Chapter 5

The apparatus of the magnetic shield had been completed two days later, and set up in Buck’s own laboratory. On the bench was the powerful, but small, little projector of the straight magnetic field, simply a specially designed accumulator, a super-condenser, and the peculiar apparatus Devin had designed to distort the electric field through ninety degrees to a magnetic field. Behind this was a curious, paraboloid projector made up of hundreds of tiny, carefully orientated coils. This was Buck’s own contribution. They were ready for the tests.

“I would invite McLaurin in to see this,” said Kendall looking at them, and then across the room bitterly toward the alleged atomic power apparatus on the opposite bench. “I think it will work. But after that--” He stared, glaring, at the heavy tungsten dome with its heavy tungsten contacts, across which the flame of released atomic energy was supposed to have leapt. “That was probably the flattest flop any experiment ever flopped.”

“Well--it didn’t blow up. That’s one comfort,” suggested Devin.

“I wish it had. Then at least it would have shown some response. The only response shown, actually, was shown on the power meter. It damn near wore out the bearings turning so fast.”

“Personally, I prefer the lack of action.” Devin laughed. “Have you got that circuit hooked up?”

“Right,” sighed Kendall, turning back to the work in hand. “Is Douglass in on this?”

“Yes--in the next room. He’ll let us know when he’s ready. He’s setting up those instruments.”

Douglass, a young junior physicist, late of the IP Physics Department, stuck his head in the door and announced his instruments were all set up.

“Keep an eye on them. They’ll move somehow, at any rate. This thing couldn’t go as flat as that atom-buster of mine.”

Carefully Kendall made a few last-minute adjustments on the limiting relays, and took up his position at the power board. Devin took his place near the apparatus, with another series of instruments, similar to those Douglass was now watching in the next room, some thirty feet away, through the two-inch metal wall. “Ready,” called Kendall.

The switch shot home. Instantly Kendall, Devin, and all the men in the building jumped some six feet from their former positions. A monstrous roar of sound crashed out in that laboratory that thundered from one wall to the other, and bellowed in a Titan’s fury. It thundered and growled, it bellowed and howled, the walls shook with the march and counter-march of crashing waves of sound.

And a ten-foot wavering flame of blue-white, bellying electric fire shuddered up to the ceiling from the contact points of the alleged atomic generator. The heat, pouring out from the flashing, roaring arc sent prickles of aching burns over Kendall’s skin. For ten seconds he stood in utter, paralyzed surprise as his flop of flops bellowed its anger at his disdain. Then he leapt to the power board and shut off the roaring thing, by cutting the switch that had started it.

“Spirits of Space! Did that come to life!”

“Atomic Energy!“ Devin cried.

“Atomic energy, hell. That’s my thirty thousand dollars’ worth of power breaking loose again,” chortled Kendall. “We missed the atomic energy, but, sweet boy, what an accumulator we stubbed our toes on! I wondered where in blazes all that power went to. That’s the answer. I’ll bet I can tell you right now what happened. We built that mercury up to a new level, and that transitional stage was the red, crystalline metal. When it reached the higher stage, it was temporarily stable--but that projector over there that we designed for the purpose of holding open electric and magnetic fields just opened the door and let all that power right out again.”

“But why isn’t it atomic energy? How do you know that no more than your power that you put in is coming out?” demanded Devin.

“The arc, man, the arc. That was a high-current, and low-voltage arc. Couldn’t you tell by the sound that no great voltage--as atomic voltages go--was smashing across there? If we were getting atomic voltage--and power--there’d have been a different tone to it, high and shriller.

“Now, did you take any readings?”

“What do you think, man? I’m human. Do you think I got any readings with that thing bellowing and shrieking in my ears, and burning my skin with ultra-violet? It itches now.”

Kendall laughed. “You know what to do for an itch. Now, I’m going to make a bet. We had those points separated for a half-million volts discharge, but there was a dust-cover thrown over them just now. That, you notice, is missing. I’ll bet that served as a starter lead for the main arc. Now I’m going to start that projector thing again, and move the points there through about six inches, and that thing probably won’t start itself.”

Most of the laboratory staff had collected at the doorway, looking in at the white-hot tungsten discharge points, and the now silent “atomic engine.” Kendall turned to them and said: “The flop picked itself up. You go on back, we seem to be all in one piece yet. Douglass, you didn’t get any readings, did you?”

Sheepishly, Douglass grinned at him. “Eh--er--no--but I tore my pants. The magnetic field grabbed me and I jumped. They had some steel buttons, and a lot of steel keys--they’re kinda’ hard to keep on now.”

The laboratory staff broke into a roar of laughter, as Douglass, holding up his trousers with both hands was beheld.

“I guess the field worked,” he said.

“I guess maybe it did,” adjudged Kendall solemnly. “We have some rope here if you need it--”

Douglass returned to his post.