No one was saying anything and the sounds of their breathing in the basement hide-out was loud in Themus’s ears. “Are you Boolbak, the steel-pincher?” the Watcher asked, to make conversation. It seemed like the thing to say.
The bearded oldster shifted his position on the coal pile on which he was sitting, blackening his beard, covering his red suit with dust. His voice changed from a whisper to a shrill. “A spy! A spy! They’ve come after me. You’ll do it to me! You’ll bend it! Get away from me, get away from me, gedda way from me, geddawayfromee!” The old man was peering out from over the top of the pile, pointing a shaking finger at Themus.
“Uncle Boolbak!” Darfla’s brows drew down and she clapped her hands together. The old man stopped shouting and looked at her.
“What?” he asked, pouting childishly.
“He’s no spy, whatever he is,” she said, casting a definitely contemptuous glance at Themus. “He was a Watcher alerted to find you. I liked him,” she said, looking toward the ceiling to find salvation for such a foul deed, “and I thought that it was about time you stopped this nonsense of yours and spoke to one of them. So I brought him here.”
“Nonsense? Nonsense, is it! Well, you’ve sealed my doom, girl! Now they’ll bend it around your poor uncle’s head as sure as Koobis and Poorah rise every morning. Oh, what have you done?”
The girl shook her head sadly, “Oh, stop it, will you. No one wants to hurt you. Show him your steel-pinching.”
“No!” he answered, pouting again.
Themus watched in amazement. The man was senile. He was a tottering, doddering child. Of what possible use could he be? Of what possible interest could he be to both the Watchers and the Crackpots, who had tried to stop Darfla’s bringing him here?
Suddenly the old man smiled secretly and moved in closer, sidling up to the Watcher as though he had a treasure everyone was after. He made small motions with his pudgy fingers, indicating he wanted Themus’s attention, his patience, his silence, and his ear, in that order. It was a most eloquent motioning, and Themus found he was complying, though no vocal request had been made. He bent closer.
Uncle Boolbak dug into a pocket of the red coal-coated jacket, and fished out a cane-shaped, striped piece of candy. “Want a piece of candy? Huh, want it, huh?”
Themus felt an urge to bolt and run, but he summoned all his dignity and said, “I’m Themus, Underclass Watcher, and I was told you—pinch steel. Is that right?”
For a moment the old man looked unhappy that the Watcher did not want any candy, then suddenly his face hardened. The eyes lost their twinkle and looked like two cold diamonds blazing at him. Boolbak’s voice, too, became harder, more mature, actually older. “Yes, that’s right, I ‘pinch’ steel, as you put it. You wonder what that means, eh?”
Themus found himself unable to talk. The man’s whole demeanor had changed. The Watcher suddenly felt like a child before a great intellect. He could only nod.
“Here. Let me show you.” The old man went behind the furnace and brought out two plates of steel. From a workbench along one wall he took a metal punch and a double-headed hammer. He threw down one of the plates, and handed Themus the punch and hammer.
“Put a hole in this with that punch,” he said, motioning Themus toward the other plate, which he had laid flat on the workbench.
Themus hesitated. “Come, come, boy. Don’t dawdle.”
The Watcher stepped to the workbench, set the punch on the plate and tapped lightly till he had a hole started. Then he placed the punch in it again and brought the hammer down on its head with two swift strokes.
The clangs rang loud in the dim basement. The punch sank through the plate and went a quarter-inch into the table. “I didn’t hit it very hard,” Themus explained, looking over his shoulder at “Santa Claus.”
“That’s all right. It’s very soft steel. Too many impurities. Kyben spacecraft are made of a steel which isn’t too much better than this, though they back it with strong reinforcers. Now watch.”
He took the plate in his hand, holding it between thumb and forefinger at one corner, letting it hang down. With the other hand he pinched it at the opposite corner, pressing thumb and forefinger together tightly.
The plate crumbled to dust, drifting down over the old man’s pinching hand in a bright stream.
Themus’s mouth opened of its own accord, his chest tightened. Such a thing wasn’t possible. The old man was a magician.
The dust glowed up at him from the floor. It was slightly luminous. He goggled, unable to help himself.
“Now,” said Boolbak, taking the other plate. “Put a hole in this one.”
Themus found he was unable to lift the hammer. His hands refused to obey. One did not see such things and remain untouched.
“Snap out of it, boy! Come on, punch!” The old man’s voice was commanding; Themus broke his trance.
He placed the punch on the second plate and in three heavy blows had gone through it and into the table again.
“Fine, fine,” said Uncle Boolbak, holding the second plate as he had the first. He pinched it, with a slight revolving movement of the fingers.
The steel seemed to change. It stayed rigid in shape, but the planes of it darkened, ran together. It was a flat piece of metal, but suddenly it seemed to have depths, other surfaces.
Boolbak held it out to Themus, “Put another hole in it.”
Themus took it, wonderingly, and laid it down on the workbench. It seemed heavier than before. He brought the hammer down sharply, three times.
The metal was unmarred.
He set the punch and hammered again, harder, half a dozen times. He took the punch away. Its point was dulled, the punch shank was slightly bowed. The metal was unscarred.
“It’s—it’s—” he began, his tongue abruptly becoming a wad of cotton batting in his mouth.
Boolbak nodded, “It’s changed, yes. It is now harder than any steel ever made. It can withstand heat or cold that would either melt to paste or shatter to splinters any other metal. It is impregnable. It is the ideal war-metal. With it an army is invincible. It is the closest thing to an ultimate weapon ever devised, for it is unstoppable.
“A tank composed of this metal would be a fearsome juggernaut. A spaceship of it could pierce the corona of a sun. A soldier wearing body armor of it would be a superman.” He stood back, his lips a thin line, letting Themus look dumbfoundedly at the plate he held.
“But how do you—how can you—it’s impossible! How can you make this? What have you done to it?” Themus felt the room swirl around him, but that defied the laws of the universe.
“Sit down. I want to talk to you. I want to tell you some things.” He put one arm around Themus’s shoulders, leading him to a flight of stairs, to sit down.
Themus looked at Darfla. She was biting her lip. Was this the talk the Crackpots did not want him to have with Uncle Boolbak?
Themus sensed: this is it. This is an answer. Perhaps not the answer to all that troubled him, but it was, unquestionably, an answer.
Suddenly he didn’t want to know. He was afraid; terribly afraid. He stammered. “Do-do you think you should? I’m a Watcher, you know, and I don’t want to—”
The old man cut him off with a wave of his hand, and pushed him down firmly.
“You think you’re watching us, don’t you?” began Boolbak. “I mean, you think the Watcher Corps was assigned here to keep an eye on all the loonies, don’t you? To keep the black sheep in the asylum so the Star-Flung Kyben don’t lose face or esteem in the Galaxy, isn’t that it?”
Themus nodded, reluctantly, not wanting to insult the old man.