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"Prove that last remark and I shall be much inter-
ested. "
"No, you'll come to leam that it's true if you still
52 Robert A. Heinlein
insist on knowing the answers. Through checking
those films, Joe? Toss 'em back."
Gilead did not do so. "I suppose you have made
copies in any case?"
"Wasn't necessary; I looked at them. Don't get
ideas, Joe; you're washed up with the FBS, even if
you brought the films and my head back on a platter.
You slugged your boss remember?"
Gilead remembered that he had not told Baldwin
so. He began to believe that Baldwin did have men
inside the FBS, whether his late bureau chief had
been one of them or not.
"I would at least be allowed to resign with a clear
record. I know Bonn officially he would be happy to
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forget it." He was simply stalling for time, waiting
for Baldwin to oner an opening.
"Chuck them back, Joe. I don't want to rassle.
One of us might get killed both of us, if you won
the first round. You can't prove your case, because I
can prove I was home teasing the cat. I sold 'copters
to two very respectable citizens at the exact time you
would claim I was somewhere else." He listened
again to the speaker, answered it in the same
gibberish.
Gilead's mind evaluated his own tactical situation
to the same answer that Baldwin had expressed. Not
being given to wishful thinking he at once tossed the
films to Baldwin.
"Thanks, Joe." He went to a small oubliette set in
the wall, switched if to full power, put the films in
the hopper, waited a few seconds, and switched it
off. "Good riddance to bad rubbish."
Gilead permitted his eyebrows to climb. "Kettle
Belly, you've managed to surprise me."
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"How?"
"I thought you wanted to keep the nova effect as a
means to power."
"Nuts! Scalping a man is a hell of a poor way to
GULF 53
cure him of dandruff. Joe, how much do you know
about the nova effect?"
"Not much. I know it's a sort of atom bomb powerful
enough to scare the pants off anybody who gets to
thinking about it."
"It's not a bomb. It's not a weapon. It's a means of
destroying a planet and everything on it complete-
ly by turning that planet into a nova. If that's a
weapon, military or political, then I'm Samson and
you're Delilah.
"But I'm not Samson," he went on, "and I don't
propose to pull down the Temple nor let anybody
else do so. There are moral lice around who would
do just that, if anybody tried to keep them from
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having their own way. Mrs. Keithley is one such.
Your boy friend Bonn is another such, if only he had
the guts and the savvy which he ain't. I'm bent on
frustrating such people. Wl do you know about
ballistics, Joe?"
"Grammar school stuff."
"Inexcusable ignorance." The speaker sounded
again; he answered it without lyeaking his flow. "The
problem of three bodies still lacks a neat general
solution, but there are several special solutions the
asteroids that chase Jupiter in Jupiter's own orbit at
the sixty degree position, for example. And there's
the straight-line solution you've heard of the aster-
oid 'Earth-Anti'?"
"That's the chunk of rock that is always on the
other side of the Sun, where we never see it."
"That's right only it ain't there any more. It's
been novaed."
Gilead, normally immune to surprise, had been
subjected to one too many. "Huh? I thought this
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nova effect was theory?"
"Nope. If you had had time to scan through the
films you would have seen pictures of it. It's a pluto-
nium, lithium, and heavy water deal, with some
flourishes we won't discuss. It adds up to the match
54 Robert A. Heinlein
that can set afire a world. It did a little world flared
up and was gone.
"Nobody saw it happen. No one on Earth could
see it, for it was behind the Sun. It couldn't have
been seen from Moon Colony; the Sun still blanked
it off from there visualize the geometry. All that
ever saw it were a battery of cameras in a robot ship.
All who knew about it were the scientists who rigged
it and aU of them were with us, except the direc-
tor- If he had been, too, you would never have been
in this mix up,"
"Dr. Finnley?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]