After it was over, Benoy Kumar came up and urged Brown to come down to the hippopotamus-farm."I think maybe Gus and I have something for you," he said mysteriously.
"You mean for military purposes? Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"I did, but you were busy. And we didn't know what it would do until a couple of days ago, and we only figured out how to make it work last night, "
So Brown went. As they let themselves into the farm, Scheherazade, the queen of the herd, recognized Brown as a friend and started toward him, opening her gargantuan mouth expectantly. Brown hoisted himself on the steel bars of the fence and yelled "Gus! O-o-oh Gus!"
From behind the trees came a voice: "Hey, is that you, Fernando? All right, Scheherazade, you come here!" The hippopotamus waddled off.
"Gus!" shouted Brown, "How many times have I told you to keep your pets away from the gate? First thing you know one of 'em will step on a visitor's foot, and we'll have a damage suit. Or a visitor will get scared and run out leaving the gate open, and the hippos'll clean out every melon patch in ten miles. Or Scheherazade will get me against the fence and lean, and I don't think that would do me any good!"
Gus Gillenhaal, the pink top of his skull showing through his sparse yellow-white hair, apologized' profusely, promising that an extra fence would be built, and so forth. Brown, who had heard all this before, walked on up the path; the Swede, arms still gyrating, followed."And you know, Fernando, my Scheherazade wouldn't a fly hurt, and we got an order from Bengal for six hippos for canal-clearance, and with a couple more like that we show a profit for the year, and that Tamil boy of mine is run off again, and..."
INSIDE the rambling concrete structure that served Gillenhaal as dispensary for his charges, shop, laboratory, and living-quarters, Kumar picked off the work-bench, littered with tools and a vast tangle of wire, something that looked like a flashlight with a pistol grip. "This is the gadget," he said; "If you'll sit down, Fernando, I'll explain.
"Gus and I thought we were inventing something new in photosynthesizers, to see if maybe we couldn't make a synthetic virus or something. But we found that, if you can form carbon-linkages with ultraviolet radiation, you can also break them down. The carbon-hydrogen bond isn't a very strong one, you know. You look at the heat of formation of the commoner hydrocarbons; they're all relatively near zero. Methane is about plus 20 kilogram-calories per gram-molecule; ethylene is about minus 6, compared to plus 94 for carbon dioxide and plus 69 for water.
"It's mostly a matter of finding just the right wave-length. It has to be a certain function of the orbits of the outer electrons of carbon and hydrogen. But once you have that, you don't need much power. You turn your beam on, and if it hits an organic substance all the carbon-hydrogen bonds on the surface break, and you get a lot of free monatomic hydrogen floating around. That's about the most inflammable substance there is, so you don't have to worry any more about where the rest of your energy is coming from. The combustion of the hydrogen supplies that—poof!"
"I see," said Brown."That's how these stories of an atomic gun have gotten around, though your device works by purely molecular reactions."
It was getting dark inside, and Gillenhaal flicked the light switch. Nothing happened. Muttering something about fuses, the Swede disappeared, leaving Kumar and Brown to discuss the possibilities of the projector. In a few moments he was back."It's funny," he said, "but our power seems to be shut off. All the fuses are okay, and to make sure I tried out some of the extras."
Before he could be answered, there was a rapid series of concussions, faint with distance. The sound swelled as they listened.
Gillenhaal said: "I think that means the Rajah has pulled one of his little yokes. What do we do, Fernando?"
Brown stepped to the door for a look citywards. Something woke to life and raced clown the path. Brown yelled "Stop!" and felt for a non-existent static pistol. Never having formed the habit of gun-toting, he had left his weapon at the laboratory. But Benoy Kumar pushed him roughly aside from behind and fired twice. The gate clanged, and the hippopotami burbled with fright. Kumar fired again; the discharge grounded on a gate-bar with a shower of sparks.
"Damn!" said the physicist."I need practice. But all I could see in this twilight was a shirt and a pair of shorts going—how do you say—Hell-bent for election. Probably --royalist spy. Where's your car, Fernando? Mine's at the gar-age."
"Lent mine to Tukharev," replied Brown."What do you need to make that gadget work?"
"A few volts a. c. or d. c, to turn the generator and heat up the tube—oh, Lord!"
"Huh?"
"The power's off, probably all over the city, and we haven't a dry-cell in the place. We've been using current from the labs for experimenting, and that little motor-generator set."
"Well, come on, then," said Brown; "There are plenty of cells in the labs."
BROWN found the gate locked. Turning to Gillenhaal, he snapped: "Gus, did you leave the key in the lock again?"
"Yudas, Fernando, I'm sorry, but you see—"
"Never mind. Where's the spare?"
"J lost it last month—-I been meaning to have another made—"
Brown cocked a fist and almost let fly at the hippopotamus-breeder. But he controlled himself."Have you forty feet of rope that we could throw over the fence?"
"I don't think so," said Gillenhaal."But wait—I got an idea." He bellowed "Scheherazade!" There was a snuffling in the dusk, and his special pet waddled up."See?" Gillenhaal indicated the gate."Push!"
The hippo put her vast nose to the bars and pushed. The tortured steel groaned but held. A second attempt also failed.
"Looks like it don't—wait! I got another idea." Gillenhaal ran back to the building, and reappeared with a hypodermic syringe the size of a small fire-extinguisher.
"Just happened to have some adrenalin," he explained."The normal human dose for stimulus is around fifteen minims; Scheherazade weighs 3, 240 pounds; that divided by 180 means 600 minims. Somebody please hold a match. Good." Scheherazade winced as the needle sank into her neck, but Gillenhaal soothed her."Now we got to wait a few minutes for the effect."
Brown listened impatiently to the symphony of explosions and static discharges. The night-glow of Asokore City was missing but the flicker of guns showed over the trees. At last Gillenhaal said : "Scheherazade! Here, push!"
Scheherazade lunged friskily at the bars. The steel bent; Gillenhaal shouted encouragement; and the hinges gave way. The hippo pitched forward and lay panting."Poor girl!" said her master, "I bet your nose got permanent grooves in it. Tomorrow I fix it. Where now, yentlemen?"
Three blocks from the laboratory they stopped as a beam from a searchlight on a truck illuminated the buildings. Men were jumping out of trucks and spreading out, directed by officers with flashlights. Somebody banged on the laboratory doors and shouted in Urdu.
"Turbans!" said Brown."That means Avanend's private army; they're the only ones who wear 'em."
As the royalist forces spread through the surrounding blocks, the three men beat a hasty retreat, cutting across vacant lots."Our friends are back there in the city," said Brown; "I'd like to get 'em out, but how we could do it with one static pistol—" He cursed softly.
THEY were well out on the highway to Madras. A car stopped near them with a squeal of tires. Its headlights were out; the driver was evidently using night-goggles. A spotlight beam stabbed out, and a voice said in Urdu: "Stand, you three! We want a look at you." Then it changed to English."Why Meestair Brown! A pleasant surprise. General Avanend said to look for—"
Crack! Kumar whisked the static gun from behind his back and fired. The light vanished, and while glass tinkled on the road, the three men bolted into the woods. Behind them the blue crackling fingers of static discharges explored the bush. One struck a tree near them and showered them with fragments. Brown got a beetle down the neck of his sport shirt, but it had been safely electrocuted. He was more concerned with the possibility of stepping on a krait than of being hit; he knew that it would take some seconds for the royalists' eyes to become adapted to the ghostly images in the infra-red goggles.