The wheels touched the rock and rolled forward slowly. Cobb applied the brakes and cut the motor, flung open the door and jumped out.
Swiftly he headed for the tunnel, running up the slope.
Something moved in the tunnel’s mouth, a weaving, staggering something. A man walking on wobbly legs, gripping a portfolio under one arm.
The man looked up and the pale moonlight slanted across his face.
«Butler!» Cobb cried.
Butler stopped, reached out a hand to steady himself. The portfolio fell to the ground and slid along the rock.
«Butler,» yelled Cobb. «Butler, thank God!»
Butler’s right hand came up and the moonlight gleamed on dull metal.
Butler’s voice croaked at him. «Stay where you are!»
Cobb took another step forward.
«I’ll shoot,» croaked Butler. «I’ll shoot, so help me—»
The gun barked, its muzzle flash throwing a swift red shadow on the man who held it.
«Butler, it’s Cobb! Bill Cobb!»
The gun roared again and a bullet whined close.
«For the love of Mike,» yelled Cobb.
The gun wavered and Butler’s knees gave way. Cobb leaped forward, but he was too late to catch the falling man. When he reached Butler, the scientist had tumbled forward, across the portfolio, guarding it even as he clawed feebly to regain his feet.
Cobb knelt and lifted him, bent low to hear the whisper.
«Got to get away,» it ran. «Get into the hills. Got to—»
Cobb shook him and Butler’s eyes flicked open.
«Bill,» he said.
«Yes,» said Cobb.
«Let’s get out of here,» Butler whispered. «The power mob. Spies. One of them … one of them—»
Cobb nodded grimly.
«The papers?» he asked.
Half croak, half whisper, Butler told him: «All here. All we need. The rest … mean nothing.»
Swiftly, Cobb picked Butler up, cradling him in his arms, staggering toward the ship.
«Blast … knocked me … out,» Butler said. «Came to after … while. Shaky … can’t talk good—»
«Shock,» said Cobb.
It was a miracle, he knew, that the man hadn’t been killed outright by the pressure and the flare of radioactive particles. The downward turn of the tunnel and the depth of the vault, he knew, was all that saved him.
With Butler in the ship, he sprinted back to pick up the portfolio and revolver, then raced to the plane and took it up, vanes whirring wildly, sent it fleeing across the mountaintops.
«Doctor,» croaked Butler.
«I’m taking you to one,» said Cobb. «Sit back and take it easy. Keep yourself covered up.»
Butler’s hand reached out and plucked at his sleeve.
«What is it, Glenn?» Cobb asked.
«Maybe it … would be … better—»
«Take your time,» cautioned Cobb. «Don’t try too hard.»
«—If they thought … I … was dead.»
Cobb grunted. «Maybe it would, at that.»
«Work in … secret … then.»
«Sure, sure,» said Cobb. «That’s the idea.»
He stared straight ahead into the blackness.
Work in secret. Underground. Skulking like criminals. Hiding from powerful men who saw in them a threat to empire.
And even if they did, where would they get the money? Atomic research took money, a lot of money. There had been trouble scraping together enough to build the plant—the plant that now was gone. Millions of dollars for a flash in the sky and a scar gouged in the ground.
Atomic Power Inc., he knew, was beaten, cleaned out. It was no more than a gilt name on an office door back in New York. And after tomorrow, after the newspapers and Primitives got through with them, it wouldn’t even be that. It would be nothing—absolutely nothing.
There was, he told himself, bitterly, just one thing to do. Come morning and he would go down to the Messenger office and beat up Felix Jones.
He’d told Jones he would do that. Although Jones wasn’t really to blame.
He was just a newspaperman, one of many, doing the best he knew, writing what his boss wanted him to write at so many bucks a week.
The men he wanted to beat couldn’t be reached—not now. There was only one way to beat them, take away the things they owned, smash the things they’d built, hold them up to pity and to ridicule. And now that couldn’t be done.
Tomorrow those men would sit and gloat. Tomorrow—
He twisted his head around and looked back toward the misty peaks. The moon was sinking, the lower horn just touching the mountains.
Something floated across its face, a tiny thing with tiny spinning vanes.
He watched it, fascinated, saw the moon-glint strike like hidden fire against the blades.
Another helicopter!
Butler mumbled at him.
«Yes, what is it?»
«Doctor—»
«It’s O.K.,» said Cobb. «I’ll take you to a friend of mine. He won’t say a thing. Won’t even know who you are. He won’t ask and I won’t tell him.»
«Best way,» said Butler.
Pale morning light was filtering through the windows when Cobb let himself into the office and hurried to the wall safe. Swiftly he spun the combination and thrust the portfolio inside.
«Good morning, Mr. Cobb,» said a voice from the doorway.
Cobb swung about.
The man who stood there was tall and thin and carried a heavy cane.
«It was most fortunate about Butler,» Ford Adams said.
«You are just too late,» said Cobb. «If you’d caught up with me a minute sooner, you could have brained me with that stick. The portfolio would have been yours.»
«I could have caught up with you any time,» Adams told him. «But I wasn’t interested in the portfolio. I wanted to talk to you again. Remember I said I would.»
Cobb thrust his hands into his coat pockets, felt the hardness of the revolver he’d picked up back at the tunnel. Slowly his fingers curled around it.
«Come in,» he said.
Adams limped across the room, laid his cane on the desk and sat down.
«There was a certain proposition—» he started to say, but Cobb stopped him with a gesture.
«Forget the proposition, Adams,» Cobb said. «A hundred men died out in Montana tonight. Most of them friends of mine. Three or four million dollars of equipment and years of labor went up in a flash. You were out there. I saw a ’copter as I was leaving.»
Adams nodded. «I was there. I followed you.»
«Then,» said Cobb, «it’s time for you to talk.»
His hand came out of his pocket and he laid the revolver on the desk.
«There is,» said Adams, «no need for melodrama.»
«There’s no melodrama involved,» Cobb told him. «If your explanation isn’t good, I’m going to shoot you deader than a mackerel. If for no other reason than you know Butler is alive. What’s simpler than that?»
«I see,» said Adams.
«No one,» said Cobb, «is going to ruin his chance again. Nor the world’s chance, either. He’s the only man today who can give the world workable atomic power. If something happened to him, no one knows how long the world would have to wait.»
«You mean the power people would hunt him down if they knew he were alive?»
Cobb nodded. «They won’t touch Ramsey or me. We don’t count. We don’t have the brain that Butler has.»
The radio on the desk flashed a green light, chirped persuasively.
Cobb stared at it. The green light flashed again. The chirp seemed more insistent.
«It might be about Butler,» Adams said.
Cobb reached out for the gun, swiveled it on Adams, then bent over the radio.
«One move,» he warned.
«You needn’t worry,» said Adams. «My life is something I value very highly.»