[Illustration: _The Lensman and the observer helped Storm into his heavily padded armor. Their movements were automatic--the ointment, the devices--_] _INTRODUCING "Storm" Cloud, who, through tragedy, is destined to become the most noted figure in the galaxy--THE_ VORTEX BLASTER (_Complete in this issue!_) by E. E. SMITH, Ph. D. _Author of "The Skylark, " "Skylark Three, " "The Skylark of Valeron, " the Lensman stories, etc. _ Safety devices that do not protect. The "unsinkable" ships that, before the days of Bergenholm and of atomicand cosmic energy, sank into the waters of the earth. More particularly, safety devices which, while protecting against oneagent of destruction, attract magnet-like another and worse. Such as thearmored cable within the walls of a wooden house. It protects theelectrical conductors within against accidental external shorts; but, inadequately grounded as it must of necessity be, it may attract andupon occasion has attracted the stupendous force of lightning. Then, fused, volatilized, flaming incandescent throughout the length, breadth, and height of a dwelling, that dwelling's existence thereafter is to bemeasured in minutes. Specifically, four lightning rods. The lightning rods protecting thechromium, glass, and plastic home of Neal Cloud. Those rods wereadequately grounded, grounded with copper-silver cables the bigness of astrong man's arm; for Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, knew his lightningand he was taking no chances whatever with the safety of his lovely wifeand their three wonderful kids. He did not know, he did not even suspect, that under certain conditionsof atmospheric potential and of ground-magnetic stress his perfectlydesigned lightning-rod system would become a super-powerful magnet forflying vortices of atomic disintegration. And now Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, sat at his desk in a strained, dull apathy. His face was a yellowish-gray white, his tendoned handsgripped rigidly the arms of his chair. His eyes, hard and lifeless, stared unseeingly past the small, three-dimensional block portrait ofall that had made life worth living. For his guardian against lightning had been a vortex-magnet at themoment when a luckless wight had attempted to abate the nuisance of a"loose" atomic vortex. That wight died, of course--they almost alwaysdo--and the vortex, instead of being destroyed, was simply broken upinto an indefinite number of widely-scattered new vortices. And one ofthese bits of furious, uncontrolled energy, resembling more nearly ahandful of material rived from a sun than anything else with whichordinary man is familiar, darted toward and crashed downward to earththrough Neal Cloud's new house. That home did not burn; it simply exploded. Nothing of it, in it, oraround it stood a chance, for in a fractional second of time the placewhere it had been was a crater of seething, boiling lava--a crater whichfilled the atmosphere to a height of miles with poisonous vapors; whichflooded all circumambient space with lethal radiations. Cosmically, the whole thing was infinitesimal. Ever since man learnedhow to liberate intra-atomic energy, the vortices of disintegration hadbeen breaking out of control. Such accidents had been happening, werehappening, and would continue indefinitely to happen. More than oneworld, perhaps, had been or would be consumed to the last gram by suchloose atomic vortices. What of that? Of what real importance are a fewgrains of sand to an ocean beach five thousand miles long, a hundredmiles wide, and ten miles deep? And even to that individual grain of sand called "Earth"--or, in modernparlance, "Sol Three, " or "Tellus of Sol", or simply "Tellus"--theaffair was of negligible importance. One man had died; but, in dying, hehad added one more page to the thick bulk of negative results already onfile. That Mrs. Cloud and her children had perished was merelyunfortunate. The vortex itself was not yet a real threat to Tellus. Itwas a "new" one, and thus it would be a long time before it would becomeother than a local menace. And well before that could happen--beforeeven the oldest of Tellus' loose vortices had eaten away much of hermass or poisoned much of her atmosphere, her scientists would havesolved the problem. It was unthinkable that Tellus, the point of originand the very center of Galactic Civilization, should cease to exist. * * * * * But to Neal Cloud the accident was the ultimate catastrophe. Hispersonal universe had crashed in ruins; what was left was not worthpicking up. He and Jo had been married for almost twenty years and thebonds between them had grown stronger, deeper, truer with every passingday. And the kids.... It _couldn't_ have happened ... Fate COULDN'T dothis to him ... But it had ... It could. Gone ... Gone ... GONE.... And to Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, sitting there at his desk in torn, despairing abstraction, with black maggots of thought gnawing holes inhis brain, the catastrophe was doubly galling because of its cruelirony. For he was second from the top in the Atomic Research Laboratory;his life's work had been a search for a means of extinguishment ofexactly such loose vortices as had destroyed his all. His eyes focussed vaguely upon the portrait. Clear, honest gray eyes ... Lines of character and of humor ... Sweetly curved lips, ready to smileor to kiss.... He wrenched his eyes away and scribbled briefly upon a sheet of paper. Then, getting up stiffly, he took the portrait and moved woodenly acrossthe room to a furnace. As though enshrining it he placed the plasticblock upon a refractory between the electrodes and threw a switch. Afterthe flaming arc had done its work he turned and handed the paper to atall man, dressed in plain gray leather, who had been watching him withquiet, understanding eyes. Significant enough to the initiated of theimportance of this laboratory is the fact that it was headed by anUnattached Lensman. "As of now, Phil, if it's QX with you. " The Gray Lensman took the document, glanced at it, and slowly, meticulously, tore it into sixteen equal pieces. "Uh, uh, Storm, " he denied, gently. "Not a resignation. Leave ofabsence, yes--indefinite--but not a resignation. " "Why?" It was scarcely a question; Cloud's voice was level, uninflected. "I won't be worth the paper I'd waste. " "Now, no, " the Lensman conceded, "but the future's another matter. Ihaven't said anything so far, because to anyone who knew you and Jo as Iknew you it was abundantly clear that nothing could be said. " Two handsgripped and held. "For the future, though, four words were uttered longago, that have never been improved upon. 'This, too, shall pass. '" "You think so?" "I don't think so, Storm--I know so. I've been around a long time. Youare too good a man, and the world has too much use for you, for you togo down permanently out of control. You've got a place in the world, andyou'll be back--" A thought struck the Lensman, and he went on in analtered tone. "You wouldn't--but of course you wouldn't--you couldn't. " "I don't think so. No, I won't--that never was any kind of a solution toany problem. " Nor was it. Until that moment, suicide had not entered Cloud's mind, andhe rejected it instantly. His kind of man did not take the easy way out. After a brief farewell Cloud made his way to an elevator and was whiskeddown to the garage. Into his big blue DeKhotinsky Sixteen Special andaway. Through traffic so heavy that front-, rear-, and side-bumpers almosttouched he drove with his wonted cool skill; even though, consciously, he did not know that the other cars were there. He slowed, turned, stopped, "gave her the oof, " all in correct response to flashing signalsin all shapes and colors--purely automatically. Consciously, he did notknow where he was going, nor care. If he thought at all, his numbedbrain was simply trying to run away from its own bitter imaging--which, if he had thought at all, he would have known to be a hopeless task. Buthe did not think; he simply acted, dumbly, miserably. His eyes saw, optically; his body reacted, mechanically; his thinking brain wascompletely in abeyance. Into a one-way skyway he rocketed, along it over the suburbs and intothe transcontinental super-highway. Edging inward, lane after lane, hereached the "unlimited" way--unlimited, that is, except for beinglimited to cars of not less than seven hundred horsepower, in perfectmechanical condition, driven by registered, tested drivers at speeds notless than one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour--flashed hisregistry number at the control station, and shoved his right foot downto the floor. * * * * * Now everyone knows that an ordinary DeKhotinsky Sporter will do ahundred and forty honestly-measured miles in one honestly measured hour;but very few ordinary drivers have ever found out how fast one of thosebrutal big souped-up Sixteens can wheel. They simply haven't got what ittakes to open one up. "Storm" Cloud found out that day. He held that two-and-a-half-tonJuggernaut on the road, wide open, for two solid hours. But it didn'thelp. Drive as he would, he could not outrun that which rode with him. Beside him and within him and behind him. For Jo was there. Jo and thekids, but mostly Jo. It was Jo's car as much as it was his. "Babe, thebig blue ox, " was Jo's pet name for it; because, like Paul Bunyan'sfabulous beast, it was pretty nearly six feet between the eyes. Everything they had ever had was that way. She was in the seat besidehim. Every dear, every sweet, every luscious, lovely memory of her wasthere ... And behind him, just out of eye-corner visibility, were thethree kids. And a whole lifetime of this loomed ahead--a vista ofemptiness more vacuous far than the emptiest reaches of intergalacticspace. Damnation! He couldn't stand much more of-- High over the roadway, far ahead, a brilliant octagon flared red. Thatmeant "STOP!" in any language. Cloud eased up his accelerator, easeddown his mighty brakes. He pulled up at the control station and atrimly-uniformed officer made a gesture. "Sorry, sir, " the policeman said, "but you'll have to detour here. There's a loose atomic vortex beside the road up ahead-- "Oh! It's Dr. Cloud!" Recognition flashed into the guard's eyes. "Ididn't recognize you at first. You can go ahead, of course. It'll be twoor three miles before you'll have to put on your armor; you'll know whenbetter than anyone can tell you. They didn't tell us they were going tosend for _you_. It's just a little new one, and the dope we got was thatthey were going to shove it off into the canyon with pressure. " "They didn't send for me. " Cloud tried to smile. "I'm just drivingaround--haven't my armor along, even. So I guess I might as well goback. " He turned the Special around. A loose vortex--new. There might be ahundred of them, scattered over a radius of two hundred miles. Sistersof the one that had murdered his family--the hellish spawn of thataccursed Number Eleven vortex that that damnably incompetent bunglingass had tried to blow up.... Into his mind there leaped a picture, wire-sharp, of Number Eleven as he had last seen it, and simultaneouslyan idea hit him like a blow from a fist. He thought. _Really_ thought, now; cogently, intensely, clearly. If hecould do it ... Could actually blow out the atomic flame of an atomicvortex ... Not exactly revenge, but.... By Klono's brazen bowels, itwould work--it'd _have_ to work--he'd _make_ it work! And grimly, quietly, but alive in every fiber now, he drove back toward the citypractically as fast as he had come away. * * * * * If the Lensman was surprised at Cloud's sudden reappearance in thelaboratory he did not show it. Nor did he offer any comment as hiserstwhile first assistant went to various lockers and cupboards, assembling meters, coils, tubes, armor, and other paraphernalia andapparatus. "Guess that's all I'll need, Chief, " Cloud remarked, finally. "Here's ablank check. If some of this stuff shouldn't happen to be in usablecondition when I get done with it, fill it out to suit, will you?" "No, " and the Lensman tore up the check just as he had torn up theresignation. "If you want the stuff for legitimate purposes, you're onPatrol business and it is the Patrol's risk. If, on the other hand, youthink that you're going to try to snuff a vortex, the stuff stays here. That's final, Storm. " "You're right--and wrong, Phil, " Cloud stated, not at all sheepishly. "I'm going to blow out Number One vortex with duodec, yes--but I'm_really_ going to blow it out, not merely make a stab at it as an excusefor suicide, as you think. " "How?" The big Lensman's query was skepticism incarnate. "It can't bedone, except by an almost impossibly fortuitous accident. You yourselfhave been the most bitterly opposed of us all to these suicidalattempts. " "I know it--I didn't have the solution myself until a few hours ago--ithit me all at once. Funny I never thought of it before; it's been rightin sight all the time. " "That's the way with most problems, " the Chief admitted. "Plain enoughafter you see the key equation. Well, I'm perfectly willing to beconvinced, but I warn you that I'll take a lot of convincing--andsomeone else will do the work, not you. " "When I get done you'll see why I'll pretty nearly have to do it myself. But to convince you, exactly what is the knot?" "Variability, " snapped the older man. "To be effective, the charge ofexplosive at the moment of impact must match, within very close limits, the activity of the vortex itself. Too small a charge scatters itaround, in vortices which, while much smaller than the original, arestill large enough to be self-sustaining. Too large a charge simplyrekindles the original vortex--still larger--in its original crater. Andthe activity that must be matched varies so tremendously, in magnitude, maxima, and minima, and the cycle is so erratic--ranging from seconds tohours without discoverable rhyme or reason--that all attempts to do soat any predetermined instant have failed completely. Why, even Kinnisonand Cardynge and the Conference of Scientists couldn't solve it, anymore than they could work out a tractor beam that could be used as atow-line on one. " "Not exactly, " Cloud demurred. "They found that it could be forecast, for a few seconds at least--length of time directly proportional to thelength of the cycle in question--by an extension of the calculus ofwarped surfaces. " "Humph!" the Lensman snorted. "So what? What good is a ten-secondforecast when it takes a calculating machine an hour to solve theequations.... Oh!" He broke off, staring. "Oh, " he repeated, slowly, "I forgot that you're a lightningcalculator--a mathematical prodigy from the day you were born--who neverhas to use a calculating machine even to compute an orbit.... But thereare other things. " "I'll say there are; plenty of them. I'd thought of the calculator anglebefore, of course, but there was a worse thing than variability tocontend with.... " "What?" the Lensman demanded. "Fear, " Cloud replied, crisply. "At the thought of a hand-to-hand battlewith a vortex my brain froze solid. Fear--the sheer, stark, naturalhuman fear of death, that robs a man of the fine edge of control andbrings on the very death that he is trying so hard to avoid. That's whathad me stopped. " "Right ... You may be right, " the Lensman pondered, his fingers drummingquietly upon his desk. "And you are not afraid of death--now--evensubconsciously. But tell me, Storm, please, that you won't invite it. " "I will not invite it, sir, now that I've got a job to do. But that's asfar as I'll go in promising. I won't make any superhuman effort to avoidit. I'll take all due precautions, for the sake of the job, but if itgets me, what the hell? The quicker it does, the better--the sooner I'llbe with Jo. " "You believe that?" "Implicitly. " "The vortices are as good as gone, then. They haven't got any morechance than Boskone has of licking the Patrol. " "I'm afraid so, " almost glumly. "The only way for it to get me is for meto make a mistake, and I don't feel any coming on. " "But what's your angle?" the Lensman asked, interest lighting his eyes. "You can't use the customary attack; your time will be too short. " "Like this, " and, taking down a sheet of drafting paper, Cloud sketchedrapidly. "This is the crater, here, with the vortex at the bottom, there. From the observers' instruments or from a shielded set-up of myown I get my data on mass, emission, maxima, minima, and so on. Then Ihave them make me three duodec bombs--one on the mark of the activityI'm figuring on shooting at, and one each five percent over and underthat figure--cased in neocarballoy of exactly the computed thickness tolast until it gets to the center of the vortex. Then I take off in aflying suit, armored and shielded, say about here.... " "If you take off at all, you'll take off in a suit, inside a one-manflitter, " the Lensman interrupted. "Too many instruments for a suit, tosay nothing of bombs, and you'll need more screen than a suit candeliver. We can adapt a flitter for bomb-throwing easily enough. " "QX; that would be better, of course. In that case, I set my flitterinto a projectile trajectory like this, whose objective is the center ofthe vortex, there. See? Ten seconds or so away, at about this point, Itake my instantaneous readings, solve the equations at that particularwarped surface for some certain zero time.... " "But suppose that the cycle won't give you a ten-second solution?" "Then I'll swing around and try again until a long cycle _does_ showup. " "QX. It will, sometime. " "Sure. Then, having everything set for zero time, and assuming that theactivity is somewhere near my postulated value.... " "Assume that it isn't--it probably won't be, " the Chief grunted. "I accelerate or decelerate--" "Solving new equations all the while?" "Sure--don't interrupt so--until at zero time the activity, extrapolatedto zero time, matches one of my bombs. I cut that bomb loose, shootmyself off in a sharp curve, and Z-W-E-E-E-T--POWIE! She's out!" With anexpressive, sweeping gesture. "You hope, " the Lensman was frankly dubious. "And there you are, rightin the middle of that explosion, with two duodec bombs outside yourarmor--or just inside your flitter. " "Oh, no. I've shot them away several seconds ago, so that they explodesomewhere else, nowhere near me. " "_I_ hope. But do you realize just how busy a man you are going to beduring those ten or twelve seconds?" "Fully. " Cloud's face grew somber. "But I will be in full control. Iwon't be afraid of anything that can happen--_anything_. And, " he wenton, under his breath, "that's the hell of it. " "QX, " the Lensman admitted finally, "you can go. There are a lot ofthings you haven't mentioned, but you'll probably be able to work themout as you go along. I think I'll go out and work with the boys in thelookout station while you're doing your stuff. When are you figuring onstarting?" "How long will it take to get the flitter ready?" "A couple of days. Say we meet you there Saturday morning?" "Saturday the tenth, at eight o'clock. I'll be there. " * * * * * And again Neal Cloud and Babe, the big blue ox, hit the road. And as herolled the physicist mulled over in his mind the assignment to which hehad set himself. Like fire, only worse, intra-atomic energy was a good servant, but aterrible master. Man had liberated it before he could really control it. In fact, control was not yet, and perhaps never would be, perfect. Up toa certain size and activity, yes. They, the millions upon millions ofself-limiting ones, were the servants. They could be handled, fenced in, controlled; indeed, if they were not kept under an exciting bombardmentand very carefully fed, they would go out. But at long intervals, forsome one of a dozen reasons--science knew _so_ little, fundamentally, ofthe true inwardness of the intra-atomic reactions--one of these small, tame, self-limiting vortices flared, nova-like, into a large, wild, self-sustaining one. It ceased being a servant then, and became amaster. Such flare-ups occurred, perhaps, only once or twice in acentury on Earth; the trouble was that they were so utterly, damnably_permanent_. They never went out. And no data were ever secured: forevery living thing in the vicinity of a flare-up died; every instrumentand every other solid thing within a radius of a hundred feet melteddown into the reeking, boiling slag of its crater. Fortunately, the rate of growth was slow--as slow, almost, as it waspersistent--otherwise Civilization would scarcely have had a planetleft. And unless something could be done about loose vortices beforetoo many years, the consequences would be really serious. That was whyhis laboratory had been established in the first place. Nothing much had been accomplished so far. The tractor beam that wouldtake hold of them had never been designed. Nothing material was of anyuse; it melted. Pressors worked, after a fashion: it was by the use ofthese beams that they shoved the vortices around, off into the wasteplaces--unless it proved cheaper to allow the places where they had comeinto being to remain waste places. A few, through sheer luck, had beenblown into self-limiting bits by duodec. Duodecaplylatomate, the mostpowerful, the most frightfully detonant explosive ever invented upon allthe known planets of the First Galaxy. But duodec had taken an awfultoll of life. Also, since it usually scattered a vortex instead ofextinguishing it, duodec had actually caused far more damage than it hadcured. No end of fantastic schemes had been proposed, of course; of varyingdegrees of fantasy. Some of them sounded almost practical. Some of themhad been tried; some of them were still being tried. Some, such as theperennially-appearing one of building a huge hemispherical hull in theground under and around the vortex, installing an inertialess drive, andshooting the whole neighborhood out into space, were perhaps feasiblefrom an engineering standpoint. They were, however, potentially socapable of making things worse that they would not be tried save aslast-ditch measures. In short, the control of loose vortices was verymuch an unsolved problem. * * * * * Number One vortex, the oldest and worst upon Tellus, had been pushed outinto the Badlands; and there, at eight o'clock on the tenth, Cloudstarted to work upon it. The "lookout station, " instead of being some such ramshackle structureas might have been deduced from the Lensman's casual terminology, was infact a fully-equipped observatory. Its staff was not large--eight menworked in three staggered eight-hour shifts of two men each--but theinstruments! To develop them had required hundreds of man-years of timeand near-miracles of research, not the least of the problems having beenthat of developing shielded conductors capable of carrying truly throughfive-ply screens of force the converted impulses of the very radiationsagainst which those screens were most effective. For the observatory, and the one long approach to it as well, had to be screened heavily;without such protection no life could exist there. This problem and many others had been solved, however, and there theinstruments were. Every phase and factor of the vortex's existence andactivity were measured and recorded continuously, throughout everyminute of every day of every year. And all of these records were summedup, integrated, into the "Sigma" curve. This curve, while only anincredibly and senselessly tortuous line to the layman's eye, was averitable mine of information to the initiate. Cloud glanced along the Sigma curve of the previous forty-eight hoursand scowled, for one jagged peak, scarcely an hour old, actually punchedthrough the top line of the chart. "Bad, huh, Frank?" he grunted. "Plenty bad, Storm, and getting worse, " the observer assented. "Iwouldn't wonder if Carlowitz were right, after all--if she ain't gettingready to blow her top I'm a Zabriskan fontema's maiden aunt. " "No periodicity--no equation, of course. " It was a statement, not aquestion. The Lensman ignored as completely as did the observer, if notas flippantly, the distinct possibility that at any moment theobservatory and all that it contained might be resolved into theircomponent atoms. "None whatever, " came flatly from Cloud. He did not need to spend hoursat a calculating machine; at one glance he _knew_, without knowing howhe knew, that no equation could be made to fit even the weighted-averagelocus of that wildly-shifting Sigma curve. "But most of the cycles cutthis ordinate here--seven fifty-one--so I'll take that for my value. That means nine point nine oh six kilograms of duodec basic charge, withone five percent over and one five percent under that for alternates. Neocarballoy casing, fifty-three millimeters on the basic, others inproportion. On the wire?" "It went out as you said it, " the observer reported. "They'll have 'emhere in fifteen minutes. " "QX--I'll get dressed, then. " The Lensman and the observer helped him into his cumbersome, heavily-padded armor. They checked his instruments, making sure that theprotective devices of the suit were functioning at full efficiency. Thenall three went out to the flitter. A tiny speedster, really; a torpedobearing the stubby wings and the ludicrous tail-surfaces, themultifarious driving-, braking-, side-, top-, and under-jets socharacteristic of the tricky, cranky, but ultra-maneuverable breed. Butthis one had something that the ordinary speedster or flitter did notcarry; spaced around the needle beak there yawned the open muzzles of atriplex bomb-thrower. [Illustration: _Ten seconds in which to solve the equation--to choose, fire, move clear--the flitter bucked. _] More checking. The Lensman and the armored Cloud both knew that everyone of the dozens of instruments upon the flitter's special board wasright to the hair; nevertheless each one was compared with themaster-instrument of the observatory. * * * * * The bombs arrived and were loaded in; and Cloud, with a casually-wavedsalute, stepped into the tiny operating compartment. The massivedoor--flitters have no airlocks, as the whole midsection is scarcelybigger than an airlock would have to be--rammed shut upon its fibergaskets, the heavy toggles drove home. A cushioned form closed in uponthe pilot, leaving only his arms and lower legs free. Then, making sure that his two companions had ducked for cover, Cloudshot his flitter into the air and toward the seething inferno which wasLoose Atomic Vortex Number One. For it was seething, no fooling; and itwas an inferno. The crater was a ragged, jagged hole a full mile fromlip to lip and perhaps a quarter of that in depth. It was not, however, a perfect cone, for the floor, being largely incandescently molten, waspractically level except for a depression at the center, where theactual vortex lay. The walls of the pit were steeply, unstablyirregular, varying in pitch and shape with the hardness andrefractoriness of the strata composing them. Now a section would glareinto an unbearably blinding white puffing away in sparkling vapor. Again, cooled by an inrushing blast of air, it would subside into anangry scarlet, its surface crawling in a sluggish flow of lava. Occasionally a part of the wall might even go black, into pock-markedscoriae or into brilliant planes of obsidian. For always, somewhere, there was an enormous volume of air pouring intothat crater. It rushed in as ordinary air. It came out, however, in aragingly-uprushing pillar, as--as something else. No one knew--or knowsyet, for that matter--exactly what a loose vortex does to the moleculesand atoms of air. In fact, due to the extreme variability alreadyreferred to, it probably does not do the same thing for more than aninstant at a time. That there is little actual combustion is certain; that is, except forthe forced combination of nitrogen, argon, xenon, and krypton withoxygen. There is, however, consumption: plenty of consumption. And whatthat incredibly intense bombardment impinges up is ... Is altered. Profoundly and obscuredly altered, so that the atmosphere emitted fromthe crater is quite definitely no longer air as we know it. It may becorrosive, it may be poisonous in one or another of a hundred fashions, it may be merely new and different; but it is no longer the air which wehuman beings are used to breathing. And it is this fact, rather than thedestruction of the planet itself, which would end the possibility oflife upon Earth's surface. * * * * * It is difficult indeed to describe the appearance of a loose atomicvortex to those who have never seen one; and, fortunately, most peoplenever have. And practically all of its frightful radiation lies in thoseoctaves of the spectrum which are invisible to the human eye. Suffice itto say, then, that it had an average effective surface temperature ofabout fifteen thousand degrees absolute--two and one-half times as hotas the sun of Tellus--and that it was radiating every frequency possibleto that incomprehensible temperature, and let it go at that. And Neal Cloud, scurrying in his flitter through that murky, radiation-riddled atmosphere, setting up equations from the readings ofhis various meters and gauges and solving those equations almostinstantaneously in his mathematical-prodigy's mind, sat appalled. Forthe activity level was, and even in its lowest dips remained, far abovethe level he had selected. His skin began to prickle and to burn. Hiseyes began to smart and to ache. He knew what those symptoms meant; eventhe flitter's powerful screens were not stopping all the radiation; evenhis suit-screens and his special goggles were not stopping what leakedthrough. But he wouldn't quit yet; the activity might--probablywould--take a nose-dive any instant. If it did, he'd have to be ready. On the other hand, it might blow up at any instant, too. There were two schools of mathematical thought upon that point. One heldthat the vortex, without any essential change in its physical conditionor nature, would keep on growing bigger. Indefinitely, until, unitingwith the other vortices of the planet, it had converted the entire massof the world into energy. The second school, of which the forementioned Carlowitz was the loudestvoice, taught that at a certain stage of development the internal energyof the vortex would become so great that generation-radiationequilibrium could not be maintained. This would, of course, result in anexplosion; the nature and consequences of which this Carlowitz was wontto dwell upon in ghoulishly mathematical glee. Neither school, however, could prove its point--or, rather, each school proved its point, bymeans of unimpeachable mathematics--and each hated and derided theother, loudly and heatedly. And now Cloud, as he studied through his almost opaque defenses thatindescribably ravening fireball, that esuriently rapacious monstrositywhich might very well have come from the deepest pit of the hottest hellof mythology, felt strongly inclined to agree with Carlowitz. It didn'tseem possible that anything _could_ get any worse than that withoutexploding. And such an explosion, he felt sure, would certainly bloweverything for miles around into the smitheriest kind of smithereens. The activity of the vortex stayed high, 'way too high. The tiny controlroom of the flitter grew hotter and hotter. His skin burned and his eyesached worse. He touched a communicator stud and spoke. "Phil? Better get me three more bombs. Like these, except up around.... " "I don't check you. If you do that, it's apt to drop to a minimum andstay there, " the Lensman reminded him. "It's completely unpredictable, you know. " "It may, at that ... So I'll have to forget the five percent margin andhit it on the nose or not at all. Order me up two more, then--one athalf of what I've got here, the other double it, " and he reeled off thefigures for the charge and the casing of the explosive. "You might breakout a jar of burn-dressing, too. Some fairly hot stuff is leakingthrough. " "We'll do that. Come down, fast!" Cloud landed. He stripped to the skin and the observer smeared his everysquare inch of epidermis with the thick, gooey stuff that was not only ahighly efficient screen against radiation, but also a sovereign remedyfor new radiation burns. He exchanged his goggles for a thicker, darker, heavier pair. The two bombs arrived and were substituted for two of theoriginal load. "I thought of something while I was up there, " Cloud informed theobservers then. "Twenty kilograms of duodec is nobody's firecracker, butit may be the least of what's going to go off. Have you got any idea ofwhat's going to become of the energy inside that vortex when I blow itout?" "Can't say that I have. " The Lensman frowned in thought. "No data. " "Neither have I. But I'd say that you better go back to the newstation--the one you were going to move to if it kept on getting worse. " "But the instruments.... " the Lensman was thinking, not of theinstruments themselves, which were valueless in comparison with life, but of the records those instruments would make. Those records werepriceless. "I'll have everything on the tapes in the flitter, " Cloud reminded. "But suppose.... " "That the flitter stops one, too--or doesn't stop it, rather? In thatcase, your back station won't be there, either, so it won't make anydifference. " How mistaken Cloud was! "QX, " the Chief decided. "We'll leave when you do--just in case. " * * * * * Again in air, Cloud found that the activity, while still high, was nottoo high, but that it was fluctuating too rapidly. He could not get evenfive seconds of trustworthy prediction, to say nothing of ten. So hewaited, as close as he dared remain to that horrible center ofdisintegration. The flitter hung poised in air, motionless, upon softly hissingunder-jets. Cloud knew to a fraction his height above the ground. Heknew to a fraction his distance from the vortex. He knew with equalcertainty the density of the atmosphere and the exact velocity anddirection of the wind. Hence, since he could also read closely enoughthe momentary variations in the cyclonic storms within the crater, hecould compute very easily the course and velocity necessary to land thebomb in the exact center of the vortex at any given instant of time. Thehard part--the thing that no one had as yet succeeded in doing--was topredict, for a time far enough ahead to be of any use, a usably closeapproximation to the vortex's quantitative activity. For, as has beensaid, he had to over-blast, rather than under-, if he could not hit it"on the nose:" to under-blast would scatter it all over the state. Therefore Cloud concentrated upon the dials and gauges before him;concentrated with every fiber of his being and every cell of his brain. Suddenly, almost imperceptibly, the Sigma curve gave signs of flatteningout. In that instant Cloud's mind pounced. Simultaneous equations: nineof them, involving nine unknowns. An integration in four dimensions. Nomatter--Cloud did not solve them laboriously, one factor at a time. Without knowing how he had arrived at it, he knew the answer; just asthe Posenian or the Rigellian is able to perceive every separatecomponent particle of an opaque, three-dimensional solid, but withoutbeing able to explain to anyone how his sense of perception works. Itjust _is_, that's all. Anyway, by virtue of whatever sense or ability it is which makes amathematical prodigy what he is, Cloud knew that in exactly eight andthree-tenths seconds from that observed instant the activity of thevortex would be slightly--but not too far--under the coefficient of hisheaviest bomb. Another flick of his mental trigger and he knew the exactvelocity he would require. His hand swept over the studs, his right foottramped down, hard, upon the firing lever; and, even as the quiveringflitter shot forward under eight Tellurian gravities of acceleration, heknew to the thousandth of a second how long he would have to hold thatacceleration to attain that velocity. While not really long--inseconds--it was much too long for comfort. It took him much closer tothe vortex than he wanted to be; in fact, it took him right out over thecrater itself. But he stuck to the calculated course, and at the precisely correctinstant he cut his drive and released his largest bomb. Then, so rapidlythat it was one blur of speed, he again kicked on his eight G's of driveand started to whirl around as only a speedster or a flitter can whirl. Practically unconscious from the terrific resultant of the linear andangular accelerations, he ejected the two smaller bombs. He did not careparticularly where they lit, just so they didn't light in the crater ornear the observatory, and he had already made certain of that. Then, without waiting even to finish the whirl or to straighten her out inlevel flight, Cloud's still-flying hand darted toward the switch whoseclosing would energize the Bergenholm and make the flitter inertialess. Too late. Hell was out for noon, with the little speedster still inert. Cloud had moved fast, too; trained mind and trained body had beenworking at top speed and in perfect coordination. There just simplyhadn't been enough time. If he could have got what he wanted, ten fullseconds, or even nine, he could have made it, but.... * * * * * In spite of what happened, Cloud defended his action, then andthereafter. Damnitall, he _had_ to take the eight-point-three secondreading! Another tenth of a second and his bomb wouldn't have fitted--hedidn't have the five percent leeway he wanted, remember. And no, hecouldn't wait for another match, either. His screens were leaking likesieves, and if he had waited for another chance they would have pickedhim up fried to a greasy cinder in his own lard! The bomb sped truly and struck the target in direct central impact, exactly as scheduled. It penetrated perfectly. The neocarballoy casinglasted just long enough--that frightful charge of duodec exploded, ifnot exactly at the center of the vortex, at least near enough to thecenter to do the work. In other words, Cloud's figuring had beenclose--very close. But the time had been altogether too short. The flitter was not even out of the crater when the bomb went off. Andnot only the bomb. For Cloud's vague forebodings were materialized, andmore; the staggeringly immense energy of the vortex merged with that ofthe detonating duodec to form an utterly incomprehensible whole. In part the hellish flood of boiling lava in that devil's cauldron wasbeaten downward into a bowl by the sheer, stupendous force of the blow;in part it was hurled abroad in masses, in gouts and streamers. And theraging wind of the explosion's front seized the fragments and tore andworried them to bits, hurling them still faster along their paths ofviolence. And air, so densely compressed as to be to all intents andpurposes a solid, smote the walls of the crater. Smote them so that theycrumbled, crushed outward through the hard-packed ground, broke up intojaggedly irregular blocks which hurtled, screamingly, away through theatmosphere. Also the concussion wave, or the explosion front, or flying fragments, or something, struck the two loose bombs, so that they too exploded andadded their contribution to the already stupendous concentration offorce. They were not close enough to the flitter to wreck it ofthemselves, but they were close enough so that they didn't do her--orher pilot--a bit of good. The first terrific wave buffeted the flyer while Cloud's right hand wasin the air, shooting across the panel to turn on the Berg. The impactjerked the arm downward and sidewise, both bones of the forearm snappingas it struck the ledge. The second one, an instant later, broke his leftleg. Then the debris began to arrive. Chunks of solid or semi-molten rock slammed against the hull, knockingoff wings and control-surfaces. Gobs of viscous slag slapped itliquidly, freezing into and clogging up jets and orifices. The littleship was hurled hither and yon, in the grip of forces she could no moreresist than can the floating leaf resist the waters of a cataract. AndCloud's brain was as addled as an egg by the vicious concussions whichwere hitting him from so many different directions and so nearly all atonce. Nevertheless, with his one arm and his one leg and the few cellsof his brain that were still at work, the physicist was still in thefight. By sheer force of will and nerve he forced his left hand across thegyrating key-bank to the Bergenholm switch. He snapped it, and in theinstant of its closing a vast, calm peace descended, blanket-like. For, fortunately, the Berg still worked; the flitter and all her contents andappurtenances were inertialess. Nothing material could buffet her orhurt her now; she would waft effortlessly away from a feather's lightestpossible touch. Cloud wanted to faint then, but he didn't--quite. Instead, foggily, hetried to look back at the crater. Nine-tenths of his visiplates were outof commission, but he finally got a view. Good--it was out. He wasn'tsurprised; he had been quite confident that it would be. It wasn'tscattered around, either. It _couldn't_ be, for his only possibility ofsmearing the shot was on the upper side, not the lower. * * * * * His next effort was to locate the secondary observatory, where he had toland, and in that too he was successful. He had enough intelligence leftto realize that, with practically all of his jets clogged and his wingsand tail shot off, he couldn't land his little vessel inert. Thereforehe would have to land her free. And by dint of light and extremely unorthodox use of what jets he hadleft in usable shape he did land her free, almost within the limits ofthe observatory's field; and having landed, he inerted her. But, as has been intimated, his brain was not working so well; he hadheld his ship inertialess quite a few seconds longer than he thought, and he did not even think of the buffetings she had taken. As a resultof these things, however, her intrinsic velocity did not match, anywherenear exactly, that of the ground upon which she lay. Thus, when Cloudcut his Bergenholm, restoring thereby to the flitter the absolutevelocity and inertia she had had before going free, there resulted adistinctly anti-climactic crash. There was a last terrific bump as the motionless vessel collided withthe equally motionless ground; and "Storm" Cloud, vortex blaster, wentout like the proverbial light. Help came, of course; and on the double. The pilot was unconscious andthe flitter's door could not be opened from the outside, but those werenot insuperable obstacles. A plate, already loose, was sheared away; thepilot was carefully lifted out of his prison and rushed to Base Hospitalin the "meat-can" already in attendance. And later, in a private office of that hospital, the gray-clad Chief ofthe Atomic Research Laboratory sat and waited--but not patiently. "How is he, Lacy?" he demanded, as the Surgeon-General entered the room. "He's going to live, isn't he?" "Oh, yes, Phil--definitely yes, " Lacy replied, briskly. "He has a goodskeleton, very good indeed. The burns are superficial and will yieldquite readily to treatment. The deeper, delayed effects of the radiationto which he was exposed can be neutralized entirely effectively. Thus hewill not need even a Phillips's treatment for the replacement of damagedparts, except possibly for a few torn muscles and so on. " "But he was smashed up pretty badly, wasn't he? I know that he had abroken arm and a broken leg, at least. " "Simple fractures only--entirely negligible. " Lacy waved aside with anairy gesture such small ills as broken bones. "He'll be out in a fewweeks. " "How soon can I see him?" the Lensman-physicist asked. "There are someimportant things to take up with him, and I've got a personal messagefor him that I must give him as soon as possible. " Lacy pursued his lips. Then: "You may see him now, " he decided. "He is conscious, and strong enough. Not too long, though, Phil--fifteen minutes at most. " "QX, and thanks, " and a nurse led the visiting Lensman to Cloud'sbedside. "Hi, Stupe!" he boomed, cheerfully. "'Stupe' being short for stupendous, not 'stupid'. " "Hi, Chief. Glad to see somebody. Sit down. " "You're the most-wanted man in the Galaxy, " the visitor informed theinvalid, "not excepting even Kimball Kinnison. Look at this spool oftape, and it's only the first one. I brought it along for you to read atyour leisure. As soon as any planet finds out that we've got asure-enough vortex-blower-outer, an expert who can really call hisshots--and the news travels mighty fast--that planet sends in adouble-urgent, Class A-Prime demand for first call upon your services. "Sirius IV got in first by a whisker, it seems, but Aldebaran II was soclose a second that it was a photo finish, and all the channels havebeen jammed ever since. Canopus, Vega, Rigel, Spica. They all want you. Everybody, from Alsakan to Vandemar and back. We told them right offthat we would not receive personal delegations--we had to almost throw acouple of pink-haired Chickladorians out bodily to make them believethat we meant it--and that the age and condition of the vortexinvolved, not priority of requisition, would govern, QX?" "Absolutely, " Cloud agreed. "That's the only way it could be, I shouldthink. " "So forget about this psychic trauma.... No, I don't mean that, " theLensman corrected himself hastily. "You know what I mean. The will tolive is the most important factor in any man's recovery, and too manyworlds need you too badly to have you quit now. Not?" "I suppose so, " Cloud acquiesced, but somberly. "I'll get out of here inshort order. And I'll keep on pecking away until one of those vorticesfinishes what this one started. " "You'll die of old age then, son, " the Lensman assured him. "We got fulldata--all the information we need. We know exactly what to do to yourscreens. Next time nothing will come through except light, and only asmuch of that as you feel like admitting. You can wait as close to avortex as you please, for as long as you please; until you get exactlythe activity and time-interval that you want. You will be just ascomfortable and just as safe as though you were home in bed. " "Sure of that?" "Absolutely--or at least, as sure as we can be of anything that hasn'thappened yet. But I see that your guardian angel here is eyeing herclock somewhat pointedly, so I'd better be doing a flit before they tossme down a shaft. Clear ether, Storm!" "Clear ether, Chief!" And that is how "Storm" Cloud, atomic physicist, became the mostnarrowly-specialized specialist in all the annals of science: how hebecame "Storm" Cloud, Vortex Blaster--the Galaxy's only vortex blaster. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Comet_, July 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. Obvious typographic errors and misspellings have been corrected. ]