William Morrison by Task of Kayin

Author:Task of Kayin [Kayin, Task of]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-08-30T19:31:39+00:00

HE WAS the only one to know the danger. He realized at once that he could tell no one. Blayson and Lymer had eyes only on the fortunes they intended to make, and they would have refused to believe anything that stood in the way of those fortunes. Nor could he go to anyone else. There would be questions

He imagined himself trying to inform the Mayor of the city. Some underling would be sure to meet him. "You say there's danger, Mr. Kayin? That how you pronounce it? Foreign-sounding name. Where'd you come from?"

He would have to invent answers in advance for every possible embarrassing question. And then would come the most embarrassing of all:

"How do you know there's danger?"

There was no answer to that. Could he say that he had worked in the same field of research himself? Or could he give them the example of what had happened on another planet?"

It was a problem that he would have to solve by himself. He racked his head, and found no simple solution. He had his optical analyzer, and one or two additional trifles like it, but there was no special apparatus he could use, no weapons. Outside of his scientific knowledge and his non-human brain, he had only the same weapons as the human beings themselves. And these were hardly enough to put an end for good to a project on which so many human beings had built their hopes.

The buildings approached completion, the laboratory equipment began to be installed. And then, finally, when delay was no longer possible, on the eve of the very day that was to see the plant put into operation, Kayin acted.

He knew that until work actually began there would be but a single night watchman, and it was this man at whom he struck first. A single carefully aimed blow with a padded club produced unconsciousness. Kayin did not strike hard, but he struck hard enough. As the watchman fell, Kayin seized the man, bound and gagged him.

Then he entered the building and began to destroy.

He started with the cosmic ray collector, working quietly and efficiently, and concentrating on the electronic and magnetic parts. These had been ordered long before the building itself had been begun. They would be hard to replace.

He passed on to the giant incubator vats, and finally turned his attention to the collection of formulas which reposed in the files. These were important, but he knew that they were not enough. The most important formulas of all lay in the mind of the man who had developed the process, and that was, for the moment at least, beyond him. What Kayin was doing now was playing for time. He was setting a match to the papers of the last file when he heard a voice. More time had passed than he realized, and they had come early on this day that was to have seen the beginning of a great enterprise.

They must already have noted the absence of the watchman.

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