Invaders from the Infinite - John W. Campbell (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📗

high as possible without heat loss.”

“Good enough. The line to the city power will stand what pressure?”

“It is good for the maximum of these tubes,” replied the Talsonian.

“Then get into communication with the city plant and tell them to prepare for every work-unit they can carry. I’ll get the generator.” Arcot turned, and flew on his power suit to the ship.

In a few moments he was back, a molecular pistol in one hand, and suspended in front of him on nothing but a ray of ionized air, to all appearances, a cylindrical apparatus, with a small cubical base.

The cylinder was about four feet long, and the cubical box about eighteen inches on a side.

“What is that, and what supports it?” asked the Talsonian scientists in surprise.

“The thing is supported by a ray which directs the molecules of a small bar in the top clamp, driving it up,” explained Morey, “and that is the generator.”

“That! Why it is hardly as big as a man!” exclaimed the Talsonian.

“Nevertheless, it can generate a billion horsepower. But you couldn’t get the power away if you did generate it.” He turned toward Arcot, and called to him.

“Arcot⁠—set it down and let her rip on about half a million horsepower for a second or so. Air arc. Won’t hurt it⁠—she’s made of lux and relux.”

Arcot grinned, and set it on the ground. “Make an awful hole in the ground.”

“Oh⁠—go ahead. It will satisfy this fellow, I think,” replied Morey.

Arcot pulled a very thin lux metal cord from his pocket, and attached one end of a long loop to one tiny switch, and the other to a second. Then he adjusted three small dials. The wire in hand, he retreated to a distance of nearly two hundred feet, while Morey warned the Talsonians back. Arcot pulled one end of his cord.

Instantly a terrific roar nearly deafened the men, a solid sheet of blinding flame reached in a flaming cone into the air for nearly fifty feet. The screeching roar continued for a moment, then the heat was so intense that Arcot could stand no more, and pulled the cord. The flame died instantly, though a slight ionization clung briefly. In a moment it had cooled to white, and was cooling slowly through orange⁠—red deep⁠—red⁠—

The grass for thirty feet about was gone, the soil for ten feet about was molten, boiling. The machine itself was in a little crater, half sunk in boiling rock. The Talsonians stared in amazement. Then a sort of sigh escaped them and they started forward. Arcot raised his molecular pistol, a blue green ray reached out, and the rock suddenly was black. It settled swiftly down, and a slight depression was the only evidence of the terrific action.

Arcot walked over the now cool rock, cooled by the action of the molecular ray. In driving the molecules downward, the work was done by the heat of these molecules. The machine was frozen in the solid lava.

“Brilliant idea, Morey,” said Arcot disgustedly. “It’ll be a nice job breaking it loose.”

Morey stuck the lux metal bar in the top clamp, walked off some distance, and snapped on the power. The rock immediately about the machine was molten again. A touch of the molecular pistol to the lux metal bar, and the machine jumped free of the molten rock.

Morey shut off the power. The machine was perfectly clean, and extremely hot.

“And your ship is made of that stuff!” exclaimed the Talsonian scientist. “What will destroy it?”

“Your weapon will, apparently.”

“But do you believe that we have power enough?” asked Morey with a smile.

“No⁠—it’s entirely too much. Can you tone that condensed lightning bolt down to a workable level?”

IX The Irresistible and the Immovable

The generator Arcot had brought was one of the two spare generators used for laboratory work. He took it now into the substation, and directed the Talsonian students and the scientist in the task of connecting it into the lines; though they knew where it belonged, he knew how it belonged.

Then the terrestrian turned on the power, and gradually increased it until the power authorities were afraid of breakdowns. The accumulators were charged in the city, and the power was being shipped to other cities whose accumulators were not completely charged.

But, after giving simple operating instructions to the students, Arcot and Morey went with Stel Felso Theu to his laboratory.

“Here,” Stel Felso Theu explained, “is the original apparatus. All these other machines you see are but replicas of this. How it works, why it works, even what it does, I am not sure of. Perhaps you will understand it. The thing is fully charged now, for it is, in part, one of the defenses of the city. Examine it now, and then I will show its power.”

Arcot looked it over in silence, following the great silver leads with keen interest. Finally he straightened, and returned to the Talsonian. In a moment Morey joined them.

The Talsonian then threw a switch, and an intense ionization appeared within the tube, then a minute spot of light was visible within the sphere of light. The minute spot of radiance is the real secret of the weapon. The ball of fire around it is merely wasted energy.

“Now I will bring it out of the tube.” There were three dials on the control panel from which he worked, and now he adjusted one of these. The ball of fire moved steadily toward the glass wall of the tube, and with a crash the glass exploded inward. It had been highly evacuated. Instantly the tiny ball of fire about the point of light expanded to a large globe.

“It is now in the outer air. We make the⁠—thing, in an evacuated glass tube, but as they are cheap, it is not an expensive procedure. The ball will last in its present condition for approximately three hours. Feel the exceedingly intense heat? It is radiating away its vast energy.

“Now here is the point of greatest interest.” Again the Talsonian