"But-Dog take it, sir, I'll never be captured! I made up my mind about that a long time ago."
Phipps shrugged. "If you get yourself killed, that's all right. But we can't be sure of that, no matter how resolute you are. We can't risk it; there's too much at stake."
"You can't hold me here! You have no authority over me!"
"No. But you can't leave."
Don opened his mouth, closed it, and walked out.
He woke up the next morning determined to do something about it. But Dr. Conrad was up before he was and stopped to make a suggestion before he left. "Don?"
"Yeah, Rog?"
"If you can tear yourself out of that sack, you might come around to the power lab this morning. There will be something worth looking at-I think."
"Huh? What? What time?"
"Oh, say about nine o'clock."
Don showed up, along with apparently every human in the place and about half of Sir Isaac's numerous family. Roger Conrad was in charge of the demonstration. He was busy at a control console which told the uninstructed observer nothing. He busied himself with adjustments, looked up and said, "Just keep your eyes on the birdie, folks-right over that bench." He pressed a key.
There flicked into being over the bench, hanging in the air unsupported, a silvery ball some two feet across. It seemed to be a perfect sphere and a perfect reflector and, more than anything else in the world, it made Don think of a Christmas tree ornament. Conrad grinned triumphantly. "Okay, Tony-give it the ax!"
Tony Vincente, the most muscular of the laboratory crew, picked up a broadbladed ax he had ready. "How would you like it split-up and down, or sideways?"
"Suit yourself."
Vincente swung the ax over his head and brought it down hard.
It bounced off.
The sphere did not quiver, nor was there any mar on its perfect mirror surface. Conrad's boyish grin got even wider. "End of act one," he announced and pressed another button. The sphere disappeared, left nothing to show where it had been.
Conrad bent over his controls. "Act two," he announced. "We now cancel out half the locus. Stand clear of the bench." Shortly he looked up. "Ready! Aim! Fire!" Another shape took being, a perfect sphere otherwise like the last. Its curved outer surface was faced up. "Stick the props in, Tony."
"Just a sec, while I light up." Vincente lit a cigarette, puffed it vigorously, then propped it in an ash tray and slid it under the half globe. Conrad again manipulated his controls; the shape descended, rested on the bench, covering the burning cigarette on its tray. "Anybody want to try the ax on it, or anything else?" asked Conrad.
Nobody seemed anxious to tamper with the unknown. Conrad again operated his board and the silver bowl lifted. The cigarette still smoldered in the tray, unaffected. "How," he asked, "would you like to put a lid like that over the Federation's capital at Bermuda-aiid leave it in place until they decided to come to terms?"
The idea quite evidently met with unanimous approval. The members of the Organization present were all, or almost all, citizens of Venus, emotionally involved in the rebellion no matter what else they were doing. Phipps cut through the excited comment with a question. "Dr. Conrad-would you give us a popular explanation of what we have seen? Why it works, I mean; we can guess at its enormous potentials."
Conrad's face got very serious. "Mmm... Chief, perhaps it would be clearest to say that the fasarta modulates the garbab in such a phase relationship that the thrimaleen is forced to bast-or, to put it another way, somebody loosed mice in the washroom. Seriously, there is no popular way to explain it. If you were willing to spend five hard years with me, working up through the math, I could probably bring you to the same level of ignorance and confusion that I enjoy. Some of the tensor equations involved are, to put it mildly, unique. But the instructions were clear enough and we did it."
Phipps nodded. "Thanks-if that is the word I want. I'll ask Sir Isaac."
"Do, please. I'd like to listen."
Despite the proof that the lab crew had been able to jury-rig at least part of the equipment described by the message in the two wires, Don's jitters got no better. Each day the sign in the mess hall reminded him that time was running out-and that he was sucking his thumb while it did so. He thought no more about trying to get them to send him back to the war zone; instead he began to make plans to get there on his own.
He had seen maps of the Great South Sea and knew roughly where he was. To the north there was territory uninhabited even by dragons-but not uninhabited by their carnivorous cousins. It was considered impassable. The way to the south around the lower end of the sea was much farther, but it was dragon country all the way right up to outlying human farms. With whistle speech and food enough to last at least a week he might get through to some settler who could pass him along to the next. As for the rest he had his knife and he had his wits and he was much more swampwise than he had been when he had made his escape from Bankfield's men.
He began to sneak food out of the mess hall and cache it in his room.
He was within a day and a night of attempting his break when Phipps sent for him. He considered not showing up but decided that it would be less suspicion-arousing to comply.
Sit down," Phipps began. "Cigarette? No-I forgot. What have you been doing with yourself lately? Keeping busy?"
"Not a darn thing to do!"
"Sorry. Mr. Harvey, have you given any thought to what sort of a world we will have when this is over?"
"Well, no, not exactly." He had thought about it, but his own imaginings were too poorly worked out for him to care to express them. As for himself, someday the war would be over-he supposed-and then he would carry out his long-postponed intention of seeking out his parents. After that, well...
"What sort of world would you like it to be?"
"Uh? Well, I don't know." Don pondered. "I guess I'm not what you call `politically minded.' I don't much care how they run it-except, well, there ought to be a sort of looseness about it. You know-a man ought to be able to do what he wants to, if he can, and not be pushed around."
Phipps nodded. "You and I have more in common than you may have thought. I'm not a purist in political theory myself. Any government that gets to be too big and too successful gets to be a nuisance. The Federation got that way-it started out decently enough-and now it has to be trimmed down to size. So that the citizens can enjoy some looseness. "
Don said, "Maybe the dragons have the right idea-no organization bigger than a family."
Phipps shook his head. "What's right for dragons is not right for us. Anyhow, families can be just as oppressive as government-take a look at the youngsters around here; five hundred years or so to look forward to before they can sneeze without permission. I asked your opinion because I don't know the answer myself-and I've studied the dynamics of history longer than you've been alive. All I know is that we are about to turn loose into the world forces the outcome of which I cannot guess."
Don looked startled. "We've got space travel now; I don't see what important difference it will make to make it faster. As for the other gimmick, it seems to me a swell idea to be able to put a lid on a city so that it can't be atom-bombed."
"Granted. But that is just the beginning. I've been making a list of some of the things that will come about-I think. In the first place you vastly underestimate the importance of speeding up transportation. As for the other possibilities, I'm stumped. I'm too old and my imagination needs greasing. But here's one for a starter: we might be able to move water, lots of water, significant amounts, from here to Mars." His brow wrinkled. "We might even be able to move planets themselves."