thespiral stairway that led to the surface, talking as they went. But theapparent conversation had little to do with the instruction thatMacHeath was giving Griffin as they climbed.
So when MacHeath stopped suddenly and patted at his coverall pockets,Griffin was ready for the words that came next.
"Damn!" MacHeath said. "I've left my notebook. Will you go down andget it for me, Bill?"
Dr. Nordred had neither understood nor noticed the actualinstructions:
"Bill, as soon as I give you an excuse, get back down there and checkthat gun chamber. Give it a thorough going-over. I don't really thinkyou'll find a thing, but I don't want to take any chances at thisstage of the game."
"Right," said Griffin, starting back down the stairway.
MacHeath and Dr. Nordred went on climbing.
* * * * *
David MacHeath sat at a table in the project's cafeteria, absentlystirring his coffee, and trying to look professionally modest whileDr. Luvochek and Dr. Bessermann alternately praised him for his work.
Luvochek, a tubby little butterball of a man, whose cherubic facewould have made him look almost childlike if it weren't for the blueof his jaw, said: "You and those two men of yours have really done amarvelous job in the past four days, Mr. MacHeath--really marvelous."
"I'll say," Bessermann chimed in. "I was getting pretty tired oflooking at burned-out equipment and spending three-quarters of my timeputting in replacement parts and wielding a soldering gun." Bessermannwas leaner than Luvochek, but, like his brother scientist, he wasbalding on top. Both men were in their middle thirties.
"I don't understand this jinx, myself," Luvochek said. "At first, itwas just little things, but the accidents got worse and worse. Andthen, when the Monster blew--" He stopped and shook his head slowly."I'd suspect sabotage, except that there was never any sign oftampering with the equipment I saw."
"What do you think of the sabotage idea?" Bessermann asked MacHeath.
MacHeath shrugged. "Haven't seen any signs of it."
"Run of bad luck," said Luvochek. "That's all."
As they talked MacHeath absorbed the patterns of thought that wove inand out in the two men's minds. Both men were more open than Dr.Nordred; they were easier for MacHeath to understand. Nowhere wasthere any thought of guilt--at least, as far as sabotage wasconcerned.
MacHeath drank his coffee slowly and thoughtfully, keeping up his partof the three-way conversation while he concentrated on his ownproblem.
One thing was certain: Nowhere in the minds of any of the personnel ofthe Redford Project was there any conscious knowledge of sabotage. Noteven in the mind of Konrad Bern.
Dr. Roger Kent, a tall, lantern-jawed sad-eyed man in his forties, hadbeen hard to get through to at first, but as soon as MacHeathdiscovered that the hard block Kent had built up around himself wascaused by grief over a wife who had been dead five years, he became aseasy to read as a billboard. Kent had submerged his grief in work; theeternal drive of the true scientist to drag the truth out of MotherNature. He was constitutionally incapable of sabotaging the veryinstruments that had been built to dig in after that truth.
Dr. Konrad Bern, on the other hand, was difficult to read below thepreconscious stage. Science, to him, was a form of power, to be usedfor "idealistic" purposes. He was perfectly capable of sabotaging theweapons of an enemy if it became necessary, whether that meant ruininga physical instrument or carefully falsifying the results of anexperiment. Outwardly, he was a pleasant enough chap, but his mindrevealed a rigidly held pattern of hatreds, fears, and twistedidealism. He held them tightly against the onslaughts of a hostileworld.
And that meant that he couldn't possibly have any control overwhatever psionic powers he may have had.
Unless--
Unless he was so expert and so well-trained that he was better thananything the S.M.M.R. had ever known.
MacHeath didn't even like to think about that. It would mean that allthe theory of psionics that had been built up so painstakingly overthe past years would have to be junked _in toto_.
Something was gnawing in the depths of his mind. In the perfectlyrational but utterly nonlogical part of his subconscious where hunchesare built, something was trying to form.
MacHeath didn't try to probe for it. As soon as he had enoughinformation for the hunch to be fully formed, it would be ready touse. Until then, it would be worthless, and probing for it mightinterrupt the formation.
* * * * *
He was just finishing his coffee as Bill Griffin came in the door andheaded toward the table where MacHeath, Luvochek, and Bessermann weresitting.
MacHeath stood up and said: "Excuse me. I'll have to be getting somework done if you guys are ever going to get your own work done."
"Sure."
"Go ahead."
"Thanks for the coffee," MacHeath added as he moved away.
"Anytime," said Bessermann, grinning. "You guys just keep up the goodwork. When you fix 'em, they stay fixed. We haven't had a burnoutsince you came."
"Maybe you broke our statistical jinx," said Luvochek, with a chubbysmile.
"Maybe," said MacHeath. "I hope so."
For some reason, the gnawing in his hunch factory became morepersistent.
As he and Griffin walked toward the door, Griffin reported rapidly. "Ichecked everything in the gun chamber. No sign of any tampering.Everything's just as we left it. The dust film hasn't been disturbed."
"It figures," said MacHeath.
Outside, in the corridor, they met Dr. Konrad Bern hurrying toward thecafeteria. He stopped as he saw them.
"Oh, hello, Mr. MacHeath, Mr. Griffin," he said. His white-toothedsmile was friendly, but both of the S.M.M.R. agents could detect thehostility that was hard and brittle beneath the surface. "I wanted tothank you for the wonderful job you've been doing."
"Why, thank you, doctor," said MacHeath honestly. "We aim to satisfy."
Bern chuckled. "You're doing well so far. Odd streak of luck we'vehad, isn't it? Poor Dr. Nordred has been under a terrible strain; hiswhole life work is tied up in this project." He made a vague gesturewith one hand. "Would you care for some coffee?"
"Just had some, thanks," said MacHeath, "but we'll take a rain check."
"Fine. Anytime." And he went on into the cafeteria.
"Wow!" said Griffin as he walked on down the corridor with MacHeath."That man is scared silly! But what an actor! You'd never know he waseating his guts out."
"Sure he's scared," MacHeath said. "With all this sabotage talk goingaround, he's afraid there'll be an exhaustive investigation, and hecan't take that right now."
Griffin frowned. "I guess I missed that. What did you pick up?"
"He's supposed to meet a Soviet agent tonight, and he's afraid he'llbe caught. He doesn't know what happened to the first three, and hewon't know what will happen to Number Four tonight.
"We'll keep him around as long as he's useful. He's not a Bohr or aPauli or a Fermi, but he--"
MacHeath stopped himself suddenly and came to a dead halt.
"My God," he said softly, "that's _it_."
His hunch had hatched.
After a moment, he said: "Harry is getting back from the target end ofthe tube now, Bill. He can't pick me up, so beetle it down to the toolroom, get him, and get up to the workshop fast. If I'm not there,wait; I have a little prying to do."
"Can do," said Griffin. He went toward the elevator at an easy lope.
David MacHeath went in the opposite direction.
* * * * *
When MacHeath returned to the workshop which he had been assigned,Bill Griffin and Harry Benbow were waiting for him. Beside thebig-muscled Griffin, Harry Benbow looked even thinner than he was. Hewas a good six-two, which made him a head taller than Griffin, but,unlike many tall, lean men, Benbow had no tendency to slouch; he stoodtall and straight, reminding MacHeath of a poplar tree toweringproudly over the countryside. Benbo
w was one of those rare AmericanNegroes whose skin was actually as close to being "black" as humanpigmentation will allow. His eyes were like disks of obsidian set inspheres of white porcelain, which gave an odd contrast-similarityeffect when compared with Griffin's china-blue eyes.
If the average man had wanted to pick two human beings who were"opposites," he could hardly have made a better choice than Benbow andthe short, thickly-built, blond-haired, pink-skinned Bill Griffin. Butthe average man would be so struck by the differences that he wouldnever notice that the similarities were vastly more important.
"You look as if you'd just been kissed by Miss America," Harry said asMacHeath came through the door.
"Better than that," MacHeath said. "We've got work to do."
"What's the pitch?" Griffin wanted to know.
"Well, in the first place, I'm afraid Dr. Konrad Bern is no longer ofany use to the Redford Project. We're going to have to arrest him asan unregistered agent of the Soviet Government."
"It's just as well," said Harry Benbow gently. "His research hasn'tdone us any good and it hasn't done the Soviets any good. The poorguy's been on edge ever since he got here. All the pale hide aroundthis place stirs up every nerve in him."
"What got you onto this?" Griffin asked MacHeath.
"A hunch first," MacHeath said. "Then I got data to back it up. But,first ... Harry, how'd you know about Bern's reactions? He keeps thoseprejudices of his down pretty deep; I didn't think you could go thatfar."
"I didn't have to. He spent half an hour talking to me this morning.He was so happy to see a fellow human being--according to hisdefinition of human being--that he was as easy to read as if _you_were doing the reading."
MacHeath nodded. "I hate to throw him to the wolves, but he's got togo."
"What was the snooping you said you had to do?" Griffin asked.
"Dates. Times. Briefly, I found that the run of accidents has beenbuilding up to a peak. At first, it was just small meters that wentwrong. Then bigger, more complex stuff. And, finally, the Monsterwent. See the pattern?"
The other men nodded.
"You're the therapist," Griffin said. "What do you suggest?"
"Shock treatment," said David MacHeath.
* * * * *
Just how Dr. Konrad Bern got wind of the fact that a squad of FBI menhad come to the project to arrest him that evening is something thatMacHeath didn't know until later. He was busy at the time, ignoringanything but what he was interested in. It always fascinated him towatch the mind of a psychokinetic expert at work. He couldn't do thetrick himself, and he was always amazed at the ability of anyone whocould.
It was like watching a pianist play a particularly difficult concerto.A person can watch a pianist, see every move he is making, and why heis making it. But being able to see what is going on doesn't mean thatone can duplicate the action. MacHeath was in the same position.Telepathically, he could observe the play of emotions that ran througha psychokinetic's mind--the combinations of avid desire and the utterloathing which, playing one against another, could move a brick, abook, or a Buick if the mind was powerful enough. But he couldn't doit himself, no matter how carefully he tried to follow the ragingemotions that acted as two opposing jaws of a pair of tongs to liftand move the object.
And so engrossed was he with the process that he did not notice thatKonrad Bern had eluded the FBI. He was unaware of what had happeneduntil one of the Federal agents rapped loudly on the workshop door.
Almost instantly, MacHeath picked up the information from the agent'smind. He glanced at Griffin and Benbow. "You two can handle it. Becareful you don't overdo it."
Then he went to the door and opened it a trifle. "Yes?"
The man outside showed a gold badge. "Morgan, FBI. You DavidMacHeath?"
"Yes." MacHeath stepped outside and showed the FBI man hisidentification.
"We were told to co-operate with you in this Konrad Bern case. He'smanaged to slip away from us somehow, but we know he's still in thearea. He can't get past the gate."
MacHeath let his mind expand until it meshed with that of Dr. KonradBern.
"There is a way out," MacHeath snapped. "The acceleration tube."
"What?"
"Come on!" He started sprinting toward the elevators. He explained tothe FBI agent as they went.
"The acceleration tube of the ultracosmotron runs due north of herefor two miles underground. The guard at the other end won't beexpecting anyone to be coming from the inside of the target building.If Bern plays his cards right, he can get away."
"Can't we phone the target building?" the FBI man asked.
"No. We shut off all the electrical equipment and took down some ofthe wires so we could balance the acceleration fields."
"Well, if he's on foot, we could send a car out there. We'd get therebefore he does. Uh ... wouldn't we?"
"Maybe. But he'll kill himself if he sees he's trapped." That wasn'tquite true. Bern was ready to fight to the death, and he had a heavypistol to back him up. MacHeath didn't want to see anyone killed, andhe didn't want stray bullets flying around the inside of that tube orin the target room.
MacHeath and the FBI agent piled out of the elevator at the bottom ofthe shaft. Dr. Roger Kent was standing at the head of the stairs thatspiraled down to the gun chamber. Dr. Kent knew that Bern had gonedown the stairway, but he didn't know why.
"He's our saboteur," MacHeath said quickly. "I'm going after him. Assoon as I close the door and seal it, you turn on the pumps. Lower theair pressure in the tube to a pound per square inch belowatmospheric. That'll put a force of about a ton and a quarter againstthe doors, and he won't be able to open them."
Dr. Kent still didn't grasp the fact that Bern was a spy.
"Explain to him, Morgan," MacHeath told the Federal agent. He went ondown the spiral staircase, knowing that Kent would understand and actin plenty of time.
* * * * *
The door to the tube was standing open. MacHeath slipped on a pair ofthe sponge-soled shoes, noticing angrily that Bern hadn't bothered todo so. He went into the tube and closed the door behind him. Then hestarted down the blackness of the tube at a fast trot. Ahead of him,in the utter darkness, he could hear the click of heels as theleather-shod Bern moved toward the target end of the long tube.
Neither of them had lights. They were unnecessary, for one thing,since there was only one direction to go and there were no obstaclesin the path. Bern would probably have carried a flashlight if he'dbeen able to get his hands on one quickly, but he hadn't, so he wentin darkness. MacHeath didn't want a light; in the darkness, he had theadvantage of knowing where his opponent was.
Every so often, Bern would stop, listening for sounds of pursuit,since his own footsteps, echoing down the glass-lined cylinder,drowned out any noise from behind. But MacHeath, running silently onthe toes of his thick-soled shoes, kept in motion, gaining on thefleeing spy.
A two-mile run is a good stretch of exercise for anyone, but MacHeathdidn't dare slow down. As it was, Konrad Bern was already tuggingfrantically at the door that led to the target room by the timeMacHeath reached him. But the faint sighing of the pumps had alreadytold MacHeath that the air pressure had been dropped. Bern couldn'tpossibly get the door open.
MacHeath's lungs wanted to be filled with air; his chest wanted toheave; he wanted to pant, taking in great gulps of life-giving oxygen.But he didn't dare. He didn't want Bern to know he was there, so hestrained to keep his breath silent.
He stepped up behind the physicist in the pitch blackness, and judgingcarefully, brought his fist down on the nape of the man's neck in ahard rabbit punch.
Konrad Bern dropped unconscious to the floor of the tube.
Then MacHeath let his chest pump air into his lungs in long, harshgasps. Shakily, he lowered himself to the floor beside Bern andsquatted on his haunches, waiting for the hiss of the bleeder valvethat would tell him that the air pressure had been raised to allowsomeon
e to enter the air lock.
It was Morgan, the FBI man, who finally cracked the door. Griffin andDr. Kent were with him.
"You all right?" asked Morgan.
"I'm fine," MacHeath said, "but Bern is going to have a sore neck fora while. I didn't hit him hard enough to break it, but he'll getplenty of sleep before he wakes up."
More FBI men came in, and they dragged out the unprotesting Bern.
Dr. Kent said: "Well, I'm glad that's over. I'll have to get back andsee what Dr. Nordred is raving about."
"Raving?" asked MacHeath innocently.
"Yes. While I was in the pump room reducing the pressure, he called meon the interphone. Said he'd been looking all over for me. He andLuvochek and Bessermann are up in the lab." He frowned. "They claimthat one of the radiolead samples was floating in the air in the lab.It's settled down now, I gather, but it only weighs a fraction of whatit should, though it's gaining all the time. And that's ridiculous.It's not at all what Dr. Nordred's theory predicted." Then he clampedhis lips together, thinking perhaps he had talked too much.
"Interesting," said MacHeath blandly. "Very interesting."
* * * * *
Senator Gonzales sat in Brian Taggert's sixth-floor office in theS.M.M.R. building and looked puzzled. "All right, I grant you thatBern couldn't have been the saboteur. Then why arrest him?"
Dave MacHeath took a drag from his cigarette before he answered. "Wehad to have a patsy--someone to put the blame on. No one reallybelieved that it was just bad luck, but they'll all accept the ideathat Bern was a saboteur."
"We would have had to arrest him eventually, anyway," said BrianTaggert.
"Give me a quick run-down," Gonzales said. "I've got to explain thisto the President."
"Did you ever hear of the Pauli Effect?" MacHeath asked.
"Something about the number of electrons that--"
"No," MacHeath said quickly. "That's the Pauli _principle_, betterknown as the Exclusion Principle. The Pauli _Effect_ is a differentthing entirely, a psionic effect.
"It used to be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by hisinability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was inresearch, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lotmore than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, orburn up if Pauli just walked into the room.
"Up to the time he died, in 1958, his colleagues kidded about it,without really believing there was anything behind it. But it isrecorded that the explosion of some vacuum equipment in a laboratoryat the University of Goettingen was the direct result of the PauliEffect. It was definitely established that the explosion occurred atthe precise moment that a train on which Pauli was traveling stoppedfor a short time at the Goettingen railway station."
The senator said: "The poltergeist phenomenon."
"Not exactly," MacHeath said, "although there is a similarity. Thepoltergeist phenomenon is usually spectacular and is nearly alwaysassociated with teen-age neurotics. Then there's the pyrotic; firesalways start in his vicinity."
"But there's always a reason for psionic phenomena to react violentlyunder subconscious control," Senator Gonzales pointed out. "There'salways a psychological quirk."
"Sure. And I almost fell into the same trap, myself."
"How so?"
"I was thinking that if Bern were the saboteur, all our theories aboutpsionics would have to be thrown out--we'd have to start from adifferent set of precepts. _And I didn't even want to think about suchan idea!_"
"Nobody likes their pet theories overthrown," Gonzales observed.
"Of course not. But here's the point: The only way that a scientifictheory can be proved wrong is to uncover a phenomenon which doesn'tfit in with the theory. A theoretical physicist is a mathematician; hemakes logical deductions and logical predictions by juggling symbolsaround in accordance with some logical system. But the axioms, theassumptions upon which those systems are built, are nonlogical. Youcan't prove an axiom; if comes right out of the mind.
"So imagine that you're a theoretical physicist. A reallyoriginal-type thinker. You come up with a mathematical system thatexplains all known phenomena at that time, and predicts others thatare, as yet, unknown. You check your math over and over again; there'sno error in your logic, since it all follows, step by step."
"O.K.; go on," Gonzales said interestedly.
"Very well, then; you've built yourself a logical universe, based onyour axioms, and the structure seems to have a one-to-onecorrespondence with the actual universe. Not only that, but if thetheory is accepted, you've built your reputation on it--your life.
"Now, what happens if your axioms--not the logic _about_ the axioms,but the axioms themselves--are proven to be wrong?"
* * * * *
Brian Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth. "Why, you give up theerroneous set of axioms and build a new set that will explain the newphenomenon. Isn't that what a scientist is supposed to do?" His mannerwas that of wide-eyed innocence laid on with a large trowel.
"Oh, _sure_ it is," said the senator. "A man builds his whole life,his whole universe; on a set of principles, and he scraps them at thedrop of a hat. _Sure_ he does."
"He claims he will," MacHeath said. "Any scientist worth the paper hisdiploma is printed on is firmly convinced that he will change hisaxioms as soon as they're proven false. Of course, ninety-nine percent of 'em _can't_ and _won't_ and _don't_. They refuse to look atanything that suggests changing axioms.
"Some scientists eagerly accept the axioms that they were taught inschool and hang on to them all their lives, fighting change tooth andnail. Oh, they'll accept new ideas, all right--provided that they fitin with the structures based on the old axioms.
"Then there are the young iconoclasts who don't like the axioms asthey stand, so they make up some new ones of their own--men likeNewton, Einstein, Planck, and so on. Then, once the new axioms havebeen forced down the throats of their colleagues, the innovatorsbecome the Old Order; the iconoclasts become the ones who put thefences around the new images to safeguard them. And they're even morefirmly wedded to their axioms than anyone else. This is _their_universe!
"Of course, these men proclaim to all the world that they areperfectly willing to change their axioms. And the better a scientisthe is, the more he believes, in his heart-of-hearts, that he reallywould change. He really thinks, consciously, that he wants others totest his theories.
"But notice: A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomenain its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a_new_ fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structureformulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicistis _experiment_!"
Senator Gonzales' attentive silence was eloquent.
"Experiment!" MacHeath repeated. "That can wreck a theory quicker andmore completely than all the learned arguments of a dozen men. Andevery theoretician is aware of that fact. Consciously, he gladlyaccepts the inevitable; but his subconscious mind will fight to keepthose axioms.
"_Even if it has to smash every experimental device around!_
"After all, if nobody can experiment on your theory, it can't beproved wrong, can it?
"In Nordred's case, as in Pauli's, this subconscious defense actuallymade itself felt in the form of broken equipment. Dr. Theodore Nordredwas totally unconscious of the fact that he detested and feared theidea of anyone experimenting to prove or disprove his theory. He hadno idea that he, himself, was re-channeling the energy in thosemachines to make them burn out."
Brian Taggert looked at MacHeath pointedly. "Do you think the shocktreatment you gave him will cause any repercussions?"
"No. Griffin and Benbow held that block of radiolead floating in theair only while Dr. Nordred was alone in the lab. He pushed at it, feltof it, and moved it around for more than ten minutes before he'd admitthe reality of what he saw. Then he called Luvochek and Bessermann into look at it.
"Griffin and Benbow
let the sample settle to the desk, so that by thetime the other two scientists got to the lab, the lead didn't have anapparent negative weight, but was still much lighter than it shouldbe.
"All the while that Bessermann and Luvochek were trying to weigh thelead block, to get an accurate measurement, Griffin and Benbow, threerooms away, kept increasing the weight slowly towards normal. And sofar no one has invented a device which will give an instantaneouscheck on the weight of an object. A balance can't check the weight ofa sample unless that weight is constant; there's too much time laginvolved.
"So, what evidence do they have? Scientifically speaking, none. Theyhave no measurements, and the experiment can't be repeated. And onlyNordred actually saw the sample _floating_. Luvochek and Bessermannwill eventually think up a 'natural' explanation for the apparentsteady gain in weight. Only Nordred will remain convinced that what hesaw actually happened.
"I don't see how there could be any serious repercussions in the fieldof physics." But he looked at Taggert for confirmation.
Taggert gave it to him with an approving look.
"It's a funny thing," said Gonzales musingly. "Some time back, we werein a situation where we had to go to the extreme of physical violenceto keep from demonstrating to a scientist that psionic powers couldbe controlled, just to keep from ruining the physicist's work.
"Now, we turn right around and demonstrate the 'impossible' to anotherphysicist in order to pull his hard-earned axioms out from under him."He smiled wryly. "There ain't no justice in the world."
"No," agreed MacHeath, "but the trick worked. He won't have anysubconscious desire