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Title: Passage to anywhere
Author: Sam Merwin Jr.
Illustrator: Kelly Freas
Release date: January 16, 2026 [eBook #77717]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: King-Size Publications, Inc, 1955
Credits: Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASSAGE TO ANYWHERE ***
Passage to Anywhere
by Sam Merwin Jr.
_Have you ever wondered what would happen if man’s inventive genius
should abandon space rocket construction for a more daring approach
to the conquest of space? Suppose--just suppose--you could step into
a matter-transmitting machine and be instantly teleported to Venus
or Mars? Concede the possibility and bear in mind that a battle of
political titans would have to be waged first, and we predict you
won’t be able to lay this story down. For Sam Merwin Jr., with his
customary brilliance, has actually dared to fire the opening gun._
=The scientists were riding high in the saddle with U N backing. But
it took a touch of genius to win the teleportation battle.=
The moment Park Hamilton sat down behind his desk and saw the shocking
pink envelope lying atop the neat little rectangular tower that
represented his morning’s mail, he felt a distinct sense of foreboding.
For, while Hamilton was not psychic, in the course of his six-year
tenure of the difficult office of executive operations director for
Science Projects Research, he had become highly sensitive to the
tumbler fallings of small events as indicative of larger patterns.
Reaching slowly for the shocking pink envelope, he tried to tell
himself that it was his job that was making him jumpy. Keeping SPR
together and afloat on the swirling tides of politics and opinion in a
far from united world was a job that would have caused Atlas to throw
down his burden in despair and face willingly the wrath of the gods.
Or so Hamilton had more than once told his familiars in moments of
despondency.
SPR had been born in the disturbed 1950’s as a modest revolt among
scientists--first in England, then in the United States--against
the nationalistic restrictions imposed upon them by governments
inextricably involved in the Gilbertian paradoxes of the so-called
Cold War. And, as a divided world somehow worked its way toward peace,
it had grown, little by little, to include most of the truly able
scientific brains on Earth.
Dedicated to the pure research few governments or industries could
afford, it supported itself on a sort of ASCAP arrangement, by which
its members turned over to SPR all of their royalties and were paid
in return a guaranteed income according to the earnings of the more
practical results of their work. Oddly enough, the plan was liked.
Ultimately, SPR had grown so unwieldy, and so rich, that Hamilton’s
predecessor had managed to put it loosely under the aegis of the United
Nations, thus protecting the fiercely independent organization, at
least in part, from nationalist pressure. The great SPR Proving and
Testing Laboratories in Antarctica had been set up when the UN took
mandate over that much-claimed and almost uninhabited continent.
But winning agreement to his great plan from the individualistic and
anarchic SPR members had proved almost more difficult than putting
through the UN and Antarctic projects. Jacques Swanson, the man
responsible, had died shortly after the first ground--or rather
ice--was broken south of Ross Sea. And Park Hamilton was his successor.
He had never allowed himself to believe that the job was a sinecure.
But he was firmly convinced that if he had been aware of the endless
problems to which it would give rise he would have shot himself before
considering it. Which, as his personal assistant, Miss Alderman,
invariably reminded him, was so much blather.
“You thrive on it,” she told him when this mood was upon him. “You look
five years younger.”
“That,” was his usual reply, “is because, in a Freudian sense, I’m
trying to work my way back to the womb. But one of these days you’ll
come in here and find me quite literally curled up in a foetal
position. Then what will you do?”
“Buy you a lollipop,” had been her most recent retort.
All in all, a thankless business--and, opening the shocking pink
envelope, Hamilton had a definite hunch that the day ahead was going to
be even more thankless than usual.
His foreboding was based on a number of things. Each of them was small
in itself, but in toto, they shaped up to a pattern he disliked. First,
for several days, everything connected with SPR had been running far
too smoothly. No member scientist had come up with a demand for a
half billion dollars to build a machine that would take him under the
Earth’s crust.
Moreover, no greedy power had been plotting in the UN Assembly to
subvert to its own use the discovery of one of its nationals, solely
to avoid paying SPR patent royalties. And no major industrial cartel
had been stirring up trouble, charging scientist-slavery, from the same
motives.
What was even more suspicious and disturbing, the reliable Miss
Alderman had not yet arrived at her office--and had not phoned in an
explanation. Shirley, the Eurasian receptionist, had given him this
information quite casually on the way in.
And on top of that, Hamilton had walked under a ladder coming off the
high-level ramp, where some rim repairmen had been fixing a warped edge
on the helicoptor roof. This last occurrence was the most annoying,
because Hamilton _knew_ it was foolishness and superstition. Yet he
could not help feeling as he did.
Now--the shocking pink envelope. Its color alone indicated two things.
One, that it was an emergency message from Antarctica too vital to be
entrusted to the usual coding channels. And two, that it must have come
in during the past half hour--since he had left his apartment uptown.
Otherwise it would have been relayed to him there. He was sure it could
only mean trouble.
It read: SRYAN OFF HELIJET CIRCA 2200 EDST. VACATION TIME. HAMESSAGE
RESTRAINING TOO LATE. WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN--CANTSPR. Translated, it
meant that S. Ryan had taken off in a helijet about 10 p.m., New York
time, on an overdue vacation. A message from Hamilton asking that he
delay his departure had arrived too late. Ryan’s present whereabouts
was not known. Chief, Antarctic Science Projects Research.
Hamilton said, “Damn!” in very forcible accents. Then, deciding the
oath was still too mild and too trite for the occasion, he added a few
more lurid expletives in several languages, including the Portuguese.
These last he had picked up while doing a job as consulting biologist
on the Amazon Delta Reclamation Plan--where his work had won him
admission to SPR, class AAAA, and had led directly to his present job.
He flipped the visicommunicator switch to Miss Alderman’s office, and
received in return nothing but a blank screen. He next switched over to
Shirley, the receptionist, and was instantly rewarded with a view of
her flowerlike Eurasian face. She said, “Miss Alderman’s apartment does
not answer. And she has not called in.”
He flipped off with a scowl and lit a cigarette. His foreboding had
been justified. He wondered just how his message to Ryan had been
bungled in Antarctica. Or had Ryan simply defied restraint and taken
off, and were Cantspr, Witherspoon and the rest down there covering
for him? Exhaling wearily, he decided he could hardly blame either
Witherspoon and his able staff, or Ryan himself.
Sven Ryan was an inventor and a man of genius. As an inventor he had
just successfully tested what might well prove the most important
single development in human gadgetry since the long-haired discovery
of the wheel. And, as a genius, he had to be given _some_ leeway. But
Ryan, free-roaming and talking just now--Hamilton tried but failed to
suppress a shudder at the thought.
The visicommunicator hummed and he flipped it on again, hoping it
would be the sorely needed Miss Alderman. Instead, it was Shirley.
Impassively she announced in her sweet, thin voice, “Mr. Harris of the
UN is here to see you, sir.”
“Dammit, I _know_ Mr. Harris is from the UN!” Hamilton exploded. Then,
noting her hurt look, “I’m sorry, Shirley. You’re not the target of my
wrath. Send him in.”
Ian Harris, as SPR high-level liaison man for the United Nations, had
been working closely with Hamilton for almost five years. They had
traveled together, wined and dined together both in public and private,
golfed together, and explored each other’s minds and opinions in the
closest harmony for hundreds of hours. And yet, at moments such as
this, Harris had the knack of putting Hamilton on the defensive.
Hamilton knew he was the better looking. He had viewed himself too many
times on too many color projection screens to have any doubts on that
score. But his gray-tipped brown hair looked faintly theatrical when
contrasted with Harris’ cropped black head, and his upper lip looked
naked beside the other man’s neat black mustache. What was even more
disconcerting, his features looked looser and more florid, his clothes
not nearly so well fitting.
As usual, when Harris entered with a brisk nod Hamilton was annoyed to
find the refrain of _There’ll Always Be an England_ running through his
head. He said, “Hello, Ian,” waved him to a chair and offered him a
cigarette with a defensive geniality.
The Englishman shook his head, settled back with a sigh and regarded
his host with an I-say-old-man-is-this-exactly-cricket? expression.
It occurred to Hamilton that Harris looked at the moment as sad as a
Georgia hound dog whose master had eaten up all the steak.
The silence lasted until Hamilton said, with a trace of irritation
he hated himself for revealing, “Ian, if you came over here to put
the evil eye on me, I earnestly suggest that you go back to your own
office? Let _me_ be _your_ guest.”
The UN representative regarded Hamilton as if he were some animal of a
rarely photographed and inexplicable new species. Then he said, mildly,
“Park. I find it difficult at times to convince certain regrettably
backward branches of our organization that SPR is not a malignant wild
growth upon the human social organism--a growth primarily dedicated
to the development of disruptive discoveries without regard to their
probable effect upon the structure of our society as a whole.”
“For heaven’s sake, get to the point, Ian,” said Hamilton. “We’ve been
over this a thousand times before. It’s the job of SPR’s scientists
to invent what comes bubbling up to the surface of their perhaps
oddly constructed minds. It’s my job--and yours--to fit them into the
socio-economic pattern.”
Harris regarded him with a mute disapproval that made Hamilton feel
like a small boy caught cheating in a grade-school test. The UN man
said, “Do you really think you’re doing your job, old man?”
“I’m doing my best,” said Hamilton, knowing that the toreador capework
was about over and the moment of truth about to arrive.
“I’m sure you are.” Having made his point, Harris was disposed to be
conciliatory. “But what about this Ryan business?”
Hamilton sighed, and pushed the shocking pink envelope across the
desk. “There it is,” he said simply. “Somebody goofed. I sent out a
restraining order under special code the moment I heard that Ryan’s
tests were successful.”
Harris glanced at the message, frowned, and tossed it back on the desk.
“Rough luck, Park,” he said. Then, “Has it occurred to you what it
could mean if word gets out generally that this mad genius of yours has
developed an instantaneous matter-transmitter?”
“How did _you_ hear of it?” Hamilton asked, instantly suspicious, and
remembering that it was absolutely against the UN-SPR pact for the UN
to have an informant in Antarctica.
To Hamilton’s amazement, the usually imperturbable Harris countenance
turned a bright pink. Нe thought, _If I’m not skinned alive over this
it will have been worth it--just to see Ian blush. But what is he
hiding?_
The UN man said, with seeming clairvoyance, “It’s not what you think.
I--er--picked it up quite inadvertently. I happened to stumble across
your man Ryan late last night.”
“If you did,” said Hamilton seriously, “why in the name of heaven
didn’t you clamp on to him?”
“I tried to,” was the reply. “But the circumstances were not exactly
propitious.”
“Ryan at complete liberty in New York!” Hamilton groaned. “Was he
talking?”
“If he was keeping silent,” said Harris, his face resuming its normal
pale tan, “would I be here now? I tell you, Park, this may be more
serious than you think. I’m qualified to understand his ravings--an
ability not shared by many, thank God. But there’s no way of telling
how much harm has been done.”
“Have you taken steps?” Hamilton asked, wishing he had looked up before
walking under that ladder.
Harris nodded. “I’ve put our UN force on the job. But what can they do?
There are only a few score of them. Even if they locate him, they have
no real jurisdiction outside of UN territory. All your man has to do
is tell them to push off.” He paused, then added, “I came over here to
discover your attitude and what steps _you_ are taking.”
“Thanks, Ian,” said Hamilton. Harris didn’t have to detail what
it could mean if word got out that a successful instantaneous
matter-transmitter had been discovered. It could mean world-wide
financial and economic catastrophe. It could mean disaster for every
other form of freight and cargo transportation on Earth, from the great
rocket airliners with their chains of freight-gliders to the humblest
obsolescent tramp steamer plying the ocean waves.
Hearing of it prematurely, people wouldn’t wait to learn its
limitations, or the bugs that would have to be worked out before it
could be put into operation. They’d dump their stocks and property
investments and gilt-edged bonds and the result might well be
world-wide chaos.
“We’ll do our very best, never fear,” said Hamilton, accompanying
Harris to the office door.
But, returning to his desk, he wondered just what they could do. To put
either the New York City police or the Federal Authorities on the job
would be an iron-clad way of opening up a leak. It was one hell of a
mess. He sat down behind his desk, put his face in his hands, and tried
desperately to think of something. Nothing came.
The visicommunicator hummed its little tune, and wearily he turned it
on again. Miss Alderman’s trim, competent face appeared on the screen.
He said, “Just where have _you_ been?”
She said, “I only this minute got home--and I’ve got the mad Minnesotan
with me. _Chief_, are you okay?”
II
Hamilton’s first reaction was one of utter disbelief. He said, “You’ve
_what_, Nancy? If by any chance this is a joke--”
“It’s not,” Miss Alderman assured him crisply. “How do you think I got
these rings under my eyes? Sven Ryan is sleeping it off right here in
my apartment. I didn’t dare turn on my communicator until he passed
out.”
“But where, and how did you ever get hold of him?” asked Hamilton,
still half-incredulous.
“Maybe you’d better come right over here, Chief,” she said. “I’ll
explain when you get here. Do you know where I live?”
“I do--and I’m on my way.” When Miss Alderman switched off, he flipped
Shirley’s switch, and informed her he was leaving the office. “Call Mr.
Harris and tell him everything is under control,” he directed.
He left by the private door, thus avoiding the reception room and any
potential holdups in the outer office. Emerging on the high-level ramp,
he looked about warily for the rim repairmen and their ladder, and
was relieved to discover that they had finished their work, and gone
elsewhere.
Since Miss Alderman, like everyone on SPR except its few top echelon
members, lived within a mile of the Zeckendorf Plaza offices, Hamilton
hopped a ramp-conveyor that carried him with gratifying celerity and
an equally gratifying smoothness across the bottomless canyons of the
incredible city.
In less than fifteen minutes he had arrived at a high-level port in
her own building, close to the lean green rectangle of Central Park.
About him, unnoticed, passed the ever-changing kaleidoscopic vista of
Manhattan with its familiar but fantastic metal and glass complexes of
polychromatic spires, pyramids, ziggurats and domes.
Although the trip had been incredibly brief, Miss Alderman looked as
crisply and as trimly brunette as she had on the day when she had
first stepped into his office to take up her difficult assignment as
his personal secretary. Evidently she had found time to do a quite
miraculous repair job on the circles under her eyes.
He put an arm around her shoulders, and gave her a quick squeeze. He
said, “If I forgot to say thanks over the communicator--thanks now,
Nancy.” He stood back, looking at her with open admiration. “_How?_” he
asked her.
“Have some coffee,” she suggested, flushing with pleasure.
She poured him a steaming black cupful from a glasspresso livingroom
machine which was one of SPR’s most profitable patents. As they sat
down, Hamilton could hear the faint sound of snoring from behind the
closed bedroom door. He lifted an eyebrow, and nodded toward the sound.
Miss Alderman nodded in return.
“I’m waiting,” said Hamilton.
“Well,” she began, marshalling her thoughts and words with care, “I was
sound asleep in my beautypad when I got a call on the communicator.
It must have been just about three a.m. It was one of the girls in
compo-filing. She was watching a night club mike-jockey and she told me
that Sven Ryan had just appeared on the screen, and wasn’t he supposed
to be in Antarctica? It seems she filed your restraining message
yesterday afternoon.”
“Good girls, both of you,” said Hamilton warmly.
To his surprise, Miss Alderman choked on her coffee. For some reason,
her reaction reminded him of Ian Harris’ inexplicable embarrassment in
his office earlier.
When she had recovered herself, Miss Alderman said, “I’m sorry, Chief.
But I think you’ll understand when I tell you that by the time I got
myself together and over to the club our crazy genius was sitting at a
table swathed in three of Molly Sadler’s choicest items--one blonde,
one redhead, and one brunette. You never saw such--er--figures.”
Hamilton could not help smiling. His use of the phrase _good girls_
in even remote connotation with any of Molly Sadler’s justly renowned
Cyprians was more than amusing. He said, “You underrate me, Nancy. How
did Ryan react when he saw you?”
“It was odd.” She told him. “Mind you, he was very drunk, and by the
time I managed to get him halfway reassembled he couldn’t remember any
of it. But I’d be willing to swear he said, ‘Lord! Another vulture! And
I fled Antarctica to get away from all of you. But where’s your black
mustache?’”
She stroked her perfectly smooth upper lip, looking faintly troubled.
Then she said, “I don’t have a mustache, do I, Chief?”
He replied, “No, of course not, but Ia--” He caught it barely in
time. And, in spite of himself, he grimaced, envisioning what must
have happened. Evidently Ryan, loaded and ready for “tiger hunting,”
had headed for Molly Sadler’s famous non-home and discovered the
impeccable, imperturbable, and immovable Ian Harris already there.
“What’s the matter, Chief?” Miss Alderman stared at him with curiosity
snapping in her wide-set black eyes.
“Nothing,” said Alderman. “Tell you later. How did you manage to get
him away from the bevy? From what I’ve heard about Molly’s girls--” He
let it hang.
“Chief, all I can tell you after last night is that everything you
hear isn’t half the truth,” she said solemnly. “If I had a quarter of
the--well, I’ll just say that if I had a certain kind of glamor I’d
never have wasted a fourth of my life becoming college-trained to spend
the best years of my youth behind a desk--even a very nice desk.”
“You’ll do--anywhere,” he told her. Then, frowning, “Among the
interesting things I’ve heard about Molly’s girls is that some of them
have college degrees too. Was Ryan talking?”
“He certainly was,” said Miss Alderman promptly. “He was beguiling his
harem with promises to ship each of them an Antarctic rock-diamond
every week, by instant teleportation.”
“Oh, God!” said Hamilton. “Let’s hope these particular girls
have extremely low IQ’s. They could be the exact opposite of the
intellectual type.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it, Chief,” was Miss Alderman’s reply. “Though it
doesn’t seem quite fair, when you come right down to it.”
“How did you get him away from them?” he asked.
She shook her close-cut darkhaired head. “If I hadn’t been full of
outraged righteousness, if I’d stopped to think twice, I’d never have
made it,” she admitted. “I just marched in and led poor Sven out by
the ear. It was a high-handed, somewhat unworthy trick--at least he
seemed to think so once I had him under wraps. I’m beginning to think
so myself.”
“Get hold of yourself, Nancy,” said Hamilton, rising. “You’ve done SPR
a very great service. How’d you keep him here?”
“Not the way you think,” she said promptly. “By the time I got him here
he was running out of steam. He wanted to talk--and go on drinking.
He’s a pretty nice guy, you know. It took me all the rest of the night
to get him folded up.” She paused, then added, “Chief, is this new item
of his as hot as he claims?”
“Ian Harris was in my office just now, having catfits over it,” said
Hamilton. “Potentially, it’s the hottest potato SPR has ever come up
with. And we’ve had to handle some pretty sizzling ones, remember?”
“I remember,” said Miss Alderman.
Hamilton rose. He said, “I think we’d better wake Ryan up. We can’t let
him sleep here indefinitely.”
“Why, Chief!” asked Miss Alderman, standing to reveal a trim if not
opulent figure.
“I’m not, at the moment, concerned about your reputation,” he told her,
inwardly damning all women for their tendency to coyness at the wrong
moments. “What I am concerned with is Ryan and his--”
The doorbell chimed sharply. After a swift, silent interchange, Miss
Alderman answered it. Rather expecting Ian Harris to have run them to
earth, Hamilton was not wholly surprised at the appearance of a huge,
burly man with bushy black eyebrows and a ruggedly handsome face.
Face and body belonged to Charles Forsythe, Undersecretary of Science
and Industry in the Cabinet of the President of the United States and
one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful individuals. It is
perhaps needless to add that he was, incidentally, SPR’s deadliest foe
in the name of private enterprise.
Miss Alderman turned to stare at Hamilton, her expression bewildered
and uncertain.
Hamilton said, quietly, “Come in, Charlie. Come in. I’m glad to see
you.”
“Glad to see you, too, Park,” said Forsythe. The two men eyed each
other with the restrained wariness of polite jungle cats. Then
Forsythe’s mouth twitched and Hamilton found himself laughing with the
intruder. _Confound the man!_ he thought. It was a hell of a note when
you couldn’t stay mad at your enemies.
Actually, Forsythe’s sudden emergence in the already complex problem of
Sven Ryan and his matter-transmitter was an element Hamilton had been
hoping they could avoid ever since Ian Harris had told him Ryan was at
liberty in New York and talking his head off. But, since Forsythe was
already here....
Hamilton said, “Let Miss Alderman pour you a cup of coffee. It’s
excellent, I can assure you.”
“Thank you, I could use one,” said the industrialist, flinging
himself in a rollachair that creaked ominously under his by no means
inconsiderable weight. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“I don’t imagine you did,” said Hamilton, shaking his head faintly at
Nancy, who was giving him a shall-I-put-something-in-it? look. “You
must have been pretty busy.”
“All in the night’s work,” said Forsythe, yawning and extending his
legs. His voice, like the rest of him, was big and deep. Charlie
Forsythe looked like a gigantic, old-fashioned steel puddler who
had come up in the world and was not quite adjusted to its social
niceties--a bull in a china shop instead of the expensively-reared son
of vast inherited wealth that he actually was. He was a throwback to
the industrial-pirate era of the late nineteenth century--human, tough,
limited, determined, likeable, and always dangerous.
He was, in fact, that most dangerous variety of anarchist--the sort
that believes in absolute freedom for himself and stringent regulation
for others. He was a dinosaur, a three-decker man of war. He was
obsolete but he didn’t know it. All of which, with his strength of
personality and immense resources, made him doubly dangerous.
The cup of coffee Miss Alderman handed him looked like a child’s piece
of doll-house china in his immense hairy hand. Нe drained it at a
draught, nodded his thanks, and said, “Well, where’s the boy?”
“In there,” said Hamilton, nodding toward the bedroom door. “He’s
sleeping it off.”
“I’ve got an order here,” said Forsythe patting his breast pocket.
“I’ve also got operatives outside. We’re picking up Ryan under the
Security Act of nineteen fifty-six.”
“You _have_ been busy,” said Hamilton, really worried. “But that Act
has been superseded by a whole flock of subsequent legislation.”
Forsythe grinned lazily, like a satisfied sabre-tooth tiger. He said,
“Maybe--but it’s still on the books. And by the time the courts get
through arguing out the pros and cons of it we’ll have all the juice
out of the boy.” He glanced at Hamilton, and added significantly, “All
of this is on the level, isn’t it? I’d hate to think I’d wasted the
entire night for nothing.”
Hamilton longed to lie, but knew it would gain him nothing. They’d
simply pull Ryan in anyway and find out about his invention for
themselves. He said, “It’s on the level, Charley. But the whole thing
is so new--so untried. It may take years, even decades.”
Forsythe lit a cigar--a cigarette would have looked like a ladycracker
stuck in that enormous face. He said, “That may be so. But we can’t
afford to risk it. The Wrights invented the airplane at the turn of the
century, and ten years later they were using it to bomb targets in the
Second Balkan War.”
That, thought Hamilton unhappily, was one of the things that made
Forsythe dangerous. Underneath the bullyboy exterior lurked a
first-class brain and a vast storehouse of knowledge in unexpected
fields. It was, he decided, time to take steps.
“Charley,” he said, “I think you know what I am empowered to do if
you try this with Ryan. It is clearly stated in the SPR charter that
infringement by a national government, or any subject or citizen
of such a government, upon the rights of either SPR, or any member
thereof, permits us to apply sanctions, either limited or total,
according to our judgment. That’s a UN General Assembly provision.”
Forsythe looked sleepily amused. “Quite the lawyer, aren’t you, Park?
Too bad you aren’t as good an American.”
With difficulty Hamilton restrained the sudden surge of anger within
him. He said, “Not today, Charley. But if you pull this kidnapping
merely to save your own bank account SPR _will_ take action--and we’ll
have no trouble getting UN backing.”
“Of course you won’t,” said Forsythe, smiling. “But we can’t afford the
risk of matter-transmission at this point. We’re willing to fly by the
seat of our pants. The UN can’t afford to have you people withdraw your
patents from us and put America out of business.” He blew a perfect
smoke ring.
Miss Alderman emerged from the bedroom. “He’s still out like a light,”
she said.
“We have an ambulance downstairs,” said Forsythe quietly. “We were
going to use it anyway.”
Hamilton said, “Naturally, we wouldn’t put America out of business.
But we could withdraw your rights to all SPR patents employed in your
international carriers. That would hurt _you_. It would force American
exporters to use foreign carriers. But it wouldn’t put America or the
world out of business.”
It was the old, hateful tug of war, the civilized man against the
jungle barbarian in thought and deed. Not for the first time, Hamilton
felt a sense of shame at his country’s forbearance. As, he supposed,
other internationalists must occasionally feel toward their own.
Forsythe said, “I hardly have to remind you, Park, that there is strong
and growing resentment in certain influential circles against your SPR
as a world monopoly that gobbles up all of our finest scientific brains
and forces us to pay for their use.”
“If you’d paid them well enough to begin with, SPR would never have
been formed,” said Hamilton.
“Perhaps.” Forsythe shrugged. “But that’s water under the bridge. We
shan’t repeat the mistake, I promise you.”
“You won’t get the chance,” warned Hamilton.
They were eyeing each other warily when the doorbell chimed again.
Miss Alderman hastened to answer it. Ian Harris stood framed in
the entranceway, backed by four white-and-blue-uniformed UN police
officers. A pair of plainclothesmen, obviously Forsythe’s operatives,
hovered at a discreet distance behind them.
Harris, looking every inch the Britisher, waited until Miss Alderman
had closed the door. Then he said, “Mr. Forsythe, am I right in my
interpretation of what Miss Alderman recently informed me via UN
communicator? Did you enter this apartment, accompanied by an armed
escort, for the sole purpose of removing without his consent an SPR
employee to an unknown destination?”
Forsythe shrugged his mammoth shoulders. “Interpret it as you choose.
I came here empowered by the President of the United States, operating
under law--the Security Act of nineteen fifty-six--to ensure that a
citizen of my country does not employ his specialized knowledge to its
jeopardy.”
Harris said, drily, “For your information, Forsythe, and that of your
government, all SPR property and persons fall under UN jurisdiction
according to General Assembly agreement--an agreement ratified by all
member nations. That naturally includes their living quarters. Since
Miss Alderman is an SPR official her apartment is therefore inviolable
by any national police force--except in case of a felony.”
Hamilton stepped in. He said, “Gentlemen, we seem to have reached an
impasse. May I therefore suggest a way out?”
III
Hamilton left Forsythe and Ian Harris sitting on opposite sides of
the fore-cabin of the SPR helirocket which was taking them swiftly
southward to Antarctica. In the rear cabin were Miss Alderman and an
unhappily reawakened Sven Ryan.
Hamilton nodded to his assistant and said, “Nancy, you’d better go
forward and keep those two tigers from tearing each other limb from
limb. I want to talk to Ryan alone. It’s of great importance.”
Miss Alderman slipped silently from the rear cabin and Hamilton sat
down in the seat she had left vacant and studied the inventor in
tight-lipped concern. Despite the fact that he had spent two years
under the skin-tanning Antarctic sun and snow-glare, Sven Ryan’s face
was white. Quite obviously he was the sort of milk-skinned redhead who
does not react to exposure by turning red or brown.
At the moment, his face was a near-pistachio green--a delicate pastel
shade that contrasted vividly with the bright red of his hair and
eyeballs. He sat despondently on his cot, with his chin in his hands,
flanked by an oxygen inhalator and a half-empty bottle of anti-fatigue
tablets.
He eyed his chief with resignation. “What are you going to do to me,
Park?” he said. “Boot me out of the SPR?”
“For heaven’s sake, why?” Hamilton asked, surprised.
“For blowing a couple of million bucks,” was the solemn reply.
Hamilton had expected to find Ryan in the throes of physical reaction
to his bender, but he had not expected such abject mental misery.
He said, soothingly, “Sven, you know as well as I do that SPR funds
are primarily for the use of its scientists--for their research and
experimentation. The only thing that puzzles me is why you went
gallivanting off and spilled your large flannel mouth all over New York
last night.”
Hamilton was prepared for every answer but the one he got. Incredibly,
the inventor lifted his bleary eyes to the other’s face and said, “Why
shouldn’t I drown my sorrows after blowing all that money and work on a
miserable failure? And if I chose to talk about it, that’s my business.”
Hamilton felt as if the helirocket had hit an old-fashioned air pocket.
The very breath seemed to go out of him. He said, “But according to the
reports, your transmitter was a success. It worked.”
Sven Ryan made a gesture of disgust. “Sure it worked,” he said, “over
one kilometer with a few kilos of dead weight. But you know what I was
working for. My whole aim has been to invent some method of transport
that will make interplanetary travel economically feasible. But what
good is a transporter that cannot send organic life?”
He paused to take a whiff of oxygen and his looks and spirits almost
visibly improved. “I must have been out of my mind, Park. I ran a dozen
extra tests with white mice.” He shook his head wretchedly. “What came
out in the receiver was sickening. I felt like a sadist.”
“So you took off and got drunk,” said Hamilton. “You wanted to drown
your sorrows.”
Here, he thought, was a perfect example of the creative, scientific
mind--a mind so wrapped up in fulfillment of a dream, in the attainment
of a single end, that everything else remained in fuzzy focus. Here was
that persistent anomaly, the completely dedicated man who would never
cease to be a problem to the more scatter-gunned mass of humanity. It
was a problem that ranged all the way from the absentminded professor
to the discoverer of new theories and machines that were constantly
threatening to disrupt the balances by which other men lived.
“Seven years!” said Ryan gloomily. “Seven years and almost three
million SPR dollars--and it’s a tragic bust. Do you wonder I blew my
top, Park?” He paused again and for an instant his eyes lighted up.
“Chief, do you know who I ran into last night? I’m not going to tell
you where, but it was--”
“It was Ian Harris of the UN, and you stumbled over him at Molly
Sadler’s house of joy,” said Hamilton.
“How’d you know?” Ryan asked. Then, before his chief could answer,
“Lord, Park, it was almost worth it. But I was in no mood to trade shop
talk with Ian Harris then. So I grabbed me an armful of girls and took
off. The next thing I remember, Nancy--your girl Friday--was hauling me
away from them. And the next thing I remember after that is waking up
here with the same face before me. Park, is part of her job tormenting
poor scientists out for a little ill-deserved fun?”
Hamilton chuckled. Then he said, “Didn’t she tell you anything, Sven?”
“She tried to,” was the reply, “but I shut her up. As it was my ears
were ringing in three different keys. Why do you ask?”
“Brace yourself, boy,” said Hamilton, deciding it was time to discuss
some home truths with a youth who was showing every sign of rapid
recovery. “We’re on our way to Antarctica. Did you know that?”
“That I got,” said Ryan. “Are you planning to have me flayed alive or
merely drawn and quartered?”
“Hardly,” Hamilton assured him. “Though there are a couple of chaps up
in the front cabin who might not be averse to such a plan. One of them
is Charles Forsythe, the American Secretary for Science and Industry.
The other is your old friend Ian Harris.”
Ryan sat bolt upright on his cot, his clearing eyes wide with surprise.
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “How come they’re in on this? Are they
planning to participate in my courtmartial? I’m sorry, Park, if I’ve
made things tough for you. But I don’t quite see what I did to--”
“All you did,” Hamilton interrupted, “was to invent the first
successful instantaneous matter-transmitter in history. In your
preoccupation with discovering a way to send men to the stars it
evidently didn’t occur to you that your little gadget, right here on
Earth, can make every other means of transport from a mountain burro to
the latest A-rocket obsolete overnight. And then you had to get drunk
and spill it all over New York! Charlie Forsythe tried to put you under
security lock and key for the United States.”
Hamilton went on to explain exactly what had happened. How Nancy
Alderman had plucked him to precarious safety, how Forsythe had
attempted protective custody, how Harris had foiled Forsythe, and
finally how Hamilton himself, after a prolonged and fruitless argument,
had stepped in with a compromise suggestion.
“You mean you want me to run off a test for these characters?” Ryan
inquired with amazing perspicacity.
“Exactly,” said Hamilton. “You can, can’t you?”
“Sure,” was the prompt reply. “But it won’t prove anything. The
ground-level projection range is only a couple of kilometers. Even with
towers, it won’t transmit far enough to amount to anything. Who wants
to haul heavy freight up to the top of a hundred-meter tower to move it
a few more kilometers? Park, it just doesn’t make sense.”
“How far did the first airplane fly?” Hamilton asked the inventor. “A
hundred and thirty-seven feet, wasn’t it?”
“Hmmph!” Ryan took another whiff of oxygen. “I hadn’t thought of the
Earth-transport angle. But the bugs in this creation of mine are going
to be a hell of a lot harder to work out. Earth-transport--why, it’s
like using a diecaster to crack a nut.” Then, with a look of alarm,
“Chief, you aren’t giving up on the space-travel dream, are you?”
Hamilton shook his head. “You know better than that,” he said. “In
fact--” He let it hang, adding quickly, “But forget about your
invention being a flop. It’s potentially the most important single
device any SPR man has ever come up with. I’m sorry we had to cut off
your spree in mid-flight, but we couldn’t afford an international panic
just now.”
A brief, boyish smile lent charm to the inventor’s almost ugly face.
He said wistfully, “I guess it would kick over a lot of applecarts at
that. Hey, Park, where are you going?”
“You may not have noticed,” said Hamilton drily, “but we’re coming in
to land. Don’t you want to come forward and join the others? After all,
you are the lion of this occasion.”
* * * * *
Ryan hesitated, then shook his head. “I might embarrass Harris,” he
said, and winced at the accidental rhyme.
“Impossible,” said Hamilton, rising. Then, recalling the Englishman’s
blush in his office only that morning, “Well, have it your own way.
Just remember you’re a hero, son.”
“I’ll try, Father Hamilton,” said Ryan, patting his diaphragm and
belching vigorously. “Sometimes I don’t know what’s worse--the hangover
or its cure.”
“You’re cured,” said Hamilton from the doorway. “See you at the base.
Run these tests off and you’ll get all the liberty and girls you
want--liquor, too.”
“Don’t make me ill again,” said Ryan. “I’ve had it for another five
years. I’m even looking forward to seeing the girls at the base again.
Thanks, Park--for everything.”
An hour later, they were seated at a luncheon table in the CANTSPR’s
private dining room, where Jack Witherspoon and his aides had whipped
together a remarkable short-notice meal of foods raised or grown on the
SPR Breeding and Agricultural Station.
There was a delicious plankton-and-shark-fin soup, followed by filets
of musk-oxen that had been so treated by SPR husbandry and food experts
that it rivaled the finest Argentine beef. These were accompanied by an
astonishing array of locally-grown fruits and vegetables, some out of
doors, some under artificial lights, and all of them hydroponically.
When dessert was served Witherspoon--a lean, nut-brown man with a high,
near-bald forehead--remarked, “One thing we never have to worry about
here is the sherbet. We always have plenty of ice.”
The sally brought a chuckle, but it was of short duration. Forsythe
and Ian Harris were still locked in their marathon argument as to the
rights of the individual nation, and the individual citizen balanced
against the stern edicts of a world control.
“You can’t go against human nature,” Forsythe said for the fifteenth
time. “People are people, and they’ll always want to take care of their
own before they share with others.”
“_Some_ people, Forsythe,” said Harris drily. “Fortunately or
otherwise, there are a number of us who consider loyalty to self and
species above loyalty to any institution or set of institutions,
however traditional.”
“I suppose,” said Forsythe in his booming voice, “that the UN is not an
institution--and you are not loyal to it?”
“A specious argument, I fear,” replied Harris, stroking his neat black
mustache. “I’ll grant you that institutions are necessary, man being
what he is. But it is therefore necessary for us to create and serve
institutions that grow constantly larger in scope and embrace more and
more people in their pattern of expansion. Should we not instead draw a
line and say, ‘Here I stop--I go no further.’”
“What will happen when we colonize the planets?” Sven Ryan asked.
Harris regarded the inventor with mild astonishment, while Forsythe
looked actually baleful. The American cabinet member said, “I thought
the space-dream was halted for the time being, after the last
Moon-mission failed. How much did that one cost you people? Forty-one
billions, wasn’t it?”
“And the lives of seventeen men and women when the appropriations bill
was cut--thanks largely to American influence in the UN,” retorted the
inventor hotly.
“If they’d come back as ordered, no one would have died,” said Forsythe
angrily. “What was the sense of maintaining a Moon station when all
they could do was observe conditions there--at the staggering cost of
fifteen billion dollars a year?”
“I opposed the appropriations cut, Mr. Ryan,” Ian Harris reminded him.
“However, expenses were running a bit hog-wild.”
“Do you think of nothing but dollars?” Ryan asked pugnaciously. His
hangover safely buried, he had acquired a new belligerence.
Hamilton broke the embarrassed silence that followed. Laying his napkin
on the table, he rose and asked, “Don’t you think we’d better be
getting on with the test?”
Actually, he was on the inventor’s side of the argument, but he
dared not risk alienating the others. Leaving the dining room, they
were taken underground, where they donned temperature-proof aluminum
coveralls. Then they rode a swift, monorail subway to the proving
ground. Hamilton wished his chest would stop itching. It always began
the moment he found himself unable to scratch it.
Miss Alderman caught his arm for an instant as they left the monorail
at the end of their journey. “What have you got in mind, Chief?” she
asked him in a cautious whisper.
“Wait and see,” was his whispered reply. “We’ve still got an ace or two
up our sleeves.”
“I hope so,” she said earnestly. “If Mr. Forsythe gets frightened
enough, I’m afraid he’ll ask the Americans to drop a bomb on the whole
base.”
“We can stop a bomb,” Hamilton told her quietly. “We’ve got to stop any
effort to put clamps on SPR through UN channels. I’m not even sure how
Ian would stand on such a move if your boyfriend’s invention looks too
good. But that’s my job. You concentrate on keeping Ryan in hand. You
didn’t do too well at the lunch table.”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” was Miss Alderman’s hot retort--a trifle too
heated, Hamilton thought. He replied with his most irritating chuckle.
IV
As the tests were set up, Hamilton, Sven Ryan and Ian Harris remained
at the near transmitter-post, while Forsythe and Miss Alderman
journeyed by jet-sled across a kilometer of concrete to the far
terminus, with Jack Witherspoon doing the honors as operator at the
terminus post. The transmitter, looking somewhat like an old-fashioned
circular heater, or primitive radar receptor, was enclosed in a heated
dome-hut. With the complex machinery that surrounded it, it rose more
than two meters high.
Ian Harris, regarding it with a dubious gleam in his eye, remarked, “It
looks rather like an upended warming pan, doesn’t it?”
Hamilton ignored the remark. “As I get it, Sven, the principle involved
is that of atomic transmutation--right?” he asked, prowling about the
machine as the inventor set about preparing it for the test with quiet
efficiency.
“That’s the basic idea,” Ryan replied. “Actually, it breaks down the
cargo into its atomic components, and transmits it over the beam to the
terminus, where it is reassembled. The whole process of breakdown, like
the reassembly, must take place in one-thousandth of a second--or we’d
come up with apple tapioca or something. You should see some of the
messes we’ve had. And--” he added with a glance at Hamilton, “I don’t
mean the mice.”
“Int’resting,” said Ian Harris, stroking his mustache. “Any chance of
an explosion if the timing’s off?”
Ryan shook his copper head. “Not a chance,” he replied firmly.
“There’s nothing to trigger a critical mass--and besides, there’s no
critical mass to trigger. If there were--” He paused significantly.
“If there were we’d have been blown to bits, along with a large chunk
of Antarctica, months ago. Some of our timing was so far off it was
pitiful.”
Hamilton said, “What about while your beam is operating. Any time limit
on that?”
“None that we know of,” was the reply. “Once she’s in beam
transmission, she’s static. It’s the breakdown and reassembly stages
where every millisecond counts.” He flipped a switch, and a large
visiscreen showed Jack Witherspoon preparing a duplicate of the
transmitter, with Miss Alderman and hulking Charley Forsythe hovering
in the background.
“Ready, Jack?” the inventor asked.
“In a minute,” was the reply. “What are you sending us?”
Sven looked at Ian Harris. “Willing to risk your watch?” he asked.
“Park will replace it if anything goes wrong.”
“You can send a watch without hurting it?” the UN liaison man asked.
“Well, we’re going to try,” said Sven, his features impassive.
After a moment of reluctance, the Englishman pulled a slim platinum
timepiece from his pocket. “The chain, too?” he asked.
“Sure--why not? Thanks.” The inventor took the objects and placed them
in an adjustable holder in the center of the transmitter. “You spoiled
my time last night, Mr. Harris,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I spoil yours
today?”
“_Hah!_ Very good,” said Harris, looking faintly uncomfortable.
In the screen, Witherspoon said, “Ready here, Sven.”
“Coming at you,” said the redheaded inventor. He pushed a button.
Witherspoon unlocked the receiver on the screen and held the
Englishman’s watch close to it.
“Jove! It’s still ticking!” said Harris, looking relieved. Moments
later, it had been sent back and he was holding it in his hand, an
expression of utter incredulity on his habitually impassive face.
“Impossible!” he exclaimed faintly.
“But true,” said Sven with a trace of mockery. Hamilton frowned at him
and shook his head.
After a half dozen other tests, which included transmission and
re-transmission of a kilo of butter, a lump of crude iron, a book, a
jet-sled, a handkerchief and a bunch of station-grown grapes, the two
parties reassembled and rode the monorail back to the main base, where
Witherspoon had them served fine synthetic brandy. Hamilton noted that
Ryan took a soft drink instead.
There had been little talk during the journey. In Witherspoon’s
quarters, Hamilton noticed an obviously shaken Charley Forsythe and a
white-faced Ian Harris gathered in a corner, where they seemed to be
reaching some sort of whispered agreement.
Miss Alderman, regarding them anxiously, nudged her chief’s elbow and
asked, “Don’t you think we ought to break that up before it goes too
far? I’m not scared of either of them. But the thought of them together
gives me chills.”
Hamilton shook his head. “Let’s hear what they have to say,” he
replied, _sotto voce_. “I’d like to get this whole business thrashed
out and settled before we get back to New York. Once they’re on their
own again, I’m afraid to imagine what they’ll do.”
He chatted with Sven Ryan and Witherspoon, congratulating them on their
achievement. But he kept a weather eye cocked on the conference in the
corner. When Forsythe cleared his throat like some giant bullfrog, and
stepped forward, he was prepared for anything.
“First,” said the aggressive financier in his great roar of a voice,
“I want to congratulate you, Ryan, and all of you in SPR, for what you
have shown us this afternoon. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d
never have believed it.”
He paused for effect, then went on with, “However, I am sure you are
all aware of the momentous consequences of this latest and greatest of
human accomplishments. Before I go on, I want to say that Mr. Harris,
as the UN representative on the spot, is in full agreement with me.
“As things stand today, if so much as a whisper leaks out that you
have accomplished instantaneous matter-transmission, we’ll be facing a
financial breakdown that will make the Great Depression of fifty years
ago look like a boom. Since we have no guarantee that the secret can or
will be kept--no offense, gentlemen and Miss Alderman--both Mr. Harris
and I feel we are going to have to put the entire SPR Antarctica Base
under security wraps.
“Mind you, this is only a temporary fiat, as yet unbacked by either UN
or United States mandate. But, in view of the appalling potential of
your discovery, both Mr. Harris and I feel that no other steps will
suffice.”
Hamilton _shushed_ an irate Sven Ryan, who looked ready to do battle
with his fists. He stepped forward, wishing fugitively that he didn’t
have to look up to the financier. Turning to Harris, he said, “Ian, do
you really want to clamp down on SPR?”
The Englishman looked miserable--but helpless. He said, “I detest the
step and you know it. But what else is there to do, old man?”
Hamilton sighed. “Instead of suppressing knowledge--a step that has
never worked for long in all history--why don’t you prepare the world
to accept this new miracle?”
Forsythe boomed, “It’s too big a risk, Park. They’ll never adjust
to the idea without a bad crash. This is going to take _years_ of
preparation. It’s like asking Australian bushmen to drive helicars in
New York overhead traffic.”
“Perhaps it’s not as big a jump as you fear,” said Hamilton quietly.
“Charley, you’ve been looking for a loophole to crack down on
SPR--pardon the scrambled metaphor--all your life. You’re jumping at
the chance to suppress something you can’t control. Ian, you’re not
really frightened--you’re being lazy. You are afraid of the work that
has to be done.”
Stung, the Englishman said, “Possibly, Park. But consider the full
implications of the ability to transport an endless flood of material
across any ocean you wish--instantaneously. Why should any shipper on
Earth even consider our present modes of transport?”
“Because,” said Hamilton, with a half-wink at an obviously bursting
Sven Ryan, “the present modes of transport are the only means of
getting their goods where they want them to go.”
“What are you talking about?” Forsythe boomed.
“But with our own eyes, we saw--” began Harris.
Hamilton raised his hand. “You witnessed matter-transmission, never
fear,” he told them. Then he went on to detail what the inventor had
told him in the helirocket, adding a detail or two he knew himself.
“So you see,” he concluded, “to transmit matter over any distance
would mean the building of immense towers and loading platforms. The
transmitter cannot send through the curve of the Earth. And it cannot
be bounced off the Heavyside Layer.”
Forsythe and Harris exchanged puzzled glances. It was the UN official
who said, “Then you mean the device is impractical? If it is, what are
we so excited about?”
“Precisely what I was wondering,” said Hamilton. “Good artificial
jewels have been made for more than a century. But real gems have not
lost an iota of their value.” He paused to sip his brandy, added, “So
you gentlemen have let the mere words _matter-transmission_ terrify
you.”
“If the words alarmed _us_,” said Harris, “consider their effect on
humanity at large.”
“Probably much less than you suppose,” said Hamilton. “Remember,
humanity at large has much less immediately at stake in the various
forms of transportation than either of you.”
Forsythe seemed to have lost interest. “You’re right, Park, much as
I hate to admit it. We’re up against nothing a little well-guided
public relations campaign won’t handle. And you--SPR--have come up with
another impractical invention.”
“Impractical?” said Hamilton, looking one by one at the others in the
room. “I wouldn’t say so. Sven Ryan, you set out to develop a means of
making space-flight economically feasible. When your transmitter proved
unable to send living creatures intact, you thought you had failed.”
“What have you got in mind, Park?” the inventor asked.
“Just this,” said Hamilton. “What has made any successful establishment
of posts on the Moon or any of the planets impossible? It is not the
transportation of _men_. It is the transportation of material both ways
to maintain them and make their operation profitable--scientifically as
well as economically. Sven, there’s no Earth curvature between here and
the near side of the Moon. Once we set up a transfer-terminus on the
near side, the supply problem would be licked.”
Ryan leaped on Hamilton, and gave him a bear-hug. “Chief!” he almost
shouted. “You’ve done it! You’ve got the answer!”
Half-laughing, Hamilton got clear of the inventor and said, “I may have
an answer, but _you_ did it.” He turned toward Harris and Forsythe,
adding, “Well, what do you gentlemen think now of our impractical
gadget?”
Harris could only nod. From his relieved expression, from the glint of
excitement in his eyes, there was no question where his true sympathies
lay. Charley Forsythe stepped forward again, grabbed Ryan and said, “By
God, when you get it worked out, I want to go up there.”
“You’re too big--and too fat!” said the inventor.
“Gentlemen,” said Hamilton, moving in again, “a toast to the
transmitter, and to its inventor--and to the Moon and all the moons and
planets beyond!”
“Passage to anywhere,” Miss Alderman murmured as she lifted her glass.
Later, riding back to New York with her in the helirocket, Hamilton
felt limp, washed out, distinctly sorry for himself. “Why do I have to
get back so soon?” he inquired, a trifle peevishly. “Charley and Ian
are having all the fun back there in Antarctica, celebrating.”
“Duty calls, Chief,” she said with an indulgent smile.
He ignored her. “And all I get is a hug from Sven Ryan. For five bucks,
I’d pay Molly Sadler a visit and meet some of those stunners of hers in
the flesh.”
“Not for five dollars, you wouldn’t,” said Miss Alderman with a
half-smile. “Besides, you’re not the type.”
“Dammit, do you have to remind me now?” he said. He settled lower in
his seat and wished he had a hat to pull over his eyes. He wished Nancy
Alderman weren’t so damnably puritanic. He wished....
Moments later, Mrs. Nancy Hamilton leaned across him and made sure his
jacket would not get rumpled while he slept.
Transcriber’s note:
This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, February 1956 (Vol. 5,
No. 1.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but minor
inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
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