He stated the thought to himself carefully and explicitly, facing it boldly. The overpowering reason, for instance, of a desire to murder. But why? There could be no motive. In his twenty-three years of life, he had never made a serious enemy. Not this serious. Not murder serious.
He clutched at his clipped hair. This was a ridiculous line of thought, but there was no escaping it. He stepped cautiously back to the closet. There had to be something there that was sending out radiation; something that had not been there four hours earlier. He saw it almost at once.
It was a little box not more than six inches in any direction. Biron recognized it and his lower lip trembled slightly. He had never seen one before, but he had heard of them. He lifted the counter and took it into the bedroom. The little murmur fell off, almost ceased. It started again when the thin mica partition, through which the radiation entered, pointed toward the box. There was no question in his mind. It was a radiation bomb.
The present radiations were not in themselves deadly; they were only a fuse. Somewhere inside the box a tiny atomic pile was constructed. Short-lived artificial isotopes heated it slowly, permeating it with the appropriate particles. When the threshold of head and particle density was reached, the pile reacted. Not in an explosion, usually, although the heat of reaction would serve to fuse the box itself into a twist of metal, but in a tremendous burst of deadly radiation that would kill anything living within a radius of six feet to six miles, depending on the bomb's size.
There was no way of telling when the threshold would be reached. Perhaps not for hours, and perhaps the next moment. Biron remained standing helplessly, flashlight held loosely in his damp hands. Half an hour before, the visiphone had awakened him, and he had been at peace then. Now he knew he was going to die.
Biron didn't want to die, but he was penned in hopelessly, and there was no place to hide,
He knew the geography of the room. It was at the end of a corridor, so that there was another room only on one side, and, of course, above and below. He could do nothing about the room above. The room on the same floor was on the bathroom side, and it adjoined via its own bathroom. He doubted that he could make himself heard.
That left the room below.
There were a couple of folding chairs in the room, spare seats to accommodate company. He took one. It made a flat, slapping sound when it hit the floor. He turned it edgewise and the sound became harder and louder.
Between each blow, he waited; wondering if he could rouse the sleeper below and annoy him sufficiently to have him report the disturbance.
Abruptly, he caught a faint noise, and paused, the splintering chair raised above his head. The noise came again, like a faint shout. It was from the direction of the door.
He dropped the chair and yelled in return. He crushed his ear up against the crack where door joined wall, but the fit was good, and the sound even there was dim.
But he could make out his own name being called.
"Farrill! Farrill!" several times over, and something else. Maybe "Are you in there?" or "Are you all right?"
He roared back, "Get the door open." He shouted it three or four times. He was in a feverish sweat of impatience. The bomb might be on the point of letting loose even now.
He thought they heard him. At least, the muffled cry came back, "Watch out. Something, something, blaster." He knew what they meant and backed hurriedly away from the door.
There were a couple of sharp, cracking sounds, and he could actually feel the vibrations set up in the air of the room. Then there followed a splitting noise and the door was flung inward. Light poured in from the corridor.
Biron dashed out, arms flung wide. "Don't come in," he yelled. "For the love of Earth, don't come in. There's a radiation bomb in there."
He was facing two men. One was Jonti. The other was Esbak, the superintendent. He was only partly dressed.
"A radiation bomb?" he stuttered.
But Jonti said, "What size?" Jonti's blaster was still in his hand, and that alone jarred with the dandyish effect of his ensemble, even at this time of night.
Biron could only gesture with his hands.
"All right," said Jonti. He seemed quite cool about it, as he turned to the superintendent. "You'd better evacuate the rooms in this area, and if you have leadsheets anywhere on the university grounds, have them brought out here to line the corridor. And I wouldn't let anyone in there before morning."
He turned to Biron. "It probably has a twelve-to-eighteen-foot radius. How did it get there?"
"I don't know," said Biron. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "If you don't mind, I've got to sit down somewhere." He threw a glance at his wrist, then realized his wrist watch was still in the room. He had a wild impulse to return after it.
There was action now. Students were being hustled out of their rooms.
"Come with me," said Jonti. "I think you had better sit down too. "
Biron said, "What brought you out to my room? Not that I'm not thankful, you understand."
"I called you. There was no answer, and I had to see you."
"To see me?" He spoke carefully, trying to control his irregular breathing. "Why?"
"To warn you that your life was in danger."
Biron laughed raggedly. "I found out."
"That was only the first attempt. They'll try again."
"Who are 'they'?"
"Not here, Farrill," said Jonti. "We need privacy for this. You're a marked man, and I may already have endangered myself as well."
2. The Net Across Space
The student lounge was empty; it was dark as well. At four-thirty in the morning it could scarcely have been otherwise. Yet Jonti hesitated a moment as he held the door open, listening for occupants.