Unwise Child | Page 6

a plastic case, six by six by eight, and it still smelled of hot insulation, although the case itself was barely warm.
"What is it?" Harry asked in wonder.
"It's the gizmo that turned your equipment off. When I passed by it, my own gadget must have blown it. I knew the police couldn't have made it here between the time of the fight and the time they showed up. They must have had at least an extra minute. Besides, I didn't think anyone could build an instrument that would blank out everything at long range. It had to be something near your main cable. I think you'll find a metallic oscillator in there. Analyze it. Might be useful."
Harry turned the box over in his hands. "Probably has a timer in it to start it.... Well.... That helps."
"What do you mean?"
"I've got a pretty good idea who put it here. Older kid. Nineteen--maybe twenty. Seemed like a nice lad, too. Didn't take him for a JD. Can't trust anyone these days. Thanks, Mike. If I find anything new in here, I'll let you know."
"Do that," said Mike the Angel. "And, as a personal favor, I'll show you how to build my own super-duper, extra-special, anti-vibroblade defense unit."
Old Harry grinned, crinkling up his wizened face in a mass of fine wrinkles. "You'd better think up a shorter name than that for it, laddie; I could probably build one in less time than it takes you to say it."
"Want to bet?"
"I'll bet you twenty I can do it in twenty-four hours."
"Twenty it is, Harry. I'll sell you mine this time tomorrow for twenty bucks."
Harry shook his head. "I'll trade you mine for yours, plus twenty." Then his eyes twinkled. "And speaking of money, didn't you come down here to buy something?"
Mike the Angel laughed. "You're not going to like it. I came down to get a dozen plastic-core resistors."
"What size?"
Mike told him, and Old Harry went over to the proper bin, pulled them out, all properly boxed, and handed them to him.
"That'll be four dollars," he said.
Mike the Angel paid up with a smile. "You don't happen to have a hundred-thousand-unit microcryotron stack, do you?"
"Ain't s'posed to," said Harry MacDougal. "If I did, I wouldn't sell it to you. But, as a matter of cold fact, I do happen to have one. Use it for a paperweight. I'll give it to you for nothing, because it don't work, anyhow."
"Maybe I can fix it," said Mike the Angel, "as long as you're giving it to me. How come it doesn't work?"
"Just a second, laddie," said Harry. He scuttled to the rear of the shop and came back with a ready-wrapped package measuring five by five by four. He handed it to Mike the Angel and said: "It's a present. Thanks for helping me out of a tight spot."
Mike said something deprecative of his own efforts and took the package. If it were in working order it would have been worth close to three hundred dollars--more than that on the black market. If it was broken, though, it was no good to Mike. A microcryotron unit is almost impossible to fix if it breaks down. But Mike took it because he didn't want to hurt Old Harry's feelings by refusing a present.
"Thanks, Harry," he said. "Happen to know why it doesn't work?"
Harry's face crinkled again in his all-over smile. "Sure, Mike. It ain't plugged in."

4
Mike the Angel did not believe in commuting. Being a bachelor, he could afford to indulge in that belief. In his suite of offices on 112th Street, there was one door marked "M. R. Gabriel." Behind that door was his private secretary's office, which acted as an effective barrier between himself and the various employees of the firm. Behind the secretary's office was his own office.
There was still another door in his inner office, a plain, unmarked door that looked as though it might conceal a closet.
It didn't. It was the door to a veddy, veddy expensive apartment with equally expensive appointments. One wall, thirty feet long and ten feet high, was a nearly invisible, dustproof slab of polished, optically flat glass that gave the observer the feeling that there was nothing between him and the city street, five hundred feet below.
The lights of the city, coming through the wall, gave the room plenty of illumination after sunset, but the simple flick of a switch could polarize it black, allowing perfect privacy.
The furniture was massive, heavily braced, and well upholstered. It had to be; Mike the Angel liked to flop into chairs, and his two hundred and sixty pounds gave chairs a lot of punishment.
On one of the opaque walls was Dali's original "Eucharist," with its muffled, robed figures looking oddly luminous in the queer combination of city lights and interior illumination.