Chapter 1

On the thirty-ninth floor of a large New York apartment two young men were lounging about after a strenuous game of tennis. The blue tendrils of smoke from their pipes rose slowly, to be drawn away by the efficient ventilating system. The taller of the two seemed to be doing most of the talking. In the positions they had assumed it would have been rather difficult to be sure of which was the taller, but Robert Morey was a good four inches taller than Richard Arcot. Arcot had to suffer under the stigma of “runt” with Morey around--he was only six feet tall.

The chosen occupation of each was physical research, and in that field Arcot could well have called Morey “runt”, for Arcot had only one competitor--his father. In this case it had been “like father, like son”. For many years Robert Arcot had been known as the greatest American physicist, and probably the world’s greatest. More recently he had been known as the father of the world’s greatest physicist. Arcot junior was probably one of the most brilliant men the world had ever seen, and he was aided in all his work by two men who could help him in a way that amplified his powers a thousand fold. His father and his best friend, Morey, were the complimentary and balancing minds to his great intelligence. His father had learned through years of work the easiest and best ways of performing the many difficult feats of laboratory experimentation. Morey could develop the mathematical theory of a hypothesis far more readily than Arcot could. Morey’s mind was more methodical and exact than Arcot’s, but Arcot could grasp the broad details of a problem and get the general method of solution developed with a speed that made it utterly impossible for his friend even to follow the steps he suggested.

Since Arcot junior’s invention of the multiple calculus, many new ramifications of old theories had been attained, and many developments had become possible.

But the factor that made Arcot so amazingly successful in his line of work was his ability to see practical uses for things, an ability that is unfortunately lacking in so many great physicists. Had he collected the royalties his inventions merited, he would have been a billionaire twice or thrice over. Instead he had made contracts on the basis that the laboratories he owned be kept in condition, and that he be paid a salary that should be whatever he happened to need. Since he had sold all his inventions to Transcontinental Airways, he had been able to devote all his time to science, leaving them to manage his finances. Perhaps it was the fact that he did sell these inventions to Transcontinental that made these lines so successful; but at any rate, President Arthur Morey was duly grateful, and when his son was able to enter the laboratories he was as delighted as Arcot.

The two had become boon companions. They worked, played, lived, and thought together.

Just now they were talking about the Pirate. This was the seventh day of his discovery, and he had been growing steadily more menacing. It was the great Transcontinental Airways that had suffered most repeatedly. Sometimes it was the San Francisco Flyer that went on without a pilot, sometimes the New York-St. Louis expresses that would come over the field broadcasting the emergency signal. But always the people were revived with little difficulty, and each time more of the stock of “Piracy, Inc.” was accumulated. The Air Guard seemed helpless. Time and time again the Pirate slipped in undetected. Each time he convinced them that it was an outside job, for the door was always sealed from the outside.

“Dick, how do you suppose he gets away with the things he does right under the eyes of those Air Guardsmen? He must have some system; he does it every time.”

“I have a vague idea,” Arcot answered. “I was going to ask you today, if your father would let us take passage on the next liner carrying any money. I understand the insurance rates have been boosted so high that they don’t dare to send any cash by air any more. They’ve resorted to the slow land routes. Is there any money shipment in sight?”

Morey shook his head. “No, but I have something that’s just as good, if not better, for our purpose. The other day several men came into Dad’s office, to charter a plane to San Francisco, and Dad naturally wondered why they had been referred to the president of the company. It seems the difficulty was that they wanted to hire the ship so they could be robbed! A large group of medical men and cancer victims were going for the ‘treatment’. Each one of the twenty-five hundred going was to bring along one hundred dollars. That meant a total of a quarter of a million dollars, which is to be left on the table. They hoped the Pirate would gas them and thus cure them! Dad couldn’t officially do this, but told them that if there were too many people for the San Francisco express, two sections would be necessary. I believe they are going on that second section. Only one hundred dollars! A low price for cancer cure!

“Another thing: Dad asked me to tell you that he’d appreciate your help in stopping this ultra-modern pirate. If you go down to see him in the morning, you’ll doubtless be able to make the necessary arrangements.”

“I’ll do so gladly. I wonder, though, if you know more about this than I do. Did they try that C-32L mask on an animal?”

“The Pirate was telling the truth. They tried it on a dog and he went to sleep forever. But do you have any idea how that gas does all it does?”

Now Arcot shook his head. “I don’t know what the gas is, but have a lead on how it works. You may know that carbon monoxide will seep through a solid plate of red-hot steel. That has been known for some three hundred years now, and I have to hand it to this Pirate for making use of it. Even in the war of 2075 they didn’t find any practical application for the principle. He has just found some gas that induces sleep in very low concentrations, and at the same time is able to penetrate to an even greater extent than carbon monoxide.”

“I was wondering how he stores that stuff,” Morey commented. “But I suppose he makes it as fast as he uses it, by allowing two or more constituents to react. It might well be simple enough to store them separately, and the air-stream blowing past him would carry the gas behind him, permitting him to lay a stream of it in front of the big plane. Is that about it?”

“That was about what I had figured. One of the things I want to do when I go with that Invalid Special tomorrow is to get some samples for analysis.”

“That’s a pretty big order, isn’t it, Dick? How are you going to handle it, or even get it into your apparatus?”

“Easily enough as far as getting the sample goes. I have already had some sample bottles made. I have one of them in the lab--excuse me a moment.” Arcot left the room, to return a few minutes later with a large aluminum bottle, tightly closed. “This bottle has been pumped out to a very good vacuum. I then swept it out with helium gas. Then it was pumped out again. I hope to take this into some gas-filled region, where the gas will be able to leak in, but the air won’t. When it comes to going out again, the gas will have to fight air pressure, and will probably stay in.”

“Hope it works. It would help if we knew what we were bucking.”

The next morning Arcot had a long conference with President Morey. At the end of it, he left the office, ascended to the roof, and climbed into his small helicopter. He rose to the local traffic level, and waiting his chance, broke into the stream of planes bound for the great airfields over in the Jersey district. A few minutes later he landed on the roof of the Transcontinental Airways shops, entered them, and went to the office of the Designing Engineer, John Fuller, an old schoolmate. They had been able to help each other before, for Fuller had not paid as much attention to theoretical physics as he might have, and though he was probably one of the outstanding aeronautical designers, he often consulted Arcot on the few theoretical details that he needed. Probably it was Arcot who derived the greatest benefit from this association, for the ability of the designer had many times brought his theoretical successes to practical commercial production. Now, however, he was consulting Fuller, because the plane he was to take that afternoon for San Francisco was to be slightly changed for him.