He beamed at Phil, who, though flustered, found himself grinning.
“Perhaps you’re a journalist,” the oldster went on smoothly, “or at least we can pretend you are. Dr. Garnett always calls in the press when the Humberford Foundation makes a discovery, though I’m sorry to say the press stopped coming about twenty years ago. They’d quit thinking of para-psychology as newsworthy. But perhaps there’s been time to breed a new race of journalists with a revived interest in esping and all the teles. In any case Garnett and the whole staff will be overjoyed at the presence of a pressman.”
“You mean the Humberford Foundation investigates extrasensory perception and things like that?” Phil asked.
“You should know, since you’ve been sent here to get a story,” the old man said reprovingly. “Still, reporters often haven’t the foggiest idea what they’ve been sent out to report, so you’re excused.”
Phil found himself grinning again. He hadn’t any notion of how the old man knew about Lucky or where he stood in the general picture, except that he felt strangely certain that the old man didn’t have anything to do with the organizations out to get Lucky. And the oldster’s mischievous pretense that Phil was a reporter might at least get him past the imposing door and let him spy around.
“So the Humberford Foundation has made a new discovery in parapsychology?” he said conversationally.
The other nodded. “Dr. Garnett was most excited. So much so that he didn’t have time to tell me what it was all about, except that they’d started to get some amazing results – and just this morning. So I hurried over. Good esp is apt to go poof, so it’s best to get it when it’s hot. I have a standing order with Garnett to call me over the moment anything starts to flash. For that matter, I have the same orders with practically every scientific laboratory in the area – though the others don’t always call me. But – thank Thoth! – Garnett isn’t in a field that’s under the benign aegis of security and he isn’t at all security minded himself. In fact, I’m not certain he’s ever heard of the FBL. So you may get a real scoop, Mr…?”
“Gish. Phil Gish.”
The oldster’s thin hand pressed his with a feathery touch. “Morton Opperly.”
Phil stared at him for several seconds, then gasped, “The -?”
The other assented with an apologetic shrug. Phil let it sink in. This was Morton Opperly who had worked on the Manhattan Project, whose name had appeared beside Einstein’s on the Physicists’ Covenant, who had tried unsuccessfully to get himself jailed for refusal to do research during World War III, who had become a legend. Phil had always vaguely assumed he’d died years ago.
He gazed at the renowned physicist in happy awe. The question that rose effortlessly to his lips was a testimony to Opperly’s ability to create an atmosphere of unlimited free discussion unknown since 1940.
“Mr. Opperly, what are orthos?”
“Orthos? That could be short for any number of scientific terms, Phil, but I bet you mean the ones that shoot. Those are orthos-fissionables. Trouble with ordinary fissionables – or fissionables under ordinary circumstances – is that the fragments and neutrons shoot off in all directions and the critical mass is large. But if you get the fissionable atoms all lined up with their axis of spin pointing in the same direction, then they all split in the same place and every neutron hits the nucleus of the atom next to it. Because of that last fact, the neutrons are all used up and the critical mass becomes minute. Half the fragments fly in one direction, half in the other, making it a very nasty and convenient weapon, except it has to backfire.”
“How do you get the atoms lined up?” Phil asked eagerly.
“Temperature near absolute zero and an electric field,” Opperly said, touching a button beside the doorway. “Simplest thing in the world. The new insulators can hold a gun magazine at one degree Kelvin for weeks, and carry enough fissionable pellets to give rapid fire, with the effect of a steady beam, for more than a minute. Planning to make yourself an ortho in your home workshop, Phil? I’m afraid they don’t sell that kit. Everything I’ve been telling you is top security, death penalty and all that. But I’m getting so senile I don’t understand security regulations. I’m apt to babble anything. I keep telling Bobbie T. he’ll have to have me orthocuted some day, but like everyone else he refuses to take me seriously. That’s the trick they used on me in WW3 and they’ve never forgot it.”
“Bobbie T.?”
Opperly made another of his apologetic grimaces. “Barnes. President Robert T. Barnes. We were charter members of the Midwest Starship Society. Of course he was just a shaver then and now he’s a besotted, scripture quoting fox, but shared dreams have a way of linking people permanently. I drop in on him now and then and flash my Starship badge. He’s one of my pipelines to what’s happening in the world, though the security services don’t tell him too much. That’s how I learned about the green cat.”
Phil was nerving himself to ask Opperly just what he’d learned, when he heard footsteps behind him.
The man who looked like a brother of the girl with hoofs was standing in the gateway.
Just then the door of the mansion opened, revealing a scholarly appearing man whose face was twitching with excitement and nervousness. His coat had two bulging brief case pockets, while his vest was crammed with enough microbooks to make up a dozen encyclopedias, plus two micronotebooks with stylus, and a fountain pen besides. His hair was graying and thin, and he wore ancient pince-nez that twitched with his nose.
“Dr. Opperly!” He greeted in a high-pitched voice that expressed both fluster and delight. “You come at a whirling moment!”
“That’s the way I like them, Hugo,” Opperly told him. “Where’s Garnett?”
But the other was looking at Phil, who decided the twitch was permanent. At the moment its owner was using it to express inquiry and mild apprehension.
“Oh,” Opperly said casually, “this is Phil Gish of the press.” His eyes twinkled. “Of the U. S. Newsmoon, in fact. Phil, this is Hugo Frobisher, Ph.Ch. – Chancellor of Philosophy, you know, the new higher degree. I’m just a lowly Ph.D. myself.”
But Frobisher was beaming at Phil as if he were a donor with a $100,000 check. “This is most gratifying, Mr. Gish,” he breathed. Then he whipped out a micronotebook and poised on its white field the stylus whose movements would be reproduced on one ten thousandth of the space on the tape inside. “The U. S. Newsmoon, you say?”
At that moment the man at the gate came clumping up behind them. Phil felt a gust of uneasiness, but the newcomer merely treated them all to a big, innocent grin that brought out all the handsomeness of the faun-like face.
“Me press, too,” he announced happily. “Introducing to each you Dion da Silva. Much delight.”
Frobisher seemed about to melt with gratification, though da Silva’s gaiety was undoubtedly generally contagious. “What paper?” Frobisher asked.
Phil noted that Opperly was studying the newcomer intently. The latter was having trouble with Frobisher’s question.
“Mean what?” he countered, drawing his shaggy eyebrows together in a frown.
“ La Prensa ,” Opperly supplied suddenly. “Mr. da Silva representsLa Prensa. ”
“Is so. Thank you,” da Silva confirmed.
Phil could have sworn that Opperly had never seen da Silva before and that da Silva had never heard ofLa Prensa.
However, Frobisher seemed to accept the explanation. “Come in, come in, gentlemen,” he urged, fluttering backward. “I’m sure you’ll first want to tour our little establishment and have a peek at all our projects. Story background, you know.”
“I’m sure they’ll want to go straight to Garnett and get the story itself,” Opperly assured him. “Where is Winston anyway, Hugo?”