He didn’t mention the job again; it was up to Olliver, he thought, to bring that up. And Oliver did, on the evening of the third day.
He said, “We’re going to Mars tomorrow, Crag. Forgot to ask you one thing. Can you pilot a Class AB space cruiser, or do I hire us a pilot?”
“I can handle one.”
“You’re sure? It’s space-warp drive, you know. As I understand it, the last slip you worked on was rocket.”
Crag said, “The last ship I flew legally was rocket. But how about a license, unless you want to land in a back alley on Mars?”
“You’re licensed. If a license is invalidated for any reason other than incompetency, it’s automatically renewed if you’ve been readjusted through the psycher. And today I picked up a stet of your license and a copy of the psycher certificate. After I got them, though, I remembered I didn’t know whether you could handle space-warp.”
Evadne said, “It doesn’t matter, Jon. I’m licensed; I can handle the cruiser.”
“I know, my dear. But I’ve told you; I do not think it safe to travel in space with only one person who is qualified to pilot the ship. Perhaps I’m ultra-conservative, but why take unnecessary risks?”
Crag asked, “Ready now to tell me about the job?”
“Yes. When we reach Mars, we’ll separate. Evadne and I will stay in Marsport until you have accomplished your mission.”
“Which is to be done where?”
“You’ve heard of Kurt Eisen?”
“The one who helped develop space-warp?”
“That‘s the one. He has his laboratory and home just outside Marsport. He’s fabulously wealthy; it’s a tremendous estate. About eighty employees, thirty of them armed guards. The place is like a fortress. It’ll almost have to be an inside job-another good reason why you couldn’t have handled it without a psycher certificate.”
Crag nodded. “At least it will be easier if I can get in. And just what am I looking for after I get there?”
“A device that looks like a flat pocket flashlight. Blued steel cast. Lens in the center of one end, just like an atomic flashlight, but the lens is green and opaque-opaque to light, that is.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“No. The party’s source of information is a technician who used to work for Eisen. He’s now a member of the party. He worked with Eisen in developing it, but can’t make one by himself; he wasn’t fully in Eisen’s confidence-just allowed to help with details of design. Oh, and if you can get the plans, it’ll help. We can duplicate the original, but it’ll be easier from the plans. And one other thing. Don’t try it out.”
“All right,” Crag said, “I won’t try it out-on one condition. That you tell me what it is and what it does. Otherwise, my curiosity might get the better of me.”
Olliver frowned, but he answered. “It’s a disintegrator. It’s designed to negate the-well, I’m not up on atomic theory, so I can’t give it to you technically. But it negates the force that holds the electrons to the nucleus. In effect, it collapses matter into neutronium.”
Crag whistled softly. “And you say it’s an ineffective weapon?”
“Yes, because its range is so short. The size needed increases as the cube of the cube of the distance-or something astronomical like that. The one you’re after works up to three feet. To make one that would work at a hundred feet it would have to be bigger than a house. And for a thousand feet-well, there aren’t enough of the necessary raw materials in the Solar System to build one; it would have to be the size of a small planet. And besides, there’s a time lag. The ray from the disintegrator sets up a chain reaction in any reasonably homogeneous object it’s aimed at, but it takes seconds to get it started. So if you shoot at somebody-at a few feet distance-they’re dead all right, but they’ve got time to kill you before they find it out.” Olliver smiled. “Your left hand is much more effective, Crag, and has about the same range.”
“Then why is it worth a million credits to you?”
“I told you, the by-product. Neutronium.”
Crag had heard of neutronium; every spaceman knew that some of the stars were made of almost completely collapsed matter weighting a dozen tons to the cubic inch. Dwarf stars, the size of Earth and the weight of the sun. But no such collapsed matter existed in the Solar System. Not that there was any reason why it shouldn’t-if a method had been found to make atoms pack themselves solidly together. Pure neutronium would be unbelievably heavy, heavier than the center of any known star.
“Neutronium,” he said, thoughtfully. “But what would you use it for? How could you handle it? Wouldn’t it sink through anything you tried to hold it in and come to rest at the center of the earth-or whatever planet you made it on?”
“You’re smart, Crag. It would. You couldn’t use it for weighting chessmen. I know how to capitalize on it-but that’s one thing I don’t think you have to know. Although I may tell you later, after you’ve turned over the disintegrator.”
Crag shrugged. It wasn’t his business, after all. A million credits was enough for him, and let Olliver and his party capitalize on neutronium however they wished. He asked, “Did this technician who worked for Eisen give you a diagram of the place?”
Olliver opened a drawer of the desk and handed Crag an envelope.
Crag spent the rest of the evening studying its contents.
They took off from Albuquerque spaceport the following afternoon and landed on Mars a few hours later. As soon as the cruiser was hangared, they separated, Crag presumably quitting his job with Olliver. He promised to report in not more than two weeks.
A man named Lane Knutson, was his first objective. He had full details about Knutson and an excellent description of him; that had been an important part of the contents of the envelope he had studied the final evening on Earth. Knutson was the head guard at Eisen’s place and did the hiring of the other guards. According to Crag’s information, he hung out, in his off hours, in spacemen’s dives in the tough section of Marsport.
Crag hung out there, too, but spent his time circulating from place to place instead of settling down in any one. He found Knutson on the third day. He couldn’t have missed him, from the description. Knutson was six feet six and weighed two hundred ninety. He had arms like an ape and the strength and disposition of a Venusian draatr.
Crag might have made friends with him in the normal manner, but he took a short cut by picking a quarrel. With Knutson’s temper, the distance between a quarrel and a fight was about the same as the distance between adjacent grapes under pressure in a wine press.
Crag let himself get the worst of it for a minute or two, so Knutson wouldn’t feel too bad about it, and then used his left hand twice, very lightly, pulling his punches. Once in the guts to bend the big man over, and then a light flick to the side of the jaw, careful not to break bone. Knutson was out cold for five minutes.
After that, they had a drink together and got chummy. Within half an hour Crag had admitted that he was looking for a job-and was promptly offered one.
He reported for work the following day and, after Knutson had shown him around, he was glad he hadn’t decided to try the outside. The place really was a for-tress. A twenty-foot-high electronic barrier around the outside; inside that, worse things. But it didn’t matter, since he was already inside. Even so, he had to undergo a strenuous physical and verbal examination and Olliver had been right about the psycher certificate; without it, he’d have been out on his ear within an hour.