The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gone Fishing, by James H. Schmitz

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Title: Gone Fishing

Author: James H. Schmitz

Illustrator: Krenkel

Release Date: September 30, 2009 [EBook #30140]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.

GONE FISHING

By JAMES H. SCHMITZ

_There is no predictable correlation between intelligence and
ethics, nor is ruthlessness necessarily an evil thing. And
there is nothing like enforced, uninterrupted contemplation
to learn to distinguish one from another...._

Illustrated by Krenkel

* * * * *

Barney Chard, thirty-seven--financier, entrepreneur, occasional
blackmailer, occasional con man, and very competent in all these
activities--stood on a rickety wooden lake dock, squinting against the
late afternoon sun, and waiting for his current business prospect to
give up the pretense of being interested in trying to catch fish.

The prospect, who stood a few yards farther up the dock, rod in one
hand, was named Dr. Oliver B. McAllen. He was a retired physicist,
though less retired than was generally assumed. A dozen years ago he
had rated as one of the country's top men in his line. And, while
dressed like an aging tramp in what he had referred to as fishing
togs, he was at the moment potentially the country's wealthiest
citizen. There was a clandestine invention he'd fathered which he
called the McAllen Tube. The Tube was the reason Barney Chard had come
to see McAllen.

Gently raising and lowering the fishing rod, and blinking out over the
quiet water, Dr. McAllen looked preoccupied with disturbing
speculations not connected with his sport. The man had a secrecy bug.