"Smith, E E 'Doc' - Lensman 07 - Masters Of The Vortex" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

In the glare of blue-green radiance the atmosphere inside the hoods, the very ether, warped and writhed. In spite of the distortion of vision, however, it could be seen that growth was taking place, and at an astounding rate. In a few minutes the seeds had sprouted; in an hour the thick, broad, purplish-green leaves were inches long. In seven hours each tank was full of a lushly luxuriant tangle of foliage.
'This is the point of maximum yield,' Fairchild remarked, as he shut off the projectors. 'We will now process one tank, if you like.'
'Certainly I like. How else could I know it's the clear quill?'
'By the looks,' came the scientist's dry rejoinder. 'Pick your tank.'
One tank was removed. The leaves were processed. The full cycle of growth of the remaining tank was completed. Graves himself harvested the seeds, and himself carried them away.
Six days, six samples, six generations of seed, and the eminently skeptical Graves was convinced.
'You've got something there, Doc,' he admitted then. 'We can really go to town on that. Now, how about notes, or stuff from your old place, or people who may have smelled a rat?'
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Tm perfectly clean. None of my boys know anything important, and none ever will. I assemble all apparatus myself, from standard pans, and disassemble it myself. I've been around, Graves.'
'Well, we can't be too sure.' The fat man's eyes were piercing and cold. 'Leakers don't live very long. We don't want you to die, at least not until we get in production here.'
'Nor then, if you know when you're well off,' the scientist countered, cynically. 'I'm a fellow of the College of Radiation, and it took me five years to learn this technique. None of your hatchetmen could ever learn it. Remember that, my friend.'
'So?'
'So don't get off on the wrong foot and don't get any funny ideas. I know how to run things like this and I've got the manpower and equipment to do it. If I come in I'm running it, not you. Take it or leave it.'
The fat man pondered for minutes, then decided. 'I'll take it. You're in, Doc. You can have a cave-two hundred seventeen is empty-and we'll go up and get things started right now.'
Less than a year later, the same two men sat in Graves' office. They waited while a red light upon a peculiarly complicated deskboard faded through pink into pure white.
'All clear. This way, Doc.' Graves pushed a yellow button on his desk and a section of blank wall slid aside.
In the elevator thus revealed the two men went down to a sub-basement. Along a dimly-lit corridor, through an elaborately locked steel door, and into a steel-lined room. Four inert bodies lay upon the floor.
Graves thrust a key into an orifice and a plate swung open, revealing a chute into which the bodies were dumped. The two retraced their steps to the manager's office.
'Well, that's all we can feed to the disintegrator,' Fairchild lit an Alsakanite cigarette and exhaled appreciatively.
'Why? Going soft on us?'
'No. The ice is getting too thin.'
'Whaddya mean, "thin"?' Graves demanded. 'The Patrol inspectors are ours-all that count. Our records are fixed. Everything's on the green.'
'That's what you think,' the scientist sneered. 'You're supposed to be smart. Are you? Our accident rate is up three
hundredths; industrial hazard rate and employee turnover about three and a half; and the Narcotics Division alone knows how much we have upped total bootleg sales. Those figures are all in the Patrol's books. How can you give such facts the brush-off?'
'We don't have to.' Graves laughed comfortably. 'Even a half of one percent wouldn't excite suspicion. Our distribution is so uniform throughout the galaxy that they can't center it. They can't possibly trace anything back to us. Besides, with our lily-white reputation, other firms would get knocked off in time to give us plenty of warning. Lutzenschiffer's, for instance, is putting out Heroin by the ton.'
'So what?' Fairchild remained entirely unconvinced. 'Nobody else is putting out what comes out of cave two seventeen- demand and price prove that. What you don't seem to get, Graves, is that some of those damned Lensmen have brains. Suppose they decide to put a couple of Lensmen onto this job
-then what? The minute anybody runs a rigid statistical analysis on us, we're done for.'
'Um ... m.' This was a distinctly disquieting thought, in view of the impossibility of concealing anything from a Lens-man who was really on the prowl. 'That wouldn't be so good. What would you do?'
'I'd shut down two seventeen-and the whole hush-hush end
-until we can get our records straight and our death-rate down to the old ten-year average. That's the only way we can be really safe.'
'Shut down! The way they're pushing us for production? Don't be an idiot-the chief would toss us both down the chute.'
'Oh, I don't mean without permission. Talk him into it. It'd be best for everybody, over the long pull, believe me.'
'Not a chance. He'd blow his stack. If we can't dope out something better than that, we go on as is.'
'The next-best thing would be to use some new form of death to clean up our books.'
'Wonderful!' Graves snorted contemptuously. 'What would we add to what we've got now-bubonic plague?'
'A loose atomic vortex.'
'Wh-o-o-o-sh!' The fat man deflated, then came back up, gasping for air. 'Man, you're completely nuts! There's only one on the planet, and it's ... or do you mean ... but nobody ever
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touched one of those things off deliberately ... can it be done?'
'Yes. It isn't simple, but we of the College of Radiation know how-theoretically-the transformation can be made to occur. It has never been done because it has been impossible to extinguish the things; but now Neal Cloud is putting them out. The fact that the idea is new makes it all the better.'
'I'll say so. Neat ... very neat.' Graves' agile and cunning brain figuratively licked its chops. 'Certain of our employees will presumably have been upon an outing in the upper end of the valley when this terrible accident takes place?'
'Exactly-enough of them to straighten out our books. Then, later, we can dispose of undesirables as they appear. Vortices are absolutely unpredictable, you know. People can die of radiation or of any one of a mixture of various toxic gases and the vortex will take the blame.'
'And later on, when it gets dangerous, Storm Cloud can blow it out for us,' Graves gloated. 'But we won't want him for a long, long time!'
'No, but we'll report it and ask for him the hour it happens ... use your head, Graves!' He silenced the manager's anguished howl of protest. 'Anybody who gets one wants it killed as soon as possible, but here's the joker. Cloud has enough Class-A-double-prime-urgent demands on file already to keep him busy from now on, so we won't be able to get him for a long, long time. See?'
'I see. Nice, Doc. ... very, very nice. But I'll have the boys keep an eye on Cloud just the same.'
At about this same time two minor cogs of TPI's vast machine sat blissfully, arms around each other, on a rustic seat improvised from rocks, branches, and leaves. Below them, almost under their feet, was a den of highly venomous snakes, but neither man or girl saw them. Before them, also unperceived, was a magnificent view of valley and stream and mountain.
All they saw, however, was each other-until their attention was wrenched to a man who was climbing toward them with the aid of a thick club which he used as a staff.
'Oh ... Bob!' The girl stared briefly; then, with a half-articulate moan, shrank even closer against her lover's side.