Trade secret

IV.

Baird had it on his program by the time they got back. Again, they were never quite sure how he managed to get news of their affairs so quickly. It could have been through Goodman this time, they thought, but even that seemed unlikely. At any rate, they heard his report firsthand as the two families had dinner together in Mart’s apartment.

“It’s out at last,” said Baird, pinching his nostrils together in self-righteousness. “One of the most startling news stories of all time is the truth behind the fantastic enterprises of ex-Govermnent scientists Martin Nagle and Kenneth Berkeley. You will remember these men resigned many months ago from secret Government laboratories to become involved in a toy manufacturing business. Lately, they have managed a gambling house in Las Vega, Nevada. We know now what Martin and Berkeley are after!

“A reliable informant of this reporter has learned that the goal of these two is the breaking down of the entire system of American Patent Law. And the method they choose is apparently that of blackmail!

“Since the beginning of the Patent System, our courts have kept sacred the forces of Nature and prevented them from falling into the hands of selfish, monopolistic interests. The country has prospered technically under the System, and our inventors and scientists have been abundantly rewarded by it.

“Now we have a blatant attempt to destroy it all by demanding control over the natural forces of the universe, which these two men refuse to disclose in the tradition of the great scientists. I do not know what the outcome of this contention will be, but I am certain that our courts will not allow such a brazen assault to succeed. Our Patent System must be protected and retained intact, in order to secure to inventors their just rights for the fruits of their labors, and at the same time guard against the monopolistic exploitation of the open storehouse of Nature.

“It is a sad thing indeed, to witness the default of two such men of genius as Martin Nagle and Kenneth Berkeley. They are men of genius. The whole world of science acknowledges that they are. The genius of the principles in their toys and gambling machines is recognized. We sincerely hope they will reconsider this fantastic effort and return to the laboratories where they are needed so badly in the defense effort of their country.”

Carolyn Nagle moved to the television receiver and turned it off. She was a tall, dark-haired woman and her face was unnaturally white as she faced the rest of them.

“That’s it,” she said. “I hope you are ready for it. If you don’t wind this thing up pretty soon, we’re liable to be hanging from a lamp-post somewhere along Fifth Avenue.”

Mart picked up his glass and stared at the blank screen. “Yeah, I knew it would be bad, but I didn’t think anybody would go off their nut to that extent. Berk, maybe you and I ought to go down and have a talk with Baird.”

“Uh, uh,” said Berk. “As your personal psychiatrist, I advise against it. Baird’s a flag-waver. A defender of the home fires. He’s just plain dangerous. You’d better stay away from that guy if you’re smart.”

“He could be the one to spur an investigation. That’s our next step.”

“Not if he knew we wanted it. He’d simply hound us over the air until we couldn’t move. Carolyn’s right. We’ve got to move fast.”

“We’ve got Jennings,” said Mart. “But I’d rather not use him. His association with us in the past is too well-known. I’d rather it came from someone like Baird. Anyway, we can give it a day or two and see what develops. Personally, I think we should wait until more of the right people have seen the Volcano. That’s our ace.”

“We won’t dare let the children out of the house,” said Carolyn. “Some crackpot stirred up by Baird is certain to decide to defend his country against them before long. Sometimes I almost wish you hadn’t started this thing.”

“You can’t stand an egg on end without breaking it,” said Mart philosophically. “You’ve got the personal teleport. See the kids are never without it. How quick are you —!” He made a swift motion as if to draw a gun.

Carolyn’s hand dropped to the narrow belt at her waist. She vanished before Mart’s hand was halfway up.

“Quick enough,” she said from the other side of the room.

“Not bad,” said Mart. “A little slow in getting your hand on the tab, though. Maybe we ought to practice a little. Anybody want to see Jersey beach tonight —?”

Mart and Berk reopened their offices the next morning. Almost before they had the desks dusted off, there was a visitor. Mart looked up and grinned as Don Wolfe was ushered in.

“I heard Baird on television last night,” said the engineer.

“Oh?” said Mart.

“Yes. A dam good thing, too. I was pretty sore the last time I went out of here.”

“I don't recall having done anything to offend,” said Mart.

“Nothing,” said Wolfe, “except give an exhibition of the most colossal, insufferable, unbearable conceit that one human being has ever displayed toward another.”

“That’s quite an interpretation of my conduct.”

“But not an unfair one.”

Mart spread his hands and indicated a chair. “And so you have come back.”

“Yes,” said Don Wolfe, “to congratulate you and to accept your apologies.”

“I’m apologizing now?”

“You’d better! I carried it off.”

For the space of a half dozen heart beats Mart held his breath. His eyes narrowed on his visitor. “The rocket?”

“Yeah.” Wolfe took from his pocket a small object that looked like a clutter of wires wrapped about a half dozen peanut tubes and an assortment of condensers. He bent over and clamped it to the leg of the desk.

“Move back a little.”

Mart did so. Abruptly the desk lifted a foot off the floor and remained hanging in midair. He reached out to touch it. It swung gently aside, but when he pressed downward it resisted all his efforts.

“I see.” He pinched his lips thoughtfully and leaned back in the chair. “And now, naturally, I’m supposed to ask what you’re going to do with it.”

Don Wolfe touched the gadget again, and the desk settled gently to the floor. He put the haywire rigging on the desk between them. “I told you I heard Baird last night.”

He reached for a heavy glass paperweight and began methodically battering the contraption until the lights in the tiny tubes vanished amid an unrecognizable clutter of glass shards and twisted wire. He brushed the debris into the wastebasket.

“You don’t really need to apologize,” he said. “I just wanted to prove I’d done it, and tell you I’m with you.

“But it was close. If I hadn’t heard Baird last night, it would have been a different story. I didn’t savvy what you were up to until I heard his broadcast. I was too mad to recognize that you were obviously doing something besides exercising pure cussedness.

“I don’t think you’ve got a chance, you understand, but just the same I’m with you. I doubt there’s a development or research engineer in the country who wouldn’t like to personally deliver a knockout blow to the Patent Office. If there is, I don't know where he’s hiding.”

He shifted and arose from his seat. “I’m also going to be out of a job when my chief hears I’ve just smashed up this pretty little working model. I burned all notes. I don’t think the model shop people could reconstruct it from clues I might have left. So if you know of any lab that could use a good development man you might let me know.”

“I know of just a small job that needs doing — by a very good man. Sit down.”

Wolfe resumed his seat and Mart leaned forward. “You heard Baird,” said Mart. “So you know what kind he is. I want to use him, but I can’t do it directly. He’d balk at anything I even intimated.

“What I want is a congressional investigation — of me, and of the whole Patent System. I believe that Baird could bring it off. He’s just the kind to shake an old bone until everybody is so tired they will agree to anything he says. But he needs to be pushed into it. You’re the man to do the pushing.”

“What could I do?” said Wolfe.

“Simply tell him your story. You offered me a generous deal on the rocket toy principle, but I refused to turn it over. Tell him the aviation industry has got to have it for vital national defense work. Wave the flag. He’ll go for that. Lay it on thick enough and he’ll be braying at congressional doors the same day.”

“He might do it too well.”

“We’ll take that chance. Will you do it? There will be a little pay, but not much.”

“Never mind the pay — if this is the crusade I think it is.”

“Thanks. Let me hear from you as soon as you contact Baird.”

Mart and Berk expected results from Baird’s broadcast. By noon these began to appear in abundance. There were telegrams from Mart’s former students, who were now respected engineers and physicists in commercial laboratories throughout the country. His colleagues on a half dozen teaching staffs sent messages also. And strangers whom he had never known, but whose signatures were over the names of some of the largest concerns in the country, added their observations.

Doris, their secretary in the outer office, had long since been given instructions that they were out to all phone callers except their families and important business associates. In Mart’s office he and Berk sorted the messages one by one, dividing them into two piles.

“Maybe we need a third pile,” said Berk. “Here’ a fellow who wants to know if we think we can help him get a patent on his super-cling shoes for cats, which can’t be kicked off.”

“He doesn’t need our help,” said Mart. “The Patent Office would grant that without a second thought! I got one like that, too. Some guy wants to patent a house suspended like a bird cage. Its rocking motion is supposed to cure neuroses of people who were never properly rocked in a cradle. But most of these offer us a pat on the back and wish us luck. How about your batch?”

Berk nodded. “Same here. Some of these guys are really bitter. Not the crackpots. Engineers mostly. The physicists seem a little less enthusiastic about what we’re doing. Most of them sound a little bewildered.”

“They would,” said Mart. “All their lives they have accepted the fact that the Patent System has no bearing on their work, so they aren’t even sure of what they ought to expect of it. When the bell finally rings and they catch on to what they’ve been missing, there’ll be a reaction!”

Don Wolfe called on the phone later in the day. “Baird ate it up,” he said. “It was just what he was looking for. It will be on his broadcast tonight. But that guy’s a first-class paranoid. It looks to me like it would be a good idea to get a bodyguard until this blows over. He’s, quote, out to make a public example of the intellectual selfishness that has hamstrung our nation for the past two decades, unquote. He’s just plain nuts.”

“That’s about normal for the type,” said Mart. “I think we can take care of ourselves. If you want me to, I’ll fix up some letters now. There shouldn’t be any trouble about finding a new job. I hope you’ll be available for testimony if this investigation goes through.”

“I will, don’t worry. And I won’t need the letters. I managed to pick up something on my own this afternoon. Let me know when I can help out the good work again.”

Don Wolfe had not exaggerated. As Mart listened to the television reporter in the evening he felt a little sick. Baird’s viciousness emphasized anew the magnitude of the thing they were combating. The Patent System was only a small fragment, he thought. Roots of the same malignancy penetrated deeply into every division of society.

But Baird succeeded, at least, in making the point Mart wanted him to make. He demanded Congress appoint a committee to investigate the rights of an individual to withhold knowledge of vital concern to the welfare of the nation, even though he couldn’t patent his discoveries.

“We know this information exists,” he said. “It exists in the mind of one man. Can we afford to let this man monopolize and bury these vital principles beyond the reach of the nation? I submit that this information is comparable to the resources of coal, oil, and atomic energy. We would not think of allowing a single individual to bar access to any of these. I call upon the Congress of the United States to investigate this intolerable situation and pass legislation at once which will correct it.”

The effectiveness of Baird’s appeal was demonstrated to Mart the following morning as he stepped into a taxi. The moment he was seated, the doors on either side opened, and two neatly dressed men sat down beside him. He felt the points of guns pressed against him on either side.

Somewhat sadly, he turned to get a look at each of them. There was nothing familiar except a certain thoughtless determination that could be associated with crusaders like Baird — or equally well with thugs who hoped to torture out of him his secrets for their own use.

With the point of his elbow, Mart pressed the control segment of the teleport belt and found himself sitting on the cornice of the apartment building watching the taxi jolt through the traffic below. He watched until it disappeared. He would have to get Carolyn and the children out of town, he thought. He had known the party would be rough, but he hadn’t anticipated it quite this bad.

He moved himself down to the apartment and faced Carolyn, who gave a start at his sudden appearance. “I thought you went to the office!” she said.

He told her what had occurred.

“Well, we’re not going to move somewhere out in the sticks,” she said. “That’s the craziest idea you’ve had yet. If anyone is going to kidnap us, they could do it ten times as easy out there as they could here in town. You would be worrying constantly about how we were. There's no sense in it. We’re staying right here until it’s over.

“The children are as competent in their use of the belts as you or I. And that reminds me, you are going to have to speak to Jimmy. His teacher gave him a scolding yesterday about his homework, and he teleported himself right out of class and back home. The teacher became hysterical, and it scared the other children out of their wits. I made him go right back. But you’ve got to warn him that it’s not to be used like that.”

Mart grinned at the thought of Jimmy’s teacher. But he sobered and admitted to himself that Carolyn was right. It would be foolish to send them away. The incident in the taxi still gave him jitters, however. Something would have to be done to speed things up.

When he finally reached the office, a couple of hours late, it looked as if that something had occurred. Berk handed him a telegram from Jennings.

It said, “Looks like you’re going to need help, boy. We’re going to give it whether you want it or not. Las Vegas has become the mecca of American physical scientists. The poor guys are losing their shirts. This thing has got to end. Following is a copy of the message we have sent to Washington:

“The undersigned believe it to be to the best interest of the nation that the suggestion be acted upon to investigate the claims and discoveries of one Dr. Martin Nagle, but not for the purpose of suppressing Dr. Nagle, and penalizing him, as has been suggested elsewhere. We ask that such an investigation allow Dr. Nagle to receive an impartial judgment concerning his claims and decisions.”

Below the name of Jennings were the names of sixty-five other leading physicists throughout the country.

Mart’s hand was shaking just a little when he put the paper down. “Quite a lot of names there of people I didn’t think would go along with us. Sort of gives you an idea of who your friends are, anyway.”