Voice of the Conqueror. John Russell Fearn
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way. Albert was looking mysteriously confident and certainly not like a man who has lost a job and has no other in sight.
It did indeed take him a fortnight to discover a fresh situation—a lowly one indeed—as a cleaner in a laboratory devoted to electronics. Emily could not appreciate that it was the electronics that appealed to Albert, not the humdrum procedure of mopping floors and dusting endless shelves.
The laboratory was one of fifty scattered up and down Britain under the new Science and Electronics legislation, by which all scientists of all European countries were teamed together to pool their knowledge. Every branch of science was included under the new law, but chiefly experimental work in electronics, guided missiles, and tests of interplanetary space were being carried out—this latter by means of high altitude rockets loaded with instruments.
CHAPTER TWO
Into this web-work of science, therefore, came Albert—quiet, mysteriously confident about something, offering himself to No. 9 Laboratory in North London as a cleaner.
“Done laboratory work before?” questioned the sharp-eyed doyen who controlled the establishment.
“No, sir.” Albert gave a meek smile. “I hardly see that cleaning a laboratory can be very different from cleaning anywhere else. It’s simply the process of removing dirt.”
“It is more than that, Simpkins. You may get mixed up with radioactive isotopes and all manner of things. Part of the time you may even have to wear protective suiting. I’m warning you in advance in case the job doesn’t appeal.”
“It appeals immensely, sir. I feel at home amongst scientific apparatus. I’ve studied science as a hobby all my life.”
“I see.” The doyen studied the filing system. “Formerly a chief projectionist, eh? Mmmm, scientific after a fashion. Integrity beyond question. Very well, Simpkins, the job is yours at the salary quoted in the advertisement. You are prepared to sign a bond of fidelity that no word shall ever escape you as to any scientific experiment which you may witness whilst employed here?”
“Quite prepared, sir.”
“Right!” And upon appending his signature, Albert became one of the staff. His salary was far below that which he had formerly earned, but he was entirely happy. Emily, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite, and never forgot to upbraid him every time he returned from his slogging and cleaning.
“I can’t imagine what you’re thinking of!” she declared flatly one evening when she and Albert were alone. “You have a profession in your hands as a projectionist—and in the present cinema boom there’s plenty need of them—and yet you’re content to clean floors!”
“Not by any means, Emmy. I’m learning a lot. All about altitude rockets, supersonics, electronics, and a host of scientific accomplishments. Besides, I’m friendly with several of the senior scientists who’ll always talk to anybody interested in science, even if he is only a cleaner—and they are giving me valuable information.”
“What about, for heaven’s sake?”
“About those theories I’ve been tossing round in my mind for so many years. I’m tying them up now, one by one, and in the finish I’ll have one grand, practical plan. Then things will really happen.”
“What things?” Emily was relentless.
Albert gazed into the fire. “Emmy, I once said that all the unhappiness in the world is caused by selfishness and greed. Suppose something happened to change all that? Suppose people everywhere did the right thing because they just couldn’t do anything else?”
“Ridiculous! More of your crazy dreaming, Albert!”
“No.” Albert shook his head slowly, his eyes having a light in them that Emily had never seen before. “No, Emmy, it isn’t crazy. It’s practical. Everything I am doing is with a fixed purpose. Just leave me alone and wait. A day will come when we’ll not only have all the money we need, but all the happiness as well.… It isn’t natural that living, thinking beings should be anything else but happy. That’s part of my philosophy.”
“Then it’s out of joint! Everybody’s unhappy about something. I defy you to find a really contented person on the face of the earth!”
“At the moment you’re right. But later.…” Albert, however, had drifted off into speculations, and Emily could not get any further explanations from him. Finally she gave it up, and Albert returned to his inevitable magazine.
So, for many weeks, matters pursued an apparently humdrum course. Albert came and went at his cleaning job, saying little to Emily because she had not the kind of mind to understand him. The one thing she could understand, however, was that Albert began to bring home odd pieces of equipment concealed in his overalls, and by degrees they began to occupy quite a fair space in the outhouse—normally used for bicycles and lawn-mower.
“Are you sure,” Emily asked uneasily, “that you’re doing right in bringing home stuff like this?”
“Quite sure. It’s mainly throw-out stuff, and I’ve asked permission to keep some of it. As a cleaner I’m well in touch with the laboratory junk.’’
“Junk, yes, but the stuff I’ve seen looks like perfectly good electrical equipment and worth a fair sum of money.”
“It would be if it were not defective. Everything’s all right, Emmy, believe me. In any case, you can’t get in or out of a Government laboratory without the most rigid overhaul. Detector beams and heaven knows what go to work on you as you enter and leave the building, just so as to be sure you’re not carrying anything you shouldn’t.”
Emily nodded even though she found it hard to believe. But Albert was telling the truth. The stuff he had appropriated was quite valueless to the laboratory, where precision to the nth degree was required, and he had been given permission to take some of the stuff away—supposedly to form the basis of a color television receiver. Only Albert had far higher dreams than this!
He had very little spare time—Emily saw to that—but whenever he could seize a few moments, he tinkered away in the outhouse with his queer gadgets, coils of wire, and linked-up batteries. Where apparatus was defective he rectified it, and quite skilfully too. Accordingly, by degrees, there began to appear something that looked like a cross between a radio set and a tape-recorder.
The youngsters wanted to know what it was all about, and had to be satisfied with a vague explanation about a 3-D color televisor. Emily wanted to know everything too, and learned precisely nothing. Nor could she or the children examine the mystery apparatus in their spare time because Albert bought an old but sturdy safe of considerable dimensions and kept the apparatus locked away in it whenever he was absent from home.
Apparently the “Televisor” was not the limit of his ambition, however, for presently he began to construct another kind of instrument. It looked like a clock and was superbly designed. Even Emily had to admit that. Nobody would ever have guessed that Albert was the veriest amateur. But then, he had the constructional pages of his science magazine to help him.
By the spring his “clock” was complete, and by now it formed the apparent nucleus of another piece of equipment, in the center of which the “clock” was embedded. There were tubes in this external equipment—tubes, wires, small transformers, and a host of other things utterly baffling to anybody except Albert, or maybe a trained scientist.
Albert was sensible enough, however, to realize that you cannot fool all the people all the time. So, of his own free will he suddenly condescended to explain to the family what he was driving at, and he chose a warm evening in spring when Emily, Ethel, Dick, Betty, and Vera were all at home, an event of unusual rarity.
“Things,” Albert said, with an air of tremendous assurance, “are very shortly going to happen! Because you’ll be involved in these things as much as anybody else, you might as well have advance warning. I’ve been working on a master-plan, and it’s about complete.”
“Taken