Chapter I

"Hold 'er there for a while, Tom. I want to get three more electroscopes and a recording bolometer. The thermopile doesn't record, you know. The recording electroscope will give us a photographic record—but no immediate information as the experiment progresses," called Dr. Randolph Warren. He swung himself to the three-inch thick fused quartz tube, wrapped his hands around its milky column, and slid down the shaft forty feet to the ground below. A whining hum of electric motors and the slap-slap-slap of the silk ribbons mounting to the huge aluminum sphere above, drowned out the call of Tom Blamen, inside the sphere. Tom wanted to know if he might try the thing on low voltage once. Tom didn't get an answer, but he looked at the meters, and saw a needle quivering at the point marked "17" on the master meter.

"17,000,000—and I'll have to discharge somehow before he can place the ladder to climb back. It's a shame to waste all that—" He looked out of his observation window, a conducting window made of two sheets of plate glass separated by a layer of dilute sulphuric acid. Set in the aluminum sphere it maintained the conductivity of the metal across the gap.

Twenty-five feet away a weird mushroom rose from the concrete floor of the concrete laboratory. Set on a tripod of carefully designed insulators, the half-sphere seemed some strange growth. The polished aluminum with its discharge points pitted and scarred by the lashing force of terrific discharges was joined to the sphere by a clear tube of fused quartz. This seemed swollen half-way between, and the three-inch tube opened to the size of a foot-ball. Around this swelling, held in position by strings of insulators depending from the ceiling twenty feet above, were three tremendous magnets. The swelling in the tube contained a smaller globe or sphere and in this was a filament of iron wire. The inner tube was very highly evacuated, one of the dozen tubes Sanderson brought back with him from his voyage to space beyond the earth's atmosphere in fact. In 1952 there had been a dozen tubes, now in 1955, only three years later, but four remained, so those absolutely evacuated tubes were very valuable. Opened, then sealed while in empty space, they were the only EMPTY tubes on earth. It spoke of the importance of this experiment that the University had permitted this tube to be used.

Blamen's gaze shifted back to the mushroom tower, down its insulated base to the powerful electric motor which drove a white ribbon of silk. The ribbon of silk brushed against a bit of CHARGITE, a specially designed compound which gave the silk a charge of electricity. The endless belt whisked the charge up to the sphere above, where points collected it and carried it away to the sphere. Like an endless-chain bucket conveyor the silk ribbon was bringing electric charges up, as a similar ribbon carried equal—but opposite charges to the control sphere where he sat.

Tom Blamen was in a whirl of hesitancy and doubt. He looked nervously about. He could discharge the spheres in a bolt of lightning to the heavy metal conductors thirty-five feet away by simply running out the discharge-arms. But it seemed a waste of energy—

Ran Warren was back—he stood in the door looking up at the man in the window of the sphere.

"Shall I discharge through the tube?" asked Blamen, eagerly.

Warren didn't hear, but as anyone might, nodded in annoyance, "Yes—discharge to towers—send down the ladder, of course."

Blamen accepted it as authority to do what he wanted. He gave a glance at the dials—17.6 million volts now—He stopped the motors, and the bands slowed with a doleful slap-slap-slap. He threw another switch, and the three enormous magnets surged with terrific, hitherto unused, power, a magnetic field of compressive force, three tremendous magnetic fields opposing each other, and pressing down simultaneously on that little inner tube. The fine iron filament-wire trembled. Suddenly it burst into blazing, explosive incandescence as a tremendous current rushed through it—and simultaneously the terrific, stored energy at 17.6 million volts smashed through the iron vapor in the little tube. Seventeen and six tenth millions of volts leaping across a gap of eight inches!

Warren leaped forward in amazed surprise. "Tom, you fool—don't—" He stopped, and froze as a terrible cry came to his ears.

In the tube a light had formed. The discharge was all over—should have been. But in the tube was a virulent thing that glowed some indescribable color, a violet so tremendously deep that it seemed a red-black. A wave of energy struck Warren, that made him throw a protective hand across his eyes, and stagger back from that room of incandescence, back, and out to the corridor beyond. His eyes were in torture, his whole body felt crisp and dry. Still that terrific light was glowing around the corner of the door, beating out at him, and still the feeling of heat and some terrible impact of energy parched his body. There were faint mutterings, shakings and quivers in the building now, the light from within was growing stronger. Suddenly there was a terrific explosion. The light grew bluer, and more brilliant, it seemed to increase rapidly, and the man staggered under a wave of beating, destroying energy, invisible, but terribly tangible.

Then in an instant it was over, and only a heaving and restless movement of the building remained. Warren slumped to the floor as cries of panic echoed from other parts of the Heavy Apparatus Laboratories.

A crowd of men was collected about him, a doctor bending over him and two stretcher bearers nearby, when he regained consciousness. He groaned in agony as he woke. His whole body was stiff and sore. He could feel a terrific coat of sunburn over all its surface except where something as thick as his belt or shoes had protected him.

"Burn—radiation burn of some kind. Take him to the infirmary and coat him with 732-aE. It's serious. How's the other man?"

"Dead—very. Burned raw, and looks as though he might have been electrocuted first. We'd better clear out, the wall is cracked badly."

"Wh—what happened?" asked Warren blankly and inanely.

"If you don't know, nobody can tell you, Warren," replied Jordan of Chemical Processes, who stood beside him now. "You started an earthquake though that darned near knocked the building down. We all left, then discovered you two hadn't, and came back. You were lying here, and Blamen—he's gone, Ran," he concluded gravely.

"Blamen—started the tube—something happened. I called him and told him to discharge to the towers—to the ground—but he discharged through the tube. Is the apparatus all right?" Warren asked anxiously.

"The Sanderson Tube is gone—everything else O. K."

Warren groaned. "Oh Lord, I could replace anything but that!"

The stretcher bearers were carrying him away before he got a chance to say any more, and the pain of the burns came back. He groaned softly. "The Sanderson tube!"

"And so, Putt-putt, I've come to you as usual. It was a wild yarn I told, and I was dismissed with regrets, but my illness, lasting more than three months, made it imperative for them to have some man to take my place in the meantime—and somebody said something about a Sanderson tube and somebody else mentioned 175,000 dollars damages to buildings——

"And now I've told you how I left the University."

Donald Murray Putney, sometimes referred to by Warren as "Putt-putt"—and "filthly rich"—inventor of the gasoline turbine, which had promptly wrecked several hundred promising gasoline engine companies, till they bought his patents, and supplied Warren with material for endless annoyance, was not satisfied that he heard the whole story.

"Yes, how—but not, why. What was the wild tale?" he demanded. Putney knew Warren was not addicted to wild tales, especially if they might be interpreted as excuses for himself.

"Well—I suggested that the action, which I saw, must be due to some hitherto unknown force. Certainly, Don," he went on, warming up to his subject, "there wasn't enough energy in my apparatus, taking the total energy stored on the two spheres, the field energy of the three magnets, and the potential energy, too, for that matter—they fell down you know—to start an earthquake. Also, a discharge, even of 17.6 million volts—all the instruments jammed—wouldn't give me a case of sun, or radiation burn that would lay me up in the infirmary for three straight months. Anyway—I had different aims." He quieted suddenly as he remembered he was started again, and the last reception of his theory had made it a painful discussion for him.

"What were the aims?"

"Energy of matter," replied Warren grimly.

Putney was silent for some moments, puffing his pipe leisurely as he leaned back in his chair. The furnishings of his bachelor apartment were dedicated to the Goddess of Comfort.

"Hmmm—that would cause an earthquake. In fact it might well cause several dozen earthquakes. It would certainly cause an earthquake on Wall Street.

"By the way, who led the laughter in the Directors Meeting?"

"Old Nestor," replied Warren guardedly. "And it surprised me a lot. Naturally I would be surprised anyway, but old Nestor is no dumb business man. He got on that faculty for more reasons than one."

"Yes," agreed Putney, "he did." Putney smiled sourly. "That old boy is a live man, and alive to the opportunities too. He bought in there, because he can get information cheap and wholesale. That's why Nestor Aircraft is a strong investment. And does Nestor love me—? He does—like a shark would. I nearly wrecked him with that little patent of mine, and he hasn't gotten over it yet. What did he say?"

"He started them off, perhaps. I didn't expect him to say 'Impossible' but he was the first."

"Oh—did he?" Putney smiled to himself. "And has he spoken to you since? Warren, I learned when I had patents to sell—and you know I've sold a lot more since that turbine affair—that Nestor has ideas of his own on business manners. Who gets the rights on the discovery if you remain with the University?"

"Why—they would!" exclaimed Warren.

"Uhuh—open to everybody to use. No money in that. Well, you're kicked out. If your ideas are correct, who gets the rights now?"

"I would——"

"And that's where you're wrong. Would you? How could you get them—how could you prove it—how could you build the apparatus—?" Putney leaned forward with blazing black eyes. "You know you couldn't—not till Nestor furnished your laboratory, and he'd run off with the patents, and you'd get a salary. You're black-listed with Universities now, and you know it. So does he. He saw that you had millions—billions perhaps, in the palm of your hand. So he fired you. In a day he'll offer you a laboratory job, and set you on that again, and he'll get the money!"

Warren gazed at his friend in amazement. "You're right, Putt-putt. You're damn right. Only I'm going to ask you into a partnership with me. You've got the money, and I've got an idea, that is apparently worth Nestor's time!"

Putney stood up and stretched forth his hand. "And we've got a partnership, Ran, that nothin'll bust!"