Thin Edge Part 5

"You'll get used to it. That's why I knew Jack hadn't died 'accidentally'--he was murdered."

"You ... you're not carrying a gun," Tarnhorst said.

"Do I need one?"

Tarnhorst swallowed. "Yes. Fergus will be back in a moment."

"Who's Fergus?"

"He's the man who controls PMC 873."

Harry Morgan shoved his hand into his jacket pocket "Then I have a gun. You saw it, didn't you?"

"Yes. Yes ... I saw it when you came in."

"Good. Call him."

When Sam Fergus came in, he looked as though he had had about three or four too many slugs of whiskey. There was an odd fear an his face.

"Whats matter, Edway? I--" The fear increased when he saw Morgan.

"Whadda you here for?"

"I'm here to make a speech Fergus. Sit down." When Fergus still stood, Morgan repeated what he had said with only a trace more emphasis. "Sit down."

Fergus sat. So did Tarnhorst.

"Both of you pay special attention," Morgan said, a piratical gleam in his eyes. "You killed a friend of mine. My best friend. But I'm not going to kill either of you. Yet. Just listen and listen carefully."

Even Tarnhorst looked frightened. "Don't move, Sam. He's got a gun. I saw it when he came in."

"What ... what do you want?" Fergus asked.

"I want to give you the information you want. The information that you killed Jack for." There was cold hatred in his voice. "I am going to tell you something that you have thought you wanted, but which you really will wish you had never heard. I'm going to tell you about that cable."

Neither Fergus nor Tarnhorst said a word.

"You want a cable. You've heard that we use a cable that has a tensile strength of better than a hundred million pounds per square inch, and you want to know how it's made. You tried to get the secret out of Jack because he was sent here as a commercial dealer. And he wouldn't talk, so one of your goons blackjacked him too hard and then you had to drop him off a bridge to make it look like an accident.

"Then you got your hands on me. You were going to wring it out of me.

Well, there is no necessity of that." His grin became wolfish. "I'll give you everything." He paused. "If you want it."

Fergus found his voice. "I want it. I'll pay a million--"

"You'll pay nothing," Morgan said flatly. "You'll listen."

Fergus nodded wordlessly.

"The composition is simple. Basically, it is a two-phase material-like fibergla.s.s. It consists of a strong, hard material imbedded in a matrix of softer material. The difference is that, in this case, the stronger fibers are borazon--boron nitride formed under tremendous pressure--while the softer matrix is composed of tungsten carbide. If the fibers are only a thousandth or two thousandths of an inch in diameter--the thickness of a human hair or less--then the cable from which they are made has tremendous strength and flexibility.

"Do you want the details of the process now?" His teeth were showing in his wolfish grin.

Fergus swallowed. "Yes, of course. But ... but why do you--"

"Why do I give it to you? Because it will kill you. You have seen what the stuff will do. A strand a thousandth of an inch thick, encased in silon for lubrication purposes, got me out of that filthy hole you call a prison. You've heard about that?"

Fergus blinked. "You cut yourself out of there with the cable you're talking about?"

"Not with the cable. With a thin fiber. With one of the hairlike fibers that makes up the cable. Did you ever cut cheese with a wire?

In effect, that wire is a knife--a knife that consists only of an edge.

"Or, another experiment you may have heard of. Take a block of ice.

Connect a couple of ten-pound weights together with a few feet of piano wire and loop it across the ice block to that the weights hang free on either side, with the wire over the top of the block. The wire will cut right through the ice in a short time. The trouble is that the ice block remains whole--because the ice melts under the pressure of the wire and then flows around it and freezes again on the other side. But if you lubricate the wire with ordinary glycerine, it prevents the re-freezing and the ice block will be cut in two."

Tarnhorst nodded. "I remember. In school. They--" He let his voice trail off.

"Yeah. Exactly. It's a common experiment in basic science. Borazon fiber works the same way. Because it is so fine and has such tremendous tensile strength, it is possible to apply a pressure of hundreds of millions of pounds per square inch over a very small area.

Under pressures like that, steel cuts easily. With silon covering to lubricate the cut, there's nothing to it. As you have heard from the guards in your little h.e.l.l-hole.

"h.e.l.l-hole?" Tarnhorst's eyes narrowed and he flicked a quick glance at Fergus. Morgan realized that Tarnhorst had known nothing of the extent of Fergus' machinations.

"That lovely little political prison up in Fort Tryon Park that the World Welfare State, with its usual solicitousness for the common man, keeps for its favorite guests," Morgan said. His wolfish smile returned. "I'd've cut the whole thing down if I'd had had the time.

Not the stone--just the steel. In order to apply that kind of pressure you have to have the filament fastened to something considerably harder than the stuff you're trying to cut, you see. Don't try it with your fingers or you'll lose fingers."

Fergus' eyes widened again and he looked both ill and frightened. "The man we sent ... uh ... who was found in your room. You--" He stopped and seemed to have trouble swallowing.

"Me? _I_ didn't do anything." Morgan did a good imitation of a shark trying to look innocent. "I'll admit that I looped a very fine filament of the stuff across the doorway a few times, so that if anyone tried to enter my room illegally I would be warned." He didn't bother to add that a pressure-sensitive device had released and reeled in the filament after it had done its work. "It doesn't need to be nearly as tough and heavy to cut through soft stuff like ... er ...

say, a beefsteak, as it does to cut through steel. It's as fine as cobweb almost invisible. Won't the World Welfare State have fun when that stuff gets into the hands of its happy, crime-free populace?"

Edway Tarnhorst became suddenly alert. "What?"

"Yes. Think of the fun they'll have, all those lovely slobs who get their basic subsistence and their dignity and their honor as a free gift from the State. The kids, especially. They'll _love_ it. It's so fine it can be hidden inside an ordinary thread--or woven into the hair--or...." He spread his hands. "A million places."

Fergus was gaping. Tarnhorst was concentrating on Morgan's words.

"And there's no possible way to leave fingerprints on anything that fine," Morgan continued. "You just hook it around a couple of nails or screws, across an open doorway or an alleyway--and wait."

"We wouldn't let it get into the people's hands," Tarnhorst said.

"You couldn't stop it," Morgan said flatly. "Manufacture the stuff and eventually one of the workers in the plant will figure out a way to steal some of it."

"Guards--" Fergus said faintly.

"_Pfui._ But even you had a perfect guard system, I think I can guarantee that some of it would get into the hands of the--common people. Unless you want to cut off all imports from the Belt."

Tarnhorst's voice hardened. "You mean you'd deliberately--"

"I mean exactly what I said," Morgan cut in sharply. "Make of it what you want."