Free Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea by Theodore Sturgeon

long ago.”
    “Here’s one Congressional junket he’ll never forget.”
    “Don’t be too hard on him, Sue,” Cathy said warmly. “I was ready to agree with the rest of the world, that Parker is typecast for the headline-hungry, penny-pinching politician, but I’ll give him credit. He hasn’t panicked; he has a good head—you don’t fumble around federal budgets for as many years as he has without learning something about math—and he puts it absolutely at the Admiral’s disposal. At the same time, he operates on a ‘If you can’t help, don’t hinder.’ basis; when he can’t help, he has sense enough to stay out of the way.”
    “Good to hear,” nodded the psychiatrist. “And—where do we stand on that—that thing up there?”
    “The only thing I can tell you—and I’m not pulling security!—is that for some reason which nobody but possibly Nelson understands, the band lies over the earth’s magnetic equator, not its geographic one.”
    “Well, I—I hope that helps.”
    “Don’t worry, Sue. We’re in good hands.”
    Dr. Hiller smiled. “Oh, my dear, I know we are. And with all due and deserved credit to your admired Admiral, I think I could say that even if he didn’t exist.”
    “I couldn’t,” said Cathy immediately.
    “I can,” said Dr. Hiller seriously, all teasing gone from her voice. She glanced around her, a meaningful gesture; it said things about the crew, about tight mouths, pale sweaty brows, cautious fearful looks at the TV repeaters, which instead of feeding entertainment and enlightenment, stared out at everyone like the cataracted eye of a corpse. “There’s a lot to be afraid of,” she said quietly, “but I am not afraid. I have a sort of . . . secret weapon. I wish I could share it.”
    “What is it?” asked Cathy, prepared for some subtle psychological revelation.
    “Do you remember the names of the men Bergen read over the radio that first time—the scientists who are meeting at the UN?”
    “I remember enough to be a little awestruck still. Pittar, Dobrovny, even Meshikov. Charbier.”
    “I know Charbier,” said Susan Hiller. “He was at the big symposium in Athens two years ago. It was a symposium on psychiatry and he’s most famous as a chemist, but the paper he read there was the main thing that happened there. Chemotherapeutics—that is, drugs for treatment of psychic disorders—went ahead twenty years just from that one paper. Then I met him—he’s the most charming, uncomplicated, modest human being you could imagine. But he’s not my secret weapon. Zucco is.”
    “Zucco? I—well, of course I’ve heard of him, but I don’t know as much about him as perhaps I should.”
    “Emilio Zucco,” said Dr. Hiller, and her eyes glowed. “He’s not by any means an old man, you know, but already he can take his place in the company of the world’s universal geniuses. Like Franklin—scientist, statesman, diplomat, author. Like Leonardo da Vinci, who, while being artist enough to paint the Last Supper, was a technologist five hundred years ahead of his time. You know of Zucco probably as a theoretical mathematician in Einstein’s league—”
    “Oh yes, and a practical scientist too—didn’t he design the big radio telescope at Altamont in the Andes?”
    “Yes he did. He’s an astronomer, cosmologist, physicist. But I’ll bet you didn’t know he is a superb artist, a composer as well; he plays piano quite well enough to have been a concert performer.”
    “I didn’t know that. What I have heard mostly about him is that anyone who gets between Zucco and what he wants, gets a Zucco-sized hole through him.”
    Dr. Hiller laughed. “That’s very well put. And pretty close to the truth. But it kind of stands to reason, doesn’t it? He’s so often right—one could say, always —that it’s a little foolish to stand in his way. Dr. Zucco is my idea of the ultimate proof of the old saying that when history needs a giant, mankind produces