Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (127 page)

“I said it would be undignified,” chuckled Seaton, rather short of breath, “but I didn’t know just how much so it was going to be.”

Dorothy tucked her fingers into his hand.

“Are you hurt anywhere, Dick?”

“Not a bit. He led me a great chase, though.”

“I was scared to death until you told Martin to let the switch alone. But it was funny then! I hadn’t noticed your resemblance to a jumping-jack before. Won’t you do it again sometime and let us take a movie of it?”

“That was as good as any show in town, Dick,” said the lawyer, wiping his eyes, “but you must be more careful. Next time, it might not be funny at all.”

“There will be no next time for this rig,” replied Seaton. “This is merely to show us that our ideas are all right. The next trip will be in a full-scale, completely-equipped boat.”

“It was perfectly wonderful,” declared Dorothy. “I know this first flight of yours will be a turning-point or something in history. I don’t pretend to understand how you did it—the sight of you standing still up there in the air made me wonder if I really were awake, even though I knew what to expect—but we wouldn’t have missed it for worlds, would we, Dad?”

“No. I am very glad that we saw the first demonstration. The world has never before seen anything like it, and you two men will rank as two of the greatest discoverers.”

“Seaton will, you mean,” replied Crane, uncomfortably. “You know I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“It’s nearly all yours,” denied Seaton. “Without your ideas I would have lost myself in space in my first attempt.”

“You are both wrong,” said Vaneman. “You, Martin, haven’t enough imagination; and you, Dick, have altogether too much, for either of you to have done this alone. The honor will be divided equally between you.”

* * * *

He turned to Crane as Dorothy and Seaton set out toward the house.

“What are you going to do with it, commercially? Dick, of course, hasn’t thought of anything except this space-car—equally of course, you have?”

“Yes. Knowing the general nature of the power and confident that Dick would control it, I have already drawn up sketches for a power-plant installation of five hundred thousand electrical horsepower, which will enable us to sell power for less than one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour and still return twenty percent annual dividends. However, the power-plant comes after the flyer.”

“Why? Why not build the power-plant first, and take the pleasure trip afterward?”

“There are several reasons. The principal one is that Dick and I would rather be off exploring new worlds, while the other members of the Seaton-Crane Company, Engineers, build the power-plant.”

During the talk the men had reached the house, into which the others had disappeared some time before. Upon Crane’s invitation, Vaneman and his daughter stayed to dinner, and Dorothy played for awhile upon Crane’s wonderful violin. The rest of the evening was spent in animated discussion of the realization of Seaton’s dreams of flying without wings and beyond the supporting atmosphere. Seaton and Crane did their best to explain to the non-technical visitors how such flight was possible.

“Well, I am beginning to understand it a little,” said Dorothy finally. “In plain language, it is like a big magnet or something, but different. Is that it?”

“That’s it exactly,” Seaton assured her.

“What are you going to call it? It isn’t like anything else that ever was. Already this evening you have called it a bus, a boat, a kite, a star-hound, a wagon, an aerial flivver, a sky-chariot, a space-eating wampus, and I don’t know what else. Even Martin has called it a vehicle, a ship, a bird, and a shell. What is its real name?”

“I don’t know. It hasn’t got any that I know of. What would you suggest, Dottie?”

“I don’t know what general name should be applied to them, but for this one there is only one possible name, ‘The Skylark.’“

“Exactly right, Dorothy,” said Crane.

“Fine!” cried Seaton. “And you shall christen it, Dottie, with a big Florence flask full of absolute vacuum. ‘I christen you “The Skylark.” BANG!’“

As the guests were leaving, at a late hour, Vaneman said:

“Oh, yes. I bought an extra
Clarion
as we came out. It tells a wild tale of an explosion so violent that science cannot explain it. I don’t suppose it is true, but it may make interesting reading for you two scientific sharps. Good night.”

Seaton accompanied Dorothy to the car, bidding her a more intimate farewell on the way. When he returned, Crane, with an unusual expression of concern on his face, handed him the paper without a word.

* * * *

“What’s up, old man? Something in it?” he asked, as he took the paper. He fell silent as he read the first words, and after he had read the entire article he said slowly:

“True, beyond a doubt. Even a
Clarion
reporter couldn’t imagine that. It’s all intra-atomic energy, all right—some poor devil trying our stunt without my horseshoe in his pocket.”

“Think, Dick! Something is wrong somewhere. You know that two people did not discover X at the same time. The answer is that somebody stole your idea, but the idea is worthless without the X. You say that the stuff is extremely rare—where did they get it?”

“That’s right, Mart. I never thought of that. The stuff
is
extremely rare. I am supposed to know something about rare metals, and I never heard of it before—there isn’t even a gap in the Periodic System in which it belongs. I would bet a hat that we have every milligram known to the world at present.”

“Well, then,” said the practical Crane. “We had better see whether or not we have all we started with.”

Asking Shiro to bring the large bottle from the vault, he opened the living-room safe and brought forth the small vial. The large bottle was still nearly full, the seal upon it unbroken. The vial was apparently exactly as Seaton had left it after he had made his bars.

“Our stuff seems to be all there,” said Crane. “It looks as though someone else has discovered it also.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Seaton, their positions now reversed. “It’s altogether too rare.”

He scanned both bottles narrowly.

“I can tell by taking the densities,” he added, and ran up to the laboratory, returning with a Westphal balance in his hand. After testing both solutions he said slowly:

“Well, the mystery is solved. The large bottle has a specific gravity of 1.80, as it had when I prepared it; that in the vial reads only 1.41. Somebody has burglarized this safe and taken almost half of the solution, filling the vial up with colored water. The stuff is so strong that I probably never would have noticed the difference.”

“But who could it have been?”

“Search me! But it’s nothing to worry about now, anyway, because whoever it was is gone where he’ll never do it again. He’s taken the solution with him, too, so that nobody else can get it.”

“I wish I were sure of that, Dick. The man who tried to do the research work is undoubtedly gone—but who is back of him?”

“Nobody, probably. Who would want to be?”

“To borrow your own phrase, Dick, Scott ‘chirped it’ when he called you ‘Nobody Holme.’ For a man with your brains you have the least sense of anybody I know. You know that this thing is worth, as a power project alone, thousands of millions of dollars, and that there are dozens of big concerns who would cheerfully put us both out of the way for a thousandth of that amount. The question is not to find one concern who might be backing a thing like that, but to pick out the one who is backing it.”

* * * *

After thinking deeply for a few moments he went on:

“The idea was taken from your demonstration in the Bureau, either by an eye-witness or by someone who heard about it afterward, probably the former. Even though it failed, one man saw the possibilities. Who was that man? Who was there?”

“Oh, a lot of the fellows were there. Scott, Smith, Penfield, DuQuesne, Roberts—quite a bunch of them. Let’s see—Scott hasn’t brains enough to do anything. Smith doesn’t know anything about anything except amines. Penfield is a pure scientist, who wouldn’t even quote an authority without asking permission. DuQuesne is…hm-m…DuQuesne…he…I.…”

“Yes. DuQuesne. I have heard of him. He’s the big black fellow, about your own size? He has the brains, the ability, and the inclination, has he not?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to say that. I don’t know him very well, and personal dislike is no ground at all for suspicion, you know.”

“Enough to warrant investigation. Is there anyone else who might have reasoned it out as you did, and as DuQuesne possibly could?”

“Not that I remember. But we can count DuQuesne out, anyway, because he called me up this afternoon about some notes on gallium; so he is still in the Bureau. Besides, he wouldn’t let anybody else investigate it if he got it. He would do it himself, and I don’t think he would have blown himself up. I never did like him very well personally—he’s such a cold, inhuman son of a fish—but you’ve got to hand it to him for ability. He’s probably the best man in the world today on that kind of thing.”

“No, I do not think that we will count him out yet. He may have had nothing to do with it, but we will have him investigated nevertheless, and will guard against future visitors here.”

Turning to the telephone, he called the private number of a well-known detective.

“Prescott? Crane speaking. Sorry to get you out of bed, but I should like to have a complete report upon Dr. Marc C. DuQuesne, of the Rare Metals Laboratory, as soon as possible. Every detail for the last two weeks, every move and every thought if possible. Please keep a good man on him until further notice.… I wish you would send two or three guards out here right away, to-night; men you can trust and who will stay awake.… Thanks. Good night.”

CHAPTER V

Direct Action

Seaton and Crane spent some time developing the object-compass. Crane made a number of these instruments, mounted in gymbals, so that the delicate needles were free to turn in any direction whatever. They were mounted upon jeweled bearings, but bearings made of such great strength, that Seaton protested.

“What’s the use, Mart? You don’t expect a watch to be treated like a stone-crusher. That needle weighs less than half a gram. Why mount it as though it weighed twenty pounds?”

“To be safe. Remember the acceleration the Lark will be capable of, and also that on some other worlds, which we hope to visit, this needle will weigh more than it does here.”

“That’s right, Mart, I never thought of that. Anyway, we can’t be too safe to suit me.”

When the compasses were done and the power through them had been adjusted to one-thousandth of a watt, the lowest they could maintain with accuracy, they focused each instrument upon one of a set of most carefully weighed glass beads, ranging in size from a pin-head up to a large marble, and had the beads taken across the country by Shiro, in order to test the sensitiveness and accuracy of the new instruments. The first test was made at a distance of one hundred miles, the last at nearly three thousand. They found, as they had expected, that from the weight of the object and the time it took the needle to come to rest after being displaced from its line by a gentle tap of the finger, they could easily calculate the distance from the compass to the object. This fact pleased Crane immensely, as it gave him a sure means of navigation in space. The only objection to its use in measuring earthly distances was its extreme delicacy, the needle focused upon the smallest bead in the lot at a distance of three thousand miles coming to rest in little more than one second.

The question of navigation solved, the two next devoted themselves to perfecting the “X-plosive bullet,” as Seaton called it. From his notes and equations Seaton calculated the weight of copper necessary to exert the explosive force of one pound of nitro-glycerin, and weighed out, on the most delicate assay-balance made, various fractions and multiples of this amount of the treated copper, while Crane fitted up the bullets of automatic-pistol cartridges to receive the charges and to explode them on impact.

They placed their blueprints and working notes in the safe, as usual, taking with them only those notes dealing with the object-compass and the X-plosive bullet, upon which they were still working. No one except Shiro knew that the original tracings, from which the blue-prints had been made, and their final, classified notes were always kept in the vault. They cautioned him and the three guards to keep a close watch until they returned. Then they set out in the biplane, to try out the new weapon in a lonely place where the exploding shells could do no damage.

* * * *

They found that the X-plosive came fully up to expectations. The smallest charge they had prepared, fired by Crane at a great stump a full hundred yards away from the bare, flat-topped knoll that had afforded them a landing-place, tore it bodily from the ground and reduced it to splinters, while the force of the explosion made the two men stagger.

“She sure is big medicine!” laughed Seaton. “Wonder what a real one will do?” and drawing his pistol, he inserted a cartridge carrying a much heavier charge.

“Better be careful with the big ones,” cautioned Crane. “What are you going to shoot at?”

“That rock over there,” pointing to a huge boulder half a mile away across the small valley. “Want to bet me a dinner I can’t hit it?”

“No. You forget that I saw you win the pistol trophy of the District.”