The Stutterer | Page 7

And I know
something else. He stutters."
"What?" said the sheriff. "Now I know you're lying."
The father started dragging the boy by the arm. "Come on home,
Jimmy. You got one more licking coming."
Jordan, however, was sure the boy was not lying. "Leave him alone,"
he said. "He's right. He did see him." He took a fast look at the
timepiece on his panel board. "I'll be down in an hour and a half. Wait
for me."
He flicked the switch off, and kicked up the motors. The ship shot
southward almost as rapidly as a projectile.
He had topped the Sierras and had just turned into the great central
valley of California when, with the impact of a blow, a frightening
thought occurred to him.
He flicked the screen on again, and he caught the sheriff sitting behind
his desk industriously scratching himself in one armpit.
"Listen," Jordan said, speaking very fast. "You've got to send out a
national alarm. You must get every man you can down to the power
plant. You've got to stop him from getting in."
The sheriff stopped scratching himself and stared at Jordan.
"What are you so het up about, young man?"
"Do it, and do it now," Jordan almost shouted. "He'll tear the pile apart
and let the hafnium go off. It'll blow half the state off the planet."
The sheriff was unperturbed. "Mr. Star boy," he said sarcastically, "any
grammar school kid knows that if someone came within a hundred
yards of one of those power-house piles, he'd burn like a match stick.
And besides why would he want to blow himself to pieces?"

"He's made out of permallium." Jordan was shouting now.
The sheriff suddenly grew pale. "Get off my screen. I'm calling
Sacramento."
* * * * *
Jordan set the ship for maximum speed, well beyond the safety limit.
He kept peering ahead into the dusk, momentarily fearful that the
whole countryside would light up in one brilliant flash. In a few
minutes he was sweating and trembling with the tension.
Over Walnut Grove, he recognized the series of dams, reservoirs and
water-lifts where the Sacramento was raised up out of its bed and
turned south. For greater speed, he came close to Earth, flying at
emergency height, reserved ordinarily for police, firemen, doctors and
ambulances. He set his course by sight following the silver road of the
river, losing it for ten or fifteen miles at a time where it passed through
subterranean tunnels, picking it up again at the surface, always shooting
south as fast as the atmosphere permitted.
At seven thirty, when the sun had finally set, he sighted the lights of
Red Mountain, and he cut his speed and swung in to land. There was no
trouble picking out the power plant; it was a big dome-shaped building
surrounded by a high wall. It was so brilliantly lit up, that it stood out
like a beacon, and there were several hundred men milling about before
it.
He settled down on the lawn inside the walls, and the sheriff came
bustling up, a little more red in the face than usual.
"I've been trying to figure for the last hour what the devil I would do to
stop him if he decided to come here," Berkhammer said.
"He's not here then?"
The sheriff shook his head. "Not a sign of him. We've gone over the
place three times."

Jordan settled back in relief, sitting down in the open doorway of his
ship. "Good," he said wearily.
"Good!" the sheriff exploded. "I don't know whether I'd rather have him
show up or not. If this whole business is nothing more than the crazy
imagination of some kid who ought to get tanned and a star-cop with
milk behind his ears, I'm really in the soup. I've sent out an alarm and
I've got the whole state jumping. There's a full mechanized battalion of
state troops waiting in there." He pointed toward the power plant.
"They've got artillery and tanks all around the place."
Jordan jumped down out of the ship. "Let's see what you've got set up
here. In the meantime, stop fretting. I'd rather see you fired than
vaporized along with fifty million other people."
"I guess you're right there," Berkhammer conceded, "but I don't like to
have anyone make a fool out of me."
* * * * *
At Ballarat, an old man, Eddie Yudovich, was the watchman and
general caretaker of the electrical generation plant. Actually, his job
was a completely unnecessary one, since the plant ran itself. In its very
center, buried in a mine of graphite were the tubes of hafnium, from
whose nuclear explosions flowed a river of electricity without the need
of human thought or direction.
He had