Sixth Column (3 page)

action." He stopped and thought, then went on almost at once. "I really must

have your permission, Major, to examine the cadavers of our late colleagues,

then by examining for differences between them and those alive, especially

those hard hit by the unknown action-" He broke off short and eyed Wilkie

speculatively.

"No, you don't!" protested Wilkie. "You won't make a guinea pig out of

me. Not while I know it!" Ardmore was unable to tell whether the man's

apprehension was real or facetious. He cut it short.

"The details will have to be up to you gentlemen. But remember-no

chances to your lives without notifying me."

"You hear that, Brooksie?" Wilkie persisted.

Ardmore went to bed that night from sheer sense of duty, not because he

felt ready to sleep. His immediate job was accomplished; he had picked up

the pieces of the organization known as the Citadel and had thrown it

together into some sort of a going concern-whether or not it was going any

place he was too tired to judge, but at least it was going. He had given them

a pattern to live by, and, by assuming leadership and responsibility, had

enabled them to unload their basic worries on him and thereby acquire some

measure of emotional security. That should keep them from going crazy in a

world which had gone crazy.

What would it be like, this crazy new world-a world in which the

superiority of western culture was not a casually accepted Òf course,' a

world in which the Stars and Stripes did not fly, along with the pigeons, over

every public building?

Which brought to mind a new worry: if he was to maintain any pretense

of military purpose, he would have to have some sort of a service of

information.

He had been too busy in getting them all back to work to think about it,

but he would have to think about it tomorrow, he told himself, then continued

to worry about it.

An intelligence service was as important as a new secret weapon-more

important; no matter how fantastic and powerful a weapon might be

developed from Dr. Ledbetter's researches, it would be no help until they

knew just where and how to use it against the enemy's weak points. A

ridiculously inadequate military intelligence had been the prime characteristic

of the United States as a power all through its history. The most powerful

nation the globe had ever seen--but it had stumbled into wars like a blind

giant. Take this present mess: the atom bombs of PanAsia weren't any more

powerful than our own but we had been caught flat-footed and had never

gotten to use a one.

We had had how many stock-piled? A thousand, he had heard. Ardmore

didn't know, but certainly the PanAsians had known, just how many, just

where they were. Military intelligence had won the war for them, not secret

weapons. Not that the secret weapons of the PanAsians were anything to

sneer at particularly when it was all too evident that they really were "secret."

Our own so-called intelligence services had fallen down on the job.

O. K., Whitey Ardmore, it's all yours now! You can build any sort of an

intelligence service your heart desires-using three near-sighted laboratory

scientists, an elderly master sergeant, two kitchen privates, and the bright

boy in person. So you are good at criticizing-"If you're so smart, why ain't you

rich?"

He got up, wished passionately for just one dose of barbiturate to give

him a night's sleep, drank a glass of hot water instead, and went back to bed.

Suppose they did dig up a really powerful and new weapon? That

gadget of Ledbetter's certainly looked good, if they could learn to handle it

but what then? One man couldn't run a battle cruiser-he couldn't even get it

off the ground-and six men couldn't whip an empire, not even with sevenleague boots and a death ray. What was that old crack of Archimedes? "If I

had a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to rest it, I could move the

Earth."

How about the fulcrum? No weapon was a weapon without an army to

use it.

He dropped into a light sleep and dreamed that he was flopping around

on the end of the longest lever conceivable, a useless lever, for it rested on

nothing. Part of the time he was Archimedes, and part of the time

Archimedes stood beside him, jeering and leering at him with a strongly

Asiatic countenance.

CHAPTER TWO

Ardmore was too busy for the next couple of weeks to worry much about

anything but the job at hand. The underlying postulate of their existence

pattern-that they were, in fact, a military organization which must some day

render an accounting to civil authority-required that he should comply with, or

closely simulate compliance with, the regulations concerning paperwork,

reports, records, pay accounts, inventories, and the like. In his heart he felt it

to be waste motion, senseless, yet as a publicity man, he was enough of a

jackleg psychologist to realize intuitively that man is a creature that lives by

symbols. At the moment these symbols of government were all important.

So he dug into the regulation manual of the deceased paymaster and

carefully closed out the accounts of the dead, noting in each case the

amounts due each man's dependents "in lawful money of the United States,"

even while wondering despondently if that neat phrase would ever mean

anything again. But he did it, and he assigned minor administrative jobs to

each of the others in order that they might realize indirectly that the customs

were being maintained.

It was too much clerical work for one man to keep up. He discovered that

Jeff Thomas, the cook's helper, could use a typewriter with facility and had a

fair head for figures. He impressed him into the job. It threw more work on

Graham, who complained, but that was good for him, he thought-a dog

needs fleas. He wanted every member of his command to go to bed tired

every night.

Thomas served another purpose. Ardmore's highstrung disposition

required someone to talk to. Thomas turned out to be intelligent and

passively sympathetic, and he found himself speaking with more and more

freedom to the man. It was not in character for the commanding officer to

confide in a private, but he felt instinctively that Thomas would not abuse his

trust-and he needed nervous release.

Calhoun brought up the matter which forced Ardmore to drop his

preoccupation with routine and turn his attention to more difficult matters.

Calhoun had called to ask permission to activate Ledbetter's apparatus, as

modified to suit their current hypotheses, but he added another and

embarrassing question.

"Major Ardmore, can you give me some idea as to how you intend to

make use of the 'Ledbetter effect'?"

Ardmore did not know; he answered with another question. "Are you

near enough to results to make that question urgent? If so, can you give me

some idea of what you have discovered so fax?"

"That will be difficult," Calhoun replied in an academic and faintly

patronizing manner, "since I am constrained not to speak in the mathematical

language which, of necessity, is the only way of expressing such things-"

"Now, Colonel, please," Ardmore broke in, irritated more than he would

admit to himself and inhibited by the presence of Private Thomas, "you can

kill a man with it or you can't and you can control whom you kill or you can't."

"That's an oversimplification," Calhoun argued. "However, we think that

the new set-up will be directional in its effect. Dr. Brook's investigations

caused him to hypothecate an asymmetrical relationship between the action

and organic life it is applied to, such that an inherent characteristic of the life

form determines the effect of the action as well as the inherent characteristics

of the action itself. That is to say, the effect is a function of the total factors of

the process, including the life form involved, as well as the original action-"

"Easy, easy, Colonel. What does that mean as a weapon?"

"It means that you could turn it on two men and decide which one it is to

kill-with proper controls," Calhoun answered testily. "At least, we think so.

Wilkie has volunteered to act as a control on it, with mice as the object."

Ardmore granted permission for the experiment to take place, subject to

precautions and restrictions.

When Calhoun had gone, his mind returned at once to the problem of

what he was going to do with the weapon-if any. And that required data that

he did not have. Damn it!-he had to have a service of information; he had to

know what was going on outside.

The scientists were out, of course. And Scheer, for the scientific staff

needed his skill. Graham? No, Graham was a good cook, but nervous and

irritable, emotionally not stable, the very last man to pick for a piece of

dangerous espionage. It left only himself. He was trained for such things; he

would have to go.

"But you can't do that, sir," Thomas reminded him.

"Huh? What's that?" He had been unconsciously expressing his thoughts

aloud, a habit he had gotten into when he was alone, or with Thomas only.

The man's manner encouraged using him for a sounding board.

"You can't leave your command, sir. Not only is it against regulations,

but, if you will let me express an opinion, everything you have done so far will

fall to pieces."

"Why should it? I'll be back in a few days."

"Well, sir, maybe it would hold together for a few days-though I'm not

sure of that. Who would be in charge in your absence?"

"Colonel Calhoun-of course."

"Of course." Thomas expressed by raised eyebrows and ready

agreement an opinion which military courtesy did not permit him to say aloud.

Ardmore knew that Thomas was right. Outside of his specialty, Calhoun was

a bad-tempered, supercilious, conceited old fool, in Ardmore's opinion.

Ardmore had had to intercede already to patch up trouble which Calhoun's

arrogance had caused. Scheer worked for Calhoun only because Ardmore

had talked with him, calmed him down, and worked on his strong sense of

duty.

The situation reminded him of the time when he had worked as press

agent for a famous and successful female evangelist. He had signed on as

director of public relations, but he had spent two-thirds of his time

straightening out the messes caused by the vicious temper of the holy

harridan.

"But you have no way of being sure that you will be back in a few days,"

Thomas persisted. "This is a very dangerous assignment; if you get killed on

it, there is no one here who can take over your job."

"Oh, now, that's not true, Thomas. No man is irreplaceable."

"This is no time for false modesty, sir. That may be true in general, but

you know that it is not true in this case. There is a strictly limited number to

draw from, and you are the only one from whom all of us will take direction. In

particular, you are the only one from whom Dr. Calhoun will take direction.

That is because you know how to handle him. None of the others would be

able to, nor would he be able to handle them."

"That's a pretty strong statement, Thomas."

Thomas said nothing. At length Ardmore went on.

"All right, all right suppose you are right. I've got to have military

information. How am I going to get it if I don't go myself?"

Thomas was a little slow in replying. Finally, he said quietly, "I could try

it."

"You?" Ardmore looked him over and wondered why he had not

considered Thomas. Perhaps because there was nothing about the man to

suggest his potential ability to handle such a job-that, combined with the fact

that he was a private, and one did not assign privates to jobs requiring

dangerous independent action. Yet perhaps

"Have you ever done any work of that sort?"

"No, but my experience may be specially adapted in a way to such

work."

"Oh, yes! Scheer told me something about you. You were a tramp,

weren't you, before the army caught up with you?"

"Not a tramp," Thomas corrected gently, "a hobo."

"Sorry-what's the distinction?"

"A tramp is a bum, a parasite, a man that won't work. A hobo is an

itinerant laborer who prefers casual freedom to security. He works for his

living, but he won't be tied down to one environment."

"Oh, I see. Hm-m-m-yes, and I begin to see why you might be especially

well adapted to an intelligence job. I suppose it must require a good deal of

adaptability and resourcefulness to stay alive as a hobo. But wait a minute,

Thomas-I guess I've more or less taken you for granted; I need to know a

great deal more about you, if you are to be entrusted with this job. You know,

you don't act like a hobo."

"How does a hobo act?"

"Eh? Oh, well, skip it. But tell me something about your background.

How did you happen to take up hoboing?"

Ardmore realized that he had, for the first time, pierced the man's natural

reticence. Thomas fumbled for an answer, finally replying, "I suppose it was

that I did not like being a lawyer."

"What?"

"Yes. You see, it was like this: I went from the law into social