Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (125 page)

“The force is attraction toward all matter, generated by the vibrations of all the constituent electrons in parallel planes. It is directed along a line perpendicular to the plane of vibration at its center, and approaches infinity as the angle theta approaches the limit of Pi divided by two. Therefore, by shifting the axis of rotation or the plane of vibration thus making theta vary between the limits of zero and Pi divided by two.…”

He was interrupted by Dorothy, who, mortified by her thoughtlessness in getting him started, had sprung up and seized him by the arm.

“Sit down, Dicky!” she implored. “Sit down, you’re rocking the boat! Save your mathematics for Martin. Don’t you know that I could never find out why ‘x’ was equal to ‘y’ or to anything else in algebra?”

She led him back to his chair, where he drew her down to a seat on the arm beside him.

“Whom do you love?” she whispered gayly in his ear.

After a time she freed herself.

“I haven’t practised today. Don’t you want me to play for you a little?”

“Fine business, Dottie. When you play a violin, it talks.”

She took down her violin and played; first his favorites, crashing selections from operas and solos by the great masters, abounding in harmonies on two strings. Then she changed to reveries and soft, plaintive melodies. Seaton listened with profound enjoyment. Under the spell of the music he relaxed, pushed out the footrest of the chair, and lay back at ease, smoking dreamily. The cigar finished and his hands at rest, his eyes closed of themselves. The music, now a crooning lullaby, grew softer and slower, until his deep and regular breathing showed that he was sound asleep. She stopped playing and sat watching him intently, her violin in readiness to play again, if he should show the least sign of waking, but there was no such sign. Freed from the tyranny of the mighty brain which had been driving it so unmercifully, his body was making up for many hours of lost sleep.

Assured that he was really asleep, Dorothy tip-toed to her father’s study and quietly went in.

“Daddy, Dick is asleep out there in the chair. What shall we do with him?”

“Good work, Dottie Dimple. I heard you playing him to sleep—you almost put me to sleep as well. I’ll get a blanket and we’ll put him to bed right where he is.”

“Dear old Dad,” she said softly, sitting on the arm of his chair and rubbing her cheek against his. “You always did understand, didn’t you?”

“I try to, Kitten,” he answered, pulling her ear. “Seaton is too good a man to see go to pieces when it can be prevented. That is why I signalled you to keep the talk off the company and his work. One of the best lawyers I ever knew, a real genius, went to pieces that same way. He was on a big, almost an impossible, case. He couldn’t think of anything else, didn’t eat or sleep much for months. He won the case, but it broke him. But he wasn’t in love with a big, red-headed beauty of a girl, and so didn’t have her to fiddle him to sleep.

“Well, I’ll go get the blanket,” he concluded, with a sudden change in his tone.

In a few moments he returned and they went into the living-room together. Seaton lay in exactly the same position, only the regular lifting of his powerful chest showing that he was alive.

“I think we had better.…”

“Sh…sh,” interrupted the girl in an intense whisper. “You’ll wake him up, Daddy.”

“Bosh! You couldn’t wake him up with a club. His own name might rouse him, particularly if you said it; no other ordinary sound would. I started to say that I think we had better put him to bed on the davenport. He would be more comfortable.”

“But that would surely wake him. And he’s so big.…”

“Oh, no, it wouldn’t, unless I drop him on the floor. And he doesn’t weigh much over two hundred, does he?”

“About ten or eleven pounds.”

“Even though I am a lawyer, and old and decrepit, I can still handle that much.”

With Dorothy anxiously watching the proceeding and trying to help, Vaneman picked Seaton up out of the chair, with some effort, and carried him across the room. The sleeping man muttered as if in protest at being disturbed, but made no other sign of consciousness. The lawyer then calmly removed Seaton’s shoes and collar, while the girl arranged pillows under his head and tucked the blanket around him. Vaneman bent a quizzical glance upon his daughter, under which a flaming blush spread from her throat to her hair.

“Well,” she said, defiantly, “I’m going to, anyway.”

“My dear, of course you are. If you didn’t, I would disown you.”

As her father turned away, Dorothy knelt beside her lover and pressed her lips tightly to his.

“Good night, sweetheart,” she murmured.

“‘Night,” he muttered in his sleep, as his lips responded faintly to her caress.

Vaneman waited for his daughter, and when she appeared, the blush again suffusing her face, he put his arm around her.

“Dorothy,” he said at the door of her room, using her full name, a very unusual thing for him, “the father of such a girl as you are hates to lose her, but I advise you to stick to that boy. Believe in him and trust him, no matter what happens. He is a real man.”

“I know it, Dad…thank you. I had a touch of the blues today, but I never will again. I think more of his little finger than I do of all the other men I ever knew, put together. But how do you know him so well? I know him, of course, but that’s different.”

“I have various ways of getting information. I know Dick Seaton better than you do—better than he knows himself. I have known all about every man who ever looked at you twice. I have been afraid once or twice that I would have to take a hand, but you saw them right, just as you see Seaton right. For some time I have been afraid of the thought of your marrying, the young men in your social set are such a hopeless lot, but I am not any more. When I hand my little girl over to her husband next October I can be really happy with you, instead of anxious for you. That’s how well I know Richard Seaton.… Well, good night, daughter mine.”

“Good night, Daddy dear,” she replied, throwing her arms around his neck. “I have the finest Dad a girl ever had, and the finest…boy. Good night.”

* * * *

It was three o’clock the following afternoon when Seaton appeared in the laboratory. His long rest had removed all the signs of overwork and he was his alert, vigorous self, but when Crane saw him and called out a cheery greeting he returned it with a sheepish smile.

“Don’t say anything, Martin—I’m thinking it all, and then some. I made a regular fool of myself last night. Went to sleep in a chair and slept seventeen hours without a break. I never felt so cheap in my life.”

“You were worn out, Dick, and you know it. That sleep put you on your feet again, and I hope you will have sense enough to take care of yourself after this. I warn you now, Dick, that if you start any more of that midnight work I will simply call Dorothy over here and have her take charge of you.”

“That’s it, Mart, rub it in. Don’t you see that I am flat on my back, with all four paws in the air? But I’m going to sleep every night. I promised Dottie to go to bed not later than twelve, if I have to quit right in the middle of an idea, and I told her that I was coming out to see her every other evening and every Sunday. But here’s the dope. I’ve got that missing factor in my theory—got it while I was eating breakfast this afternoon.”

“If you had eaten and slept regularly here and kept yourself fit you would have seen it before.”

“Yes, I guess that’s right, too. If I miss a meal or a sleep from now on I want you to sand-bag me. But never mind that. Here’s the explanation. We doped out before, you know, that the force is something like magnetism, and is generated when the coil causes the electrons of this specially-treated copper to vibrate in parallel planes. The knotty point was what could be the effect of a weak electric current in liberating the power. I’ve got it! It shifts the plane of vibration of the electrons!”

“It is impossible to shift that plane, Dick. It is fixed by physical state, just as speed is fixed by temperature.”

“No, it isn’t. That is, it usually is, but in this case it may be shifted. Here’s the mathematical proof.”

So saying, Seaton went over to the drafting table, tacked down a huge sheet of paper, and sketched rapidly, explaining as he drew. Soon the two men were engaged in a profound mathematical argument. Sheet after sheet of paper was filled with equations and calculations, and the table was covered with reference books. After two hours of intense study and hot discussion Crane’s face took on a look of dawning comprehension, which changed to amazement and then to joy. For the first time in Seaton’s long acquaintance with him, his habitual calm was broken.

“By George!” he cried, shaking Seaton’s hand in both of his. “I think you have it! But how under the sun did you get the idea? That calculus isn’t in any of the books. Where did you get it? Dick, you’re a wonder!”

“I don’t know how I got the idea, it merely came to me. But that Math is right—it’s
got
to be right, no other conclusion is possible. Now, if that calc. is right, and I know it is, do you see how narrow the permissible limits of shifting are? Look at equation 236. Believe me, I sure was lucky, that day in the Bureau. It’s a wonder I didn’t blow up the whole works. Suppose I hadn’t been working with a storage cell that gave only four amperes at two volts? That’s unusually low, you know, for that kind of work.”

* * * *

Crane carefully studied the equation referred to and figured for a moment.

“In that case the limit would be exactly eight watts. Anything above that means instant decomposition?”

“Yes.”

Crane whistled, a long, low whistle.

“And that bath weighed forty pounds—enough to vaporize the whole planet. Dick, it cannot be possible.”

“It doesn’t seem that way, but it is. It certainly makes me turn cold all over, though, to think of what might have happened. You know now why I wouldn’t touch the solution again until I had this stuff worked out?”

“I certainly do. You should be even more afraid of it now. I don’t mind nitroglycerin or T.N.T., but anything like that is merely a child’s plaything compared to this. Perhaps we had better drop it?”

“Not in seven thousand years. The mere fact that I was so lucky at first proves that Fate intended this thing to be my oyster. However, I’ll not tempt the old lady any farther. I’m going to start with one millionth of a volt, and will use a piece of copper visible only under a microscope. But there’s absolutely no danger, now that we know what it is. I can make it eat out of my hand. Look at this equation here, though. That being true, it looks as though you could get the same explosive effect by taking a piece of copper which had once been partially decomposed and subjecting it to some force, say an extremely heavy current. Again under the influence of the coil, a small current would explode it, wouldn’t it?”

“It looks that way, from those figures.”

“Say, wouldn’t that make some bullet? Unstabilize a piece of copper in that way and put it inside a rifle bullet, arranged to make a short circuit on impact. By making the piece of copper barely visible you could have the explosive effect of only a few sticks of dynamite—a piece the size of a pea would obliterate New York City. But that’s a long way from our flying-machine.”

“Perhaps not so far as you think. When we explore new worlds it might be a good idea to have a liberal supply of such ammunition, of various weights, for emergencies.”

“It might, at that. Here’s another point in equation 249. Suppose the unstabilized copper were treated with a very weak current, not strong enough to explode it? A sort of borderline condition? The energy would be liberated, apparently, but in an entirely new way. Wonder what would happen? I can’t see from the theory—have to work it out. And here’s another somewhat similar condition, right here, that will need investigating. I’ve sure got a lot of experimental work ahead of me before I’ll know anything. How’re things going with you?”

“I have the drawings and blue-prints of the ship itself done, and working sketches of the commercial power-plant. I am working now on the details, such as navigating instruments, food, water, and air supplies, special motors, and all of the hundred and one little things that must be taken into consideration. Then, as soon as you get the power under control, we will have only to sketch in the details of the power-plant and its supports before we can begin construction.”

“Fine, Mart, that’s great. Well, let’s get busy!”

CHAPTER IV

Steel Liberates Energy—Unexpectedly

DuQuesne was in his laboratory, poring over an abstruse article in a foreign journal of science, when Scott came breezily in with a newspaper in his hand, across the front page of which stretched great headlines.

“Hello, Blackie!” he called. “Come down to earth and listen to this tale of mystery from that world-renowned fount of exactitude and authority, the
Washington Clarion
. Some miscreant has piled up and touched off a few thousand tons of T.N.T. and picric acid up in the hills. Read about it, it’s good.”

DuQuesne read:

MYSTERIOUS EXPLOSION!

MOUNTAIN VILLAGE WIPED OUT OF EXISTENCE!

TWO HUNDRED DEAD, NONE INJURED!

FORCE FELT ALL OVER WORLD. CAUSE UNKNOWN.

SCIENTISTS BAFFLED.

HARPER’S FERRY. March 26.—At 10: 23 A.M. today, the village of Bankerville, about thirty miles north of this place, was totally destroyed by an explosion of such terrific violence that seismographs all over the world recorded the shock, and that windows were shattered even in this city. A thick pall of dust and smoke was observed in the sky and parties set out immediately. They found, instead of the little mountain village, nothing except an immense, crater-like hole in the ground, some two miles in diameter and variously estimated at from two to three thousand feet deep. No survivors have been found, no bodies have been recovered. The entire village, with its two hundred inhabitants, has been wiped out of existence. Not so much as a splinter of wood or a fragment of brick from any of the houses can be found. Scientists are unable to account for the terrific force of the explosion, which far exceeded that of the most violent explosive known.