THE VORTEX BLASTER MAKES WAR
A Novelette by
E. E. SMITH, PH. D.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astonishing Stories, October 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER ONE
Storm Cloud—the Vortex Blaster!
Doctor Neal Cloud had once been a normal human being, gregarious andneighborly. He had been concerned as little with death as is thenormal human being. Death was an abstraction. It was inevitable, ofcourse, but it could not actually touch him or affect him personally,except at some unspecified, unconsidered and remote future time.
For twenty uneventful years he worked in the Atomic ResearchLaboratory of the Galactic Patrol, seeking a way to extinguish the"loose" atomic vortices resulting from the breaking out of controlof atomic power plants. At home he had had wife Jo and their threekids—and what Jo had meant to him can be described adequately only inmathematical, not emotional terms. They had formed practically a closedsystem.
Hence, when a loose atomic vortex crashed to earth through hishome, destroying in an instant everything that had made lifeworthwhile—Doctor Cloud had changed.
He had had something to live for; he had loved life. Then—suddenly—hehad not, and he did not.
Cloud had always been a mathematical prodigy. Given the variousactivity values of a vortex at any instant, he knew exactly the "sigma"(summation) curve. Or, given the curve itself, he knew every individualreading of which it was composed—all without knowing how he did it.Nevertheless, he had never tried to blow out a vortex with duodec. Hewanted to live, and it was a mathematical certainty that that verylove of life would so impede his perceptions that he would die in theattempt.
Then came disaster. While still numb with the shock of it, he decidedto blow out the oldest and worst vortex on Earth; partly in revenge,partly in the cold hope that he would fail and die, as so many hundredsof good men had already died.
But it was the vortex that died, not Cloud. It was a near thing, butwhen he was released from the hospital he found himself the most famousman alive. He was "Storm" Cloud, the Vortex Blaster—Civilization'sonly vortex blaster!
He had now extinguished hundreds of the things. The operation, once sothrilling to others, had become a drab routine to him.
But he had not recovered and never would recover a normal outlook uponlife. Something within him had died with his Jo, a vital something hadbeen torn from the innermost depths of his being. That terrible psychicwound was no longer stamped boldly upon him for all to see—it nolonger made it impossible for him to work with other men or for othermen to work with him—but it was there.
Thus he preferred to be alone. Whenever he decently could, he traveledalone, and worked alone.
He was alone now, hurtling through a barren region of space towardRift Seventy-one and the vortex which was next upon his list. In theinterests of time-saving and safety—minions of the Drug Syndicate hadtaken him by force from a passenger liner not long since, in order tosave from extinction a vortex which they were using in their nefariousbusiness—he was driving a light cruiser converted to one-man control.In one special hold lay his vortex-blasting flitter; in others were hisvast assortment of duodec bombs and other stores and supplies.
And as he drove along through those strangely barren, unsurve