With No Strings Attached

heshut it off." He chuckled. "He never would let us look into thatsuitcase. Naturally, we wouldn't buy a pig in a poke, as the sayinggoes. We told him that any time we could be allowed to look at hisinvention, we'd be glad to see him again. He left in a huff, and thatwas the last we saw of him."

  "How do you explain," Thorn said carefully, "the fact that hissuitcase _did_ run all those lights?"

  The colonel chuckled again. "Hell, we had that figured out. He justhad a battery of some kind in the suitcase. No fancy gimmick forderiving power from perpetual motion or anything like that. Nope. Justa battery, that's all."

  Captain Dean Lacey was grinning hugely.

  Thorn said: "Tell me, colonel--what was this fellow's name?"

  "Oh, I don't recall. Big, blond chap. Had a Swedish name--or maybeNorwegian. Sanderson? No. Something like that, though."

  "Sorensen?" Thorn asked.

  "That's it! Sorensen! Do you know him?"

  "We've done business with him," said Thorn dryly.

  "He didn't palm his phony machine off on you, did he?" the colonelasked with a light laugh.

  "No, no," Thorn said. "Nobody sold us a battery disguised as aperpetual motion device. Our relations with him have been quiteprofitable, thank you."

  "I'd say you still ought to watch him," said Colonel Dower. "Once acon man, always a con man, is my belief."

  Captain Lacey rubbed his hands together. "Ed, tell me something.Didn't it ever occur to you that a battery which would do all that--abattery which would hold a hundred kilowatt-hours of energy in asuitcase would be worth the million he was asking for it?"

  Colonel Dower looked startled. "Why ... why, no. The man was obviouslya phony. He wouldn't tell us what the power source was. He--" ColonelDower stopped. Then he set his jaw and went on. "Besides, if it were abattery, why didn't he say so? A phony like that shouldn't be--" Hestopped again, looking at the naval officer.

  Lacey was still grinning. "We have discovered, Ed," he said in analmost sweet voice, "that Sorensen's battery will run a submarine."

  "With all due respect to your rank and ability, captain," Thorn said,"I have a feeling that you'd have been skeptical about any such story,too."

  "Oh, I'll admit that," Lacey said. "But I still would have beenimpressed by the performance." Then he looked thoughtful. "But I mustadmit that it lowers my opinion of your inventor to hear that he tellsall these cock-and-bull stories. Why not just come out with thetruth?"

  "Evidently he'd learned something," Thorn said. "Let me tell you whathappened after the contracts had been signed--"

  * * * * *

  ... The contracts had been signed after a week of negotiation. Thornwas, he admitted to himself, a little nervous. As soon as he had seenthe test out on Salt Flats, he had realized that Sorensen haddeveloped a battery that was worth every cent he had asked for it.Thorn himself had pushed for the negotiations to get them throughwithout too much friction. A million bucks was a lot of loot, butthere was no chance of losing it, really. As Sorensen said, thecontract did not call for the delivery of a specific device, it calledfor a device that would produce specific results. If Sorensen's devicedidn't produce those results, or if they couldn't be duplicated byThorn after having had the device explained to him, then the contractwasn't fulfilled, and the ambitious Mr. Sorensen wouldn't get anymillion dollars.

  Now the time had come to see what was inside that mysterious LittleBlack Suitcase. Sorensen had obligingly brought the suitcase to themain testing and development laboratory of North American Carbide &Metals.

  Sorensen put it on the lab table, but he didn't open it right away."Now I want you to understand, Mr. Thorn," he began, "that I, myself,don't exactly know how this thing works. That is, I don't completelyunderstand what's going on inside there. I've built several of them,and I can show you how to build them, but that doesn't mean Iunderstand them completely."

  "That's not unusual in battery work," Thorn said. "We don't completelyunderstand what's going on in a lot of cells. As long as the thingworks according to the specifications in the contract, we'll besatisfied."

  "All right. Fine. But you're going to be surprised when you see what'sin here."

  "I probably will. I've been expecting a surprise," Thorn said.

  What he got was a _real_ surprise.

  There was a small pressure tank of hydrogen inside--one of the littleones that are sometimes used to fill toy balloons. There was a smallbatch of electronic circuitry that looked as though it might be theinsides of an FM-AM radio.

  All of the rest of the space was taken up by batteries.

  And every single one of the cells was a familiar little cannister.They were small, rechargeable nickel-cadmium cells, and every one borethe trademark of North American Carbide & Metals!

  One of the other men in the lab said: "What kind of a joke is this?"

  "Do you mean, Mr. Sorensen," Thorn asked with controlled precision,"that your million-dollar process is merely some kind of gimmickrywith our own batteries?"

  "No," said Sorensen. "It's--"

  "Wait a minute," said one of the others, "is it some kind of hydrogenfuel cell?"

  "In a way," Sorensen said. "Yes, in a way. It isn't as efficient asI'd like, but it gets its power by converting hydrogen to helium.I need those batteries to start the thing. After it gets going, theseleads here from the reactor cell keep the batteries charged. The--"

  He was interrupted by five different voices all trying to speak atonce. He could hardly--

  * * * * *

  "... He could hardly get a word in edgewise at first," said Thorn. Hewas enjoying the look of shocked amazement on Colonel Dower's face."When Sorensen finally did get it explained, we still didn't knowmuch. But we built another one, and it worked as well as the one hehad. And the contract didn't specifically call for a battery. He hadus good, he did."

  "Now wait--" Colonel Dower said. "You mean to say it wasn't a batteryafter all?"

  "Of course not."

  "Then why all the folderol?"

  "Colonel," Thorn said, "Sorensen patented that device nine years ago.It only has eight years to run. But he couldn't get anyone at all tobelieve that it would do what he said it would do. After years ofbeating his head against a stone wall, years of trying to convincepeople who wouldn't even look twice at his gadget, he decided to getsmart.

  "He began to realize that 'everybody knew' that hydrogen fusion wasn'tthat simple. It was his _theory_ that no one would listen to. As soonas he told anyone that he had a hydrogen fusion device that could bestarted with a handful of batteries and could be packed into asuitcase, he was instantly dismissed as a nut.

  "I did a little investigating after he gave us the full information onwhat he had done. (Incidentally, he signed over the patent to us,which was more than the contract called for, in return for a job withour outfit, so that he could help develop the fusion device.)

  "As I said, he finally got smart. If the theory was what was makingpeople give him the cold shoulder, he'd tell them nothing.

  "You know the results of that, Colonel Dower. At least he got somebodyto test the machine. He managed to get somebody to look at what itwould do.

  "But that wasn't enough. He didn't have, apparently, any legitimateexcuse for keeping it under wraps that way, so everyone wassuspicious."

  "But why tell _you_ it was a battery?" asked Captain Lacey.

  "That was probably suggested by Colonel Dower's reaction to the testshe saw," Thorn said. "Somebody--I think it was George Gamow, but I'mnot certain--once said that just having a theory isn't enough; thetheory has to make sense.

  "Well, Sorensen's theory of hydrogen fusion producing electric currentdidn't make sense. It was _true_, but it didn't make sense.

  "So he came up with a theory that _did_ make sense. If everyone wantedto think it was 'nothing but a battery', then, by Heaven, he'd sell itas a battery. And _that_, gentlemen, was a theory we were perfectlywilling to believe. It wasn't true, but it di
d make sense.

  "As far as I was concerned, it was perfectly natural for a man who hadinvented a new type of battery to keep it under wraps that way.

  "Naturally, after we had invested a million dollars in the thing, we_had_ to investigate it. It worked, and we had to find out why andhow."

  "Naturally," said Colonel Dower, looking somewhat uncomfortable. "Ipresume this is