Page:Amazing Stories Volume 16 Number 06.djvu/116

116 "If you don't get to the point of all this—!"

Henry caught the glint in the professor's eye. He hastened to make placaory gestures with both hands. "All right, Joseph; I'm coming to it." His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper: "Joseph, just think how much it would mean to us if our side had the most powerful bomb in the world!"

Horror stalked across the professor's features. "You mean—?"

Henry's goatee bobbed excitedly. "Yes, Joseph! I'm working on it now! And you can see how important it must be if spies try to steal it." He sighed with all the satisfaction of a mother who has just watched her son take the presidential oath of office.

The professor stumbled across the laboratory and slumped into a chair.

"Bombs!" he muttered shakily. "Bombs. Oh, my God!"

OMETHING of his attitude communicated itself to his partner. "Honestly, Joseph, I didn't expect anything like this to happen," he consoled. "All I was trying to do—"

"Ten years ago I retired to come out here and raise guinea pigs," the professor said sadly. "I wanted peace. I wanted quiet. I wanted to enjoy the country." He laughed. It was like a banshee's wail.

"Please, Joseph—"

"So then you had to start inventing. First it was that anti-ragweed radio wave that wiped out every peony in the township. We got sued for that."

"I still think it was a good idea, Joseph."

"Then came your 'death ray.

"It didn't kill anything," his colleague defended.

"But it did sterilize every single guinea pig we had. It wiped out our source of income for better than a month. And it cost us some of our best customers. When laboratories buy guinea pigs from a firm, they expect service."

"I guess," mused Henry unhappily, "that I've been sort of a problem."

"Not content with that, you had to dream up a gaseous solvent that menaced the whole state. You nearly got killed getting rid of it. You'd have thought that would teach you a lesson. But no." The professor's voice rose to a thunderous pitch. "No, Henry Horn, that wasn't enough. You kept right on inventing—one headache after another. And now it's bombs! Bombs!"

Henry sniffled miserably.

Suddenly the professor spun about. Again his eyes impaled his little partner. "How did those Nipponese nightingales know anything about you or your experiments?" he demanded.

Henry squirmed uncomfortably.

"Well?"

Quaking visibly, the other drew the evening newspaper from his coat pocket. "Maybe they saw it here," he suggested weakly, pointing to a column-long article on an inside page. "You can read it while I'm finishing the dishes." He made a bolt for the door.

Professor Paulsen intercepted him in two long strides. Gripping the protesting Henry by the nape of the neck, the savant locked the door, then turned to the newspaper.

HE story was long and eulogistic. It described in glowing terms the brilliant work for national defense being done by the country's leading scientists, Henry Horn and Professor Joseph Paulsen. They had, according to the article, developed a new explosive which would relegate the proudest achievements of Axis science to the kindergarten class. A pound of it would sink a battleship, at least. The