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Isaac Newton had been heavily blindfolded. He'd been right about the wooden crate in which
he'd been imprisoned. Now he saw that the crate was in the unheated cargo section of a
'plane, and that it had been heavily insulated against the cold. It was the thick insulation
which had dulled the roar of the 'plane's engines, making them sound like a waterfall in his
imagination. The pulling force had been supplied by an enormous mountain of a man,
accompanied by another who seemed dwarf-like in contrast. The small man had opened an
airlock between the unheated cargo section and the warm passenger section and Isaac
Newton had been dragged through by the big man, which explained the sudden surge in
temperature. There was a conversation in a language he didn't understand, with a third
voice now joining in, at the end of which Isaac Newton felt the straps that had hitherto bound
him up like a Chinese doll suddenly released. Slowly and shakily he climbed to his feet, to
find a second powerful-looking man standing there, a bald man of about fifty with very blue
eyes and with a skull that flared out curiously above the temples.
'I hope Bolbochan did not handle you roughly, Professor Newton,' the man said in English,
smiling broadly to display an even set of very large teeth. 'Permit me to introduce myself.
The name is Kaufman St John. If you will be good enough to come this way you will soon
see that you are among friends.'
Kaufman St John led the way to the front of the 'plane, which was furnished with armchairs in
the style of the first-class section of a commercial aircraft. Seated in one of the armchairs,
affecting to read a magazine, was the Professor of Geostrophics from Cambridge.
'Oh, they've let you out at last! I'm glad of that. I'd tell them what they want to know if I were
you. No point in making a fuss about it. After all, you won't be losing anything personally,'
said Boulton, causing Kaufman St John to smile again broadly and say:
'Doubtless you will be wondering, Professor Newton, how Boulton and I came to be
acquainted. We met a couple of years ago in an attempt to corner the world's pepper
market, in which enterprise I regret to say we were foiled by the CIA. But not before poor
Boulton had quite lost his shirt.'
'I rather suspected as much.'
'Your business acumen does you credit, Professor Newton. Losses were sustained. Losses
which now will be repaid, I am happy to think. Repaid with considerable interest, I am even
happier to think.'
'By whom?'
'The Americans. It is the Americans always, isn't it?'
'I don't know. Is it?'
'They want the code to Comet Halley, you see,' broke in Boulton. 'All you have to do is to
write it down, and to explain it so that the Americans will be able to understand how to use it
to contact Comet Halley themselves.'
'For which they will pay?' Isaac Newton asked.
'Of course,' Kaufman St John answered tersely, 'they will pay.'
'Plenty?'
'Plenty.'
'Enough to corner the world's pepper market? It was the pepper market, wasn't it?'
'Let us not enter into what for the moment are irrelevancies, Professor Newton.'
'I'm curious, Mr St John. Curious to know how such payments are arranged. In what
currency? And where? Or do you do it in the futures to which Boulton seems to be
addicted?'
'I said to avoid irrelevancies, Professor Newton.'
'Would it be irrelevant for me to ask what happens when I have
K
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1
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given you this code?'
'You will be landed at Stockholm Airport.'
'I am a little bit concerned at the prospect of overshooting Stockholm,' Isaac Newton
persisted, 'in which case we would be in much less friendly territory from my point of view.
Indeed, I would have thought we must almost have reached Stockholm already.'
'All this borders on irrelevancy, Professor Newton. It is as if for some useless reason you are
trying to gain time. But to settle your curiosity I will tell you that we are close now to the North
Pole, well away from normal flight paths. Our procedure will be to circle the Pole until our
business is completed.'
'And if I refuse to complete it?'
'But you can't refuse, Newton! You can't refuse. Don't you realise this 'plane is a flying torture
chamber!' whined Boulton nervously.
At this Isaac Newton became more keenly aware than before that the rear part of the 'plane
was hidden by a curtain. Even as his eyes lifted towards it, the curtain parted and a figure
appeared in the gap, a figure with a waxen face, straight white hair worn shoulder-length,
and dressed all in white like a surgeon.
'It is a matter of arithmetic,' said Kaufman St John. 'Nobody refuses beyond the seventh
injection. Already with the fifth comes some disordering of the brain. With the tenth comes
death. The choice is yours, Professor Newton.'
Isaac Newton knew that he must refuse, but he did not yet know why it had to be so. Why it
had to be done the hard way, when in the end his writing down of the code would have no
importance. If that was the case, why not give it to these creatures immediately? Yet it shone
crystal-clear in his mind that the time had not come for that. Before the time came, the hard
way must be followed, as others throughout the long millennia of history had been compelled
to take that road - Scrooge the humble storekeeper at the Laboratory among them.
Bolbochan lifted him as easily as a child out of his chair, out of the smooth luxury of the front
of the 'plane, and into the very different world that lay beyond the curtain - a world of glaring [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
