Planet in Peril Read Free

KF. Well, I guess it may last out my time.”
    “I never did understand why Telecom let you keep running.”
    “For only one reason, but a good one. Our charter got incorporated, in some strange way, in their constitution. I give the credit to my then predecessor, a guy called Bert White. The proprietorship of KF is a self-perpetuating office for which the chief qualification is low cunning, but White was exceptional. Short of rewriting their own constitution, a desperate step that might stir up a regular horde of hibernating skeletons, they've got to go on giving us rights of telecasting. They just have to get what satisfaction they can from watching us slowly fade away; but since we represent one of the few remaining strands of capitalism in the modem world, there’s one line I can try. Under managerialism , were sunk. So I shall try switching us to the one tiny oasis where managerialism doesn’t send its camels—to Siraq .” “Well, good luck.” Charles thought about it for a moment. “Not very hopeful, is it?”
    Dinkuhl said: “I like you, Charlie. You put things well. I can always join Red League again—you know I started with that outfit?”
    “No. I didn’t know.”
    “The day I tossed my Telecom membership card in the lake was the happiest day of my life. I’m not even sure which lake it was now. I suppose they would make me out a new one.”
    Dinkuhl glanced at his watch; it was extraordinarily big and he wore it on his wrist instead of on his watch-finger.
    “But pending Siraq or Red League, the show must go on. So, on your way. One thing.” Charles looked at him. “I hear the boating’s tricky on that coast.”
    Charles said: “I’ve already been told that.”
    ‘“This,” said Dinkuhl , “is official. The voice of the KF News Reel”

II
    Saba Koupal did not make a good initial impression on Charles. She was attractive enough, dark, rather square-faced, but her personality was unattractive. It was comforting to remember that Ledbetter had told him he need not keep her if he didn’t want to.
    The lab was on high ground, facing the sea and perhaps a hundred yards from it. There was a good view of San Miguel, which was about a mile away, and the back looked into an orange grove which appeared to stretch indefinitely. The equipment in the lab was very good. The first thing he noticed was the five-thousand KV electrobombard he had asked for, and failed to get, when it was announced a year before. There were three cyclotrons. Money had been spent here, and he felt he knew UC policy well enough to be sure that that meant they had expected to get something out of it. The difficulty was finding precisely what.
    Humayun ’ s notes were scrappy; scrappy enough to be just about useless and yet, tantalizingly, not quite scrappy enough to discard entirely. It was the kind of work, clearly enough, which would gain considerably in meaning with the application of the key of what Humayun was driving at.
    This need obliged him to fall back on Sara. He found her in the north room, engaged in the graphitization of a specimen of carbon. He stood behind her without saying anything for a couple of minutes. He said at last:
    "And the next step?”
    She turned round slowl y, holding a pair of asbestos tongs. She looked at him steadily, and behind the steadiness she was obviously jumpy and hostile.
    “Slow bombardment, drying out for twenty-four hours, and checking lattice changes by positron diffraction.” “To establish?”
    She hesitated; she still looked at him but her gaze was edgy. “It’s a continuation of a series of experiments Dr. Humayun put in hand.”
    It was a warm day outside. Charles said impulsively: “I’d like to have a talk with you, Sara. You can spare half an hour?”
    She said distantly: “If you’d prefer that.”
    They walked down to the shore in silence. To the south there was something of an anchorage—a rough breakwater with a couple of concrete posts built on.
    He nodded