Vulcan's Hammer

"Why do I have to attend to it?" Jason Dill said with irritation. "Can't you handle it? If you're overworked, hire a couple more clerks up here, from the pool. There's al­ways plenty of clerks; you know that as well as I. We must have two million of them on the payrolls. And yet you still have to bother me." His wrath and anxiety swept up involuntarily, directed at his subordinate; he knew that he was taking it out on Larson, but he felt too depressed to worry about it.

Larson, with no change of expression, said in a firm voice, "This particular form was sent in by a Director. That's why I feel-"

"Give it to me, then," Jason Dill said, accepting it.

The form was from the North American Director, Wil­liam Barris. Jason Dill had met the man any number of times; in his mind he retained an impression of a some­what tall individual, with a high forehead ... in his middle thirties, as Dill recalled. A hard worker. The man had not gotten up to the level of Director in the usual ma

"This is interesting," Jason Dill said aloud to Larson; he put the form aside for a moment. "We ought to be sure we're publicizing this particular Director. Of course, he probably does a full public-relations job in his own dis­trict; we shouldn't worry."

Larson said, "I understand he made it up the hard way. His parents weren't anybody."

"We can show," Jason Dill said, "that the ordinary indi­vidual, with no pull, knowing no one in the organization, can come in and take a regular low-grade job, such as clerk or even maintenance man, and in time, if he's got the ability and drive, he can rise ail the way up to the top. In fact, he might get to be Managing Director." Not, he thought to himself wryly, that it was such a wonderful job to have.

"He won't be Managing Director for a while," Larson said, in a tone of certitude.

"Hell," Jason Dill said wearily. "He can have my job right now, if that's what he's after. I presume he is." Lift­ing the form he glanced at it. The form asked two ques­tions.

a) are the healers of real significance?

b) why don't you respond to their existence?

Holding the form in his hands, Jason Dill thought, One of the eternal bright young men, climbing rapidly up the Unity ladder. Barris, Taubma

"Dog eat dog," he said aloud.

"Sir?" Larson said at once.

Jason Dill put down the form. He opened a drawer of his desk and got out a flat metal tin; from it he took a cap­sule which he placed against his wrist. At once the capsule dissolved through the dermal layers; he felt it go into his body, passing into his blood stream to begin work without delay. A tranquilizer... one of the newest ones in the long, long series.

It works on me, he thought, and they work on me; it in one direction, their constant pressure and harassment in the other.

Again Jason Dill picked up the form from Director Barris. "Are there many DQ's like this?"

"No, sir, but there is a general increase in tension. Sev­eral Directors besides Barris are wondering why Vulcan 3 gives no pronouncement on the Healers' Movement."

"They're all wondering," Jason Dill said brusquely.

"I mean," Larson said, "formally. Through official cha

"Let me see the rest of the material."

Larson passed him the remaining DQ forms. "And here's the related matter from the data troughs." He passed over a huge sealed container. "We've weeded all the incoming material carefully."

After a time Jason Dill said, "I'd like the file on Barris."

"The documented file?"

Jason Dill said, "And the other one. The unsub-pak." Into his mind came the full term, not usually said outright. Unsubstantiated. "The worthless packet," he said. The phony charges, the trumped-up smears and lies and vicious poison-pen letters, mailed to Unity without signature. Un­signed, sometimes in the garbled prose of the psychotic, the lunatic with a grudge. And yet those papers were kept, were filed away. We shouldn't keep them, Jason Dill thought. Or make use of them, even to the extent of ex­amining them. But we do. Right now he was going to look at such filth as it pertained to William Barris. The accumu­lation of years.

Presently the two files were placed before him on his desk. He inserted the microfilm into the sca

And now, Jason Dill thought, the slander. The missing parts; the other side, the dark shadow side.

To his disappointment, he found the unsub-pak on Wil­liam Barris almost empty.

Is the man that i

"Nothing here," he said when Larson returned.

"I noticed how light the file felt," Larson said. "Sir, I went down to the data rooms and had them process all the recent material; I thought possibly there might be some­thing not yet in the file." He added, "As you probably know, they're several weeks behind."

Seeing the paper in the mans' hand, Jason Dill felt his pulse speed up in anticipation. "What came in?"

"This." Larson put down a sheet of what appeared to be expensive watermarked stationery. "I also took the measure, when I saw this, of having it analyzed and traced. So you'd know how to assess its worth."

"Unsigned," Dill said.

"Yes, sir. Our analysts say that it was mailed last night, somewhere in Africa. Probably in Cairo."

Studying the letter, Jason Dill murmured, Here's some­one who Barris didn't manage to get to. At least not in time."

Larson said, "It's a woman's writing. Done with an an­cient style of ball-point pen. They're trying to trace the make of pen. What you have there is actually a copy of the letter; they're still examining the actual document down in the labs. But for your purposes-"

"What are my purposes?" Dill said, half to himself. The letter was interesting, but not unique; he had seen such ac­cusations made toward other officials in the Unity organi­zation.

To whom it may concern:

This is to notify you that William Barris, who is a Director, ca