Ole Doc Methuselah Part 36

Ole Doc looked up with a start. "Just his brain, my dear."

She hastily went back to the window seat. The cushion's ta.s.sels suffered horribly when the thought came to her that she might have been brought here as a part of this experiment, that she was to be something of a human sacri- fice to science. And the more she thought about this possi- bility the more she believed it. Wilhelm Giotini was a great man; he had built up an entire civilization on five worlds which had hitherto been given to outlaws and casual wanderers; his vast energy had been sufficient to make cities grow in a matter of weeks and whole new industries from mine to finished product in a month or two. Who was she, Patricia Dore, to be weighed in the balance against an experiment involving Giotini? This Soldier was certain, absolutely certain to use her for his own ends.

It was a deep drop to the courtyard below and as she scouted her chances here she was startled to see that a group of guardsmen were gathering alertly at the gate below. But there were other windows and, without moving fast enough to attract Ole Doc's attention, she made her way to the next. The drop was no better nor was there a balcony and here were more guardsmen being posted.

There was something about the way they handled their

weapons and looked at the house which gave her to understand that they intended something against this room.

"My dear," said Ole Doc, beckoning.

She looked wide-eyed at the guardsmen and then at Ole Doc in a between-two-fires hysteria of mind. She held herself to calmness finally, the legendary repute of the Soldier of Light winning, and came back to the bed.

"There are guardsmen all around us," she said, half as a promise of reprisal if anything happened to her.

Ole Doc paced to the window and looked out. He saw the troop gathered at the gate and in a burst of indigna- tion, so obvious was their intent there, threw open the leaded pane and started to ask them what they meant.

Instantly a blaster carved a five-foot section off the upper window. A piece of melted gla.s.s. .h.i.t Ole Doc on the neck and he swore loud enough to melt the remaining sash. But he didn't stop swearing. His right hand was travelling and at almost the instant that the burn struck, his blaster jolted and jolted hard.

Three guardsmen went down, slammed back against the gate by the force of fire, the last of them spinning around and around. Ole Doc never saw him fall. Ole Doc was back and under cover just as five more battle sticks went to work on the window. A big piece of ceiling scored up and curled brown to fall with a dusty crash an instant later.

Giotini evidently had known there would be moments like this. He had big, ray-proof shutters on each window which closed from inside. Ole Doc got them shut and barred and they grew hot to the touch as people below wasted ammunition on them.

Patricia Dore made nothing of this. It had occurred to her that perhaps these guards had set out to rescue her, for she had been fed a great deal of circulating library in her youth and she had an aberrated idea of just how much men would do for one woman. Just as she was getting a dramatic notion about aiding outside to get this Soldier who was obviously now no Soldier at all-for n.o.body ever fired on the U.M.S.-Ole Doc told her to get out of the way and sit down and she obeyed meekly.

Ole Doc looked at the metal case, noted the meter readings and then looked at the girl. She thought he was surveying her for the kill but she flattered herself. Ole Doc was simply trying to think and it is easier to think when one has a pretty object on which to fasten the eyes.

His own helmet, with its ship-connected radio, had been left in the generalissimo's car. No other communication of orthodox type was at hand. He grabbed up a bundle of sheets, revealing a rather gruesome sight, wadded them into a ball, saturated them with alcohol from his gear, opened a shutter partly and looked cautiously out. There was a summerhouse which the wad would just reach and he launched it. He was so quick that he had drawn and fired into it and shut the shield before he got fire back. A moment later, when he peered through the slits, he saw that the blankets were on fire and busily igniting the summerhouse. There were enough roses around there to make a very good smudge. But whether Hippocrates would see it and if he saw it whether or not he would know it for what it was, Ole Doc could not possibly guess.

He went back to the cabinet. A small meter at the top was tick-tick-ticking in a beg to be valved off.

He threw the switches and the yowl of the dynamo stopped, making a sudden and oppressive silence in the room which hurt the girl's ears. Ole Doc peered into the view plate, looked grim and sat down on the naked bed with the cadaver.

He began to scribble on the white porcelain top of the box, making all manner of intricate mathematical combi- nations, thumbing them out and making them once more.

He had figured all this once on a particularly boring trip between Centre and Galaxy 12 and he had written it all down, neatly and with full shorthand explanation just where it should have been-on his cuff. And he had torn off the cuff and given it to Hippocrates. And Hippocrates had up and burned the whole lot of them. Ole Doc swore, forgetting the girl who held her ears and, hearing swear- ing, was sure now that this could be no real Soldier of Light, Saviour of Mankind and pale and mournful patter of suffering children.

A thundering was begun now on the outer door and Ole Doc had to get up and double bar that. Giotini had certainly been justified in making this room strong. Unless they blew up the whole palace, they weren't like to get in.

He figured harder, getting his thumb entirely black with smudges of erasures, reworking the equations frantically.

Far off there began a mutter of heavy cannon and he jerked up his head listening intently. The weaker rattle he knew for the Morgue's battery. Hippocrates must be hold-

ing a pow-pow with them in his favorite way-and this made the chances of rescue from that quarter very, very slim.

"What's got into them people?" demanded Ole Doc of the metal box.

He erased once more and began again, making himself a.s.sume a very detached air. There was a sonic equation, a simple, embracing equation which, when he got it back again-

The girl saw how hard he was working and decided she had an opportunity to slide out the door on the side which, so far, did not seem to be attacked. She raised the bar, touched the k.n.o.b and instantly was engulfed in a swirl of guardsmen.

Ole Doc came up, took three steps across the bed and fired. The flare and flash of his blaster lit up the room like summer lightning and the screams which greeted it were a whole lot louder than thunder. One guardsman went down, sawed in half. Another tangled up with the first, stood in quivering shock and then rolled out of the way to let the man behind him take one full in the face.

The girl was curled up in terror just inside the door.

One shot furrowed two inches above her head and another turned the k.n.o.b which she still touched so hot that it burned her. Her dress began to smoulder at the hem from a ricochet.

Ole Doc was still coming, still firing. He nailed his fourth and fifth men, liberally sprayed the hall, ducked a tongue of lightning and got the door shut by the expedient of burning a body which blocked it in half. He fixed the bar.

"Now where did you think you were going?" he de- manded. "Here. Listen to this." And he turned on a big radio beside Giotini's bed, flipping the cog switches for stations. But there was only one on, which was just then announcing. "Sometimes," said Ole Doc, "I almost think Hippocrates was right!"

Then he went back to the case and tried to pick up the threads of his computations. Suddenly he had it. It all came back and lay there in a scrawl looking at him.

It was the basic formula of cellular memory transmis- sion in the neuro-sonic range, derived from the highest harmonic of nerve cell frequency and computable in this form to calculate the bracket of particular memory tapes as transmitted from sonic reception to audio-sonic record-

ing cells. It was the retention frequency of audio memory.

As the nerve cell does not live long and as it is very liable to putrefaction, Ole Doc considered himself fortu- nate to find as much of Giotini's brain intact as he had.

He began to work with a disk recorder and mike, setting up a tangle of wires which would have done credit to a ham operator, back on Earth. The thunder was beginning at the front door again.

Vaguely, through his preoccupation filtered the radio behind him. ". . . the complete depopulation of this planet is a certainty. No slightest signal has come from there since ten this morning at which time the recording you have just heard was taken. There is no government bulle- tin on this. Dr. Glendenning of the generalissimo's staff states that the disease is so virulent that it is probably capable of a clean sweep of the Planet Ma.s.s. Gasperand then remains the only populated planet in this system and a rapid survey this morning showed that the continent of Vargo and our present location alone contain any surviv- ing beings. It is momentarily expected-"

Ole Doc looked back to his work and worked even harder. The efforts at the door grew louder and more violent.

At long last, Ole Doc made a play-back, nodded and beckoned to the girl. Patricia came with great reluctance.

"You should be interested in this," said Ole Doc. "It remarks an advance of science. I have taken Giotini's brain, preserved it and have taken from it its various memories in the audio range. Now if you will listen-"

She listened for about three seconds, her eyes saucer big with horror, and then she screamed loud enough to drown radio and battering and gunfire.

Ole Doc went to the door. "h.e.l.lo out there!"

The thundering stopped.

"h.e.l.lo out there," said Ole Doc. "It is necessary that I speak with Lebel. You're not going to get in here and if you keep at this too long, my relief ship will come down on you with enough guns to blow the whole planet out of orbit. Let me speak to Lebel!"

There was a very long pause and then Lebel was heard on the other side of the door. "Well? Are you going to come out and give yourself up?"

"No," said Ole Doc, "but I have built a set to communi- cate with my base. Unless you parley you will be a hunted

man through all the stars. I have something of consider- able interest to you."

"I doubt it," said Lebel.

"Come here," said Ole Doc to the girl. "Tell him what you have seen and heard."

"It's horrible!" she said. "I won't!"

"Oh yes you will!" said Ole Doc. "Tell him."

"He cut out Giotini's brain!" she cried. "He put it in a machine and he made it talk and he's got records in here of him talking! It's horrible!"