the place will ever touch the relish, so poison in it will hit only Llewes and no one else...'
It was all a kind of lunchtime make-believe, but not for Farley. Grimly, and in earnest, he decided to murder Llewes.
It became an obsession with him. His blood tingled at the thought of Llewes dead, of himself able to take the credit that was rightfully his for those months of living in a small bubble of oxygen and tramping across frozen ammonia to remove products and set up new reactions in the thin, chill winds of hydrogen and methane.
But it would have to be something which couldn't possibly harm anyone but Llewes. That sharpened the matter and focused things on Llewes' atmosphere room. It was a long, low room, isolated from the rest of the laboratories by cement blocks and fireproof doors. No one but Llewes ever entered, except in Llewes' presence and with his permission. Not that the room was ever actually locked. The effective tyranny Llewes had established made the faded slip of paper on the laboratory door, reading 'Do Not Enter' and signed with his initials, more of a barrier than any lock... except where the desire for murder superseded all else.
Then what about the atmosphere room? Llewes' routine of testing, his almost infinite caution, left nothing to chance. Any tampering with the equipment itself, unless it were unusually subtle, would certainly be detected.
Fire then? The atmosphere room contained inflammable materials and to spare, but Llewes didn't smoke and was perfectly aware of the danger of fires. No one took greater precautions against one.
Farley thought impatiently of the man on whom it seemed so difficult to wreak a just vengeance; the thief playing with his little tanks of methane and hydrogen where Farley had used it by the cubic mile. Llewes for the little tanks and fame; Farley for the cubic miles and oblivion.
All those little tanks of gas; each its own color; each a synthetic atmosphere. Hydrogen gas in red cylinders and methane in striped red and white, a mixture of the two representing the atmosphere of the outer planets. Nitrogen in brown cylinders and carbon dioxide in silver for the atmosphere of Venus. The yellow cylinders of compressed air and the green cylinders of oxygen, where Earthly chemistry was good enough. A parade of the rainbow, each color dating back through centuries of convention.
Then he had the thought. It was not born painfully, but came all at once. In one moment it had all crystallized in Farley's mind and he knew what he had to do.
Farley waited a painful month for September i8th, which was Space Day. It was the anniversary of man's first successful space flight and no one would be working that night. Space Day was, of all holidays, the
one most meaningful to the scientist in particular and even the dedicated Llewes would be making merry then.
Farley entered Central Organic Laboratories-to use its official title-that night, certain he was unobserved. The labs weren't banks or museums. They were not subject to thievery and such night watch men as there were had a generally easy-going attitude toward their jobs.
Farley closed the main door carefully behind him and moved slowly down the darkened corridors toward the atmosphere room. His equipment consisted of a flashlight, a small vial of black powder, and a thin brush he had bought in an art-supply store at the other end of town three weeks before. He wore gloves.
His greatest difficulty came in actually entering the atmosphere room. It's 'forbiddenness' hampered him more than the general forbiddenness of murder. Once in, however, once past the mental hazard, the rest was easy.
He cupped the flashlight and found the cylinder without hesitation. His heart was beating so as almost to deafen him, while his breath came quickly and his hand trembled.
He tucked the flash under his arm, then dipped the tip of the artist's brush into the black dust. Grains of it adhered to the brush and Farley pointed it into the nozzle of the gauge attached to the cylinder. It took eons-long seconds for that trembling tip to enter the nozzle.
Farley moved it about delicately, dipped it into the black dust again, and inserted it once more in the nozzle. He repeated it over and over, almost hypnotized by the intensity of his own concentration. Finally, using a bit of facial tissue dampened with saliva, he began to wipe off the outer rim of the nozzle, enormously relieved that the job was done and