Chapter V

In the big, bare, concrete room a score of men were working at a peculiar apparatus that rose rapidly from the floor. There were two towers capped by great aluminum spheres. Their stilt-like legs were made of fused quartz, and electric motors were being installed at the base of the towers.

In another room, two men were working alone. Warren and Putney, fighting calculations that staggered their abilities, and ideas that staggered their imaginations.

"I think," said Warren, his eyes shining as he stared hard at the latest result, "we aren't going to need a Sanderson tube at all this time. According to that all I need do is vary the L' factor in 254 here slowly, and I won't need a very high vacuum. Shall we try it?"

"We won't try it any other way," Putney reminded him sourly. "Nestor beat us to it on the Sanderson tubes, as you know."

Warren laughed happily. "Stung! We didn't need 'em. But we do need those static generators there. We can control the thing now, we know how it can be controlled, and we can draw power from that energy center in the form we want here once it's started, and after that we'll never need to worry! Except to find other facts about its properties.

"Lord! Putney—these sheets—they hold the secret of the energy man has sought since the atom was discovered! Before us lie the equations that are the key to the infinite energy, the energy that will banish work from earth! And banish distance too! I'm sure this field here represents the annihilation of the gravity-curvature in space!" he exclaimed, pointing to a brief expression that represented in fact the second great secret.

"But, Putt, these others, these things that suddenly become irreducible and immutable, these end-equations when we attack one set of unknowns with given values. Some I recognize; here's the Planck formula, derived from space-curvatures! Here's magnetic forces, here electro-static fields—but man, what is this one? It's like nothing I know, and these others—here's a formula for creating vibrational fields in space with any period of vibration up to the limiting period of Millikan rays. Can we try these?"

"We can try them—with an automatic machine," replied Putney, "when the machine is a hundred million miles from earth."

"I think that'd be the best idea. Well, it's dark now, and time for us to stop."

They went at last for supper, and then after a brief talk on ways and means of using any power, they turned in.

It was well into the night when Warren leaped out of bed with a cry of surprise and pain. Something had stung him, and for a moment he did not know what it was. A similar muffled cry came through the wall from Putney's room an instant later, and Warren, now wide awake, smiled. The thick walls stopped most of the sound, but he could guess what Putney was doing. The capacitance alarm signal had warned them that some one was approaching the fence, and brought them out of bed with a jump.

As the mild shocking current wakened them, the room lights were turned on automatically.

"Putt—how many are there?" asked Warren as he came into Putney's room. There was a small television set here, and the screen was glowing brightly, but a peculiar colorless and misty scene was represented. The screen was portraying the section of the fence that had been affected. Some one was attempting to approach unseen. It seemed ridiculous to see the man crouching here and there, and peering over stones and skulking in non-existent shadows. Powerful lights were flooding the grounds with 'brilliant' ultra-violet beams. They were so short as to be beyond vision, but so long as to have very slight fluorescent effects, and the three men were utterly ignorant of the blazing lights!

"Shall we let them in?" asked Putney.

"Why not?" asked Warren with a laugh. "They're trying the gate!"

Putney had pushed the secondary alarm that brought the men to his room, and they were appearing now with pistols and rifles, clad in pajamas or hastily donned trousers.

"We're letting 'em into the grounds," explained Putney as the men stared at the screen. "They'll hit one of the ultra beams sure, and start a siren howling. If they don't run for it then, especially when the visible light strikes them, I miss my guess."

"They're through," whispered some one.

"They cut the lock out with an atomic hydrogen flame."

The three separated. One stayed at the gate, holding it open against the spring that tended to close it, a revolver in one hand. The other two started softly for the house.

"They'll hit the arbor-hangar beam," estimated Kennet, the laboratory electrical apparatus specialist.

"The stone-pile inductance will spot them first," contended Wheeler, chief chemist.

The argument was interrupted by a sudden loud clicking from the master boards behind the screen. Suddenly a brilliant white pencil appeared on the screen spotting the two men and simultaneously a horrific wail shrieked from a huge siren. The three men froze instantaneously, then the two turned and beat a hasty retreat.

Putney had adjusted something before him. Now he threw a switch. The man at the gate gave a cry of pain and bounded back from the fence. The released gate suddenly swung to with a clang. It could not lock, however. The two running men hit the fence about the same time, and they too bounced back with a cry of pain. The fence was charged.

Putney threw a second switch with a grin, then a third. As he threw the second, the fence suddenly began to spit long streamers of flame, and miniature lightning bolts reached out, lapping at the ground and streaming up to the heavens.

The last switch had connected a microphone, and now as the wail of the siren died protestingly into silence, a monstrous voice issued from speakers on the laboratory.

"I would advise you to refrain from assaulting the fence. It might bear unhappy consequences. May I invite you gentlemen into the laboratory? If you will go to the spot of light thrown by the searchlight, you will be directed along the path."

The men walked sullenly to the light. Three unhappy, shabby looking specimens of humanity they were. Presently they were instructed to lay down their weapons, and proceed to the house without armaments.

"The reception committee decided to meet you here instead of at the gate," smiled Putney as the three came into the room, heavily guarded.

"What did we touch off?" growled the least washed of the three.

"Well, in the first place, when you approached the fence, the alarm got us out of bed, and turned on the flood lights," began Warren.

"Open-space!" sneered the leader, "We'd a' seen lights an' beat it."

"Look out—the entire grounds are flood-lighted," replied Putney waving to the screen, and the dark window. "Only it's dark light."

The men looked puzzled. They also looked unhappy.

"What did you men come here for?" demanded Warren.

"See if we c'u'd get yah and the fly-cops outta bed."

"I think they don't mean to answer, Putt," said Warren soberly, turning to his friend. "We'd better take them down to the laboratory and the infra-compressor till they become more talkative."

A gleam of laughter came into Putney's eyes. "Why not start them on the vibrator?"

"All right. Take 'em down, men." Three very worried crooks heavily guarded by ten husky scientist-mechanics were taken down to the laboratory.

"I don't think it's fair to use the vibrator on 'em without giving 'em another chance to talk." Kennet turned a compassionate eye on the invaders.

"Oh, I dunno. They knew what was comin' when they came here, and besides, it doesn't always cripple them. I remember the first time they used it the thing broke down about fifteen seconds, and the guy could walk within two weeks."

"Hey, guy, wat is dis ting?" asked the smallest of the captives. His voice was very hard—and slightly strained.

"Well, they attach electric things to your arms and legs," invented Kennet rapidly, "and they turn on a current that sorta slowly fires you inside, and makes you jerk and vibrate so your bones come out of the joints, and—but you'll see it pretty soon." Again that compassionate eye swept them.

They reached the main laboratory door, and Kennet told the others to hold them here while he went in. In a moment Putney and Warren appeared, and rapidly Kennet sketched his invention.

Ten minutes later the captives were brought in. A heavy wooden chair painted a glossy black was set beside a huge mass of compact apparatus. As they entered Putney threw a switch, and with a tremendous crackling, sparks five feet long began leaping from one contact to another. The humming deepened, and the sparks became steady roaring flame. Heavy chains hung over the chair, and some great thick cables stretched from the apparatus, ending in straps of soft copper.

"Put the big one in it first," ordered Warren, cocking his head and looking at him. "He'll last longer."

The big one attempted to resist, but was soon seated and chained in the great wooden, straight backed chair. Close behind his ears was that dull, powerful hum, and the roar and snap of vicious sparks that weirdly lit the laboratory with a flickering blue flame.

"Say, Warren, why not give the guy another chance before you start. He'll be crippled afterwards and may not be able to talk for a while?" suggested Kennet.

"I—I'll talk—I'll talk," agreed the man in his fright.

Accompanied by the hum and the crackle of sparks, lit by their flickering flame, the man talked fast and he talked truthfully. He didn't like the feel of heavy copper bands on his wrists, and the sound of snapping sparks. His account was detailed and vivid.

He had been sent to get any papers or notes he could find about the study, a map of which he had been given. Meanwhile his companion would attempt to locate and abstract the instruments that Atkill had described. They were to be taken to a certain junk shop, where some one would call for them. That was all he knew. The others ardently agreed.

"What'll we do with 'em?" asked Kennet finally when Warren had asked all the questions he wanted.

"Oh, send them back. We haven't any use for them."

It was three hours later when "Sporty" Cantoli reported to Joe Keller, announcing that his three men had come back badly scared, and convinced that they had escaped by a narrow margin from the fiends of hell. They had told everything they knew, and described vividly the torture they had undergone. Sporty reported he had not succeeded in getting anyone else to do the job.