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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/18814-h.zip b/18814-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..cc6dfd4 --- /dev/null +++ b/18814-h.zip diff --git a/18814-h/18814-h.htm b/18814-h/18814-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..82f4ee3 --- /dev/null +++ b/18814-h/18814-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1533 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Mercenaries, by Henry Beam Piper</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + hr.full { width: 100%; } + pre {font-size: 75%;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mercenaries, by Henry Beam Piper, +Illustrated by Brush</h1> +<pre> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Mercenaries</p> +<p>Author: Henry Beam Piper</p> +<p>Release Date: July 12, 2006 [eBook #18814]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MERCENARIES***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net/)</h3> +<p> </p> +<p>Transcriber's note:<br /> +<br /> +This etext was produced from <i>Astounding Science Fiction</i>, +March, 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence +that the copyright on this publication was renewed. +</p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1>THE MERCENARIES</h1> + +<h2>BY H. BEAM PIPER</h2> + +<h3>Illustrated by Brush</h3> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Once, wars were won by maneuvering hired fighting men; now wars +are different—and the hired experts are different. But the human +problems remain!</i></p></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p>Duncan MacLeod hung up the suit he had taken off, and sealed his shirt, +socks and underwear in a laundry envelope bearing his name and +identity-number, tossing this into one of the wire baskets provided for +the purpose. Then, naked except for the plastic identity disk around his +neck, he went over to the desk, turned in his locker key, and passed +into the big room beyond.</p> + +<p>Four or five young men, probably soldiers on their way to town, were +coming through from the other side. Like MacLeod, they wore only the +plastic disks they had received in exchange for the metal ones they wore +inside the reservation, and they were being searched by attendants who +combed through their hair, probed into ears and nostrils, peered into +mouths with tiny searchlights, and employed a variety of magnetic and +electronic detectors.</p> + +<p>To this search MacLeod submitted wearily. He had become quite a +connoisseur of security measures in fifteen years' research and +development work for a dozen different nations, but the Tonto Basin +Research Establishment of the Philadelphia Project exceeded anything he +had seen before. There were gray-haired veterans of the old Manhattan +Project here, men who had worked with Fermi at Chicago, or with +Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, twenty years before, and they swore in amused +exasperation when they thought of how the relatively mild regulations of +those days had irked them. And yet, the very existence of the Manhattan +Project had been kept a secret from all but those engaged in it, and its +purpose from most of them. Today, in 1965, there might have been a few +wandering tribesmen in Somaliland or the Kirghiz Steppes who had never +heard of the Western Union's Philadelphia Project, or of the Fourth +Komintern's Red Triumph Five-Year Plan, or of the Islamic Kaliphate's +Al-Borak Undertaking, or of the Ibero-American Confederation's Cavor +Project, but every literate person in the world knew that the four great +power-blocs were racing desperately to launch the first spaceship to +reach the Moon and build the Lunar fortress that would insure world +supremacy.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/illus1.jpg"><img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/></a> +</div> + +<p>He turned in the nonmagnetic identity disk at the desk on the other side +of the search room, receiving the metal one he wore inside the +reservation, and with it the key to his inside locker. He put on the +clothes he had left behind when he had passed out, and filled his +pockets with the miscellany of small articles he had not been allowed to +carry off the reservation. He knotted the garish necktie affected by the +civilian workers and in particular by members of the MacLeod Research +Team to advertise their nonmilitary status, lit his pipe, and walked out +into the open gallery beyond.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Karen Hilquist was waiting for him there, reclining in one of the metal +chairs. She looked cool in the belted white coveralls, with the white +turban bound around her yellow hair, and very beautiful, and when he saw +her, his heart gave a little bump, like a geiger responding to an +ionizing particle. It always did that, although they had been together +for twelve years, and married for ten. Then she saw him and smiled, and +he came over, fanning himself with his sun helmet, and dropped into a +chair beside her.</p> + +<p>"Did you call our center for a jeep?" he asked. When she nodded, he +continued: "I thought you would, so I didn't bother."</p> + +<p>For a while, they sat silent, looking with bored distaste at the swarm +of steel-helmeted Army riflemen and tommy-gunners guarding the transfer +platforms and the vehicles gate. A string of trucks had been passed +under heavy guard into the clearance compound: they were now unloading +supplies onto a platform, at the other side of which other trucks were +backed waiting to receive the shipment. A hundred feet of bare concrete +and fifty armed soldiers separated these from the men and trucks from +the outside, preventing contact.</p> + +<p>"And still they can't stop leaks," Karen said softly. "And we get blamed +for it."</p> + +<p>MacLeod nodded and started to say something, when his attention was +drawn by a commotion on the driveway. A big Tucker limousine with an +O.D. paint job and the single-starred flag of a brigadier general was +approaching, horning impatiently. In the back seat MacLeod could see a +heavy-shouldered figure with the face of a bad-tempered great +Dane—General Daniel Nayland, the military commander of Tonto Basin. The +inside guards jumped to attention and saluted; the barrier shot up as +though rocket-propelled, and the car slid through; the barrier slammed +down behind it. On the other side, the guards were hurling themselves +into a frenzy of saluting. Karen made a face after the receding car and +muttered something in Hindustani. She probably didn't know the literal +meaning of what she had called General Nayland, but she understood that +it was a term of extreme opprobrium.</p> + + +<p>Her husband contributed: "His idea of Heaven would be a huge research +establishment, where he'd be a five-star general, and Galileo, Newton, +Priestley, Dalton, Maxwell, Planck and Einstein would be tech +sergeants."</p> + +<p>"And Marie Curie and Lise Meitner would be Wac corporals," Karen added. +"He really hates all of us, doesn't he?"</p> + +<p>"He hates our Team," MacLeod replied. "In the first place, we're a lot +of civilians, who aren't subject to his regulations and don't have to +salute him. We're working under contract with the Western Union, not +with the United States Government, and as the United States participates +in the Western Union on a treaty basis, our contract has the force of a +treaty obligation. It gives us what amounts to extraterritoriality, like +Europeans in China during the Nineteenth Century. So we have our own +transport, for which he must furnish petrol, and our own armed guard, +and we fly our own flag over Team Center, and that gripes him as much as +anything else. That and the fact that we're foreigners. So wouldn't he +love to make this espionage rap stick on us!"</p> + +<p>"And our contract specifically gives the United States the right to take +action against us in case we endanger the national security," Karen +added. She stuffed her cigarette into the not-too-recently-emptied +receiver beside her chair, her blue eyes troubled. "You know, some of us +could get shot over this, if we're not careful. Dunc, does it really +have to be one of our own people who—?"</p> + +<p>"I don't see how it could be anybody else," MacLeod said. "I don't like +the idea any more than you do, but there it is."</p> + +<p>"Well, what are we going to do? Is there nobody whom we can trust?"</p> + +<p>"Among the technicians and guards, yes. I could think of a score +who are absolutely loyal. But among the Team itself—the top +researchers—there's nobody I'd take a chance on but Kato Sugihara."</p> + +<p>"Can you even be sure of him? I'd hate to think of him as a traitor, +but—"</p> + +<p>"I have a couple of reasons for eliminating Kato," MacLeod said. "In the +first place, outside nucleonic and binding-force physics, there are only +three things he's interested in. Jitterbugging, hand-painted neckties, +and Southern-style cooking. If he went over to the Komintern, he +wouldn't be able to get any of those. Then, he only spends about half +his share of the Team's profits, and turns the rest back into the Team +Fund. He has a credit of about a hundred thousand dollars, which he'd +lose by leaving us. And then, there's another thing. Kato's father was +killed on Guadalcanal, in 1942, when he was only five. After that he was +brought up in the teachings of Bushido by his grandfather, an old-time +samurai. Bushido is open to some criticism, but nobody can show where +double-crossing your own gang is good Bushido. And today, Japan is +allied with the Western Union, and in any case, he wouldn't help the +Komintern. The Japs'll forgive Russia for that Mussolini back-stab in +1945 after the Irish start building monuments to Cromwell."</p> + +<p>A light-blue jeep, lettered <i>MacLeod Research Team</i> in cherry-red, was +approaching across the wide concrete apron. MacLeod grinned.</p> + +<p>"Here it comes. Fasten your safety belt when you get in; that's Ahmed +driving."</p> + +<p>Karen looked at her watch. "And it's almost time for dinner. You know, I +dread the thought of sitting at the table with the others, and wondering +which of them is betraying us."</p> + +<p>"Only nine of us, instead of thirteen, and still one is a Judas," +MacLeod said. "I suppose there's always a place for Judas, at any +table."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The MacLeod Team dined together, apart from their assistants and +technicians and students. This was no snobbish attempt at +class-distinction: matters of Team policy were often discussed at the +big round table, and the more confidential details of their work. People +who have only their knowledge and their ideas to sell are wary about +bandying either loosely, and the six men and three women who faced each +other across the twelve-foot diameter of the teakwood table had no other +stock-in-trade.</p> + +<p>They were nine people of nine different nationalities, or they were nine +people of the common extra-nationality of science. That Duncan MacLeod, +their leader, had grown up in the Transvaal and his wife had been born +in the Swedish university town of Upsala was typical not only of their +own group but of the hundreds of independent research-teams that had +sprung up after the Second World War. The scientist-adventurer may have +been born of the relentless struggle for scientific armament supremacy +among nations and the competition for improved techniques among +industrial corporations during the late 1950s and early '60s, but he had +been begotten when two masses of uranium came together at the top of a +steel tower in New Mexico in 1945. And, because scientific research is +pre-eminently a matter of pooling brains and efforts, the independent +scientists had banded together into teams whose leaders acquired power +greater than that of any <i>condottiere</i> captain of Renaissance Italy.</p> + +<p>Duncan MacLeod, sitting outwardly relaxed and merry and secretly +watchful and bitterly sad, was such a free-captain of science. One by +one, the others had rallied around him, not because he was a greater +physicist than they, but because he was a bolder, more clever, less +scrupulous adventurer, better able to guide them through the maze of +international power-politics and the no less ruthless if less nakedly +violent world of Big Industry.</p> + +<p>There was his wife, Karen Hilquist, the young metallurgist who, before +she was twenty-five, had perfected a new hardening process for SKF and +an incredibly tough gun-steel for the Bofors works. In the few minutes +since they had returned to Team Center, she had managed to change her +coveralls for a skirt and blouse, and do something intriguing with her +hair.</p> + +<p>And there was Kato Sugihara, looking younger than his twenty-eight +years, who had begun to demonstrate the existence of whole orders of +structure below the level of nuclear particles.</p> + +<p>There was Suzanne Maillard, her gray hair upswept from a face that had +never been beautiful but which was alive with something rarer than mere +beauty: she possessed, at the brink of fifty, a charm and smartness that +many women half her age might have envied, and she knew more about +cosmic rays than any other person living.</p> + +<p>And Adam Lowiewski, his black mustache contrasting so oddly with his +silver hair, frantically scribbling equations on his doodling-pad, as +though his racing fingers could never keep pace with his brain, and +explaining them, with obvious condescension, to the boyish-looking +Japanese beside him. He was one of the greatest of living mathematicians +by anybody's reckoning—<i>the</i> greatest, by his own.</p> + +<p>And Sir Neville Lawton, the electronics expert, with thinning red-gray +hair and meticulously-clipped mustache, who always gave the impression +of being in evening clothes, even when, as now, he was dressed in faded +khaki.</p> + +<p>And Heym ben-Hillel, the Israeli quantum and wave-mechanics man, his +heaping dinner plate an affront to the Laws of Moses, his white hair a +fluffy, tangled chaos, laughing at an impassively-delivered joke the +English knight had made.</p> + +<p>And Rudolf von Heldenfeld, with a thin-lipped killer's mouth and a +frozen face that never betrayed its owner's thoughts—he was the +specialist in magnetic currents and electromagnetic fields.</p> + +<p>And Farida Khouroglu, the Turkish girl whom MacLeod and Karen had found +begging in the streets of Istanbul, ten years ago, and who had grown up +following the fortunes of the MacLeod Team on every continent and in a +score of nations. It was doubtful if she had ever had a day's formal +schooling in her life, but now she was secretary of the Team, with a +grasp of physics that would have shamed many a professor. She had grown +up a beauty, too, with the large dark eyes and jet-black hair and +paper-white skin of her race. She and Kato Sugihara were very much in +love.</p> + +<p>A good team; the best physics-research team in a power-mad, +knowledge-hungry world. MacLeod thought, toying with the stem of his +wineglass, of some of their triumphs: The West Australia Atomic Power +Plant. The Segovia Plutonium Works, which had got them all titled as +Grandees of the restored Spanish Monarchy. The sea-water chemical +extraction plant in Puerto Rico, where they had worked for Associated +Enterprises, whose president, Blake Hartley, had later become President +of the United States. The hard-won victory over a seemingly insoluble +problem in the Belgian Congo uranium mines——He thought, too, of the +dangers they had faced together, in a world where soldiers must use the +weapons of science and scientists must learn the arts of violence. Of +the treachery of the Islamic Kaliphate, for whom they had once worked; +of the intrigues and plots which had surrounded them in Spain; of the +many attempted kidnappings and assassinations; of the time in Basra when +they had fought with pistols and tommy guns and snatched-up clubs and +flasks of acid to defend their laboratories.</p> + +<p>A good team—before the rot of treason had touched it. He could almost +smell the putrid stench of it, and yet, as he glanced from face to face, +he could not guess the traitor. And he had so little time—</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Kato Sugihara's voice rose to dominate the murmur of conversation around +the table.</p> + +<p>"I think I am getting somewhere on my photon-neutrino-electron +interchange-cycle," he announced. "And I think it can be correlated to +the collapsed-matter research."</p> + +<p>"So?" von Heldenfeld looked up in interest. "And not with the problem of +what goes on in the 'hot layer' surrounding the Earth?"</p> + +<p>"No, Suzanne talked me out of that idea," the Japanese replied. "That's +just a secondary effect of the effect of cosmic rays and solar +radiations on the order of particles existing at that level. But I think +that I have the key to the problem of collapsing matter to plate the +hull of the spaceship."</p> + +<p>"That's interesting," Sir Neville Lawton commented. "How so?"</p> + +<p>"Well, you know what happens when a photon comes in contact with the +atomic structure of matter," Kato said. "There may be an elastic +collision, in which the photon merely bounces off. Macroscopically, +that's the effect we call reflection of light. Or there may be an +inelastic collision, when the photon hits an atom and knocks out an +electron—the old photoelectric effect. Or, the photon may be retained +for a while and emitted again relatively unchanged—the effect observed +in luminous paint. Or, the photon may penetrate, undergo a change to a +neutrino, and either remain in the nucleus of the atom or pass through +it, depending upon a number of factors. All this, of course, is old +stuff; even the photon-neutrino interchange has been known since the +mid-'50s, when the Gamow neutrino-counter was developed. But now we come +to what you have been so good as to christen the Sugihara Effect—the +neutrino picking up a negative charge and, in effect, turning into an +electron, and then losing its charge, turning back into a neutrino, and +then, as in the case of metal heated to incandescence, being emitted +again as a photon.</p> + +<p>"At first, we thought this had no connection with the spaceship +insulation problem we are under contract to work out, and we agreed to +keep this effect a Team secret until we could find out if it had +commercial possibilities. But now, I find that it has a direct +connection with the collapsed-matter problem. When the electron loses +its negative charge and reverts to a neutrino, there is a definite +accretion of interatomic binding-force, and the molecule, or the +crystalline lattice or whatever tends to contract, and when the neutrino +becomes a photon, the nucleus of the atom contracts."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Heym ben-Hillel was sitting oblivious to everything but his young +colleague's words, a slice of the flesh of the unclean beast impaled on +his fork and halfway to his mouth.</p> + +<p>"Yes! Certainly!" he exclaimed. "That would explain so many things I +have wondered about: And of course, there are other forces at work +which, in the course of nature, balance that effect—"</p> + +<p>"But can the process be controlled?" Suzanne Maillard wanted to know. +"Can you convert electrons to neutrinos and then to photons in +sufficient numbers, and eliminate other effects that would cause +compensating atomic and molecular expansion?"</p> + +<p>Kato grinned, like a tomcat contemplating the bones of a fish he has +just eaten.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I can. I have." He turned to MacLeod. "Remember those bullets I +got from you?" he asked.</p> + +<p>MacLeod nodded. He handloaded for his .38-special, and like all advanced +cases of handloading-fever, he was religiously fanatical about +uniformity of bullet weights and dimensions. Unlike most handloaders, he +had available the instruments to secure such uniformity.</p> + +<p>"Those bullets are as nearly alike as different objects can +be," Kato said. "They weigh 158 grains, and that means +one-five-eight-point-zero-zero-zero-practically-nothing. The diameter is +.35903 inches. All right; I've been subjecting those bullets to +different radiation-bombardments, and the best results have given me a +bullet with a diameter of .35892 inches, and the weight is unchanged. In +other words, there's been no loss of mass, but the mass had contracted. +And that's only been the first test."</p> + +<p>"Well, write up everything you have on it, and we'll lay out further +experimental work," MacLeod said. He glanced around the table. "So far, +we can't be entirely sure. The shrinkage may be all in the crystalline +lattice: the atomic structure may be unchanged. What we need is matter +that is really collapsed."</p> + +<p>"I'll do that," Kato said. "Barida, I'll have all my data available for +you before noon tomorrow: you can make up copies for all Team members."</p> + +<p>"Make mine on microfilm, for projection," von Heldenfeld said.</p> + +<p>"Mine, too," Sir Neville Lawton added.</p> + +<p>"Better make microfilm copies for everybody," Heym ben-Hillel suggested. +"They're handier than type-script."</p> + +<p>MacLeod rose silently and tiptoed around behind his wife and Rudolf von +Heldenfeld, to touch Kato Sugihara on the shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Come on outside, Kato," he whispered. "I want to talk to you."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The Japanese nodded and rose, following him outside onto the roof above +the laboratories. They walked over to the edge and stopped at the +balustrade.</p> + +<p>"Kato, when you write up your stuff, I want you to falsify everything +you can. Put it in such form that the data will be absolutely worthless, +but also in such form that nobody, not even Team members, will know it +has been falsified. Can you do that?"</p> + +<p>Kato's almond-shaped eyes widened. "Of course I can, Dunc," he replied. +"But why—?"</p> + +<p>"I hate to say this, but we have a traitor in the Team. One of those +people back in the dining room is selling us out to the Fourth +Komintern. I know it's not Karen, and I know it's not you, and that's as +much as I do know, now."</p> + +<p>The Japanese sucked in his breath in a sharp hiss. "You wouldn't say +that unless you were sure, Dunc," he said.</p> + +<p>"No. At about 1000 this morning, Dr. Weissberg, the civilian director, +called me to his office. I found him very much upset. He told me that +General Nayland is accusing us—by which he meant this Team—of +furnishing secret information on our subproject to Komintern agents. He +said that British Intelligence agents at Smolensk had learned that the +Red Triumph laboratories there were working along lines of research +originated at MacLeod Team Center here. They relayed the information to +Western Union Central Intelligence, and WU passed it on to United States +Central Intelligence, and now Counter Espionage is riding Nayland about +it, and he's trying to make us the goat."</p> + +<p>"He would love to get some of us shot," Kato said. "And that could +happen. They took a long time getting tough about espionage in this +country, but when Americans get tough about something, they get tough +right. But look here; we handed in our progress-reports to Felix +Weissberg, and he passed them on to Nayland. Couldn't the leak be right +in Nayland's own HQ?"</p> + +<p>"That's what I thought, at first," MacLeod replied. "Just wishful +thinking, though. Fact is, I went up to Nayland's HQ and had it out with +him; accused him of just that. I think I threw enough of a scare into +him to hold him for a couple of days. I wanted to know just what it was +the Komintern was supposed to have got from us, but he wouldn't tell me. +That, of course, was classified-stuff."</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"Well then, Karen and I got our digestive tracts emptied and went in to +town, where I could use a phone that didn't go through a military +switch-board, and I put through a call to Allan Hartley, President +Hartley's son. He owes us a break, after the work we did in Puerto Rico. +I told him all I wanted was some information to help clear ourselves, +and he told me to wait a half an hour and then call Counter Espionage +Office in Washington and talk to General Hammond."</p> + +<p>"Ha! If Allan Hartley's for us, what are we worried about?" Kato asked. +"I always knew he was the power back of Associated Enterprises and his +father was the front-man: I'll bet it's the same with the Government."</p> + +<p>"Allan Hartley's for us as long as our nose is clean. If we let it get +dirty, we get it bloodied, too. We have to clean it ourselves," MacLeod +told him. "But here's what Hammond gave me: The Komintern knows all +about our collapsed-matter experiments with zinc, titanium and nickel. +They know about our theoretical work on cosmic rays, including Suzanne's +work up to about a month ago. They know about that effect Sir Neville +and Heym discovered two months ago." He paused. "And they know about the +photon-neutrino-electron interchange."</p> + +<p>Kato responded to this with a gruesome double-take that gave his face +the fleeting appearance of an ancient samurai war mask.</p> + +<p>"That wasn't included in any report we ever made," he said. "You're +right: the leak comes from inside the Team. It must be Sir Neville, or +Suzanne, or Heym ben-Hillel, or Adam Lowiewski, or Rudolf von +Heldenfeld, or—No! No, I can't believe it could be Farida!" He looked +at MacLeod pleadingly. "You don't think she could have—?"</p> + +<p>"No, Kato. The Team's her whole life, even more than it is mine. She +came with us when she was only twelve, and grew up with us. She doesn't +know any other life than this, and wouldn't want any other. It has to be +one of the other five."</p> + +<p>"Well, there's Suzanne," Kato began. "She had to clear out of France +because of political activities, after the collapse of the Fourth +Republic and the establishment of the Rightist Directoire in '57. And +she worked with Joliot-Curie, and she was at the University of Louvain +in the early '50s, when that place was crawling with Commies."</p> + +<p>"And that brings us to Sir Neville," MacLeod added. "He dabbles in +spiritualism; he and Suzanne do planchette-seances. A planchette can be +manipulated. Maybe Suzanne produced a communication advising Sir Neville +to help the Komintern."</p> + +<p>"Could be. Then, how about Lowiewski? He's a Pole who can't go back to +Poland, and Poland's a Komintern country." Kato pointed out. "Maybe he'd +sell us out for amnesty, though why he'd want to go back there, the way +things are now—?"</p> + +<p>"His vanity. You know, missionary-school native going back to the +village wearing real pants, to show off to the savages. Used to be a +standing joke, down where I came from." MacLeod thought for a moment. +"And Rudolf: he's always had a poor view of the democratic system of +government. He might feel more at home with the Komintern. Of course, +the Ruskis killed his parents in 1945—"</p> + +<p>"So what?" Kato retorted. "The Americans killed my father in 1942, but +I'm not making an issue out of it. That was another war; Japan's a +Western Union country, now. So's Germany——How about Heym, by the way? +Remember when the Komintern wanted us to come to Russia and do the same +work we're doing here?"</p> + +<p>"I remember that after we turned them down, somebody tried to kidnap +Karen," MacLeod said grimly. "I remember a couple of Russians got rather +suddenly dead trying it, too."</p> + +<p>"I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of our round-table argument +when the proposition was considered. Heym was in favor of accepting. Now +that, I would say, indicates either Communist sympathies or an +overtrusting nature," Kato submitted. "And a lot of grade-A traitors +have been made out of people with trusting natures."</p> + +<p>MacLeod got out his pipe and lit it. For a long time, he stared out +across the mountain-ringed vista of sagebrush, dotted at wide intervals +with the bulks of research-centers and the red roofs of the villages.</p> + +<p>"Kato, I think I know how we're going to find out which one it is," he +said. "First of all, you write up your data, and falsify it so that it +won't do any damage if it gets into Komintern hands. And then—"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The next day started in an atmosphere of suppressed excitement and +anxiety, which, beginning with MacLeod and Karen and Kato Sugihara, +seemed to communicate itself by contagion to everybody in the MacLeod +Team's laboratories. The top researchers and their immediate assistants +and students were the first to catch it; they ascribed the tension under +which their leader and his wife and the Japanese labored to the recent +developments in the collapsed-matter problem. Then, there were about a +dozen implicitly-trusted technicians and guards, who had been secretly +gathered in MacLeod's office the night before and informed of the crisis +that had arisen. Their associates could not miss the fact that they were +preoccupied with something unusual.</p> + +<p>They were a variegated crew; men who had been added to the Team in every +corner of the world. There was Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman, the Arab jeep-driver +who had joined them in Basra. There was the wiry little Greek whom +everybody called Alex Unpronounceable. There was an Italian, and two +Chinese, and a cashiered French Air Force officer, and a Malay, and the +son of an English earl who insisted that his name was Bertie Wooster. +They had sworn themselves to secrecy, had heard MacLeod's story with a +polylingual burst of pious or blasphemous exclamations, and then they +had scattered, each to the work assigned him.</p> + +<p>MacLeod had risen early and submitted to the ordeal of the search to +leave the reservation and go to town again, this time for a conference +at the shabby back-street cigar store that concealed a Counter Espionage +center. He had returned just as Farida Khouroglu was finishing the +microfilm copies of Kato's ingeniously-concocted pseudo-data. These +copies were distributed at noon, while the Team was lunching, along with +carbons of the original type-script.</p> + +<p>He was the first to leave the table, going directly to the basement, +where Alex Unpronounceable and the man who had got his alias from the +works of P. G. Wodehouse were listening in on the telephone calls going +in and out through the Team-center switch-board, and making recordings. +For two hours, MacLeod remained with them. He heard Suzanne Maillard and +some woman who was talking from a number in the Army married-officers' +settlement making arrangements about a party. He heard Rudolf von +Heldenfeld make a date with some girl. He listened to a violent +altercation between the Team chef and somebody at Army Quartermaster's +HQ about the quality of a lot of dressed chicken. He listened to a call +that came in for Adam Lowiewski, the mathematician.</p> + +<p>"This is Joe," the caller said. "I've got to go to town late this +afternoon, but I was wondering if you'd have time to meet me at the +Recreation House at Oppenheimer Village for a game of chess. I'm calling +from there, now."</p> + +<p>"Fine; I can make it," Lowiewski's voice replied. "I'm in the middle of +a devil's own mathematical problem; maybe a game of chess would clear my +head. I have a new queen's-knight gambit I want to try on you, anyhow."</p> + +<p>Bertie Wooster looked up sharply. "Now there; that may be what we're—"</p> + +<p>The telephone beside MacLeod rang. He scooped it up; named himself into +it.</p> + +<p>It was Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman. "Look, chief; I tail this guy to Oppenheimer +Village," the Arab, who had learned English from American movies, +answered. "He goes into the rec-joint. I slide in after him, an' he +ain't in sight. I'm lookin' around for him, see, when he comes bargin' +outa the Don Ameche box. Then he grabs a table an' a beer. What next?"</p> + +<p>"Stay there; keep an eye on him," MacLeod told him. "If I want you, I'll +call."</p> + +<p>MacLeod hung up and straightened, feeling under his packet for his +.38-special.</p> + +<p>"That's it, boys," he said. "Lowiewski. Come on."</p> + +<p>"Hah!" Alex Unpronounceable had his gun out and was checking the +cylinder. He spoke briefly in description of the Polish mathematician's +ancestry, physical characteristics, and probable post-mortem +destination. Then he put the gun away, and the three men left the +basement.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>For minutes that seamed like hours, MacLeod and the Greek waited on the +main floor, where they could watch both the elevators and the stairway. +Bertie Wooster had gone up to alert Kato Sugihara and Karen. Then the +door of one of the elevators opened and Adam Lowiewski emerged, with +Kato behind him, apparently lost in a bulky scientific journal he was +reading. The Greek moved in from one side, and MacLeod stepped in front +of the Pole.</p> + +<p>"Hi, Adam," he greeted. "Have you looked into that batch of data yet?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. Yes." Lowiewski seemed barely able to keep his impatience +within the bounds of politeness. "Of course, it's out of my line, but +the mathematics seems sound." He started to move away.</p> + +<p>"You're not going anywhere," MacLeod told him. "The chess game is over. +The red pawns are taken—the one at Oppenheimer Village, and the one +here."</p> + +<p>There was a split second in which Lowiewski struggled—almost +successfully—to erase the consternation from his face.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you're talking about," he began. His right hand +started to slide under his left coat lapel.</p> + +<p>MacLeod's Colt was covering him before he could complete the movement. +At the same time, Kato Sugihara dropped the paper-bound periodical, +revealing the thin-bladed knife he had concealed under it. He stepped +forward, pressing the point of the weapon against the Pole's side. With +the other hand, he reached across Lowiewski's chest and jerked the +pistol from his shoulder-holster. It was one of the elegant little .32 +Beretta 1954 Model automatics.</p> + +<p>"Into the elevator," MacLeod ordered. An increasing pressure of Kato's +knife emphasized the order. "And watch him; don't let him get rid of +anything," he added to the Greek.</p> + +<p>"If you would explain this outrage—" Lowiewski began. "I assume it is +your idea of a joke—"</p> + +<p>Without even replying, MacLeod slammed the doors and started the +elevator upward, letting it rise six floors to the living quarters. +Karen Hilquist and the aristocratic black-sheep who called himself +Bertie Wooster were waiting when he opened the door. The Englishman took +one of Lowiewski's arms; MacLeod took the other. The rest fell in behind +as they hustled the captive down the hall and into the big sound-proofed +dining room. They kept Lowiewski standing, well away from any movable +object in the room; Alex Unpronounceable took his left arm as MacLeod +released it and went to the communicator and punched the all-outlets +button.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Maillard; Dr. Sir Neville Lawton; Dr. ben-Hillel; Dr. von +Heldenfeld; Mlle. Khouroglu," he called. "Dr. MacLeod speaking. Come at +once, repeat at once, to the round table—Dr. Maillard; Dr. Sir Neville +Lawton—"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Karen said something to the Japanese and went outside. For a while, +nobody spoke. Kato came over and lit a cigarette in the bowl of +MacLeod's pipe. Then the other Team members entered in a body. Evidently +Karen had intercepted them in the hallway and warned them that they +would find some unusual situation inside; even so, there was a burst of +surprised exclamations when they found Adam Lowiewski under detention.</p> + +<p>"Ladies and gentlemen," MacLeod said, "I regret to tell you that I have +placed our colleague, Dr. Lowiewski, under arrest. He is suspected of +betraying confidential data to agents of the Fourth Komintern. +Yesterday, I learned that data on all our work here, including +Team-secret data on the Sugihara Effect, had got into the hands of the +Komintern and was being used in research at the Smolensk laboratories. I +also learned that General Nayland blames this Team as a whole with +double-dealing and selling this data to the Komintern. I don't need to +go into any lengthy exposition of General Nayland's attitude toward this +Team, or toward Free Scientists as a class, or toward the +research-contract system. Nor do I need to point out that if he pressed +these charges against us, some of us could easily suffer death or +imprisonment."</p> + +<p>"So he had to have a victim in a hurry, and pulled my name out of the +hat," Lowiewski sneered.</p> + +<p>"I appreciate the gravity of the situation," Sir Neville Lawton said. +"And if the Sugihara Effect was among the data betrayed, I can +understand that nobody but one of us could have betrayed it. But why, +necessarily, should it be Adam? We all have unlimited access to all +records and theoretical data."</p> + +<p>"Exactly. But collecting information is the smallest and easiest part of +espionage. Almost anybody can collect information. Where the spy really +earns his pay is in transmitting of information. Now, think of the +almost fantastic security measures in force here, and consider how you +would get such information, including masses of mathematical data beyond +any human power of memorization, out of this reservation."</p> + +<p>"Ha, nobody can take anything out," Suzanne Maillard said. "Not even +one's breakfast. Is Adam accused of sorcery, too?"</p> + +<p>"The only material things that are allowed to leave this reservation are +sealed cases of models and data shipped to the different development +plants. And the Sugihara Effect never was reported, and wouldn't go out +that way," Heym ben-Hillel objected.</p> + +<p>"But the data on the Sugihara Effect reached Smolensk," MacLeod replied. +"And don't talk about Darwin and Wallace: it wasn't a coincidence. This +stuff was taken out of the Tonto Basin Reservation by the only person +who could have done so, in the only way that anything could leave the +reservation without search. So I had that person shadowed, and at the +same time I had our telephone lines tapped, and eavesdropped on all +calls entering or leaving this center. And the person who had to be the +spy-courier called Adam Lowiewski, and Lowiewski made an appointment to +meet him at the Oppenheimer Village Recreation House to play chess."</p> + +<p>"Very suspicious, very suspicious," Lowiewski derided. "I receive a call +from a friend at the same time that some anonymous suspect is using the +phone. There are only five hundred telephone conversations a minute on +this reservation."</p> + +<p>"Immediately, Dr. Lowiewski attempted to leave this building," MacLeod +went on. "When I intercepted him, he tried to draw a pistol. This one." +He exhibited the Beretta. "I am now going to have Dr. Lowiewski +searched, in the presence of all of you." He nodded to Alex and the +Englishman.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>They did their work thoroughly. A pile of Lowiewski's pocket effects was +made on the table; as each item was added to it, the Pole made some +sarcastic comment.</p> + +<p>"And that pack of cigarettes: unopened," he jeered. "I suppose I +communicated the data to the manufacturers by telepathy, and they +printed it on the cigarette papers in invisible ink."</p> + +<p>"Maybe not. Maybe you opened the pack, and then resealed it," Kato +suggested. "A heated spatula under the cellophane; like this."</p> + +<p>He used the point of his knife to illustrate. The cellophane came +unsealed with surprising ease: so did the revenue stamp. He dumped out +the contents of the pack: sixteen cigarettes, four cigarette tip-ends, +four bits snapped from the other ends—and a small aluminum microfilm +capsule.</p> + +<p>Lowiewski's face twitched. For an instant, he tried vainly to break +loose from the men who held him. Then he slumped into a chair. Heym +ben-Hillel gasped in shocked surprise. Suzanne Maillard gave a short, +felinelike cry. Sir Neville Lawton looked at the capsule curiously and +said: "Well, my sainted Aunt Agatha!"</p> + +<p>"That's the capsule I gave him, at noon," Farida Khouroglu exclaimed, +picking it up. She opened it and pulled out a roll of colloidex +projection film. There was also a bit of cigarette paper in the capsule, +upon which a notation had been made in Kyrilic characters.</p> + +<p>Rudolf von Heldenfeld could read Russian. "'Data on new development of +photon-neutrino-electron interchange. 22 July, '65. Vladmir.' Vladmir, I +suppose, is this <i>schweinhund's</i> code name," he added.</p> + +<p>The film and the paper passed from hand to hand. The other members of +the Team sat down; there was a tendency to move away from the chair +occupied by Adam Lowiewski. He noticed this and sneered.</p> + +<p>"Afraid of contamination from the moral leper?" he asked. "You were glad +enough to have me correct your stupid mathematical errors."</p> + +<p>Kato Sugihara picked up the capsule, took a final glance at the +cigarette pack, and said to MacLeod: "I'll be back as soon as this is +done." With that, he left the room, followed by Bertie Wooster and the +Greek.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Heym ben-Hillel turned to the others: his eyes had the hurt and puzzled +look of a dog that has been kicked for no reason. "But why did he do +this?" he asked.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/illus3.jpg"><img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/></a> +</div> + +<p>"He just told you," MacLeod replied. "He's the great Adam Lowiewski. +Checking math for a physics-research team is beneath his dignity. I +suppose the Komintern offered him a professorship at Stalin University." +He was watching Lowiewski's face keenly. "No," he continued. "It was +probably the mathematics chair of the Soviet Academy of Sciences."</p> + +<p>"But who was this person who could smuggle microfilm out of the +reservation?" Suzanne Maillard wanted to know. "Somebody has invented +teleportation, then?"</p> + +<p>MacLeod shook his head. "It was General Nayland's chauffeur. It had to +be. General Nayland's car is the only thing that gets out of here +without being searched. The car itself is serviced at Army vehicles +pool; nobody could hide anything in it for a confederate to pick up +outside. Nayland is a stuffed shirt of the first stuffing, and a tinpot +Hitler to boot, but he is fanatically and incorruptibly patriotic. That +leaves the chauffeur. When Nayland's in the car, nobody even sees him; +he might as well be a robot steering-device. Old case of Father Brown's +Invisible Man. So, since he had to be the courier, all I did was have +Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman shadow him, and at the same time tap our phones. +When he contacted Lowiewski, I knew Lowiewski was our traitor."</p> + +<p>Sir Neville Lawton gave a strangling laugh. "Oh, my dear Aunt Fanny! And +Nayland goes positively crackers on security. He gets goose pimples +every time he hears somebody saying 'E = mc<sup>2</sup>', for fear a Komintern +spy might hear him. It's a wonder he hasn't put the value of Planck's +Constant on the classified list. He sets up all these fantastic search +rooms and barriers, and then he drives through the gate, honking his +bloody horn, with his chauffeur's pockets full of top secrets. Now I've +seen everything!"</p> + +<p>"Not quite everything," MacLeod said. "Kato's going to put that capsule +in another cigarette pack, and he'll send one of his lab girls to +Oppenheimer Village with it, with a message from Lowiewski to the effect +that he couldn't get away. And when this chauffeur takes it out, he'll +run into a Counter Espionage road-block on the way to town. They'll +shoot him, of course, and they'll probably transfer Nayland to the +Mississippi Valley Flood Control Project, where he can't do any more +damage. At least, we'll have him out of our hair."</p> + +<p>"If we have any hair left," Heym ben-Hillel gloomed. "You've got Nayland +into trouble, but you haven't got us out of it."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" Suzanne Maillard demanded. "He's found the traitor +and stopped the leak."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but we're still responsible, as a team, for this betrayal," the +Israeli pointed out. "This Nayland is only a symptom of the enmity which +politicians and militarists feel toward the Free Scientists, and of +their opposition to the research-contract system. Now they have a +scandal to use. Our part in stopping the leak will be ignored; the +publicity will be about the treason of a Free Scientist."</p> + +<p>"That's right," Sir Neville Lawton agreed. "And that brings up another +point. We simply can't hand this fellow over to the authorities. If we +do, we establish a precedent that may wreck the whole system under which +we operate."</p> + +<p>"Yes: it would be a fine thing if governments start putting Free +Scientists on trial and shooting them," Farida Khouroglu supported him. +"In a few years, none of us would be safe."</p> + +<p>"But," Suzanne cried, "you are not arguing that this species of an +animal be allowed to betray us unpunished?"</p> + +<p>"Look," Rudolf von Heldenfeld said. "Let us give him his pistol, and one +cartridge, and let him remove himself like a gentleman. He will spare +himself the humiliation of trial and execution, and us all the +embarrassment of having a fellow scientist pilloried as a traitor."</p> + +<p>"Now there's a typical Prussian suggestion," Lowiewski said.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Kato Sugihara, returning alone, looked around the table. "Did I miss +something interesting?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, very," Lowiewski told him. "Your Junker friend thinks I should +perform <i>seppuku</i>."</p> + +<p>Kato nodded quickly. "Excellent idea!" he congratulated von Heldenfeld. +"If he does, he'll save everybody a lot of trouble. Himself included." +He nodded again. "If he does that, we can protect his reputation, after +he's dead."</p> + +<p>"I don't really see how," Sir Neville objected. "When the Counter +Espionage people were brought into this, the thing went out of our +control."</p> + +<p>"Why, this chauffeur was the spy, as well as the spy-courier," MacLeod +said. "The information he transmitted was picked up piecemeal from +different indiscreet lab-workers and students attached to our team. Of +course, we are investigating, mumble-mumble. Naturally, no one will +admit, mumble-mumble. No stone will be left unturned, mumble-mumble. +Disciplinary action, mumble-mumble."</p> + +<p>"And I suppose he got that microfilm piecemeal, too?" Lowiewski asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that?" MacLeod shrugged. "That was planted on him. One of our girls +arranged an opportunity for him to steal it from her, after we began to +suspect him. Of course, Kato falsified everything he put into that +report. As information, it's worthless."</p> + +<p>"Worthless? It's better than that," Kato grinned. "I'm really sorry the +Komintern won't get it. They'd try some of that stuff out with the big +betatron at Smolensk, and a microsecond after they'd throw the switch, +Smolensk would look worse than Hiroshima did."</p> + +<p>"Well, why would our esteemed colleague commit suicide, just at this +time?" Karen Hilquist asked.</p> + +<p>"Maybe plutonium poisoning." Farida suggested. "He was doing something +in the radiation-lab and got some Pu in him, and of course, shooting's +not as painful as that. So—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear!" Suzanne protested. "That but stinks! The great Adam +Lowiewski, descending from his pinnacle of pure mathematics, to perform +a vulgar experiment? With actual <i>things</i>?" The Frenchwoman gave an +exaggerated shudder. "Horrors!"</p> + +<p>"Besides, if our people began getting radioactive, somebody would be +sure to claim we were endangering the safely of the whole establishment, +and the national-security clause would be invoked, and some nosy person +would put a geiger on the dear departed," Sir Neville added.</p> + +<p>"Nervous collapse." Karen said. "According to the laity, all scientists +are crazy. Crazy people kill themselves. Adam Lowiewski was a scientist. +Ergo Adam Lowiewski killed himself. Besides, a nervous collapse isn't +instrumentally detectable."</p> + +<p>Heym ben-Hillel looked at MacLeod, his eyes troubled.</p> + +<p>"But, Dunc; have we the right to put him to death, either by his own +hand or by an Army firing squad?" he asked. "Remember he is not only a +traitor; he is one of the world's greatest mathematical minds. Have we a +right to destroy that mind?"</p> + +<p>Von Heldenfeld shouted, banging his fist on the table: "I don't care if +he's Gauss and Riemann and Lorenz and Poincare and Minkowski and +Whitehead and Einstein, all collapsed into one! The man is a stinking +traitor, not only to us, but to all scientists and all sciences! If he +doesn't shoot himself, hand him over to the United States, and let them +shoot him! Why do we go on arguing?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Lowiewski was smiling, now. The panic that had seized him in the hallway +below, and the desperation when the cigarette pack had been opened, had +left him.</p> + +<p>"Now I have a modest proposal, which will solve your difficulties," he +said. "I have money, papers, clothing, everything I will need, outside +the reservation. Suppose you just let me leave here. Then, if there is +any trouble, you can use this fiction about the indiscreet underlings, +without the unnecessary embellishment of my suicide—"</p> + +<p>Rudolf von Heldenfeld let out an inarticulate roar of fury. For an +instant he was beyond words. Then he sprang to his feet.</p> + +<p>"Look at him!" he cried. "Look at him, laughing in our faces, for the +dupes and fools he thinks we are!" He thrust out his hand toward +MacLeod. "Give me the pistol! He won't shoot himself; I'll do it for +him!"</p> + +<p>"It would work, Dunc. Really, it would," Heym ben-Hillel urged.</p> + +<p>"No," Karen Hilquist contradicted. "If he left here, everybody would +know what had happened, and we'd be accused of protecting him. If he +kills himself, we can get things hushed up: dead traitors are good +traitors. But if he remains alive, we must disassociate ourselves from +him by handing him over."</p> + +<p>"And wreck the prestige of the Team?" Lowiewski asked.</p> + +<p>"At least you will not live to see that!" Suzanne retorted.</p> + +<p>Heym ben-Hillel put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. +"Is there no solution to this?" he almost wailed.</p> + +<p>"Certainly: an obvious solution," MacLeod said, rising. "Rudolf has just +stated it. Only I'm leader of this Team, and there are, of course, jobs +a team-leader simply doesn't delegate." The safety catch of the Beretta +clicked a period to his words.</p> + +<p>"No!" The word was wrenched almost physically out of Lowiewski. He, too, +was on his feet, a sudden desperate fear in his face. "No! You wouldn't +murder me!"</p> + +<p>"The term is 'execute'," MacLeod corrected. Then his arm swung up, and +he shot Adam Lowiewski through the forehead.</p> + +<p>For an instant, the Pole remained on his feet. Then his knees buckled, +and he fell forward against the table, sliding to the floor.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>MacLeod went around the table, behind Kato Sugihara and Farida Khouroglu +and Heym ben-Hillel, and stood looking down at the man he had killed. He +dropped the automatic within a few inches of the dead renegade's +outstretched hand, then turned to face the others.</p> + +<p>"I regret," he addressed them, his voice and face blank of expression, +"to announce that our distinguished colleague, Dr. Adam Lowiewski, has +committed suicide by shooting, after a nervous collapse resulting from +overwork."</p> + +<p>Sir Neville Lawton looked critically at the motionless figure on the +floor.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid we'll have trouble making that stick, Dunc," he said. "You +shot him at about five yards; there isn't a powder mark on him."</p> + +<p>"Oh, sorry; I forgot." MacLeod's voice was mockingly contrite. "It was +Dr. Lowiewski's expressed wish that his remains be cremated as soon +after death as possible, and that funeral services be held over his +ashes. The big electric furnace in the metallurgical lab will do, I +think."</p> + +<p>"But ... but there'll be all sorts of formalities—" the Englishman +protested.</p> + +<p>"Now you forget. Our contract," MacLeod reminded him. "We stand upon our +contractual immunity: we certainly won't allow any stupid bureaucratic +interference with our deceased colleague's wishes. We have a regular +M.D. on our payroll, in case anybody has to have a death certificate to +keep him happy, but beyond that—" He shrugged.</p> + +<p>"It burns me up, though!" Suzanne Maillard cried. "After the spaceship +is built, and the Moon is annexed to the Western Union, there will be +publicity, and people will eulogize this species of an Iscariot!"</p> + +<p>Heym ben-Hillel, who had been staring at MacLeod in shocked unbelief, +roused himself.</p> + +<p>"Well, why not? Isn't the creator of the Lowiewski function +transformations and the rules of inverse probabilities worthy of +eulogy?" He turned to MacLeod. "I couldn't have done what you did, but +maybe it was for the best. The traitor is dead; the mathematician will +live forever."</p> + +<p>"You miss the whole point," MacLeod said. "Both of you. It wasn't a +question of revenge, like gangsters bumping off a double-crosser. And it +wasn't a question of whitewashing Lowiewski for posterity. We are the +MacLeod Research Team. We owe no permanent allegiance to, nor +acknowledge the authority of, any national sovereignty or any +combination of nations. We deal with national governments as with +equals. In consequence, we must make and enforce our own laws.</p> + +<p>"You must understand that we enjoy this status only on sufferance. The +nations of the world tolerate the Free Scientists only because they need +us, and because they know they can trust us. Now, no responsible +government official is going to be deceived for a moment by this suicide +story we've confected. It will be fully understood that Lowiewski was a +traitor, and that we found him out and put him to death. And, as a +corollary, it will be understood that this Team, as a Team, is fully +trustworthy, and that when any individual Team member is found to be +untrustworthy, he will be dealt with promptly and without public +scandal. In other words, it will be understood, from this time on, that +the MacLeod Team is worthy of the status it enjoys and the +responsibilities concomitant with it."</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MERCENARIES***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 18814-h.txt or 18814-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/8/1/18814">http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/8/1/18814</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Mercenaries + + +Author: Henry Beam Piper + + + +Release Date: July 12, 2006 [eBook #18814] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MERCENARIES*** + + +E-text prepared by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 18814-h.htm or 18814-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/8/1/18814/18814-h/18814-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/8/1/18814/18814-h.zip) + + +Transcriber's note: + + This etext was produced from _Astounding Science Fiction_, + March, 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence + that the copyright on this publication was renewed. + + + + + +THE MERCENARIES + +by + +H. BEAM PIPER + +Illustrated by Brush + + + + + + + + _Once, wars were won by maneuvering hired fighting men; now wars + are different--and the hired experts are different. But the human + problems remain!_ + + + + +Duncan MacLeod hung up the suit he had taken off, and sealed his shirt, +socks and underwear in a laundry envelope bearing his name and +identity-number, tossing this into one of the wire baskets provided for +the purpose. Then, naked except for the plastic identity disk around his +neck, he went over to the desk, turned in his locker key, and passed +into the big room beyond. + +Four or five young men, probably soldiers on their way to town, were +coming through from the other side. Like MacLeod, they wore only the +plastic disks they had received in exchange for the metal ones they wore +inside the reservation, and they were being searched by attendants who +combed through their hair, probed into ears and nostrils, peered into +mouths with tiny searchlights, and employed a variety of magnetic and +electronic detectors. + +To this search MacLeod submitted wearily. He had become quite a +connoisseur of security measures in fifteen years' research and +development work for a dozen different nations, but the Tonto Basin +Research Establishment of the Philadelphia Project exceeded anything he +had seen before. There were gray-haired veterans of the old Manhattan +Project here, men who had worked with Fermi at Chicago, or with +Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, twenty years before, and they swore in amused +exasperation when they thought of how the relatively mild regulations of +those days had irked them. And yet, the very existence of the Manhattan +Project had been kept a secret from all but those engaged in it, and its +purpose from most of them. Today, in 1965, there might have been a few +wandering tribesmen in Somaliland or the Kirghiz Steppes who had never +heard of the Western Union's Philadelphia Project, or of the Fourth +Komintern's Red Triumph Five-Year Plan, or of the Islamic Kaliphate's +Al-Borak Undertaking, or of the Ibero-American Confederation's Cavor +Project, but every literate person in the world knew that the four great +power-blocs were racing desperately to launch the first spaceship to +reach the Moon and build the Lunar fortress that would insure world +supremacy. + +He turned in the nonmagnetic identity disk at the desk on the other side +of the search room, receiving the metal one he wore inside the +reservation, and with it the key to his inside locker. He put on the +clothes he had left behind when he had passed out, and filled his +pockets with the miscellany of small articles he had not been allowed to +carry off the reservation. He knotted the garish necktie affected by the +civilian workers and in particular by members of the MacLeod Research +Team to advertise their nonmilitary status, lit his pipe, and walked out +into the open gallery beyond. + + * * * * * + +Karen Hilquist was waiting for him there, reclining in one of the metal +chairs. She looked cool in the belted white coveralls, with the white +turban bound around her yellow hair, and very beautiful, and when he saw +her, his heart gave a little bump, like a geiger responding to an +ionizing particle. It always did that, although they had been together +for twelve years, and married for ten. Then she saw him and smiled, and +he came over, fanning himself with his sun helmet, and dropped into a +chair beside her. + +"Did you call our center for a jeep?" he asked. When she nodded, he +continued: "I thought you would, so I didn't bother." + +For a while, they sat silent, looking with bored distaste at the swarm +of steel-helmeted Army riflemen and tommy-gunners guarding the transfer +platforms and the vehicles gate. A string of trucks had been passed +under heavy guard into the clearance compound: they were now unloading +supplies onto a platform, at the other side of which other trucks were +backed waiting to receive the shipment. A hundred feet of bare concrete +and fifty armed soldiers separated these from the men and trucks from +the outside, preventing contact. + +"And still they can't stop leaks," Karen said softly. "And we get blamed +for it." + +MacLeod nodded and started to say something, when his attention was +drawn by a commotion on the driveway. A big Tucker limousine with an +O.D. paint job and the single-starred flag of a brigadier general was +approaching, horning impatiently. In the back seat MacLeod could see a +heavy-shouldered figure with the face of a bad-tempered great +Dane--General Daniel Nayland, the military commander of Tonto Basin. The +inside guards jumped to attention and saluted; the barrier shot up as +though rocket-propelled, and the car slid through; the barrier slammed +down behind it. On the other side, the guards were hurling themselves +into a frenzy of saluting. Karen made a face after the receding car and +muttered something in Hindustani. She probably didn't know the literal +meaning of what she had called General Nayland, but she understood that +it was a term of extreme opprobrium. + +Her husband contributed: "His idea of Heaven would be a huge research +establishment, where he'd be a five-star general, and Galileo, Newton, +Priestley, Dalton, Maxwell, Planck and Einstein would be tech +sergeants." + +"And Marie Curie and Lise Meitner would be Wac corporals," Karen added. +"He really hates all of us, doesn't he?" + +"He hates our Team," MacLeod replied. "In the first place, we're a lot +of civilians, who aren't subject to his regulations and don't have to +salute him. We're working under contract with the Western Union, not +with the United States Government, and as the United States participates +in the Western Union on a treaty basis, our contract has the force of a +treaty obligation. It gives us what amounts to extraterritoriality, like +Europeans in China during the Nineteenth Century. So we have our own +transport, for which he must furnish petrol, and our own armed guard, +and we fly our own flag over Team Center, and that gripes him as much as +anything else. That and the fact that we're foreigners. So wouldn't he +love to make this espionage rap stick on us!" + +"And our contract specifically gives the United States the right to take +action against us in case we endanger the national security," Karen +added. She stuffed her cigarette into the not-too-recently-emptied +receiver beside her chair, her blue eyes troubled. "You know, some of us +could get shot over this, if we're not careful. Dunc, does it really +have to be one of our own people who--?" + +"I don't see how it could be anybody else," MacLeod said. "I don't like +the idea any more than you do, but there it is." + +"Well, what are we going to do? Is there nobody whom we can trust?" + +"Among the technicians and guards, yes. I could think of a score +who are absolutely loyal. But among the Team itself--the top +researchers--there's nobody I'd take a chance on but Kato Sugihara." + +"Can you even be sure of him? I'd hate to think of him as a traitor, +but--" + +"I have a couple of reasons for eliminating Kato," MacLeod said. "In the +first place, outside nucleonic and binding-force physics, there are only +three things he's interested in. Jitterbugging, hand-painted neckties, +and Southern-style cooking. If he went over to the Komintern, he +wouldn't be able to get any of those. Then, he only spends about half +his share of the Team's profits, and turns the rest back into the Team +Fund. He has a credit of about a hundred thousand dollars, which he'd +lose by leaving us. And then, there's another thing. Kato's father was +killed on Guadalcanal, in 1942, when he was only five. After that he was +brought up in the teachings of Bushido by his grandfather, an old-time +samurai. Bushido is open to some criticism, but nobody can show where +double-crossing your own gang is good Bushido. And today, Japan is +allied with the Western Union, and in any case, he wouldn't help the +Komintern. The Japs'll forgive Russia for that Mussolini back-stab in +1945 after the Irish start building monuments to Cromwell." + +A light-blue jeep, lettered _MacLeod Research Team_ in cherry-red, was +approaching across the wide concrete apron. MacLeod grinned. + +"Here it comes. Fasten your safety belt when you get in; that's Ahmed +driving." + +Karen looked at her watch. "And it's almost time for dinner. You know, I +dread the thought of sitting at the table with the others, and wondering +which of them is betraying us." + +"Only nine of us, instead of thirteen, and still one is a Judas," +MacLeod said. "I suppose there's always a place for Judas, at any +table." + + * * * * * + +The MacLeod Team dined together, apart from their assistants and +technicians and students. This was no snobbish attempt at +class-distinction: matters of Team policy were often discussed at the +big round table, and the more confidential details of their work. People +who have only their knowledge and their ideas to sell are wary about +bandying either loosely, and the six men and three women who faced each +other across the twelve-foot diameter of the teakwood table had no other +stock-in-trade. + +They were nine people of nine different nationalities, or they were nine +people of the common extra-nationality of science. That Duncan MacLeod, +their leader, had grown up in the Transvaal and his wife had been born +in the Swedish university town of Upsala was typical not only of their +own group but of the hundreds of independent research-teams that had +sprung up after the Second World War. The scientist-adventurer may have +been born of the relentless struggle for scientific armament supremacy +among nations and the competition for improved techniques among +industrial corporations during the late 1950s and early '60s, but he had +been begotten when two masses of uranium came together at the top of a +steel tower in New Mexico in 1945. And, because scientific research is +pre-eminently a matter of pooling brains and efforts, the independent +scientists had banded together into teams whose leaders acquired power +greater than that of any _condottiere_ captain of Renaissance Italy. + +Duncan MacLeod, sitting outwardly relaxed and merry and secretly +watchful and bitterly sad, was such a free-captain of science. One by +one, the others had rallied around him, not because he was a greater +physicist than they, but because he was a bolder, more clever, less +scrupulous adventurer, better able to guide them through the maze of +international power-politics and the no less ruthless if less nakedly +violent world of Big Industry. + +There was his wife, Karen Hilquist, the young metallurgist who, before +she was twenty-five, had perfected a new hardening process for SKF and +an incredibly tough gun-steel for the Bofors works. In the few minutes +since they had returned to Team Center, she had managed to change her +coveralls for a skirt and blouse, and do something intriguing with her +hair. + +And there was Kato Sugihara, looking younger than his twenty-eight +years, who had begun to demonstrate the existence of whole orders of +structure below the level of nuclear particles. + +There was Suzanne Maillard, her gray hair upswept from a face that had +never been beautiful but which was alive with something rarer than mere +beauty: she possessed, at the brink of fifty, a charm and smartness that +many women half her age might have envied, and she knew more about +cosmic rays than any other person living. + +And Adam Lowiewski, his black mustache contrasting so oddly with his +silver hair, frantically scribbling equations on his doodling-pad, as +though his racing fingers could never keep pace with his brain, and +explaining them, with obvious condescension, to the boyish-looking +Japanese beside him. He was one of the greatest of living mathematicians +by anybody's reckoning--_the_ greatest, by his own. + +And Sir Neville Lawton, the electronics expert, with thinning red-gray +hair and meticulously-clipped mustache, who always gave the impression +of being in evening clothes, even when, as now, he was dressed in faded +khaki. + +And Heym ben-Hillel, the Israeli quantum and wave-mechanics man, his +heaping dinner plate an affront to the Laws of Moses, his white hair a +fluffy, tangled chaos, laughing at an impassively-delivered joke the +English knight had made. + +And Rudolf von Heldenfeld, with a thin-lipped killer's mouth and a +frozen face that never betrayed its owner's thoughts--he was the +specialist in magnetic currents and electromagnetic fields. + +And Farida Khouroglu, the Turkish girl whom MacLeod and Karen had found +begging in the streets of Istanbul, ten years ago, and who had grown up +following the fortunes of the MacLeod Team on every continent and in a +score of nations. It was doubtful if she had ever had a day's formal +schooling in her life, but now she was secretary of the Team, with a +grasp of physics that would have shamed many a professor. She had grown +up a beauty, too, with the large dark eyes and jet-black hair and +paper-white skin of her race. She and Kato Sugihara were very much in +love. + +A good team; the best physics-research team in a power-mad, +knowledge-hungry world. MacLeod thought, toying with the stem of his +wineglass, of some of their triumphs: The West Australia Atomic Power +Plant. The Segovia Plutonium Works, which had got them all titled as +Grandees of the restored Spanish Monarchy. The sea-water chemical +extraction plant in Puerto Rico, where they had worked for Associated +Enterprises, whose president, Blake Hartley, had later become President +of the United States. The hard-won victory over a seemingly insoluble +problem in the Belgian Congo uranium mines----He thought, too, of the +dangers they had faced together, in a world where soldiers must use the +weapons of science and scientists must learn the arts of violence. Of +the treachery of the Islamic Kaliphate, for whom they had once worked; +of the intrigues and plots which had surrounded them in Spain; of the +many attempted kidnappings and assassinations; of the time in Basra when +they had fought with pistols and tommy guns and snatched-up clubs and +flasks of acid to defend their laboratories. + +A good team--before the rot of treason had touched it. He could almost +smell the putrid stench of it, and yet, as he glanced from face to face, +he could not guess the traitor. And he had so little time-- + + * * * * * + +Kato Sugihara's voice rose to dominate the murmur of conversation around +the table. + +"I think I am getting somewhere on my photon-neutrino-electron +interchange-cycle," he announced. "And I think it can be correlated to +the collapsed-matter research." + +"So?" von Heldenfeld looked up in interest. "And not with the problem of +what goes on in the 'hot layer' surrounding the Earth?" + +"No, Suzanne talked me out of that idea," the Japanese replied. "That's +just a secondary effect of the effect of cosmic rays and solar +radiations on the order of particles existing at that level. But I think +that I have the key to the problem of collapsing matter to plate the +hull of the spaceship." + +"That's interesting," Sir Neville Lawton commented. "How so?" + +"Well, you know what happens when a photon comes in contact with the +atomic structure of matter," Kato said. "There may be an elastic +collision, in which the photon merely bounces off. Macroscopically, +that's the effect we call reflection of light. Or there may be an +inelastic collision, when the photon hits an atom and knocks out an +electron--the old photoelectric effect. Or, the photon may be retained +for a while and emitted again relatively unchanged--the effect observed +in luminous paint. Or, the photon may penetrate, undergo a change to a +neutrino, and either remain in the nucleus of the atom or pass through +it, depending upon a number of factors. All this, of course, is old +stuff; even the photon-neutrino interchange has been known since the +mid-'50s, when the Gamow neutrino-counter was developed. But now we come +to what you have been so good as to christen the Sugihara Effect--the +neutrino picking up a negative charge and, in effect, turning into an +electron, and then losing its charge, turning back into a neutrino, and +then, as in the case of metal heated to incandescence, being emitted +again as a photon. + +"At first, we thought this had no connection with the spaceship +insulation problem we are under contract to work out, and we agreed to +keep this effect a Team secret until we could find out if it had +commercial possibilities. But now, I find that it has a direct +connection with the collapsed-matter problem. When the electron loses +its negative charge and reverts to a neutrino, there is a definite +accretion of interatomic binding-force, and the molecule, or the +crystalline lattice or whatever tends to contract, and when the neutrino +becomes a photon, the nucleus of the atom contracts." + + * * * * * + +Heym ben-Hillel was sitting oblivious to everything but his young +colleague's words, a slice of the flesh of the unclean beast impaled on +his fork and halfway to his mouth. + +"Yes! Certainly!" he exclaimed. "That would explain so many things I +have wondered about: And of course, there are other forces at work +which, in the course of nature, balance that effect--" + +"But can the process be controlled?" Suzanne Maillard wanted to know. +"Can you convert electrons to neutrinos and then to photons in +sufficient numbers, and eliminate other effects that would cause +compensating atomic and molecular expansion?" + +Kato grinned, like a tomcat contemplating the bones of a fish he has +just eaten. + +"Yes, I can. I have." He turned to MacLeod. "Remember those bullets I +got from you?" he asked. + +MacLeod nodded. He handloaded for his .38-special, and like all advanced +cases of handloading-fever, he was religiously fanatical about +uniformity of bullet weights and dimensions. Unlike most handloaders, he +had available the instruments to secure such uniformity. + +"Those bullets are as nearly alike as different objects +can be," Kato said. "They weigh 158 grains, and that means +one-five-eight-point-zero-zero-zero-practically-nothing. The diameter is +.35903 inches. All right; I've been subjecting those bullets to +different radiation-bombardments, and the best results have given me a +bullet with a diameter of .35892 inches, and the weight is unchanged. In +other words, there's been no loss of mass, but the mass had contracted. +And that's only been the first test." + +"Well, write up everything you have on it, and we'll lay out further +experimental work," MacLeod said. He glanced around the table. "So far, +we can't be entirely sure. The shrinkage may be all in the crystalline +lattice: the atomic structure may be unchanged. What we need is matter +that is really collapsed." + +"I'll do that," Kato said. "Barida, I'll have all my data available for +you before noon tomorrow: you can make up copies for all Team members." + +"Make mine on microfilm, for projection," von Heldenfeld said. + +"Mine, too," Sir Neville Lawton added. + +"Better make microfilm copies for everybody," Heym ben-Hillel suggested. +"They're handier than type-script." + +MacLeod rose silently and tiptoed around behind his wife and Rudolf von +Heldenfeld, to touch Kato Sugihara on the shoulder. + +"Come on outside, Kato," he whispered. "I want to talk to you." + + * * * * * + +The Japanese nodded and rose, following him outside onto the roof above +the laboratories. They walked over to the edge and stopped at the +balustrade. + +"Kato, when you write up your stuff, I want you to falsify everything +you can. Put it in such form that the data will be absolutely worthless, +but also in such form that nobody, not even Team members, will know it +has been falsified. Can you do that?" + +Kato's almond-shaped eyes widened. "Of course I can, Dunc," he replied. +"But why--?" + +"I hate to say this, but we have a traitor in the Team. One of those +people back in the dining room is selling us out to the Fourth +Komintern. I know it's not Karen, and I know it's not you, and that's as +much as I do know, now." + +The Japanese sucked in his breath in a sharp hiss. "You wouldn't say +that unless you were sure, Dunc," he said. + +"No. At about 1000 this morning, Dr. Weissberg, the civilian director, +called me to his office. I found him very much upset. He told me that +General Nayland is accusing us--by which he meant this Team--of +furnishing secret information on our subproject to Komintern agents. He +said that British Intelligence agents at Smolensk had learned that the +Red Triumph laboratories there were working along lines of research +originated at MacLeod Team Center here. They relayed the information to +Western Union Central Intelligence, and WU passed it on to United States +Central Intelligence, and now Counter Espionage is riding Nayland about +it, and he's trying to make us the goat." + +"He would love to get some of us shot," Kato said. "And that could +happen. They took a long time getting tough about espionage in this +country, but when Americans get tough about something, they get tough +right. But look here; we handed in our progress-reports to Felix +Weissberg, and he passed them on to Nayland. Couldn't the leak be right +in Nayland's own HQ?" + +"That's what I thought, at first," MacLeod replied. "Just wishful +thinking, though. Fact is, I went up to Nayland's HQ and had it out with +him; accused him of just that. I think I threw enough of a scare into +him to hold him for a couple of days. I wanted to know just what it was +the Komintern was supposed to have got from us, but he wouldn't tell me. +That, of course, was classified-stuff." + +"Well?" + +"Well then, Karen and I got our digestive tracts emptied and went in to +town, where I could use a phone that didn't go through a military +switch-board, and I put through a call to Allan Hartley, President +Hartley's son. He owes us a break, after the work we did in Puerto Rico. +I told him all I wanted was some information to help clear ourselves, +and he told me to wait a half an hour and then call Counter Espionage +Office in Washington and talk to General Hammond." + +"Ha! If Allan Hartley's for us, what are we worried about?" Kato asked. +"I always knew he was the power back of Associated Enterprises and his +father was the front-man: I'll bet it's the same with the Government." + +"Allan Hartley's for us as long as our nose is clean. If we let it get +dirty, we get it bloodied, too. We have to clean it ourselves," MacLeod +told him. "But here's what Hammond gave me: The Komintern knows all +about our collapsed-matter experiments with zinc, titanium and nickel. +They know about our theoretical work on cosmic rays, including Suzanne's +work up to about a month ago. They know about that effect Sir Neville +and Heym discovered two months ago." He paused. "And they know about the +photon-neutrino-electron interchange." + +Kato responded to this with a gruesome double-take that gave his face +the fleeting appearance of an ancient samurai war mask. + +"That wasn't included in any report we ever made," he said. "You're +right: the leak comes from inside the Team. It must be Sir Neville, or +Suzanne, or Heym ben-Hillel, or Adam Lowiewski, or Rudolf von +Heldenfeld, or--No! No, I can't believe it could be Farida!" He looked +at MacLeod pleadingly. "You don't think she could have--?" + +"No, Kato. The Team's her whole life, even more than it is mine. She +came with us when she was only twelve, and grew up with us. She doesn't +know any other life than this, and wouldn't want any other. It has to be +one of the other five." + +"Well, there's Suzanne," Kato began. "She had to clear out of France +because of political activities, after the collapse of the Fourth +Republic and the establishment of the Rightist Directoire in '57. And +she worked with Joliot-Curie, and she was at the University of Louvain +in the early '50s, when that place was crawling with Commies." + +"And that brings us to Sir Neville," MacLeod added. "He dabbles in +spiritualism; he and Suzanne do planchette-seances. A planchette can be +manipulated. Maybe Suzanne produced a communication advising Sir Neville +to help the Komintern." + +"Could be. Then, how about Lowiewski? He's a Pole who can't go back to +Poland, and Poland's a Komintern country." Kato pointed out. "Maybe he'd +sell us out for amnesty, though why he'd want to go back there, the way +things are now--?" + +"His vanity. You know, missionary-school native going back to the +village wearing real pants, to show off to the savages. Used to be a +standing joke, down where I came from." MacLeod thought for a moment. +"And Rudolf: he's always had a poor view of the democratic system of +government. He might feel more at home with the Komintern. Of course, +the Ruskis killed his parents in 1945--" + +"So what?" Kato retorted. "The Americans killed my father in 1942, but +I'm not making an issue out of it. That was another war; Japan's a +Western Union country, now. So's Germany----How about Heym, by the way? +Remember when the Komintern wanted us to come to Russia and do the same +work we're doing here?" + +"I remember that after we turned them down, somebody tried to kidnap +Karen," MacLeod said grimly. "I remember a couple of Russians got rather +suddenly dead trying it, too." + +"I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of our round-table argument +when the proposition was considered. Heym was in favor of accepting. Now +that, I would say, indicates either Communist sympathies or an +overtrusting nature," Kato submitted. "And a lot of grade-A traitors +have been made out of people with trusting natures." + +MacLeod got out his pipe and lit it. For a long time, he stared out +across the mountain-ringed vista of sagebrush, dotted at wide intervals +with the bulks of research-centers and the red roofs of the villages. + +"Kato, I think I know how we're going to find out which one it is," he +said. "First of all, you write up your data, and falsify it so that it +won't do any damage if it gets into Komintern hands. And then--" + + * * * * * + +The next day started in an atmosphere of suppressed excitement and +anxiety, which, beginning with MacLeod and Karen and Kato Sugihara, +seemed to communicate itself by contagion to everybody in the MacLeod +Team's laboratories. The top researchers and their immediate assistants +and students were the first to catch it; they ascribed the tension under +which their leader and his wife and the Japanese labored to the recent +developments in the collapsed-matter problem. Then, there were about a +dozen implicitly-trusted technicians and guards, who had been secretly +gathered in MacLeod's office the night before and informed of the crisis +that had arisen. Their associates could not miss the fact that they were +preoccupied with something unusual. + +They were a variegated crew; men who had been added to the Team in every +corner of the world. There was Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman, the Arab jeep-driver +who had joined them in Basra. There was the wiry little Greek whom +everybody called Alex Unpronounceable. There was an Italian, and two +Chinese, and a cashiered French Air Force officer, and a Malay, and the +son of an English earl who insisted that his name was Bertie Wooster. +They had sworn themselves to secrecy, had heard MacLeod's story with a +polylingual burst of pious or blasphemous exclamations, and then they +had scattered, each to the work assigned him. + +MacLeod had risen early and submitted to the ordeal of the search to +leave the reservation and go to town again, this time for a conference +at the shabby back-street cigar store that concealed a Counter Espionage +center. He had returned just as Farida Khouroglu was finishing the +microfilm copies of Kato's ingeniously-concocted pseudo-data. These +copies were distributed at noon, while the Team was lunching, along with +carbons of the original type-script. + +He was the first to leave the table, going directly to the basement, +where Alex Unpronounceable and the man who had got his alias from the +works of P. G. Wodehouse were listening in on the telephone calls going +in and out through the Team-center switch-board, and making recordings. +For two hours, MacLeod remained with them. He heard Suzanne Maillard and +some woman who was talking from a number in the Army married-officers' +settlement making arrangements about a party. He heard Rudolf von +Heldenfeld make a date with some girl. He listened to a violent +altercation between the Team chef and somebody at Army Quartermaster's +HQ about the quality of a lot of dressed chicken. He listened to a call +that came in for Adam Lowiewski, the mathematician. + +"This is Joe," the caller said. "I've got to go to town late this +afternoon, but I was wondering if you'd have time to meet me at the +Recreation House at Oppenheimer Village for a game of chess. I'm calling +from there, now." + +"Fine; I can make it," Lowiewski's voice replied. "I'm in the middle of +a devil's own mathematical problem; maybe a game of chess would clear my +head. I have a new queen's-knight gambit I want to try on you, anyhow." + +Bertie Wooster looked up sharply. "Now there; that may be what we're--" + +The telephone beside MacLeod rang. He scooped it up; named himself into +it. + +It was Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman. "Look, chief; I tail this guy to Oppenheimer +Village," the Arab, who had learned English from American movies, +answered. "He goes into the rec-joint. I slide in after him, an' he +ain't in sight. I'm lookin' around for him, see, when he comes bargin' +outa the Don Ameche box. Then he grabs a table an' a beer. What next?" + +"Stay there; keep an eye on him," MacLeod told him. "If I want you, I'll +call." + +MacLeod hung up and straightened, feeling under his packet for his +.38-special. + +"That's it, boys," he said. "Lowiewski. Come on." + +"Hah!" Alex Unpronounceable had his gun out and was checking the +cylinder. He spoke briefly in description of the Polish mathematician's +ancestry, physical characteristics, and probable post-mortem +destination. Then he put the gun away, and the three men left the +basement. + + * * * * * + +For minutes that seamed like hours, MacLeod and the Greek waited on the +main floor, where they could watch both the elevators and the stairway. +Bertie Wooster had gone up to alert Kato Sugihara and Karen. Then the +door of one of the elevators opened and Adam Lowiewski emerged, with +Kato behind him, apparently lost in a bulky scientific journal he was +reading. The Greek moved in from one side, and MacLeod stepped in front +of the Pole. + +"Hi, Adam," he greeted. "Have you looked into that batch of data yet?" + +"Oh, yes. Yes." Lowiewski seemed barely able to keep his impatience +within the bounds of politeness. "Of course, it's out of my line, but +the mathematics seems sound." He started to move away. + +"You're not going anywhere," MacLeod told him. "The chess game is over. +The red pawns are taken--the one at Oppenheimer Village, and the one +here." + +There was a split second in which Lowiewski struggled--almost +successfully--to erase the consternation from his face. + +"I don't know what you're talking about," he began. His right hand +started to slide under his left coat lapel. + +MacLeod's Colt was covering him before he could complete the movement. +At the same time, Kato Sugihara dropped the paper-bound periodical, +revealing the thin-bladed knife he had concealed under it. He stepped +forward, pressing the point of the weapon against the Pole's side. With +the other hand, he reached across Lowiewski's chest and jerked the +pistol from his shoulder-holster. It was one of the elegant little .32 +Beretta 1954 Model automatics. + +"Into the elevator," MacLeod ordered. An increasing pressure of Kato's +knife emphasized the order. "And watch him; don't let him get rid of +anything," he added to the Greek. + +"If you would explain this outrage--" Lowiewski began. "I assume it is +your idea of a joke--" + +Without even replying, MacLeod slammed the doors and started the +elevator upward, letting it rise six floors to the living quarters. +Karen Hilquist and the aristocratic black-sheep who called himself +Bertie Wooster were waiting when he opened the door. The Englishman took +one of Lowiewski's arms; MacLeod took the other. The rest fell in behind +as they hustled the captive down the hall and into the big sound-proofed +dining room. They kept Lowiewski standing, well away from any movable +object in the room; Alex Unpronounceable took his left arm as MacLeod +released it and went to the communicator and punched the all-outlets +button. + +"Dr. Maillard; Dr. Sir Neville Lawton; Dr. ben-Hillel; Dr. von +Heldenfeld; Mlle. Khouroglu," he called. "Dr. MacLeod speaking. Come at +once, repeat at once, to the round table--Dr. Maillard; Dr. Sir Neville +Lawton--" + + * * * * * + +Karen said something to the Japanese and went outside. For a while, +nobody spoke. Kato came over and lit a cigarette in the bowl of +MacLeod's pipe. Then the other Team members entered in a body. Evidently +Karen had intercepted them in the hallway and warned them that they +would find some unusual situation inside; even so, there was a burst of +surprised exclamations when they found Adam Lowiewski under detention. + +"Ladies and gentlemen," MacLeod said, "I regret to tell you that I have +placed our colleague, Dr. Lowiewski, under arrest. He is suspected of +betraying confidential data to agents of the Fourth Komintern. +Yesterday, I learned that data on all our work here, including +Team-secret data on the Sugihara Effect, had got into the hands of the +Komintern and was being used in research at the Smolensk laboratories. I +also learned that General Nayland blames this Team as a whole with +double-dealing and selling this data to the Komintern. I don't need to +go into any lengthy exposition of General Nayland's attitude toward this +Team, or toward Free Scientists as a class, or toward the +research-contract system. Nor do I need to point out that if he pressed +these charges against us, some of us could easily suffer death or +imprisonment." + +"So he had to have a victim in a hurry, and pulled my name out of the +hat," Lowiewski sneered. + +"I appreciate the gravity of the situation," Sir Neville Lawton said. +"And if the Sugihara Effect was among the data betrayed, I can +understand that nobody but one of us could have betrayed it. But why, +necessarily, should it be Adam? We all have unlimited access to all +records and theoretical data." + +"Exactly. But collecting information is the smallest and easiest part of +espionage. Almost anybody can collect information. Where the spy really +earns his pay is in transmitting of information. Now, think of the +almost fantastic security measures in force here, and consider how you +would get such information, including masses of mathematical data beyond +any human power of memorization, out of this reservation." + +"Ha, nobody can take anything out," Suzanne Maillard said. "Not even +one's breakfast. Is Adam accused of sorcery, too?" + +"The only material things that are allowed to leave this reservation are +sealed cases of models and data shipped to the different development +plants. And the Sugihara Effect never was reported, and wouldn't go out +that way," Heym ben-Hillel objected. + +"But the data on the Sugihara Effect reached Smolensk," MacLeod replied. +"And don't talk about Darwin and Wallace: it wasn't a coincidence. This +stuff was taken out of the Tonto Basin Reservation by the only person +who could have done so, in the only way that anything could leave the +reservation without search. So I had that person shadowed, and at the +same time I had our telephone lines tapped, and eavesdropped on all +calls entering or leaving this center. And the person who had to be the +spy-courier called Adam Lowiewski, and Lowiewski made an appointment to +meet him at the Oppenheimer Village Recreation House to play chess." + +"Very suspicious, very suspicious," Lowiewski derided. "I receive a call +from a friend at the same time that some anonymous suspect is using the +phone. There are only five hundred telephone conversations a minute on +this reservation." + +"Immediately, Dr. Lowiewski attempted to leave this building," MacLeod +went on. "When I intercepted him, he tried to draw a pistol. This one." +He exhibited the Beretta. "I am now going to have Dr. Lowiewski +searched, in the presence of all of you." He nodded to Alex and the +Englishman. + + * * * * * + +They did their work thoroughly. A pile of Lowiewski's pocket effects was +made on the table; as each item was added to it, the Pole made some +sarcastic comment. + +"And that pack of cigarettes: unopened," he jeered. "I suppose I +communicated the data to the manufacturers by telepathy, and they +printed it on the cigarette papers in invisible ink." + +"Maybe not. Maybe you opened the pack, and then resealed it," Kato +suggested. "A heated spatula under the cellophane; like this." + +He used the point of his knife to illustrate. The cellophane came +unsealed with surprising ease: so did the revenue stamp. He dumped out +the contents of the pack: sixteen cigarettes, four cigarette tip-ends, +four bits snapped from the other ends--and a small aluminum microfilm +capsule. + +Lowiewski's face twitched. For an instant, he tried vainly to break +loose from the men who held him. Then he slumped into a chair. Heym +ben-Hillel gasped in shocked surprise. Suzanne Maillard gave a short, +felinelike cry. Sir Neville Lawton looked at the capsule curiously and +said: "Well, my sainted Aunt Agatha!" + +"That's the capsule I gave him, at noon," Farida Khouroglu exclaimed, +picking it up. She opened it and pulled out a roll of colloidex +projection film. There was also a bit of cigarette paper in the capsule, +upon which a notation had been made in Kyrilic characters. + +Rudolf von Heldenfeld could read Russian. "'Data on new development of +photon-neutrino-electron interchange. 22 July, '65. Vladmir.' Vladmir, I +suppose, is this _schweinhund's_ code name," he added. + +The film and the paper passed from hand to hand. The other members of +the Team sat down; there was a tendency to move away from the chair +occupied by Adam Lowiewski. He noticed this and sneered. + +"Afraid of contamination from the moral leper?" he asked. "You were glad +enough to have me correct your stupid mathematical errors." + +Kato Sugihara picked up the capsule, took a final glance at the +cigarette pack, and said to MacLeod: "I'll be back as soon as this is +done." With that, he left the room, followed by Bertie Wooster and the +Greek. + + * * * * * + +Heym ben-Hillel turned to the others: his eyes had the hurt and puzzled +look of a dog that has been kicked for no reason. "But why did he do +this?" he asked. + +"He just told you," MacLeod replied. "He's the great Adam Lowiewski. +Checking math for a physics-research team is beneath his dignity. I +suppose the Komintern offered him a professorship at Stalin University." +He was watching Lowiewski's face keenly. "No," he continued. "It was +probably the mathematics chair of the Soviet Academy of Sciences." + +"But who was this person who could smuggle microfilm out of the +reservation?" Suzanne Maillard wanted to know. "Somebody has invented +teleportation, then?" + +MacLeod shook his head. "It was General Nayland's chauffeur. It had to +be. General Nayland's car is the only thing that gets out of here +without being searched. The car itself is serviced at Army vehicles +pool; nobody could hide anything in it for a confederate to pick up +outside. Nayland is a stuffed shirt of the first stuffing, and a tinpot +Hitler to boot, but he is fanatically and incorruptibly patriotic. That +leaves the chauffeur. When Nayland's in the car, nobody even sees him; +he might as well be a robot steering-device. Old case of Father Brown's +Invisible Man. So, since he had to be the courier, all I did was have +Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman shadow him, and at the same time tap our phones. +When he contacted Lowiewski, I knew Lowiewski was our traitor." + +Sir Neville Lawton gave a strangling laugh. "Oh, my dear Aunt Fanny! And +Nayland goes positively crackers on security. He gets goose pimples +every time he hears somebody saying 'E = mc^{2}', for fear a Komintern +spy might hear him. It's a wonder he hasn't put the value of Planck's +Constant on the classified list. He sets up all these fantastic search +rooms and barriers, and then he drives through the gate, honking his +bloody horn, with his chauffeur's pockets full of top secrets. Now I've +seen everything!" + +"Not quite everything," MacLeod said. "Kato's going to put that capsule +in another cigarette pack, and he'll send one of his lab girls to +Oppenheimer Village with it, with a message from Lowiewski to the effect +that he couldn't get away. And when this chauffeur takes it out, he'll +run into a Counter Espionage road-block on the way to town. They'll +shoot him, of course, and they'll probably transfer Nayland to the +Mississippi Valley Flood Control Project, where he can't do any more +damage. At least, we'll have him out of our hair." + +"If we have any hair left," Heym ben-Hillel gloomed. "You've got Nayland +into trouble, but you haven't got us out of it." + +"What do you mean?" Suzanne Maillard demanded. "He's found the traitor +and stopped the leak." + +"Yes, but we're still responsible, as a team, for this betrayal," the +Israeli pointed out. "This Nayland is only a symptom of the enmity which +politicians and militarists feel toward the Free Scientists, and of +their opposition to the research-contract system. Now they have a +scandal to use. Our part in stopping the leak will be ignored; the +publicity will be about the treason of a Free Scientist." + +"That's right," Sir Neville Lawton agreed. "And that brings up another +point. We simply can't hand this fellow over to the authorities. If we +do, we establish a precedent that may wreck the whole system under which +we operate." + +"Yes: it would be a fine thing if governments start putting Free +Scientists on trial and shooting them," Farida Khouroglu supported him. +"In a few years, none of us would be safe." + +"But," Suzanne cried, "you are not arguing that this species of an +animal be allowed to betray us unpunished?" + +"Look," Rudolf von Heldenfeld said. "Let us give him his pistol, and one +cartridge, and let him remove himself like a gentleman. He will spare +himself the humiliation of trial and execution, and us all the +embarrassment of having a fellow scientist pilloried as a traitor." + +"Now there's a typical Prussian suggestion," Lowiewski said. + + * * * * * + +Kato Sugihara, returning alone, looked around the table. "Did I miss +something interesting?" he asked. + +"Oh, very," Lowiewski told him. "Your Junker friend thinks I should +perform _seppuku_." + +Kato nodded quickly. "Excellent idea!" he congratulated von Heldenfeld. +"If he does, he'll save everybody a lot of trouble. Himself included." +He nodded again. "If he does that, we can protect his reputation, after +he's dead." + +"I don't really see how," Sir Neville objected. "When the Counter +Espionage people were brought into this, the thing went out of our +control." + +"Why, this chauffeur was the spy, as well as the spy-courier," MacLeod +said. "The information he transmitted was picked up piecemeal from +different indiscreet lab-workers and students attached to our team. Of +course, we are investigating, mumble-mumble. Naturally, no one will +admit, mumble-mumble. No stone will be left unturned, mumble-mumble. +Disciplinary action, mumble-mumble." + +"And I suppose he got that microfilm piecemeal, too?" Lowiewski asked. + +"Oh, that?" MacLeod shrugged. "That was planted on him. One of our girls +arranged an opportunity for him to steal it from her, after we began to +suspect him. Of course, Kato falsified everything he put into that +report. As information, it's worthless." + +"Worthless? It's better than that," Kato grinned. "I'm really sorry the +Komintern won't get it. They'd try some of that stuff out with the big +betatron at Smolensk, and a microsecond after they'd throw the switch, +Smolensk would look worse than Hiroshima did." + +"Well, why would our esteemed colleague commit suicide, just at this +time?" Karen Hilquist asked. + +"Maybe plutonium poisoning." Farida suggested. "He was doing something +in the radiation-lab and got some Pu in him, and of course, shooting's +not as painful as that. So--" + +"Oh, my dear!" Suzanne protested. "That but stinks! The great Adam +Lowiewski, descending from his pinnacle of pure mathematics, to perform +a vulgar experiment? With actual _things_?" The Frenchwoman gave an +exaggerated shudder. "Horrors!" + +"Besides, if our people began getting radioactive, somebody would be +sure to claim we were endangering the safely of the whole establishment, +and the national-security clause would be invoked, and some nosy person +would put a geiger on the dear departed," Sir Neville added. + +"Nervous collapse." Karen said. "According to the laity, all scientists +are crazy. Crazy people kill themselves. Adam Lowiewski was a scientist. +Ergo Adam Lowiewski killed himself. Besides, a nervous collapse isn't +instrumentally detectable." + +Heym ben-Hillel looked at MacLeod, his eyes troubled. + +"But, Dunc; have we the right to put him to death, either by his own +hand or by an Army firing squad?" he asked. "Remember he is not only a +traitor; he is one of the world's greatest mathematical minds. Have we a +right to destroy that mind?" + +Von Heldenfeld shouted, banging his fist on the table: "I don't care if +he's Gauss and Riemann and Lorenz and Poincare and Minkowski and +Whitehead and Einstein, all collapsed into one! The man is a stinking +traitor, not only to us, but to all scientists and all sciences! If he +doesn't shoot himself, hand him over to the United States, and let them +shoot him! Why do we go on arguing?" + + * * * * * + +Lowiewski was smiling, now. The panic that had seized him in the hallway +below, and the desperation when the cigarette pack had been opened, had +left him. + +"Now I have a modest proposal, which will solve your difficulties," he +said. "I have money, papers, clothing, everything I will need, outside +the reservation. Suppose you just let me leave here. Then, if there is +any trouble, you can use this fiction about the indiscreet underlings, +without the unnecessary embellishment of my suicide--" + +Rudolf von Heldenfeld let out an inarticulate roar of fury. For an +instant he was beyond words. Then he sprang to his feet. + +"Look at him!" he cried. "Look at him, laughing in our faces, for the +dupes and fools he thinks we are!" He thrust out his hand toward +MacLeod. "Give me the pistol! He won't shoot himself; I'll do it for +him!" + +"It would work, Dunc. Really, it would," Heym ben-Hillel urged. + +"No," Karen Hilquist contradicted. "If he left here, everybody would +know what had happened, and we'd be accused of protecting him. If he +kills himself, we can get things hushed up: dead traitors are good +traitors. But if he remains alive, we must disassociate ourselves from +him by handing him over." + +"And wreck the prestige of the Team?" Lowiewski asked. + +"At least you will not live to see that!" Suzanne retorted. + +Heym ben-Hillel put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. +"Is there no solution to this?" he almost wailed. + +"Certainly: an obvious solution," MacLeod said, rising. "Rudolf has just +stated it. Only I'm leader of this Team, and there are, of course, jobs +a team-leader simply doesn't delegate." The safety catch of the Beretta +clicked a period to his words. + +"No!" The word was wrenched almost physically out of Lowiewski. He, too, +was on his feet, a sudden desperate fear in his face. "No! You wouldn't +murder me!" + +"The term is 'execute'," MacLeod corrected. Then his arm swung up, and +he shot Adam Lowiewski through the forehead. + +For an instant, the Pole remained on his feet. Then his knees buckled, +and he fell forward against the table, sliding to the floor. + + * * * * * + +MacLeod went around the table, behind Kato Sugihara and Farida Khouroglu +and Heym ben-Hillel, and stood looking down at the man he had killed. He +dropped the automatic within a few inches of the dead renegade's +outstretched hand, then turned to face the others. + +"I regret," he addressed them, his voice and face blank of expression, +"to announce that our distinguished colleague, Dr. Adam Lowiewski, has +committed suicide by shooting, after a nervous collapse resulting from +overwork." + +Sir Neville Lawton looked critically at the motionless figure on the +floor. + +"I'm afraid we'll have trouble making that stick, Dunc," he said. "You +shot him at about five yards; there isn't a powder mark on him." + +"Oh, sorry; I forgot." MacLeod's voice was mockingly contrite. "It was +Dr. Lowiewski's expressed wish that his remains be cremated as soon +after death as possible, and that funeral services be held over his +ashes. The big electric furnace in the metallurgical lab will do, I +think." + +"But ... but there'll be all sorts of formalities--" the Englishman +protested. + +"Now you forget. Our contract," MacLeod reminded him. "We stand upon our +contractual immunity: we certainly won't allow any stupid bureaucratic +interference with our deceased colleague's wishes. We have a regular +M.D. on our payroll, in case anybody has to have a death certificate to +keep him happy, but beyond that--" He shrugged. + +"It burns me up, though!" Suzanne Maillard cried. "After the spaceship +is built, and the Moon is annexed to the Western Union, there will be +publicity, and people will eulogize this species of an Iscariot!" + +Heym ben-Hillel, who had been staring at MacLeod in shocked unbelief, +roused himself. + +"Well, why not? Isn't the creator of the Lowiewski function +transformations and the rules of inverse probabilities worthy of +eulogy?" He turned to MacLeod. "I couldn't have done what you did, but +maybe it was for the best. The traitor is dead; the mathematician will +live forever." + +"You miss the whole point," MacLeod said. "Both of you. It wasn't a +question of revenge, like gangsters bumping off a double-crosser. And it +wasn't a question of whitewashing Lowiewski for posterity. We are the +MacLeod Research Team. We owe no permanent allegiance to, nor +acknowledge the authority of, any national sovereignty or any +combination of nations. We deal with national governments as with +equals. In consequence, we must make and enforce our own laws. + +"You must understand that we enjoy this status only on sufferance. The +nations of the world tolerate the Free Scientists only because they need +us, and because they know they can trust us. Now, no responsible +government official is going to be deceived for a moment by this suicide +story we've confected. It will be fully understood that Lowiewski was a +traitor, and that we found him out and put him to death. And, as a +corollary, it will be understood that this Team, as a Team, is fully +trustworthy, and that when any individual Team member is found to be +untrustworthy, he will be dealt with promptly and without public +scandal. In other words, it will be understood, from this time on, that +the MacLeod Team is worthy of the status it enjoys and the +responsibilities concomitant with it." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MERCENARIES*** + + +******* This file should be named 18814.txt or 18814.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/8/1/18814 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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