Campbell, John W Jr - The Battery of Hate

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The Battery of Hate

BY JOHN W. CAMPBELL, JR.

CHAPTER I

BRUCE KENNEDY looked delightedly at the ampere-hour-meter on the laboratory

bench, at the voltmeter, and finally at the ammeter. Then he drew out the

notebook from the left-hand desk drawer and carefully wrote in the new

entries.

"Wednesday, May 28, 1938, nine-thirty A.M. Ampere-hours, five thousand, six

hundred seventy-two; watt-hours, twenty-three thousand, eight hundred

twenty-two; volts, four-point-two; amperes, eighty-five. Sweet spirits of

niter, isn't she a brute for work!" He looked happily at the squat, black case

on the floor, two feet long, eighteen inches wide, and two feet high. A small,

humped projection at one end seemed the source of a faint whine that filled

the cellar-laboratory. A mass of heavy leads ran from two thick copper

terminals at the top of the black case, up to the table which served as a

laboratory bench. Over on one side of the room, where the angle of the

concrete cellar wall joined the wallboard, a pile of unused apparatus of

various sorts was heaped in disarray. Inductances, voltmeters, heavy

resistance coils, all the apparatus of an experimenter in electrophysics. On

the concrete wall, sections of shelves had been placed, holding rows of

various chemicals; in a rack on the floor below the window that let a patch of

bright golden sunshine on the floor hung a dozen curious rectangles of a

black, lustrous material. They were just the shape of the end of the black

case on the floor, plates for the battery evidently, black, lustrous plates,

soft black graphite.

To one side of the door through the wallboard was a frame of

pipes, and, attached to it by porcelain insulators was a network of wires that

resembled a gigantic electric toaster. A plate of zinc hung behind it,

evidently protecting from the heat the more or less combustible wallboard,

which had, nevertheless, been scorched slightly.

The room was terrifically, uncomfortably hot, though both door and window were

opened, for it was a warm May day, and the huge heater certainly did nothing

to alleviate the temperature.

Kennedy wiped the perspiration from his forehead, happily, however, and smiled

down at his battery.

"The fuel battery—the ideal source of power! Electricity directly from coal—or

graphite. Electricity produced so cheaply nothing can compete! Electric

automobiles ten times more powerful and a hundred times simpler than the best

today—electric airplanes, noiseless and unfailing, because an electric motor

has just two bearings and a magnetic field. These batteries won't fail—they

can't.

"Lord, the world will be a better place, I guess." He smiled and stretched

himself ecstatically. Some men get more pleasure out of proving the world

isn't a bad place, and making their fellows like it better, than from

cornering the means to bring what pleasures the world already has to

themselves. Bruce Kennedy was one of the first kind. He smiled whimsically at

his "toaster" now. "You were all right when I started these experiments last

January, but May in New Jersey and you don't get along. Guess it's time to

test those batteries on a refrigerating machine." He stopped, as still another

thought struck him. Success was here and the thousand and one tiny but

irritating problems were ironed out, and now the great problem of its use came

before him. "Another thing people will have—home cooling will be worthwhile

when electric power comes at ten dollars a ton!"

Bruce Kennedy saw the good his invention of the fuel battery would bring the

world. A plate of graphite, cheaper and more plentiful than coal, down there

in the Archiazoic Period, oxygen from the air, a plate of copper, plated with

a thin layer of gold merely to collect current, and a cheaply made solution.

Power. Power, as he said, at "ten dollars a ton," for the air was free; the

graphite alone had to be renewed. The little whining motor, run by the battery

itself, served to force the bubbles of air through the solution, to keep it

saturated with oxygen.

So Bruce Kennedy blithely set about patenting the great invention and making

himself an electric automobile to be driven by these super-batteries. Had

someone pointed out to him the terrible path of

hate and bloodshed that lay ahead of that squat, rounded block of power on his

cellar floor, and ahead of him, he would not have believed it, for he was

young enough to think that men worked for the good of men, as he himself did.

CHAPTER II

Marcus Charles Gardner, large, very friendly, and popularly known as M. Chas.

Gardner, the big power of finance, was looking in some surprise at his

secretary.

"What? Who's this wants in? What's he got that's so important and

confidential, he can't tell you?"

"I don't know, for of course he didn't say, Mr. Gardner, but he's one of your

patent examiners. It might well be important."

"Oh, well. He might have waited till later in the morning anyway. Everybody

knows I hate to do or listen to anything important before lunch. Send him in;

it probably isn't much."

A small, shrewd-looking man came in. His clothes were very neat and very

somber. He looked like a successful lawyer, and was one, a patent lawyer.

"Mr. Gardner?"

"Yes," replied the magnate.

"I'm Peasley Jamison, as you have seen, and I have some news I am sure you

will want to hear. Perhaps I should not be certain, perhaps you will certainly

not want to hear it. At any rate"—he smiled at the bigger man

ironically—"there's a new invention. I've been watching for it for the last

twenty years, hoping I'd get hold of it. Hardwell and Thomas got it, new firm,

not big at all, but they tied it up beautifully. Very skillfully drawn patent.

Very pretty work."

"I," said M. Chas. Gardner angrily, "don't give a damn how beautiful it is.

What is it?"

Still the lawyer did not seem content to disclose his mystery. "I believe you

have control of North American Super-power? And proxy-control of most of the

oil fields of the country?"

"Yes, what of it?" Gardner was beginning to be wearied.

"If you can, sell out, and do it quickly," snapped the little man. Gardner

suddenly looked very much more alive.

"Eh, what? What in hell is this invention?"

"You wouldn't know if I told you. It's called a fuel battery, in-

vented by a young man by the name of Brace Rollings Kennedy. It's a device

that can produce power directly from graphite, and it gives it as electricity,

the most adaptable of all powers."

"Well, why not buy it?" snapped Gardner.

"Because, my dear man, you haven't money enough to pay adequately for it,"

smiled the little lawyer.

Gardner looked startled. That was the first time, in some twenty years, anyone

had told him he hadn't money enough to buy what he wanted. "What? How- Why I'm

worth at least a billion."

"Could you get that billion in cash? No, you could not. Neither could you buy

that invention. Even if you could, what would you use it for?"

"Why not in power plants, which is the natural answer? Tear out the boilers

tind generators?"

"Because it generates direct current, which can't be shipped along a line

readily; because there won't be any power plants when any man can make his

own, as he now owns his own cellar furnace; and lastly because that is only

one of the very minor possibilities. Do you know what's going to happen to the

oil companies? There won't be one where there are hundreds now. There aren't

going to be any gasoline-burning, oil-wasting, smelly, greasy, troublesome

gasoline automobiles any more. They'll be electric, and a gasoline motor uses

two quarts of oil for every drop an electric motor needs on its two bearings.

Gasoline is going to be so cheap they'll pay to have it carted away, and save

the insurance."

Gardner laughed. "I hope the rest of your predictions are as empty. I've seen

electric automobiles and their batteries. Now and then you can see one having

a furious race with some spavined truck horse."

Jamison's tight-lipped smile returned. "Did you ever see a

hundred-and-fifty-horsepower electric car? I did; I went to Florida to see it.

I was one of the few who saw it and knew what it was. Kennedy built one. He

went one hundred and seventy-five miles an hour. He said later he got scared

and had to stop."

"One hundred and fifty won't do that," said Gardner keenly.

"One hundred and fifty gasoline won't," Jamison acquiesced, "but one hundred

and fifty electric is something different. You've seen electric trucks,

haven't you? Some make a good twenty-five miles an hour—with two horsepower.

"A gasoline engine is in a constant state of explosion, which means

it wastes ninety-nine percent of its power on noise, heat, friction, and waste

motion. An electric motor has two bearings, no explosions, no . noise, no

waste motion, and almost no heat."

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Campbell, John W Jr - The Battery of Hate

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