Part 2

Cloud shot the flitter into the air and toward the seething inferno which was Loose Atomic Vortex Number One. The crater was a ragged, jagged hole perhaps two miles from lip to lip and a quarter of a mile in depth. The floor, being largely molten, was almost level except for a depression at the center, where the actual vortex lay. The walls of the pit were steeply, unstably irregular, varying in pitch and shape with the refractoriness of the strata composing them. Now a section would glare into an unbearably blinding white, puffing away in sparkling vapor. Again, cooled by an inrushing blast of air, it would subside into an angry scarlet, its surface crawling in a sluggish flow of lava. Occasionally a part of the wall might even go black, into pockmarked scoriae or brilliant planes of obsidian.

For always, at some point or other, there was a torrent of air rushing into that crater. It rushed in as ordinary air. It came out, however, in a ragingly uprushing pillar, as—as something else. No one knows exactly what a vortex does to air. Or, rather, the composition of the effluent gases varies as frequently and as unpredictably as does the activity of the vortex. Thus, the atmosphere emitted from a vortex-crater may be corrosive, it may be poisonous, it may be merely different; but it is no longer the air which we human beings are used to breathing. This conversion and corruption of Earth’s atmosphere, if it could not be stopped, would end the possibility of life upon the planet’s surface long before the world itself could be consumed.

As to the vortex itself . . . it is difficult indeed to describe such a phenomenon. Practically all of its frightful radiation lies in those octaves of the spectrum which are invisible to the human eye. Suffice it to say, then, that it was a continuously active atomic reactor, with an effective surface temperature of approximately twenty five thousand degrees Kelvin, and let it go at that.

Neal Cloud, driving his flitter through that murky, radiation-riddled atmosphere, extrapolating his sigma curve by the sheer power of his mathematical-prodigy’s mind, sat appalled. For the activity level was, and even in its lowest dips remained, well above the figure he had chosen. Distant though he was from the rim of that hellish pit, his skin began to prickle and to burn. His eyes began to smart and to ache. He knew what those symptoms meant: even the flitter’s powerful screens were leaking; even his suit-screens and his special goggles were not stopping the stuff. But he wouldn’t quit yet: the activity might—probably would—take a nose-dive any second now. If it did, he’d have to be ready. On the other hand, it might blow up any second, too.

There were two schools of mathematical thought upon that point. One held that a vortex, without any essential change in its nature or behavior, would keep on growing bigger until, uniting with the other vortices of the planet, it had converted all the mass of the world into energy.

The second school, of which the forementioned “Calamity” Carlowitz was the loudest voice, taught that at a certain stage of development the internal energy of the vortex would become so great that generation-radiation equilibrium could not be maintained. This would of course result in an explosion, the nature and consequences of which this Carlowitz was wont to dwell upon in ghoulishly mathematical glee. Neither school could prove its point, however—or, rather, each school proved its point with eminently plausible mathematics—and each hated and derided the other, with heat and at length.

Neal Cloud, as he studied through his almost opaque defenses that indescribably ravening fireball, that rapacious monstrosity which might very well have come from the very center of the hottest hell of mythology, felt strangely inclined to agree with Carlowitz. It didn’t seem possible that it _could_ get any worse without exploding.

The activity stayed high; ’way too high. The tiny control room grew hotter and hotter. His skin burned more and his eyes ached worse. He touched a stud and spoke.

“Phil? Better get me three more bombs. Like these, except up around. . . .”

“I don’t check you. If you do that, it’s apt to drop to a minimum and stay there. I’d suggest a wider interval.”

“QX—that’d be better. Two, then, instead of three. Four point nine eight zero and thirteen point nine four zero. You might break out a jar of burn-dressing, too; some fairly warm stuff is leaking through.”

“Will do. Come down, fast!”

Cloud landed. He stripped to the skin and his friends smeared him with the thick, gooey stuff that was not only added protection against radiation, but also a sovereign remedy for new burns. He exchanged his goggles for a heavier, darker pair. The two bombs arrived and were substituted for two of the original load.

“I thought of something while I was up there,” Cloud said then. “Fourteen kilograms of duodec is nobody’s firecracker, but it may be the least of what’s going to go off. Have you got any idea of what’s going to become of the intrinsic energy of the vortex when I snuff it?”

“Can’t say I have.” The Lensman frowned in thought. “No data.”

“Neither have I. But I’d say you’d better go back to the new station—the one you were going to move to if it kept on getting worse. The clocks are ticking there, aren’t they?”

“Yes. It might be the smart thing to do—just in case.”

Again in air, Cloud found that the activity, while still very high, was not too high for his heaviest bomb, but that it was fluctuating too rapidly. He could not get even five seconds of trustworthy prediction, to say nothing of ten. So he waited, as close to the horrible center of disintegration as he dared.

The flitter hung poised in air, motionless, upon softly hissing under-jets. Cloud knew to a fraction his height above the ground. He knew to a fraction his distance from the vortex. He knew the density of the atmosphere and the velocity and direction of the wind. Hence, since he could also read, closely enough, the momentary variations in the cyclonic storms within the crater, he could compute very easily the course and velocity necessary to land the bomb in the exact center of the vortex at any given instant of time. The hard part—the thing that no one had as yet succeeded in doing—was to predict, for a time far enough ahead to be of any use, a usably close approximation to the vortex’s quantitative activity.

Therefore Cloud concentrated upon the dials and gauges in front of him; concentrated with every fiber of his being and with every cell of his brain.

Suddenly, almost imperceptably, the sigma curve gave signs of flattening out. Cloud’s mind pounced. Simultaneous differential equations; nine of them. A quadruple integration in four dimensions. No matter—Cloud did not solve problems laboriously, one operation at a time. Without knowing how he had arrived at it, he knew the answer; just as the Posenian or the Rigellian can perceive every separate component particle of an opaque, three-dimensional solid, but without being able to explain to any Tellurian how his sense of perception works. It just _is_, that’s all.

By virtue of whatever sense or ability it is which makes a mathematical prodigy what he is, Cloud knew that in exactly seven and three-tenths seconds from that observed instant the activity of the vortex would match precisely the rating of his heaviest bomb. Another flick of his mental switch and he knew exactly the velocity he would require. His hand swept over the studs, his right foot tramped down hard upon the firing pedal; and, even as the quivering flitter rammed forward under five Tellurian gravities of acceleration, he knew to the thousandth of a second how long he would have to hold that acceleration to attain that velocity. While not really long—in seconds—it was much too long for comfort. It would take him much closer to the vortex than he wanted to be; in fact, it would take him almost to the crater’s rim.

But he stuck to the calculated course, and at the precisely correct instant he released his largest bomb and cut his dive. Then, in a continuation of the same motion, his hand slashed down through the beam of light whose cutting would activate the Bergenholm and make the vessel inertialess—safe from any form whatever of physical violence. For an instant nothing happened, and for that instant Cloud sat appalled. _Neutralization of inertia took time!_ Not that he had ever been told that it was instantaneous—he had just assumed so. He had never noticed any time-lapse before, but now it seemed to be taking forever!

After that one instant of shocked inaction he went into ultra-speed action; kicking in the little vessel’s all-out eight-G drive and whirling her around as only a flitter or a speedster can whirl; only to see in his plate the vortex opening up like a bell-flower, or like a sun going nova.

Cloud’s forebodings were more than materialized then, for it was not only the bomb that was going off. The staggeringly immense energy of the vortex was merging with that of the detonating duodec to form an utterly indescribable explosion.

In part the flood of incandescent lava in the pit was beaten downward by the sheer, stupendous force of the blow; in part it was hurled abroad in masses, gouts, and streamers. And the raging blast of the explosion’s front seized the fragments and tore and worried them to bits, hurling them still faster along their paths of violence. And air, so densely compressed as to act like a solid, smote the walls of the crater. Those walls crumbled, crushed outward through the hard-packed ground, broke up into jaggedly irregular blocks which hurtled screamingly in all directions.

The blast-wave or explosion front buffeted the flyer while she was still partially inert and while Cloud was almost blacked out and physically helpless from the frightful linear and angular accelerations. The impact broke his left arm and his right leg; the only parts of his body not pressure-packed. Then, milliseconds later, the debris began to arrive.

Chunks of solid or semi-molten rock slammed against the hull, knocking off wings and control-surfaces. Gobs of viscous slag slapped it liquidly, freezing into and clogging up jets and orifices. The little ship was knocked hither and thither by forces she could no more resist than can a floating leaf resist a cataract; Cloud’s brain was addled as an egg by the vicious concussions which were hitting him so nearly simultaneously from so many different directions.

The concussions and the sluggings lightened . . . stopped . . . a vast peace descended, blanket-wise. The flitter was free—was riding effortlessly away on the outermost, most tenuous fringes of the storm!

Cloud wanted to faint, then, but he didn’t—quite. With one arm and leg and what few cells of his brain were still in working order, he was still in the fight. It did not even occur to him, until long afterward, that he was not going to make any effort whatever to avoid death.

Foggily, he tried to look at the crater. Nine-tenths of his visiplates were dead, but he finally got a view. Good—it was out. He wasn’t surprised—he knew it would be.

His next effort was to locate the secondary observatory, where he would have to land; and in that, too, he was successful. He had enough intelligence left to realize that, with practically all of his jets clogged and his wings and tail shot off, he couldn’t land his flitter inert. He’d _have_ to land her free.

Neal Cloud was not the world’s best pilot. Nevertheless, by dint of light and somewhat unorthodox use of what few jets he had left, he did land her free. A very good landing, considering—he almost hit the observatory’s field, which was only one mile square—and having landed her, he inerted her.

But, as has been intimated, his brain wasn’t working quite so good; he had held his ship inertialess for quite a few seconds longer than he thought, and he did not even think of the terrific buffetings she had taken. As a result of these things, however, her intrinsic velocity did not match, anywhere nearly, that of the ground upon which she lay. Thus, when Cloud cut his Bergenholm, restoring thereby to the flitter the absolute velocity and the inertia she had before going free, there resulted a distinctly anticlimactic crash.

There was a last terrific bump as the motionless vessel collided with the equally motionless ground; and “Storm” Cloud, Vortex Blaster, went out like the proverbial light.

Help came, of course; on the double. Cloud was unconscious and the flitter’s port could not be opened from the outside, but those were not insuperable obstacles. A plate, already loose, was torn away; the pilot was unclamped and rushed to Base Hospital in the “meat-crate” standing by.

Later, in a private office of that hospital, the head of the Vortex Control Laboratory sat and waited—not patiently.

“How is he, Lacy?” he demanded, as the surgeon-marshal entered the room. “He’s going to live?”

“Oh, yes, Phil—definitely yes,” Lacy replied, briskly. “A very good skeleton; very good indeed. His screens stopped all the really bad radiation, so the damage will yield quite readily to treatment. He doesn’t really need the Phillips we gave him—for the replacement of damaged parts, you know—except for a few torn muscles and so on.”

“But he was pretty badly smashed up—I helped take him out, you know—how about that arm and leg? He was a mess.”

“Merely simple fractures—entirely negligible.” Lacy waved aside with an airy gesture such minor ills as broken bones. “He’ll be out in a couple of weeks.”

“How soon can I see him? Business can wait, but there’s a personal matter that can’t.”

“I know what you mean.” Lacy pursed his lips. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t allow it, but you see him now. Not too long, though, Phil; he’s weak. Ten minutes at most.”

“QX. Thanks.” A nurse led the visiting Lensman to Cloud’s bedside.

“Hi, stupe!” he boomed, cheerfully. “‘Stupe’ being short for ‘stupendous’, this time.”

“Ho, chief. Glad to see somebody. Sit down.”

“You’re the most-wanted man in the galaxy, not excepting Kimball Kinnison. Here’s a spool of tape, which you can look at as soon as Lacy will let you have a scanner. It’s only the first one. As soon as any planet finds out that we’ve got a sure-enough-vortex-blower-outer who can really call his shots—and _that_ news gets around mighty fast—it sends in a double-urgent, Class A Prime demand for you.

“Sirius IV got in first by a whisker, but it was a photo finish with Aldebaran II and all channels have been jammed ever since. Canopus, Vega, Rigel, Spica. Everybody, from Alsakan to Zabriska. We announced right off that we wouldn’t receive personal delegations—we had to almost throw a couple of pink-haired Chickladorians out bodily to make them believe we meant it—that our own evaluation of necessity, not priority of requisition, would govern. QX?”

“Absolutely,” Cloud agreed. “That’s the only way to handle it, I should think.”

“So forget this psychic trauma. . . . No, I don’t mean that,” the Lensman corrected himself hastily. “You know what I mean. The will to live is the most important factor in any man’s recovery, and too many worlds need you too badly to have you quit now. Check?”

“I suppose so,” Cloud acquiesced, but somberly, “and I’ve got more will to live than I thought I had. I’ll keep on pecking away as long as I last.”

“Then you’ll die of old age, Buster,” the Lensman assured him. “We got full data. We know exactly how long it takes to go from fully inert to fully free. We know exactly what to do to your screens. Next time nothing will come through except light, and only as much of that as you like. You can wait as close to a vortex as you please, for as long as is necessary to get exactly the conditions you want. You’ll be as safe as if you were in Klono’s hip pocket.”

“Sure of that?”

“Absolutely—or at least, as sure as we can be of anything that hasn’t happened yet. But your guardian angel here is eyeing her clock a bit pointedly, so I’d better do a flit before she tosses me out on my ear. Clear ether, Storm!”

“Clear ether, chief!”

Thus “Storm” Cloud, nucleonicist, became the most narrowly-specialized specialist in the long annals of science; became “Storm” Cloud, the Vortex Blaster.

And that night Lensman Philip Strong, instead of sleeping, thought and thought and thought. What could he do—what could _anybody_ do—if Cloud should get himself killed? _Somebody_ would have to do _something_ . . . but who? And what? Could—or could not—another Vortex Blaster be found? Or trained?

And next morning, early, he Lensed a thought.

“Kinnison? Phil Strong. I’ve got a high-priority problem that will take a lot of work and a lot more weight than I carry. Are you free to listen for a few minutes?”

“I’m free. Go ahead.”

_Chapter 3_ ▂▂▂▂▂▂CLOUD LOSES AN ARM

TELLURIAN PHARMACEUTICALS, INC., was Civilization’s oldest and most conservative drug house. “Hide-bound” was the term most frequently used, not only by its younger employees, but also by its more progressive competitors. But, corporatively, Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, Inc., did not care. Its board of directors was limited by an iron-clad, if unwritten, law to men of seventy years more; and against the inertia of that ruling body the impetuosity of the younger generation was exactly as efficacious as the dashing of ocean waves against an adamantine cliff—and in very much the same fashion.

Ocean waves do in time cut into even the hardest rock; and, every century or two, TPI did take forward step—after a hundred years of testing by others had proved conclusively that the “new” idea conformed in every particular with the exalted standards of the Galactic Medical Association.

TPI’s plant upon the planet Deka (Dekanore III, on the charts) filled the valley of Clear Creek and the steep, high hills on its sides, from the mountain spring which was the creek’s source to its confluence with the Spokane River.

The valley floor was a riot of color, devoted as it was to the intensive cultivation of medicinal plants. Along both edges of the valley extended row after row of hydroponics sheds. Upon the mountains’ sides there were snake dens, lizard pens, and enclosures for many other species of fauna.

Nor was the surface all that was in use. The hills were hollow: honeycombed into hundreds of rooms in which, under precisely controlled environments of temperature, atmosphere, and radiation, were grown hundreds of widely-variant forms of life.

At the confluence of creek and river, just inside the city limits of Newspoke—originally New Spokane—there reared and sprawled the Company’s headquarters buildings; offices, processing and synthesizing plants, laboratories, and so on. In one of the laboratories, three levels below ground, two men faced each other. Works Manager Graves was tall and fat; Fenton V. Fairchild, M.D., Nu.D., F.C.R., Consultant in Radiation, was tall and thin.

“Everything set, Graves?”

“Yes. Twelve hours, you said.”

“For the full cycle. Seven to the point of maximum yield.”

“Go ahead.”

“Here are the seeds. Treconian broadleaf. For the present you will have to take my word for it that they did not come from Trenco. These are standard hydroponics tanks, size one. The formula of the nutrient solution, while complex and highly critical, contains nothing either rare or unduly expensive. I plant the seed, thus, in each of the two tanks. I cover each tank with a plastic hood, transparent to the frequencies to be used. I cover both with a larger hood—so. I align the projectors—thus. We will now put on armor, as the radiation is severe and the atmosphere, of which there may be leakage when the pollenating blast is turned on, is more than slightly toxic. I then admit Trenconian atmosphere from this cylinder. . . .”

“Synthetic or imported?” Graves interrupted.

“Imported. Synthesis is possible, but prohibitively expensive and difficult. Importation in tankers is simple and comparatively cheap. I now energize the projectors. Growth has begun.”

In the glare of blue-green radiance the atmosphere inside the hoods, the very ether, warped and writhed. In spite of the distortion of vision, however, it could be seen that growth was taking place, and at an astounding rate. In a few minutes the seeds had sprouted; in an hour the thick, broad, purplish-green leaves were inches long. In seven hours each tank was full of a lushly luxuriant tangle of foliage.

“This is the point of maximum yield,” Fairchild remarked, as he shut off the projectors. “We will now process one tank, if you like.”

“Certainly I like. How else could I know it’s the clear quill?”

“By the looks,” came the scientist’s dry rejoinder. “Pick your tank.”

One tank was removed. The leaves were processed. The full cycle of growth of the remaining tank was completed. Graves himself harvested the seeds, and himself carried them away.

Six days, six samples, six generations of seed, and the eminently skeptical Graves was convinced.

“You’ve got something there, Doc,” he admitted then. “We can really go to town on that. Now, how about notes, or stuff from your old place, or people who may have smelled a rat?”

“I’m perfectly clean. None of my boys know anything important, and none ever will. I assemble all apparatus myself, from standard parts, and disassemble it myself. I’ve been around, Graves.”

“Well, we can’t be too sure.” The fat man’s eyes were piercing and cold. “Leakers don’t live very long. We don’t want you to die, at least not until we get in production here.”

“Nor then, if you know when you’re well off,” the scientist countered, cynically. “I’m a fellow of the College of Radiation, and it took me five years to learn this technique. None of your hatchetmen could _ever_ learn it. Remember that, my friend.”

“So?”

“So don’t get off on the wrong foot and don’t get any funny ideas. I know how to run things like this and I’ve got the manpower and equipment to do it. If I come in I’m running it, not you. Take it or leave it.”

The fat man pondered for minutes, then decided. “I’ll take it. You’re in, Doc. You can have a cave—two hundred seventeen is empty—and we’ll go up and get things started right now.”

* * * * *

Less than a year later, the same two men sat in Graves’ office. They waited while a red light upon a peculiarly complicated deskboard faded through pink into pure white.

“All clear. This way, Doc.” Graves pushed a yellow button on his desk and a section of blank wall slid aside.

In the elevator thus revealed the two men went down to a sub-basement. Along a dimly-lit corridor, through an elaborately locked steel door, and into a steel-lined room. Four inert bodies lay upon the floor.

Graves thrust a key into an orifice and a plate swung open, revealing a chute into which the bodies were dumped. The two retraced their steps to the manager’s office.

“Well, that’s all we can feed to the disintegrator.” Fairchild lit an Alsakanite cigarette and exhaled appreciatively.

“Why? Going soft on us?”

“No. The ice is getting too thin.”

“Whaddya mean, ‘thin’?” Graves demanded. “The Patrol inspectors are ours—all that count. Our records are fixed. Everything’s on the green.”

“That’s what _you_ think,” the scientist sneered. “You’re supposed to be smart. Are you? Our accident rate is up three hundredths; industrial hazard rate and employee turnover about three and a half; and the Narcotics Division alone knows how much we have upped total bootleg sales. Those figures are all in the Patrol’s books. How can you give such facts the brush-off?”