CHAPTER XIX
The Gravity Beam
"A gravity beam!" they ejaculated together in tones varying fromincredulity to simple puzzlement. "What's that?"
"Well, it'll take quite a bit of explaining, but I'll drop out thetechnical part of it.... You see, it's like this--You remember old manEinstein, the frizzy-hair Frisian, demonstrated that magnetism andgravity are the same thing down underneath? And that some of theastronomers and physicists have said that both magnetism and light arethe same thing? That is, forms of vibration. Well, one of the things Ipicked up from the lads in this Lassan city was that light, matter,electricity, gravitation, magnetism and the whole works, are the samething in different forms.
"They've just jumped one step beyond Einstein. Now, they've got a way ofproducing, or mining, pure light, that is, pure matter in its simplestform. When it's released from pressure it becomes material and raiseshell all over the shop. How they get the squeeze on it, I can't say.Anyway, it isn't important."
"Very interesting lecture--very," commented Gloria, gravely.
"You pipe down and listen to your betters till they get through,"Sherman went on. "Children should be seen, not heard. But what I've gothere is a piece of permalloy. Under certain magnetic conditions itdefies gravity. Now if we can screen gravity that way, why can't weconcentrate it, too?"
"Why not? Except that nobody ever did it and nobody knows how," said BenRuby.
"Well, here's the catch. We can do anything we want to with gravity ifwe go about it right. What is it in chemical atoms that has weight? It'sthe positive charge, isn't it? The nucleus. And it's balanced by thenegative charges, the electrons, that revolve around it. Now if we canfind a way to pull some of these negative charges loose from a certainnumber of atoms of a substance, there are going to be a whole lot ofpositive charges floating around without anything to bite on. And if wecan shoot them at something, it's going to have more positive chargesthan it can stand. And when that happens, the something is going to getawful heavy, and there are going to be exchanges of negative chargesamong all the positive charges, and things are going to pop."
"Yes, yes," said Ben. "But what good does all this do? Give us the realdope on how you're going to do it."
"Well, with what I picked up from the Lassans, I think I know. Theyknow all about light and mechanics, but they're rotten chemists, anddon't realize how good a thing they've got in lots of ways. Now look--ifyou throw a beam of radiations from a cathode tube into finely dividedmaterial you break up some of the atoms. Well, all we have to do is getan extra-powerful cathode tube, break up a lot of atoms, and thendeliver the positive charges from them onto whatever we're going for.That would be your gravity beam."
"How are you going to get radiation powerful enough to split up enoughatoms to do you any good?" inquired Ben.
"Easy. Use a radium cathode. The Lassans have the stuff, but never thinkof using it seriously. They think it's an amusing by-product in theirpure light mines, and just play round with it. Nobody ever used itbefore on earth, because it was too expensive for such foolishness, butwith so many less people around, we can get some without too muchtrouble, I guess."
"Mmm. Sounds possible," said Ben. "That is, in theory. I'd like to seeit work in practice. How are you going to throw this beam?"
"Cinch. Down a beam of light. Light will conduct sound or radio waveseven through a vacuum and this stuff I'm sending isn't so verydifferent. Whatever we hit will act as an amplifier and spread theeffect through the whole body."
"Boy, you want to be careful you don't blow up the earth," said MurrayLee. "Well, Gloria, I guess we're indicated to go out and dig up someradium. Let's fool them by going before they ask us. There ought to be asupply in some of the hospitals."
They rose and the other two plunged into an excited and highly technicaldiscussion. When they returned, the workmen had already constructed ablack box, not unlike an enormous camera in shape, in the center of thefloor. At its back and attached to it, stood a stand fitted with aseries of enormous clamps. Ben and Sherman were at a bench, workingblowpipes, and shaping the delicate, iridescent glass of a long tubewith a bulge at its center.
"Here you are," said Murray Lee. "I had to row with the Surgeon-Generalof the Dutch Colonial contingent to get this. He wanted to use it onsome tuberculosis experiment. But I convinced him that he wouldn't beworrying about 't. b.' if the Lassans came out of their hole and stoodthe army on its head. How goes the job?"
"Swell," said Sherman. "Now you children run along and play. We're busy.We won't be finished with this thing before tomorrow afternoon, ifthen."
As a matter of fact it was the next evening before Murray and Gloriawere summoned back to the laboratory. The device they had seen was nowmounted on a stand of its own, with long ropes of electrical connectionsrunning back from it, and had been pushed back to the end of the room.Opposite it was another stand with a two-foot square piece of sheet ironresting on a chair in its center. The lens of the big camera was pointedin that direction.
"Now," said Sherman, "watch your uncle and see what happens."
* * * * *
He turned a switch; the tube at the back of the apparatus lit up with avivid violet glow and a low humming sound filled the room.
"I decided to use powdered lead in the box," he explained. "It is theheaviest metal there is available, and gives us the largest number ofnuclei to project."
A second switch was thrown in and a beam of light leaped from the cameraand struck in the center of the iron sheet, producing merely a mildwhite illumination.
"Poof!" said Gloria. "That isn't such a much. I could do that with aflashlight."
"Right you are. I haven't let her go yet. Hold your breath now."
He bent over, drove a plunger home. For just a second the only visibleeffect was a slight intensification of the beam of light. Then there wasa report like a thunder-clap; a dazzling ball of fire appeared on thestand; a cloud of smoke, and Murray and Gloria found themselves sittingon the floor. The iron plate had completely vanished; so had the chair,all but two of its legs, which, lying in the center of the stand, wereburning brightly. The acrid odor of nitrogen dioxide filled the room.
"Golly," said Ben Ruby, seizing a fire extinguisher from the wall andturning it on the blaze. "That's even more than we expected. Look, itmade a hole right through the wall! We'll have to keep that thing tiedup."
"I'll say you will," said Murray, helping Gloria up. "It's as bad forthe guy that's using it as the one at the other end. But seriously,you've got something good there. What happened to the iron plate?"
"Disintegrated. Let's see, where does iron come in the periodic table,Ben? Twenty-six? Then you'll probably find small quantities of all thechemical elements from twenty-five down in that heap of ashes. Phooey,what a rotten smell! That must be the action of the beam on the nitrogenin the air."
"There's a lot to be worked out in this thing, yet, though," declaredBen, "and if you're right about the Lassans making a comeback, preciouslittle time in which to work it out. For one thing, we've got to get asearchlight that will throw a narrow pencil of light for a longdistance. I don't think those elephant-men are going to let us poke thisthing under their noses. And for another we've got to dope out somethingto keep it in and some way to furnish current for it...."
"Can't you work it from a tank?" asked Murray, "and rig up a frictionaccumulator to work from the tracks?"
"I can, but I don't like the idea," Sherman replied. "From the way thoseLassans took to our airplanes, I could make a guess that when they come,they're going to come in some kind of flying machine. The dodos are nogood in modern war. We'd never catch any kind of an airplane with atank."
"How about an airplane for yourselves?"
"Too unsteady and too frail. I want something that will take a few pokesand not fold up."
"Say, you guys have less ingenuity for a couple of inventors than anyoneI ever heard of," Gloria put in. "Why don't you get one of theseAustr
alian rocket-planes and fix it up. It's big enough to hold all yourfoolishness, and if this thing is half as powerful as it looks, youought to be able to harness it some way for a power-plant. Then you canplaster your rocket all over with armor. I think--"
Sherman interrupted her by bringing his fist down on the table with abang that made the glasses rattle.
"You've got it! By the nine gods of Clusium! With the punch this thinggives us used as a rocket, we'd have power enough to fly to the moon ifwe wanted to. Why a rocket airplane at all? Why not a pure rocket? Let'sgo."
It was another week before workmen, even toiling with all themachine-shop facilities of Philadelphia at their disposal, and workingday and night, could turn out the machine to Sherman's design, and itwas two more before the apparatus was installed. The trial trip was setfor the early morning when there would be least chance of atmosphericdisturbance.
The _Monitor_ (she had been named for the famous fighting craft withwhich the American navy ushered in a new age in the history of war) nowstood near the center of the flying field at the Philadelphia airport--along, projectile-like vessel with gleaming metal sides, set with heavywindows, ten feet in diameter and nearly twice as long. At her stern afunnel-like opening led to the interior. This was the exhaust for thepower-plant. At her bow the sharp nose was blunted off and its tip wasoccupied by the lens of a high-powered parabolic searchlight, slightlyrecessed, and with the discharge tubes for the atomic nuclei arrangedaround its edge so they would be thrown directly into the light-beam assoon as generated.
As the four approached her she had been placed on the ramp from whichshe was to start, slanting slightly upward, with a buffer of timber andearth behind it, to take up the enormous recoil her power plant wasexpected to develop.
"How do you get in?" asked Gloria, walking around the _Monitor_ anddiscovering no sign of a door.
"Oh, that's a trick I borrowed from our friends the Lassans," explainedSherman. "Look here." He led her to a place half way along one side,where two almost imperceptible holes marred the shining brightness ofthe new vessel's sides. "Stick your fingers in."
* * * * *
She did as directed, pressed, and a wide door in the side of theprojectile swung open. "Bright thought. No handles to break off."
They stepped in, bending their heads to avoid the low ceiling.
"She isn't as roomy or comfortable or as heavily armored as the one Imean to build later," explained Sherman, "but this is only anexperimental craft, built in a hurry, so I had to take what I couldget.... Now here, Murray you sit here. Your job is going to be to mindthe gravity beam that furnishes us our power. Every time you get thesignal from me, you throw this power switch. That will turn on all threeswitches at the stern, and shoot the gravity beam out for theexhaust.... You see, we can't expect to keep up a steady stream ofexplosions with this kind of a machine. We wouldn't be able to controlit. We'll travel in a series of short hops through the air, soaringbetween hops, like a glider."
"How are you going to do any soaring without wings?" asked Murray.
"We have wings. They fold into the body at the back. I've made themautomatic. When the power switch is thrown the wings fold in; after theexplosion they come out automatically unless we disconnect them. If wewant to really go fast, we'll disconnect them and go through the airlike a projectile."
"Oh, I see. Will the windows stand the gaff?"
"I hope to tell you they will. I had them made of fused quartz, with anouter plating of leaded glass, just in case the Lassans try to get freshwith that light-ray of theirs.
"Now, Gloria, you sit here. You're the best shot in the crowd, and it'sgoing to be your job to run that searchlight in the prow. As soon as youpick up anything with it, Ben will throw his switch, and whatever is atthe end of it will get a dose of pure protons. We'll have to do a gooddeal of our aiming by turning the ship itself. I made the searchlight asflexible as I could, but I couldn't get a great deal of turn to it onaccount of the necessity of getting the nuclei into the light beam."
"By the way," asked Murray. "Won't this pure light armor of the Lassansknock your beam for a row of ashcans?"
"I should say not! If they use it, we've got 'em. That stuff has weightand the minute this beam of ours hits it, it will intensify the effect,and no matter how much pressure they have on it, it will blow up allover the place.... All set? Let's go. Throw in your switch, Murray."
Murray did as directed. There was a humming sound and the tiny beam oflight leaped across the rear end of the ship and out the exhaust. Acrossit fell a thin powder of iron filings--the material that was to bedecomposed to furnish the power.
Bang! With a roar, the _Monitor_ leaped forward, throwing all of themback into their heavily padded seats, then dipped and soared as thewings came into play. The passengers glanced through the windows.Beneath them the outskirts of Philadelphia were already speeding by.
"Say," said Ben, "this is some bus. We must be making five hundred milesan hour."
"Sure," said Sherman. "We could do over seven hundred as a pureprojectile, but we can't use that much speed and keep our maneuveringpower."