Trade secret

III.

It wasn’t expected that the Teleport would have the same magnitude of success as the rocket had enjoyed. They advertised the new toy for a dollar and placed one-inch ads in the mail-order sections of the home owners’ and mechanics’ magazines as well as the comic books. The results were better than expected.

Mart would have been content with a couple gross well placed sales. And the grapevine told him that these were made very early in the history of the Teleport. They were the ones made to the laboratories already investigating the rocket.

As soon as he was certain that the second toy was being dismantled and investigated by the right people, Mart left all details of its manufacture and sales to Sam Marvenstein and turned his attention to the third project.

He and Berk were prepared to embark upon a career of professional gambling.

As if they had not already done that some time ago — Carolyn Nagle reminded them during their endless dinnertime discussions of the project.

It would be difficult for a single gambling house to add much, percentage-wise, to the glitter of the Las Vegas night, and the Volcano Club didn’t try — not very hard anyway. There was a medium-size neon sign atop the building, supposedly reminiscent of the last days of Pompeii, with neon waves of lava washing down the sides of the darkening cone and bits of fire popping out like bright balls from the Volcano’s mouth. It was a good sign, but it had to be searched for in the ever-present glow that hung over the city like the nebulous hopes of a gambler about to make his final tilt with the one-armed bandits.

It was a little out of the way, too, being at the end of the block on Bandit Alley in an old building that used to house a drugstore. Not being gamblers by nature, Mart and Berk had not wanted to sink a lot of money into the initial project, but at the end of the first two weeks they were genuinely disappointed.

They stood on the sidewalk outside their nearly empty club, watching the prancing, beckoning lights farther uptown. “It’s the location,” said Berk gloomily. “I told you we should get a spot closer to the center of things. A new game in an out-of-the-way location is an almost impossible combination. The gamblers are a mob. You don’t attract the individual, you attract the group.”

“Let’s hold out for a few more days,” said Mart. “If business doesn’t pick up by then, we’ll make some kind of a change. Maybe we should have hired some better looking dames.” He glanced inside at the girls taking bets from the scattering of customer. "I don’t see how we could have done much better, though. Carolyn is kicking about them now. She claims the proper type of character for the job is a sourdough in a cracked, green eyeshade.”

“Let’s move out of the doorway. Looks like this might be a customer.”

They watched with mild satisfaction as the approaching stranger stopped, glanced a moment at the sign hanging above, then moved inside the club. Their satisfaction vanished as he emerged a moment later. He looked about and seemed to spot them with some difficulty.

“Mr. Nagle —?” he said as he moved toward them.

“Yes,” said Mart. It was apparent now that the man had been drinking somewhat and was just barely over the edge of feeling high.

“I want to know how this thing works. I won’t use it until you tell me how it works.”

“Of course, be glad to,” said Mart. He sighed and took the man’s arm.

Inside, they moved around to the side of the Volcano where they would not obscure the vision of any customer seated in the amphitheater around the gambling device. The lights of the room were dim, most of the illumination coming through the plastic Volcano cone. It was as massive as three or four juke boxes and easily topped them in the garishness of its lighting. Waves of light rippled down the sides of the cone, and inside, a dozen brightly colored balls danced madly on a diaphragm across the bottom of the hole that pierced the axis of the cone.

“The world’s first and only completely honest gambling device,” said Mart. Abruptly one of the balls appeared on the outside of the cone and rolled to the bottom where it clanked against the metal rim. The number of the ball and its color flashed on a panel behind them. One of the customers looked pleased and waved a betting sheet at the nearest girl attendant.

“Absolutely foolproof,” Mart said. “The emergence of a ball from the cone is governed absolutely and completely by random chance.”

The man peered closer at the balls which had resumed their dancing on the diaphragm. “Is that so? What keeps them bouncing up and down?”

“A small motor actuates the rubber diaphragm. The balls are matched in weight to a thousandth of a milligram and their balance exceeds that of the finest ball bearing.”

“Is that so? You’re sure the game isn’t fixed, now?”

“Positive,” said Mart.

“Think I’ll try it. Where do I buy some chips?”

“Just take a seat anywhere you like. One of the girls will provide you with a betting sheet and you stamp your selection for the following game with the device provided on the arm of the chair. The attendant will show you how. The play is continuous.”

“Thanks, mister. Two dollar bet high enough to start?”

“You may start as low as a dollar if you like.”

“Look, mister, I want my games to be honest, but I want you to know I’m no small timer. Nothing smaller than two dollars for Paul Gentry. But you’re sure this game’s not fixed —”

Mart went out into the night air and joined Berk. “The guy’s a reporter,” he said. “We’ll be in the papers. If that doesn’t bring us business, nothing will.”

But it wasn’t the newspapers. Not at first anyway. Joe Baird had learned with considerable interst of the closing of the New York office and with exasperation that was also considerable he had tracked them during the ensuing weeks. So elusive had they been that it was two weeks after their opening before his man caught up with them. So it was not in the newspapers at first, but on Joe Baird’s television program the following night.

“What two famous ex-Govemment scientists are now operating a gambling joint in Las Vegas, Nevada, and why? That’s the many dollared question that a goodly number of their colleagues and government officials are going to want answered.

“You recall that we first had the Nagle Rocket which created such a furor during the Christmas season. Next was the idiotic mechanism with the disappearing bead, which is rumored to contain hidden in it even more important scientific discoveries than the rocket toy. Now we have the most fantastic device of all, a new type gambling machine. It is evident that Dr. Nagle’s complaint about low Government salaries was a serious one to him, for he now appears in the role of professional gambler to tidy up his personal fortune.”

Baird gave a lengthy description of the Volcano cone, obviously based on the observations of the pseudodrunk to whom Mart had shown the machine. “It is a fascinating gadget, completely hypnotic in its effect on the addicts who play it. We’re certain that it will be as successful as the previous enterprises of Nagle and Berkeley, but we express our regret and the regret of a nation that such badly needed genius should be found in the dimly lit back streets of scarcely legal commercialism.”

Mart and Berk missed the broadcast, being on duty at the club, but they read the account which was reproduced almost verbatim in the morning paper. Mart grinned as he passed it across the breakfast dishes to Berk. “We’ll know tonight. If that doesn’t bring them in, nothing will.”

His prediction was more than accurate. Long before noon the curious began streaming toward the obscure building housing the Volcano Club. By mid-afternoon there was not an empty seat remaining in the amphitheater.

Even Mart had to admit there was something hypnotic about the thing. He stood at the rear, watching over the heads of the crowd as they leaned half forward in their seats with eyes staring at the wash of colored light and the glowing balls that jumped at random.

Uniformed girls moved constantly along the aisles, accepting bets and stamping sheets of the winners to be paid off at the windows. And then in the later afternoon Mart and Berk recognized some of the visitors who began coming in. A few of them took seats, but others stood at the rear watching with coldly professional faces. They represented the management and ownership of the other, more conventional clubs about the city.

“I think we’re in,” Mart whispered to Berk. “Within a week we’ll have a Volcano in half the clubs in Las Vegas!”

He was a little optimistic there. It took almost three weeks before that number had bought a franchise on the Volcano. He was able to deliver the first one within two days, however, and almost before the delivery truck was back at the warehouse he received a call. Mart recognized the cigar-in-mouth voice of the gambler with whom he had made his first deal.

“What’s the matter with these things? Can’t you build them so they will stay operating more than ten minutes? We put the marbles in the hole and all they do is come rolling down the outside. They won’t stay in!”

“You put the machine back together the way it was and quit tinkering with it,” said Mart. “It will work all right the way we had it.”

The gambler adjusted his cigar with a crunching sound in the phone. “We got to change the percentages. You don’t expect us to play Santa Claus, do you? How do you make the adjustments?”

“Listen, I told you when we made the deal that these devices are straight. They operate strictly at random. A dozen balls in the pit gives you odds of eleven to one on each bet. What more do you want? The minute you tinker with the machines they’ll quit working. Now do you want to buy, or not?”

The gambler guessed he did, and hung up.

“Can you imagine these guys?” said Mart. “They talk about the one-armed bandits — how about the two-armed ones?”

There was a similar problem with every one of the clubs in which a machine was installed, but when it was finally straightened out, and the gamblers were resigned to operating an honest game, their relationships became one of distant respect based on mutual expediency. Mart and Berk needed the club installations to expose the machines to public view, and the gamblers found it somewhat like discovering a vein of high-grade gold ore under the floor of the roulette room.

Neither Mart nor Berk had any desire to prolong their stay in the gambling paradise. There was still no response, however, from the one source they hoped to disturb with the machine.

“We’ve proven the machines are effective as gambling devices,” said Berk. “But we’re wasting time. We ought to give Sam the go-ahead on the bar and drugstore models. We’re not going to get the roulette wheel’s successor into the Bureau of Standards and the University of Chicago by sitting here in Las Vegas.”

“You don’t think physicists are likely to come here to gamble?” said Mart.

“Physicists aren’t likely to gamble. And after buying the week’s groceries, how could they?”

“Yes,” said Mart, “I guess that’s one of the points we started out to make. Anyway, I’ll bet we get a bite before the end of the week. Whether we do or not, we’ll close up by then. I’ll send Sam a wire this afternoon to get in production. By next Christmas: two Volcanoes where only one pinball stood before!”

During the same afternoon Mart’s attention was attracted to a patron of the club, who was what Mart had come to label an ungambler. There were gamblers and non-gamblers, and sometimes it was hard to tell them apart. But a pure ungambler could be spotted at a glance.

This particular specimen sat in the front row of the amphitheater staring at the Volcano almost as if in a trance. He moved only occasionally to polish the glass of his spectacles with the large white handkerchief, which he withdrew with a flourish. He made bets. A considerable number of them. He did not win a single time. Mart felt like telling him to give it up. You have to have just a trace, at least, of ESP or you haven’t got a chance. Successful gamblers were loaded with it. The ungamblers were apparently born with a total lack of it.

Mart finally resisted the impulse to protect the fellow from his own deficiencies, and turned away from the amphitheater. He saw that Berk was also watching from a post near the cashier’s cage.

“FBI, I’d say,” said Berk.

“Him? Not a chance. Probably a fresh MA in English Literature. I hate to see the poor guy throwing away his money, but what can I do?”

It was almost closing time that night before this particular patron gave up his seat and left the building. They had a house rule requiring betting on at least one game in four in order to keep the seat. Evidently the man had run out of minimum dollar bets. Even so, he seemed reluctant to give up his seat and leave.

Mart half expected him to show up the next day, but he made no appearance. On the second day following, he did show up, however, and Mart almost choked in surprise to see who was accompanying the ungambling stranger.

It was the willowy figure of his old friend, Dr. Jennings.

Jennings’ face lighted with pleased surprise as he recognized Mart inside the doorway of the Volcano Club.

“Welcome to our establishment,” said Mart, grinning. “I didn’t know you went in for connivance with lady luck and the wheel of fortune. It’s a pleasure to see you here, anyway.”

“Nor I, you,” said Jennings wryly. “I didn’t see Baird’s piece until it was called to my attention several days later. By that time, Roy here was pulling my coat tails and demanding I come and see what you were up to. By the way, have you met Roy yet? He said he spent a day here, but didn’t make himself known.”

Mart beckoned to Berk, and they turned to the man they had watched lose his money two days before.

“Dr. Roy Goodman, of AEC,” said Jennings. “He, too, is not a gambling man, and he tells me you have formed in him a firm conviction to stay that way the rest of his life.”

Mart took Dr. Goodman’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I almost asked you to leave the other day. Some people have it and some don’t. If you don’t, you might as well let the ponies and bingo tables alone.

“And the Volcanoes?” said Goodman.

“And the Volcanoes. They won’t do you any good, either.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Goodman. “I was so unsure of it that I went all the way to Los Angeles and brought Dr. Jennings back to help verify my opinion.”

“And that opinion is —?” said Mart.

“That the Volcano may be the source of a great deal of good for us. Do you mind if I ask Dr. Jennings to form his own opinion?”

“As you wish, gentlemen,” said Mart.

Jennings laughed a bit uncertainly. “Well, let’s have a look. I certainly don’t know what this is all about. I suppose it’s on a level with Nagle Rockets and Teleports. Roy has a mystery, too, and I am completely mystified by you both.”

“How about dinner when you’re through?” said Berk. “We’ll get together and try to unmystify one another.”

“That does it,” said Mart as he watched the two men take seats in the amphitheater. “That does it, or I miss my guess. After they get through with their looking we can pack our trunks and go home.”

“The AEC, did Jennings say?” Berk asked.

“None other.”

Jennings and Goodman stayed inside for a long time. Finally, they came out into the orange sunlight of early evening. Jennings’ face seemed pale, as if he had been out of the sunlight for a long time. His hands trembled perceptibly as he lit a thin cigar.

“The food at our hotel is very good,” said Mart.

Jennings nodded. Neither he nor his companion said a word. The four men turned and walked all the way to the hotel in silence. Only as they sat down to the table and picked up the menu did Jennings emerge from his remoteness.

“Baked ham,” he murmured to the waitress. “And make the coffee strong. Very strong.”

Then, while they waited, he folded his hands on the table and settled his eyes on Mart. “I know you too well,” he said, “to ask if you are simply pulling our leg, but I have to ask it, anyway.”

Mart shook his head. “You’ll have to tell me what you mean by that. I have shown you only a contraption for parting dollars from suckers — with apologies and exceptions to present company,” he smiled as he glanced in Dr. Goodman’s direction.

The AEC man gave no notice that he’d heard.

“Only two kinds of men could produce the Volcano,” said Jennings. “One would be merely a fool who had stumbled on the design by accident and didn’t know what he’d made. The other would be a genius who knew exactly what he had — a genius whose brilliance was so great that he could afford to sit back and laugh at the rest of us scratching our heads and looking silly trying to figure it out.”

“Nobody’s laughing,” said Mart soberly. “But you’ve got to say it.”

“All right,” said Jennings. “That Volcano of yours is nothing but an extremely exact hyper scale model of a radioactive atomic nucleus, complete with potential barrier penetration in full operation.

“You’re telling us that you know the full basic theory behind nuclear structure and phenomena. You’re telling us that you know what happens in a radioactive atom. And you’re thumbing your nose at us while you say it. Why? Why have you done this to us, Mart?”

Mart looked down at the tablecloth and traced the pattern in the linen with his fingernail. “Not that,” he said. “I’m not deriding you. I’m ready to tell you why. I’m ready to tell anyone who figures out the Volcano for himself. After dinner, up in our own room.”

The rest of the meal passed in almost complete silence. Berk and Mart knew that Jennings wanted to talk. They knew he was thinking of their last association, on Project Levitation, but he couldn’t speak of that with Goodman present.

The AEC man seemed to sense that he was something of an intruder. As the silence continued, a look of disgruntled determination settled upon his face, as if he intended not to be left out of any secrets that might pass between the others.

Afterwards, they went up to Mart’s room. Carolyn and the children had gone to a show, so they were alone. Jennings lit a fresh cigar and sat down by a window where he could see the haze of lights and desert dust over Las Vegas. Mart stood a moment near the window, looking out. Then he turned.

“I want a patent on what I’ve got,” he said. “That’s all I’m after. Nothing but a patent.”

Jennings blew a cloud of smoke into the air and looked up quizzically. Goodman lurched impatiently in his chair. “You have patents!” the AEC man said. “I even wired Washington and had a copy of the Volcano patents sent out while I went to Los Angeles. You’re covered on everything you’ve done!”

But already Jennings was smiling as he watched Mart through the haze of cigar smoke that was fading between them. “So you want a patent!” he murmured. “I should have guessed that it would be something oblique like that, since you were teamed up with Berk. This is Berk’s angle, isn’t it?”

"We worked it out together,” said Mart. “We had developed these things and didn’t know what to do with them. Finally, Berk got so tired of my griping about the impossibility of using them without giving them away that he suggested we do something about it. We have.”

Jennings shook his head. “Not yet, Mart. You haven’t done anything except stir up a hornet’s nest. It remains to be seen whether or not the stirring-up is going to result in any real action on your problem.”

“The stirring-up is something in itself,” said Mart. “Things will never be quite the same again for anyone who fully understands the symbology of the Volcano.”

“You are talking over my head!” said Goodman irritably. “I fail completely to understand what this is all about. You have produced a model which you have tacitly admitted has been correctly interpreted by myself and Dr. Jennings. Now you say you want patents — on a device which is already covered by patents!”

“You will recall,” said Mart, “that each patent refers to a specific, unnamed Law of Nature upon which the device in question is based. In accord with the present Patent System that is as far as I can go. And we had plenty of trouble going that far — getting the Volcano in under the wire as an amusement device instead of an immoral gambling machine.”

“What do you mean, that’s as far as you can go? Where else do you want to go?”

“Where would you like me to go?”

Goodman became slightly redder in the face. “I would like you to enlighten us in our ignorance regarding the structure and internal processes of the radioactive atom — if you consider us capable of understanding it. I would like you to show how the methods of propulsion in your rocket toy may be adapted to full-scale aircraft. And the Teleport... it’s obvious what we would like you to do with that, if it’s possible.”

“It’s possible, I assure you,” said Mart. “Let me say that I don’t know exactly how — that would take a corps of engineers some little time and a fairly well equipped development laboratory to design the exact means, but that is only a matter of detail.

“I am not an engineer, Dr. Goodman, nor a gimmick maker — except temporarily. I am a theoretical researcher and desire to remain so. Unfortunately, however, I have to eat. So do my family.”

“I don’t see what that — Any good University —”

“It is commonly supposed that the theoretical researcher is much like the Artiste of old: far above working for mere dirty money. He’s supposed to work for Truth and Knowledge, while somebody else — the development engineer — makes the old filthy green stuff.”

“Dr. Nagle —”

“Now if I were to do what you ask, to broadcast the basic principles which I have discovered and employed in these devices, I would be completely out in the cold. I would get no protection or further remuneration whatever. As long as I remain a maker of trinkets and gimmicks I am entitled to the full protection and blessings of our Patent Laws. The moment I step into the field of new, basic science I have no protection whatever. I cannot even use my own work!

“I cannot reveal to you these basic Laws of Nature which I have discovered without forfeiting all claim to financial benefit from my work!”

Dr. Goodman made a noise as if appalled by some enormous sacrilege. “Of course you can’t patent a Law of Nature! It’s unthinkable! That’s something that’s just there — for everybody to use.”

“Fine. Let them use it then.”

It had grown quite dark but they had not turned on the lights. The only illumination came from the glow over the city. From the darkness by the window they heard a low chuckle and Jennings said, “If we understand your Volcano properly, what you are saying is equivalent to saying that you would like to patent the atom.”

“Yes, you might put it that way,” Mart agreed reflectively. “I wish to take out a patent on the atom.”

“You’re making fun of us,” said Goodman stiffly. “At the moment it seems to be in particularly poor taste. The Government is most certainly in need of your work. I am sure there would be no question of proper remuneration.”

“You are, huh? A lab and two assistants and seventy-two hundred a year. I made almost a hundred thousand on the Nagle Rocket alone.” Mart turned and paced halfway across the room in a motion of sudden irritation. In the dim light he faced the AEC scientist directly.

“Dr. Goodman, you have been the first to have the honor of understanding the Volcano symbology, but you seem to have great difficulty in understanding what I have said. I want you to understand it. I want you to carry it back to the Commission’s laboratories. Whenever my name comes up among your fellow workers I want you to get this straight and report it correctly: Martin Nagle has discovered some of the most important and basic Laws of Nature that we can presently conceive.

“They are of immense importance to Government, industry, and the military, but unless Martin Nagle can obtain a patent on his work and get proper remuneration for it, he is going to do nothing with it except make trinkets, gadgets and gimcracks.

“And you may further tell them that Martin Nagle has not gone off his rocker. Quote me on it.”

He glanced at his watch. “If you don’t mind, gentlemen, I’m afraid we'll have to get back to the Club. Since it is our present source of income, Berk and I need to help with the evening crowds.”

Goodman was speechless as they left the room, but Jennings winked behind his companion’s back and shook Mart’s hand. “Keep in touch with me,” he said. “I’ll let you know the reaction out West. You’ll be going back to New York, soon?”

“Yes. We have arranged for a large number of franchises on the Volcano here. It will spread to other gambling centers. Then we are putting out another model to compete with pinball machines in bars and drugstores. All in all, I think it’s going to be a very successful device.”

“I hope so!” said Jennings fervently. “I certainly hope so!”