Damned If You Don't Read online

player--he had no particular desire to look at theman's face again--and turned on the machine. The first sentence broughtthe whole scene back to mind.

  * * * * *

  "Thank you for your time, Mr. Bending," the man whose card had announcedhim as Richard Olcott. He was a rather average-sized man, with afiftyish face, graying hair that was beginning to thin, and anexpression like that of a friendly poker player--pleasant, butinscrutable.

  "I always have time to see a representative of Power Utilities, Mr.Olcott," Bending said. "Though I must admit that I'm more used todealing with various engineers who work for your subsidiaries."

  "Not subsidiaries, please," Olcott admonished in a friendly tone. "Likethe Bell Telephone Company, Power Utilities is actually a group ofindependent but mutually co-operative companies organized under a parentcompany."

  Bending grinned. "I stand corrected. What did you have on your mind, Mr.Olcott?"

  Olcott's hesitation was of half-second duration, but it was perceptible.

  "Mr. Bending," he began, "I understand that you have been ... ah ...working on a new and ... ah ... radically different method of powergeneration. Er ... is that substantially correct?"

  Bending looked at the man, his blocky, big-jawed face expressionless."I've been doing experimenting with power generators, yes," he saidafter a moment. "That's my business."

  "Oh, quite, quite. I understand that," Olcott said hurriedly."I ... ah ... took the trouble to look up your record before I came.I'm well aware of the invaluable work you've done in the power field."

  "Thank you," Bending said agreeably. He waited to see what the otherwould say next. It was his move.

  "However," Olcott said, "that's not the sort of thing I was referringto." He leaned forward in his chair, and his bright gray eyes seemed totake on a new life; his manner seemed to alter subtly.

  "Let me put my ... _our_ cards on the table, Mr. Bending. We understandthat you have designed, and are experimenting with, an amazingly compactpower source. We understand that little remains but to get the bugs outof your pilot model.

  "Naturally, we are interested. Our business is supplying the nation withpower. Anything from a new type solar battery on up is of interest tous." He stopped, waiting for Bending to speak.

  Bending obliged. "I see Petternek let the cat out of the bagprematurely," he said with a smile. "I hadn't intended to spring ituntil it was a polished work of engineering art. It's been more of ahobby than anything else, you see."

  Olcott smiled disarmingly. "I'm not acquainted with Mr. Petternek; to bequite honest, I have no idea where our engineers picked up theinformation."

  "He's an engineer," Bending said. "Friends of mine. He probably got alittle enthusiastic in a conversation with one of your boys. He seemedquite impressed by my Converter."

  "Possibly that is the explanation." Olcott paused. "Converter, you say?That's what you call it?"

  "That's right. I couldn't think up any fancier name for it. Oh, Isuppose I could have, but I didn't want anything too descriptive."

  "And the word 'converter' isn't descriptive?"

  "Hardly," said Bending with a short laugh. "Every power supply is aconverter of some kind. A nickel-cadmium battery converts chemicalenergy into electrical energy. A solar battery converts radiation intoelectrical current. The old-fashioned, oil- or coal-burning power plantsconverted chemical energy into heat energy, converted that into kineticenergy, and that, in turn was converted into electrical energy. Theheavy-metal atomic plant does almost the same thing, except that it usesnuclear reactions instead of chemical reactions to produce the heat. Thestellarator is a converter, too.

  "About the only exception I can think of is the electrostatic condenser,and you could say that it converts static electricity into a currentflow if you wanted to stretch a point. On the other hand, a condenserisn't usually considered as a power supply."

  Olcott chuckled. "I see your point. Could you give me a rough idea ofthe principle on which your Converter operates?"

  Bending allowed himself a thoughtful frown. "I'd rather not, just now,Mr. Olcott. As I said, I want to sort of spring this full-blown on theworld." He grinned. He looked like a small boy who had just discoveredthat people liked him; but it was a calculated expression, not anautomatic one.

  Olcott looked into Bending's eyes without seeing them. He ran his tonguecarefully over the inside of his teeth before he spoke. "Mr. Bending."Pause. "Mr. Bending, we--and by 'we', I mean, of course, PowerUtilities,--have heard a great deal about this ... this Converter." Hischocolate-brown eyes bored deep into the gray eyes of Samson Bending."Frankly," he continued, "we are inclined to discount ninety per cent ofthe rumors that come to us. Most of them are based on purely crackpotideas. None the less, we investigate them. If someone _does_ discover anew process of producing power, we can't afford to be blind to new ideasjust because they happen to come from ... ah ... unorthodox sources.

  "You, Mr. Bending, are an unusual case. Any rumor concerning your work,no matter how fantastic, is worth looking into on your reputation alone,even though the claims may be utterly absurd."

  "I have made no claims," Bending interposed.

  Olcott raised a lean hand. "I understand that, Mr. Bending. None theless, others--who may or may not know what they are talking about--havemade this claim _for_ you." Olcott settled back in his chair and foldedhis hands across his slight paunch. "You've worked with us before, Mr.Bending; you know that we can--and _do_--pay well for advances in thepower field which are contributed by our engineers. As you know, ourcontract is the standard one--any discovery made by an engineer while inour employ is automatically ours. None the less, we give such men ahandsome royalty." He paused, opened his brief case, and pulled out anotebook. After referring to it, he looked up at Bending and said:

  "You, yourself have benefitted by this policy. According to our records,you are drawing royalties from three patented improvements in thestellarator which were discovered at times when you were employed byus--or, rather, by one of our associative corporations--in an advisorycapacity. Those discoveries were, by contract, ours. By law, we coulduse them as we saw fit without recompense to you, other than our regularfee. None the less, we chose to pay you a royalty because that is ournormal policy with all our engineers and scientific research men. Wefind it more expedient to operate thus."

  Bending was getting a little tired of Olcott's "none the less," but hedidn't show it. "Are you trying to say that my Converter was inventedduring my employ with your company, Mr. Olcott?"

  Olcott cleared his throat and shook his head. "No. Not necessarily. Itis true that we might have a case on those grounds, but, under thecircumstances, we feel it inexpedient to pursue such a course."

  _Which means_, Bending thought, _that you don't have a case at all_."Then just what are you driving at, Mr. Olcott?" he asked aloud.

  "I'll put my cards on the table, Mr. Bending," Olcott said.

  _You've already said that_, Bending thought, _and I've seen no evidenceof it_. "Go ahead," he said.

  "Thank you." He cleared his throat again. "If your inventionis ... ah ... worth while, we are prepared to negotiate with you foruse and/or purchase of it."

  Bending had always disliked people who said or wrote "and/or," but hehad no desire to antagonize the Power Utilities representative byshowing personal pique. "Let me understand you clearly," he said. "PowerUtilities wants to buy my rights to the Converter. Right?"

  Olcott cleared his throat a third time. "In a word, yes. Provided, ofcourse, that it is actually worth our while. Remember, we know almostnothing about it; the claims made for it by our ... ah ... anonymousinformer are ... well, ah ... rather fantastic. But yourreputation--" He let the sentence hang.

  Bending was not at all immune to flattery. He grinned. "Do you mean thatyou came to me to talk about buying an invention you weren't even sureexisted--just because of my reputation?"

  "Frankly, yes," said Olcott. "Your reputation is ... ah ... shall wesay, a good o
ne in power engineering circles."

  "Are you an engineer?" Bending asked suddenly.

  Olcott blinked. "Why, no. No, I am not. I'm a lawyer. I thought youunderstood that."

  "Sorry," Bending said. "I didn't. Most of the financial work around hereis done through my Mr. Luckman. I'm not acquainted with the monetary endof the business."

  Olcott smiled. "Quite all right. Evidently I am not as well known to youas you are to