The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (39 page)

Dover frowned. “‘Enough’ is a word inapplicable in modern commercial context, as I think you should be the first to acknowledge, Mr. Offbold.”

Offbold made a grumbling noise in his throat, sat staring glumly into the fire while Dover proceeded to develop the argument, emphasizing salient points with motions of the riding crop. He explained that in the upper financial reaches, the accumulation of wealth was a game requiring little more skill than the manipulation of a pin-ball machine. Offbold nodded jerkily, finally snapped the lock on his brief-case and rose to his feet.

“Now then, Mr. Spargill, I’ll say goodby; you’ll probably have plans for dinner.”

Dover conducted him to the door. Offbold turned for a last set of reminders.

“No doubt, Mr. Spargill, you’ll be approached by promoters and confidence men; I scarcely need recommend caution to one of your—” he winced “—acumen.”

Dover nodded briskly.

“But in any event, I will perform the formality. The mines are capably managed by the existing staff; the terrestrial interests are under the stewardship of Calmus Associates. I strongly advise against any changes or any new undertakings. If you are approached by anyone wanting money on any pretext whatever—refer him to me, and I will tick him off properly.”

Offbold continued on these lines for a moment or two, while Dover, listening with half-closed eyes, swung his riding crop back and forth.

Offbold finally shook hands and departed. Dover watched him out to his cab.

“Bumbling old idiot…” He slapped at his boots. “He means well, no doubt.”

Thornton Bray, chairman of the Board of Directors for Lunar Mines Cooperative, was a large man, florid and moist as half a watermelon. He had prominent eyes without lashes; his cheeks were smooth and plump as a baby’s buttocks. Tucking the signed agreement in his pocket he shook his head with a rueful smirk.

“Yes sir, a chip off the old block. I’m afraid I overshot myself trying to out-deal you.”

Dover let the smoke of an expensive cigar trickle from the corner of his mouth. He adopted a careless manner, as if to deprecate his victory over Bray and Lunar Mineral Cooperative.

“Yes, sir,” went on Bray, “you’re a big man now. You’ll go down in history. First man holding title to an entire world. Think of it! Fifty-nine million square miles! Lord of all you survey!”

Dover glanced to the three-foot globe of the moon on his desk. The surface was divided into irregular areas tinted in gray-blue and gray, distinguishing Moon Mines from the Lunar Mineral Cooperative.

“Yes, she’ll be all one color now. I wonder…” He paused. “I supposed it would hardly be in good taste.”

“What’s that?”

“Change the name from ‘Moon’ to ‘Spargill’.”

Bray reflected. “You’d have your work cut out for you.” He shook hands, with a hearty jerking motion. “Well, I wish you luck, Mr. Spargill.” He gave his head an admiring shake. “Not that you need it, with that whipsaw brain of yours.”

Dover gestured affably with his cigar. “I see a good thing, I go after it, I get it.”

“Good-day then, Mr. Spargill.”

Dover twitched his hand in a jaunty salute, turned back to the globe.

A moment later the visiphone buzzed.

Dover spoke over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“Mr. Offbold, sir,” came the voice of his confidential secretary.

Dover yawned, returned to his desk. “I’ll speak to him.”

The screen revealed a face contorted by anger and desperation. “Quick,” cried Mr. Offbold, “you haven’t signed any papers, have you?”

Dover put his feet on the desk, flicked the ash from his cigar. “I’ve just concluded an advantageous deal, if that’s what you mean. Very far-reaching.”

Offbold’s face sagged. “Tell me the worst…”

“Moon Mines Company now is legal owner to 59 million square miles, 42 billion cubic miles, 5 × 10
¹⁹
tons of satellite. In short, we’ve bought out the Cooperative. I’m sole owner to the moon.”

Offbold’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Tell me, what did you pay? How much?”

“No small sum,” admitted Dover. “But I’ve been to the moon, I’ve seen the ore reserves on our land and on the Cooperative land and I’ll tell you, Offbold, we’ve come out to the good.”

“How much?”

“Oh—” Dover puffed hard at his cigar “—200 million cash.”

Offbold put his hand to his forehead.

“And the Antarctic Energy interest.”

“Oh!”

Dover inquired with asperity, “What’s the matter with you, Offbold?”

Offbold heaved a deep sigh. “Now you own the moon, what are you going to do with it?”

“Why, continue mining it, naturally.”

“You young fool!” roared Offbold. “Don’t you ever read the papers?”

“Certainly, whenever I have time.”

“Well, take time now!” The screen went dark.

“Miss Foresythe,” called Dover.

“Yes, Mr. Spargill?”

“The afternoon journal, if you please.”

The screen glowed. Dover’s eyes went to the lead story.

SCIENCE UNVEILS NEW BOMBSHELL
TRANSMUTATION PROCESS
ANNOUNCED

Dover said politely, “You may turn off the screen, Miss Foresythe.”

He walked slowly to the three-foot globe, caused it to spin, and the pocked surface rasped the palm of his hand. “59 million square miles,” mused Dover. “42 billion—”

“Mr. Spargill,” came the voice of his secretary. “Mr. Offbold is back on the screen.”

“Yes,” said Dover. “I’ll see him.”

Mr. Offbold had himself under restraint; only the swelling of his neck betrayed the cost at which control had been achieved. He spoke in a labored voice, each word carefully enunciated.

“Mr. Spargill, it is my duty to reveal to you the exact state of your affairs. First, Moon Mines is worth nothing. Nil. Your new acquisition, the Lunar Mineral Cooperative, is likewise valueless.”

“But—I own the whole satellite!” protested Dover.

Mr. Offbold’s eyes glittered, his lip curled tartly. “You could show title to the entire Magellanic Cloud, and it wouldn’t affect your bank credit a nickel’s worth.”

Dover mulled over the situation.

“You could not sell the entire moon for ten dollars,” barked Offbold. “No, excuse me, I take that back. No doubt there are spendthrift college boys who would offer you ten, perhaps twenty dollars, if only for the unique distinction of owning the moon. If you receive any such offers, I advise you to close; it is the only wise in which the moon has transactional value. So. We write off Moon Mines, Lunar Cooperative, and Antarctic Energy from your assets. Now—200 million dollars cash.

“There is perhaps 70 or 80 million dollars fluid, in various depreciation, building, amortization funds, etcetera. I have made a rough calculation, and find that when you have sold other holdings sufficient to pay the balance you will have left—” he paused impressively “—the South Sahara Pest Control Agency at Timbuctoo, and a considerable acreage in North Arizona, both taken by your father in payment of otherwise uncollectible debts.”

“Sell them both,” Dover directed him. “Sell everything. Pay all the bills and deposit the balance to my personal account.” He added in a brave voice, “Everything is turning out very well, just as I planned, in fact…”

“I fail to understand you,” declared Offbold icily.

Dover’s voice came hollowly. “Well, every once in a while a shaking down is good for a great organization. Tones it up, so to speak…”

Offbold lapsed into the vernacular. “You got shook down, Mr. Spargill, you got shook down.”

Roger Lambro, during a mid-afternoon conversation with Miss Deborah Fowler on the Tivoli Terrace, asked, “Where in the world is Dover Spargill these days? Haven’t seen the chap in ages.”

Miss Fowler absently shook her head. “He’s dropped out of the picture. I’ve heard rumors…” She stopped short, unwilling to pass on unpleasant gossip.

Roger Lambro was not quite so delicate. “Oh?”

She twirled the stem of her Martini glass. “Well—they say that after he pulled that ghastly floater, he went out to live on his property.” She raised her beautiful eyes to where the moon hung pale as an oyster in the afternoon sky. “Just think, Roger, perhaps he’s up there right now, looking down on us…”

Thornton Bray stood on the marble plaza of his villa at Lake Maggiore, an after-dinner Armagnac in one hand, a Rosa Panatela Suprema in the other. He was entertaining a group of business associates with an anecdote of his business career.

“—I might have been more charitable except this young ass, not dry behind the ears, thought all the time he was doing me.
Me
, Thornton Bray!” Bray laughed quietly. “Thought he was getting something for nothing. So I played him along; after all, business is business. He made the break, I followed through…Yes, sir, I wish I could have seen his face when he first felt the clinch.”

“Speaking of the moon,” said one of his friends, “she certainly looks fine tonight. Can’t say as I’ve ever seen her looking quite so—well, calm, pearly.”

Thornton Bray glanced up to the full moon. “Yes, she’s beautiful. From down here, that is. If you’ve ever mined up there, you come back to Earth with different ideas. A devilish place, bleak, arid.”

“Funny color to it,” observed another member of the party. “Green and blue and pink, all at once.”

Bray remonstrated playfully. “Come now, Jonesy. You’ve been dipping your beak more than is good for you…Have another? By Golly, I think I’ll join you.”

Cornelius Armitage, professor of Astronomy at Hale University, muttered waspishly under his breath, wiped the eyepiece of the telescope with a bit of floss.

A teaching assistant sat nearby counting stars in a sky-sample. “What’s the trouble?”

“Steam in the lens, a frightful condition. The moon looks all fuzzy.” He inspected the glass. “There, that’s better.”

He bent once more to his observations.

The teaching assistant looked up at a new sound. Professor Armitage was sitting bolt upright, his eyeglasses on the table, rubbing his eyes, blinking. “I’ve been reading far too much; got to take it a little easier.”

“All done for the night?” inquired the teaching assistant.

Professor Armitage nodded wearily. “I’m just too tired and bleary-eyed.”

Lieutenant MacLeod, overlooking a student’s work at the Maritime Institute, shook his head indulgently. “Those figures would set us three hundred miles inland. You’ve probably failed to correct for refraction.”

Cadet Glasskamp set his lips rebelliously. The problem was futile in any event; celestial navigation was seldom used in this day of loran and automatic piloting. Lunar occultation of stars to determine Greenwich time was three centuries antiquated; the exercise was no more than drudgery.

Lieutenant MacLeod admitted as much, but he claimed that working the difficult old systems clarified the primary concepts of hour angle, declination, right ascension, local time, and the like, as did none of the modern short-cut methods.

Cadet Glasskamp bent over his problem. Twenty minutes later he looked up. “I can’t find anything wrong here. Might have been an error in the observation.”

“Nonsense,” said the lieutenant. “I caught the sight myself.” Nevertheless he checked on Glasskamp’s figures, once, twice, a third time, and finally opening the Nautical Almanac, calculated the time of occultation.

He chewed his lip in amazement. “Twenty-two minutes? I don’t believe it. That shot was right on the nose.”

“Perhaps you didn’t allow for refraction of the star’s light around the moon.”

Lieutenant MacLeod gave Cadet Glasskamp a pitying look. “Refraction occurs when light passes through an atmosphere. There’s no atmosphere on the moon—although if there were—” he calculated under his breath “—the moon moves half a degree an hour, that’s thirty minutes. Earth atmosphere refracts a thousand seconds; if there were an atmosphere dense as Earth’s on the moon, you’d have to double it, light passing through twice. Two thousand. Say twelve hundred—that’s twenty minutes. If so—that would create forty chronological minutes, at half a degree per hour. Apparently,” said the lieutenant jocularly, “we’ve discovered that the moon has an atmosphere roughly half as dense as the Earth’s.”