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impassable barrier on that beautiful, straight road of theirs. I wonder if
they'll ever have enough guts to turn aside?"
"I doubt it," said Showalter. "They'll probably curl up and call it a
day."
Silvers shook his head as if to ward off an oppressive vision. "That
shouldn't be allowed to happen," he said. "They've got too much. They've
achieved too much, in spite of their limitations. I wonder if there isn't some
way we could help them?"
--------
*THE PERSON FROM PORLOCK*
Borge, the chief engineer of Intercontinental, glanced down at the
blue-backed folder in his hand. Then he looked at the strained face of Reg
Stone, his top engineer.
"It's no use," said Borge. "We're canceling the project. Millen's
report is negative. He finds the BW effect impossible of practical
application. You can read the details, yourself."
"Canceling-!" Rag Stone half rose from his chair. "But chief, you can't
do that. Millen's crazy. What can he prove with only a little math and no
experimental data? I'm right on the edge of success. If I could just make you
see it!"
_"I have_ seen it. I can't see anything that warrants our pouring out
another twenty-five thousand bucks after the hundred and fifty your project
has already cost the company."
"Twenty, then. Even fifteen might do it. Borge, if you don't let me go
on with this you're passing up the biggest development of the century. Some
other outfit with more guts and imagination and less respect for high-priced
opinion in pretty folders is going to come through with it. Teleportation is
in the bag-all we've got to do is lift it out!"
"Majestic and Carruthers Electric have both canceled their projects on
it. Professor Merrill Hanford, who assisted Bots-Wellton in the original
research, says that the BW effect will never be anything of more than academic
interest."
"Hanford!" Reg exploded. "He's jealous because he doesn't have the
brains to produce a discovery of that magnitude. Bots-Wellton himself says
that his effect will eventually make it possible to eliminate all other means
of freight transport and most passenger stuff except that which is merely for
pleasure."
"All of which is very well," said Borge, "except that it doesn't work
outside of an insignificant laboratory demonstration."
"Insignificant! The actual transfer of six milligrams of silver over a
distance of ten feet is hardly insignificant. As for Millen's math, we haven't
got the right tools to handle this."
"I was speaking from an engineering standpoint. Of course, the effect
is of interest in a purely scientific way, but it is of no use to us. Millen's
math proves it. Take this copy and see for yourself. I'm sorry, Reg, but
that's the final word on it."
Reg Stone rose slowly, his big hands resting against the glass-topped
desk. "I see. I'll just have to forget it then, I guess."
"I'm afraid so." Borge rose and extended his hand. "You've been working
too hard on this thing. Why don't you take a couple of days off? By then we'll
have your next assignment lined up. And no hard feelings over this
Bots-Wellton effect business?"
"Oh, no-sure not," Reg said absently.
He strode out of the office and back to the lab where the elaborate
equipment of his teleport project was strewn in chaotic piles over benches and
lined up in racks and panels.
A hundred thousand dollars worth of beautiful junk, he thought. He
slumped in a chair before the vast, complex panels. This cancellation was the
fitting climax to the delays, misfortunes, and accidents that had dogged the
project since it began.
From the first, everyone except a few members of the Engineering
Committee and Reg himself had been against it. Borge considered it a waste of
time and money. The other engineers referred to it as Stone's Folly.
And within Reg himself there was that smothering, frustrated,
indefinable sensation which he couldn't name.
It was a premonition of failure, and there had been a thousand and one
incidents to support it. From the first day, when one of his lab assistants
fell and broke a precious surge amplifier, the project seemed to have been
hexed. No day passed but that materials seemed mysteriously missing or
blueprints turned up with the wrong specifications on them. He'd tried six
incompetent junior engineers before the last one, a brilliant chap named
Spence, who seemed to be the only one of the lot who knew a lighthouse tube
from a stub support.
With men and materials continually snafu it was almost as if someone
had deliberately sabotaged the whole project.
He caught himself up with a short, bitter laugh. The little men in
white coats would be after him if he kept up that line of thought.
He passed a hand over his eyes. How tired he was! He hadn't realized
until now what a tremendous peak of tension he had reached. He felt it in the
faint trembling of his fingers, the pressure behind his eyeballs.
His disappointment and anger slowly settled like a vortex about Carl
Millen, the consulting physicist who'd reported negatively when Borge insisted
to the Engineering Committee that they get outside opinion on the
practicability of BW utilization.
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