The Final Figure by Sam Merwin (best novels to read for beginners .TXT) 📕

Before he left the General gave Toby five dollars. "That's for bringing me here," he told the lad. "You'll be seeing me again."

"Yes, sir," said Toby. He didn't sound at all surprised.

When he got back In the car alone, the general counted the models on the seat beside him—one rocket-launcher, one A-gun. He said, "Riley, how are we fixed for gas?"

"Pretty good, sir," came the reply. "We can make the city okay, sir."

"Fill up before you get there," the General told him. "We're going right on through to Washington tonight."

"But, sir, I haven't notified the motor pool at Governor's Island," the Sergeant protested.

"Damn the motor pool!" the General exploded. "I'll take care of them. Now get going; we've got a long drive ahead."

The big car gathered speed through the thickening night snow.

The General slept most of the way, after he and the Sergeant stopped for dinner at a Howard Johnson restaurant on Route One, just north of New Brunswick. After a shower, a change into uniform and breakfast, he was in sound operating shape when he reached his office at the Pentagon the next morning.

He arranged for a round-the-clock guard of Angus MacReedy's house, ordered investigation of the model-maker's record, had a copy of the complete file on the possible enemy weapon forwarded to Long Island by special messenger. Then he summoned a special meeting of top-echelon Ordnance brass and produced the models of the XT-101, the self-reloading rocket launcher and the improved A-gun.

If such a Broadway-Hollywood term as sensational could be used in any connection with a Pentagon conference, the General's meeting with his colleagues might have qualified for it. Experts were quick to understand the practicability of the models, quick to recast their plans accordingly.

Within the week, he was summoned before the Combined Chiefs and commended by that body for his clear-sightedness in cutting Gordian knots of the most baffling order. There was talk of a third star and appointment as Chief of Ordnance once the somewhat-doddering incumbent was retired, come June. He was a sort of brown-haired white-haired boy. He was interviewed by representatives of three national newsweeklies.

Though he wore his new honors gracefully, actually the General was thoroughly uncomfortable. He was far more concerned with the safety of the country than with his own advancement; and his ego was much too solidly-based to permit him enjoyment of honors that were not rightfully his.

The worst of it was that he couldn't explain. If he told his superiors that his "inspirations" came from the intuitive head of a toy-soldier maker on Long Island who even denied his intuition in the name of logic—not only would his own career be permanently damaged, but the value of MacReedy's models would be suspected. So much so that they might be disregarded entirely—thus retying the Gordian knots that were stymying the armament program.

MacReedy's file was laid on his desk one morning by a plump WAC secretary. It was exactly as the model-maker had stated: he was American-born, only child of a Scottish engineer and a German-American woman from Wisconsin. He held an engineering degree from a small polytechnical institute in upstate New York.

His war-record was exemplary. At the time of his wound in Central France, MacReedy had been a captain in the Combat Engineers, wearer of a silver star won at Anzio. There was a complete medical-report on the wound and treatment, whose technical jargon was too much for the General. All he could gather was that it was a head-wound and brain injury, which had rendered the model-maker unfit for Army duty.

He took the report to his opposite number in the Medical Corps, a man whose abilities in brain-surgery were mentioned in hushed voices at Johns Hopkins. Over a highball he told the whole story for the first time, hoping it wouldn't be received with hoots.

It wasn't. The white-haired surgeon looked long and meditatively at his drink. Then he said, "Kermit, I can't begin to account for it; I have muddled around in the human brain enough to know that what we like to call our scientific knowledge is at best empirical. You say this man had his ability before he was wounded?"

"He built a Sherman tank two years before we did," said the General. "Yet he claims the whole process is purely logical."

"Logic!" exclaimed the brain-man with a scorn that matched the General's own on the subject. "Logic is hindsight, Kermit. When our brains, by some intuitive process of progressive thought, reach a desired point, our egos reach backward to give the process a sort of order we call logic. Actually we seldom know how we get where we do; but we're too damned conceited to admit it.

"What in hell do we know about the brain?" he went on. "I knew a perfectly healthy young girl once, who was killed when she was standing beside her horse—the horse sneezed, jerked his head up, and jolted the side of her jaw. Yet back in seventeen eighty-one, when Arnold ordered the massacre at Fort Griswold, one old rebel was bayonetted, had his skull smashed open so that his brains were oozing out on the ground. He recovered and lived for forty years afterward, sane as you please. And they didn't have fellows like me, not then. If they had, he'd probably have died on the operating table."

"In other words you don't know," said the General.

"I don't know, Kermit," replied the other. "Another drink?"

The next day the international situation showed signs of serious deterioration, and the General took a plane to New York. All the way up he thought of something else the Surgeon-General had said to him—"One thing I have learned, it isn't exactly in my province, but I've run into it enough to make an observation.

"Whenever I've met anyone with what might be called a special gift—psychic or what have you—I've found them scared to death of it. Damned if I know why...."

He ruminated a little before continuing. "You'd think they'd be delighted—but they aren't. They either run to religion, and try to drown it in ritual—or they try to explain it away by some rationalization. Like your friend."

"Then you're willing to accept the fact he has a supernatural gift?" the General asked.

The brain-man shrugged and said, "Supernatural—supernormal—he's got something, if what you tell me is true. Can you think of a better 'ole?"

When he was driven up to the Long Island chalet early that afternoon, the General was pleased to see a command car parked unobtrusively off the road, a sentry sitting in an impromptu sentry-box made of pine bows, that commanded a good view of the approaches. At least, he thought, They wouldn't find MacReedy easy to get at. According to the reports he had seen there had been no further attempts.

Toby opened the door. He said, "Hello, General, this is fine. We were going to send you a message tonight."

The General shook hands and said, "Progress?" and, when the boy nodded excitedly, "Why aren't you in school?"

"It's after three o'clock," was the devastating reply, as Toby led him toward the cellar stairs. The General wondered briefly how much he had managed to forget in his fifty-two years.

Angus MacReedy was working at his carving table with a blow-up of the spy-pictures tacked to the cellar wall in front of him, a pile of rough-sketched plans on the table. He rose and said, "I was just doing a little polishing, General. But you hit it about right."

"Good," said the General. "Got it solved?"

"I think so," said the model-maker. "Take a look."

It was an eerie-looking item—a sort of stove-pipe mounted on a disc, surrounded by a flock of flying buttresses. Frowning the General peered at it, then looked at the blow-ups on the walls. From the correct angle, the similarity was ominously unmistakable. He said, "What in hell is it, Captain?"

MacReedy grinned. "Looks weird, doesn't it? It had me stumped for the better part of a week. There's only one thing it could be and that's what it is. Look...."

He picked up a sort of miniature torpedo from the work-table, dropped it down the stove-pipe. The thing worked like a trench-mortar. Some spring in the base of the tube sent the rocket flying in a high arc to smack the opposite wall and drop to the floor.

"It's a mobile rocket-launcher," he said needlessly. "I'd lay odds it can be used for atomic warheads."

"Good Lord!" cried the General. His mind was in a racing turmoil. The problem with the Nazi V-1 and V-2 weapons during World War Two had been the immobility of their launching platforms. If They had managed to get around it....

He thought of an insuperable obstacle, said, "But what about back-blast? Don't tell me they've found a metal able to stand up under the heat of launching."

"I doubt it," replied MacReedy seriously. "They use this barrel to give her a boost like a trench-mortar shell. My hunch is the rocket doesn't fire until she's well off the ground."

"Is it accurate?" the General asked, thunderstruck.

"Is a trench-mortar accurate?" the model-maker countered. "Ask anybody who's been in Korea."

It was a wallop for the General. Atomic rocket-launchers, mobile rocket-launchers that could function as artillery, could outrange the A-gun perhaps by hundreds of miles. And if the missiles thus fired could be guided—he could see no reason why not—the A-gun was already obsolete.

He sat down on a packing box and mopped his brow although the cellar was far from hot. He said and his voice was unsteady, "Thanks, MacReedy, I think maybe you have done it."

"I think so," said the model-maker. He wasn't boasting, but he was sure of himself. "You want to take it along with you? It should be quite simple to make. I've got a few improvements over Their supports, I think."

"If it's the last thing I do," said the General, rising, "I'm going to see you get credit for what you've done."

MacReedy made a gesture of dismissal. "Don't let it bother you, General," he said. "I like my work. Maybe you could arrange for me to make some models for the War College."

"Hell, why not the Smithsonian?" said the General. "Why not both? We ought to have a historical ordnance exhibit somewhere. And you're the man, no doubt about it."

As he left with the precious model MacReedy asked, "By the way, General, what do you want me to work on next?"

The General hesitated, then said, "Follow your hunches—logic if you will. Let's see what the next weapon after this one is going to be. You've been ahead of us the rest of the way."

"I'll see what I can do," said MacReedy with his quiet smile. "Let me know how things come out."

"That I will," said the General. Toby walked with him to the car and the General gave him another five dollars. He wished he could do something more for both of them; but at the moment it was out of the question.

It was almost six months before the General got back to the Long Island chalet. Thanks to his now fully-established reputation as an inventive genius, he was able to get a full speed ahead order on the new-type mobile rocket-launcher. MacReedy's improvements were valid, and the Department experts came up with further simplifications. By the time they were ready to go into production they actually had the weapon self-propelled, were well ahead of Them on mobility, range and accuracy. It promised to be a military revolution.

Then the General had to make a flying trip around the world—to visit American military installations in Western Europe, in Italy and Spain, in Africa, Formosa, Japan and Korea. He got back to Washington, a thoroughly tired man, and walked into both his promised third star and the Chiefship of the Department. Also into an international situation worse than any since September, 1939—when the Nazis invaded Poland.

They were pushing aggressively in both Europe and Asia, pushing with an arrogance that suggested they felt they could win in a walk if the free nations of the world offered large-scale military defiance. Rumors of a terrible secret weapon were being bruited about—not only in hush-hush military circles but in the public prints as well. One picture magazine of national circulation had actually published an article stating that They had mastered pushbutton warfare.

The General, and the Combined Chiefs made a hurried and secret trip to Aberdeen the day after his return. There, on the proving ground, they watched a big transport-plane land on a makeshift airstrip. They saw a small group of soldiers unload from the plane an odd-looking tractor-mounted weapon that resembled an immense stove-pipe with certain refinements.

They saw a lean sausage of a rocket rolled into a door near the base of the tube, watched a trifle nervously while it was elevated almost vertically. An order was barked, a button was pushed—and the rocket rose rapidly from the tube with