The Nameless Something

CHAPTER III Three Racketeers

INSTANTLY Bud Gregory brightened. He was tall and gangling and drooping. He was typically poor-white—Appalachian Highland version—bony and listless. He had worn an air of complacency until he saw Murfree, but that was gone now because he'd made a device which was a neutron-shield and set a monstrous atomic pile to work back in the Smoky Mountains.

Murfree was the man who had found out his responsibility for the devastation which resulted. But on the other hand, Murfree had paid him six hundred dollars for a device which absolutely abolished friction, and with that as capital he had set out to tour the United States without being bothered by detectives, and practically without working.

"Why—uh—sure, Mr. Murfree," said the man who knew by instinct all the things that the scientists of the world struggled to learn. "Beer? Sure! There's a place right close, Mr. Murfree. But I cain't go fur. There's some fellas comin' to see me today. They told me if I'd fix a dinkus for 'em, they'd pay me wages for as long as it works, without me doin' a tap of work more."

Murfree looked at him in envy so great that it was almost hatred. Bud Gregory knew, without knowing how he knew, how to make absolutely anything he chose. He'd made a wire that absorbed heat and turned it into electricity, but he'd done it to save the trouble of mending an automobile radiator in the normal manner, and he had charged just ten dollars for the job.

Bud Gregory had made a shield through which nothing could pass, not even a neutron —and he'd done it to save himself the trouble of replacing that miraculous wire with a tedious job of sheet-metal soldering on the same radiator. He'd made another device, at Murfree's demand, which stopped even neutrons cold—after the shield had started an unshielded atomic pile to work. Gregory could weld broken parts of a motor without taking them out, and could free a frozen motor without so much as loosening a bolt, and lots of other things. But all he wanted was to sit in absolute somnolence and inactivity.

"Come on and get the beer," said Murfree. "I came all the way across the continent to find you. Something's happened that you can fix, and it'll square everything about that business back in the Smokies." He added, "There aren't any detectives with me."

Bud Gregory shambled beside him, frowning.

"Listen, Mr. Murfree," he said uneasily, "I don't want no truck with sheriffs and policemen. I don't even want to square nothin' with 'em. I just want to get along without workin' myself to death, not botherin' nobody and nobody botherin' me."

Murfree ushered him into a tavern opposite the race-track where the souped-up racers ran. "The point is that somebody is bothering you," said Murfree. "And me. And everybody else. We'll get our beer and I'll tell you about it."

They found a table in the crowded room. Palo Bajo was too small a town to rate an atomic bomb, so in the tavern were clerks and business men and laborers—fathers of families and loudly shirted young men and men who were trying to forget the menace that hung over the country, and men who did not even try to think about it.

Murfree explained as Bud Gregory drank his beer. He explained in words of one syllable that a certain European Power had proved it had rockets which could travel two thousand miles, and atom bombs for them to carry. And, with those up its sleeve, it demanded that the United States give up its way of life and adopt an entirely new social system.

It was ready to blast every city in North America on a moment's notice. If the United States—unready as usual—started to get ready to fight, it would be destroyed. Every big city in the nation would be blown to atoms before preparations for defense could be even halfway completed.

Bud Gregory listened uncomprehendingly. He drank his beer and squirmed in his seat. "But I don't aim to have no truck with sheriffs and policemen and such!" he protested. "I ain't botherin' nobody."

Murfree explained further. Bud Gregory could devise some defense. He could probably make the defense. If he did, he, Murfree, would guarantee that he would have money enough to live on for all the rest of his life.

"But you're a gov'ment man," said Bud Gregory unhappily. "You're a good fella but I don't want no truck with the gov'ment."

MURFREE sweated. Promises of a fortune meant nothing to Bud Gregory. But Murfree had a hundred and fifty dollars left. He offered that for a device that would protect America against atomic bombardment. Millions had no meaning to Bud Gregory. A hundred and fifty dollars was concrete. He wavered.

"Listen here, Mr. Murfree," Gregory said plaintively. "I got some fellas comin' to see me today. They told me they'd pay me a hundred dollars down and ten dollars a day if I just fitted a car up with the dinkus I got on a friend's car over at the track. I don't even have to make it! All I got to do is take it off that racin'-car and put it on their car, and I don't aim to work myself to death for nobody. If I got ten dollars a day coming' in, I'm all set. I can just set and not bother nobody.

Murfree felt sheer desperation. Talk of war and devastation had no meaning to Bud Gregory. He just wanted to sit somnolently in the sunshine. If he could get a hundred dollars without working, he would not work for millions—or even for a more comprehensible hundred and fifty. He was simply impervious.

Then the beefy, squint-eyed man loomed up beside the table. He looked definitely unpleasant now. With him were two other men who looked more unpleasant still. They approached the table.

"How's your car?" asked the squint-eyed man, snarling. "Got it fixed yet?" To the others he said, "He told me his motor was froze!"

Bud Gregory looked up.

"Howdy, gentlemen!" he said cordially. "Mr. Murfree, here, he's a old friend of mine. He's a gov'ment man from the East. I done some work for him back there and he hunted me up. Set down and have some beer!"

The two newcomers' faces went expressionless. The squinty-eyed man looked murderous. Then the three of them glanced at each other. One leaned close to Murfree.

"Don't start anything, Mr. Government man," he said softly. "Me and my friend got guns on you. Buttin' into our affairs, huh?"

He moved suddenly. Murfree felt a horrible impact. Then he felt nothing whatever. . . .

The European Power sent a very pained note to the Government of the United States. The American Government had told its people of previous diplomatic correspondence, thus causing hostility toward the European Power among Americans. And the European Power was devoutly desirous of peace, yet it could not but be alarmed at the increasing belligerency of American public opinion.

Then there was the evacuation of American cities. That suggested nationwide preparation for war. Would the American Government give some convincing guarantee that it did not plan an unwarned attack? Such as the grounding and dismantling of all aircraft, and the decommissioning of its navy?

The European Power was waging a war of nerves. Its purpose was the harassment of the American public—from disorganization, unemployment, and ultimate famine—to the point where it would welcome any possible change. Its plan was to make the American people themselves demand the changes in its social system that the European Power desired.

In Washington, it began to look as if that end might be achieved. Hunger was beginning to show up. Privation was appearing. Looting in the cities had begun. So far a certain amount of holiday spirit still existed, to be sure, but the future looked black.

And Murfree woke up in the back of a speeding car. He had a splitting headache. Bud Gregory sat uneasily beside him. There were three men in the front seat—of whom one was the squint-eyed man—and when Murfree moved one of them turned around. "Don't try nothin'," he said amiably. "We ain't got any use for you government guys."

HE DISPLAYED a blued-metal weapon and turned back. Murfree's head throbbed agonizedly. He felt nauseated and ill. Bud Gregory rolled unhappy eyes at him. "Honest, Mr. Murfree, I didn't know they was goin' to act like this," he said miserably. "They offered me a hundred dollars and ten dollars a day to soup up their sedan."

The car sped along the incredibly populated roadside. There were people everywhere. When cities empty, people have to go somewhere. Small towns swarmed. Villages overflowed. Even the highways were lined with groups of people with picnic-blankets and blanket shelters. Murfree rubbed his head to clear it, and closed his eyes at the anguish which came of the movement

"What happened?" he asked thickly. "Why didn't they kill me?"

The man in front turned around again.

"We wouldn't think of it, fella," he said, grinning. "It was tricky enough crashin' you in a crowded room and draggin' you out as a drunk, without nobody gettin' wise. If we'd shot you we mighta had some trouble gettin' away ourselves."

"What's the idea?" asked Murfree drearily. "Are you spies, or just plain traitors?"

"Huh!" scoffed the man in front. "You talk like the movies! We're just honest guys pickin' up a livin' how we can. Your friend there, has got a little trick that'll be useful to us. He can fix up a car to go faster, stop shorter, turn sharper and have more pickup—"

The beefy man, at the wheel, growled at him. He shut up. The pattern wasn't right for spies or agents of a foreign, European Power. Agents of that particular Power, in any case, were packed too full of ideology to talk as this fellow did. These men sounded like yeggs or crooks who'd seen a chance to acquire getaway cars that no cop could overtake. Murfree looked dizzily at Bud Gregory, who grinned uneasily.

"Yeah. That's it, Mr. Murfree. Y'see, I was travelin' across-country, and my car didn't have much power. Motor'd lost a lotta compression. So I put on a" dinkus that made her pull up hills. And that's what these fellas want."

"What'd you do?" asked Murfree. His throat was dry and his voice was hoarse. And his head ached and ached and ached.

"Uh." Bud Gregory looked uncomfortable. "You know them little hunksa stuff that metal's made of. They wiggle all around. They wiggle faster when they get hot."

Murfree reflected dully that Bud Gregory, who was practically illiterate, was speaking with precision of the random motion of molecules which is caused by heat.

"I got a kinda idea," said Bud Gregory, "that if I could make all those hunksa stuff move one way instead of all ways, it would push the car ahead. So I fixed up a dinkus that made 'em all move one way. It give my car a lot more power."

Murfree was not astonished. Bud Gregory could not astonish him now. Of course if all the molecules of a substance move in the same direction the substance itself moves in that direction. Using the molecular motion generated by heat, you should get practically limitless acceleration, quite independent of traction.

It should start a car off at any imaginable speed, it should climb any hill, it should stop a car with unbelievable suddenness, and if the motion could be controlled—and hence the thrust—it could keep a car from turning over, and from skidding.

Yes. Also it would be action without a reaction, and it would serve equally to power an ancient jalopy or an aeroplane. Only, an aeroplane wouldn't need wings because the same molecular thrust could lift it, and that meant that it could furnish a drive for a spaceship and provide the direct means for the conquest of the stars.

And Bud Gregory had devised it to make his ancient car climb hills! "Then one day I seen some dirt-track races," explained Bud Gregory. "I seen fellas bettin' on 'em, so I made a deal with a driver and put my dinkus on his car. He could go faster, so he won, and I'd bet on him, and won some, too. It was pretty easy money, Mr. Murfree, and I don't never figure on workin' myself to death."

"Whatever you use with that drive gets cold," Murfree said dully.

"Yeah," said Bud Gregory nodding. "I use the motor to pull the car, and it gets cold. That's why I run the motor, so's it won't get too cold to push. I been followin' the dirt-track races ever since," he added, "rentin' out my dinkus to drivers an' bettin' on 'em."

AT THIS, Murfree, kidnaped and with his head one monstrous ache, felt again that helpless, irritated envy with which Bud Gregory always inspired him.

Bud had made a heat transformer which turned heat directly into kinetic energy! He'd made a device which could replace every motor on earth by a simpler element, and raise the amount of power available by an astronomical figure! He'd created an invention which could go far toward making Earth a paradise and mistress of far-flung planets —and he used it to win dirt-track races so he could bet two or four or five dollars at a time and so live without working!

Now that same device—which could mean the survival of humanity in those distant ages when the sun begins to cool—that same device would now be applied to provide thieves and holdup men with getaway cars the police could not overtake!

Murfree did not believe his captors were spies or aliens. They were simply criminals. And presently they would very probably kill him, because they'd want the secret of their success to remain a secret and Bud Gregory would doubtless be kept a prisoner as long as he was useful.

And meanwhile that European Power would pile one sardonic demand upon another—making sure that America did not prepare defense—until either the United States adopted the alien social system out of sheer necessity, or was wiped out in blasts of atomic flames.

But there was no use talking about it. Bud Gregory could not grasp the emergency, and these criminals would look upon it shrewdly as simply an opportunity for large-scale activity of their own variety. Murfree felt the motion of the car more and more violently in his throbbing head. Vibration was agonizing. The after-effects of the crack on his head manifested themselves, too. Suddenly, from a combination of weakness and pain and exhaustion and a form of surgical shock, he fell into a heavy, unnatural sleep.

And just at the moment that Murfree lapsed into something like a coma-like slumber, the President of the United States took a momentous and quite illegal decision. By law he could comply with the request of the European Power for the grounding and dismantling of all United States aircraft, and for the decommissioning of the battle fleet. By law he could not take any particular action in the situation as it stood. But he did do something. His jaw set, he wrote formal and quite improper orders in his own handwriting. He gave those orders personally to certain high-ranking officers.

"Perhaps this is treason," said the President bitterly. "But I won't see this country go down without a fight! The laws seem to require it, but for once to the devil with the laws! If those rascals over there want a fight, they'll get it. But they won't get an inch more of concession from us without a fight."

And after that, of course, it was simply a question of whether the President's orders could be carried out before the European Power learned that they had been issued. One way, America would be ready to give back as good as it got. The other way meant ruin!