Chapter 1
CATASTROPHE

SAFETY DEVICES that do not protect.

"Unsinkable" ships that, before the days of Bergenholm and of atomic and cosmic energy, sank into the waters of Earth.

More particularly, safety devices which, while protecting against one agent of destruction, attract magnet-like another and worse. Such as the armored cable within the walls of a wooden house. It protects the electrical conductors within it against accidental external shorts; but, inadequately grounded, it may attract and upon occasion has attracted the stupendous force of lightning. Then, steel armor exploding into incandescence inside walls and ceilings, that house's existence thereafter is to be measured in minutes.

Specifically, four lightning rods. The lightning rods protecting the chromium, glass, and plastic home of Neal Cloud. Those rods were adequately grounded, with copper-silver cables the size of a big man's forefinger; for Neal Cloud, Doctor of Nucleonics, knew his lightning and was taking no chances whatever with the safety of his wife and children.

He did not know, did not even suspect, that under certain conditions of atmospheric potential and of ground-magnetic stress his perfectly-designed and perfectly-installed system would become a super-powerful attractor for flying vortices of atomic disintegration.

So now Neal Cloud, nucleonicist, sat at his desk in a strained, dull apathy. His face was a yellowish-gray white, his tendoned hands gripped rigidly the arms of his chair. His eyes, hard and lifeless, stared unseeingly past the small, three-dimensional block portrait of all that had made life worth living.

For his guardian against lightning had been a vortex-magnet at the moment when some luckless wight had tried to abate the nuisance of a "loose" atomic vortex. That wight dies, of course-they almost always did-and the vortex, instead of being destroyed, was simply broken up into a number of widely-scattered new vortices. And one of those bits of furious, uncontrolled energy, resembling a handful of substance torn from the depths of a sun, darted toward and shot downward to earth through Neal Cloud's new house.

That house did not burn; it exploded. Nothing of it, in it, or near it stood a chance, for in a few seconds the place where it had been was a crater of seething, boiling lava-a crater which filled the atmosphere with poisonous vapors; which flooded all nearby space with lethal radiations.

Cosmically, the whole thing was infinitesimal. Ever since man learned how to use atomic power the vortices of disintegration had been breaking out of control. Such accidents had been happening, and would continue to happen. More than one world, perhaps, had been or would be consumed to the last gram by such loose atomic vortices. What of that? Of what real importance are a few grains of sand to a pile five thousand miles long, a hundred miles wide, and ten miles deep?

Even to that individual grain of sand called "Earth"-or, in modern parlance, "Sol Three," or "Tellus of Sol," or simply "Tellus"-the affair was negligible. One man had died; but, in dying, he had added one more page to the thick bulk of negative results already on file. That Mrs. Cloud and her children had perished was merely unfortunate. The vortex itself was not yet a real threat to Tellus. It was a "new" one, and thus it would be a long time before it would become other than a local menace.

Nor, to any except a tiny fraction of Earth's inhabitants, was the question of loose atomic vortices a matter of concern. It was unthinkable that Tellus, the point of origin and the very center of Galactic Civilization, could cease to exist. Long before such vortices could eat away much of her mass, or poison much of her atmosphere, Earth's scientists would have solved the problem.

But to Neal Cloud the accident was ultimate catastrophe. His personal universe had crashed in ruins; what was left was not worth picking up. He and Jo had been married for more than fifteen years and the bonds between them had grown stronger, deeper, truer with every passing day. And the kids . . . it couldn't have happened . . . fate COULDN'T do this to him . . . but it had . . . it could. Gone . . . gone . . . GONE!

And to Neal Cloud, sitting there at his desk in black abstraction, with maggots of thought gnawing holes in his mind, the catastrophe was doubly galling because of its cruel irony. For he was second from the top in the Vortex Control Laboratory; his life's work had been a search for a means or method of extinguishing loose atomic vortices.

His eyes focused vaguely upon the portrait. Wavy brown hair . . . clear, honest gray eyes . . . lines of character, of strength and of humor . . . sweetly curved lips, ready to smile or to kiss. . . .

He wrenched his attention away and scribbled briefly upon a sheet of paper. Then, getting up stiffly, he took the portrait and moved woodenly across the room to a furnace. After the flaming arc had done its work he turned and handed the paper to a tall man, with a Lens glowing upon his wrist, who had been watching him with quiet, understanding eyes. Significant enough, to the initiate, of the importance of the laboratory is the fact that it was headed by a Lensman.

"As of now, Phil, if it's QX with you."

The 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 of absence, perhaps, but not severance."

"Why not?" It was scarcely a question; Cloud's voice was level, uninflected. "I wouldn't be worth the paper I'd waste."

"Now, no; but the future's another matter. I haven't said anything so far, because I knew you and Jo. Nothing could be said." Two hands gripped and held. "For the future, though, four words that were spoken long ago have never been improved upon. 'This, too, shall pass'."

"You think so?"

"I know so, Storm. I've been round a long time. You're too good a man to go down out of control. You've got a place in the world and a job to do. You'll be back-" a thought struck the Lensman and he went on, in a strangely altered tone: "But you wouldn't-of course you wouldn't-you couldn't."

"I don't think so. No." Suicide, tempting although it might be, was not the answer. "Good-bye, Phil."

"Not good-bye, Storm. Au revoir."

"Maybe." Cloud left the laboratory and took an elevator down to the garage. Into his big blue DeKhotinsky Special and away.

Through traffic so heavy that front-, rear-, and side-bumpers almost touched he drove with his wonted cool skill; even though he did not know, consciously, that the other cars were there. He slowed, turned, stopped, "shoveled on the coal," all correctly-and all purely automatically.

He did not know where he was going, nor care. His numbed brain was simply trying to run away from its own bitter imaginings-which, if he had thought at all, he would have known hopeless of accomplishment. But he did not think. He simply acted; dumbly, miserably.

Into a one-way skyway he rocketed; along it over the suburbs and into the trans-continental super-highway. Edging inward, lane after lane, he reached the "unlimited" way-unlimited, that is, except for being limited to cars of not less than seven hundred horsepower, in perfect mechanical condition, driven by registered, tested drivers at not less than one hundred twenty five miles per hour-flashed his number at the control station, and shoved his right foot down to the floor.

Everyone knows that an ordinary DeKhotinsky Sporter will do a hundred and forty honestly-measured miles in one honestly-timed hour; but very few drivers have ever found out how fast one of those brutal big souped-up Specials can wheel. Most people simply haven't got what it takes to open one up.

"Storm" Cloud found out that day. He held that six-thousand-pound Juggernaut onto the road, wide open, for mile after mile after mile. But it didn't help. Drive as he would, he could not out-run that which rode with him. Beside him and within him and behind him; for Jo was there.

Jo and the kids, but mostly Jo. It was Jo's car as much as it was his. "Babe, the big blue ox," was her pet name for it; because, like Paul Bunyan's fabulous beast, it was pretty nearly six feet between the eyes.

Jo was in the seat beside him. Every dear, every sweet, every luscious, lovely memory of her was there . . . and behind him, just beyond eye-corner visibility, were the three kids. And a whole lifetime of this loomed ahead-a vista of emptiness more vacuous by far than the emptiest reaches of inter-galactic space. Damnation! he couldn't stand much more of. . . .

High over the roadway, far ahead, a brilliant octagon flared red. That meant "STOP!" in any language. Cloud eased up on the accelerator; eased down on the brake-pedal; took his place in the line of almost-stalled traffic. There was a barrier and a trimly-uniformed policeman.

"Sorry, sir," the officer said, with a sweeping, turning gesture, "but you'll have to detour over to Twenty. There's a loose atomic vortex beside the road up ahead. . . . Oh, it's you, Doctor Cloud! You can go ahead, of course. Couple of miles yet before you'll need your armor. They didn't tell us they were sending for you. It's just a little new one, and the dope we got was that they were going to shove it over into the...