Twistor (8 page)

David was looking directly at the large stainless-steel sphere when it disappeared, accompanied by a loud hollow
pop!
Immediately wires and small metal parts cascaded to the floor and the auto-fill circuits of the helium and nitrogen supplies cut in, the severed feed lines spouting clear streams of the cryogenic liquids and gouts of steam as water vapor condensed from the chilled air. Cut water lines added to the mess. A glass vacuum gauge, now unsupported but still attached to its black cable, swung diagonally, colliding with the floor in a crash of shattering glass punctuated by blue-green flashes from its shorted electrodes. Its power supply gave a loud click as it responded to the overload condition.

'Jesus H. Christ!' said David Harrison, staring at the empty space where, just one second earlier, the culmination of ten months of hard work and a net expenditure of $47,362 from Allan Saxon's National Science Foundation grant had rested.

PART
2

Properly, there is no other knowledge than that which is got by working; the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge, a thing to be argued in schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic vortices, 'til we try and fix it.

Thomas Carlyle

(1795–1881)

5

Thursday Morning, October 7

A bleary-eyed David Harrison looked out at the upward-sloping sea of student faces, then put the last transparency of his lecture on the overhead projector and hammered on the final concept concerning capacitance and energy storage. Some of the students were watching attentively, some flipping notebook pages, some yawning or reading newspapers at the back of the two-hundred-seat lecture hall. He had been teaching Allan's Physics 122 class all week, and he noticed that he was developing something of a fan club. The three attractive young ladies in the second row were sending him messages of dewy interest and anticipation. Good, that means they're awake, he thought.

He glanced at the large wall clock at the rear of the sloping theaterlike classroom. The time was 9:09 A.M., still eleven more minutes before the bell. Time for the demo, he thought, and walked behind the slablike lecture demonstration table. He pulled the heavy glass Leyden jar capacitor onto the aluminum sheet next to the department's antique Wimshurst machine.

The Wimshurst machine was a large electrostatic charging device straight out of the nineteenth century, a thing of tinfoil and turning glass plates and tinsel brushes and balls and cranks and round leather sewing-machine belts. As he turned the crank, the twin glass plates rotated in opposite directions, and between the silvery ball electrodes the apparatus produced a fat blue spark. The spark was accompanied by a curiously satisfying
Fwap!,
and a sharp ozone smell. A dozen bored faces turned to see
what
was going on. The 'fans' clapped with delight and smiled.

'Now,' said David, 'we're going to have a little demonstration that may teach us something about capacitance and energy storage. This big object is called a Leyden jar capacitor, and it's just like the one described in your book. It has cup-shaped metal conductors on the inside and outside, kept apart by the jar-shaped glass insulator. The insulator is quite thick, and it can hold many thousands of volts without electrical breakdown. Now I'm going to put a big electrical charge on it . . . ' He paused, leering at the class and beetling his eyebrows. ' . . . with this Wimshurst machine, which I have borrowed from Dr Frankenstein's laboratory deep in the Physics Hall basement,' he added, using his best Karloff imitation. That got a laugh.

'We're going to try and learn something about stored energy,' he continued, resuming his normal voice. He stopped cranking and picked up a long insulated rod supporting a C-shaped conductor that ended in two shiny balls. He held the C across the terminals of the Leyden jar.
Fwap!!
went the spark as he shorted the capacitor. 'See,' he said,
'
I can store lots of energy in this capacitor because it holds a large voltage and has a big plate area. Now watch this one.' He turned the crank again and heard a satisfying sizzling noise as the Wimshurst machine again charged the device. 'This time, inspired by the work of Dr Frankenstein, we are going to dissect our patient,' said David, mugging a demented grin. The fans giggled.

As he turned to get the other insulated rod, he spotted Vickie standing just outside the exit door of the lecture hall, watching. Uh-oh, he thought to himself. For the first time in recent memory, he was not pleased to see her. Using the pair of insulated rods, he disconnected the large juglike capacitor from the machine, pushed it down the table to a second grounded plate,
and
grasped its metallic outer sheath by a projecting handle. This is a special kind of Leyden jar capacitor. It comes apart,' he said as he grasped an insulated handle on the inner conductor and pulled. The inner electrode, a blunt cylindrical piece of metal that fitted snugly into the interior of the jarlike glass insulator, pulled out easily.

Then he grasped the top edge of the glass, pulled it away from the outer conductor, and set the glass vessel on the table. There was a slight sizzling noise and a heightened smell of ozone. Then he picked up the inner conductor by its handle and touched it to the outer conductor. The class, now well conditioned, was expecting another big spark. The tiny
pop
that occurred instead was an anticlimax. There were a few nervous laughs.

'OK,' said David, 'we've disarmed the beast by touching the inner conductor to the outer conductor. It's dead. Now let's put it back together.' He picked up the glass insulator in both hands and slid it into the cup-shaped outer electrode. Then he picked up the inner electrode from the grounded sheet by its insulated handle and slipped it into the glass cavity.

'Now,' said David, 'how many of you think the electric charge is gone and the capacitor is discharged?' Most of the class raised their hands. 'Does anyone think it's still charged?' No response. 'Well then, since it's all discharged, would anyone like to volunteer to touch the inner and outer conductors at the same time?' He mugged the demented grin again and beckoned. The fans giggled, the class shifted nervously, and there were a few nudges and uneasy laughs. No one volunteered.

'I congratulate you on not having the courage of your convictions,' said David. He touched the C-ring across the electrodes, and there was a startling
Fwap!
as a large blue spark jumped across the connection. The class buzzed with excitement. 'D'you see that?' asked David.
'
It was still loaded with electrical energy! Now the question is . . . '

The serious students, sensing a possible item for the next test, opened their notebooks and began to write.

'
. . . where was all of that electrical energy hiding when I touched the metal parts together? Now I'm not going to tell you the answer. I want you to think about this and talk about it among yourselves until Monday . . . Professor Saxon will be back, and he'll explain it to you then.' The fan club looked disappointed.

'And don't forget that you have a problem set due on Monday also. Any questions? No? OK! Class dismissed!' As if triggered by his last words, the class-break bell sounded.

As David turned away from the lecture table, perhaps a dozen students from the first few rows charged up to the front table to get a closer look at the demonstration and to ask questions. These were the curious and interested ones, the ones who made it worth teaching the class. A student, one of the fans, asked if he would be teaching other classes next quarter, or if he would be teaching this one again soon. He said no, and she looked disappointed.

He excused himself as soon as he could manage it. He felt good. Despite his spotty preparation, the lecture had gone quite well, and the demonstration had knocked their socks off. Then he saw Vickie waiting at the exit door and looking rather irritated, and his mood fell.

He collected his transparencies and notebook at the overhead projector, then threaded his way to the exit door halfway up the rows of seats. Vickie was standing there, green eyes blazing.

'David, what happened last night?' she said, her voice unusually shrill.

'Uh, let's wait 'til we get to the lab to talk,' said David, leading her down the hallway.

'
I read the logbook and played back the data files. None of it makes any sense at all. What happened, David? Where's the cryostat? Where are the coils and the sensors?' Victoria's voice rose.
'
Where's my thesis experiment, dammit!'

David closed the door of the lab, put his lecture notes on a corner of the workbench, and slumped onto a wooden chair. Vickie still looked upset, but the walk from the lecture room to the laboratory had calmed her somewhat. She was still standing, however. 'David,' she said, tapping a foot on the concrete floor,
'
what the hell is going on?'

'I wish I knew, Vickie.' He inhaled deeply and paused to organize his thoughts. 'Sit down, and I'll tell what happened. Maybe you can tell me what's going on.'

She sat in the other chair and glared at him.

David carefully described what he had done after she had left the previous night. 'While I was looking straight at it,' he said finally, 'the whole bloody chamber just disappeared! There was a sort of
pop
sound, and then there was nothing there.'

She blinked but said nothing.

'I guess I was in shock for a while after that. I remember shutting off the water, the power, and the cryogenic fillers, and then I spent a long time just writing down everything I could think of in the logbook, trying to arrive at some rational explanation. But I was just going over the same ground again and again, and it was getting late. Finally I decided that the best thing to do was to go home, so I went. I made myself a stiff drink and went to bed. It's strange,' he added lamely, 'I slept like a baby. When I woke up this morning I barely had time to scribble out a few transparencies and get to the lecture.' He paused, waiting for Vickie to say something, but she sat silently staring at him. David felt a compulsion to continue talking, to fill the silence with words.

'
Vickie, the goddamned thing just disappeared! I know that sounds crazy, but that's what happened. The chamber we spent the last six months designing and building is gone, and I don't know where it went or how to get it back.'

He felt rather desperate for a moment. Why didn't she say something? But then something triggered an old memory, and he felt himself growing more calm and thoughtful. 'You know,' he began, 'once when I was a kid we found a huge light bulb in a garbage bin near the football stadium. I guess it was for the stadium lights. Anyhow, I threw a rock and hit it, and it broke with a loud funny
pop
and smashed all to pieces. The
pop
was an implosion, the air rushing in to fill the vacuum that had been in the bulb. Last night when the chamber disappeared, the
pop
sound it made was exactly like that. I think the damned chamber imploded!'

'God, David, that's weird!' said Victoria, frowning. Then she added, 'How could a hunk of stainless steel implode without leaving a trace?' Without waiting for an answer, she blurted 'Have you
told
anyone yet?'

'What am I supposed to tell them? That our chamber imploded and disappeared? I might as well say a billy goat broke into the lab and ate our equipment.' He walked over to the concrete slab still holding the four upthrust chamber supports, their brackets truncated. He kicked at a scrap of metal lying on the floor. Then he stopped, bent down, and picked it up. It was a stainless-steel flange that had been welded to the chamber. He examined its inner surface, then touched its edge very carefully with his finger.

'David, what about Allan? You've got to call and tell him what happened. And wow, he's going to be mad! I can hear him now. It's his NSF grant, and his laboratory, and his equipment, and his professional reputation. David, he's going to take this as a personal insult. It would be best to tell him by phone. That would give him a chance to cool off a bit while we're out of shotgun range.'

'
Yes, that should be done soon,' David agreed, but his thoughts were elsewhere. 'Hmmm, this is interesting. Come here and look at this, Vickie!' He held out the piece of metal. He had noticed that the surface where it had been attached to the chamber was strangely shiny, like a polished mirror. She took it in her hand and examined it. She touched the edge carefully. 'It's so smooth and the edges are so sharp! It would be hard to get a finish this smooth even with the precision surface grinder in the main shop.' She bent down and examined some of the other pieces of metal, ceramic, glass, and plastic that littered the floor. They're all the same way, David. How could that be?'

David picked up one of the larger metal pieces, the stub of a brace, and examined his reflection in its shiny inner surface. He walked to the window where the late morning sunlight was slanting through the glass. Holding the shiny surface so that it reflected the sunlight, he brought the sun's image to a brilliant spot on the palm of his other hand.
'
It focuses!' he said, quickly removing his hand from the hot spot. He walked across the room to the workbench, picked up a meter stick, and returned to the window. With the mirrorlike surface he cast a bright image of the sun on the wall under the windowsill and used the stick to measure the distance from the reflecting surface to the wall.

'What are you up to, David?' asked Victoria, walking to the window to stand beside him.

'If you look carefully,' he answered, 'you can see that all of these shiny surfaces are slightly concave, like fragments of a shaving mirror. I was using the sun's image to measure the focal length of this big one. It's just about forty-six centimeters. That means, if I remember my freshman physics right, that the radius of curvature of the reflecting surface is twice that, or ninety-two centimeters.' He walked quickly to the control console and moved the mouse through a rapid series of operations.
'
Yes, I thought I remembered that number from last night. Vickie, the curvature of these surfaces matches the size of the field I set up just before the chamber disappeared. My field solution was for a sphere with a radius of ninety-two centimeters!' He sat at the console, his chin in his hands, and was quiet for a long time, not moving, his thoughts far away.