The Technologists Read Free Page A

scratching his strong chin sagely.
    “I questioned him thoroughly and he vowed he hadn’t had a drop, and I didn’t find any liquor upon his person or notice any in his rooms. Nor any of the others who were witnesses.”
    Carlton bowed his head and sat down on a barrel at the edge of the pier, staring at loose planks that were floating past him below. His head throbbed with the echoes of all the futile conversations since the morning with his patrolmen, unnerved sailors, angry shipowners, crying passengers. He dismissed his inferior to assist the rest of the men with the debris. The Harbor Police had encircled the wharf with their boatsand were steering incoming vessels away, including a small fishing boat weaving in and out with a heavy-duty net, looting lost booty.
    Boots thumped aggressively on the planking behind him, and he was rising to attention before he even turned.
    “Chief Kurtz,” he said, bowing. “I believe you will find we have the situation in hand.”
    “Indeed!” responded Kurtz with surprise, pulling at one end of his bushy mustache and inclining his head toward the destruction. “Tell me, Sergeant Carlton, what
is
this situation? What I see are two of the most important commercial wharves of our city in tatters.”
    “Three ships sunk, four others damaged or otherwise destroyed, with losses in excess of twenty-four thousand dollars. Fifteen individuals injured to varying degrees, mostly broken arms and legs, and burns, with loss of life avoided only by the great exertions of several experienced sailors.”
    “But how?” Kurtz demanded after Carlton finished the report. “How did this happen?”
    “That is the very question,” Carlton said, raising a single eyebrow, and clearing his throat assiduously.
    “Hem! Haw! Go on!”
    “Chief. I have spoken to several captains and navigators who were on the vessels involved and have instructed the patrolmen to interview as many others as we can locate. Each one, to a man, reports that their instruments failed—were deranged in their readings—all in the space of the same few minutes.”
    “How is it possible?”
    “It is flagrantly not possible, sir! You need not believe me alone. The captain of the Harbor Police says that it is emphatically and categorically
not
possible for so many compasses and what-you-will to fail at once.”
    Kurtz stared ominously into the harbor. “Sabotage?”
    “Chief,” the sergeant began, then hesitated before going on. “Chief, all the instruments were on ships from different destinations with distinct schedules, some arriving, some departing. How it could be sabotage, well, I have wrangled with that question with the same success Joseph had with the angel.”
    “Then what, Sergeant Carlton? Necromancy? The devil? That’s what some of the sailors are squawking about, and that means ships avoiding our ports, and tens of thousands of dollars lost. If the mayor and the legislature sink their teeth into this, it will touch off a volcano under my feet. What do you propose doing about that?”
    “We shall remove the debris as best and as quickly as we can manage, so the city engineers can begin to rebuild.”
    Jaw clenched, Kurtz took off his hat and tossed it into the harbor. “There’s one more piece of debris to fish out, Sergeant!”
    “Very well, Chief,” replied the officer obediently. “I will have my best man do it straightaway.”
    Kurtz rolled his eyes. “You can return my hat to me in my office when you know what caused those ships to lose their direction. Until then, I’d rather not see that thunderstruck phiz of yours back at the station house.”
    “But, Chief, perhaps the Harbor Police should lead this investigation.”
    “They swallow too much of our funds already, and they would crave any excuse to siphon off more. No. Over my dead body, Carlton.”
    “Then perhaps I ought to consult with some of the professors at that new college in Back Bay. They are experts in all the new sciences, and