The shadier side of his business was handled in strict privacy, without assistants. The matter of the neuro-gun, for example—
Gallegher had made that remarkable weapon, quite without realizing its function. He had hashed it together one evening, piecing out the job with court plaster when his welder went on the fritz. And he’d given it to Vanning, on request. Vanning didn’t keep it long. But already he had earned thousands of credits by lending the gun to potential murderers. As a result, the police department had a violent headache.
A man in the know would come to Vanning and say, “I heard you can beat a murder rap. Suppose I wanted to—”
“Hold on! I can’t condone anything like that.”
“Huh? But—”
“Theoretically, I suppose a perfect murder might be possible. Suppose a new sort of gun had been invented, and suppose — just for the sake of an example — it was in a locker at the Newark Stratoship Field.”
“Huh?”
“I’m just theorizing. Locker Number Seventy-nine, combination thirty-blue-eight. These little details always help one to visualize a theory, don’t they?”
“You mean—”
“Of course if our murderer picked up this imaginary gun and used it, he’d be smart enough to have a postal box ready, addressed to…say…Locker Forty, Brooklyn Port. He could slip the weapon into the box, seal it, and get rid of the evidence at the nearest mail conveyor. But that’s all theorizing. Sorry I can’t help you. The fee for an interview is three thousand credits. The receptionist will take your check.”
Later, conviction would be impossible. Ruling 857-M, Illinois Precinct, case of State vs. Dupson, set the precedent. Cause of death must be determined. Element of accident must be considered. As Chief Justice Duckett had ruled during the trial of Sanderson vs. Sanderson, which involved the death of the accused’s mother-in-law—
Surely the prosecuting attorney, with his staff of toxicological experts, must realize that—
And in short, your honor, I must respectfully request that the case be dismissed for lack of evidence and proof of casus mortis—
Gallegher never even found out that his neuro-gun was a dangerous weapon. But Vanning haunted the sloppy laboratory, avidly watching the results of his friend’s scientific doodling. More than once he had acquired handy little devices in just this fashion. The trouble was, Gallegher wouldn’t work.
He took another sip of martini, shook his head, and unfolded his lanky limbs. Blinking, he ambled over to a cluttered workbench and began toying with lengths of wire.
“Making something?”
“Dunno. Just fiddling. That’s the way it goes, I put things together, and sometimes they work. Trouble is, I never know exactly what they’re going to do. Tsk!” Gallegher dripped the wires and returned to his couch. “Hell with it.”
He was, Vanning reflected, an odd duck. Gallegher was essential amoral, thoroughly out of place in this too-complicated world. He seemed to watch, with a certain wry amusement, from a vantage point of his own, rather disinterested for the most part. And he made things—
But always and only for his own amusement. Vanning sighed and glanced around the laboratory, his orderly soul shocked by the mess. Automatically he picked up a rumpled smock from the floor, and looked for a hook. Of course there was none. Gallagher, running short of conductive metal, had long since ripped them out and used them in some gadget or other.
The so-called scientist was creating a zombie, his eyes half-closed. Vanning went over to a metal locker in one corner and opened the door. There were no hooks, but he folded the smock neatly and laid it on the floor of the locker.
Then he went back to his perch on Monstro.
“Have a drink?” Gallagher asked. Vanning shook his head. “Thanks, no. I’ve got a case coming up tomorrow.”
“There’s always thiamin. Filthy stuff. I work better when I’ve got pneumatic cushions around my brain.”
“Well I don’t.”
“It is purely a matter of skill,” Gallagher hummed, “to which each may attain if he will…What are you gaping at?”
“That — locker,” Vanning said, frowning in a baffled way. “What the—” He got up. The metal door hadn’t been securely latched and had swung open. Of the smock Vanning had placed within the metal compartment there was no trace.
“It’s the paint,” Gallegher explained swiftly. “Or the treatment. I bombarded it with gamma rays. But it isn’t good for anything.”
Vanning went over and swung a fluorescent into a more convenient position. The locker wasn’t empty, as he had first imagined. The smock was no longer there, but instead there was a tiny blob — something, pale green and roughly spherical.
“It melts things?” Vanning asked, staring.
“Uh-huh. Pull it out. You’ll see.”
Vanning felt hesitant about putting his hand inside the locker. Instead, he found a long pair of test tube clamps and tossed the blob out. It was—
Vanning hastily looked away. His eyes hurt. The green blob was changing in color, shape and size. A crawling nongeometrical blur of motion rippled over it. Suddenly, the clamps were remarkably heavy.
No wonder. They were gripping the original smock.
“It does that, you know,” Gallagher said absently. “Must be a reason, too. I put things in the locker and they get small. Take ’em out, and they get big again. I supposed I could sell it to a stage magician.” His voice sounded doubtful.
Vanning sat down, fingering the smock and staring at the metal locker. It was a cube, approximately 3 × 3 × 5, lined with what seemed to be a grayish paint, sprayed on. Outside it was shiny black.
“How’d you do it?”
“Huh? I dunno. Just fiddling around.” Gallagher sipped his zombie. “Maybe it’s a matter of dimensional exorcism. My treatment may have altered the spatiotemporal relationships inside the locker. I wonder what that means?” he murmured in a vague aside. “Words frighten me sometimes.”
Vanning was thinking about tesseracts. “You mean it’s bigger inside than it is outside?”
“A paradox, a paradox, a most delightful paradox. You tell me. I suppose the inside of the locker isn’t in this space time continuum at all. Here, shove that bench in it.
You’ll see.” Gallagher made no moves to rise; he waved toward the article of furniture in question.
“You’re crazy. That bench is bigger than the locker.”
“So it is. Shove it in a bit at a time. That corner first. Go ahead.”
Vanning wrestled with the bench. Despite his shortness, he was stockily muscular.
“Lay the locker on its back. It’ll be easier.”
“I…uh!…O.K. Now what?”
“Edge the bench down into it.”
Vanning squinted at his companion, shrugged, and tried to obey. Of course the bench wouldn’t go into the locker. One corner did, that was all. Then, naturally, the bench stopped, balancing precariously at an angle.
“Well?”
“Wait.”
The bench moved. It settled slowly, downward. As Vanning’s jaw dropped, the bench seemed to crawl into the locker, with the gentled motion of a not-too-heavy object sinking through water. It wasn’t sucked down. It melted down. The portion still outside the locker was unchanged. But that too settled, and was gone.
Vanning craned forward. A blur of movement had his eyes. Inside the locker was — something. It shifted its contours, shrank, and became a spiky sort of scalene pyramid, deep purple in hue.
It seemed to be less than four inches across at its widest point.
“I don’t believe it.” Vanning said. Gallegher grinned, “As the Duke of Wellington remarked to the subaltern, it was a demned small bottle, sir.”