many. Everything we've got is too lethal. The difficulty would be in keeping anybody alive, even ourselves. Eh? All the people at the top, you know. Well — us, for instance.' He gave a wheezy, happy little chuckle.
'But that isn't what we want,' Mr Lazenby insisted.
'It's not a question of what you want, it's a question of what we've got. Everything we've got is terrifically lethal. If you want everybody under thirty wiped off the map, I expect you could do it. Mind you, you'd have to take a lot of the older ones as well. It's difficult to segregate one lot from the other, you know. Personally, I should be against that. We've got some very good young research fellows. Bloody-minded, but clever.'
'What's gone wrong with the world?' asked Kenwood suddenly.
'That's the point,' said Professor Eckstein. 'We don't know. We don't know up at our place in spite of all we do know about this, that and the other. We know a bit more about the moon nowadays, we know a lot about biology, we can transplant hearts and livers; brains, too, soon, I expect, though I don't know how that'll work out. But we don't know who is doing this. Somebody is, you know. It's a sort of high-powered background stuff. Oh yes, we've got it cropping up in different ways. You know, crime rings, drug rings, all that sort of thing. A high-powered lot, directed by a few good, shrewd brains behind the scenes. We've had it going on in this country or that country, occasionally on a European scale. But it's going a bit further now, other side of the globe — Southern Hemisphere. Down to the Antarctic Circle before we've finished, I expect.' He appeared to be pleased with his diagnosis.
'People of ill-will –'
'Well, you could put it like that. Ill-will for ill-will's sake or ill-will for the sake of money or power. Difficult, you know, to get at the point of it all. The poor devils themselves don't know. They want violence and more violence. They don't like the world, they don't like our materialistic attitude. They don't like a lot of our ways of making money, they don't like a lot of the fiddles we do. They don't like seeing poverty. They want a better world. Well, you could make a better world, perhaps, if you thought about it long enough. But the trouble is, if you insist on taking away something first, you've got to put something back in its place. Nature won't have a vacuum — an old saying, but true. Dash it all, it's like a heart transplant. You take one heart away but you've got to put another one there. One that works. And you've got to arrange about the heart you're going to put there before you take away the faulty heart that somebody's got at present. Matter of fact, I think a lot of those things are better left alone altogether, but nobody would listen to me, I suppose. And anyway it's not my subject.'
'A gas?' suggested Colonel Munro.
Professor Eckstein brightened.
'Oh, we've got all sorts of gases in stock. Mind you, some of them are reasonably harmless. Mild deterrents, shall we say. We've got all those.' He beamed like a complacent hardware dealer.
'Nuclear weapons?' suggested Mr Lazenby.
'Don't you monkey with that! You don't want a radio-active England , do you, or a radio-active continent, for that matter?'
'So you can't help us,' said Colonel Munro.
'Not until somebody's found out a bit more about all this,' said Professor Eckstein. 'Well, I'm sorry. But I must impress upon you that most of the things we're working on nowadays are dangerous.' He stressed the word. 'Really dangerous.'
He looked at them anxiously, as a nervous uncle might look at a group of children left with a box of matches to play with, and who might quite easily set the house on fire.
'Well, thank you. Professor Eckstein,' said Mr Lazenby. He did not sound particularly thankful.
The Professor gathering correctly that he was released, smiled all round and trotted out of the room.
Mr Lazenby hardly waited for the door to close before venting his feelings.
'All alike, these scientists,' he said bitterly. 'Never any practical good. Never come up with anything sensible. All they can do is split the atom — and then tell us not to mess about with it!'
'Just as well if we never had,' said Admiral Blunt, again bluntly. 'What we want is something homely and domestic like a kind of selective weedkiller which would –' He paused abruptly. 'Now what the devil –?'
'Yes, Admiral?' said the Prime Minister politely.
'Nothing — just reminded me of something. Can't remember what –'
The Prime Minister sighed.
'Any more scientific experts waiting on the mat?' asked Gordon Chetwynd, glancing hopefully at his wristwatch.
'Old Pikeaway is here, I believe,' said Lazenby. 'Got a picture — or a drawing — or a map or something or other he wants us to look at –'
'What's it all about?'
'I don't know. It seems to be all bubbles,' said Mr Lazenby vaguely.
'Bubbles? Why bubbles?'
'I've no idea. Well,' he sighed, 'We'd better have a look at it.'
'Horsham's here, too –'
'He may have something new to tell us,' said Chetwynd.
Colonel Pikeaway stumped in. He was supporting a rolled-up burden which with Horsham's aid was unrolled and which with some difficulty was propped up so that those sitting round the table could look at it.
'Not exactly drawn to scale yet, but it gives you an idea,' said Colonel Pikeaway.
'What does it mean, if anything?'
'Bubbles?' murmured Sir George. An idea came to him. 'Is it a gas? A new gas?'
'You'd better deliver the lecture, Horsham,' said Pikeaway. 'You know the general idea.'
'I only know what I've been told. It's a rough diagram of an association of world control.'
'By whom?'
'By groups who own or control the sources of power — the raw materials of power.'
'And the letters of the alphabet?'
'Stand for a person or a code name for a special group. They are intersecting circles that by now cover the globe.
'That circle marked 'A' stands for armaments. Someone, or some group is in control of armaments. All types of armaments. Explosives, guns, rifles. All over the world armaments are being produced according to plan, dispatched ostensibly to under-developed nations, backward nations, nations at war. But they don't remain where they are sent. They are re-routed almost immediately elsewhere. To guerrilla warfare in the South American Continent — to rioting and fighting in the USA — to Depots of Black Power — to various countries in Europe.
''D' represents drugs — a network of suppliers run them from various depots and stockpiles. All kinds of drugs, from the more harmless varieties up to the true killers. The headquarters seem likely to be situated in the Levant, and to pass out through Turkey , Pakistan , India and Central Asia .'
'They make money out of it?'
'Enormous sums of money. But it's more than just an association of pushers. It has a more sinister side to it. It's being used to finish off the weaklings amongst the young, shall we say, to make them complete slaves. Slaves so that they cannot live and exist or do jobs for their employers without a supply of drugs.'
Kenwood whistled.
'That's a bad show, isn't it? Don't you know at all who those drug pushers are?'
'Some of them, yes. But only the lesser fry. Not the real controllers. Drug headquarters are, so far as we can judge, Central Asia and the Levant . They get delivered from there in the tyres of cars, in cement, in concrete, in all kinds of machinery and industrial goods. They're delivered over the world and passed on as ordinary trade goods where they are sent to go.
''F' stands for finance. Money! A money spider's web in the centre of it all. You'll have to go to Mr Robinson to tell you about money. According to a memo here, the money is coming very largely from America and there's a headquarters in Bavaria . There's a vast reserve in Africa , based on gold and diamonds. Most of the money is going to South America . One of the principal controllers, if I may so put it, of money, is a very powerful and talented woman. She's old now: must be near to death. But she is still strong and active. Her name was Charlotte Krapp. Her father owned the vast Krapp yards in Germany . She was a financial genius herself and operated in Wall Street. She accumulated fortune after fortune by investments in all parts of the world. She owns transport, she owns machinery, she owns industrial concerns. All these things. She lives in a vast castle in Bavaria — from there she directs a flow of money to different parts of the globe.
