CHAPTER III
Counteroffensive
"So," said Jim Forrest, "she won."
"Won?" replied Turner.
"She said that she'd end up with the crystal. What makes you think that if she stole it once from the laboratory she wouldn't steal it from you the second time?"
"Ellen Haynes is no thief!" snapped Turner.
"No? Well, consider this, Turner. Ellen Haynes does not consider herself a thief when she appropriates that rare hunk of rock. So far as Haynes is concerned, she believes that she has every right to it, especially in view of the fact that the government ignored it, thus depriving both her and her father of whatever benefits it might bring. Since she considers herself no thief, she is under no moral compulsion to deliver."
"She is a deputized Guardsman," said Turner. "As such, she is sworn to uphold the law."
"She was—and until proven otherwise—a citizen and equally responsible to uphold the law," said Forrest. "But who took the thing in the first place?"
"She is now a sworn member—"
"Look, Captain Turner," interrupted Forrest sharply. "Do you mean to stand there and tell me that a policeman is morally better than a citizen?"
Turner flushed. If he said 'yes' he'd be talking like a hypocrite—if he said 'no' he would almost be admitting that he might have been mistaken in sending the desired crystal out under the supervision of the one who had initially stolen it. His training and loyalty to the Guard made him believe that a man dedicated to the interests of the law was under more compulsion than a mere citizen without an oath.
He admitted it was wrong. He was forgetting that a criminal can swear an oath and be unfaithful to it because he doesn't mind adding false witness to a list of greater crimes providing it is gainful for him.
Forrest noted the turmoil in the Guardsman's mind and pressed his point. "Ellen told me that you'd help her," he said. "And you have. I think that Ellen believed that you'd go all the way and eschew your uniform for her, but the way you did it was to both of your advantages."
"Ellen wouldn't lie to me," said Turner stoutly.
"I know," said Forrest cynically, "because she loves you. Fine. So if she loves you in the first place, why does she break the law you've sworn to uphold? To heck with appearances, Turner. You know in your own mind that if you condone her theft of the crystal you might as well throw that fancy black and gold suit into the converter and join her in a life of—well, she's no criminal save for one breach—petty crime. No doctor ever got along with a medicophobe for a wife. No policeman ever spent a happy married life with a she-pickpocket. So it is either your life or hers that you'll have to follow."
"Perhaps not," replied Turner. "If she does as I expect her to and returns the crystal she can erase her minor offense. Everybody makes mistakes, Forrest. The smart man seldom repeats his errors."
"You're still forgetting that Ellen Haynes considers her act no crime. Whatever the crystal is good for she has been deprived of benefit by a situation that ignores its existence. Her theft of the thing works no hardship on the Solar System or any of its people. Define theft, Turner."
"Look," snapped Turner, "Ellen is no criminal. She has committed a crime which she can erase by her own hand. Why should she be punished for an interplanetary offense when she can and will do that which will nullify her crime?"
"Meaning?"
"Meaning simply that the uninterested arm of the law will be more convinced when she turns up with the crystal and knows that I am still pursuing the thief. I'll gladly sacrifice one criminal—you—who have no justification as she has, in order to see her free and rewarded."
"Well," said Forrest standing up and stretching, "I think this has gone far enough, Turner." He picked up a package of cigarettes from the table, put one in his mouth, and then felt for a match. He lifted the fountain-pen-sized blaster from his belt and triggered it.
The tiny beam lit his cigarette and he drew in a lungful of smoke. He blew out the smoke in a large cloud that hid his actions momentarily. Under the cover of the smoke he turned the cap on the little gadget, pointed it at Turner, and pressed the button.
The tiny beam seared the air and drilled a tiny hole in the broad green muzzle-crystal of Turner's blaster. It heated to dull-red almost instantly, and Turner hurled the weapon from him with a shock of unexpected pain. The weapon charred the floor as it landed.
Following the beam as fast as he could Jim Forrest threw his Sunday punch while Turner was still reacting from the burn-shock The flying fist caught Turner on the jaw and the guardsman went down like a pole-axed steer. He came to as Forrest was snapping the Guardsman's own handcuffs on him.
"I'm no murderer," he told Turner. "I calculate it to be sixty hours to Mars at one gravity. I'll set the autopilot that way. I'll set the warning-radio also. I'll lock you in the living-suite below, where you will have all the comforts of a celibate home excepting the means with which to get out. In sixty hours your velocity will be zero with respect to Mars and the warning-radio will hurl out your own personal distress call."
"You're...!" blazed Turner.
"Yes, I know," smiled Forrest. "A criminal. Well, kidnaping a Guardsman is merely adding to my long and checkered career. But you see, Turner, I want that crystal. You can also add theft of an official Guardship to my roster of criminal acts. So, lead the way to the living-suite below."
"I'll...."
"Oh. Turner, I might suggest that when you come looking for me you be very careful. I'll be driving a Guardship, you know, and if someone takes a shot at me I'll be psychologically forced to defend myself as a mere matter of survival. Guardships are pretty well-armed, or need I tell you?"
Turner blazed with anger. "Okay," he snarled. "Lock me in. But you can't lick the whole system! We'll get you cold! And if in the meantime you intercept Miss Haynes, remember that you are interfering with an official deputy."
"Then," smiled Forrest quite cheerfully, "I'm actually helping you to prove that Ellen Haynes is no criminal, aren't I?"
Turner fumed and continued to fume as Jim Forrest welded the living-suite door shut with his pen-beam.
Twenty minutes later, Turner felt the ship turn and accelerate towards Mars. He felt a slight shock a moment later and knew that Jim Forrest had just cast off in his Guardship. He cursed roundly and then, sensibly, he sat down and relaxed.
He concluded sensibly there was little to be gained by spending sixty hours in self-villification.
He'd failed temporarily but Forrest couldn't lick the whole solar system....
Using Turner's matter-synchronized detector, Jim Forrest tracked the tiny space tender down in a matter of less than two hours. The tender, of course, was helpless when the Guardship tractor beam fastened onto it, and it was drawn easily into the tender-lock and anchored.
The door opened and Ellen Haynes emerged, furious.
"Before you say anything," said Jim, "tell me whether you were really going to headquarters or were just making off with the crystal again."
"What difference does it make now?" she asked bitterly.
"No difference to me," said Forrest idly. "I'm just trying to estimate your character."
"I'm not taken in," she snapped. "With certain individuals you might stir their interest enough to make them look at it askance. But with the Solar Lab, who've already ignored the thing for years, they'd continue. So...."
"So you think you're going to work on it yourself?"
"I most certainly am," she said with conviction.
He laughed shortly.
"You think not?" she demanded. "Either alone or with you, since you've been after it and seem to have both me and the zonium at the same time right now."
"Ellen," he said slowly, "I intend to destroy that crystal!"
She grabbed for the box and shielded it with her body but Jim shook his head. "Not here," he said. "There's nothing here that would destroy it."
"Your blaster?"
"Wouldn't touch it."
"I—a blaster wouldn't touch it?" asked Ellen Haynes in amazement.
"Wouldn't touch it," he said firmly and convincingly.
Ellen's eyes opened wide. "Armor!" she breathed. And in that one instant the whole mighty idea came, flooding her mind and making her almost reel in dizziness at the flood of jumbled ideas.
Guardships plated with zonium for protection; personal armor because zonium was light in weight; zonium-lined blaster barrels to keep the things from falling apart after a hundred or so shots and perhaps even super-projectors protected by zonium liners.
The big projectors used on the Guardships were none too efficient because they etched themselves into uselessness after a hundred or less of the gigantic blasts. Half of a Guardship's bulk was filled with spare blaster replacements.
"Armor," he nodded, with a look of horror.
"What's wrong with that?" she demanded sharply.
"That's the point. There's apparently nothing wrong with it," he said, "except that there's no real reason for it. Who or what will attack a Guardship? There is no common enemy loose in the Solar System and we know that there are no extra-solar races capable of any massed attack on Sol's family—so far, anyway. There is an occasional, wild-eyed pirate but he is usually tracked down within a few weeks after he takes his first victim. With zonium armor there could be piracy because a pirate could then laugh at the heavily-armed Guardships."
"But it sounds good," she interrupted.
"And you know darn well that the Guard would immediately plate their ships with zonium!"
"Certainly. And my income from that.... Why, I'd be unmentionably wealthy!"
She positively glowed for a moment with the idea. Then she turned to him and said, "But if a blaster wouldn't touch it, how do you hope to destroy it? Toss it into the sun?"
Jim Forrest paled. He walked over to her and pushed her aside. He took the zonium crystal from the box and hefted it while Ellen looked on in fear that he would destroy it then and there.
"Ellen Haynes," he said solemnly, "this much zonium if hurled into the sun would create a nova!"
"But it is so small."
"Yes, but zonium is a strange metal," he said. "The mass-energy relation is carefully disregarded by zonium. In normal matter, energy equals the mass times the square of the speed of light in centimeters per second."
"But its mass is not considerable."
"Zonium is a temporal metal," said Forrest. "When it is under the influence of a magnetic field passing through the magnetic axis—an electrical current through the electrical axis—and a beam of light through the optical axis its mass increases according to some exponential function of the energy levels of the radiation that is passing through it.
"Throw it into the sun where the radiation-energy output is some four million tons of energy per second and zonium increases its apparent mass by a factor of the cube—one exponential power for each axis accepting and passing radiation—of the mass of the zonium times the factorial expansion of the energy passing through it. It would be much like hurling Jupiter into the sun."
He handed her the crystal. "Ellen Haynes," he said dramatically, "you hold in your hand the agent of Sol's destruction!"
She looked at it with fascinated horror and gingerly replaced it in the packing.
"So develop it. Plate your ships with it. Line the millions of blasters with it. Line your power converters with it. Use zonium in the units that give each dwelling light and power. Load every sportsman's crate with it and have everybody tossing cubes of the stuff around. Interesting stuff—kids will be playing with it. Then calculate your chances of keeping a bit of it out of the sun."
Ellen Haynes shuddered. About once each year some spacecraft didn't return, usually a small, privately-owned job that was trying to cut the perihelion too thin. The mortality was rather high on the drones that rode the inner flame-area of Sol's domain with automatic recorders. Yet, with good supervision, zonium would be safe.
"How," she asked drily, "do you hope to destroy it?"
"I don't know," he said. "But it must be destroyed.”