Empire | Page 4

the balance that existed within that bit of space. Not only
energy itself was preserved, but the very form of energy.
But why? That was the question that hammered at him. Why? Before
he could go ahead, he had to know why.
Perhaps the verging of the field toward Field 349? Somewhere in
between those two fields of force, somewhere within that almost
non-existent border-line which separated them, he might find the secret.
Rising to his feet, he knocked out his pipe.
"Harry," he announced, "we have work to do."
Smoke drooled from Wilson's nostrils.
"Yeah," he said.

Page had a sudden urge to lash out and hit the man. That eternal
drooling of smoke out of his nostrils, that everlasting cigarette dangling
limply from one corner of his mouth, the shifty eyes, the dirty
fingernails, got on his nerves.
But Wilson was a mechanical genius. His hands were clever despite the
dirty nails. They could fashion pinhead cameras and three gram
electroscopes or balances capable of measuring the pressure of
electronic impacts. As a laboratory assistant he was unbeatable. If only
he wouldn't answer every statement or question with that nerve-racking
'yeah'!
Page stopped in front of a smaller room, enclosed by heavy quartz.
Inside that room was the great bank of mercury-vapor rectifiers. From
them lashed a blue-green glare that splashed against his face and
shoulders, painting him in angry, garish color. The glass guarded him
from the terrific blast of ultra-violet light that flared from the pool of
shimmering molten metal, a terrible emanation that would have flayed
a man's skin from his body within the space of seconds.
* * *
The scientist squinted his eyes against the glare. There was something
in it that caught him with a deadly fascination. The personification of
power--the incredibly intense spot of incandescent vapor, the tiny
sphere of blue-green fire, the spinning surge of that shining pool, the
intense glare of ionization.
Power... the breath of modern mankind, the pulse of progress.
In an adjacent room were the accumulators. Not Interplanetary
accumulators, which he would have had to rent, but ones he had bought
from a small manufacturer who turned out only ten or fifteen thousand
a year... not enough to bother Interplanetary.
Gregory Manning had made it possible for him to buy those
accumulators. Manning had made many things possible in this little
laboratory hidden deep within the heart of the Sierras, many miles from

any other habitation.
Manning's grandfather, Jackson Manning, had first generated the
curvature field and overcome gravity, had left his grandson a fortune
that approached the five billion mark. But that had not been all. From
his famous ancestor, Manning had inherited a keen, sharp, scientific
mind. From his mother's father, Anthony Barret, he had gained an
astute business sense. But unlike his maternal grandfather, he had not
turned his attention entirely to business. Old Man Barret had virtually
ruled Wall Street for almost a generation, had become a financial myth
linked with keen business sense, with an uncanny ability to handle men
and money. But his grandson, Gregory Manning, had become known to
the world in a different way. For while he had inherited scientific
ability from one side of the family, financial sense from the other, he
likewise had inherited from some other ancestor--perhaps remote and
unknown--a wanderlust that had taken him to the farthest outposts of
the Solar System.
IT was Gregory Manning who had financed and headed the rescue
expedition which took the first Pluto flight off that dark icebox of a
world when the exploration ship had crashed. It was he who had piloted
home the winning ship in the Jupiter derby, sending his bulleting craft
screaming around the mighty planet in a time which set a Solar record.
It was Gregory Manning who had entered the Venusian swamps and
brought back, alive, the mystery lizard that had been reported there.
And he was the one who had flown the serum to Mercury when the
lives of ten thousand men depended upon the thrumming engines that
drove the shining ship inward toward the Sun.
Russell Page had known him since college days. They had worked out
their experiments together in the school laboratories, had spent long
hours arguing and wondering... debating scientific theories. Both had
loved the same girl, both had lost her, and together they had been bitter
over it... drowning their bitterness in a three-day drunk that made
campus history.
After graduation Gregory Manning had gone on to world fame, had
roamed over the face of every planet except Jupiter and Saturn, had

visited every inhabited moon, had climbed Lunar mountains, penetrated
Venusian swamps, crossed Martian deserts, driven by a need to see and
experience that would not let him rest. Russell Page had sunk into
obscurity, had buried himself