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old man with a hysterical face.
Arnold looked up, arose eagerly, almost as if he would assault Mario physically.
Mario in a calm voice said, "Arnold, pay attention a minute. You're right, I'm wrong."
Arnold's face hung slack as a limp bladder. Attack needs resistance on which to harden
itself. Feebly his fury asserted itself. He reeled off his now-familiar invective. Mario
listened a minute.
"Arnold, the process you invented-have you ever tested it in practice?"
"Of course, you swine. Naturally. Of course. What do you take me for? One of your blow-
hard call-boys?"
"It works, you say. Now listen, Arnold: we're working on a new theory at Ebery Air-car.
We're planning to put out value at low cost. I'd like to build your process into the new
model. If it actually does what you say. And I'd like to have you come back to work for us."
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r r
Letya Arnold snorted, his whole face a gigantic sneer. "Put that propulsion into an air-
boat? Pah! Use a drop-forge to kill a flea? Where's your head, where's your head? It's
space-drive; that's where we're going. Space!"
It was Mario's turn to be taken aback. "Space? Will it work in space?" he asked weakly.
"Work? It's just the thing! You took all my money-you!" The words were like skewers,
dripping an acrid poison. "If I had my money now, patent or no patent, I'd be out in space.
I'd be ducking around Alpha Centauri, Sinus, Vega, Capella!"
The man was more than half-mad, thought Mario. He said, "You can't go faster than light."
Letya Arnold's voice became calm, crafty. "Who said I can't? You don't know the things I
know, swine-slut"
Mario said, "No, I don't but all that aside, I'm a changed man, Arnold. I want you to forget
any injustice I may have done you. I want you back at work for Ebery Air-car. I'd like you
to adapt the drive for public use."
Again Arnold sneered. "And kill everything that happened to be behind you? Every
electron shot from the reactor would be like a meteor; there'd be blasts of incandescent air;
impact like a cannon-ball. No, no-space. That's where the drive must go...."
"You're hired, if you want to be," said Mario patiently. "The laboratory's waiting for you. I
want you to work on that adaptation. There must be some kind of shield." Noting the taut
clamp to Arnold's mouth, he said hastily, "If you think you can go faster than light, fine!
Build a ship for space and I'll test fly it myself. But put in your major effort on the
adaptation for public use, that's all I ask."
Arnold, cooler by the minute, now exhibited the same kind of sardonic unbelief Mario had
noticed in Correaos. "Blow me, but you've changed your tune, Ebery. Before it was money,
money, money. If it didn't make you money, plow it under. What happened to you?"
"The Chateau d'lf," said Mario. "If you value your sanity, don't go there. Though God
knows," and he looked at Arnold's wasted body, "you couldn't do much worse for yourself
than you've already done."
"If it changes me as much as it's changed you, I'm giving it a wide berth. Blow me, but
you're almost human."
"I'm a changed man," said Mario. "Now go to Correaos, get an advance, go to a doctor."
On his way to the Rothenburg Building and Kubal Associates it came to him to wonder
how Ebery was using his body. In his office he ran down a list of detective agencies, settled
on Brannan Investigators, called them, put them to work.
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CHAPTER VII
Inventor With a Grudge
Investigator Murris Slade, the detective, was a short thickset man with a narrow head. Two
days after Mario had called the Brannan agency, he knocked at Mario's workroom at Kubal
Associates.
Mario looked through the wicket in the locked door, admitted the detective, who said
without preamble, "I've found your man."
"Good," said Mario, returning to his seat "What's he doing?"
Slade said, in a quiet accentless voice, "There's no mystery or secrecy involved. He seems [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]