crossed the compound and entered the old laboratory.
One was that perhaps it might be wise to surround his buildings with a field of force of some kind and post warnings for trespassers. The other thought was of Conant and the vague uneasiness the man had been sending to him through the radiophone these last weeks. His suggestion, two days ago, that a power plant be built on the island—
horrible idea!
Conant rose from a laboratory bench as Kidder walked in.
They looked as each other wordlessly for a long moment. Kidder hadn't seen the bank president in years. The man's presence, he found, made his scalp crawl.
'Hello,' said Conant genially. 'You're looking fit.'
Kidder grunted. Conant eased his unwieldy body back onto the bench and said,
'Just to save you the energy of asking questions, Mr. Kidder, I arrived two hours ago on a small boat. Rotten way to travel. I wanted to be a surprise to you; my two men rowed me the last couple of miles. You're not very well equipped here for defense, are you? Why, anyone could slip up on you the way I did.'
'Who'd want to?' growled Kidder. The man's voice edged annoyingly into his brain. He spoke too loudly for such a small room; at least, Kidder's hermit's ears felt that way. Kidder shrugged and went about Preparing a light meal for himself.
'Well,' drawled the banker. 'I might want to.' He drew out a Dowmetal cigar case. 'Mind if I smoke?'
'I do,' said Kidder sharply.
Conant laughed easily and put the cigars away. 'I might,' he said, want to urge you to let me build that power station on this island.'
'Radiophone work?'
'Oh, yes. But now that I'm here you can't switch me off. Now—how about it?'
'I haven't changed my mind.'
'Oh, but you should, Kidder, you should. Think of it—think of the good it would do for the masses of people that are now paying exorbitant power bills!'
'I hate the masses! Why do you have to build here?'
'Oh, that. It's an ideal location. You own the island; work could begin here without causing any comment whatsoever. The plant would spring full-fledged on the power markets of the country, having been built in secret. The island can be made impregnable.'
'I don't want to be bothered.'
'We wouldn't bother you. We'd build on the north end of the island —a mile and a quarter from you and your work. Ah—by the way— where's the model of the power transmitter?'
Kidder, with his mouth full of synthesized food, waved a hand at a small table on which stood the model, a four-foot, amazingly intricate device of plastic and steel and tiny coils.
Conant rose and went over to look at it. 'Actually works, eh?' He sighed deeply and said, 'Kidder, I really hate to do this, but I want to build that plant rather badly.
Carson! Robbins!'
Two bull-necked individuals stepped out from their hiding places in the comers of the room. One idly dangled a revolver by its trigger guard. Kidder looked blankly from one to the other of them.
'These gentlemen will follow my orders implicitly, Kidder. In half an hour a party will land here—engineers, contractors. They will start surveying the north end of the island for the construction of the power plant. These boys here feel about the same way I do as far as you are concerned. Do we proceed with your cooperation or without it? It's immaterial to me whether or not you are left alive to continue your work. My engineers can duplicate your model.'
Kidder said nothing. He had stopped chewing when he saw the gunmen, and only now remembered to swallow. He sat crouched over his plate without moving or speaking.
Conant broke the silence by walking to the door. 'Robbins—can you carry that model there?' The big man put his gun away, lifted the model gently, and nodded.
'Take it down to the beach and meet the other boat. Tell Mr. Johansen, the engineer, that this is the model he is to work from.' Robbins went out. Conant turned to Kidder.
'There's no need for us to anger ourselves,' he said oilily. 'I think you are stubborn, but I don't hold it against you. I know how you feel. You'll be left alone; you have my promise. But I mean to go ahead on this job, and a small thing like your life can't stand in my way.'
Kidder said, 'Get out of here.' There were two swollen veins throbbing at his temples. His voice was low, and it shook.
'Very well. Good day, Mr. Kidder. Oh—by the way—you're a clever devil.' No one had ever referred to the scholastic Mr. Kidder that way before. 'I realize the possibility of your blasting us off the island. I wouldn't do it if I were you. I'm willing to give you what you want—privacy. I want the same thing in return. If anything happens to me while I'm here, the island will be bombed by someone who is working for me. I'll admit they might fail. It they do, the United States government will take a hand. You wouldn't want that, would you? That's rather a big thing for one man to fight. The same thing goes if the plant is sabotaged in any way after I go back to the mainland. You might be killed. You will most certainly be bothered interminably. Thanks for your... er... cooperation.' The banker smirked and walked out, followed by his taciturn gorilla.
Kidder sat there for a long time without moving. Then he shook his head, rested it in his palms. He was badly frightened; not so much because his life was in danger, but because his privacy and his work— his world—were threatened. He was hurt and bewildered. He wasn't a businessman. He couldn't handle men. All his life he had run away from human beings and what they represented to him. He was like a frightened child when men closed in on him.
Cooling a little, he wondered vaguely what would happen when the power plant opened. Certainly the government would be interested. Unless —unless by then Conant was the government. That plant was an unimaginable source of power, and not only the kind of power that turned wheels. He rose and went back to the world that was home to him, a world where his motives were understood, and where there were those who could help him. Back at the Neoterics' building, he escaped yet again from the world of men into his work.
Kidder called Conant the following week, much to the banker's surprise. His two days on the island had got the work well under way, and he had left with the arrival of a shipload of laborers and material. He kept in close touch by radio with Johansen, the engineer in charge. It had been a blind job for Johansen and all the rest of the crew on the island. Only the bank's infinite resources could have hired such a man, °r the picked gang with him.
Johansen's first reaction when he saw the model had been ecstatic. He wanted to tell his friends about this marvel; but the only radio set available was beamed to Conant's private office in the bank, and Co- nant's armed guards, one to every two workers, had strict orders to destroy any other radio transmitter on sight. About that time he realized that he was a prisoner on the island. His instant anger subsided when he reflected that being a prisoner at fifty thousand dollars a week wasn't too bad. Two of the laborers and an engineer thought differently, and got disgruntled a couple of days after they arrived. They disappeared one night—the same night that five shots were fired down on the beach. No questions were asked, and there was no more trouble.
Conant covered his surprise at Kidder's call and was as offensively jovial as ever.
'Well, now! Anything I can do for you?'
'Yes,'' said Kidder. His voice was low, completely without expression. 'I want you to issue a warning to your men not to pass the white line I have drawn five hundred yards north of my buildings, right across the island.'
'Warning? Why, my dear fellow, they have orders that you are not to be disturbed on any account.'
'You've ordered them. All right. Now warn them. I have an electric field surrounding my laboratories that will kill anything living which penetrates it. I don't want to have murder on my conscience. There will be no deaths unless there are trespassers. You'll inform your workers?'
'Oh, now Kidder,' the banker expostulated. 'That was totally unnecessary. You won't be bothered. Why—' But he found he was talking into a dead mike. He knew better than to call back. He called Johansen instead and told him about it. Johansen didn't like the sound of it, but he repeated the message and signed off. Conant liked that man. He was, for a moment, a little sorry that Johansen would never reach the mainland alive.
But that Kidder—he was beginning to be a problem. As long as his weapons were strictly defensive he was
