Chapter VII

The laboratory was lit brilliantly by long grey-white glowing tubes filled with carbon dioxide gas. The glowing tubes gave a light precisely imitating that which streamed in through the great steel-framed windows, casting a pattern of trapezoids on the grey floor. But the grey-white tubes gave no shadows in this place where a shadow might mean an irreparable accident.

The tripod towers were finished, and the great silvery domes glowed under the clear light. There was no quartz tube connecting them now, only the three great magnets and two long rods of aluminum that failed to meet by a few inches, just between the poles of the mighty magnets.

Motors were humming softly, and a half-score of men stared up at the aluminum dome on the left.

"How's it going, Ran?" called Putney. His voice was steady, but inside himself he felt anything but steady. He had tried to argue with Warren, he knew that Warren should not risk his invaluable brain, that some man, whom the world might replace, should take that chance. That was reasonable. But it wasn't right, and he knew it in his heart, when he tried to make Warren agree. Now Warren was in the aluminum dome, and no man on earth could reach him to argue more. He was protected by an enormous and rapidly increasing charge of electricity.

"Sixteen and a quarter million volts," called Warren exultantly, "and rising." Minutes went by and the steady hum of the motors continued, the soft slap-slap-slap of the silken ribbons that carried their charges up, and came down for some more.

"Seventeen million volts!" called Warren. "It'll be seventeen and a half soon. The leakage is almost nothing. Switches ready?"

"Right, Ran," replied Putney steadily.

"Make sure all the electroscopes, both recording and visual, are charged, train your bolometers and other instruments. Check up, then for God's sake, get behind that lead screen, and use the periscope."

Swiftly the men checked over a bank of instruments all focused on the little spot of space between the three great magnets. Then they retired behind the heavy, curving sheet of thick lead that sat against one wall. A broad periscope mirror would send the light to them without sending the harmful radiations, for in its path it passed through a four-inch-thick plate of ultra-violet-opaque glass.

Warren watched the instruments before him. The needle of the electro-static voltmeter device was quivering at 17+ now. His swift eyes swept the meters and saw they were all registering correctly. Then at last he stepped into a tiny lead closet built in the center of the aluminum dome. The entire interior was lined with heavy, thick milky glass, save one port of clear glass. There were various meters here, and two long glass rods.

His face was flushed as he saw the voltmeter reach the seventeen and a half mark.

He tripped the green-handled glass rod. There was a wrench, a tautening, and the meter jumped as the magnets went on, and the motors below whined to a stop.

"Here She Goes!" He pushed the second rod. There was a brief flare of light as a bit of iron wire suddenly exploded into brief incandescence, then a sudden terrific wrenching, and a tremendous wave of smashed air as the awful power of seventeen and one-half million volts jumped across a six-inch gap.

Then a second wave came, a wave of flaring, infinitely bright, and almost palpable white energy, a cascade of light that beat down from a tiny point between the great magnets.

Matter was vanishing! Thrown into another space, it was rapidly disintegrating!

There was a sudden whine and screech as motors started, and the magnets lowered rapidly away from the glowing electrodes of the static generator. The point of blazing incandescence followed them, rested between their poles. The crane that supported the magnets swung them swiftly to a powerful machine on the floor. There was a thud as heavy plungers shot home, and a second snap as others shot free. The blazing ball pulsed larger for the briefest fraction of a second, and dived suddenly for the machine. It stopped, and hovered like the white flame of a torch over a small hollow in the top of the black cube of the squat bulk. It shrank, and burned steadily and clearly with a brilliant white light.

"Readings!" called Warren exultantly.

"X-rays—none. Cosmics—none. Ultra-V's, none detectable. All radiation seems to be in the visible, principally in the blue-white range. When first started there was an instantaneous shot of cosmics and others, gamma, X and Ultra-V's, but they damped out instantly. You win, Ran, you win!" called Putney joyously.

Warren appeared suddenly, and slid down the quartz rod to the floor. In an instant he was running toward the squat machine, Putney behind him.

"How long can it last without additional fuel?" asked Putney as they ran.

"God knows, Putt. An hour at least, though. I can't tell how much the magnets captured and how much escaped when it went up in incandescence."

Warren cautiously moved a control. The brilliant ball seemed to expand, but the radiance died down, its color remained, but it was dimmer.

"Can't go lower, it's at the minimum now. Shall I try the fields?"

"Eventually, why not now?" replied Putney soberly.

Warren adjusted several rheostats, and read the meters carefully. Then he threw a heavy switch. The ball of luminescence quivered, and dulled to an orange color. A meter moved, and across the room a huge bar of rustless steel glowed red. Presently a second of the score or more glowed. The ball grew smaller, and under Warren's manipulation turned white once more.

"It works, Putt, it works," Warren almost whispered. In less than a minute the entire grill, of more than twenty heavy steel bars, was glowing bright red over its entire fifteen foot length. The laboratory was swimming in heat, but the men scarcely noticed it.

"Feed it!" urged Putney.

Warren cautiously turned a small button. The ball suddenly quivered and darted down slightly. A line of red, a fine steel wire had appeared in the center of the hollow bowl-like depression it swam upon, and the globe of embodied energy perched on it. The great bars suddenly glowed brighter, white hot, and began to slump swiftly. Only Warren's quick manipulation saved them. A faint hum from the globe of energy seemed the only sound in the room. There was a queer pulsing in the machine before them now.

"It works, Putney, it works all right. I couldn't somehow picture it happening. I could see that it should, I thought it would, but I didn't believe. That's it, Putt. Matter going forever, irrevocably." There was awe in the physicist's voice.

"The question is," Putney reminded him practically, "will it continue to go forever?"

"Let's start, then!"

That was two days before Atkill spoke to Wilson, and for the next three days the men worked constantly, observing, collecting data, then calculating the meaning of the things they saw and the things they were able to do. By the third day a tremendous amount of work had been done, and on the evening of that day the first fire, the Promethean Torch of atomic fires, had been transferred. Now it rested on a tremendous block of solid iron, and set about it were the dozens of instruments that controlled and directed its work. They had learned many things, and done many things.

And Putney was drawing up their patent claims now. Immediately after the fire had been started the men signed a joint statement in the presence of a Notary Public, and the document was post-marked. It proved the date of the discovery.