Campbell, John W Jr - The Mightiest machine

VIP免费

2024-12-16 0 0 268.95KB 95 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

JOHN W. CAMPBELL first started writing in 1930 when his first short story,

When the Atoms Failed, was accepted by a science-fiction magazine. At that

time he was twenty years old and still a student at college. As the title of

the story indicates, he was even at that time occupied with the significance

of atomic energy and nuclear physics.

For the next seven years, Campbell, bolstered by a scientific background that

ran from childhood experiments, to study at Duke University and the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote and sold science-fiction,

achieving for himself an enviable reputation in the field.

In 1937 he became the editor of Astounding Stories magazine and applied

himself at once to the task of bettering the magazine and the field of s-f

writing in general. His influence on science-fiction since then has been

great. Today he still remains as the editor of that magazine's evolved and

redesigned successor, Analog.

by JOHN W. CAMPBELL

ACE BOOKS, INC.

1120 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10036

THE MIGHTIEST.MACmNE

An Ace Book, by arrangement with the author.

Cover by Podwil.

John W. Campbell has also written: THE BLACK.STAR PASSES (F-346)

Printed in U.S.A.

"I SUPPOSE," SAID Don Carlisle with a look of disapproval, "that this, too, is

the 'latest and greatest achievement of interplanetary transportation

engineers.' They turn out a new latest and greatest about once every six

months -as fast as they build new ships in other words."

"You should talk!" Russ Spencer laughed. "One of the features of that ship is

the new Carlisle air rectifiers, guaranteed to maintain exactly the right

temperature, ion, oxygen, and ozone content as well as humidity control. But,

anyway," he went on, turning to his friend, "I wish you could have made this

discovery just two years earlier. It was the dream of dad's life to build the

first meteor-pro6f ship in the, Spencer Rocketship Yards. You physicists were

mighty slow about that. You've done the miracle now-I hope -but I wish you

could have done it sooner."

Big Aarn Munro smiled his slow smile. "I wish I could have, Russ. But

remember, physics is like a chain-you can't add the last link till all the

earlier ones are in place. You don't know, perhaps, how much depends on that

one discovery of the magnetic atmosphere. I couldn't have done it two years

before, because then the necessary background hadn't been developed. Now, the

magnetic atmosphere development of mine will serve as background for other

developments. While you engineers have been working on this ship, I have,

despite Carlisle's contemptuous references, been trying to prepare for another

'latest and greatest.' "

They had reached now, the base of the huge metal ways that supported the newly

completed Procyon, the Spencer Rocket Co.'s latest product. Nearly seven

hundred feet long, two hundred and fifty in diameter, a huge, squat cylinder,

it loomed gigantic. The outer hull of aluberyl gleamed with faint iridescent

color in the light of the few great lamps scattered about the huge

construction shed.

The hum and rattle of saws and welders was subdued here, all the work was

being done inside now, and fleets of heavy freight planes were dropping gently

into place on the helicopters, bearing loads of furnishings. Lights glowed in

some of the ports now, and six huge, twisting cables snaked off across the

littered yards to the main power board. The distant rhythm of the great power

plant outside echoed faintly even here.

"She taking off on time, Russ?" asked Aarn, looking up at her.

"She should." The engineer nodded. "Barrett said he was sure of his end. Trial

run tomorrow starting at 13:57:30 o'clock. Just to Luna City and back. And

let's hope, Aarn, that your idea is right." A note of real earnestness had en-

tered Spencer's voice now. "Aside from the fact that she means nearly ten

million credits investment, which no one will insure on this trip, there will

-necessarily be seventy-three men aboard. And I'm taking your word for it and

testing her in the worst of the Leonids."

Aarn nodded silently. Then he spoke again: "Physics says they will be safe

from anything short of a ton. And meteors weighing even a hundred pounds are

mighty rare."

""But it takes only one," Spencer reminded him, "and that one would mean near

ruin to me. My grandfather and my father have built up this business. I've had

mighty little to do with it-only the last two years since dad died-but I don't

want to see the tradition die. My grandfather built the first rocket to reach

the Moon back in 1983. Dad built the first rocket to reach Mars back in 2036.

Your father rode the first rocket to reach the surface of Jupiter. And mine

built it. But naturally the old Spencer rocket had plenty of competition. The

Deutsche Rakete people being the worst -or best. They'll be on my neck if I

lose this. But the little ships worked and, despite what they say about the

big field not holding, I'm trusting your figures."

"I'm going along," Aarn smiled. "I'll bet my neck on it, anyway. Physics is

generally a pretty safe bet."

"Uhmm-maybe so," Carlisle put in. "But you physicists have done a poor job on

the subject of the atom. You've been promising us atomic energy and

transmutation for a century, and you can't even tell why a chemical

combination takes place."

"I hear," said Aarn slowly, "that you chemists have a theory that will account

for it. And that theory also says that tungsten, in an X-ray tube, should

radiate in the 'pale pink,' as Morgenthal expressed it."

"Well-that's as good as your physics atoms will do. You predict, similarly,

that carbon will combine only with elec-

tro-negative elements. And X-rays in the 'pale pink' are no worse than denying

the very useful hydrocarbons. And we chemists have produced rocket fuels for

terrestrial rockets, while you physicists haven't yet produced atomic energy

for interplanetary rockets. Oh, you have a sort of bad compromise in the

accumulator-"

"The accumulator is a'very useful and compact device," Aarn interrupted,

"which holds no less than thirty thousand kilowatt hours per pound-just a wee

bit better than you chemists have ever hoped to do. I well remember that we

Jovians waited twenty-two long years for release. Chemists made fuels

eventually, that would lift a ship from Earth to Phobos-Mars to Jupiter, but

couldn't even begin to lift it back. So a few spirits like dad and mother and

the rest of the people there just marooned themselves and waited twenty-two

years till physics rescued them. Chemistry got them in, but couldn't get them

out again."

"Yes; but chemistry made their synthetic foods for them meanwhile"

"Foul things," said Aarn with a grimace. "I was nineteen before I tasted

food."

"They seemed to agree with you," said Spencer with a slight smile.

Aarn Munro stood some five feet seven in height, and, to those who did not

know him and his remarkable history, appeared exceedingly fat. He was nearly

five feet in circumference, while his arms and legs stuck out at peculiar

angles. And they seemed misshapen.

Jupiter, a world of two and a half times the gravity of Earth, required

strength in its people, and speed, too. On Earth, Aarn weighed nearly three

hundred and fifty pounds. For the first twenty years of his life he had lived

on the giant of the system, and had developed such strength as no

Terrestrian ever dreamed of. More than once he had proved his ability to lift

and walk off with a ton and a half of lead. "They did, chemically," Aarn

acknowledged. "But I wasn't sorry to see a ship come in that could get out

again."

"But," said Spencer, "if It wasn't for the nice stepladder of satellites, by

the way, even Aarn's vaunted physics couldn't get a ship loose from old Jove's

grip."

"That's true," returned Aarn, "but it doesn't enter the question, you see,

because the satellites are there. Nine of 'em. So it's just a case of Jupiter

to Five to Europa to Six to Mars. And what better could you ask?"

"I can ask a lot better," Spencer said, his voice suddenly sharp and annoyed.

They had reached the main entrance port of the Procyon, but Spencer stopped

where he was, damming up a stream of workmen, to talk. "I can ask for

antigravity apparatus. If physics is any good, it ought at least to be able to

say 'Here's the way to do it, but we can't just yet because of this or that,"

and then find out how to overcome those difficulties,

"And I could ask for a machine that could generate power. Power from atoms,

perhaps. This thing, this big hulking brute, it's a waste of water that this

planet may need some day. Look at Mars-dry as dust. Almost impossible to get

rocket water there. If it wasn't for the photo cells that give them power

direct from the Sun, and make it possible to cook water out of gypsum, they

couldn't live. Some day Earth will need water as badly, and this wasting of

thousands of tons of water is a crime and a thousand other things.

"Damn it all, Aarn, why don't you do something? Chemistry is helpless. It's a

job for physics, and you know it, and so does Carlisle, for all his bluffing.

Why don't you do it, though?

"You've done a miracle already in making that magnetic

atmosphere, and I know it. The way it stops meteors and burns them into gas is

a miracle; but not enough, we need more."

"We do, Russ, and I know it. That magnetic atmosphere was a by-product. It was

a first "step on the road, just the metal of which the key is made, purely

incidental. I haven't been saying much, but I've been doing some extremely

interesting work. And-I'm going to tell you a story.

"I saw a machine. It was the mightiest machine that could ever exist. It was

an atomic, better, a material engine. It burned matter to energy. Most of the

energy was electrical in nature at one stage of the process, but it was

converted to heat and light and other forms of energy. And one of those forms

of energy was a curious field of force that could tear great holes in

tremendous masses of matter, and there appeared coincidentally with that a

force that seemed to hurl masses of matter greater than a dozen worlds like

Earth, greater than mighty Jupiter, a million miles into space.

"It was a wonderful, pulsing, rhythmic machine, and operated in a wonderful

adjustment more delicate than any machine man ever made. Controlling

unimaginable billions of billions of horSe power, it remained in perfect

balance with a variation in its output of less than one per cent. Controlling

forces that could have hurled this planet about like a bit of dust, it

remained in perfect equilibrium.

"It was a star. Any star. It was the Sun, the mightiest machine man ever

observed. A titanic, inconceivable generator handling the power of three

millions of tons of destroyed matter every second-and maintaining equilibrium.

The explosion of more than three million tons of matter, really, regulated and

controlled. Save that occasionally a great rent appears in its surface that

could swallow all the planets of the system, and not be filled, or a tongue of

flame a quarter

of a million miles high and a million miles wide darts out, apparently lifting

billions of tons of matter hundreds of thousands of miles against a

gravitational force ten times as intense as Jupiter's-twenty-five times

Earth's.

"But-does it?"

Aarn looked intently at Spencer, and slowly an expression of wonder spread

over the engineer's face.

"Good-Heaven! Antigravity!"

"I only guess that, Russ. I don't know. But I want to have your help now. I

need your influence to have all the spaceliner captains make observations of a

particular nature. And I need the observations of the lunar magnetometer and

electrometer coordinated with a set of readings taken on Phobos and on

Satellite Nine. If you get me those- And I've another idea."

Aam turned and went on into the Procyon thoughtfully. The workmen who had been

patiently waiting for the big boss to get out of the way started streaming

through again.

IN THE super-patient tone one uses when patience is nigh exhausted, Spencer

spoke to the grinning Carlisle: "No. Spelled n-o. It is a syllable of

negation, and refers definitely to the fact that that blistering, cockeyed son

of an aberrating corkscrew, Aarn, has given me no tiniest bit of information.

I gave him all the information he wanted.

"I then asked him for one tiny spark of hope. 'Uhh! That isn't what I hope.

That's not so good. Still-maybe-my theory may be wrong, but it may not. No; I

don't know, Russ. I'll-' And then the clogged rocket goes wandering off on a

triple-focus ellipsoid orbit. I can't find out what he was going to do. He's

as noisy as a clam playing hide and seek with his best enemy when he starts

thinking. The worst of it is that he won't tell me anything at all."

Don Carlisle grinned again in sympathy. "I heard he was making noises like an

oyster, so I came over to see. Whose lab is this, anyway?"

Spencer looked at him reproachfully. "Why bring that up? I pay for it, so

naturally I can't get in. Since the Procyon rode out to the Moon and back

through the Leonid meteor shower without a dent, the whole shipyard has been

so crowded with orders I couldn't turn round quickly, and he's grown a head as

big as Jupiter itself. Before this gravity stunt he was working on something

else. 'Super-permeable space' he calls it. Something to do with that 'magnetic

atmosphere' of his."

"What," asked Carlisle, "is a magnetic atmosphere? I asked him once, and he

explained something about a field of high permeability that did something or

other to meteors so that they were electrified and so the field of special

permeability became impermeable, and the magnet makes the meteors stop and

blow up, because they are iron. Now I, in my simple, childish mind, always

thought a magnet attracted iron. It seems I was wrong."

Spencer grinned and answered: "It does. Up to a point, that is. What Aarn did

was to discover a way of making lines of magnetic force do something-that

gives us an isolated north or an isolated south magnetic pole. Also an

electric charge. Aarn says that the magnetic lines of force that represent the

other pole are turned through ninety degrees in space and become lines of

electric force.

"Anyway, he has a single pole magnet, and that proceeds to surround itself

with a uniform magnetic field. It does attract iron and nickel and cobalt, of

course, but when the metals fall through the magnetic field they have to cut

the lines of magnetic force. In doing so they act as electric generators.

Electricity is generated in them and heats them. But heat represents energy,

and the heat they generate is generated at the expense of their motion.

"The magnetic field is so intense, and their velocity so great at first, that

they are heated almost instantaneously to thousands of degrees centigrade and

explode into vapor. As vapor they are not dangerous, and nothing larger can

get through. Except, of course, the huge things that are too big for the field

to handle, but a meteor weighing five hundred pounds is almost as rare as a

comet.

"In other words, this magnetic field serves for the space ship just as the

Earth's atmosphere does for the planet. It slows the biggest, and stops and

utterly destroys the little ones. It is extremely seldom that a meteor gets

through our

atmosphere. The magnetic atmosphere is almost equally effective."

"But why will a plain piece of metal, without windings or anything, generate

current?" Carlisle objected.

"Say, Car, use your head. That's something you do know -eddy currents-why on

that basis, why does a generator generate? Each wire is just a simple piece of

metal. You've used the same principle a thousand times. Each electric power

meter uses the thing in the control damper disk, the aluminum disk that

rotates between the poles of a pair of permanent magnets. Anyway, that's not

the important part. The big thing is that Aarn succeeded in making the lines

of force lie down around the ship like a sheath instead of standing out like

hairs on a frightened cat. It-"

"Hello, boss!" said a deep voice immediately above and behind his left ear.

"Won't you come in?"

Spencer rose six inches from his chair in a spasmodic

" jump and turned on Aarn with a sour face. "You misplaced

decimal point, if it weren't for my memories and loyalty

to dear old Mass Tech, I'd amputate you from the pay roll."

"Would you?" asked Aarn, with a pensive air. When pensive, Aarn's broad face

and huge body succeeded in looking like a cow of subnormal intelligence,

ruminating on the possible source of its next meal. He did now. "I'd hate

that, Russ. But I think you'd hate it worst. I got my super-permeable space

condition. That's about the poorest name imaginable, so I've decided-to invent

a name. Be it hereinafter referred to by the party of the first part as the

'transpon' condition. Anyway, come on in."

Aarn's workship was large and divided into two parts, the apparatus room,

inhabited by four technical assistants who made up the apparatus Aarn called

for, and Mun-ro's own sanctum.

In Aarn's inner lab were a series of benches and cabinets and tables. These

were all loaded with junked apparatus, unused parts, spare voltmeters, and

coils of wire. The floor was reserved for the heavier junk that would have

crushed the tables.

Spencer was quite surprised to see that one of the largest benches had

actually been entirely cleared, and two sets of apparatus set up on it. Aarn

smiled his blank.grin again. Spencer knew from sad experience that that smile

meant something completely revolutionary that would upset all his calculations

and probably cost him, temporarily at least, several million dollars.

"Look," said Aarn.

He waved his hands toward the new apparatus he had set up on the bench. The

apparatus consisted of two main groups. At one end of the bench was a squat

control panel, backed by a complex assortment of tubes and a device that

closely resembled the magnetic atmosphere apparatus connected with a curious

wire cone. There was a standard a foot tall surmounted by a cone of copper

bars running lengthwise to form the sides and around, binding the longitudinal

bars in position.

The tip of the cone was a block of copper, the size of a golf ball. The mouth

of the device was some four inches across and the length over all about ten

inches. But the copper bars that formed the sides of the cone were carefully

insulated from the block that was at the tip. From this block, a single

straight bar of copper projected along the axis of the cone.

Aarn smiled and turned on the apparatus. A low, musical hum rose from the

tubes and coils, and slowly a faint blue glow centered about the copper block

at the tip of the cone and the pencil of metal that extended up the axis/ For

five seconds this held" steady while a similar blue glow

began to build up about the outer system of copper conductors. Presently, as

this reached a maximum, the inner glow began to fade, then swiftly a pulsing

rhythm was set up, first the inner, then the outer conductor system glowing

more intensely. The light settled down to a steady flickering that the eye

could barely perceive, and Aam smiled at it thoughtfully.

"The apparatus takes a few minutes to warm up. That's the first half. That was

the hardest part, too, curiously, though this projector here is a far more

important discovery." Aarn pushed a second standard into view, which was

surmounted by a metal bowl that closely resembled a deep soup dish. The inner

surface was evidently a parabolic one, made up of a maze of tiny coils, each

oriented carefully toward some definite aim, while the entire rim of the "soup

dish" was a single larger coil.

Carefully Aarn adjusted it so that it pointed toward the nickering cage of

copper wires, and beyond it to the apparatus at the other end of the bench.

This apparatus seemed fairly simple, merely a number of standards with various

arrangements of wires. Two parallel copper bars, a double spiral made of two

insulated wires, two metal disks. "Those," said Aarn softly, "are simply

connected with the normal power supply. It is alternating current of sixty

cycles at two hundred and twenty volts. The device I have is a pickup. It will

collect the power from those wires. The projector here is the real secret-it

makes space itself become a perfect conductor of electric-space-strain. Not

electricity. Electric-space-strain. But the result is the same. It makes the

space along its axis capable of carrying power along the axis-and along the

axis only. When I start this, the space between here and that interrupter coil

back there will become a perfect conductor. The interrupter coil is necessary

to prevent the thing reaching on, out indefinitely.

"The pick-up there, will be in that path of conduction, and so will the first

of those lead-offs there. That pair of straight wires. The wires will not be

mutually short circuited because this will conduct current only along the

axis. But the pick-up there keeps sending out flashes of a somewhat similar

energy at an angle so that it covers the entire column, and so can pick up the

power in it.

"I can't make that pick-up work continuously, because the energies would then

interfere and simply short-circuit things. But I can make it work at any

frequency from one cycle a second to about fifty megacycles. Now I'm going to

adjust it to sixty cycles, and it will get in step with the power on the two

leads-and run that -series of lights and that motor."

Aarn pushed a switch. Instantly three tumblers snapped over automatically, a

powerful surge of power seemed to draw at the men themselves momentarily, and

then the little flickering pick-up was sending out searchlight beams of

brilliant ionization. They started out along the shape of the cone, spread

rapidly, till they filled the tight, round column of power coming from the

transpon condition projector, then the ionization stretched along like a

luminous liquid flower in a pipe.

"The thing isn't in phase-wasting a lot of power," said Aarn.

He began adjusting a dial, and the slight visible flickering vanished as the

frequency rose. Suddenly the ionization all but vanished, leaving only a

slight glow about the pickup itself. Then an instant later it was back, but

vanished again. Each time the ionization stopped, the lights glowed, and the

motor Aarn had pointed out hummed into speed.

Presently he had it exactly adjusted, and the lights burned steadily, the five

horse-power motor continuing smoothly.

"The efficiency is about seventy-five per cent, which is not very good, I'll

admit-but good enough for what I have in mind."

Spencer was looking at the device intently. At last he asked: "But why doesn't

the pick-up short-circuit the thing when it has thrown out its pick-up force?

It throws a conducting band or disk completely across the tube of the transpon

beam, as you said you called it. That will carry current at right angles to

the axis, so it lies completely across the two terminals of the wires."

Aarn smiled grimly. "That, Russ, is why I took nearly nine months to do this.

I had to prevent that. The answer is that the lock and the grid don't project

the same force. The grid projects a force which will accept only a negative

electric force, while the block will accept only positive. Therefore it can't

short-circuit."

"Then it rectifies, too? Some little device! It's a thing we've sought for a

century, Arn-power broadcast along a beam."

"No," said Aarn sharply. "That's the point-it isn't broadcast along a beam. A

beam reaches out and picks it up. The difference is as great and as vital as

"the difference between being hit aiid stopping something going by. If a man's

fist connects with the button, your jaw absorbs kinetic energy. He has

broadcast it along the beam of his arm.

"But if you reach out and grab hold of a man running by you, you have reached

out for and taken hold of a source of kinetic energy and momentum. Right?"

"Hm-hum! Distinct difference. But why does it count here? What difference does

it make?"

"Nut-a system of difference. No beam any man ever made could hold an absolute

beam-a fixed diameter from here to infinity. Any power beam you make has to

carry so much power per square-inch cross section at the point where

the power is picked up. Suppose I'm sending power to a ship going to the Moon.

On Earth the beam is ten feet across. Fine, the ship has an absorber or pick-

up twenty feet in diameter, let's say. When the ship is fifty miles up, the

beam and the pick-up are the same size. At one hundred miles the beam is

wasting seventy-five per cent of its power because it has to maintain a

certain power at the ship, and only twenty-five per cent of the beam is

impinging on the target.

"Now-take it the other way. If the ship projects the beam, the earth power

station is simply pouring power into a funnel. The energy can go only one way,

and no matter how widespread it is at Earth, it has to get out on the pickup

in the beam. It's bound to be infinitely more efficient after you get more

than ten miles away."

"Slightly," agreed Spencer with a smile. "So hereafter, ships won't carry

accumulators, eh? Just send back a beam and pick up power from Earth. But say-

how are they going to be made to pay for it? They could tap any power source

or any line on Earth?"

Aarn smiled and replied: "In the first place, they won't get their power from

Earth, and in the second place, just suppose you sent back one of the beams to

tap any sixty-cycle line on Earth. What would happen? First, you'd have to get

in phase with some One of the big power-line networks. Then, bingo, you have

everything from one hundred and ten to one hundred and ten thousand and above

volts coming smashing along. It would blow you to kingdom come and wreck the

apparatus. Might do some damage back on Earth, but I doubt it."

"Not get the power from Earth? Where then? Not from one of the other planets

surely, because they have power troubles of their own."

"From the mightiest machine!"

"Good Heaven! The Sun! Do you mean that thing could tap the awful power of the

Sun?"

Spencer's face was suddenly pale. He could visualize that beam as though a

visible thing reaching from some tiny dust mote out across space to impinge on

the Sun, and drink of the power in that million-mile electric furnace, where

matter was smashed beyond atoms, ground to radiation.

"The Sun," Aarn nodded. "It's hard to think of all at once. Tapping the-

mightiest machine-the most inconceivably huge engine in the universe really-

for any star would do. Making a star supply your power. A furnace that

consumes nearly four million tons of matter a second.

"It's simple really. You need a power stack, of course- a huge supply of power

storage to operate your machine when you were not in position to tap the Sun.

It would require only a modification of this device-one I have worked out

completely-and we could draw a billion billion horse power in direct current

at any voltage you wished, up to a maximum of about five hundred million,

which would make insulation impossible in any circumstances."

"Then-unlimited power-and I thought-it was just a new power-transmission

device. Atomic energy! Man could never build-of course he couldn't make one as

big-a sun -two million million million tons of engine-three hundred thousand

worlds like this-"

He laughed suddenly. "Car, you wanted to'know why physics didn't give you the

atomic energy they promised. Here's physics' answer! Atomic energy would be

too expensive-require too elaborate a control-so physics taps a sun!"

Ill

"THAT," SAID Aarn quietly, "is one of the things I promised. Now that we have

the power I promised, I think I can also promise the antigravity device."

"Antigravity, too! Say, Aarn, there won't be anything left to find after you

get through with physics. But can you? How-"

"The Sun gave that secret, too. It is because the terrific forces beneath the

surface cut off the gravity that those huge masses of matter can be ejected to

form prominences. I was right-and the data that men out in space collected

gave me the necessary basis for my problem's solution.

"Look-for a century or more men have known that there were three types of

space-strain energy fields. There is the electric-energy field and the

magnetic-energy field, which are mutually at right angles to each other. My

'magnetic atmosphere' device simply turns half of the magnetic field through

ninety degrees and makes it an electric instead of a magnetic field pole. That

was simple.

"But-gravity has no poles. Gravity is fourth dimensional instead of in three

dimensions. I found out the answer, thanks to the Sun. Remember, it takes a

three-dimensional thing to have two different types of stresses. Take a rubber

balloon as an example. The rubber can be dented inward. A strain along the

diameter of the sphere. But the rubber becomes stretched on one side and more

or less piled up on the other. Those two types of stress are at exactly

ninety-degree angles. That represents magnetism and electric field.

"Obviously, if we dent the balloon inward in one place, it will stretch

outward somewhere else to make up for it, perhaps all over, but a swelling

takes place. That represents the fact that a north pole is always associated

with a south pole, somewhere or other. If the fabric is stretched along its

surface, it is thinner in one place, but inevitably piles up elsewhere. Where

there is a positive pole there is necessarily an accumulation of negative,

somewhere.

"But our rather poor illustration doesn't explain just how the ninety-degree

twist is possible except generally in that, if the balloon is dented, if the

fabric stretches, there is no actual dent outward. Our model is poor, because

space is four dimensional.

"But you see that it requires a three-dimensional medium for two stresses at

right angles to each other. It requires four for three right-angle forces. And

the curious thing about that four-dimensional stress is that it doesn't have

polarity necessarily. But there is a -reverse condition. In magnetic and

electric fields, opposites attract. In gravity likes attract That is

characteristic. Opposites repel.

"I can make the gravity curvature-given energy enough. I can also make the

reverse curvature of space. But before I can reverse curvature of space

locally, I have to iron out the normally present gravitational curvature. Any

space strain is energy. It requires enormous energy."

Aarn got off the bench where he had been sitting, and started clearing away

his last demonstration rapidly, setting up a new group of apparatus.

"Suppose we wanted to free a mass of gravity. To flatten out the local

gravity, we have to overcome its own gravity. You know the old lines-of-force

picture of magnetism, Spence. You can use that lines-of-force idea on any of

the three space fields. In the gravitational picture, it works something like

this: the attraction of the Earth for a small body, like

this lead weight, for instance, is equaled, of course, by the attraction of

the small body for the Earth. If you think of it as lines of force, picture

the lines about a small piece of iron in the field of a powerful magnet. The

magnetic lines of force bend into and pass through the piece of iron.

"Suppose we wanted to wrap a coil of wire around that bit of iron, and make it

'magnetic-weightless,' so to speak. We would have to build up a magnetic force

in our coil that opposed the greater magnetic field and bent the magnetic

lines of force away. Then really, in demagnetizing our little piece of iron,

we are having to overcome the big field in which it is at least locally.

"Ditto with degravitation. We act as though we were merely trying to make the

piece of lead we are working with stop attracting, stop being a source of

gravitational force, but in order to do that we have to overcome locally

Earth's field, the Sun's field, and all the fields of the universe.

"^Actually, of course, this is too much work, and for practical work I will

overcome only the solar-system fields. But, even so, that represents a lot of

energy. The law of conservation of energy demands that I supply energy

equivalent to lifting the degravitized body completely free of the fields by

distance, lifting it out to infinity in other words. That's equivalent to the

kinetic energy it would have at about sixty miles per second."

Aarn paused. He had his apparatus set up-a strangely shaped series of coils

surrounded by a pair of heavy metal plates. A hollow space of about a thousand

cubic inches remained in them, and in this space now, Aarn was arranging a

lead sphere suspended from one arm of a long-arm balance. It was balanced at

the other end by a group of weights totaling five pounds.

From the coils, two heavy copper cables ran, twisted, off to the main power

board on the other side of the room.

His apparatus ready, Aarn walked over to the panel and laid his hand on the

main power control.

"Ready, I guess. Keep an eye on that lead, Spence, and see if you can keep it

balanced!"

Aarn flipped a small switch, a relay thunked over, then rapidly he advanced

his controller. For perhaps ten seconds nothing happened.

"Induction-she's building up a magnetic field in there now, and an electric

pole, too," Aarn explained.

Then-abruptly, yet leisurely, the weight pan of the longarm balance sank.

"The weight's going!" called Spence excitedly.

"It should!" Aarn grinned. "She's drawing two thousand horse power."

Carlisle watched interestedly as Spencer took weight after weight from the

balance pan. Still the scale remained steady. "It's two and a half pounds now-

"That's about enough," decided Aarn. "I just wanted to show-you."

"Can you make Earth's centrifugal force throw it up?"

"I could-in about four and a half years with this power source. That thing

begins building up a back force that makes it hard to pump in juice. That's

not the latest design-I've found ways to improve the thing since that was

made, which will all be incorporated in the real apparatus. Further, remember,

while that's going down fairly fast now, destroying weight is like filling a

fuel tank. You can fill a vacuum a lot easier and faster than you can a fuel

tank with two tons per square inch in there already. It will begin to show up

pretty quickly now. When the weight gets down to about five hundredths of a

pound, it will go very slowly." :

Aarn reached over, and made some adjustments on his power board, and all but

two meters dropped to zero.

"I'm just holding that now. There's no need to de-weight it, is there? We

can't do anything real till we have a big job, and a Sun-tapping beam to run

it. It builds up an electric-field back-force of several thousand volts;

that's what was stopping that then. With the Sun-beam and a big model I can

demonstrate. And-uh-well, I have something else, too. But I'm not ready yet,"

Aarn hastened to add.

Spencer had started up expectantly when Aarn said he had even more. Now he

looked at him disgustedly. "As I told Carlisle, you're as noisy as a clam in

hiding when you've got something interesting to puzzle about. Now let me ask a

question: How do you know that Sun beam will work? Have you tested it on old

Sol?"

Aarn smiled faintly and waved him away. "This isn't my home planet-but even so

I like it. I said that got power from the Sun. The ionizing layer, my lad,

conducts. Could you imagine what would happen if you short-circuited the Sun?

That's why the ship we're going to build as a testing laboratory-we'll need a

space laboratory now, and it'll cost you five millions, Spence, my boy-will

have a huge bank of these new storage devices.

"You know how much energy accumulators will store. These gravitational coils

will store electric power at high voltage and about one thousand times the

capacity per pound. We need the storage for the times when you are in an

atmosphere, behind a planet, or similarly hindered. Here's a point to

remember-you can't have those Sun-beam ships wandering about aimlessly.

They'll have to be very strictly limited. One of those fellows could cut a

swath through any other ship."

"Whew-what a weapon!" gasped Spencer as he pictured it. "Cut a world in two

with that and the Sun's power."

"Uhm-deadly enough if you could get in position, but

that beam is tender in its way. If you just remember these two facts, you'll

see why it really isn't much of a weapon, and isn't.to be greatly feared on

the score of blowing up a world. That it could be dangerous to a certain

extent, is of course true. But remember, that world will have the first chance

to put power on the beam. Suppose you are waiting for that beam, and the

instant it hits your world you unload a few million volts and a hundred

thousand ampere-hours of .accumulators on it as just the frequency it's turned

for? Good-by, projector.

"Or suppose you had your beam already developed, reaching from ship to Sun, it

would take about a quarter of an hour to develop a beam from the Earth to the

Sun because of the finite speed of light-and just wait for the world to move

into it. You have to send a signal down the beam which determined to what

extent you are going to tap the Sun, naturally, or the Sun would just send a

flood that would wipe you out before you could shut it off.

"Then if you signaled for unlimited power, so that you could really damage a

world, you'd be wiped out first. And always you have to wait the quarter of an

hour or so for the energy to make a round trip-and if it's war, somebody will

be out looking for you with something bigger than a mosquito spray."

"I shouldn't have cared to develop it if it had been as dangerous as it might

have been," Spencer said quietly. "But then, why did you say you couldn't use

it in an atmosphere?"

"Short-circuiting the beam is the signal for unlimited power. Hold it on long

enough, and you'd get the power."

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

JOHNW.CAMPBELLfirststartedwritingin1930whenhisfirstshortstory,WhentheAtomsFailed,wasacceptedbyascience-fictionmagazine.Atthattimehewastwentyyearsoldandstillastudentatcollege.Asthetitleofthestoryindicates,hewasevenatthattimeoccupiedwiththesignificanceofatomicenergyandnuclearphysics.Forthenextsevenyea...

展开>> 收起<<

Campbell, John W Jr - The Mightiest machine.pdf

共95页,预览19页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Campbell, John W Jr - The Mightiest machine

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: