The Vortex Blaster | Page 2

the problem. It was unthinkable that Tellus, the point of origin
and the very center of Galactic Civilization, should cease to exist.
* * * * *
But to Neal Cloud the accident was the ultimate catastrophe. His
personal universe had crashed in ruins; what was left was not worth
picking up. He and Jo had been married for almost twenty years and the
bonds between them had grown stronger, deeper, truer with every
passing day. And the kids.... It couldn't have happened ... fate
COULDN'T do this to him ... but it had ... it could. Gone ... gone ...
GONE....
And to Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, sitting there at his desk in torn,
despairing abstraction, with black maggots of thought gnawing holes in
his brain, the catastrophe was doubly galling because of its cruel irony.
For he was second from the top in the Atomic Research Laboratory; his
life's work had been a search for a means of extinguishment of exactly
such loose vortices as had destroyed his all.
His eyes focussed vaguely upon the portrait. Clear, honest gray eyes ...
lines of character and of humor ... sweetly curved lips, ready to smile or
to kiss....
He wrenched his eyes away and scribbled briefly upon a sheet of paper.
Then, getting up stiffly, he took the portrait and moved woodenly
across the room to a furnace. As though enshrining it he placed the
plastic block upon a refractory between the electrodes and threw a
switch. After the flaming arc had done its work he turned and handed
the paper to a tall man, dressed in plain gray leather, who had been
watching him with quiet, understanding eyes. Significant enough to the
initiated of the importance of this laboratory is the fact that it was
headed by an Unattached Lensman.

"As of now, Phil, if it's QX with you."
The Gray Lensman took the document, glanced at it, and slowly,
meticulously, tore it into sixteen equal pieces.
"Uh, uh, Storm," he denied, gently. "Not a resignation. Leave of
absence, yes--indefinite--but not a resignation."
"Why?" It was scarcely a question; Cloud's voice was level, uninflected.
"I won't be worth the paper I'd waste."
"Now, no," the Lensman conceded, "but the future's another matter. I
haven't said anything so far, because to anyone who knew you and Jo
as I knew you it was abundantly clear that nothing could be said." Two
hands gripped and held. "For the future, though, four words were
uttered long ago, that have never been improved upon. 'This, too, shall
pass.'"
"You think so?"
"I don't think so, Storm--I know so. I've been around a long time. You
are too good a man, and the world has too much use for you, for you to
go down permanently out of control. You've got a place in the world,
and you'll be back--" A thought struck the Lensman, and he went on in
an altered tone. "You wouldn't--but of course you wouldn't--you
couldn't."
"I don't think so. No, I won't--that never was any kind of a solution to
any problem."
Nor was it. Until that moment, suicide had not entered Cloud's mind,
and he rejected it instantly. His kind of man did not take the easy way
out.
After a brief farewell Cloud made his way to an elevator and was
whisked down to the garage. Into his big blue DeKhotinsky Sixteen
Special and away.

Through traffic so heavy that front-, rear-, and side-bumpers almost
touched he drove with his wonted cool skill; even though, consciously,
he did not know that the other cars were there. He slowed, turned,
stopped, "gave her the oof," all in correct response to flashing signals in
all shapes and colors--purely automatically. Consciously, he did not
know where he was going, nor care. If he thought at all, his numbed
brain was simply trying to run away from its own bitter
imaging--which, if he had thought at all, he would have known to be a
hopeless task. But he did not think; he simply acted, dumbly, miserably.
His eyes saw, optically; his body reacted, mechanically; his thinking
brain was completely in abeyance.
Into a one-way skyway he rocketed, along it over the suburbs and into
the transcontinental super-highway. Edging inward, lane after lane, he
reached the "unlimited" way--unlimited, that is, except for being
limited to cars of not less than seven hundred horsepower, in perfect
mechanical condition, driven by registered, tested drivers at speeds not
less than one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour--flashed his
registry number at the control station, and shoved his right foot down to
the floor.
* * * * *
Now everyone knows that an ordinary DeKhotinsky Sporter will do a
hundred and forty honestly-measured miles in one honestly measured
hour; but very few ordinary drivers have ever