Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Rutherford ?" he asked Parsons.
                   "Pinwinnie Rutherford
of Edinburgh ?"
                   "Ernest Rutherford. Of New Zealand . I ran across him in Canada . He's done some interesting work in the
area of light rays, if you can call them that." St. Ives wiggled loose a
thread of chicken, carried the morsel halfway to his mouth, looked at it, and
changed his mind. "There's some indication that alpha and beta rays from
the sun slide away along the earth's magnetic field, arriving harmlessly at the
poles. It seems likely, at a hasty glance, that without the field they'd sail
in straightaway —we'd be bathed in radioactivity. The most frightful mutations
might occur. It has been my pet theory, in fact, that the dinosaurs were laid
low in precisely that same fashion—that their demise was a consequence of the
reversal of the poles and the inherent cessation of the magnetic field."
                   Parsons shrugged. "All of this is theory,
of course. But the comet is eight days away, and that's not at all theory. It's
not a brontosaurus, my dear fellow, it's an enormous
chunk of iron that threatens to smash us into jelly. From your chair across the
table it's easy enough to fly in the face of the science of mechanics, but I'm
afraid, sir, that Lord Kelvin will get along very well without you—he has in
the past."
                   "There's a better way," said St.
Ives simply. It was useless to lose his temper over Parsons's practiced stubbornness.
                   "Oh?" said the secretary.
                   "Ignacio Narbondo, I believe, has showed
it to us."
                   Parsons dropped his spoon onto his lap and
launched into a choking fit. St. Ives held up a constraining hand. "I'm
very much aware of his threats, I assure you. And they're not idle threats,
either. Do you propose to pay him?"
                   "I'm constrained from discussing
it."
                   "He'll do what he claims. He's taken the
first steps already."
                   "I realize, my dear fellow, that you and
the doctor are sworn enemies. He ought to have danced his last jig on the
gallows a long time ago. If it were in my power to bring him to justice, I
would, but I have no earthly idea where he is, quite frankly, and I'll warn
you, with no beating about the bush, that this
business of the comet must not become a personal matter with you. I believe you
take my meaning. Lord Kelvin
                   St. Ives counted to ten very slowly. Somewhere
between seven and eight, he discovered that Parsons was very nearly right. What
he said was beside the point, though. "Let me repeat," St. Ives said
evenly, "that I believe there's a better way."
                   "And what does a lunatic like Narbondo
have to do with this 'better way'?"
                   "He intends, if I read him aright, to
effect the stoppage of certain very active volcanoes in arctic Scandinavia via the introduction of petrifactive
catalysts into open fissures and dykes. The subsequent detonation of an
explosive charge would lead to the eruption of a chain of volcanic mountains
that rise above the jungles of Amazonian Peru. The entrapped energy expended by
such an upheaval would, he hopes, cast us like a Chinese rocket into the course
of the comet."
                   "Given the structure of the interior of
the earth," said Parsons, grinning into his mineral water, "it seems
a dubious undertaking at best. Perhaps ..." |
                   "Are you familiar with hollow-earth
theory?" '
                   Parsons blinked at St. Ives. The corners of
his mouth twitched.
                   "Specifically with that of McClung-Jones
of the Quebec Geological Mechanics Institute? The 'thin-crust phenomenon'?"
                   Parsons shook his head tiredly.
                   "It's possible," said