detectable in the way that Barling spoke and acted. It wasn't.
The guard returned, ushering in before him somebody who had presumably been
waiting outside. For the first time, the Assassin's iron self-control broke
down. His eyes bulged, and he gaped across the room as if he had seen a ghost
. . . which was not surprising.
"Good morning," said Professor Malleborg Brozlan.
Time seemed to stand still. For once, the wheels in the Assassin's mind ground
to a complete halt. No coherent thought formed in his head; no words came to
his lips. This was definitely no illusion . . . but there was no doubt that
the man he had left at Anderscliff had been totally, absolutely,
unquestionably . . . dead.
"Surprised?" The dryness in the colonel's voice did not conceal a faint trace
of amusement.
The Assassin closed his eyes and slumped back against the pillows. "How?" he
Page 101
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
managed, in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. "How is this
possible?"
"So you're hooked, eh? You've got to know, haven't you? You'll listen to what
we have to say?"
The Assassin nodded numbly without opening his eyes.
"Good." A pause. "Professor?"
The guard placed a spare chair at the foot of the bed. Brozlan sat down and
began speaking. Clearly he had been following the conversation on a monitor
outside the room.
"Maybe there were some hotheads among us." He nodded his snowy head slowly.
"But the thought of a truly independent Martian civilization . . . free to
benefit from all the lessons and mistakes that are written through the history
of Earth . . . without having to inherit any of the consequences . . . a
chance to begin again, in a way, but this time to get it right. It was a dream
that fired the imagination and raised the passions of practically every young
man of my generation." The professor shifted his eyes and regarded the figure
lying in the bed. "I'm sure you know the kind of thing I mean." Despite
himself the Assassin found his gaze drawn irresistibly to the apparition
sitting a few feet away from him. Brozlan was real; he was warm; he was alive
. . . and talking matter-of-factly to the man who, without a moment's thought
or hesitation, had killed him.
"How can this be?" the Assassin whispered again.
Brozlan looked at him coldly, but without overt malevolence. When he spoke
again, his voice was sad. "You know nothing of the power that exists on Mars
today. You allow yourself to be manipulated by people who are interested only
in serving their own ends . . . as I myself was once manipulated."
"I . . . don't understand." In spite of his resolve not to be drawn into
conversation, the Assassin was unable to restrain the question. "What power
are you talking about?"
"Science!" Brozlan replied, his voice trembling slightly with sudden emotion.
"The power of science. The domes of Mars contain some of the finest brains
that the human race has ever produced. Think back over the last twenty or
thirty years. Think of the discoveries and developments that have come from
the laboratories of Mars . . . the whole science of gravitics and the first
practicable gravitic drive; economical transmutation of elements on a bulk
scale; bulk synthesis of molecular compounds; computer biocommunications;
genetic programming . . . the list is long. But do you think for one moment
that all the knowledge acquired in those laboratories is public knowledge?
Things have happened there, and are still happening, that people have never
dreamed of."
The Assassin stared at him incredulously for a few seconds. "Are you saying
that you are a reincarnation?" he gasped. "Something like that is really
possible?"
Brozlan shook his head briefly. "No, nothing like that. Let me begin at the
beginning." He paused to collect his thoughts. "I am a physicist. I specialize
in molecular structures. Practically all of the raw materials used in industry
today are synthesized from artificially transmuted elements using techniques
originally perfected on Mars." The Assassin nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on
the professor. Brozlan did not continue at once, but gestured toward the flask
of water that stood on the bedside locker. Carl May filled a glass and passed
it to him, while Barling rose from his chair and began pacing to and fro
between the bed and the window, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.
"To produce a full range of materials needed on Mars, it was not sufficient to
just synthesize unstructured molecules in bulk," Brozlan resumed. "We needed
to be able to duplicate, say, the crystal lattice structures of many metal-
base compounds, or the polymer chains of organic substances things that are
abundant on Earth but totally lacking back there."
"I'd have thought that that's where you'd use traditional processing methods,"
Page 102
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the Assassin muttered. He didn't mind talking as long as it was he who was
asking the questions. It could only be to his ultimate advantage to know more
about what was going on.
"We could have done that." Brozlan nodded. His face creased into a frown. "But
we were not satisfied with that idea. We had a virgin planet with no set ways
or traditions to uphold. It seemed unsatisfactory simply to follow slavishly
the methods that had evolved on Earth. We could have spent fortunes copying
all of Earth's industrial complexes on Mars only to find them obsolete before
they went into production. We were convinced that there had to be a better
way."
The Assassin thought for a moment and looked puzzled. "How?" he asked at last.
Brozlan's eyes glinted. He replied:
"Consider any form of component that is used in the construction of a larger
assembly . . . the parts of a machine, for example. How is the component made?
We take a lump of whatever material we need and cut away from it all the
excess to leave the shape that we require. That forms the basis of just about
every machining process that is used traditionally."
The Assassin shrugged. "What other way is there?"
"Deposition!" Brozlan peered at him intently. "Instead of cutting material
away to leave the part, we deposited material to build the part up!"
"You mean like electrolytic forming? That's not new."
"The idea isn't," Brozlan agreed. "But the way we were doing it was. You see,
electrolytic forming works only with certain metals. We were working with
every kind of molecule."
"You mean you could build up something out of anything any substance at all?"
"Exactly! And it didn't have to be all the same kind of molecule. We could mix
them together any way we chose. We could produce a solid block that was
phophor-bronze at one end and polythene at the other, with a smooth transition
from one to the other in between. It opened up a whole new dimension in
engineering design possibilities. The whole process was computer-controlled. A
designer could develop a program to create any part he wanted out of any
material he chose or any combination of materials molecule by molecule if he
really wanted to go down to that level of detail." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]