Astounding Science Fiction, February 1952 (British Edition) — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

56 nine, nine, per cent sure of myself. Pm one hundred per cent sure of myself and the reason I won’t bet you is because that would be robbery; and besides, once you'd lost, you’d hate me for winning the rest of your life.” — “The bet still stands,” said Cary. “All right!’ roared Burke, jumping to his feet. “If you want to force the issue, suit yourself. It’s a bet.” Cary grinned and got up, following him out of the pleasant, spacious sitting room, Where warm lamps dispelled the gray gloom of the snow-laden sky beyond the windows, and into a short, metal-walled corridor where the ceiling tubes blazed in efficient nakedness. They followed this for a short distance to a room where the wall facing the corridor and the door set in it were all of glass. Here Burke halted. “There’s the machine,” he said, pointing through the transparency of the wall and turning to Cary behind him. “If you want to communicate with it verbally, you speak into that grille there. The calculator is to your right; and that inner door leads down to the room housing the lighting and heat- ing plants. But if you’re thinking of phy- sical sabotage, you might as well give up. The lighting and heating systems don’t even have emergency manual controls. They're run by a little atomic pile that oniy the machine can be trusted to handle —that is, except for an automatic setup that damps the pile in case lightning strikes the machine or some such thing. And you couldn’t get through the shielding in a week. As for breaking through to the ma- chine up here, that panel in which the grille is’set is made of two-inch thick steel sheets with their edges flowed together under pressure.” “I assure you,” said Cary, “I don’t in- tend to damage a thing.” Burke looked at him sharply, but there was no hint of sarcasm in the smile that twisted the other’s thin lips. “All right,” he said, stepping back from the door. “Go ahead. Can I wait here, or do you have to have me out of sight?” “Oh, by all means watch,” said Cary. “We machine-gimmickers have nothing to hide.” He turned mockingly to Burke, and lifted his arms. “See? Nothing up my right sleeve. Nothing up my left.” “Go on,” interrupted Burke roughly. “Get it over with. I want to get back to my drink.” ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION “At once,” said Cary, and went in through the door, closing it behind him. Through the transparent wall, Burke watched him approach the panel in line with the speaker grille and stop some two feet in front of it. Having arrived at this spot, he became utterly motionless, his back to Burke, his shoulders hanging relaxed and his hands motionless at his side. For the good part of a minute, Burke strained his eyes to discover what action was going on under the guise of Cary’s apparent im- mobility. Then an understanding struck him and he laughed. “Why,” he said to himself, “he’s bluffing right up to the last minute, hoping I'll get worried and rush in there and stop him.” Relaxed, he lit a cigarette and looked at his watch. Some forty-five seconds to go. In less than a minute, Cary would be coming out, forced at last to admit defeat —-that is, unless he had evolved some fan- tastic argument to prove that defeat was really victory. Burke frowned. It was al- most pathological, the way Cary had always refused to admit the superiority of ‘anyone or anything else; and unless some way was found to soothe him he would be a very unpleasant companion for the remaining days that the storm held him marooned with Burke. It would be literally murder to force him toe take off in the tornado velocity winds and a temperature that must be in the minus sixties by this time. At the same time, if went against the meteorologist’s grain to crawl for the sake of congeniality— The vibration of the generator, half-felt through the floor and the soles of his shoes, and customarily familiar as the motion of his own lungs, ceased abruptly. The fluttering streamers fixed to the venti- lator grille above his head ceased their colorful dance and dropped limply down as the rush of air that had carried them, ceased. The lights dimmed and went out, leaving only the gray and ghostly light from the thick windows at each end of the cor- ridor to illuminate the passage and the room. The cigarette dropped unheeded from Burke’s fingers and in two swift strides he was at the door and through it. “What have you done?” he snapped at Cary. The other looked mockingly at him, walked across to the nearer wall of the room and leaned his shoulder blades negli- gently against it. Eomichook (S@)