“I am thinking again of Hitler,” Opperly interposed quietly. “On his first half-dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover,” he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, “the power of the Thinkers isn’t based on what they’ve got, but on what the world hasn’t got—peace, honor, a good conscience—”
The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. “Radiogram for you, Willard.” He grinned across the hall at Opperly. “When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?”
The physicist waved to him. “Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry.”
The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off.
“What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?” Farquar chortled suddenly. “It’s come sooner than I expected. Look at this.”
He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn’t take it. Instead he asked, “Who’s it from? Tregarron?”
“No, from Helmuth. There’s a lot of sugar corn about man’s future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they’re going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they’ll need our help.”
“An invitation?”
Farquar nodded. “For this afternoon.” He noticed Opperly’s anxious though distant frown. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap-that after the Maelzel question they may figure I’m better rubbed out?”
The older man shook his head. “I’m not afraid for your life, Willard. That’s yours to risk as you choose. No, I’m worried about other things they might do to you.”
“What do you mean?” Farquar asked.
Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. “You’re a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man’s prides and desires.” His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, “Excuse me, Willard, but wasn’t there a girl once? A Miss Arkady—”
Farquar’s ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted.
“And didn’t she go off with a Thinker?”
“If girls find me ugly, that’s their business,” Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. “What’s that got to do with this invitation?”
Opperly didn’t answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, “In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition.”
Willard snorted. “Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise.”
“Perhaps,” Opperly agreed. “Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn’t exposed to the temptations of the world.”
Farquar turned on him. “Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?”
“Not exactly.”
“You think I’ll be persuaded to change my amis?” Farquar demanded angrily.
Opperly shrugged his helplessness. “No, I don’t think you’ll change your aims.”
Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men.
As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment Jorj Helmuth was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind.
Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox.
Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm.
Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, “Set sail for Mars!” The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward.
In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted.
A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory- straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket.
But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even —his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie!
And then—then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they’d be far ahead. No more deception.
He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, “Caddy!” He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn’t there.
Confound the girl! he couldn’t help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she’d sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance.
No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a willful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would tram her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis.
Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he’d been wise hi summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron.
But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn’t his boss, but just the Thinkers’ most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control hi this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader hi theoretics and over-all strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie.
He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno- learner, and began the two-hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.
Jan Tregarron had supplemented his shorts with pink coveralls, but he was still drinking beer. He emptied his glass and lifted it a lazy inch. The beautiful girl beside bom refilled it without a word and went on stroking his forehead.
“Caddy,” he said reflectively, without looking at her, “there’s a little job I want you to do. You’re the only one with the proper background. The point is: it will take you away from Jorj for some time.”