The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales by Edmond Hamilton Page B
Authors: Edmond Hamilton
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starship implies the intention to go to the stars. Why haven’t you?”
“For the simplest reason in the world,” said Shearing bitterly. “The damn thing can’t fly.”
“But—” said Hyrst, in astonishment.
“It isn’t finished. It’s been building for over seventy years now, and a long and painful process that’s been, too, Hyrst—doing it bit by bit in secret, and every bit having to be dreamed up out of whole cloth, and often discarded and dreamed up again, because the principle of a workable stardrive has never been formulated before. And it still isn’t finished. It can’t be finished, unless—”
He stopped, and both men turned their attention to the outside.
“Bellaver’s looking at his chrono,” said Hyrst. “Go ahead, we’ve got a minute.”
Shearing continued, “unless we can get hold of enough Titanite to build the hyper-shift relays. Nothing else has a fast enough reaction time, and the necessary load-capacity. We must have burned out a thousand different test-boards, trying.”
“Can’t you buy it?” asked Hyrst. The question sounded reasonable, but he knew as he said it that it was a foolish one. “I mean, I know the stuff is scarcer than virtue and worth astronomical sums—that’s what MacDonald was so happy about—but—”
“The Bellaver Corporation had a corner on the stuff before our ship was even thought of. That’s what brought this whole damned mess about. Some of our people—not saying why they wanted it, of course—tried to buy some from Bellaver in the usual way, and one of them must have been incautious about his shield. Because a Lazarite working for Bellaver caught a mental hint of the starship, and the reason for the Titanite, and that was it. Three generations of Bellavers have been after us for the stardrive, and it’s developed into a secret war as bitter as any ever fought on the battlefield. They hold all the Titanite, we hold the ship, and perhaps now you’re beginning to see why MacDonald was killed, and why you’re so important to both sides.”
“Beginning to,” said Hyrst. “But only beginning.”
“MacDonald found a Titanite pocket. And as you know, a Titanite pocket isn’t very big. One man can break the crude stuff, fill a sack with it, and tote it on his own back if he doesn’t have a power-sled.”
“MacDonald had a sled.”
“And he used it. He cleaned out his pocket, afraid somebody else would track him to it, and he hid the wretched ore somewhere. Then he began to dicker. He approached the Bellaver Corporation, and we heard of it and approached him . He tried playing us off against Bellaver to boost the price, and suddenly he was dead and you were accused of his murder. We thought you really had done it, because no Titanite turned up, and we knew Bellaver hadn’t gotten it from him. We’d watched too closely. It wasn’t until some years later that one of our people learned that MacDonald had threatened a little too loudly to sell to us unless Bellaver practically tripled his offer—and of course Bellaver didn’t dare do that. A price so much out of line even for Titanite would have stirred all the rival shipbuilders to unwelcome curiosity. So, we figured, Bellaver had had him killed.”
“But what happened to the Titanite?”
“That,” said Shearing, “is what nobody knows. Bellaver must have figured that if his tame Lazarites couldn’t find where MacDonald had put it, we couldn’t either. He was right. With all our combined mental probes and conventional detectors we haven’t been able to track it down. And we haven’t been able to find any more pockets, either. Bellaver Corporation got exclusive mineral rights to the whole damned moon. They even own the refinery now.”
Hyrst shook his head. “Latent impressions or not, I don’t see how I can help on that. If MacDonald had given the killer any clue—”
A beam of bright blue light no thicker than a pencil struck in through the mouth of the passage. It
“For the simplest reason in the world,” said Shearing bitterly. “The damn thing can’t fly.”
“But—” said Hyrst, in astonishment.
“It isn’t finished. It’s been building for over seventy years now, and a long and painful process that’s been, too, Hyrst—doing it bit by bit in secret, and every bit having to be dreamed up out of whole cloth, and often discarded and dreamed up again, because the principle of a workable stardrive has never been formulated before. And it still isn’t finished. It can’t be finished, unless—”
He stopped, and both men turned their attention to the outside.
“Bellaver’s looking at his chrono,” said Hyrst. “Go ahead, we’ve got a minute.”
Shearing continued, “unless we can get hold of enough Titanite to build the hyper-shift relays. Nothing else has a fast enough reaction time, and the necessary load-capacity. We must have burned out a thousand different test-boards, trying.”
“Can’t you buy it?” asked Hyrst. The question sounded reasonable, but he knew as he said it that it was a foolish one. “I mean, I know the stuff is scarcer than virtue and worth astronomical sums—that’s what MacDonald was so happy about—but—”
“The Bellaver Corporation had a corner on the stuff before our ship was even thought of. That’s what brought this whole damned mess about. Some of our people—not saying why they wanted it, of course—tried to buy some from Bellaver in the usual way, and one of them must have been incautious about his shield. Because a Lazarite working for Bellaver caught a mental hint of the starship, and the reason for the Titanite, and that was it. Three generations of Bellavers have been after us for the stardrive, and it’s developed into a secret war as bitter as any ever fought on the battlefield. They hold all the Titanite, we hold the ship, and perhaps now you’re beginning to see why MacDonald was killed, and why you’re so important to both sides.”
“Beginning to,” said Hyrst. “But only beginning.”
“MacDonald found a Titanite pocket. And as you know, a Titanite pocket isn’t very big. One man can break the crude stuff, fill a sack with it, and tote it on his own back if he doesn’t have a power-sled.”
“MacDonald had a sled.”
“And he used it. He cleaned out his pocket, afraid somebody else would track him to it, and he hid the wretched ore somewhere. Then he began to dicker. He approached the Bellaver Corporation, and we heard of it and approached him . He tried playing us off against Bellaver to boost the price, and suddenly he was dead and you were accused of his murder. We thought you really had done it, because no Titanite turned up, and we knew Bellaver hadn’t gotten it from him. We’d watched too closely. It wasn’t until some years later that one of our people learned that MacDonald had threatened a little too loudly to sell to us unless Bellaver practically tripled his offer—and of course Bellaver didn’t dare do that. A price so much out of line even for Titanite would have stirred all the rival shipbuilders to unwelcome curiosity. So, we figured, Bellaver had had him killed.”
“But what happened to the Titanite?”
“That,” said Shearing, “is what nobody knows. Bellaver must have figured that if his tame Lazarites couldn’t find where MacDonald had put it, we couldn’t either. He was right. With all our combined mental probes and conventional detectors we haven’t been able to track it down. And we haven’t been able to find any more pockets, either. Bellaver Corporation got exclusive mineral rights to the whole damned moon. They even own the refinery now.”
Hyrst shook his head. “Latent impressions or not, I don’t see how I can help on that. If MacDonald had given the killer any clue—”
A beam of bright blue light no thicker than a pencil struck in through the mouth of the passage. It
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