E. E. Smith

“ Vortices are absolutely unpredictable, you know. People we don't like can die of radiation or of any one or a mixture of various toxic gases and vapors and the vortex will take the blame."
"And later, when it gets dangerous, Storm Cloud can blow it out for us," Graves gloated. "But we'll not want him for a long, long time!"
"No, but we'll report it and ask for him the hour it happens—" Fairchild silenced the manager's expostulations. "Use your head, Graves! Anybody who has a vortex go out of control wants it killed as soon as possible. ”

“ The fat man's blue eyes were now neither genial nor good-natured; they were piercing and cold. "In this game anybody who permits any leaks dies. And anyone who knows too much dies. We don't want you to die, at least until after we get started on Deka—"
"Nor then," the scientist interrupted cynically, "if you know when you're well off. I'm the only man in the universe who can run the apparatus. It would take a mighty good man three years to learn it after I get it going. Remember that, my friend."
"So what?" Graves' stare was coldly level. ”

“ Ryder, even while his left arm tightened around his Jackie's waist, felt with his right hand for a club of his own and tensed his muscles in readiness for strife—for the climbing man was all too apparently mad. ”

“ There was a possibility that Cloud, a mathematical prodigy able to compute instantaneously any mathematical problem, would be able to succeed where so many others had failed; but as long as he had Jo and the three kids, as long as he had the normal love of life, that possibility had never occurred to him.
When he lost them, however, he no longer had the slightest interest in living. Unwilling to kill himself, he decided to try to blow out the oldest and worst vortex upon Tellus. ”

“ For if such an entirely unsuspected firm as Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, with all their elaborate preparations and precautions—some of the inspectors must have been corrupted too, although we aren't to the bottom of that phase yet—could not get more than started, it is not probable that any other attempt will prove markedly successful. And in the case of the other habit-forming drugs, which Tellurian Pharmaceuticals and undoubtedly many other supposedly reputable firms have been distributing in quantity, you have given us a very potent weapon. ”

“ In the hydroponics office there was an eminently personable and yet level-headed young filing clerk named Jacqueline Comstock, who was all unconsciously—or was it?—working much more toward her Mrs. degree than for the good of the firm.
It was inevitable, then, that these two should single each other out; that each should come to behold in the other all that made life worth while. ”

“ Against the inertia of that ruling body the impetuosity of the younger generations was precisely as efficacious as the dashing of waves against the foot of an adamantine cliff—and in very much the same fashion. Ocean waves do, in time, cut into even the hardest rock ”

“ There has been some talk of a honeymoon to Chickladoria, but that may have been a blind. Doubles? Disappearance? The vortex? What do you think?"
"Um—We've got to hold the risk at minimum." Fairchild pondered for minutes. "We can't disintegrate them, that's sure. We're trying to clear our books of too much of that stuff already. They've got to be found dead, and the quota for the vortex for this period is full. Therefore we'll have to keep them alive and out of sight—where they are is as good a place as any—for a week."
"Why alive? ”

“ Communicators—He was getting somewhere now—a steel-lined room, a girl and a boy.
"Eureka! Good evening, folks."
It had not taken long for Ryder to arrive at the explanations of the predicament in which he and the girl were so hopelessly enmeshed.
"Thionite!" he explained to her, bitterly. "I never saw a man take thionite before, let alone die of it, but it's the only thing I can think of that can turn a man into such an utter maniac as that one was. They're growing the stuff. They must be a zwilnik outfit from top to bottom. That's why they've got to rub us out." ”

“ With our reputation, other firms would get knocked off in time to give us plenty of warning. Lutzenschiffer's, for instance, is putting out heroin by the ton."
"Again I say that's what you think." Fairchild remained entirely unconvinced. "Nobody else is putting out the stuff that comes out of Cave Two Seventeen—demand and price prove that. What you don't seem to get, Graves, is that some of those damned Lensmen have brains. ”

“ Graves sneered.
"No," the scientist replied calmly. "The ice is getting thin."
"Whaddya mean 'thin'?" the manager demanded. "The Patrol inspectors are ours—enough of them, anyway. Our records are fixed. Faked identities, trips, all that stuff, you know. Everything's on the green."
"That's what you think," Fairchild countered cynically. "Our accident rate, in spite of everything we have been able to do, is up three hundredths of one percent; industrial hazard rate and employee turnover about three and a half; and the Narcotics Division alone knows how much we have upped total bootleg sales. ”

“ All our communications officers were killed and the sets—even those in the lifeboats—blasted. You can't do much with your left hand, of course, but you may be able to boss the job of rigging up a spare."
"I can do more than you think," Cloud grinned wryly. "It so happens that I'm left-handed. Give me a couple of technicians and we'll see what we can do."
They set to work, but before they had accomplished anything a cruiser drove up, flashing its identification as a warship of the Galactic Patrol. ”

“ Graves laughed coarsely. "You won't live very long, so don't worry about conveniences. But keep still. If you want to know what is going to happen to you, listen—we have no objections to that—but one more word out of you and I cut the circuit. Go ahead, Fairchild, with what you were saying."
"There was a fault in the rock. Small, but big enough to let a little of the fine smoke seep through. He must have been a sniffer before to be able to smell the trace of the stuff that was drifting down the hill. All fixed now, though. I'm having the fault, and any others that may exist, cemented up solid. ”

“ Newspoke—originally New Spokane—was the largest city of Dekanore III. It lay in the broad valley of the Spokane River, just above the mouth of Clear Creek, which latter stream meandered along a fertile valley between mountains lofty and steep. Clear Creek Valley—all of it—and all its neighboring mountains belonged to Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
The valley floor was a riot of color, devoted as it was to the intensive cultivation of medicinal plants which could not as yet be grown economically in tanks. Along both edges of the valley extended rows of huge hydroponics sheds. ”

“ Ryder put in, desperately, "surely you don't have to murder Jackie here in cold blood. I was just suggesting to Graves that he could get a therapist—"
"Shut up," the scientist ordered coldly. "Our therapists are working on things that are really important. You two must die."
"But why?" Ryder protested wildly. He could not as yet perceive more than a small fraction of the whole. "I tell you, it's—"
"We'll let you guess," said Fairchild.
Shock upon shock had been too much for the girl's overstrained nerves. She fainted quietly and Ryder eased her unconscious form down to the cold steel floor. ”

“ Lensmen came, and companies of Patrolmen equipped in many and various fashions, but it was several weeks before the situation was entirely under control. Then Ellington—Councillor Ellington, the old Unattached Lensmen who was in charge of all Narcotics work—called the three detainees into the office which had been set aside for his use.
"We can release you now," the Lensman smiled. "Thanks, from me as well as from the Patrol, for everything you have done. There has been some talk that you two youngsters have been contemplating a honeymoon upon Chickladoria or thereabouts?" ”

“ Cloud's weapon flamed briefly. "I thought so. They do their serious radiation work somewhere else. The air right now, though, I imagine, is bad. It won't be long now. Do I hear something?"
"Somebody's coming, but suppose it's the Patrol?"
"They'll be in armor, so a few blasts won't hurt 'em. Maybe the zwilniks will be in armor, too—if so we'll have to duck—but I imagine that they'll throw the first ones in here just as they are."
They did. Graves, or whoever was directing things, rushed his nearest guards into action, hoping to reach B Twelve before anyone else could. ”

“ The pirate snapped. "Go inert and open up, or I'll inert you with a needle-beam and open you up, compartment by compartment—like this." A narrow beam lashed out and expired. "That was through one of your cargo holds, just to show you that I mean business. The next one will be through your control room."
Resistance being out of the question, the liner went inert, and while the intrinsic velocities of the two vessels were being matched, the attacker issued further instructions.
"All officers are to be in the control room, all passengers in the main saloon. Everybody unarmed. ”

“ Those mountains were hollow, honeycombed into a host of rooms in which, under precisely controlled environments of temperature, atmosphere, and radiation, were grown and studied hundreds of widely-variant forms of life. ”

“ More than half carrying his companion, still gripping unconsciously his heavy club, the man set off down the rugged trail. Out of sight of what had happened, the girl opened her eyes and they continued the descent in a more usual, more decorous fashion until they met a man hurrying upwards.
"Oh, Doctor Fairchild! There was a—" But the report which Ryder was about to make was unnecessary; the alarm had already been given.
"I know!" the scientist puffed. "Stop! Stay right where you are." He jabbed a finger emphatically downward to anchor the couple in the exact spot they occupied. "Don't talk! ”

“ Those figures are all in the Patrol's files. How can you give such facts the brush-off?"
"We don't have to," Graves laughed comfortably. "Even a half of one percent would not excite suspicion, and our distribution is so uniform throughout the galaxy that they can't center it. They can't possibly trace anything back to us. ”

“ Stonely assured him. "Doctor Stonely will retire and will gradually drop from sight. I will abandon this disguise, resume my true identity as Fairchild, which has been kept alive judiciously, and move openly to Deka."
"Notes? Data? Possible observers? This machinery and stuff?" Graves insisted.
"No notes or data have ever been written down. The knowledge exists only in my own brain. You are the first person other than myself ever to see the inside of this room. This apparatus will be unrecognizable before it is boxed, and I shall do the packing myself. Why? ”

“ Gas, however, was bad. They couldn't weld cover-plates everywhere, even if they had time and metal. Every drug house had air-helmets, though, and this one must have hundreds of them. Ah! here they were!
He put one on, and made awkward shift to drape two more around his neck. He had to keep his one hand free. To the indicated elevator he dashed. Down two floors. He ran along the corridor and drove the narrowest, hottest possible cutting beam of his DeLameter into the lock of Room B Twelve. ”

“ I think I'll go over to the Patrol station and borrow one."
"Nerves, my boy, nerves and shock," Graves diagnosed. "Losing an arm would shock hell out of anybody's nervous system, I'd say. Maybe the Phillips treatment—the new one growing on—pulls you out of shape." ”