Kenneth Bulmer by The Wizard of Starship Poseiden

Chancellor concerning Haffner. Willi Haffner was a famous scientist who
was carrying out some original research on virus culture and Lewistead was
fortunate, said Harcourt, in being able to offer him laboratory facilities.
Especially, he added with emphasis, now that Haffner had overcome his—weakness.
    That had been Howland's doing. Haffner was
down to half a bottle a day and going strong. Having work to do that challenged
him had provided the main spur. When this job had been done, Randolph had
promised him, he could include all the experiments on brains, human and animal,
he wished to undertake when the money had been split up. The notion of furthering
another scientist's work had— surprising Howland—appealed to Randolph.
    "This
is a good thing," he said emphatically. "We men of science, to use a
convenient yellow-tape phrase, must stake our claim to the riches of the galaxy.
After all, if it was not for science there would be no richness in the galaxy.
It would lie locked up in primal atoms, secreted away in the depths of the sky.
Man would still be grubbing in the dirt for his daily bread."
    So
it was that Haffner worked more joyously than he had for years isolating,
producing and orienting the required audio virus. He and Howland had to produce
the finished product in sufficient quantity to satisfy Randolph. That took
time. They went at the job, night and day, keeping all hours in the laboratory.
Time, Randolph told them with a flick of the eyes to the wall calendar, was
running out.
    Other
groups working under Mallow, reporting to heads of sub-committees set up at
that first meeting, carried out their part in the complex preparations. Over
all, the dommating influence of Professor Randolph could be felt as a physical
presence, urging, encouraging, domineering, castigating. The day approached.
    Through this period Howland, from overwork
and lack of sleep, grew pale and taut and nervy. He felt most of all the lack
of any trusted confidante. Willi Haffner was a help; but Howland held back from
full confidence in the reformed soak. The bitter realization that he was
engaged in a technically criminal activity soured him, turned him
short-tempered and unapproachable as much through the fear of failure as
anything else. It was right— right— he told himself a dozen times a day that the frittered-away money of the
galaxy should be directed to cleaner, saner ends.v
    Those long and dreary days before Christmas
when he'd been a boy grimly saving his pocket money and working at odd jobs
around the village after school returned to his memory now, here in this period
of hard work and anxious waiting. His parents were both long dead and he'd left
the village school to fight his way up the educational labyrinth to his present
position. Every step of the way he'd had to fight. He wore now a meek and
humble look before the galaxy; but he was made of stem stuff—his upbringing had
seen to that. There were plenty of keen and bright up-and-coming young
scientists in all the branches, ready to take what he could not hold.
    Accepting
the position with Randolph to work with that famous man in his inquiries into
the origin of life and—the greatest temptation of all—the opportunity to create
life, had been for Howland a tremendous chance. The positions he had turned
down had been dismissed without regret— until the devastating news that the
Maxwell Fund was not theirs.
    Well,
after they had—had stolen—this money, they would finish up their work on
Pochalin Nine and then he could return to the normal galaxy with a reputation
and pick and choose his own next steps in a career that meant eveiything to
him.
    The weather continued in a filthy mood all
that week and the next. Snow fell monotonously and people went about with long
faces, anxious to remember to take their anti-cold pills regularly. Overhead
the sky, when it was visible through snow flakes, looked like a ghoul's
soup-pot cover, clapped grey and greasy down over the