Daniel R. Gilgannon

“ It reminded me instantly of the beer-barrel nuclear reactor, a portable affair, developed by the British physicist Robert Parker. Its purpose dawned on me: This was the trigger of the atomic gun that Chetzisky held at the temples of a planet.
I moved in for a clearer view. As I did I was brought up abruptly by a calm, even voice, its tone of command sharpened in the crisp morning air. "You needn't move any more, gentleman. Just raise your hands."
I looked in the direction of the speaker, as my hands went up. Out of the shadows in front of us emerged a short man with a rifle. Chetzisky! ”

“ Chetzisky had said, "give man the means to aid the suffering, to conserve the strength of the toiler, to bring more comfort and leisure to all. But does man appreciate our work? No! He uses our every work to steal from his brother, to cheat, enslave, even to kill him." ”

“ Now that Pilon knew I had read his diary, there was good chance he might try to keep me from getting back alive to Katanga. With the ruthlessness of the fanatic Pilon might feel he owed that much to "the great man" Chetzisky.
A mile from camp the trail broke out of the jungle onto a swaying suspension bridge across a deep gorge. The driver inched the jeep across. Looking down I felt nauseous; a fall and a man was a shredded pulp. ”

“ Yet he was a humanist, too; the suffering he knew as a young Pole, son of tragically poor parents, made him that way. Chetzisky was savagely impatient of the stupidity of man, who built himself a hell instead of a paradise. Science, he felt, could find a way to put mankind on its best behaviour. ”

“ I had said. "But science has given the world a dose of the atom bomb and it hasn't started behaving."
"Yes, I know. But there must be a way. An enforced goodness is better than none at all." He had fallen into a brooding silence, and I had left him to go to my berth. Next morning I had found Chetzisky still in the lounge car, wrapped in thought.
"Well, Arnold, what do you think?" asked Armstrong, breaking in on my recollections.
"Frankly, Jim, I believe he could do it; he's that kind of man."
"That makes two of us," said Armstrong, his fingers thrumming on the side of his chair. ”

“ A good man and a loyal friend. If he weren't as stubborn and resolute as a bull-dog, you might not be sitting down to your supper tonight.
My mind is strangely clear and calm, as if washed by cool, clean winds from distant space. I remember everything vividly, the whole sequence of events that began a month ago.
I was chatting, I recall, with some students about the transuranic elements after my lecture on "The Chain Reaction of Uranium" when a lab instructor tapped me on the shoulder.
"There's an army colonel waiting upstairs in your office, Doctor Bailey." ”

“ Nevil Oxford answered. I poured out my story. His voice shook as he talked with me. I had him on the ropes and I kept pouring it on. The earth had only six days to live unless the nation did something about it. We were just a stone's throw, so to speak, from catching up with Chetzisky. ”

“ Then again he may have a way of activating uranium, thorium, and radium deposits all over the world by ultra-high frequency radiations."
"You don't think," said Armstrong, "that there might be atomic bombs cached in strategic places throughout the world, ready to be set off on a certain day by time mechanisms or confederates?"
"Hardly. That would call for such widespread activity and the work of so many hands it couldn't escape detection. Besides, to achieve the annihilation Chetzisky promises would take thousands of bombs. Such production is beyond us as a nation, never mind an individual." ”

“ A brilliant man, deeply concerned for the world. His words moved me as he spoke of policing the world into peace. His hopes, he told me in strictest confidence, rest on an ore discovery by Ian MacRoberts of British Columbia, a university geologist, who seems to have found a new radioactive element easily controlled. The Doctor has received a sample from MacRoberts today to verify the preliminary spectroscopic analysis. When I left, Doctor Chetzisky shook my hand warmly. I wished him success and promised secrecy. He is one of the obscure great men of our times. ”

“ Then I remembered Chetzisky and realized with a sour humor that worrying about time in terms of years was optimistic. Time now was only a matter of three days.
And moping like this wouldn't add to them.
"Check the radio," I snapped, turning to the pilot; "see if you can raise Burns Lake."
He climbed back into the plane. The lights went on; at least, they still worked. I turned to Johnny Eagle, "You better get the sleeping bags out and turn in yourself. There's nothing to be done till morning." ”

“ About midnight we broke out of the forest wilderness high up on the timber line. The night was brilliantly clear by this time; sharply etched shadows of dark pines lay about us. Towering into the starry skies were our Peaks, their upper reaches capped with snow, with here and there a thick dark scar where a fissure lay in shadow. ”

“ According to Johnny Eagle, the place we wanted was north of Burns Lake. He didn't know the exact spot, but he remembered two things nearby: a rain-rotted cross on a mountain grave and two peaks that MacRoberts had christened the Twins because of their identical appearance.
It wasn't much to go on, but it was something to keep alive our hopes of getting Chetzisky before it was too late.
"Good luck," Major Burley said, "I hope it won't be a wild goose chase."
"It better not be," Armstrong said tersely. "You better get going, Arnold. I'll keep in touch with you by radio from Burns Lake." ”

“ He told the Indian to go back outside and watch and tell him when the soldiers got inside the crater.
"So you are looking for Professor MacRoberts, a private investigator," Chetzisky chuckled softly. "There is something familiar about you; I should have paid more attention to my suspicions in the beginning. You're someone I met once. That beard confuses me."
He waited for me to answer. I had to keep him talking; the paranoiac loves it. All Armstrong's men needed now was time. They were at the doorstep. "I'm Doctor Arnold Bailey of Atlantic University." ”

“ But it wasn't just a bad dream. "... above all you must creep up on Chetzisky," I heard Armstrong saying.
"Seven days doesn't leave much time for creeping."
"I know." Armstrong was grim. "But the Indian should help."
"What Indian?" I exclaimed. The nightmare feeling deepened.
"I forgot, Arnold. When Chetzisky and MacRoberts disappeared into the wilds, they took two Indians along that had been with MacRoberts on previous trips. Fortunately there was a third Indian, a young boy, who went out once before with MacRoberts. We're counting on him to guide you to wherever the Doctor is." ”

“ I almost dropped the mike at the sound of the voice that boomed over the radio loudspeaker. It was Armstrong's.
Public opinion roused by Nevil Oxford's censored broadcast had forced the government's hand and Armstrong had been placed in command of a last minute effort to locate Chetzisky. Only two days separated the earth from annihilation.
"We can't get to you in this weather, Arnold. Sit tight and pray."
"Don't bother about us, Jim," I told Armstrong. "We're well enough set; don't waste time." ”

“ I could stand it no longer and immediately after class I phoned Armstrong in Washington.
He sounded high-strung himself. Unable to get official cooperation he was being forced to dig up the information on Pilon by devious methods. "We have to get official support, Arnold," he snapped angrily. "Otherwise, some of these Washington worshippers of red-tape, clerks parroting, 'That's another department, sir,' and 'put it through channels' sticklers are going to kill any chance of our tracking down Chetzisky."
"And kill two billion people," I added with wry humor. ”

“ Then I stepped quickly out of the brush. Suddenly I stopped dead, afraid even to breathe. Two feet from me an Indian dozed, a rifle across his lap. It was too late; his eyes blinked open. I hurled myself on him. There was a brief scuffle and then he lay still, knocked unconscious by the butt of my .45.
I faded back into the undergrowth and waited. I thought I heard the door of the cabin in the clearing open. But nothing happened.
I let out a deep breath and started skirting the clearing, keeping in the shadows until I was in front of the ramp-like runway. ”

“ Armstrong lit up a cigarette and after the first long puff went on, "Have you any idea how Chetzisky could do it? You're a scientist; you should know."
"Well, Jim, it's a fantastic possibility and it calls for some fantastic conjectures. Perhaps he's found a way to produce a chain reaction right down into the earth's core; perhaps he can produce a radioactive cloud of colossal proportions. ”

“ Armstrong was saying, a warning look in his eyes. "This is one moment when we have to keep our heads, or more than just us will lose them. Hold tight here for a day. Washington probably got Disney's report on your trip to the Congo. I think I can talk my way out of the mess. If I don't," he shrugged hopelessly, "it's all up to you."
All next day I sweated for a word from Armstrong. About five o'clock a call came from one of his friends in Washington. He was under house arrest but still striving desperately to wake the government up to Chetzisky's threat. ”

“ I'll arrange for you to fly to the atomic labs and take up Chetzisky's trail from there. You'll have the entire weekend to dig up something." He took me by the arm and hustled me out of the office.
While I rummaged in my rooms for a luggage case and packed some clothes, the energetic Armstrong sat on my bed smoking a cigarette and filled me in on the details he had rounded up in the past twenty-four hours. The man was a wonder the way he had gone to work unofficially on the Chetzisky case while still handling a regular official assignment on the leakage of troop movements. ”

“ Only twelve more remained to Chetzisky's deadline.
The plane swung down over the west African coast and then turned inland. Thirty-two hours after leaving Washington, it touched down on the runway at N'Dolo airfield in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo.
"Zero hour," I thought with a quiver of excitement as I stooped through the cabin door onto the landing ramp. On hand to meet me was George Disney, head of the commission, who drove me to the Hotel Albert where I was to put up. He was the leisurely type. Pilon, he said, was up country. He could be called down, or I might go up, just as I wished. ”

“ Nevil was sipping coffee from a paper cup as he bent over the news bulletins on the clattering teletypes when I entered his office in the F.B.C. Building. After a preliminary exchange of the usual alumni gossip I got down to cases and told him about Chetzisky. ”

“ Give us peace within a month or I shall destroy the earth utterly." And only two men believed the sender to be capable of carrying out his threat—two men, bucking red-tape, trying to find the terribly sincere atomic physicist, Chetzisky, before the deadline! ”

“ Meanwhile, Nevil Oxford phoned me twice, inquiring about our search for Chetzisky. His voice betrayed his uneasiness.
On the morning of my departure from Idlewild the New York Times, as if given confirmation to our conjectures, carried a front page story announcing a new uranium deposit in the Katanga area. Two university scientists who assayed samples stated the ore was among the highest grade yet discovered. Yield about three kilograms per ton. ”

“ There was a hastily written post-script. "Will arrange passport, plane passage, etc., for you. Draw some money from bank for expenses. Armstrong."
My heart pounded. The Congo! The site of the world's richest uranium deposits, it would be just the natural workshop for Chetzisky.
Perhaps, I mused, trying to reason out a pattern, this fellow Pilon discovered or heard of a new ore find in, say, the jungle area east of the famous Katanga district, and told Chetzisky about it. ”

“ Armstrong.
I slumped back into the chair, swearing silently at every bureaucrat in Washington. Served them right if we let Chetzisky fry them. But it meant being fried ourselves; I looked over to the snoring Budnick and decided on a trick I had seen Army interrogators work during the war.
"Come on, Budnick," I said shaking him. I called to his wife to bring some fresh coffee. After he had gulped down two steaming cups, I opened up on him again.
"Abeles, Aberon" ... For two hours I shot names at him from a telephone directory without let-up. My voice turned hoarse. ”

“ Armstrong might arrive any minute. I hoped.
"When the time comes," he continued, "and I believe it is now, I will remove the moderator bar from the drum at the top of the incline and release it. It will strike a trigger mechanism which will catapult it into the face of the vein of MCR ore. The critical mass will be exceeded and a planetary atom bomb will have been born." ”

“ I'm sorry. I lost my temper. Living alone in this jungle wears a person's nerves a little thin."
I nodded understandingly.
"Dr. Pilon, I really came down here to make inquiries about Doctor Chetzisky." ”