“Space police! Are they after me, too? What did he want?”
“You,” the robot said. “Good-by. You interrupted a lovely song I was singing to myself.”
“Make that coffee,” Gallegher ordered as the image faded. He stepped out of the booth and stood for a moment, considering, while he stared blankly at the towers of Manhattan rising around him, with their irregular patterns of lighted windows, square, oval, circular, crescent, or star shaped.
A call from Washington.
Hopper cracking down.
Max Cuff and his thugs.
Fatty Smith.
Smith was the best bet. He tried the visor again, calling DU.
“Sorry, we have closed for the day.”
“This is important,” Gallegher insisted. “I need some information. I’ve got to get in touch with a man—”
“I’m sorry.”
“S — m-i-t-h,” Gallegher spelled. “Just look him up in the file or something, won’t you? Or do you want me to cut my throat while you watch?” He fumbled in his pocket.
“If you will call tomorrow—”
“That’ll be too late. Can’t you just look it up for me? Please. Double please.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m a stockholder in DU,” Gallegher snarled, “I warn you, my girl!”
“A…oh. Well, it’s irregular, but — S-m-i-t-h? One moment. The first name is what?”
“I don’t know. Give me all the Smiths.” The girl disappeared and came back with a file box labeled SMI. “Oh, dear,” she said, riffling through the cards. “There must be several hundred Smiths.”
Gallegher groaned. “I want a fat one,” he said wildly. “There’s no way of checking on that, I suppose.”
The secretary’s lips tightened. “Oh, a rib. I see. Good night!” She broke the connection.
Gallegher sat staring at the screen. Several hundred Smiths. Not so good. In fact, definitely bad.
Wait a minute, he had bought DU stock when it was on the skids. Why? He must have expected a rising market. But the stock had continued to fall, according to Arnie.
There might be a lead there.
He reached Arnie at the broker’s home and was insistent. “Break the date. This won’t take you long. Just find out for me why the DU’s on the skids. Call me back at my lab. Or I’ll break your neck. And make it fast! Get that dope, understand?”
Arnie said he would. Gallegher drank black coffee at a counter stand, went home warily by taxi, and let himself into his house. He double-locked the door behind him. Narcissus was dancing before the big mirror in the lab.
“Any calls?” Gallegher said.
“No. Nothing’s happened. Look at this graceful pas.”
“Later. If anybody tries to get in, call me. I’ll hide till you can get rid of ’em.” Gallegher squeezed his eyes shut. “Is the coffee ready?”
“Black and strong. In the kitchen.”
The scientist went into the bathroom instead, stripped, cold-showered, and took a brief irradiation. Feeling less woozy, he returned to the lab with a gigantic cup full of steaming coffee. He perched on Bubbles and gulped the liquid.
“You look like Rodin’s Thinker,” Narcissus remarked. “I’ll get you a robe. Your ungainly body offends my aesthetic feelings.”
Gallegher didn’t hear. He donned the robe, since his sweating skin felt unpleasantly cool, but continued to drink the coffee and stare into space.
“Narcissus. More of this.”
Equation: a(or)b(or)c equals x. He had been trying to find the value of a, b, or c. Maybe that was the wrong way. He hadn’t located J. W. at all. Smith remained a phantom. And Dell Hopper (one thousand credits) had been of no assistance.
It might be better to find the value of x. That blasted machine must have some purpose. Granted, it ate dirt. But matter cannot be destroyed; it can be changed into other forms.
Dirt went into the machine; nothing came out.
Nothing visible.
Free energy?
That was invisible, but could be detected with instruments.
Voltmeter, ammeter — gold leaf—
Gallegher turned the machine on again briefly. Its singing was dangerously loud, but no one rang the door buzzer, and after a minute or two Gallegher snapped the switch back to OFF. He had learned nothing.
Arnie called. The broker had secured the information Gallegher wanted.
“’Twasn’t easy. I had to pull some wires. But I found out why DU stock’s been dropping.”
“Thank Heaven for that! Spill it.”
“DU’s a sort of exchange, you know. They farm out jobs. This one — it’s a big office building to be constructed in downtown Manhattan. Only the contractor hasn’t been able to start yet. There’s a lot of dough tied up in the deal and there’s a whispering campaign that’s hurt the DU stock.”
“Keep talking.”
Arnie went on. “I got all the info I could, in case. There were two firms bidding on the job.”
“Who?”
“Ajax, and somebody named—”
“Not Smith?”
“That’s it,” Arnie said. “Thaddeus Smith. S-m-e-i-t-h, he spells it.”
There was a long pause. “S-m-e-i-t-h,” Gallagher repeated at last. “So that’s why the girl at DU couldn’t…eh? Oh, nothing. I ought to have guessed it.” Sure. When he’d asked Cuff whether Fatty spelled his name with an e or an i, the alderman had said both. Smeith. Ha!
“Smeith got the contract,” Arnie continued. “He underbid Ajax. However, Ajax has political pull. They got some alderman to clamp down and apply an old statute that put the kibosh on Smeith. He can’t do a thing.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Arnie said, “the law won’t permit him to block Manhattan traffic. It’s a question of air rights. Smeith’s client — or DU’s client, rather — bought the property lately, but air rights over it had been leased for a ninety-nine-year period to Transworld Strato. The strato-liners have their hangar just beyond that property, and you know they’re not the gyros. They need a straightaway course for a bit before they can angle up. Well, their right of way runs right over the property. Their lease is good. For ninety-nine years they’ve got the right to use the air over the land, above and over fifty feet above ground level.”
Gallegher squinted thoughtfully. “How could Smith expect to put up a building there, then?”
“The new owner possesses the property from fifty feet above soil down to the center of the earth. Savvy? A big eighty-story building — most of it underground. It’s been done before, but not against political pull. If Smeith fails to fulfill his contract, the job goes to Ajax — and Ajax is hand-in-glove with that alderman.”
“Yeah. Max Cuff,” Gallegher said. “I’ve met the lug. Still — what’s this statute you mentioned?”
“An old age one, pretty much obsolete, but sill on the books. It’s legal. I checked. You can’t interfere with down-town traffic, or upset the stagger system of transport.”
“Well?”
“If you dig a hole for an eighty story building,” Arnie said, “you get a lot of dirt and rock. How can you haul it away without upsetting traffic? I didn’t try to figure out how many tons have to be removed.”
“I see,” Gallegher said softly.
“So there it is, on a platinum platter. Smeith took the contract. Now he’s stymied. He can’t get rid of the dirt he’ll be excavating, and pretty soon Ajax will take over and wangle a permit to truck out the material.”
“How — if Smeith can’t?”
“Remember the alderman? Well, a few weeks ago some of the streets downtown were blocked off, for repairs. Traffic was rerouted — right by that building site. It’s been siphoned off there, and it’s so crowded that dirt trucks would tangle up the whole business. Of course it’s temporary”—Arnie laughed shortly—“temporary until Smeith is forced out. Then the traffic will be rerouted again, and Ajax can wangle their permit.”