Chapter TWO: The Crystal Phantoms

"Now," said Claverly, peering through the television hookup that brought him an image of the crystal, "we are ready." His voice came over the speaker tinnily.

"It's been checked?"

"Definitely. We're all ready."

DeLieb manipulated the controls as the rest of them watched through the large projection screen. Clawed arms came from the side of the screen and picked the crystal out of the dish. They carried it over to the mouth of a pneumatic tube, where it was dropped into a carrier. There was a _whoosh!_ and the carrier disappeared.

The scene on the television screen switched abruptly to Claverly, who opened the end of the tube and removed the crystal. He held it up for them to see.

"So here we are," said Claverly. "The crystal and myself, removed from the critical mass of human radiation--if that means anything. Watch me closely. I am going to test this crystal for power output."

Claverly turned aside and clamped the crystal in a holder. He turned away, then, and--

There was a flash that filled the telescreen. It did not blind the onlookers, for the total output of the projection system would not furnish so much light. But the flash at the transmitting end paralyzed the orthicon, and once the phosphor of the receiving tube ceased to glow, the screen went dark. The orthicon at the far end of the line was no longer working. There was no roar of sound from the speaker. Just an electric crackle, and then the hiss of the live circuit.

"Gone!" said DeLieb explosively.

Phelps turned from the mounted telescope and said, "I saw a flicker from the windows, but the building is still there."

"Then it didn't blow," said Jane Nolan.

Crandall caught a faint flicker on the telescreen. The bare highlights were there, just coming up above the black level. "Claverly!" said Dave.

They turned. The tall scientist was visible, standing still as they had seen him before. Motionless, like a strobo-flashed picture.

Dave raced down, out of the building and into the parked jeep. He shoved the jeep into gear and took off with a roar. His tires threw dust as he raced across the intervening three miles to the remote laboratory.

Claverly was there. A phantom Claverly; a three-dimensional image, unmistakable as the man himself. Transparent, however; the bricks of the far wall could be distinguished through it.

The image was fading, but so very gradually that Dave had to watch carefully to be certain.

* * * * *

"The crystal is still here," said Dave. "It seems unchanged."

"We see," replied DeLieb. "The video is working again."

"So--what was Claverly's next move to be?"

"Wait!" cried Jane. "Be careful; Claverly--"

"Someone has to do it," said Dave. "If you'll give me directions--?"

Phelps shook his head at the rest and said: "Dave, if we could manipulate that thing from here through these last few motions, Claverly wouldn't have been there."

"Forgot that," said Dave unhappily. "So now what?"

"I'm coming over. You leave."

"Check--but don't like it."

Dave was less than a thousand yards away from the building when Phelps entered. His jeep was not equipped with radio or telephone so he did not know what went on. All he knew was a swift burst of brightness, perceptible against the bright sky. Dave stopped the jeep in half its length and turned it to go racing back.

Phelps was there, too. A phantom image standing near the image of Claverly, but apparently more solid. Claverly was fading; Phelps was a fresh image.

"Same damned thing!" cried Crandall into the microphone.

"I'm coming--" started DeLieb, but Dave stopped him with a firm "No!"

Then he ran the jeep back to the main buildings, thinking furiously. By the time he arrived, he had an idea....

* * * * *

"This is no random thing," he said. "This is malicious."

"Malicious?" asked Jane. "What do you mean?"

"How many nuclear laboratories have we lost, trying to reproduce this crystal?"

"Nine."

"And how many top-flight scientists?"

"Almost forty."

"The forty we can least afford to lose," added Dave. "Can you think of an easier way to sap the scientific strength of a country than to give it something that performs miracles--and also kills?"

"Ah," said Jane, shaking her head. "But there's a hole in that reasoning. No one gave us anything. We discovered the Manhattan Crystal by accident--in a restricted laboratory and under the most rigid supervision."

"Accident, hell! No doubt a young and innocent mouse thinks it's an accident when he finds a piece of cheese. The crystal is the cheese--and the trap. Kids, we're being taken for a ride. Give 'em a chance to lop off a gang of you and a lab at the same time and they do it. Give them no chance to get the lab, and they'll wait to get a scientist. Offer 'em a cluck of a newsman, of no scientific learning, and they wait until they have a chance at an important scientist. The crystal is still there."

"I'll go--"

"DeLieb, sit still. Claverly went, Phelps went. You go, and the next will be Nolan or Howes."

"So what do you suggest?"

"I'm no scientist. Teach me what to do. I'll do it."

"You'll die."

"I'll prove a point," said Dave. "And I won't die! I'll prove to you that anybody but a top scientist can tinker all day with that thing without danger. If you think I'm wrong, remember that I was there once and came back. Now--what do I do?"

Howes laughed bitterly. "If that were as simple as winding an alarm clock or grinding the valves on a gas engine, we'd have no problem, Dave."

"You can tell me the motions; you can tell me what to do. You can coach me at the job, and with training--hell, fellers, you don't have to know organic chemistry to mix a cake and men have performed operations with a jackknife at sea, with directions by radio. I'm checked out in a B-108, and any man who can keep his eyes on seventy meters, a hundred and twelve switches, forty levers, sixty-seven pushbuttons, and drive the damned thing with his free hand at the same time ought to be able to learn whatever this job requires." He looked around him. "And in the meantime, we'll let that crystal sit there and simmer, waiting for a nice, ripe physicist to come and get stuck!"

"It will take days," said Jane thoughtfully.

"Better days than lives," said Dave sharply.

"Okay," said DeLieb. "You certainly can do no harm. You may do some good. We'll try it your way."

For the next ninety-six hours, Dave Crandall got a total of nine hours of sleep. He worked in another replica of the remote lab, using similar instruments. He had not the foggiest notion of what he was doing, but he learned the manual dexterity necessary to do it. He didn't know what the meters meant, but he learned how to read them. He couldn't understand why he must do thus and so when such and such a meter read to a certain value, but he learned that, too. He became a trained human primate, an animal who knew that four raps plus four raps equalled eight raps; a chimpanzee trained to drive an automobile.

Not that Dave was ignorant, unintelligent, or untutored. Dave was college, postgrad, and a writer. Dave knew as much present-day science as any layman. He wrote science articles for his paper, was constantly exposed to science, and a lot of it took. But this science was as far beyond the kind he knew as the jet plane is beyond the Wright Brothers' original model.

Then DeLieb told him, "Dave, you're ready."

"Let's go."

"Not tonight."

"Why waste time?"

"You're tired. I'm tired. We're all tired, if you want to finish the conjugation. Tonight we loaf and rest and get a full night's sleep. Tomorrow we work. This is the royal edict."

"I vote yea," laughed Jane Nolan. "Come, ambitious one. On nine hours' sleep in four days, you should be easy to handle."

Dave shrugged. DeLieb looked askance. "Jane, if you take him dancing, we'll all kill you."

"You wouldn't have to," she said. "I'd be dead already. No, I'm taking Dave out to the farm where he can see stars and breathe fresh air, and loaf on long grass."

* * * * *

Jane's mother, forewarned, piled the dinner table high, and Dave was fed to the bursting point. They walked under the stars, afterwards, and then sprawled on the long grass, looking at the sky.

"You're quite a guy, Dave," said Jane.

"Probably the only one of my kind in existence," he said solemnly. "Most men have eight eyes, you know. I've only got two."

"Blue, aren't they?"

"Brown," he corrected. "All two of them."

"They're blue."

"Brown."

"Dave, I'm a qualified observer and I recall them as blue!"

"Wishful thinking. Probably your first love had blue eyes."

Jane lit a match and held it over him for an instant. "Blue," she said.

"Are you going to believe your eyes or what I tell you?" he demanded.

"My eyes," she said. "Just because I happen to think you're quite special, I don't necessarily believe everything you say."

"What's so special? I'm just an ordinary sort of guy. Most of the things I learned in school haven't been much use to me. I drink too much and smoke too much, go to church far too little--if at all--and have no immediate hope for mankind."

"You're an idealist."

"No cigar. Cynic, yes. But idealist--?"

"You are," she said. "You are also some sort of human dynamo. You come as a newspaperman to report on our doings and end up marching yourself into danger and almost running the research group."

"Think of the story I'll be able to write," he said.

"And if you don't--?"

He laughed. "I'm in no danger," he said.

"I hope you aren't."

"Better me than someone who might be able to solve this thing."

"I don't think so."

"I'm no loss to civilization, Jane."

"That's your fault," she told him, half-angry. "You could be a great asset if you'd only try."

"And what form of attempt does this require?"

"Stop playing cynic. We don't need people to tell civilization that it has a dirty back yard or a few rotten beams in the cellar. What we need is a few men with ideals to tell us how to clean up the yard and how to bolster the rotten stringers. Set your sights on some goal, and then settle down to work for it."

Dave groaned. "How do you start settling down after thirty-five years of hell-raising?"

"Do you want to know?"

"I've often wanted to know."

"Get married, Dave."

"Who'd have me?"

"I would. Marry me, Dave."

"Lord, no!" he exploded.

"I expected a refusal," she said softly. "I didn't expect quite such a vigorous rejection."

"I'm not rejecting you," he said earnestly. "You're a fine woman, Jane."

"Who was she?" Jane asked.

"She? Who?"

"The girl that broke your heart."

Dave laughed. "I'm not carrying any torch," he told her. He leaned on one elbow and looked down at her. The starlight was faint, but he could see her well enough. "In fact, Jane, under other circumstances I might get quite soft-headed about you."

"Then why not?"

He flopped back and stared at the sky. "Jane, you've accused me of being brave. This is damned foolishness. I'm not brave. I've got about six months to live, and I'm told the end will not be pleasant. I'd prefer to go black in a hurry, doing something that couldn't be done by a man with his life ahead of him. That isn't bravery; it's just cutting clean the end of a well-frayed rope."

"Who says so?" demanded Jane.

"The famous Dr. Thomas Meteridge."

"He might be wrong."

Crandall chuckled. "He's seldom wrong. Fact is, Jane, I've to kick off in six months, otherwise Old Doc Meteridge is a quack and a charlatan."

"He may be wrong."

Dave found her hand and held it over his side. "Feel warm? That's a collection of fission products, tossing all sorts of junk around."

After a moment she said, "Some men wait for death complacently; some spend their remaining time roistering; and Dave Crandall spends his time doing dangerous jobs for humanity. Now tell me that you're not an idealist, Dave."

"I--"

"Oh, stop arguing," she said. She still held the hand that had pressed hers over his side. Now Jane caught it in a hard grip and pulled, rolling him towards her. She met him halfway, missed his lips on the first try, and then made contact as her free arm went around his shoulders. Dave's was a startled response at first.

"Who's arguing?" he asked after a moment. He added his free arm to the embrace and held her to him.

The stars above them whirled a quarter way across the sky--unnoticed.