Empire

"Sorry, I really can't shake hands," he said. "I'm not here, you know. Just my image."

Chambers' hand dropped to the desk. "Stupid of me not to realize that. You looked so natural." He sat back in his chair again, brushed his gray mustache. A smile twisted his lips. "So you've been watching me?"

"Off and on," Greg said.

"And what is the occasion of this visit?" asked Chambers. "You could have held a distinct advantage by remaining unseen. I didn't entirely believe what Craven told me, you know."

"That isn't the point at all," declared Greg. "Maybe we can get to understand one another."

"So you're ready to talk business."

"Not in the sense you mean," Greg said. "I'm not willing to make concessions, but there's no reason why we have to fight one another."

"Why, no," said Chambers, "there's no reason for that. I'll be willing to buy your discovery."

"I wouldn't sell it to you," Greg told him.

"You wouldn't? Why not? I'm prepared to pay for it."

"You'd pay the price, all right. Anything I asked ... even if it bankrupted you. Then you'd mark it down to loss, and scrap material energy. And I'll tell you why."

A terrible silence hung in the room as the two men eyed one another across the table.

"You wouldn't use it," Greg went on, "because it would remove the stranglehold you have on the planets. It would make power too cheap. It would eliminate the necessity of your rented accumulators. The Jovian moons and Mars could stand on their feet without the power you ship to them. You could make billions in legitimate profits selling the apparatus to manufacture the energy ... but you wouldn't want that. You want to be dictator of the Solar System. And that is what I intend to stop."

"Listen, Manning," said Chambers, "you're a reasonable man. Let's talk this thing over without anger. What do you plan to do?"

"I could put my material engines on the market," said Greg. "That would ruin you. You wouldn't move an accumulator after that. Your Interplanetary stock wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on. Material energy would wipe you out."

"You forget I have franchises on those planets," Chambers reminded him. "I'd fight you in the courts until hell froze over."

"I'd prove convenience, economy and necessity. Any court in any land, on any planet, would rule for me."

Chambers shook his head. "Not Martian or Jovian courts. I'd tell them to rule for me and the courts outside of Earth do what I tell them to."

Greg straightened and backed from the desk. "I hate to ruin a man. You've worked hard. You've built a great company. I would be willing, in return for a hands-off policy on your part, to hold up any announcement of my material energy until you had time to get out, to save what you could."

Hard fury masked Chambers' face. "You'll never build a material energy engine outside your laboratory. Don't worry about ruining me. I won't allow you to stand in my way. I hope you understand."

"I understand too well. But even if you are a dictator out on Mars and Venus, even if you do own Mercury and boss the Jovian confederacy, you're just a man to me. A man who stands for things that I don't like."

Greg stopped and his eyes were like ice crystals.

"You talked to Stutsman today," he said. "If I were you, I wouldn't let Stutsman do anything rash. Russ Page and I might have to fight back."

Mockery tinged Chambers' voice. "Am I to take this as a declaration of war, Mr. Manning?"

"Take it any way you like," Greg said. "I came here to give you a proposition, and you tell me you're going to smash me. All I have to say to you, Chambers, is this—when you get ready to smash me, you'd better have a deep, dark hole all picked out for yourself to hide in. Because I'll hand you back just double anything you hand out."

CHAPTER TEN

"One of us will have to watch all the time," Greg told Russ. "We can't take any chances. Stutsman will try to reach us sooner or later and we have to be ready for him."

He glanced at the new radar screen they had set up that morning beside the bank of other controls. Any ship coming within a hundred miles of the laboratory would be detected instantly and pinpointed.

The board flashed now. In the screen they saw a huge passenger ship spearing down toward the airport south of them.

"With the port that close," said Russ, "we'll get a lot of signals."

"I ordered the Belgium factory to rush work on the ship," said Greg. "But it will be a couple of weeks yet. We just have to sit tight and wait. As soon as we have the ship we'll start in on Chambers; but until we get the ship, we just have to dig in and stay on the defensive."

He studied the scene in the screen. The ship had leveled off, was banking in to the port. His eyes turned away, took in the laboratory with its crowding mass of machinery.

"We don't want to fool ourselves about Chambers," he said. "He may not have the power here on Earth that he does on the other planets, but he's got plenty. Feeling the way he does, he'll try to finish us off in a hurry now."