Trade secret

II.

The split with Keyes was Mart’s major regret at the moment, but he knew that it was but the first of a long series of such incidents that would follow the promotion of the Nagle Rocket. Keyes, however, symbolized the whole class of unpleasant incidents and broken friendships that would occur. On Project Levitation, directed by Keyes at ONR the year before, Mart and Berk had worked to produce an antigravity device. And as a by-product they had developed an entirely new insight into the operation and workings of the human mind, and had produced fundamentally new methods of thinking. To exploit and explore what they found, they organized their own office of Basic Research Consultants.

As Mart left the ONR building, feeling the eyes of Keyes staring at him from the second-floor window, he was not at all sure of the wisdom of their present program. But it had all the qualities of a road full of burned bridges, and uncertainty was futile. Keyes at least would be quiescent for a time. As he had said, an open accusation now would tell the Russians that spaceships with antigravity propulsion were a fact, and Mart’s explanation had thrown him sufficiently off center so that it would take him time to plan any new and definite move. By then it wouldn’t matter —

The sale of the toy rocket was not delayed until Christmas. It was pushed hard as soon as Sam Marvenstein’s refitted plant was able to put it on store counters. At once it was seized upon by the country’s small fry citizens as the successor to all horse and pistol paraphernalia and the pseudo rocket equipment with which they had been kidding themselves. This was the real thing. Re-orders flowed into the plant almost on the heels of the shipments going out.

Within two weeks of initial manufacture Sam Marvenstein was hopelessly behind schedule. He called Mart on the phone. “The toy business is like flowers and fresh vegetables,” he said. “One minute you’re in and the next minute you’re out. One good item and a man can retire. A real blooper and you have to start all over again.”

“What’s the matter?” said Mart. “The rocket is selling, isn’t it?”

“That’s the trouble. It’s selling too well.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We need more factory space. We’re behind far enough on the orders we’ve got now to warrant doubling our floor space. But how long can we sell rockets without reaching the saturation point?

“It looks to me like Christmas would do it. If we turned them out, we could sell a rocket to every kid in the country above crawling age. So suppose we went ahead and increased our floor space with all the necessary jigs and dies — what happens afterwards? Can you give us a new item that will make the expansion worth while, or do you intend to be strictly a one-shot?”

“I won’t be a one-shot,” said Mart, “I’ve been thinking of the same problems. In the spring we'll have another little gadget to follow up the rocket. I think we should acquire the increased space on a rental basis. Tool up to produce all the rockets the trade can stand. We can afford the capital investment and any subsequent loss on it.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” said Sam.

Although every news service in the country had given the Nagle Rocket a brief play, it was Joe Baird, the nightly TV columnist, who continued to pick at the bones of the story as if not satisfied that all the meat was out of it. Mart was never quite sure where Baird got his leads, but he was quite satisfied to see the columnist’s thin face and hear his somewhat squeaky voice announce with its full capacity for insinuation: “What former high-ranking Government scientist is now peddling toys for a living because Uncle’s pay check wasn’t big enough? This same scientist is scheduled shortly to be the subject of a series of investigations regarding his use of certain scientific principles for the production of toys instead of for the essential welfare of our nation. A big ripe, raspberry to the man who might be among the first to take his nation to the Moon — and is content merely to entertain the kids.”

Mart had no idea whether Baird had inside information or whether he was shooting in the dark. At any rate his agitation was encouraging. It promised results.

The office of Nagle and Berkeley, Basic Research Consultants, was not one to attract customers in large numbers, or particularly before hours. But on the morning following Baird’s denunciation Mart came down to open up and found a visitor waiting at the end of the long hall near the locked door of the office. The man was wearing a gray, slightly mashed felt hat and carried a brief case which he rested on the radiator as he looked out the window. Mart gave him a curious glance and fitted the key to the lock. Then he almost closed the door in the stranger’s face as the latter hurried towards the office.

“I beg your pardon! I didn’t know you were looking for our office.”

“You are Dr. Martin Nagle?” the man said.

Mart nodded. “Toymaker extraordinary. Please come in.”

“Very extraordinary, I would say.” The man deposited his hat and offered his hand. “My name is Don Wolfe. I am chief engineer at Apex Aircraft. There are a few things I would like to talk over with you.”

Mart smiled and led the way to his own office. “Please sit down. If you’re here concerning the adaptability of the Nagle Rocket to aircraft propulsion, the answer is no. Not in its present form. And that being what you came to ask about I suppose you have had a long trip for nothing.”

“No, I think not,” said Wolfe. He laid his brief case on the corner of the desk and took the chair Mart indicated. “If I heard correctly you said, ‘not in its present form.’ I assume, then, that the mechanism has other and more adaptable forms.”

“Might be. You said it, I didn’t.”

Wolfe frowned and hunched forward a trifle in his chair. “My company is prepared to negotiate very generously with you in the utilization of this device. Naturally, you have had and will have other offers. I would like to be assured of an equal footing with others, and in turn assure you that we believe we can meet the best of them. Naturally, I say this upon the basis of our engineers’ examination of your toy. We have no doubt that it is what you say: an antigravity device.”

“I hope no one was hurt,” said Mart.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I say, I hope no one was hurt when you tried to scale up the mechanism in order to increase its lifting power.”

Wolfe flushed and glanced down at his hands. “We did have a small accident,” he confessed. “No one was hurt, although much valuable equipment was destroyed.”

“I’m glad that was all. You had no right, you understand, to alter this patented device for commercial purposes without due permission.”

“We have the right to make improvements with a view to obtaining our own patents!”

“Of course. Of course,” said Mart. And you were able to make such improvements, I trust?”

“No, we have not,” said Wolfe. And now the tone of his voice began to change. “I do not understand you, Dr. Nagle. I am here to make a legitimate offer. I am here to ask you to name your price for a license to your patents.”

“Do you plan to go into the toy business?”

"Please, Dr. Nagle —”

“All right then. Listen to me: I have nothing to sell you. I have no patent that would be of any value to you whatever. Have you taken the trouble to read the patent issued on the Nagle Rocket?”

The engineer nodded. “Practically committed it to memory.”

“Then you have observed that the patent specifically details the precise mechanism that I have incorporated into my rocket toy. Nothing else. Is that clear? My patent covers nothing but that toy, and if you are not interested in toys, I have nothing to sell. I haven't anyway, because we're doing very nicely, thank you, with the present sale of the Nagle Rocket.”

Wolfe moved his hands rather helplessly. “But antigravity, it —”

“It should be able to power airplanes — and even spaceships.”

“Of course. You referred to a new Law of Nature in your patent. Obviously —”

“Yes. Obviously that is what you are interested in. But I'm afraid I can’t sell you a Law of Nature. Nobody gets patents on such things. Unfortunately, that has to come under the classification of Trade Secret.”

“That is hardly the attitude of the modern scientist towards his discoveries and his work,” said Wolfe stiffly.

Mart shrugged. “It’s my attitude. So now you know: The basic principle of the Nagle Rocket is completely unprotected. It is right there, lying wide open for you and your engineers to discover for yourselves. And when you do discover it you can build kites or liners to Mars.”

Wolfe made no move but continued to stare across the desk into the eyes of Martin Nagle. “You have a price,” said Wolfe. “What is your figure?”

“Yes,” Mart nodded slowly. “I have a price. But again, unfortunately, it is as unconventional as the rest of my attitude in this matter. It so happens that it is not denotable by figures.”

Wolfe picked up his brief case then and rose abruptly to his feet. “I repeat, I do not understand you, Dr. Nagle. You have either an unmitigated conceit regarding your own abilities or you take the rest of us for fools. I assure you, however, that I will take you at your own word. I shall discover for myself whatever principle underlies your toy, and make whatever utilization I care to. But it would seem far more fitting if you exhibited a willingness to co-operate in the exploitation of this discovery — or at least presented a valid reason for not doing so.”

Mart shrugged as he accompanied his visitor to the door. “It’s your baby. Let’s see you carry it off.”

Upon opening the office with Kenneth Berkeley, Mart had intensified his contacts with fellow researchers and former students who now held responsible positions in nearly every major industry. His contacts led as well into every Government laboratory employing specialists even remotely connected with basic physical research. As be expected, there began to be responses from these various points of communication. Among the first of these was one from Jennings out on the West Coast. Jennings had been with them on Levitation.

“The news of the Nagle and Berkeley enterprises,” he wrote, “makes me yearn for the good old days of Project Levitation. I didn’t know anything could be as foundationless as that project was when it started, but I believe you’ve topped it in that respect. The boys out here keep telling me you’ve gone off your rocker for sure, and I keep telling them you haven’t. When you get around to it I would appreciate some evidence to back up my defense.

“P.S. Yes, the Nagle Rockets are getting so thick in the air over our subdivisions out here that midair collisions are not infrequent, with resulting claims and counterclaims of damages from one small fry to another. Have you any legal recommendations?

“P.P.S. One corner of our physics lab was blown out the other day. Nobody got hurt, but some people are awfully mad. Seems to be some strong factions developing. There are those who would like to throw you in the clink, those who suggest you retire to the nearest booby hatch, and those who swear by all the windings of our local cyclotron that they're going to figure out just what you’ve built into these gadgets. Also had a note from Keyes advising me to stay firmly shut up regarding Project L. I trust I may be among the first to receive enlightenment.”

Mart chuckled as he showed the letter to Berk. “I can imagine what it must have cost Jennings to write that note,” he said. “He’ll go into a deep spin if he doesn’t get the answer pretty soon. I imagine that out of all those we have stirred up he is the most likely to find the gimmick.”

“How about that young fellow from Apex?” said Berk. “You said he was a pretty sharp type.”

“He’s an engineer. Whether that gives him more or less to overcome than a theoretical physicist I don’t know. I suspect, however, that we’ll be hearing again, one way or another, from Don Wolfe.”

Through his technological grapevine Mart learned that by the end of the sixth week of rocket sales a specimen had been dissected in nearly every university lab and in every corporation with more than five hundred dollars a year to spend on basic research. He learned also that Sam had received an order directly from the United States Bureau of Standards for one dozen Nagle Rockets. He was even more pleased when the grapevine came up with the dope that they were actually for trans-shipment to an AEC lab, and that the Bureau had bought its own rockets at the local five and ten.

Letters and telephone calls reported an increasing frenzy building up in all these laboratories as the scientists tinkered with the little gadget, trying to find out its basis of operation and scale it up to useful load size. He didn’t get too much from the AEC labs, but he was pretty sure the personnel there were participating in the maddening frustration reported from the Bureau of Standards and elsewhere.

With apprehension too, he waited for reports of injuries resulting from imprudent attacks on the problem. With evident good fortune, however, the grapevine had carried the news of the West Coast minor disasters and precautions were being taken. An occasional flash burn and destruction of carelessly placed equipment were all that came to his attention.

By Christmas the sale of the Nagle Rocket and the scientific frustration created by it had reached a peak. Joe Baird continued to throw occasional dark hints of vast, sinister doings on the part of the toy’s creator. Sam Marvenstein had doubled the size of his plant not once but twice. Up to two days before Christmas he was shipping rockets in carload lots.

And then it was over. With the end of the Christmas season, the frantic production wheezed to a halt. Through the offices of St. Nick and Sam Marvenstein, virtually every potential customer for a Nagle Rocket had his wants satisfied.

The day after New Year’s, Mart called Sam down to the offices of Research Consultants. As the manufacturer sat down by the desk, Mart handed him a cagelike dingus about six inches in diameter.

“The successor to the Nagle Rocket,” Mart said.

Sam looked puzzled. He turned the contraption over in his hands a couple of times and shifted so the light from the window fell through the spaces between the wires to better advantage.

“I suppose it’s really quite clever,” sighed Sam. “But exactly what does it do?”

“We’re tentatively calling it the Teleport,” said Mart. “I imagine you can think up a name with more sales appeal. You may remember reading about teleportation in a science-fiction magazine you mentioned when we first met.”

Sam’s face brightened. “Sure... I remember now! That’s the story where the fellow sends his girl across the country by radio and she comes out the other end twins so that everybody is happy and don’t need to fight over her any more.”

“Roughly,” said Mart. “Just roughly. So here’s what the gadget does. You see that this aluminum disk bisects the spherical cage and that a wire goes through the hole in the center of the disk. On one side there is a bead on the wire. Now I push the button at one pole of the sphere, where the cage wires come together with the single wire through the middle. Now the bead is on the other side of the disk.”

He handed the gadget back to Sam. “Try it yourself. Press the little button at the pole of the sphere.”

Sam took it again, a look of disappointment verging on repugnance showing on his face. “I don’t get it,” he said. “There’s nothing to that. Pushing a bead along the wire that goes through the hole in a piece of metal —”

“Look closely, Sam, and push the button.”

Sam did so, settling the device in a shaft of sunlight again and squinting through the wires of the cage. He pressed with his thumb. Instantly, the bead on the interior wire vanished from one side of the disk and appeared on the other.

“I still don’t see,” said Sam in disappointment. Then he stopped. “Hey, wait a minute! How did that bead get through there? There’s no hole for it to go through. The wire fills up the hole!”

Mart nodded benignly. “Right. Do you think that might be a sort of flash in the pan gadget that would interest the small fry — and maybe their older brothers and sisters — to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand copies?”

“Yeah, I guess maybe it would sell,” Sam muttered as he continued staring into the wire framework, pressing the button at first one pole and then the other. “But there’s gotta be a hole in the disk! There’s gotta be a way for the bead to get through,” he said. “You gotta tell me!”