Campbell, John W Jr - Islands of Space

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ISLANDS OF SPACE

Cover by McKeon

Also by John W. Campbell in Ace editions:

THE BLACK STAR PASSES (F-346) THE MIGHTIEST MACHINE (F-364)

Printed in U.S.A. .

PROLOGUE

IN THE EABLY PART OF THE Twenty Second Century, Dr. Richard Arcot, hailed as "the greatest living physicist", and Robert

Morey, his brilliant mathematical assistant, discovered the so-called "molecular motion drive", which utilized the random

energy of heat to produce useful motion.

John Fuller, designing engineer, helped the two men to build a ship which used the drive in order to have a weapon to seek

out and capture the mysterious Air Pirate whose robberies were ruining Transcontinental Airways.

The Pirate, Wade, was a brilliant but neurotic chemist who had discovered, among other things, the secret of invisibility.

Cured of his instability by modern psychomedical techniques, he was hired by Arcot to help build an interplanetary vessel

to go to Venus.

The Venusians proved to be a humanoid race of people who used telepathy for communication. Although they were

determined. "Dr. Arcot, Mr. Fuller is here. My orders are to check with you on all visitors,"

Arcot nodded. Send him up. But from now on, I'm not in to anyone but my father or the Interplanetary Chairman or the

elder Mr. Morey. If they come, don't bother to call, just send 'em up. I will not receive calls for the next ten hours. Got it?"

"You won't be bothered, Dr. Arcot."

Arcot cut the circuit and the image collapsed.

Less than two minutes later, a light flashed above the door. Arcot touched the release, and the door slid aside. He looked at

the man entering and said, with mock coldness:

"If it isn't the late John Fuller. What did you do-take a plane? It took you an hour to get here from Chicago."

Fuller shook his head sadly. "Most of the time was spent in getting past your guards. Getting to the seventy-fourth floor of

the Transcontinental Airways Building is harder than stealing the Taj Mahal." Trying to suppress a grin, , Fuller

bowed low. "Besides, I think it would do your royal i highness good to be kept waiting for a while. You're paid a couple of

million a year to putter around in a lab while honest people work for a living. Then, if you happen to stub your toe over

some useful gadget, they increase your pay. They call you scientists and spend the resources of two| worlds to get you

anything you want—and apologize if they! don't get it within twenty-four hours.

"No doubt about it; it will do your majesties good to

wait."

With a superior smile, he seated himself at the table and shuffled calmly through the sheets of equations before him.

Arcot and Wade were laughing, but not Robert Morey. With a sorrowful expression, he walked to the window and! looked

out at the hundreds of slim, graceful aircars that' floated above the city.

"My friends," said Morey, almost tearfully, "I give you the great Dr. Arcot. These countless machines we see have come

from one idea of his. Just an idea, mind you! And

who worked it into mathematical form and made it calculable, and therefore useful? I did I

"And who worked out the math for the interplanetary ships? I didl Without me they would never have been built!" He

turned dramatically, as though he were playing King Lear. "And what do I get for it?" He pointed an accusing finger at

Arcot. "What do I get? He is called 'Earth's most brilliant physicist', and I, who did all the hard work, am referred to as 'his

mathematical assistant'." He shook'his head solemnly. "It's a hard world."

At the table, Wade frowned, then looked at the ceiling. "If you'd make your quotations more accurate, they'd be more

trustworthy. The news said that Arcot was the 'System's most brilliant physicist', and that you were the brilliant

mathematical assistant who showed great genius in developing the mathematics of Dr. Arcot's new theory'." Having

delivered his speech, Wade began stoking his pipe.

Fuller tapped his fingers on the table. "Come on, you clowns, knock it off and tell me why you called a hard-working man

away from his drafting table to come up to this play room of yours. What have you got up your sleeve this time?"

"Oh, that's too bad," said Arcot, leaning back comfortably in his chair. "We're sorry you're so busy. We were thinking of

going out to see what Antares, Betelguese, or Polaris looked like at close range. And, if we don't get too1 bored, we might

run over to the giant model nebula in Andromeda, or one of the others. Tough about your being busy; you might have

helped us by designing the ship and earned your board and passage. Tough." Arcot looked at Fuller sadly.

Fuller's eyes narrowed. He knew Arcot was kidding, but he also knew how far Arcot would go when he was kidding —and

this sounded like he meant it. Fuller said: "Look, teacher, a man named Einstein said that the velocity of light was tops over

two hundred years ago, and nobody's come up with any counter evidence yet. Has the Lord instituted a new speed law?"

"Oh, no," said Wade, waving his pipe in a grand gesture of importance. "Areot just decided he didn't like that law and made

a new one himself."

"Now wait a mhfuteF said Fuller. "The velocity of light is a property of space!"

Arcot's bantering smile was gone. "Now you've got it, Fuller. The velocity of light, just as Einstein said, is a property of

space. What happens if we change space?"

Fuller blinked. "Change space? How?"

Arcot pointed toward a glass of water sitting nearby. "Why do things look distorted through the water? Because the light

rays are bent. Why are they bent? Because as each wave front moves from air to water, it slows down. The electromagnetic

and gravitational fields between those atoms are strong enough to increase the curvature of the space between them. Now,

what happens if we reverse that effect?"

"Oh," said Fuller softly. "I get it. By changing the curvature of the space surrounding you, you could get any velocity you

wanted. But what about acceleration? It would take years to reach those velocities at any acceleration a man could stand."

Arcot shook his head. "Take a look at the glass of water again. What happens when the light comes out of the water? It

speeds up again instantaneously. By changing the space around a spaceship, you instantaneously change the velocity of the

ship to a comparable velocity in that space. And since every particle is accelerated at the same rate, you wouldn't feel it,

any more than you'd feel the acceleration due to gravity in free fall."

Fuller nodded slowly. Then, suddenly, a light gleamed in his eyes. "I suppose you've figured out where you're going to get

the energy to power a ship like that?"

"He has," said Morey. "Uncle Arcot isn't the type to forget a little detail like that."

"Okay, give," said Fuller.

Arcot grinned and lit up his own pipe, joining Wade in an attempt to fill the room with impenetrable fog.

"AH right," Arcot began, "we needed two things: a tremendous source of power and a way to store it.

"For the first, ordinary atomic energy wouldn't do. It's not controllable enough and uranium isn't something we could carry

by the ton. So I began working with high-density currents.

"At the temperature of liquid helium, near absolute zero, lead becomes a nearly perfect conductor. Back in nineteen twenty,

physicists had succeeded in making a current flow for four hours in a closed circuit. It was just a ring of lead, but the

resistance was so low that the current kept on flowing. They even managed to get six hundred amperes through a piece of

lead wire no bigger than a pencil lead.

"I don't know why they didn't go on from there, but they didn't. Possibly it was because they didn't have the insulation

necessary to keep down the corona effect; in a high-density current, the electrons tend to push each other sideways out of

the wire.

"At any rate,; I tried it, using lux metal as an insulator around the wire."

"Hold it!" Fuller interrupted. "What, may I ask, is lux metal?"

"That was Wade's idea," Arcot grinned. "You remember those two substances we found in the Nigran ships during the

war?"

"Sure," said Fuller. "One was transparent and the other was a perfect reflector. You said they were made of light— photons

so greatly condensed that they were held together by their gravitational fields."

"Right, We called them light-metal. But Wade said that was too confusing. With a specific gravity of 103.5, light-metal

was certainly not a light metal! So Wade coined a couple of words. Lux is the Latin for light, so he named the transparent

one lux and the reflecting one relux."

"It sounds peculiar," Fuller observed, "but so does every coined word when you first hear it. Go on with your story."

Arcot relit his pipe and went on. "I put a current of ten thousand amps through a little piece of lead wire, and

that gave me a current density of 1010 amps per square inch.

"Then I started jackipg up the voltage, and modified the thing with a do^We-^olarity field somewhat similar to the

molecular motiori field except that it works on a sub-nucleonic level. As a result, about half of the lead fed into the

chamber became contraterrene lead! The atoms just turned themselves inside out, so to speak, giving us an atom with

positrons circling a negatively charged nucleus. It even gave the neutrons a reverse spin, converting them into anti-

neutrons.

"Result: total annihilation of matter! When the contraterrene lead atoms met the terrene lead atoms, mutual

annihilation resulted, giving us pure energy.

"Some of this power can be bled off to power the mechanism itself; the rest is useful energy. We've got all the power

we need—power, literally by the ton."

Fuller said nothing; he just looked dazed. He was well beginning to believe that these three men could do the

impossible and do it to order.

"The second thing," Arcot continued, "was, as I said, a way to store the energy so that it could be released as rapidly

or as slowly as we needed it.

"That was Morey's baby. He figured it would be possible to use the space-strain apparatus to store energy. It's an old

method; induction coils, condensers, and even gravity itself are storing energy by straining space. But with Morey's

apparatus we could store a lot more.

"A torus-shaped induction coil encloses all its magnetic field within it; the torus, or 'doughnut' coil, has a perfectly

enclosed magnetic field. We built an enclosed coil, using Morey's principle, and expected to store a few watts of

power in it to see how long we could hold it.

"Unfortunately, we made the mistake of connecting it to the city power lines, and it cost us a hundred and fifty

dollars at a quarter of a cent per kilowatt hour. We blew fuses all over the place. After that, we used the relux plate

generator.

"At any rate, the gadget can store power and plenty of it, and it can put it out the same way."

Arcot knocked the ashes out of his pipe and smiled at Fuller. "Those are the essentials of what we have to offer. We

give you the job of figuring out the stresses and strains involved. We want a ship with a cruising radius of a thousand

million light years."

"Yes, sir! Right away, sir! Do you want a gross or only a dozen?" Fuller asked sarcastically. "You sure believe- in

big orders! And whench cometh the cold cash for this lovely dream of yours?"

"That," said Morey darkly, "is where the trouble comes in. We have to convince Dad. As President of

Transcontinental Airways, he's my boss, but the trouble is, he's also my father. When he hears that I want to go

gallivanting off all over the Universe with you guys, he is very likely to turn thumbs down on the whole deal.

Besides, Arcot's dad has a lot of influence around here, too, and I have a healthy hunch he won't like the idea, either."

"I rather fear he won't," agreed Arcot gloomily.

A silence hung over the room that felt almost as heavy as the pall of pipe smoke the air conditioners were trying

frantically to disperse.

The elder Mr. Morey had full control of their finances. A ship that would cost easily hundreds of millions of dollars

was well beyond anything the four men could get by themselves. Their inventions were the property of

Transcontinental, but even if they had not been, not one of the four men would think of selling them to another

company.

Finally, Wade said: "I think we'll stand a much better chance if we show them a big, spectacular exhibition;

something really impressive. We'll point out all the advantages and uses of the apparatus. Then well show them

complete plans for the ship. They might consent."

"They might," replied Morey smiling. "It's worth a try, anyway. And let's get out of the city to do it. We can go up to

my place in Vermont. We can use the lab up there

for all we need. We've got everything worked out, so there's no need to stay here.

"Besides, I've got .sftlaKe up there in which we can indulge in a little at^visr|i to the fish stage of evolution."^

"Good enough," Arcot agreed, grinning broadly. "And we'll need that lake, too. Here in the city it's only eighty-five

because the arrears are soaking up heat for their^molecu-lar drive, but out in the country it'll be in the nineties."

"To the mountains, then! Let's pack up!"

THE MANY BOOKS AND PAPEBS they had collected were hastily put into the briefcases, and the four men took the

elevator to the landing area on the roof.

"We'll take my car," Morey said. "The rest of you can just leave yours here. They'll be safe for a few days."

They all piled in as Morey slid into the driver's seat and turned on the power.

They rose slowly, looking below them at the traffic of the great city. New York had long since abandoned her rivers

as trade routes; they had been covered solidly by steel decks which were used as public landing fields and ground car

routes. Around them loomed titanic structures of glistening colored tile. The sunlight reflected brilliantly from them,

and the contrasting colors of the buildings seemed to blend together into a great, multicolored painting.

The darting planes, the traffic of commerce down between the great buildings, and the pleasure cars above,

combined to give a series of changing, darting shadows that wove a flickering pattern over the city. The long lines of

ships

coming in from Chicago, London, Buenos Aires and San Francisco, and the constant flow from across the Pole—

from Russia, India, and China, were like mighty black serpents that wound their way into the city.

Morey cut into a Northbound traffic level, moved into the high-speed lane, and eased in on the accelerator. He held

to the traffic pattern for two hundred and fifty miles, until he was well past Boston, then he turned at the first break

and fired the ship toward their goal in Vermont.

Less than forty-five minutes since they had left New York, Morey was dropping the car toward the little mountain

lake that offered them a place for seclusion. Gently, he let the ship glide smoothly into the shed where the first

molecular motion ship had been built. Arcot jumped out, saying:

"We're here—unload and get going. I think a swim and some sleep is in order before we start work on this ship. We

can begin tomorrow." He looked approvingly at the clear blue water of the little lake.

Wade climbed out and pushed Arcot to one side. "All right, out of the way, then, little one, and let a man get going."

He headed for the house with the briefcases.

Arcot was six feet two and weighed close to two hundred, but Wade was another two inches taller and weighed a

good fifty pounds more. His arms and chest were built on the same general plan as those of a gorilla. He had good

reason to call Arcot little.

Morey, though still taller, was not as heavily formed, and weighed only a few pounds more than Arcot, while Fuller

was a bit smaller than Arcot.

Due to several factors, the size of the average human being had been steadily increasing for several centuries. Only

Wade would have been considered a "big" man by the average person, for the average man was over six feet tall.

They relaxed most of the afternoon, swimming and indulging in a few wrestling matches. At wrestling, Wade

consistently proved himself not only built like a gorilla but

muscled like one; but Arcot proved that skill was not without merit several times, for he had found that if he could

make the match las&xnsre than two minutes, Wade's huge muscles would finjj'fcn insufficient oxygen supply and

tire quickly. '

That evening, after dinner, Morey engaged Wade in a fierce battle of chess, with Fuller as an interested spectator.

Arcot, too, was watching, but he was saying nothing.

After several minutes of uneventful play, Morey stopped suddenly and glared at the board. "Now why'd I make that

move? I intended to move my queen over there to check your king on the red diagonal."

"Yeah," replied Wade gloomily, "that's what I wanted you to do. I had a sure checkmate in three moves."

Arcot smiled quietly.

They continued play for several moves, then it was Wade who remarked that something seemed to be influencing his

play.

"I had intended to trade queens. I'm glad I didn't, though; I think this leaves me in a better position."

"It sure does," agreed Morey. "I was due to clean up on the queen trade. You surprised me, too; you usually go in for

trades. I'm afraid my position is hopeless now."

It was. In the next ten moves, Wade spotted the weak points in every attack Morey made; the attack crumbled

disastrously and white was forced to resign, his long in a hopeless position.

Wade rubbed his chin. "You know, Morey, I seemed to know exactly why you made every move, and I saw every

possibility involved."

"Yeah—so I noticed," said Morey with a grin.

"Come on, Morey, let's try a game," said Fuller, sliding into the chair Wade had vacated.

Although ordinarily equally matched with Fuller, Morey again went down to disastrous defeat in an amazingly short

time. It almost seemed as if Fuller could anticipate every move.

"Brother, am I off form today," he said, rising from the table. "Come on, Arcot—let's see you try Wade."

Arcot sat down, and although he had never played chess as extensively as the others, he proceeded to clean Wade out

lock, stock, and barrel.

"Now what's come over you?" asked Morey in astonishment as he saw a very complicated formation working out, a

formation he knew was far better than Arcot's usual game. He had just worked it out and felt very proud of it.

Arcot looked at him and smiled. "That's the answer, Morey!"

Morey blinked. "What—what's the answer to what?"

"Yes—I meant it—don't be so surprised—you've seen it done before. I have—no, not under him, but a more

experienced teacher. I figured it would come in handy in our explorations."

Morey's face grew more and more astonished as Arcot's strange monologue continued.

Finally, Arcot turned to Wade, who was looking at him and Morey in wide-eyed wonder. And this time, it was Wade

who began talking in a monologue.

"You did?" he said in a surprised voice. "When?" There was a long pause, during which Arcot stared at Wade with

such intensity that Fuller began to understand what was happening.

"Well," said Wade, "if you've learned the trick so thoroughly, try it out. Let's see you project your thoughts! Go

ahead!"

Fuller, now understanding fully what was going on, burst out laughing. "He has been projecting his thoughts! He

hasn't said a word to you!" Then he looked at Arcot. "As a matter of fact, you've said so little that I don't know how

you pulled this telepathic stunt—though I'm quite convinced that you did."

"I spent three months on Venus a while back," said Arcot, 'studying with one of their foremost telepathists. Actually,

most of that time was spent on theory; learning how to do it isn't a difficult proposition. It just takes practice.

"The whole secret is that everyone has the power; it's a very ancient power in the human brain, and most of the lower

animals possess'-,!! to a greater degree than do humans. When Man develj&pec[ language, it gave his thoughts more

concreteness and permitted a freer and more clearly conceived type of thinking. The result was that telepathy fell into

disuse.

"I'm going to show you how to do it because it will be invaluable if we meet a strange race. By projecting pictures and

concepts, you can dispense with going to the trouble of learning the language.

"After you learn the basics, all you'll need is practice, but watch yourself! Too much practice can give you the great-

granddaddy of all headaches! Okay, now to begin with . . ."

Arcot spent the rest of the evening teaching them the Venerian system of telepathy.

They all rose at nine. Arcot got up first, and the others found it expedient to follow his example shortly thereafter. He had

brought a large Tesla coil into the bedroom from the lab and succeeded in inducing sufficient voltage in the bedsprings to

make very effective, though harmless, sparks.

"Come on, boys, hit the deck! Wade, as chief chemist, you are to synthesize a little coffee and heat-treat a few eggs for us.

We have work ahead today! Rise and shine!" He didn't shut off the coil until he was assured that each of them had gotten a

considerable distance from his bed.

"Ouch!" yelled Morey. "Okay! Shut it off! I want to get my pants! We're all up! You win!"

After breakfast, they all went into the room they used as a calculating room. Here they had two different types of integraph

calculators and plenty of paper and equipment to do their own calculations and draw graphs.

"To begin with," said Fuller, "let's decide what shape we want to use. As designer, I'd like to point out that a sphere is the

strongest, a cube easiest to build, and a torpedo shape

the most efficient aerodynamically. However, we intend to use it in space, not air.

"And remember, well need it more as a home than as a ship during the greater part of the trip."

"We might need an aerodynamically stable hull," Wade interjected. "It came in mighty handy on Venus. They're darned

useful in emergencies. What do you think, Arcot?"

"I favor the torpedo shape. Okay, now we've got a hull. How about some engines to run it? Let's get those, too. I'll name

the general things first; facts and figures can come later.

"First: We must have a powerful mass-energy converter. We could use the cavity radiator and use cosmic rays to warm it,

and drive the individual power units that way, or we can have a main electrical power unit and warm them all electrically.

Now, which one would be the better?"

Morey frowned. "I think we'd be safer if we didn't depend on any one plant, but had each as separate as possible. I'm for

the individual cavity radiators."

"Question," interjected Fuller. "How do these cavity radiators work?"

"They're built like a thermos bottle," Arcot explained. The inner shell will be of rough relux, which will absorb the heat

efficiently, while the outer one will be of polished relux to keep the radiation inside. Between the two we'll run a flow of

helium at two tons per square inch pressure to carry the heat to the molecular motion apparatus. The neck of the bottle will

contain the atomic generator."

Fuller still looked puzzled. "See here; with this new space strain drive, why do we have to have the molecular drive at all?"

"To move around near a heavy mass—in the presence of a strong gravitational field," Arcot said. "A gravitational field

tends to warp space in such a way that the velocity of light is lower in its presence. Our drive tries to warp or strain space

in the opposite manner. The two would simply cancel each other out and we'd waste a lot of power going nowhere. As

a'matter of fact, the gravitational field of the

sun is so' intense that we'll have to go out beyond the orbit of Pluto before we can use the space strain drive

effectively." f~<.

"I catch," said^Piitler. "Now to get back to the generators. I think the power units would be simpler if they were

controlled from one electrical power source, and just as reliable. Anyway, the molecular motion power is controlled,

of necessity, from a single generator, so if one is apt to go bad, the other is, too."

"Very good reasoning," smiled Morey, "but I'm still strong for decentralization. I suggest a compromise. We can

have the main power unit and the main verticals, which will be the largest, controlled by individual cosmic ray

heaters, and the rest run by electric power units. They'd be just heating coils surrounded by the field."

"A good idea," said Arcot. "I'm in favor of the compromise. Okay, Fuller? Okay. Now the next problem is weapons.

I suggest we use a separate control panel and a separate generating panel for the power tubes we'll want in the

molecular beam projectors."

The molecular beam projector simply projected the field that caused molecular motion to take place as wanted. As

weapons, they were terrifically deadly. If half a mountain is suddenly thrown into the air because all the random

motion of its molecules becomes concentrated in one direction, it becomes a difficult projectile to fight. Or touch the

bow of a ship with the beam; the bow drops to absolute zero and is driven back on the stern, with all the speed of its

billions of molecules. The general effect is similar to that produced by two ships having a head-on collision at ten

miles per second.

Anything touched by the beam is broken by its own molecules, twisted by its own strength, and crushed by its own

toughness. Nothing can resist it.

"My idea," Arcot went on, "was that since the same power is used for both the beams and the drive, we'll have two

separate power-tube banks to generate it. That way, if one breaks down, we can switch to the other. We can even use

both at once on the drive, if necessary; the molecular motion machines will stand it if we make them of relux and

anchor them with lux metal beams. The projectors would be able to handle the power, too, using Dad's new system.

"That will give us more protection, and, at the same time, full power. Since we'll have several projectors, the power

needed to operate the ship will be about equal to the power required to operate the projectors.

"And I also suggest we mount some heat beam .projectors."

"Why?" objected Wade. "They're less effective than the molecular rays. The molecular beams are instantly

irresistible, while the heat beams take time to heat up the target. Sure, they're unhealthy to deal with, but no more so

than the molecular beam."

"True enough," Arcot agreed, "but the heat beam is more spectacular, and we may find that a mere spectacular

display will accomplish as much as actual destruction. Besides, the heat beams are more local in effect. If we want to

kill an enemy and spare his captive, we want a beam that will be deadly where it hits, not for fifty yards around."

"Hold it a second," said Fuller wearily. "Now it's heat beams. Don't you guys think you ought to explain a little bit to

the poor goon who's designing this flying battlewagon? How did you get a heat beam?"

Arcot grinned. "Simple. We use a small atomic cavity radiator at one end of which is a rough relux parabolic filter.

Beyond that is a lux metal lens. The relux heats up tremendously, and since there is no polished relux to reflect it

back, the heat is radiated out through the lux metal lens as a powerful heat beam."

"Okay, fine," said Fuller. "But stop springing new gadgets on me, will you?"

"Ill try not to," Arcot laughed. "Anyway, let's get on to tile main power plant. Remember that our condenser coil is a

gadget for storing energy in space; we are therefore obliged to supply it with energy to store. Just forming the drive

field alone will require two times ten to the twenty-

seventh ergs, or the energy of about two and a half tons of matter. That means 9, whale of a lot of lead wire will have to be

fed into our conversion generators; it would take several hours to charge,* the coils. We'd better have two big chargers to

do the job.

"The controls we can figure out later. How about it? Any suggestions?"

"Sounds okay to me," said Morey, and the others agreed.

"Good enough. Now, as far as air and water go, we can use the standard spacecraft apparatus, Fuller, so you can figure that

in any way you want to."

"We'll need a lab, too," Wade put in. "And a machine shop with plenty of spare parts—everything we can possibly think of.

Remember, we may want to build some things out in space."

"Right. And I wonder—" Arcot looked thoughtful. "How about the invisibility apparatus? It may prove useful, and it won't

cost much. Let's put that in, too."

The apparatus he mentioned was simply a high-frequency oscillator tube of extreme power which caused vibrations

approaching light frequency to be set up in the molecules of the ship. As a result, the ship became transparent, since light

could easily pass through the vibrating molecules.

There was only one difficulty; the ship was invisible, all right, but it became a radio sender and could easily be detected by

a directional radio. However, if the secret were unknown, it was a very effective method of disappearing. And, since the

frequency was so high, a special detector was required to pick it up.

"Is that all you need?" asked Fuller.

"Nope," said Arcot, leaning back in his chair. "Now comes the kicker. I suggest that we make the hull of foot-thick lux

metal and line it on the inside with relux wherever we want it to be opaque. And we want relux shutters on the windows.

Lux is too doggone transparent; if we came too close to a hot star, we'd be badly burned."

Fuller looked almost goggle-eyed. "A—foot—of—lux! Good

Lord, Arcot! This ship would weigh a quarter of a million tons! That stuff is dense!"

"Sure," agreed Arcot, "but we'll need the protection. With a ship like that, you could run through a planetoid without

hurting the hull. We'll make the relux inner wall about an inch thick, with a vacuum between them for protection in a warm

atmosphere. And if some tremendous force did manage to crack the outer wall, we wouldn't be left without protection."

"Okay, you're the boss," Fuller said resignedly. "It's going to have to be a big ship, though. I figure a length of about two

hundred feet and a diameter of around thirty feet. The interior I'll "furnish with aluminum; it'll be cheaper and lighter. How

about an observatory?"

"Put it in the rear of the ship," Wade suggested. "We'll mount one of the Nigran telectroscopes."

"Control room in the bow, of course," Morey chipped in.

"I've got you," Fuller said. "I'll work the thing out and give you a cost estimate and drawings."

"Fine," said Arcot, standing up. "Meanwhile, the rest of us will work out our little exhibition to impress Mr. Morey and

Dad. Come on, lads, let's get back to the lab."

Ill

IT WAS TWO WEEKS before Dr. Robert Arcot and his old friend Arthur Morey, president of Transcontinental Airways, were

invited to see what their sons had been working on. The demonstration was to take place in the radiation labs fa the

basements of the Transcontinental building. Arcot,

Wade, Morey, and Fuller had brought the equipment in from the country place in Vermont and set it up in one of the

heavily-lined, vault-like chambers that were used for radiation experinfeiit"4

The two older men were seated before a huge eighty-inch three-dimensional television screen several floors above the level

where the actual demonstration was going on.

"There can't be anyone in the room, because of radiation burns," explained Arcot, junior. "We could have surrounded the

thing with relux, but then you couldn't have seen what's going on.

"I'm not going to explain anything beforehand; like magic, they'll be more astounding before the explanation is given."

He touched a switch. The cameras began to operate, and the screen sprang into life.

The screen showed a heavy table on which was mounted a small projector that looked something like a searchlight with

several heavy cables running into it. In the path of the projector was a large lux metal crucible surrounded by a ring of

relux, and a series of points of relux aimed into the crucible. These points and the ring were grounded. Inside the crucible

was a small ingot of coronium, the strong, hard, Venerian metal which melted at twenty-five hundred degrees centigrade

and boiled at better than four thousand. The crucible was entirely enclosed in a large lux metal case which was lined, on the

side away from the projector, with roughened relux.

Arcot moved a switch on the control panel. Far below them, a heavy relay slammed home, and suddenly a solid beam of

brilliant bluish light shot out from the projector, a beam so brilliant that the entire screen was lit by the intense glow, and

the spectators thought that they could almost feel the heat.

It passed through the lux metal case and through the coronium bar, only to be cut off by the relux liner, which, since it was

rough, absorbed over ninety-nine percent of the rays that struck it.

The coronium bar glowed red, orange, yellow, and white in quick succession, then suddenly slumped into a molten mass in

the bottom of the crucible.

The crucible was filled now with a mass of molten metal that glowed intensely white and seethed furiously. The slowly

rising vapors told of the rapid boiling, and their settling showed that their temperature was too high to permit them to

remain hot—the heat radiated away too fast.

For perhaps ten seconds this went on, then suddenly a new factor was added to the performance; There was a sudden

crashing arc and a blaze of blue flame that swept in a cyclonic twisting motion inside the crucible. The blaze of the arc, the

intense brilliance of the incandescent metal, and the weird light of the beam of radiation shifted in a fantastic play of

colors. It made a strange and impressive scene.

Suddenly the relay sounded again; the beam of radiance disappeared as quickly as it had come. In an instant, the blue violet

glare of the relux plate had subsided to an angry red. The violent arcing had stopped, and the metal was cooling rapidly. A

heavy purplish vapor in the crucible condensed on the walls into black, flakey crystals.

The elder Arcot was watching the scene in the screen curiously. "I wonder—" he said slowly. "As a physicist, I should say

it was impossible, but if it did happen, I should imagine these would be the results." He turned to look at Arcot junior.

"Well, go on with your exhibition, son."

"I want to know your ideas when we're through, though, Dad," said the younger man. "The next on the program is a little

more interesting, perhaps. At least it demonstrates a more commercial aspect of the thing."

The younger Morey was operating the controls of the handling robots. On the screen, a machine rolled in on caterpillar

treads, picked up the lux case and its contents, and carried them off.

A minute later, it reappeared with a large electromagnet and a relux plate, to which were attached a huge pair of silver

busbars. The relux plate was set in a stand directly in

front of the projector, and the big electromagnet was set up directly behind the relux plate. The magnet leads were

connected, and a coil, fa the form of two toruses intersecting at right angles encl|tee^| in a form-fitting relux case, had been

connected to the heavy terminals of the relux plate. An ammeter and a heavy coil of coronium wire were connected in

series with the coil, and a kilovoltmeter was connected across the terminals of the relux plate.

As soon as the connections were completed, the robot backed swiftly out of the room, and Arcot turned on the magnet and

the ray projector. Instantly, there was a sharp deflection of the kilovoltmeter.

"I haven't yet closed the switch leading into the coil," he explained, "so there's no current." The ammeter needle hadn't

moved.

Despite the fact that the voltmeter seemed to be shorted out by the relux plate, the needle pointed steadily at twenty-two.

Arcot changed the current through the magnet, and the reading dropped to twenty.

The rays had been on at very low power, the air only slightly ionized, but as Arcot turned a rheostat, the intensity

increased, and the air in the path of the beam shone with an intense blue. The relux plate, subject now to eddy currents,

since there was no other path for the energy to take, began to heat up rapidly.

"I'm going to close the switch into the coil now," said Arcot. "Watch the meters."

A relay snapped, and instantly the ammeter jumped to read 4500 amperes. The voltmeter gave a slight kick, then remained

steady. The heavy coronium spring grew warm and began to glow dully, while the ammeter dropped slightly because of the

increased resistance. The relux plate cooled slightly, and the voltmeter remained steady.

"The coil you see is storing the energy that is flowing into it," Arcot explained. "Notice that the coronium resistor is

increasing its resistance, but otherwise there is little increase in the back E.M.F. The energy is coming from the

rays which strike the polarized relux plate to give the current."

He paused a moment to make slight adjustments in the controls, then turned his attention back to the screen.

The kilovoltmeter still read twenty.

"Forty-five hundred amperes at twenty thousand volts," the elder Arcot said softly. "Where is it going?"

"Take a look at the space within the right angle of the torus coils," said Arcot junior. "It's getting dark in there despite the

powerful light shed by the ionized air."

Indeed, the space withing the twin coils was rapidly growing dark; it was darkening the image of the things behind it, oddly

blurring their outlines. In a moment, the images were completely wiped out, and the region within the coils was filled with

a strangely solid blackness.

"According to the instruments," young Arcot said, "we have stored fifteen thousand kilowatt hours of energy in that coil

and there seems to be no limit to how much power we can get into it. Just from the power it contains, that coil is worth

about forty dollars right now, figured at a quarter of a cent per kilowatt hour.

"I haven't been using anywhere near the power I can get out of this apparatus, either. Watch." He threw another switch

which shorted around the coronium resistor and the ammeter, allowing the current to run into the coil directly from the

plate.

"I don't have a direct reading on this," he explained, "but an indirect reading from the magnetic field in that room shows a

current of nearly a hundred million amperes!"

The younger Morey had been watching a panel of meters on the other side of the screen. Suddenly, he shouted: "Cut ft,

Arcot I The conductors are setting up a secondary field in the plate and causing trouble."

Instantly, Arcot's hand went to a switch. A relay slammed open, and the ray projector died.

The power coil still held its field of enigmatic blackness.

"Watch this," Arcot instructed. Under his expert manipu-

lation, a small robot handler rolled into the room. It had a pair of pliers clutched in one claw. The spectators watched

the screen in fascinatiok as the robot drew back its arm and hurled the pliers ajK.tni black field with all its might.

The pliers struck the blackness and rebounded as if they had hit a rubber wall. Arcot caused the little machine to pick

up the pliers and repeat the process.

Arcot grinned. "I've cut off the power to the coil. Unlike the ordinary induction coil, it isn't necessary to keep

supplying power to the thing; it's a static condition.

"You can see for yourself how much energy it holds. It's a handy little gadget, isn't it?" He shut off the rest of the

instruments and the television screen, then turned to his father.

"The demonstration is over. Got any theories, Dad?"

The elder Dr. Arcot frowned in thought. "The only thing I can think of that would produce an effect like that is a

stream of positrons—or contraterrene nuclei. That would explain not only the heating, but the electrical display.

"As far as the coil goes, that's easy to understand. Any energy storage device stores energy the strain in space; here

you can actually see the strain in space." Then he smiled at his son. "I see my ex-laboratory assistant has come a long

way. You've achieved controlled, usable atomic energy through total annihilation of mass. Right?"

Arcot smiled back and nodded. "Right, Dad."

"Son, I wonder if you'd give me your data sheets on that process. I'd like to work out some of the mathematical

problems involved."

"Sure, Dad. But right now—" Arcot turned toward the elder Mr. Morey. "—I'm more interested in the mathematics

of finance. We have a proposition to put to you, Mr. Morey, and that proposition, simply stated, is—"

Perhaps it was simply stated, but it took fully an hour for Arcot, Wade, and Morey to discuss the science of it with

the two older men, and Fuller spent another hour over the carefully drawn plans for the ship.

At last, the elder Mr. Morey settled back and looked va-

cantly at the ceiling. They were seated now in the conference room of Transcontinental Airways.

"Well, boys," said Mr. Morey, "as usual, I'm in a position where I'm forced to yield. I might refuse financial backing,

but you could sell any one of those gadgets for close to a billion dollars and finance the expedition independently, or

you could, with your names, request the money publicly and back it that way." He paused a moment. "I am, however,

thinking more in terms of your safety than in terms of money." There was another long pause, then he smiled at the

four younger men.

"I think, however, that we can trust you. Armed with cosmic and molecular rays, you should be able to put up a fair

scrap anywhere. Also, I have never detected any signs of feeblemindedness in any of you; I don't think you'll get

yourselves in a jam you can't get out of. I'll back you."

"I hate to interrupt your exuberance," said the elder Dr. Arcot, "but I should like to know the name of this remarkable

ship."

"What?" asked Wade. "Name? Oh, it hasn't any."

The elder Morey shook his head sadly. "That is indeed an important oversight. If a crew of men can overlook so

fundamental a thing, I wonder if they are to be trusted."

"Well, what are we going to call it, then?" asked Arcot.

"Solarite II might do," suggested Morey. "It will still be from the Solar System."

"I think we should be more broadminded," said Arcot. "We aren't going to stay in this system—not even in this

galaxy. We might call it the Galaxian."

"Did you say broadminded?" asked Wade. "Let's really be broad and call it the Universite or something like that. Or,

better yet, call it Flourine! That's everywhere in the universe and the most active element there is. This ship will go

everywhere in the universe and be the most active thing that ever existed!*'

"A good name!" said the elder Morey. "That gets my vote!"

Young Arcot looked thoughtful. "That's mighty good-I like the idea-but it, lacks ring." He paused, then, looking up at

the ceiling, repeated slowly:

*'Alone, alone, all, all alone; Alone on a wide, wide sea; Nor any saint took pity on My soul in agony."

He rose and walked over to the window, looking out where the bright points of light that were the stars of space rode

high in the deep violet of the moonlit sky.

"The sea of all space—the sea of vastness that lies between the far-flung nebulae—the mighty void—alone on a sea,

the vastness of which no man can imagine—alone-alone where no other man has been; alone, so far from all matter,

from all mankind, that not even light, racing at billions of miles each day, could reach home in less than a million

years." Arcot stopped and stood looking out of fhe window.

Morey broke the silence. "The Ancient Mariner." He paused. " 'Alone' will certainly be right. I think that name takes

all the prizes."

Fuller nodded slowly. "I certainly agree. The Ancient Mariner. It's kind of long, but it is the name."

It was adopted unanimously.

THE ANCIENT MARINER was built in the big Transcontinental shops in Newark; the power they needed was not

available in the smaller shops.

Working twenty-four hours a day, in three shifts, skilled men took two months to finish the hull according to Fuller's

specifications. The huge walls of lux metal required great care in construction, for they could not be welded; they

had to be formed in position. And they could only • be polished under powerful magnets, where the dense magnetic

field softened the lux metal enough to allow a diamond polisher to do the job.

When the hull was finished, there came the laborious work of installing the power plant and the tremendous power

leads, the connectors, the circuits to the relays—a thousand complex circuits.

Much of it was standard: the molecular power tubes, the molecular ray projectors, the power tubes for the invisibility

apparatus, and many other parts. All the relays were standard, the gyroscopic stabilizers were standard, and the

electromagnetic braking equipment for the gyros was standard.

But there would be long days of work ahead for Arcot, Wade, and Morey, for only they could install the special

equipment; only they could put in the complicated wiring, for no one else on Earth understood the circuits they had

to establish.

During the weeks of waiting, Arcot and his friends worked on auxiliary devices to be used with the ship. They

wanted to make some improvements on the old molecular ray pistols, and to develop atomic powered heat projectors

for hand use. The primary power they stored in small space-strain coils in the handgrip of the pistol. Despite their

small size, the coils were capable of storing power for thirty hours of continuous operation of the rays. The finished

weapon was scarcely larger than a standard molecular ray pistol.

Arcot pointed out that many of the planets they might visit would be larger than Earth, and they lacked any way of

getting about readily under high gravity. Since something had to be done about that, Arcot did it. He demonstrated it

to his friends one day in the shop yard.

Morey and Wade had just been in to see Fuller about

some details of the ship, and as they came out, Arcot called them over to his worjt bench. He was wearing a space

suit without the helmet. -,./•• e

The modern spsjfpe "^iit is made of woven lux metal wires of extremely small diameter and airproofed with a

rubberoid flurocarbon plastic, and furnished with air and heating units. Made as it was, it offered protection nothing

else could offer; it was almost a perfect insulator and was resistant to the attack of any chemical reagent. Not even

elemental flour-ine could corrode it. And the extreme strength of the lux metal fiber made it stronger, pound for

pound, than steel or coronium.

On Arcot's back was a pack of relux plated metal. It was connected by relux web belts to a broad belt that circled

Arcot's waist. One thin cable ran down the right arm to a small relux tube about eight inches long by two inches in

diameter.

"Watch!" Arcot said, grinning.

He reached to his belt and flipped a little switch.

"So longl See you later!" He pointed his right arm toward the ceiling and sailed lightly into the air. He lowered the

angle of his arm and moved smoothly across the huge hangar, floating toward the shining bulk of the rapidly forming

Ancient Mariner. He circled the room, rising and sinking at will, then headed for the open door.

"Come out and watch me where there's more room," he called.

Out in the open, he darted high up into the air until he was a mere speck in the sky. Then he suddenly came dropping

down and landed lightly before them, swaying on his feet and poised lightly on his toes.

"Some jump," said Morey, in mock surprise.

"Yeah," agreed Fuller. "Try again."

"Or," Wade put in, "give me that weight annihilator and I'll beat you at your own game. What's the secret?"

"That's a cute gadget. How much load does it carry?" asked Morey, more practically.

"I can develop about ten tons as far as it goes, but the

human body can't take more than five gravities, so we can only visit planets with less than that surface gravity. The

principle is easy to see; 111 show you."

He unhooked the cables and took the power pack from his back. "The main thing is the molecular power unit here,

electrically heated and mounted on a small, massive gyroscope. That gyro is necessary, too. I tried leaving it out and

almost took a nosedive. I had it coupled directly to the body and leaned forward a little bit when I was in the air!

Without a gyro to keep the drive upright, I took a loop and started heading for the ground. I had to do some fancy

gymnastics to keep from ending up six feet under—literal-

ry«

"The power is all generated in the pack with a small power plate and several storage coils. I've also got it hooked to

these holsters at my belt so we can charge the pistols while we carry them.

"The control is this secondary power cable running down my arm to my hand. That gives you your direction, and the

rheostat here at the belt changes the velocity.

"I've only made this one so far, but I've ordered six others like it. I thought you guys might like one, too."

"I think you guessed right!" said Morey, looking inside the power case. "Hey! Why all the extra room in the case?"

"It's an unperfected invention as yet; we might want to put some more stuff in there for our own private use."

Each of the men tried out the apparatus and found it quite satisfactory.

Meanwhile, there was other work to be done.

Wade had been given the job of gathering the necessary food and anything else in the way of supplies that he might think

of. Arcot was collecting the necessary spare parts and apparatus. Morey was gathering a small library and equipping a

chemistry laboratory. Fuller was to get together the necessary standard equipment for the ship—tables, seats, bunks, and

other furniture.

It took months of work, and it seemed it would never

be finished, but finally, one clear, warm day in August, the ship was completely Quipped and ready to go.

On the last inspection, the elder Dr. Arcot and the elder Mr. Morey went with' the four younger men. They stood beside the

great intergalactic cruiser, looking up at its shining hull.

"We came a bit later than we expected, son," said Dr. Arcot, "but we still expect a good show." He paused and frowned. "I

understand you don't intend to take any trial trip. What's the idea?"

Arcot had been afraid his father would be worried about that, so he framed his explanation carefully. "Dad, we figured this

ship out to the last decimal place; it's the best we can make it. Remember, the molecular motion drive will get a trial first;

we'll give it a trial trip when we leave the sun. If there's any trouble, naturally, we'll return. But the equipment is standard,

so we're expecting no trouble.

"The only part that would require a trial trip is the space-control apparatus, and there's no way to give that a trial trip.

Remember, we have to get far enough out from the sun so that the gravitational field will be weak enough for the drive to

overcome it. If we tried it this close, we'd just be trying to neutralize the sun's gravity. We'd be pouring out energy, wasting

a great deal of it; but out away from the sun, we'll get most of the energy back.

"On the other hand, when we do get out and get started we will go faster than light, and we'd be hopelessly beyond the

range of the molecular motion drive in an instant. In other words, if the space-control drive doesn't work, we can't come

back, and if it does work, there's no need to come back.

"And if anything goes wrong, we're the only ones who could fix it, anyway. If anything goes wrong, I'll radio Earth. You

ought to be able to hear from me in about a dozen years." He smiled suddenly. "Say! We might go out and get back here in

time to hear ourselves talking!

"But you can see why we felt that there was little reason

for a trial trip. If it's a failure, we'll never be back to say so; if it isn't, we'll be able to continue."

His father still looked worried, but he nodded in acquiescence. "Perfect logic, son, but I guess we may as well give up the

discussion. Personally, I don't like it. Let's see this ship of yours."

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ISLANDSOFSPACECopyright,1956,byJohnW.Campbell,Jr.Copyright,1930,byExperimenterPublications,Inc.AnAceBook,byarrangementwiththeauthor.AllRightsReservedCoverbyMcKeonAlsobyJohnW.CampbellinAceeditions:THEBLACKSTARPASSES(F-346)THEMIGHTIESTMACHINE(F-364)PrintedinU.S.A..PROLOGUEINTHEEABLYPARTOFTHETwentySeco...

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Campbell, John W Jr - Islands of Space

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