Astounding British Edition, May 1953 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

See ly ass at a ~ you ’re the member of the class most likely to succeed.” = Mart grunted. “Least likely, I'd say. I’m __- not sure that I’m convinced yet that Dun- __ ming didn’t have some terrific joker in here = somewhere.” xe “IT know what you mean, but you will. It comes gradually. And easier for you. You're the youngest of the group. Keyes _ thinks some of the older men may spend all their time proving Dunning couldn’t do it. How do you feel about that? Is that the way __-you’re heading, or are you going to try to find out what Dunning did?” = “Anything a jerk like Dunning can do, _. Nagle can do double—once Nagle is con- ___- vinced that Dunning did it.” ZB Berk threw back his head and laughed. x “Keyes will love you, boy. He’s been afraid he wouldn’t find a single top John in the country who would really try.” - Dunning’s place was in the shabby, once -- fashionable sector of town where the owners _ of the gingerbread monsters were no longer able to meet the upkeep or sell them to anyone who was. It had been learned that the house actually belonged to an uncle of Dunning, but so far he had not been located. =e A guard was on duty at the front entrance. He nodded as Berk and Mart showed their Fea OMe aera a a “Dunning’s laboratories and shops are on the first floor,” said Berk. “Upstairs is his library. He slept in one of the third floor bedrooms, but the rest are vacant. A lot of cooking seemed to have been done in the back kitchen. He left a well stocked larder. Where do you want to start?” “A quick look through the labs to begin. I want to get the feel of the layout.” On the right of the entrance hallway, they came into a small but extremely well- equipped chemistry laboratory. The place seemed well used, but immaculate. A com- plex fractionating setup was on the work- table. “Almost the only piece of writing in the whole place was found on a small pad here,” - gaid Berk. “A bit of scratch work computa- tion without any formulas or reactions.” Mart grunted and moved on to the Ses adjacent . room. Here was the more familiar ae hodgepodge of the electronic experimenter, but even in this there was instantly apparent > the mark of a careful workman. Breadboard layouts were assembled with optimum care. Test leads were carefully made of rubber _ covered or shielded wire and equipped with t P AOfmecive PT CFSE Orr hy ie i) i ‘~ a,“ fase ver}. Bae Phi, ‘ ay ‘ . . are ee a eee A WR ee we ed, et: FURY PR aerke Ff : 7 BVO FG ‘ 2 ‘i Aye a4, Wh ® "ASTOUNDING § SCIEN CE F ICTION- clips instead of being the usual random lengths of colored connecting wire hastily stripped and tied to a terminal. A sizable bank of rack and panel mounted equipment was not recognizable at once as to function. It appeared to be a setup that might belong to any careful experimenter who had no regard for his bank account. This would need further study, but Mart continued moving through to the next room, a machine shop, as well equipped for its functions as the previous rooms. A six-inch lathe, a large drill press, and a milling machine were the chief items. Mart whistled softly as he stood in the middle of the room and looked back the way they had come. “When I was a kid in high school,” he said, “this is exactly the kind of a place I thought Heaven would be.” “And it had to belong to a person like Dunning, eh?” said Berk with a slow smile. Mart turned sharply. His voice became low and serious. “Berk—whatever Dunning may have been, he was no jug-head. A paranoid, maybe, but not a jug-head. He could do things. Look at this.” He picked up a weird looking assembly from a nearby table and held it up in the light. It gleamed with a creamy sheen. A silver plated bit of high frequency plumbing. “That’s beautiful,” said Mart. “There’re not more than three or four university shops in the whole country that can turn out a piece like that. I’ve had to fight for weeks to get our machinists to come up with any- thing that complex and then it would be way out of tolerance.” He hefted the piece of plumbing lightly. He knew it was just right. It had the feel of being made right. Berk led the way across the hall. He opened the door for Mart. There, against the walls of the room, were panels of a compact digital computer, and on the other side an analogue computer. “But you haven’t seen anything yet,” said Berk. “The surprise of your life is upstairs.” Gravity was a force, Mart thought as he climbed the stairs. You only lick force with force—in the world of physics, at least. In politics and human relations, force might yield to something more subtle, but if Dun- ning had licked gravity it was with some other—and presently known—force. Physics was at least aware of every force that existed. There were no gaps except perhaps the one temporarily occupied by the elusive neutrino. Eomichbooks-=co im