Page 72 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Ark Two

corrupt practices. If we could not figure out our limits they would
not merely impede our advance but wipe us off the cosmic ledger.
As the exchange of views between Vosky and his critics tailed off
they also became increasingly vituperative. I found it laughable—a
pox on both their houses, I thought, when I came to the end of the
dispute—but I was being paid to take it all very seriously. That
exercise in generating notoriety had cost him nothing—just about
within his budget. His next project, however, had a price that no
ragtag bunch of stargazers could dream of affording—assuming he
had had supporters willing to invest in saving mankind from man. It
would take Al Magnus to fund a prototype, its further development
dependent upon its success and Vosky’s promotional abilities.
I abominated the season in which I had to contact him: mid-
winter, and not a particularly mild one. Beaten-up old attaché case on
the seat beside me, I drove up to Mount Coolidge Observatory along
a narrow winding road into increasingly cold and threatening
weather. Tire chains were in the trunk and snow boots on my feet. I
was determined to make a virtue of necessity, demonstrating my
sincerity by making this quasi-pilgrimage to his lair when the mercury
was dropping rapidly. My arrival was expected, thanks to a
sycophantic phone call a couple of days earlier. As the only person on
duty in the wee small hours he had the run of the place, and visitors
were not unknown. Given the square-footage of his one-room
apartment, it seemed appropriate to make my offer in that stark
environment where the infinite met its contemplators in their
simplest guise, mere observers powerless save for their ingenuity. My
gift came from the city below, but may as well have been manna
from heaven. If the pitiless universe’s accidental lightshow provided
endless inspiration to men like Vosky, then he would be most likely
in that setting to accept a boon appearing to come from people
likewise stimulated, and not look further into the mouth of a gift-
horse with highly questionable dentition.
Or so I read the man and his milieu. Now it was time to apply my
methods. I stopped at a chain link fence blocking the rest of the road
to the observatory with a remotely-operated gate. An intercom on a
post connected visitors to phones inside the place; Vosky answered
my signal and buzzed open the gate. I drove up to the reinforced
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