The Transvection Machine by Edward D. Hoch Read Free Book Online Page A

seconds.” He was gone for no more than five minutes, and when he returned he nodded slightly. “The tape checks out. It’s an exact duplicate of the master tape we have here of Dr. Ralph Cozzens—one of the finest abdominal men who ever lived.”
    “Just what procedure would have been followed yesterday?” Jazine wanted to know. “How many people here would have touched the master tape?”
    “That’s simple. No one! We’re completely automated here. The telephoned request from Salk Memorial gained direct access to the master computer. The desired tape of Dr. Cozzen’s appendix removal was chosen and transmitted over the telephone line automatically.”
    “I see.”
    Professor Ainsworth leaned back in his chair, casually stroking the tips of his moustache. “It’s hard to believe now that people once talked on telephones, isn’t it? Now people use vision-phones and only machines still talk to each other on telephones. The modern world!”
    “Frankly, professor, do you have complete faith in your computer? Is there anything that could have gone wrong with the system and caused Vander Defoe’s death?”
    “Do I have faith in the computer? Is that what you’re asking me, young man? My God, if we can’t trust the computer, what can we trust? The day the machine is proven capable of error, that day our entire civilization will collapse!”
    Earl Jazine left the Federal Medical Center with the distinct impression that Professor Ainsworth himself might be something of a machine.
    “Chief, this is Earl, in Washington.” The vision-phone cleared and he saw Carl Crader at his desk in the World Trade Center. “Yes, Earl. How did you make out?”
    “All dead ends, chief. The hospital denies responsibility and the Federal Medical Center says the computer couldn’t go wrong. There’s an outside possibility that the nurse made an error, but she’s not about to admit it.”
    “You think it looks like an accident?”
    Jazine shook his head. “I think it looks like murder, chief, but I’m damned if I can see how it was done.”
    “We’re back to your murder by computer.”
    “I know.”
    “Any suspects?”
    “I’m just remembering what Tromp mentioned about Defoe’s wife and his ex-partner. Might be something there.”
    “Ganger? The man who helped invent the transvection machine?”
    Jazine nodded. “That thing has been in the background all along—that transvection machine. Maybe we’ve been spending our time investigating the wrong machine, chief.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean, Earl?”
    “I’ll let you know after I talk to Ganger and Mrs. Defoe.”
    “All right,” Crader said with a sigh. “But go slow. Don’t rush into things.”
    “Anything on that Frost angle—the man from Venus?”
    “I’ve been checking on the group he was involved with. If he’s back on this planet, I think he’ll try to contact them.”
    “What about his background? Does he look like an assassin?”
    Crader bent his head and flipped through a file on the desk before him. Then he looked back up at the vision-phone. “No, Earl,” he said at last. “I just don’t see a man like Euler Frost as a political assassin, no matter what the president and Tromp would like us to think.”

6 EULER FROST
    H E WAS BORN IN a quiet Manitoba village, above the permafrost line, and for the first eight years of his life he saw only the most primitive forms of machine. His parents were medical missionaries laboring among one of the few remaining Indian tribes on the North American continent. Of necessity, their life imprisoned him in a culture and a milieu that were totally foreign to the pace and thrust of the twenty-first century. His boyhood was spent among the quiet people of the reservation, except for the annual trips south to Winnipeg, which began with his ninth birthday.
    Euler Frost’s father was a good man, and often on the trips south he would point out the advances of civilization. His eyes were always on the