Thin Edge Page 6

his eyes as Harry Morgan walked by.But Morgan could tell that he saw nothing. He had only heard. His eyeshad been removed long before. It was the condition of the man thatconvinced Morgan with utter finality that he had told the truth.

  VII

  Mr. Edway Tarnhorst felt fear, but no real surprise when the shadow inthe window of his suite in the Grand Central Hotel materialized into ahuman being. But he couldn't help asking one question.

  "How did you get there?" His voice was husky. "We're eighty floorsabove the street."

  "Try climbing asteroids for a while," said Commodore Sir Harry Morgan."You'll get used to it. That's why I knew Jack hadn't died'accidentally'--he was murdered."

  "You ... you're not carrying a gun," Tarnhorst said.

  "Do I need one?"

  Tarnhorst swallowed. "Yes. Fergus will be back in a moment."

  "Who's Fergus?"

  "He's the man who controls PMC 873."

  Harry Morgan shoved his hand into his jacket pocket "Then I have agun. You saw it, didn't you?"

  "Yes. Yes ... I saw it when you came in."

  "Good. Call him."

  When Sam Fergus came in, he looked as though he had had about three orfour too many slugs of whiskey. There was an odd fear an his face.

  "Whats matter, Edway? I--" The fear increased when he saw Morgan."Whadda you here for?"

  "I'm here to make a speech Fergus. Sit down." When Fergus still stood,Morgan repeated what he had said with only a trace more emphasis. "Sitdown."

  Fergus sat. So did Tarnhorst.

  "Both of you pay special attention," Morgan said, a piratical gleam inhis eyes. "You killed a friend of mine. My best friend. But I'm notgoing to kill either of you. Yet. Just listen and listen carefully."

  Even Tarnhorst looked frightened. "Don't move, Sam. He's got a gun. Isaw it when he came in."

  "What ... what do you want?" Fergus asked.

  "I want to give you the information you want. The information that youkilled Jack for." There was cold hatred in his voice. "I am going totell you something that you have thought you wanted, but which youreally will wish you had never heard. I'm going to tell you about thatcable."

  Neither Fergus nor Tarnhorst said a word.

  "You want a cable. You've heard that we use a cable that has a tensilestrength of better than a hundred million pounds per square inch, andyou want to know how it's made. You tried to get the secret out ofJack because he was sent here as a commercial dealer. And he wouldn'ttalk, so one of your goons blackjacked him too hard and then you hadto drop him off a bridge to make it look like an accident.

  "Then you got your hands on me. You were going to wring it out of me.Well, there is no necessity of that." His grin became wolfish. "I'llgive you everything." He paused. "If you want it."

  Fergus found his voice. "I want it. I'll pay a million--"

  "You'll pay nothing," Morgan said flatly. "You'll listen."

  Fergus nodded wordlessly.

  "The composition is simple. Basically, it is a two-phase material-likefiberglass. It consists of a strong, hard material imbedded in amatrix of softer material. The difference is that, in this case, thestronger fibers are borazon--boron nitride formed under tremendouspressure--while the softer matrix is composed of tungsten carbide. Ifthe fibers are only a thousandth or two thousandths of an inch indiameter--the thickness of a human hair or less--then the cable fromwhich they are made has tremendous strength and flexibility.

  "Do you want the details of the process now?" His teeth were showingin his wolfish grin.

  Fergus swallowed. "Yes, of course. But ... but why do you--"

  "Why do I give it to you? Because it will kill you. You have seen whatthe stuff will do. A strand a thousandth of an inch thick, encased insilon for lubrication purposes, got me out of that filthy hole youcall a prison. You've heard about that?"

  Fergus blinked. "You cut yourself out of there with the cable you'retalking about?"

  "Not with the cable. With a thin fiber. With one of the hairlikefibers that makes up the cable. Did you ever cut cheese with a wire?In effect, that wire is a knife--a knife that consists only of anedge.

  "Or, another experiment you may have heard of. Take a block of ice.Connect a couple of ten-pound weights together with a few feet ofpiano wire and loop it across the ice block to that the weights hangfree on either side, with the wire over the top of the block. The wirewill cut right through the ice in a short time. The trouble is thatthe ice block remains whole--because the ice melts under the pressureof the wire and then flows around it and freezes again on the otherside. But if you lubricate the wire with ordinary glycerine, itprevents the re-freezing and the ice block will be cut in two."

  Tarnhorst nodded. "I remember. In school. They--" He let his voicetrail off.

  * * * * *

  "Yeah. Exactly. It's a common experiment in basic science. Borazonfiber works the same way. Because it is so fine and has suchtremendous tensile strength, it is possible to apply a pressure ofhundreds of millions of pounds per square inch over a very small area.Under pressures like that, steel cuts easily. With silon covering tolubricate the cut, there's nothing to it. As you have heard from theguards in your little hell-hole.

  "Hell-hole?" Tarnhorst's eyes narrowed and he flicked a quick glanceat Fergus. Morgan realized that Tarnhorst had known nothing of theextent of Fergus' machinations.

  "That lovely little political prison up in Fort Tryon Park that theWorld Welfare State, with its usual solicitousness for the common man,keeps for its favorite guests," Morgan said. His wolfish smilereturned. "I'd've cut the whole thing down if I'd had had the time.Not the stone--just the steel. In order to apply that kind of pressureyou have to have the filament fastened to something considerablyharder than the stuff you're trying to cut, you see. Don't try it withyour fingers or you'll lose fingers."

  Fergus' eyes widened again and he looked both ill and frightened. "Theman we sent ... uh ... who was found in your room. You--" He stoppedand seemed to have trouble swallowing.

  "Me? _I_ didn't do anything." Morgan did a good imitation of a sharktrying to look innocent. "I'll admit that I looped a very finefilament of the stuff across the doorway a few times, so that ifanyone tried to enter my room illegally I would be warned." He didn'tbother to add that a pressure-sensitive device had released and reeledin the filament after it had done its work. "It doesn't need to benearly as tough and heavy to cut through soft stuff like ... er ...say, a beefsteak, as it does to cut through steel. It's as fine ascobweb almost invisible. Won't the World Welfare State have fun whenthat stuff gets into the hands of its happy, crime-free populace?"

  Edway Tarnhorst became suddenly alert. "What?"

  "Yes. Think of the fun they'll have, all those lovely slobs who gettheir basic subsistence and their dignity and their honor as a freegift from the State. The kids, especially. They'll _love_ it. It's sofine it can be hidden inside an ordinary thread--or woven into thehair--or...." He spread his hands. "A million places."

  Fergus was gaping. Tarnhorst was concentrating on Morgan's words.

  "And there's no possible way to leave fingerprints on anything thatfine," Morgan continued. "You just hook it around a couple of nails orscrews, across an open doorway or an alleyway--and wait."

  "We wouldn't let it get into the people's hands," Tarnhorst said.

  "You couldn't stop it," Morgan said flatly. "Manufacture the stuff andeventually one of the workers in the plant will figure out a way tosteal some of it."

  "Guards--" Fergus said faintly.

  "_Pfui._ But even you had a perfect guard system, I think I canguarantee that some of it would get into the hands of the--commonpeople. Unless you want to cut off all imports from the Belt."

  Tarnhorst's voice hardened. "You mean you'd deliberately--"

  "I mean exactly what I said," Morgan cut in sharply. "Make of it whatyou want."

  "I suppose you have that kind of trouble out in the Belt?" Tarnhorstasked.

  "No. We don't ha
ve your kind of people out in the Belt, Mr. Tarnhorst.We have men who kill, yes. But we don't have the kind of juvenile andgrown-up delinquents who will kill senselessly, just for kicks. Thatkind is too stupid to live long out there. We are in no danger fromborazon-tungsten filaments. You are." He paused just for a moment,then said: "I'm ready to give you the details of the process now, Mr.Fergus."

  "I don't think