He smashed his fist on the desk. «If they want to play rough, it’s O.K. with us. Before we’re through with this we’ll have them begging in the street. Those newspaper publishers who are bucking us now will come through that door over there on hands and knees and blow three times—and then we’ll give them power to turn their presses.»
«How about the world committee?» asked Adams. «You could appeal to it. Have it declare you an international project. No one could touch you then. You’d be free to work out atomic power without all the annoyance to which you are now subjected. Some arrangement could be worked out with the power companies. They’d see reason if the committee took a hand.»
«We applied,» said Cobb, «but apparently the committee can’t be bothered. They’re up to their necks in Europe and Asia. Figure the Americas should stagger along as best they can until some of the squabbles over there are ironed out.»
«But it’s not a question of the Americas,» insisted Adams. «It’s a question of the world. The whole world is concerned with atomic power.»
«They wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole,» declared Cobb. «It’s too hot for them. Their powers are limited. The only reason they have lasted this long is that the little people of the world are determined there’s never going to be another war, yell their heads off when anybody makes a move toward the world committee. But something like this—»
«Don’t you see where this is leading?» demanded Adams. «If you let atomic power loose upon the world the way you propose to do, you’re letting loose economic chaos. You’ll absolutely iron out vast companies that employ hundreds of thousands of men and women. You’ll create a securities panic, which will have repercussions throughout the world, upsetting trade schedules which just now are beginning to have some influence toward a structure for enduring peace. You’re not too young to remember what 1929 was like. That was just a ripple in comparison to the sort of chaos you can bring about.»
«Adams,» Cobb told him coldly, «you came in here and asked to help us. I didn’t know who you were and I didn’t ask. Isn’t it about time to climb out of the tree?»
«I’m really no one,» Adams said. «Just a private citizen with certain … well, you might call them eccentricities.»
«Walker sent you,» declared Cobb. «Walker or one of the power mob.»
«I can assure you that is not so.»
«Who did then? And what is the proposition?»
«There is no proposition,» declared Adams. «Not now, at least. I did have something in mind, but there is no use in wasting time outlining it to you. When the power gang licks you, I’ll drop around again.»
«The power gang won’t lick us,» snapped Cobb.
Adams reached for his cane, pulled himself out of the chair, his fantastically tall, slender body towering over Cobb’s desk.
«But they will,» he said.
«Get out,» said Cobb.
«Good-by, Mr. Cobb,» said Adams. He limped toward the door.
«And don’t come back,» Cobb told him.
Cobb sat in his chair, cold with rage. If Walker thought such a thin deception would work—
The door opened and Miss Lane stood there, a newspaper clutched in her hand.
«Mr. Cobb,» she said.
«What is it?»
She walked across the room and laid the paper down in front of him.
It was the Messenger and the screaming type of the headline smacked him in the face:
ATOMIC DANGEROUS, COBB FINALLY ADMITS
The peaks of the Absoraka range shone with white, ghostly light under the pale whiteness of a sickle moon that hung just above the jagged mountain saw-tooth.
The ’copter muttered, driving ahead, while below the darkness that was Montana slid away like a black and flowing river.
Cobb, pipe clenched between his teeth, leaned back comfortably in his seat, taking it easy, trying to relax, trying to think.
It had been clumsy of the power mob to send Adams. But it was possible that back of that clumsiness there might be some purpose. Perhaps they had meant him to detect Adams as their emissary, using him as a deliberate decoy against some other move that might be underway.
Adams, of course, had denied he had any connection with the power lobby, but that was to be expected. Unless the power crowd was more desperate than he had reason to suspect, they probably wouldn’t come out openly with a compromise at this stage of the game.
Cobb bent forward and stared out of the window of the machine, but all was darkness. Not even an isolated ranchhouse light. He glanced at his watch. Midnight.
His pipe went out and he lighted it again, watching the peaks swing nearer, still keeping their ghostly character. He noted the reading on his course and corrected it slightly.
Suddenly the sky above the peak flashed.
That was the word that best described it—flashed. There was no consciousness of fire, no flame, no glow—just a sudden, blinding flash, like a photographer’s bulb popping—a million bulbs popping. A flash that came and lasted for one split second, then was gone, leaving a blackness that for a moment blotted out the moon and the snowy peaks—a blackness that persisted until one’s eyes could readjust themselves.
The ship plowed on, while Cobb, blinded, reached out for something to clutch, instinctively reacting to the bewilderment of blackness.
Sound came. A sudden clap of sound that was vicious and nerve-wrenching. Like one short gasp of a million thunders rolled together.
The ’copter bucked and plunged and Cobb reached out blind hands, hauled back on the wheel to send it rocketing skyward. Beneath him the ship jerked and trembled, wallowing in tortured air.
Cold realization chilled Cobb’s brain, tensed his body as he fought the bucking ship.
There was only one thing on Earth that could make a flash like that—a disintegrating atomic power plant!
The ship quieted and Cobb’s eyes cleared. The moon still hung above the peaks. There was no glow above the range. There wouldn’t be, Cobb knew.
There’d be no fire … unless … unless—
He narrowed his eyes, trying to project his sight deeper into the night.
There was no glow, no hint of fire. Just the night blue of the sky, the silver of the mountain snow, the whiteness of the moon.
His breath came in gasps.
The blast apparently had been a blast and that was all. it had not set off a progressive disintegration. Probably all the fears that had been held on that account were groundless. Perhaps the blasting atoms destroyed themselves utterly, expended all their power in one vicious flare of energy.
He pushed the machine down in a long, steep glide above the peaks, steeling himself for what he knew he’d see.
From far off he saw it, the jagged scar that snaked across the valley, the powdery gleam of riven rock, polished by the blast.
He held his breath as he swung above the scar. There was no sign of buildings, no sign of life, no smoke, not even the wavering of dancing motes of dust hanging in the air. There would be no dust, he knew. An atomic explosion would leave no dust. The dust itself would be a part of that bursting energy which had gouged out the hole across the valley.
He glided the ship toward the mountain spur that ran into the valley, brought it down on idling vanes. The spur, he saw, had been chopped off, cut off as a knife might slice through cheese, sheared in a straight and vicious line. A black hole gaped in the face of the spur and Cobb felt a surge of thankfulness.
At the end of that tunnel was the vault where Butler kept the records. If the blast had smashed the vault, blown it into nothingness, it would have wiped out the work of many years. But with the vault apparently intact—