IV
The three immediately set to work. At Arcot's suggestion, Wade and Moreyattacked the plate of crystal in an attempt to tear off a small piece,on which they might work. Arcot himself went into the televisophone roomand put through a second call to the Tychos Observatory, the greatobservatory that had so recently been established on the frigid surfaceof the Moon. The huge mirror, twenty feet in diameter, allowed animmense magnification, and stellar observations were greatlyfacilitated, for no one bothered them, and the "seeing" was alwaysperfect.
However, the great distance was rather a handicap to the ordinarytelevisophone stations, and all calls put through to the astronomers hadto be made through the powerful sending station in St. Louis, where allinterplanetary messages were sent and received, while that side of theEarth was facing the station; and from Constantinople, when that cityfaced the satellite. These stations could bridge the distance readilyand clearly.
For several minutes Arcot waited while connections were being made withthe Moon; then for many more minutes he talked earnestly with theobserver in this distant station, and at last satisfied, he hung up.
He had outlined his ideas concerning the black star, based upon theperturbation of the planets; then he had asked them to investigate thepossibilities, and see if they could find any blotting out of stars by alightless mass.
Finally he returned to Morey and Wade who had been working on thecrystal plate. Wade had an expression of exasperation on his face, andMorey was grinning broadly.
"Hello, Arcot--you missed all the fun! You should have seen Wade'sstruggle with that plate!" The plate, during his absence, had beentwisted and bent, showing that it had undergone some terrific stresses.Now Wade began to make a series of highly forceful comments about theproperties of the plate in language that was not exactly scientific. Ithad value, though, in that it seemed to relieve his pent-up wrath.
"Why, Wade, you don't seem to like that stuff. Maybe the difficulty liesin your treatment, rather than in the material itself. What have youtried?"
"Everything! I took a coronium hack saw that will eat through molybdenumsteel like so much cheese, and it just wore its teeth off. I tried someof those diamond rotary saws you have, attached to an electric motor,and it wore out the diamonds. That got my goat, so I tried using alittle force. I put it in the tension testing machine, and clampedit--the clamp was good for 10,000,000 pounds--but it began to bend, so Ihad to quit. Then Morey held it with a molecular beam, and I triedtwisting it. Believe me, it gave me real pleasure to see that thingyield under the pressure. But it's not brittle; it merely bends.
"And I can't cut it, or even get some shavings off the darned thing. Yousaid you wanted to make a Jolly balance determination of the specificgravity, but the stuff is so dense you'd need only a tiny scrap--and Ican't break it loose!" Wade looked at the plate in thorough disgust.
Arcot smiled sympathetically; he could understand his feelings, for thestuff certainly was stubborn. "I'm sorry I didn't warn you fellows aboutwhat you'd run into, but I was so anxious to get that call through tothe Moon that I forgot to tell you how I expected to make it workable.Now, Wade, if you'll get another of those diamond-tooth rotary saws,I'll get something that may help. Put the saw on the air motor. Use theone made of coronium."
Wade looked after the rapidly disappearing Arcot with raised eyebrows,then, scratching his head, he turned and did as Arcot had asked.
Arcot returned in about five minutes with a small handling machine, anda huge magnet. It must have weighed nearly half a ton. This he quicklyconnected to the heavy duty power lines of the lab. Now, running thehandling machine into position, he quickly hoisted the bent and twistedplate to the poles of the magnet, with the aid of the derrick. Thenbacking the handling machine out of the way, he returned briskly to hiswaiting associates.
"Now we'll see what we will see!" With a confident smile Arcot switchedon the current of the big magnet. At once a terrific magnetic flux wasset up through the light-metal. He took the little compressed-air saw,and applied it to the crystal plate. The smooth hiss of the air deepenedto a harsh whine as the load came on it, then the saw made contact withthe refractory plate.
Unbelievingly Wade saw the little diamond-edge saw bite its way slowlybut steadily into the plate. In a moment it had cut off a little cornerof the light-matter, and this fell with a heavy thud to the magnet pole,drawn down by the attraction of the magnet and by gravity.
Shutting off the magnet, Arcot picked up a pair of pliers and grippedthe little fragment.
"Whew--light-metal certainly isn't light metal! I'll bet this littlescrap weights ten pounds! We'll have to reduce it considerably before wecan use it. But that shouldn't be too difficult."
By using the magnet and several large diamond faceplates they were ableto work the tough material down to a thin sheet; then with a heavypress, they cut some very small fragments, and with these, determinedthe specific gravity.
"Arcot," Wade asked finally, "just how does the magnet make that stufftractable? I'm not physicist enough to figure out what takes placeinside the material."
"Magnetism worked as it did," Arcot explained, "because in thislight-matter every photon is affected by the magnetism, and every photonis given a new motion. That stuff can be made to go with the speed oflight, you know. It's the only solid that could be so affected. Thisstuff should be able, with the aid of a molecular motion beam, whichwill make all the photons move in parallel paths, to move at the fullspeed of each photon--186,000 miles a second. The tremendous speed ofthese individual photons is what makes the material so hard. Theirkinetic impulse is rather considerable! It's the kinetic blow that themolecules of a metal give that keeps other metal from penetrating it.This simply gives such powerful impulse that even diamonds wouldn't cutit.
"You know that an iron saw will cut platinum readily, yet if both areheated to say, 1600 degrees, the iron is a liquid, and the platinum verysoft--but now the platinum cuts through the iron!
"Heat probably won't have any effect on this stuff, but the action ofthe magnet on the individual photons corresponds to the effect of theheat on the individual atoms and molecules. The mass is softened, and wecan work it. At least, that's the way I figure it out.
"But now, Wade, I wish you'd see if you can determine the density of thestuff. You're more used to those determinations and that type ofmanipulation than we are. When you get through, we may be able to showyou some interesting results ourselves!"
Wade picked up a tiny chip of the light-metal and headed for his ownlaboratory. Here he set up his Jolly balance, and began to work on thefragment. His results were so amazing that he checked and rechecked hiswork, but always with the same answer. Finally he returned to the mainlab where Arcot and Morey were busy at the construction of a large andcomplicated electro-static apparatus.
"What did you find?" called out Arcot, as he saw Wade reenter the room."Hold your report a second and give us a hand here, will you? I have alaboratory scale apparatus of the type the Kaxorians used in the storageof light. They've known, ever since they began working with them, thattheir machines would release the energy with more than normal violence,if certain changes were made in them. That is, the light condenser, thedevice that stored the photons so close to each other, would also serveto urge them apart. I've made the necessary changes, and now I'm tryingto set up the apparatus to work on solid light-matter. It was developedfor gaseous material, and it's a rather tricky thing to change it over.But I think we've almost got it.
"Wade, will you connect that to the high frequency oscillatorthere--no--through that counterbalanced condenser. We may have to changethe oscillator frequency quite a bit, but a variable condenser will dothat.
"Now, what results did you get?"
Wade shook his head doubtfully. "We all know it's amazing stuff--and ofcourse, it must be heavy--but still--well, anyway, I got a density of103.5!"
"Whewww--103.5! Lord! That's almost five times as heavy as the heaviestmetal hitherto known. There's about ha
lf a cubic foot of the material;that would mean about 4000 pounds for the whole mass, or two tons. Nowonder we couldn't lift the plate!"
They stopped their work on the Kaxorian apparatus to discuss the amazingresults of the density test, but now they fell to again, rapidlyassembling the device, for each was a trained experimenter. With all butthe final details completed, Arcot stood back and surveyed theirhandiwork.
"I think we'll have enough urge to cause disintegration right here," hesaid, "but I want to make sure, and so, before we set up the case overit, I think we may as well put that big magnet in place, and have itthere to help in the work of disintegration, if need be."
At last the complete apparatus was set up, and the tiny bit oflight-matter they were to work on was placed on the table of a powerfulAtchinson projector microscope, the field of view being in the exactcenter of the field of both the magnet and the coil. Carefully, then,step by step, Arcot, Morey and Wade went over their work, checking andrechecking.
"Well, we're ready," said Arcot finally, as he placed the projectorscreen in position and dimmed the lights in the room. A touch of theswitch, and the projection screen was illuminated with the greatlyenlarged image of the tiny scrap of light-metal.
With his hand on the switch, Arcot spoke to the other two. "I won't saythere's _no_ danger, since we haven't done this before; and if all theenergy should be released at once, it'll blow the top out of thebuilding. But I'm reasonably sure that it will work safely. Anyobjections?"
Wade shook his head, and Morey said: "I can't see any flaws in ourwork."
Arcot nodded, and unconsciously tensing, he closed the switch. This putthe powerful Arcot oscillator tubes into action, and the power was readyfor application.
Slowly he closed the rheostat and put the power into the coil. Thelittle sliver of metal on the slide seemed to throb a bit, and itsoutline grew hazy; but at last, with full power on, the release was soslow as to be imperceptible.
"Guess we need the magnet after all; I'll put it on this time."
He opened the coil circuit and closed the magnet circuit at halfvoltage, then again he increased the current through the rheostat. Thistime the plate throbbed quite violently, it took the appearance of a bitof iodine. Dense vapors began pouring from it, and instantly thosevapors became a blindingly brilliant flood of light. Arcot had snappedopen the switch the moment he saw this display start, and it had hadlittle time to act, for the instant the circuit was opened, it subsided.But even in that brief time, the light aluminum screen had suddenlybecome limp and slumped down, molten! The room was unbearably hot, andthe men were half blinded by the intensity of the light.
"It works!" yelled Wade. "It works! That sure was hot, too--it'sroasting in here." He flung open a window. "Let's have some air."
Arcot and Morey gripped hands with a broad grin. That display meant thatEarth and Venus would have space ships with which to fight space ships.Reason enough for their joy.
Though they had made an unusual amount of progress already, there wasstill a great deal of development work to be done. Fuller was needed,Arcot decided, so he called the elder Morey and requested his servicesif he could be spared from his present work. He could, and would arrivelater that day.
When Fuller appeared about mid-afternoon, he found the three friendsalready at work on the development of a more compact apparatus than themakeshift hookup used in making that first release mechanism.
"And so you can see," said Arcot as he finished his summary of theirwork to that point, "we still have quite a job ahead of us. I'm nowtrying to find some data for you to work on, but I can tell you this:We'll need a ship that has plenty of strength and plenty of speed. Therewill be the usual power plant, of course; the generators, the power-tubeboard, and the electro-magnetic relays for the regular molecular motioncontrols. Then, in addition, we must have controls for the rayprojector, though that must wait a while, for Dad is working on a methodof doubling our range.... Oh yes, the driving units will be inside theship now, for all our power will come from the energy of thelight-matter."
They spent the next hour in discussing the manifold details involved inthe design of their space ship: the mechanism involved in transferringthe light-energy to the drivers; a means of warming the ship ininterstellar space; a main horizontal drive for forward and backwardmotion as well as braking; three smaller vertical power units to givethem freedom of direction in climb or descent; other smaller horizontalpower units for turning and moving sideways.
The ships, they decided, must be capable of six or seven thousand milesa second. They would need three types of ships: a small single-manspeedster, without bunk or living quarters, simply a little power plantand weapon. Designed for speed and mobility, it would be very hard tohit, and because of its own offensive power would be dangerous to theenemy. They would need a fleet of mother ships--ships that would holdboth the speedsters and their pilots--say thirty to a cruiser. Therewould also be some ten-man scouts, operating in the same manner as thelarger cruisers, but with a smaller fleet of speedsters dependent onthem.
"For defense," Arcot concluded, "we'll have to depend on armor as heavyas we can make and still remain within the bounds of practicalconstruction. I don't believe we'll be able to build up enough mass toinsulate against their negative catalysis ray. We'll have to depend onmobility and offense.
"But now let's get back to work. I think, Fuller, that you might call inthe engineers of all the big aircraft and machine tool manufacturers andfabricators, and have them ready to start work at once when the plansare finally drawn up. You'd better get in touch with the Venerianproducers, too. Those new works in Sorthol, Kaxor, will certainly beable to help a lot.
"I suppose the Interplanetary Patrol men will have something to say, sothey better be called in. Likewise the Venerian Council. Morey, maybeyour dad can handle some of this."
As one they arose and set to work on their respective tasks--theplanning and building of the Earth-Venus war fleet.
The Black Star Passes Page 22
