The Black Star Passes by Jr. John W. Campbell (leveled readers .TXT) 📗

of those diamond rotary saws you have, attached to an electric motor, and it wore out the diamonds. That got my goat, so I tried using a little force. I put it in the tension testing machine, and clamped it—the clamp was good for 10,000,000 pounds—but it began to bend, so I had to quit. Then Morey held it with a molecular beam, and I tried twisting it. Believe me, it gave me real pleasure to see that thing yield under the pressure. But it's not brittle; it merely bends.

“And I can't cut it, or even get some shavings off the darned thing. You said you wanted to make a Jolly balance determination of the specific gravity, but the stuff is so dense you'd need only a tiny scrap—and I can't break it loose!” Wade looked at the plate in thorough disgust.

Arcot smiled sympathetically; he could understand his feelings, for the stuff certainly was stubborn. “I'm sorry I didn't warn you fellows about what you'd run into, but I was so anxious to get that call through to the Moon that I forgot to tell you how I expected to make it workable. Now, Wade, if you'll get another of those diamond-tooth rotary saws, I'll get something that may help. Put the saw on the air motor. Use the one made of coronium.”

Wade looked after the rapidly disappearing Arcot with raised eyebrows, then, scratching his head, he turned and did as Arcot had asked.

Arcot returned in about five minutes with a small handling machine, and a huge magnet. It must have weighed nearly half a ton. This he quickly connected to the heavy duty power lines of the lab. Now, running the handling ma[Pg. 197]chine into position, he quickly hoisted the bent and twisted plate to the poles of the magnet, with the aid of the derrick. Then backing the handling machine out of the way, he returned briskly to his waiting associates.

“Now we'll see what we will see!” With a confident smile Arcot switched on the current of the big magnet. At once a terrific magnetic flux was set up through the light-metal. He took the little compressed-air saw, and applied it to the crystal plate. The smooth hiss of the air deepened to a harsh whine as the load came on it, then the saw made contact with the refractory plate.

Unbelievingly Wade saw the little diamond-edge saw bite its way slowly but steadily into the plate. In a moment it had cut off a little corner of the light-matter, and this fell with a heavy thud to the magnet pole, drawn down by the attraction of the magnet and by gravity.

Shutting off the magnet, Arcot picked up a pair of pliers and gripped the little fragment.

“Whew—light-metal certainly isn't light metal! I'll bet this little scrap weights ten pounds! We'll have to reduce it considerably before we can use it. But that shouldn't be too difficult.”

By using the magnet and several large diamond faceplates they were able to work the tough material down to a thin sheet; then with a heavy press, they cut some very small fragments, and with these, determined the specific gravity.

“Arcot,” Wade asked finally, “just how does the magnet make that stuff tractable? I'm not physicist enough to figure out what takes place inside the material.”

“Magnetism worked as it did,” Arcot explained, “because in this light-matter every photon is affected by the magnetism, and every photon is given a new motion. That stuff can be made to go with the speed of light, you know. It's the only solid that could be so affected. This stuff should be able, with the aid of a molecular motion beam, which will make all the photons move in parallel paths, to move at the full speed of each photon—186,000 miles a second. The [Pg. 198]tremendous speed of these individual photons is what makes the material so hard. Their kinetic impulse is rather considerable! It's the kinetic blow that the molecules of a metal give that keeps other metal from penetrating it. This simply gives such powerful impulse that even diamonds wouldn't cut it.

“You know that an iron saw will cut platinum readily, yet if both are heated to say, 1600 degrees, the iron is a liquid, and the platinum very soft—but now the platinum cuts through the iron!

“Heat probably won't have any effect on this stuff, but the action of the magnet on the individual photons corresponds to the effect of the heat on the individual atoms and molecules. The mass is softened, and we can work it. At least, that's the way I figure it out.

“But now, Wade, I wish you'd see if you can determine the density of the stuff. You're more used to those determinations and that type of manipulation than we are. When you get through, we may be able to show you some interesting results ourselves!”

Wade picked up a tiny chip of the light-metal and headed for his own laboratory. Here he set up his Jolly balance, and began to work on the fragment. His results were so amazing that he checked and rechecked his work, but always with the same answer. Finally he returned to the main lab where Arcot and Morey were busy at the construction of a large and complicated electro-static apparatus.

“What did you find?” called out Arcot, as he saw Wade reenter the room. “Hold your report a second and give us a hand here, will you? I have a laboratory scale apparatus of the type the Kaxorians used in the storage of light. They've known, ever since they began working with them, that their machines would release the energy with more than normal violence, if certain changes were made in them. That is, the light condenser, the device that stored the photons so close to each other, would also serve to urge them apart. I've made the necessary changes, and now I'm trying to set up the apparatus to work on solid light-mat[Pg. 199]ter. It was developed for gaseous material, and it's a rather tricky thing to change it over. But I think we've almost got it.

“Wade, will you connect that to the high frequency oscillator there—no—through that counterbalanced condenser. We may have to change the oscillator frequency quite a bit, but a variable condenser will do that.

“Now, what results did you get?”

Wade shook his head doubtfully. “We all know it's amazing stuff—and of course, it must be heavy—but still—well, anyway, I got a density of 103.5!”

“Whewww—103.5! Lord! That's almost five times as heavy as the heaviest metal hitherto known. There's about half a cubic foot of the material; that would mean about 4000 pounds for the whole mass, or two tons. No wonder we couldn't lift the plate!”

They stopped their work on the Kaxorian apparatus to discuss the amazing results of the density test, but now they fell to again, rapidly assembling the device, for each was a trained experimenter. With all but the final details completed, Arcot stood back and surveyed their handiwork.

“I think we'll have enough urge to cause disintegration right here,” he said, “but I want to make sure, and so, before we set up the case over it, I think we may as well put that big magnet in place, and have it there to help in the work of disintegration, if need be.”

At last the complete apparatus was set up, and the tiny bit of light-matter they were to work on was placed on the table of a powerful Atchinson projector microscope, the field of view being in the exact center of the field of both the magnet and the coil. Carefully, then, step by step, Arcot, Morey and Wade went over their work, checking and rechecking.

“Well, we're ready,” said Arcot finally, as he placed the projector screen in position and dimmed the lights in the room. A touch of the switch, and the projection screen was illuminated with the greatly enlarged image of the tiny scrap of light-metal.

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With his hand on the switch, Arcot spoke to the other two. “I won't say there's no danger, since we haven't done this before; and if all the energy should be released at once, it'll blow the top out of the building. But I'm reasonably sure that it will work safely. Any objections?”

Wade shook his head, and Morey said: “I can't see any flaws in our work.”

Arcot nodded, and unconsciously tensing, he closed the switch. This put the powerful Arcot oscillator tubes into action, and the power was ready for application.

Slowly he closed the rheostat and put the power into the coil. The little sliver of metal on the slide seemed to throb a bit, and its outline grew hazy; but at last, with full power on, the release was so slow as to be imperceptible.

“Guess we need the magnet after all; I'll put it on this time.”

He opened the coil circuit and closed the magnet circuit at half voltage, then again he increased the current through the rheostat. This time the plate throbbed quite violently, it took the appearance of a bit of iodine. Dense vapors began pouring from it, and instantly those vapors became a blindingly brilliant flood of light. Arcot had snapped open the switch the moment he saw this display start, and it had had little time to act, for the instant the circuit was opened, it subsided. But even in that brief time, the light aluminum screen had suddenly become limp and slumped down, molten! The room was unbearably hot, and the men were half blinded by the intensity of the light.

“It works!” yelled Wade. “It works! That sure was hot, too—it's roasting in here.” He flung open a window. “Let's have some air.”

Arcot and Morey gripped hands with a broad grin. That display meant that Earth and Venus would have space ships with which to fight space ships. Reason enough for their joy.

Though they had made an unusual amount of progress already, there was still a great deal of development work to be done. Fuller was needed, Arcot decided, so he called [Pg. 201]the elder Morey and requested his services if he could be spared from his present work. He could, and would arrive later that day.

When Fuller appeared about mid-afternoon, he found the three friends already at work on the development of a more compact apparatus than the makeshift hookup used in making that first release mechanism.

“And so you can see,” said Arcot as he finished his summary of their work to that point, “we still have quite a job ahead of us. I'm now trying to find some data for you to work on, but I can tell you this: We'll need a ship that has plenty of strength and plenty of speed. There will be the usual power plant, of course; the generators, the power-tube board, and the electro-magnetic relays for the regular molecular motion controls. Then, in addition, we must have controls for the ray projector, though that must wait a while, for Dad is working on a method of doubling our range.... Oh yes, the driving units will be inside the ship now, for all our power will come from the energy of the light-matter.”

They spent the next hour in discussing the manifold details involved in the design of their space ship: the mechanism involved in transferring the light-energy to the drivers; a means of warming the ship in interstellar space; a main horizontal drive for forward and backward motion as well as braking; three smaller vertical power units to give them freedom of direction in climb or descent; other smaller horizontal power units for turning and moving sideways.

The ships, they decided, must be capable of six or seven thousand miles a second. They would need three types of ships: a small single-man speedster, without bunk or living quarters, simply a little power plant and weapon. Designed for speed and mobility, it would be very hard to hit, and because of its own offensive power would be dangerous to the enemy. They would need a fleet of mother ships—ships that would hold both the speedsters and their pilots—say thirty to a cruiser. There would also be some ten-man scouts, operating in the same manner as the larger cruisers, but with a smaller fleet of speedsters dependent on them.

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“For defense,” Arcot concluded, “we'll have to depend on armor as heavy as we can make and still remain within the bounds of practical construction. I don't believe we'll be able to build up enough mass to insulate against their negative catalysis ray. We'll have to depend on mobility and offense.

“But now let's get back to work. I think, Fuller, that you might call in the engineers of all the big aircraft and machine tool manufacturers and fabricators, and have them ready to start work at once when the plans are finally drawn up. You'd better get in touch with the Venerian producers, too. Those new works in Sorthol, Kaxor, will certainly