The Stutterer | Page 3

very careful. You are our only hope."
Hall returned then to the seventeen, and he said with his thoughts: "All right, now you can look." Immobile in their darkness, they snatched at his mind, and as he opened his eyes, they, too, saw the splendors of the mountains and the valley, the blue sky, and the gold sun high overhead.
* * * * *
The new man was young, only twenty-six. He was lean and dark and very enthusiastic about his work. He sat straight in his chair waiting attentively while his superior across the desk leafed through a folder.
"Jordan. Tom Jordan," the older man finally said. "A nice old Earth name. I suppose your folks came from there."
"Yes, sir," the new man said briskly.
The chief closed the folder.
"Well," he said, "your first job is a pretty important one."
"I realize that, sir," Jordan said. "I know it's a great responsibility for a man just starting with the Commission, but I'll give it every thing I have."
The chief leaned back in his seat and scratched his chin thoughtfully.
"Normally we start a beginner like you working in a pair with an older man. But we just haven't got enough men to go around. There are eight thousand planets there"--he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to a wall-sized map of the galaxy--"and we've got to cover every one. It seems reasonable that if he escaped this planet, he'll go to another that will by its atmosphere or its temperature give him some natural advantage over us--some place that is either burning hot or at absolute zero, or perhaps with a chlorine or sulfur dioxide atmosphere. That's why"--he hesitated a minute, but continued because he was a truthful man--"I picked you for Earth. It's the most populated of all the planets and it seems the least likely one that he would choose."
Jordan's face dropped a little bit when he heard the last piece of information, but he said: "I understand, sir, and if he's there, I'll bring him back."
The chief slouched farther back in his seat. He picked up a shard of rubidium that served as a paper weight and toyed with it.
"I guess you know most of the facts. They are made out of permallium. Have you ever seen any of the stuff?"
The new man shook his head. "I read about it though--some new alloy, isn't it?"
"Plenty new. It's the hardest stuff anybody has ever made. If you set off one hundred successive atom blasts over a lump of permallium, you might crystallize and scale maybe a micron off the surface. It will stand any temperature or pressure we can produce. That just means there's no way to destroy it."
Jordan nodded. He felt a little honored that the chief was giving him this explanation in person rather than just turning him over to one of the scientific personnel for a briefing. He did not understand that the old man was troubled and was talking the situation through as much for his own sake as for anyone else's.
* * * * *
"That's the problem," the chief continued. "Essentially an indestructible machine with a built-in source of power that one can't reach. It had to be built that way--a war instrument, you know."
He stopped and looked squarely at the bright young man sitting across the desk. "This lousy war. You'd think the human race would grow up some time, wouldn't you?" He filled a pipe with imported Earth tobacco and lit it, and took a few deep puffs. "There's something else. I don't know how they do it, but they can communicate with one another over long distances. That made them very useful for military purposes.
"They are loyal to one another, too. They try to protect each other and keep one another from being captured. Do you find that surprising?"
The question caught Jordan unprepared. "Well, yes. It is, kind of--" he said. "They are only machines."
The chief closed his eyes for a moment. He seemed tired.
"Yes," he repeated, "they are only machines. Anyway, we don't know everything about them, even yet. There are still a few secret angles, I think. The men who could tell us are either dead or in hiding.
"There's one fact though that gives us a great advantage. Their brain"--he stopped on the word and considered it--"I mean their thinking apparatus gives off a very penetrating short-wave length radiation which you can pick up on your meters anywhere in a radius of two thousand miles, and you can locate the source accurately if you get within fifty miles.
"The only real problem you'll have in finding them is the confusion created by illegal atomic piles. You'd be surprised how many of them we have turned up recently. They are owned by private parties and are run illegally to keep from paying the tax