VITAL FACTOR

by

Nelson Bond

Money can accomplish many things, but it cannot always control the forces it unleashes. A flying saucer takes off.

Wayne Crowder called himself a forceful man. Those who knew him best (none knew him really well) substituted adjectives somewhat less flattering. He was, they said, a cold and ruthless man; a man of iron will and icy determination; a man with a heart to match his granite jaw. Not cunning, dishonest or unfair. Just hard. A man who wanted his own way—and got it.

In an era that sees more fortunes lost than gained, Crowder proved his ability and acumen by getting rich. Even in these days of exaggerated material and labor costs this can be done by a bold, determined man who admits no obstacles. Wayne Crowder did it. He patented a simple household product needed by everyone, sold it at a penny profit that crushed all would-be competition, and made himself a multi-millionaire despite the staggering levies of the Department of Internal Revenue. He built himself a towering structure and placed his private office at its peak. He dwelt in the clouds, both figuratively and literally. In sense and essence, those whom he employed were his underlings.

A man of ice and stone and ink and steel, they called him. And in the main, their judgment was correct.

But he surprised them.

One afternoon he said to his secretary, “Get me my engineers.”

The engineers sat deferentially before his massive desk. Wayne Crowder told them crisply, “Gentlemen—I want you to build me a spaceship.”

The engineers eyed him, and then each other, a bit apprehensively. Their spokesman cleared his throat.

“A spaceship, sir?”

“I have decided,” said Crowder, “to be the man who gives spaceflight to mankind.”

One of the experts said, “We can design you such a ship, sir. That part is not too hard. The fundamental blue print has been in existence for many years; the submarine is its basis. But—”

“Yes?”

“But the motor that will power such a ship,” said the engineer frankly, “we cannot provide. Men have searched it for decades, but the answer is not yet found. In other words, we can build you a ship, but we can’t lift that ship from Earth’s surface.”

“Design the ship,” said Crowder, “and I will find the motor you need.”

The chief engineer asked, “Where?”

Crowder answered, “A fair question. And my answer is: I do not know. But somewhere in this world is a man who does know the secret—and will reveal it if I provide the money to convert his theory to fact. I’ll be that man.”

“You’ll be besieged by crackpots.”

“I know it. You men must help me separate the wheat from the chaff. But anyone who shows up with a promising idea, however fantastic it may sound, shall have a chance to show what he can do.”

“You mean you’ll subsidize their experiments? It will cost a fortune!”

“I have a fortune,” said Crowder succinctly. “Now get to work. Build me the ship, and I will make it fly.”

Wayne Crowder summoned the newsmen. Their stories were spectacular, amusing. Press syndicates took jeering de-

light in offering the world the magnate’s offer of one hundred thousand dollars in cold cash to the man who would make it possible for a vessel to rise from this planet. But the stories circulated to the distant corners of the globe; the offer was transmitted in a dozen tongues.

The prediction of the engineers was verified. The Crowder office building became a mecca and a haven for the lunatic fringe of humanity; their blueprints and scale models clogged its corridors, their letters were an inky deluge that threatened to engulf the expanded staff of clerks employed to sort, examine, scrutinize each scheme. Crowder himself saw only those few who passed the winnowing screen of the corps. Most of these he eventually turned away, but some he placed on a retaining wage and set to work. He poured a prince’s ransom into the construction of new laboratories. His wide proving-grounds became the bedlam workshop for upward of a score of would-be conquistadors of space.

The weeks rolled by; the spaceship designed by the engineers left the blueprint stage and went into construction. But still no subsidized inventor had made good his boast that his pet engine—of steam or explosive, gas or atomic, or whatever fuel—would lift the metal monster from Earth’s surface. Many tests were made. Some were comic, some tragic. But all were failures.

Still Crowder did not swerve.

“He will come,” he said. “Money and determination will buy anything. One day he will appear.”

And he was right. One day there came to his office a stranger. He was a small man. He looked even smaller in that tremendous room. He was an unusual visitor in that he carried no briefcase fat with blueprints, schematics, or formulae. He was unusual in that he neither blustered, cowered, nor deferred to his host. He was a pleasant little stranger, birdlike of eye and movement.

He said, “My name is Wilkins. I can power the ship you want.”

“So?” said Crowder.

“But it will be unlike that meaningless huge bullet your engineers are building. Rockets are a foolish waste of time. My motor requires a different sort of vessel.”

“Where are your plans?” asked Crowder.

“Here,” and he tapped his head.

Crowder said impassively, “I am supporting a score of others who claim the same. None has been successful. What makes you think your idea will work?”

“The flying disks,” replied the little man.

“Eh?”

“I’ve solved their secret. My idea is based on the principle that lets them fly. Electromagnetism. Utilization of the force of gravity. Or its opposite: counter-gravity.”

“Thank you very much,” said Crowder. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“Wait!” bade the little man. “There is one thing more. There is this.”

He drew from his pocket a metal object the size and shape of an ashtray. He suspended it over Crowder’s desk— and took his hand away. It hung there in midair. Crowder touched it. A gentle tingling stirred his fingertips, but the object did not fall. Crowder sat down again slowly.

“Enough,” he said. “What do you want?”

“For my services,” said Wilkins, “you have already set a fair price. Three other things. A workshop in which to build a pilot model. Expert assistance. And an answer.”

Crowder’s brows lifted. “An answer?”

“An answer to one question. Why do you want so much to build this ship?”

“Because,” said Crowder frankly, “I love power. Because I am ambitious. I would be the first to conquer space because to do so will make me greater, richer, stronger than any other man. I would be the master, not merely of one world, but of worlds.”

“An honest answer,” said Wilkins, “if a strange one.”

“What other could there be?”

“There could be mine,” said the little man thoughtfully. “I would leave this planet and go elsewhere—to Mars, perhaps—because there are strange beauties yet to find. Because there will be scarlet sunsets over barren wastes, and in the star-strewn night the thin, cold air of a dying world stirring in restless sighs across the valleys of the dry canals. Because my soul yearns to set foot on another world as yet untrod by man.”

Crowder said brusquely, “You are a sentimentalist. I am a man of logic. No matter. We can work together. Your workshop will be ready in the morning.”

Four months later, in the smoky haze of an October sunset, the two men sat together again. But not this time in Crowder’s tower office. This time they crouched within the cubicle of a small, disk-shaped machine made by Crowder’s engineers on plans designed by Wilkins. Outside, great crowds were gathered to witness the test flight. They stirred and murmured, waiting restlessly, as inside the control room of the craft Wilkins installed the final secret part he had not revealed to those who built his driving apparatus.

The little man secured a wire here, made a minute adjustment in another place. Crowder growled impatiently.

“Well, Wilkins? What’s holding us up?”

“Nothing now,” Wilkins laid down his tools, moved to the outer rim of the curiously shaped craft and raised a metal screen which allowed him to look out upon the proving-grounds. “Or—sentiment, perhaps. A wish to look once more on Earth’s familiar scenes.”

“You are a maudlin fool,” sniffed Crowder, “or else you are afraid. Perhaps you have decided your invention won’t work, after all?”

“It will work.”

“Then turn on your motor. Let me hear its roar and feel the tug as we cut free of Earth’s gravity and fly outward into space.”

The little man lowered the port and moved back to the controls. He touched a lever and depressed a key. His hands moved dreamily across the board. Said Crowder fretfully, “I’m beginning to distrust you, Wilkins. If this is all a hoax— When are we going to take off? You said at five sharp, and” —he glanced at his watch—“it is now five-oh-two. Well— Do we move?”

“We are already moving,” said Wilkins.

Once more he lifted the screen that covered the port. Crowder saw the purple-black of space, cream-splattered with myriad stars. Behind them, receding Earth was a toy balloon… a dime… a firefly.

“By Gad!” cried Crowder, stumbling to his feet. “By Gad, you’ve done it, Wilkins!”

Wilkins smiled.

A great elation tore at Crowder’s breast. He knew emotion at last, this cold, hard man. He cried triumphantly, “Then I was right! There is nothing money and determination cannot buy. I swore to be the man to conquer space, and I’ve made good. It’s a triumph of power and ambition.”

“And sentiment,” said Wilkins.

“What! Your dreaming would have died a-borning, but for me. I made this possible, Wilkins; don’t ever forget that. My capital, my forcefulness, my will.”

He stared at distant Earth through glowing eyes.

“This is but the beginning,” he said. “We’ll build a larger model. One great enough to hold a hundred men. We’ll launch the first invasion of a world. I’ll forge a new empire —on Mars. Turn back now, Wilkins.”

“No,” said Wilkins. “I think not.”

“What? We’ve proven this ship can fly. Now well go back and prepare for greater flights.”

“Not so,” said the little man. “We will go on.”

“What’s this?” roared Crowder. “You defy me? Are you mad?”

“No,” said Wilkins. “Sentimental.”

He took off his coat. He took off his necktie and his shirt, slipped off his trousers and his shoes. Beneath his clothing shone another garb, a strange apparel totally unlike anything Crowder had ever seen before. A gleaming, tight-knit cloth of golden hue, curiously outlining the quite unhuman aspects of his small physique. He smiled at Crowder, and it was a friendly smile. But it was not the smile of a creature born on Earth.

“Your money and ambition paved the way,” said the man from Mars, “but sentiment was the vital factor that sent me to you. You see—I wanted to go home.”

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