THE VORTEX BLASTER MAKES WAR A Novelette by E. E. SMITH, PH. D. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astonishing Stories, October 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] CHAPTER ONE Storm Cloud--the Vortex Blaster! Doctor Neal Cloud had once been a normal human being, gregarious and neighborly. He had been concerned as little with death as is the normal human being. Death was an abstraction. It was inevitable, of course, but it could not actually touch him or affect him personally, except at some unspecified, unconsidered and remote future time. For twenty uneventful years he worked in the Atomic Research Laboratory of the Galactic Patrol, seeking a way to extinguish the "loose" atomic vortices resulting from the breaking out of control of atomic power plants. At home he had had wife Jo and their three kids--and what Jo had meant to him can be described adequately only in mathematical, not emotional terms. They had formed practically a closed system. Hence, when a loose atomic vortex crashed to earth through his home, destroying in an instant everything that had made life worthwhile--Doctor Cloud had changed. He had had something to live for; he had loved life. Then--suddenly--he had not, and he did not. Cloud had always been a mathematical prodigy. Given the various activity values of a vortex at any instant, he knew exactly the "sigma" (summation) curve. Or, given the curve itself, he knew every individual reading of which it was composed--all without knowing how he did it. Nevertheless, he had never tried to blow out a vortex with duodec. He wanted to live, and it was a mathematical certainty that that very love of life would so impede his perceptions that he would die in the attempt. Then came disaster. While still numb with the shock of it, he decided to blow out the oldest and worst vortex on Earth; partly in revenge, partly in the cold hope that he would fail and die, as so many hundreds of good men had already died. But it was the vortex that died, not Cloud. It was a near thing, but when he was released from the hospital he found himself the most famous man alive. He was "Storm" Cloud, the Vortex Blaster--Civilization's only vortex blaster! He had now extinguished hundreds of the things. The operation, once so thrilling to others, had become a drab routine to him. But he had not recovered and never would recover a normal outlook upon life. Something within him had died with his Jo, a vital something had been torn from the innermost depths of his being. That terrible psychic wound was no longer stamped boldly upon him for all to see--it no longer made it impossible for him to work with other men or for other men to work with him--but it was there.