"That is the principle we use in making it a weapon. Watch the actual operation."
The ball of fire shot toward an open window, out the window, and vanished in the sky above. The Talsonian stopped the rotation of the dials. "It is motionless now, but scarcely visible. I will now release all the energy." He twirled the fourth dial, and instantly there was a flash of light, and a moment later a terrific concussion.
"It is gone." He left the controls, and went over to his apparatus. He set a heavy silver bladed switch, and placed a new tube in the apparatus. A second switch arced a bit as he drove it home. "Your generator is recharging the acc.u.mulators."
Stel Felso Theu took the backplate of the control cabinet off, and the terrestrians looked at the control with interest.
"Got it, Morey?" asked Arcot after a time.
"Think so. Want to try making it up? We can do so out of spare junk about the ship, I think. We won"t need the tube if what I believe of it is true."
Arcot turned to the Talsonian. "We wish you to accompany us to the ship.
We have apparatus there which we wish to set up."
Back to the ship they went. There Arcot, Morey and Wade worked rapidly.
It was about three-quarters of an hour later when Arcot and his friends called the others to the laboratory. They had a maze of apparatus on the power bench, and the shining relux conductors ran all over the ship apparently. One huge bar ran into the power room itself, and plugged into the huge power-coil power supply.
They were still working at it, but looked up as the others entered.
"Guess it will work," said Arcot with a grin.
There were four dials, and three huge switches. Arcot set all four dials, and threw one of the switches. Then he started slowly turning the fourth dial. In the center of the room a dim, shining mist a foot in diameter began to appear. It condensed, solidified without shrinking, a solid ball of matter a foot in diameter. It seemed black, but was a perfectly reflective surface--and luminous!
"Then--then you had already known of this thing? Then why did you not tell me when I tried to show it?" demanded the Talsonian.
Arcot was sending the globe, now perfectly non-luminous, about the room.
It flattened out suddenly, and was a disc. He tossed a small weight on it, and it remained fixed, but began to radiate slightly. Arcot readjusted his dials, and it ceased radiating, held perfectly motionless. The sphere returned, and the weight dropped to the floor.
Arcot maneuvered it about for a moment more. Then he placed his friends behind a screen of relux, and increased the radiation of the globe tremendously. The heat became intense, and he stopped the radiation.
"No, Stel Felso Theu, we do not have this on our world," Arcot said.
"You do not have it! You look at my apparatus fifteen minutes, and then work for an hour--and you have apparatus far more effective than ours, which required years of development!" exclaimed the Talsonian.
"Ah, but it was not wholly new to me. This ship is driven by curving s.p.a.ce into peculiar coordinates. Even so, we didn"t do such a hot job, did we, Morey?"
"No, we should have--"
"What--it was not a good job?" interrupted the Talsonian. "You succeeded in creating it in air--in making it stop radiating, in making a ball a foot in diameter, made it change to a disc, made it carry a load--what do you want?"
"We want the full possibilities, the only thing that can save us in this war," Morey said.
"What you learned how to do was the reverse of the process we learned.
How you did it is a wonder--but you did. Very well--matter is energy--does your physics know that?" asked Arcot.
"It does; matter contains vast energy," replied the Talsonian.
"Matter has ma.s.s, and energy because of that! Ma.s.s _is_ energy. Energy in any known form is a field of force in s.p.a.ce. So matter is ordinarily a combination of magnetic, electrostatic and gravitational fields. Your apparatus combined the three, and put them together. The result was--matter!
"You created matter. We can destroy it but we cannot create it.
"What we ordinarily call matter is just a marker, a sign that there are those energy-fields. Each bit is surrounded by a gravitational field.
The bit is just the marker of that gravitational field.
"But that seems to be wrong. This artificial matter of yours seems also a sort of knot, for you make all three fields, combine them, and have the matter, but not, very apparently, like normal matter. Normal matter also holds the fields that make it. The artificial matter is surrounded by the right fields, but it is evidently not able to hold the fields, as normal matter does. That was why your matter continually disintegrated to ordinary energy. The energy was not bound properly.
"But the reason why it would blow up so was obvious. It did not take much to destroy the slight hold that the artificial matter had on its field, and then it instantly proceeded to release all its energy at once. And as you poured millions of horsepower into it all day to fill it, it naturally raised merry h.e.l.l when it let loose."
Arcot was speaking eagerly, excitedly.
"But here is the great fact, the important thing: It is artificially created in a given place. It is made, and exists at the point determined by these three coordinated dials. It is not natural, and can exist only where it is made and nowhere else--obvious, but important. It cannot exist save at the point designated. Then, if that point moves along a line, the artificial matter must follow that moving point and be always at that point. Suppose now that a slab of steel is on that line. The point moves to it--through it. To exist, that artificial matter _must_ follow it through the steel--if not, it is destroyed. Then the steel is attempting to destroy the artificial matter. If the matter has sufficient energy, it will force the steel out of the way, and penetrate. The same is true of any other matter, lux metal or relux--it will penetrate. To continue in existence it must. And it has great energy, and will expend every erg of that energy of existence to continue existence.
"It is, as long as its energy holds out, absolutely irresistible!
"But similarly, if it is at a given point, it must stay there, and will expend every erg staying there. It is then immovable! It is either irresistible in motion, or immovable in static condition. It is the irresistible and the immovable!
"What happens if the irresistible meets the immovable? It can only fight with its energy of existence, and the more energetic prevails."
Chapter X
IMPROVEMENTS AND CALCULATIONS
"It is still incredible. But you have done it. It is certainly successful!" said the Talsonian scientist with conviction.
Arcot shook his head. "Far from it--we have not realized a thousandth part of the tremendous possibilities of this invention. We must work and calculate and then invent.
"Think of the possibilities as a shield--naturally if we can make the matter we should be able to control its properties in any way we like.
We should be able to make it opaque, transparent, or any color." Arcot was speaking to Morey now. "Do you remember, when we were caught in that cosmic ray field in s.p.a.ce when we first left this universe, that I said that I had an idea for energy so vast that it would be impossible to describe its awful power?[1] I mentioned that I would attempt to liberate it if ever there was need? The need exists. I want to find that secret."
[Footnote 1: Islands of s.p.a.ce.]
Stel Felso Theu was looking out through the window at a group of men excitedly beckoning. He called the attention of the others to them, and himself went out. Arcot and Wade joined him in a moment.
"They tell me that Fellsheh, well to the poleward of here has used four of its eight shots. They are still being attacked," explained the Talsonian gravely.
"Well, get in," snapped Arcot as he ran back to the ship. Stel Felso hastily followed, and the _Ancient Mariner_ shot into the air, and darted away, poleward, to the Talsonian"s directions. The ground fled behind them at a speed that made the scientist grip the hand-rail with a tenseness that showed his nervousness.
As they approached, a tremendous concussion and a great gout of light in the sky informed them of the early demise of several Thessians. But a real fleet was cl.u.s.tered about the city. Arcot approached low, and was able to get quite close before detection. His ray screen was up and Morey had charged the artificial matter apparatus, small as it was, for operation. He created a ball of substance outside the _Ancient Mariner_, and thrust it toward the nearest Thessian, just as a molecular hit the _Ancient Mariner"_s ray screen.
The artificial matter instantly exploded with terrific violence, slightly denting the tremendously strong lux metal walls. The pressure of the light was so great that the inner relux walls were dented inward.
The ground below was suddenly, instantaneously fused.
"Lord--they won"t pa.s.s a ray screen, obviously," Morey muttered, picking himself from where he had fallen.
"Hey--easy there. You blinked off the ray screen, and our relux is seriously weakened," called Arcot, a note of worry in his voice.