The Portland headquarters of the Intercontinental Data and Control Corporation lay some forty miles east of the city, guarding the pass between Mount Adams to the north and Mount Hood to the south. It was here that at some time in the remote past a small inland sea had penetrated the Cascade Mountains and carved itself a channel to the Pacific, to become in time the mighty Columbia River.
Fifteen years previously it had been the site of the government-owned Bonneville Nucleonic Weapons Research Laboratory. Here, American scientists, working in collaboration with the United States of Europe Federal Research Institute at Geneva, had developed the theory of meson dynamics that led to the nucleonic bomb. The theory predicted a "clean" reaction with a yield orders of magnitude greater than that produced by thermonuclear fusion. The holes they had blown in the Sahara had proved it.
During that period of history, the ideological and racial tensions inherited from the twentieth century were being swept away by the tide of universal affluence and falling birth rates that came with the spread of high-technology living. Traditional rocks of strife and suspicion were being eroded as races, nations, sects, and creeds became inextricably mingled into one huge, homogeneous global society. As the territorial irrationalities of long-dead politicians resolved themselves and the adolescent nation-states matured, the defense budgets of the superpowers were progressively reduced year by year. The advent of the nucleonic bomb served only to accelerate what would have happened anyway. By universal assent, world demilitarization became fact.
One sphere of activity that benefited enormously from the surplus funds and resources that became available after demilitarization was the rapidly expanding United Nations Solar System Exploration Program. Already the list of responsibilities held by this organization was long; it included the operation of all artificial satellites in terrestrial, Lunar, Martian, Venusian, and Solar orbits; the building and operation of all manned bases on Luna and Mars, plus the orbiting laboratories over Venus; the launching of deep-space robot probes and the planning and control of manned missions to the outer planets. UNSSEP was thus expanding at just the right rate and the right time to absorb the supply of technological talent being released as the world’s major armaments programs were run down. Also, as nationalism declined and most of the regular armed forces were demobilized, the restless youth of the new generation found outlets for their adventure-lust in the uniformed branches of the UN Space Arm. It was an age that buzzed with excitement and anticipation as the new pioneering frontier began planet-hopping out across the Solar System.
And so NWRL Bonneville had been left with no purpose to serve. This situation did not go unnoticed by the directors of IDCC. Seeing that most of the equipment and permanent installations owned by NWRL could be used in much of the corporation’s own research projects, they propositioned the government with an offer to buy the place outright. The offer was accepted and the deal went through. Over the years IDCC had further expanded the site, improved its aesthetics, and eventually established it as their nucleonics research center and world headquarters.
The mathematical theory that had grown out of meson dynamics involved the existence of three hitherto unknown transuranic elements. Although these were purely hypothetical, they were christened hyperium, bonnevillium, and genevium. Theory also predicted that, due to a "glitch" in the transuranic mass-versus-binding-energy curve, these elements, once formed, would be stable. They were unlikely to be found occurring naturally, however—not on Earth, anyway. According to the mathematics, only two known situations could give the right conditions for their formation: the core of the detonation of a nucleonic bomb or the collapse of a supernova to a neutron star.
Sure enough, analysis of the dust clouds after the Sahara tests yielded minute traces of hyperium and bonnevillium; genevium was not detected. Nevertheless, the first prediction of the theory was accepted as amply supported. Whether, one day, future generations of scientists would ever verify the second prediction, was another matter entirely.
Hunt and Gray touched down on the rooftop landing pad of the IDCC administration building shortly after fifteen hundred hours. By fifteen thirty they were sitting in leather armchairs facing the desk in Borlan’s luxurious office on the tenth floor, while he poured three large measures of scotch at the teak bar built into the left wall. He walked back to the center, passed a glass to each of the Englishmen, went back around the desk, and sat down.
"Cheers, then, guys," he offered. They returned the gesture. "Well," he began, "it’s good to see you two again. Trip okay? How’d you make it up so soon—rent a jet?" He opened his cigar box as he spoke and pushed it across the desk toward them. "Smoke?"
"Yes, good trip. Thanks, Felix," Hunt replied. "Avis." He inclined his head toward the window behind Borlan, which presented a panoramic view of pine-covered hills tumbling down to the distant Columbia. "Some scenery."
"Like it?"
"Makes Berkshire look a bit like Siberia."
Borlan looked at Gray. "How are you keeping, Rob?"
The corners of Gray’s mouth twitched downwards. "Gutrot."
"Party last night at some bird’s," Hunt explained. "Too little blood in his alcohol stream."
"Good time, huh?" Borlan grinned. "Take Francis along?"
"You’ve got to be joking!"
"Jollificating with the peasantry?" Gray mimicked in the impeccable tones of the English aristocracy. "Good God! Whatever next!"
They laughed. Hunt settled himself more comfortably amid a haze of blue smoke. "How about yourself, Felix?" he asked. "Life still being kind to you?"
Borlan spread his arms wide. "Life’s great."
"Angie still as beautiful as the last time I saw her? Kids okay?"
"They’re all fine. Tommy’s at college now—majoring in physics and astronautical engineering. Johnny goes hiking most weekends with his club, and Susie’s added a pair of gerbils and a bear cub to the family zoo."
"So you’re still as happy as ever. The responsibilities of power aren’t wearing you down yet."
Borlan shrugged and showed a row of pearly teeth. "Do I look like an ulcerated nut midway between heart attacks?"
Hunt regarded the blue-eyed, deep-tanned figure with close-cropped fair hair as Borlan sprawled relaxedly on the other side of the broad mahogany desk. He looked at least ten years younger than the president of any intercontinental corporation had a right to.
For a while the small talk revolved around internal affairs at Metadyne. At last a natural pause presented itself. Hunt sat forward, his elbows resting on his knees, and contemplated the last drop of amber liquid in his glass as he swirled it around first from right to left and then back again. Finally he looked up.
"About the scope, Felix. What’s going on, then?"
Borlan had been expecting the question. He straightened slowly in his chair and appeared to think for a moment. At last he said:
"Did you see the call I made to Francis?"
"Yep."
"Then. . ." Borlan didn’t seem sure of how to put it. ". . . I don’t know an awful lot more than you do." He placed his hands palms-down on the desk man attitude of candor, but his sigh was that of one not really expecting to be believed. He was right.
"Come on, Felix. Give." Hunt’s expression said the rest.
"You must know," Gray insisted. "You fixed it all up."
"Straight." Borlan looked from one to the other. "Look, taking things worldwide, who would you say our biggest customer is? It’s no secret—UN Space Arm. We do everything for them from Lunar data links to—to laser terminal clusters and robot probes. Do you know how much revenue I’ve got forecast from UNSA next fiscal? Two hundred million bucks. . . two hundred million!"
"So?"
"So. . . well—when a customer like that says he needs help, he gets help. I’ll tell you what happened. It was like this: UNSA is a big potential user of scopes, so we fed them all the information we’ve got on what the scope can do and how development is progressing in Francis’s neck of the woods. One day—the day before I called Francis—this guy comes to see me all the way from Houston, where one of the big UNSA outfits has its HQ. He’s an old buddy of mine—their top man, no less. He wants to know can the scope do this and can it do that, and I tell him sure it can. Then he gives me some examples of the things he’s got in mind and he asks if we’ve got a working model yet. I tell him not yet, but that you’ve got a working prototype in England; we can arrange for him to go see it if he wants. But that’s not what he wants. He wants the prototype down there in Houston, and he wants people who can operate it. He’ll pay, he says—we can name our own figure—but he wants that instrument—something to do with a top-priority project down there that’s got the whole of UNSA in a flap. When I ask him what it is, he clams up and says it’s ‘security restricted’ for the moment."
"Sounds a funny business," Hunt commented with a frown. "It’ll cause some bloody awful problems back at Metadyne."
"I told him all that." Borlan turned his palms upward in a gesture of helplessness. "I told him the score regarding the production schedules and availability forecasts, but he said this thing was big and he wouldn’t go causing this kind of trouble if he didn’t have a good reason. He wouldn’t, either," Borlan added with obvious sincerity. "I’ve known him for years. He said UNSA would pay compensation for whatever we figure the delays will cost us." Borlan resumed his helpless attitude. "So what was I supposed to do? Was I supposed to tell an old buddy who happens to be my best customer to go take a jump?"
Hunt rubbed his chin, threw back his last drop of scotch, and took a long, pensive draw on his cigar.
"And that’s it?" he asked at last.
"That’s it. Now you know as much as I do—except that since you left England we’ve received instructions from UNSA to start shipping the prototype to a place near Houston—a biological institute. The bits should start arriving day after tomorrow; the installation crew is already on its way over to begin work preparing the site."
"Houston. . . Does that mean we’re going there?" Gray asked.
"That’s right, Rob." Borlan paused and scratched the side of his nose. His face screwed itself into a crooked frown. "I, ah—I was wondering . . . The installation crew will need a bit of time, so you two won’t be able to do very much there for a while. Maybe you could spend a few days here first, huh? Like, ah . . . meet some of our technical people and clue them in a little on how the scope works—sorta like a teach-in. What d’you say—huh?"
Hunt laughed silently inside. Borlan had been complaining to Forsyth-Scott for months that while the largest potential markets for the scope lay in the USA, practically all of the know-how was confined to Metadyne; the American side of the organization needed more in the way of backup and information than it had been getting.
"You never miss a trick, Felix," he conceded. "Okay, you bum, I’ll buy it."
Borlan’s face split into a wide grin.
"This UNSA character you were talking about," Gray said, switching the subject back again. "What were the examples?"
"Examples?"
"You said he gave some examples of the kind of thing he was interested in knowing if the scope could do."
"Oh, yeah. Well, lemme see, now. . . He seemed interested in looking at the insides of bodies—bones, tissues, arteries—stuff like that. Maybe he wanted to do an autopsy or something. He also wanted to know if you could get images of what’s on the pages of a book, but without the book being opened."
This was too much. Hunt looked from Borlan to Gray and back again, mystified.
"You don’t need anything like a scope to perform an autopsy," he said, his voice strained with disbelief.
"Why can’t he open a book if he wants to know what’s inside?" Gray demanded in a similar tone.
Borlan showed his empty palms. "Yeah. I know. Search me—sounds screwy!"
"And UNSA is paying thousands for this?"
"Hundreds of thousands."
Hunt covered his brow and shook his head in exasperation. "Pour me another scotch, Felix," he sighed.