Firechild by Jack Williamson Read Free Book Online

the question. “What’s happening in Enfield?”
    “Up to now, nobody knows.” He kept his cavernous eyes on the doorway. “I pray to God it’s what we Catonians stand ready for. I pray again that such procrastinators as Gus haven’t been able to delay us too long.” He paused for effect, and his voice fell solemnly. “Gentlemen, I’m afraid we’re the nation’s only chance, though all I’ve seen up to now is those first unconfirmed AP bulletins. Which the government is hushing up.”
    “The facts will get out,” the editor muttered.
    “Not from us.” Clegg’s cragged features stiffened forbiddingly. “I should remind you that our pledges are enforced.” He nodded at the guard. “Here’s Gus.”
    Gus was Dr. Gustave Kneeland. Washed out of the Air Force Academy after a crash that left one eye almost blind, he had entered academe to earn an engineering degree from Cal Tech and the Ph.D. from M.I.T. Nearing fifty now, he had kept himself straight and fit as the young cadet. He attired himself with an effect of stylish elegance—strangely broken now and then in moments of emotional stress, when his bad eye went suddenly askew.
    After a brilliant beginning—rumored to have come at least in part from his shrewd choice of research associates—he had been director of a science foundation and then an arms expert for the Pentagon. Now National Security Adviser, he stood high among the secret founders and directors of the club.
    Uneasily silent, Clegg beckoned him to the end of the table.
    “Fellow Catonians—” Tight-lipped, he paused to shake his head. “I’m afraid you’re expecting more than I can say at this point. I have to tell you that we have every indication of a grave national disaster, but its actual dimensions are not yet known. No outcome is yet predictable.”
    “Why not?”
    “Panic.” A helpless shrug. “Civil defense, the police, the media—all in the dark. Nobody can confirm anything. Hundreds dead in Enfield before communications got cut off—the worst reports say thousands. Nothing at all for hours now. Disorder spreading out across the state. Total breakdown.”
    “What hit it?” Clegg was still on his feet, the words a hostile-seeming challenge. “Some devil’s brew out of EnGene?”
    Kneeland shrugged, his dark, hawkish face carefully blank. “Nothing confirmed.”
    “What else could it be?”
    “We don’t know. We may never know.”
    “We can guess.” Clegg’s knobby forefinger stabbed at him accusingly. “We know Lorain and what he’s been up to. Gathering Victor Belcraft and his gang of devils there to pry into God’s power of creation. Stealing His holiest arts to create genetic monsters—military monsters, since you decided to allow Pentagon funding. Can you deny—”
    “We admit nothing.” Kneeland’s lean mask stiffened. “There will be no official comment. Not from anybody. That’s an order straight from the top. No comment whatever. Not until we have something confirmed on the nature of the disaster—if it is an actual disaster.”
    “It is. Gus, you’ve got to know it is.” Clegg was patronizing, almost sneering. “Proof enough of that got out before anybody tried to muzzle the media. A disaster I expected—and warned you to expect. Lorain and Bel-craft should have been scotched a year ago. Instead, you let the Pentagon funnel secret millions—”
    “Colonel Clegg, you don’t make military policy.” Kneeland’s voice took on an edge of its own. “The President does, in consultation with people who have earned his trust. EnGene has been receiving confidential funding because his expert military and strategic advisers approved confidential funding.”
    Lifting a hand to hold off Clegg’s rejoinder, he lectured the others like the professor he had been.
    “I must clarify the basis for that decision. Progress in science isn’t something you can turn off or on. When the time has come for a new step forward, it won’t wait for any man