The Collected Stories

by Earl

  WHILE he had been talking, he had uncovered an apparatus on his private workbench. I’d seen it before, but had never taken particular notice of it. It looked vaguely like an acetylene torch inclosed in a Crookes tube, which was supported in a rigid framework of steel. The two nozzles bristled with tiny electrodes from which insulated wires trailed to the back of the tear-shaped tube. Several inch-thick cables led externally from the tube to the wall panel and were plugged in to the source of seven million electron volts with which the laboratory was supplied through a duplicate of Lawrence’s cyclotron, which first made neutrons in large quantities.

  “Now,” said Doc Rowe, patting the tube affectionately. “We will go from the theoretical, and somewhat figurative, to the experimental. I built this tube originally, years ago, to produce artificial radioactive elements. But now I have a new use for this micro-particle projector. Bob, how many subatomic particles are there known to present-day science? Name them.”

  I went down the list. “In the low-mass group, electron, positron. In the heavy-mass group, alpha particle, proton, neutron, and deuteron.”

  “And——”

  From my blank puzzlement he turned to Alvira and barked a querulous “And——” Then, finding us both lacking any sort of answer, he stepped back from us as though we were lepers.

  “Words fail me.” He sighed, tie went on in a disillusioned monotone: “I am positively afraid to ask you what two plus two is. I’m going out now, for an hour.” With which he left, shaking his old head.

  I looked in Alvira’s eyes and saw a reflection of my own flattened ego. Then, quite suddenly, we were laughing.

  “Imagine,” she gasped, “words failed him! He needs a new set of synonyms for ‘imbecile.’ ”

  The laugh did us good. Alvira wagged a mock finger of scorn under my nose. “That time we both got mowed down by Doc’s bombardment.”

  Somehow, that had forged a common bond between us. “Alvira,” I said suddenly, taking a step toward her. She did not back away.

  WHEN Doc Rowe returned, he was deep in venomous moodiness, but Alvira and I didn’t particularly care. “So,” he growled, “I give you time to atone for your abysmal ignorance of before, and I come back to find you in each other’s arms. Is this a laboratory or a lover’s nook?”

  “We’re getting married,” I announced, with the feeling of throwing a bomb.

  I warrant Doc Rowe has seldom been that startled. Words failed him again, apparently. We smiled as the old codger assimilated this unclassifiahle fact in his scientific brain. He managed to recover after a moment.

  “The principle of indeterminacy is not infallible,” he murmured. “Not in that,” He waved a hand to include us and the intangible principle for which we stood. “I suppose you’ll be leaving me?” he said in a voice of defeat.

  “Oh, no,” I assured him. “It won’t be as sudden as all that. We’ll finish out this term with you.”

  He nodded. “Naturally,” he acceded, “I couldn’t expect you at this time to be concerned about such an irrelevant thing as a subatomic particle, in the face of this sublime biological discovery you’ve just made. You may as well leave for the afternoon.”

  “That’s just it, Doc.” I grinned. “The one we failed to name before is the triteron, the isotope of hydrogen having three times the mass of the hydrogen proton. It is the prototype of the deuteron, and completes the scale from Atomic Mass 1, which is ordinary hydrogen, to Atomic Mass 4, which is the alpha particle of helium.”

  Dos Rowe, incapable of being further surprised that day, beamed on us. “Splendid!” he crowed. “To-morrow, then, we will see what we can do with the triteron in our attempt to contract time, achieve absolute inertia and gain free energy.”

  He shooed us out, though it was an hour before our usual quitting time, proving he was more human than he ordinarily cared to admit. Alvira and I were, of course, only too pleased. We had dinner together, happy as larks.

  NEXT DAY, true to his promise, Doc Rowe launched the project. He herded us before the machine which used submicroscopic artillery. Without preamble, he threw the switch that rammed seven million electron volts into the tube. It flared up with the violet light of ionization, and hummed busily.

  Doc Rowe pointed to one of the barrage of meters he had hooked into the chamber of action. Periodically, about once every ten seconds, its needle leaped spasmodically over the calibrations on the dial. Then he shut off the apparatus.

  “Now, my little love birds,” he began, “suppose we figure out what we have so far. From the left nozzle is projected a stream of neutrons formed by bombardment of carbon by alpha particles from radium, as first performed by Chadwick in 1932. From the right nozzle we get triterons. The seven million electron volts from the cyclotron are converted into an alpha ray, which bombards lithium and gives a high percentage of triterons, as performed by Lawrence recently. So far we are doing the usual.”

  He then pointed to the sphere of action in the tube. “However, you will note that the nozzles are directed inward, so that their beams cross in the center of the tube. Whenever a triteron collides with a neutron at this focal point, there is a significant result. As the meter showed, a great deal of energy for such small masses is released. Now, Bob, what exactly is formed, do you suppose, when a triteron collides with a neutron?”

  “An atom of inertron,” I retorted promptly.

  He gave me a puzzled nod and swung on Alvira. “Just what is an atom of inertron, in subatomic terms?”

  “It is composed of one alpha unit and one proton—or five protonic units—joined together with the usual planetary distance reduced to a practical zero.”

  “What is its atomic weight?” This to me, dazedly.

  I could not help grinning and rubbing it in. “It is not five, which is the sum of an alpha particle and a proton. It is in the order of a million million. Thus a cubic centimeter of inertron would weigh a million million grams.”

  Doc Rowe decided to get mean then. “How do you account for a neutron fusing with a triteron in this new fashion to give an atom of inertron?”

  “A neutron,” I said, “has no charge. Therefore, it pursues a straight line past the outer shell of electrons of a triteron. It is thus able to collide directly with the nucleus. This collision, like no other nuclear collision, causes complete collapse of the newly formed nucleus.” I frowned. “I don’t know the reason for that.”

  “Imbecile!” he said, but with a pleased grin that I was stuck at last. “A neutron must always cause collapse of a nucleus, because it is the only highspeed, heavy-mass atomic projectile which is capable of penetrating within the atom without loss of speed. That, of course, is because of its neutrality. A proton, or even the massive alpha particle, always retards velocity in the field of force of the electronic shell, before striking the nucleus. They are too weak to do more than give the nucleus a hearty shove when they arrive. But the neutron, arriving with all the fury of its projection, smashes into the nucleus with stupendous force. With enough force, in fact, to carry out a real fusion, similar to two drops of liquid joining. It plunges into a nucleus like a planet plunging into earth, to completely melt the two together. Do you agree?”

  He glared at us belligerently. I’m certain we had no outstanding objections and Doc Rowe went on like a juggernaut: “And when we get an atom of inertron, Alvira, what is the result? No—I’ll answer myself, since we must not waste any more time. The atom of inertron formed, the heaviest possible in the entire cosmos, promptly ceases all relative motion, simply because there is no known force in the universe capable of giving it momentum. It does not obey Newton’s first law of motion, because that applies to relative space, and inertron exists in the absolute. It possesses absolute inertia in absolute space. At the moment of formation, therefore, an atom of inertron releases all positive, kinetic energy it had from its former constituents. This remains behind in our apparatus, in the form of by-product radiations, which we can easily gather in.”

  Hi
s hands made the motions of gathering in large piles of invisible treasure.

  “What does the inertron atom itself do? It leaves the apparatus, leaves earth, and plunges with inconceivable velocity for the core of the universe, the bub around which all galaxies, including our own, rotate. This is estimated to be about a million light years in the direction of Sagittarius. Nothing can stop it. It plunges through suns, planets, and all matter without the slightest hindrance, for it is almost infinitely small and infinitely heavy.

  “At the hub of the universe it comes to rest, joining itself to the mass of inertron which must exist there. Here it stays for all time, immovably. None of the laws of the universe we deal with applies to it. Time, for it, has been contracted to nothingness, to an absolute zero as absolute as its inertia, and as the space it exists in, and as the mass it contains. To us, it does not exist at all, for you remember our equations cancel it to a zero when time cancels to zero. Yet it exists, also, in the absolute space that does not exist for us. It is a paradox almost without meaning.”

  He sighed and brought himself down to earth, as though he had been out there at the mysterious hub of the cosmos.

  “However, that is the basis of my inertron generator—and of my original contention that the contraction of time releases energy.

  “But there is work to do. We must find a way to increase the percentage of collisions of our neutrons and triterons. At present the apparatus uses more power in projecting these particles than it gains in the formation of inertron atoms.”

  WE PLUNGED into concentrative work. I will not go into detail, but three months later we had a magnetic-field surrounding tube that drew the stream of triterons into a tight beam which could be focused on the stream of neutrons almost like the two jets of a hydro-oxy torch are aligned. And like that instrument, at the point of convergence a powerful holocaust took place, but thousands of times more energetic.

  The millions of inertron atoms we formed, going through the glass, steel, our bodies perhaps, and earth, and out into the absolute, left behind their legacy of power, far more than we put into the machine. It was almost miraculous.

  Doc Rowe, just before Alvira and I graduated out of his hands, drew up a complete set of plans and mailed them to the Nobel energy prize committee. “Mind you,” he explained to us elaborately, “I do not care a fig for the fame this will bring, nor the prestige to Rushmore College, and least of all for the million dollars. I could have announced the neutron two years before Chadwick, and radio sodium before Lawrence, but does it matter who carries the banners of marching science? I seek truth for itself. The million dollars? Bah! You shall see me fling it back in their faces!”

  I was never able to figure out just to what extent Doc Rowe meant those things. I cannot say whether his Cavendish nature was assumed or real. But I’ll never forget the day he tore open the letter from the Nobel committee in our presence, read it, and turned a sickly green. We read it, Alvira and I.

  Briefly, it explained that an apparatus quite similar in design and operation had been described to them a week before! It had been submitted by none other than Dr. E. O. Lawrence, of the University of California. And that, therefore, with regrets, the prize would go to him.

  We were sure, Alvira and I, that the sole disappointment to Doc Rowe was the lost chance to fling that million-dollar prize back in their faces! But it was ironical, we thought, that the man who could contract time hadn’t contracted time in time!

  That marked the end of the Nobel institute’s singular experiment to take care of civilization’s power needs for all time. The Nobel committee’s commentary was: “There is no doubt that the result, in one bold stroke, has tied man to the infinite. The inertron generator does not depend for its fuel on such transient things as coal or water power. Its power is from the subatom, which makes up all matter. This energy source is eternal so long as matter itself, and the life it composes, is everlasting. Its principles will operate a million years from now, and a million million, long after the siftings of coal in earth’s crust are exhausted. Civilization has carried a back-breaking load of this black gold since the inception of the steam engine in the middle 18th century. To-day we break free. Civilization rides the atom!”

  But all stories seem to have unexpected anticlimaxes. At least this one does. Alvira and I were agreeably surprised, a few weeks later, to read in the papers that the Nobel committee had split the million-dollar melon between Lawrence and Doc Rowe, since they had independently devised the same machine, and almost at the same time.

  “I wonder,” said Alvira, “if Doc Rowe will throw that half million back into their faces? Or has he had his heart set on doing it with the full million!”

  A few days later, as though in answer, we received a note from Doc Rowe, saying:

  It was Lawrence himself who insisted on the division of the prize. Under those circumstances I could not fling it back in their faces, could I? Herewith is a little memento of our labors together—for the advancement of biology.

  It was a check for fifty thousand dollars. You figure the man out!

  1938

  WAYWARD WORLD

  It all happened on a world that—by all the laws of space—wasn’t there!

  THE superbullet of beryllium-bronze bored its way into the vacuum between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. At either end mushrooming banks of slender rocket tubes were ready to belch out their thunder to slow or speed the ship. For twelve days now—since leaving Ganymede—their shining ship, the Thunderbolt, had plummeted the barrens of space, seeking a rendezvous with a mystery planet allegedly—but unofficially—glimpsed in the giant 200-inch reflector at Mt. Palomar.

  Most of the Thunderbolt’s bulk was taken up with fuel reserves and other supplies. The cabin in which the two human occupants ate, slept and guided the rocket juggernaut took up little more than one-fifth of the space at the nose. It was designed for the deeps of space, with a cruising range a score of times the distance between Earth and Mars. Its builders had launched it with pride.

  “It’s a wild-goose chase. I tell you.” snarled Wade Welton. He was standing at the lee port, gazing out upon the limitless star-powdered firmament that seemed to hem them in closely, immovably. Yet the spaceship was arrowing through the void at a thousand miles a second. “We’re heading right for the main street of dreamland.”

  Archibald Quinley Osgood snorted. “You’re a high-powered skeptic, Wade boy. But why should Solar Metals Inc. pack us into the latest model neodyne ship, fully stocked and fueled, if they weren’t dead serious?” He took a turn or two in the cabin. “Why. it’s a pleasure just to be in this space greyhound.”

  Welton’s eyes searched the jeweled apex of the constellation Gemini—the “Twins”—ahead of them. For undoubtedly the hundredth time he hawked the space between Castor and Pollux. “It’s not there,” he said in the tones of a curse. “Not to the naked eye. Binoculars. on the other hand, make a mess of it. with so many pin-magnitude stars popping out. It’s not there. Archie. And it can’t be there. I’m glad to say I don’t see it. since I consider myself reasonably sane. There can be no planet between Uranus and Saturn. A wild-goose chase in space,” he finished emphatically.

  Osgood grinned amiably. “Professor Malcolm Afferton is at the head of the batting list in astronomy. As director of the Mt. Palomar staff, he wouldn’t be making wild reports.”

  “He didn’t report this, though.” reminded Welton. “Not officially. The 100-inch telescope on Ganymede has not reported it, and they’re a lot nearer than Earth. At the time we left, they were going over old plates, trying to get a photographic sequence of the 12th magnitude planet supposedly spotted between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.”

  “There’s plenty of room there.” argued Osgood complacently. “About nine hundred million miles.”

  Welton groaned and thumped the side of his head with his fist. “Did you ever hear of perturbation, my microcephalic friend?”

  “You mean like when I disturb you?”
inquired Osgood innocently.

  Welton released a hundred-candle-power glare and hissed, “Even if the alleged planet were the mass of Mercury, its gravitational effects would give Saturn’s orbit a little twist, easily measurable. Also Uranus’. Even their moons. Now what do you say when some one insists that something’s there that ain’t there? Because not by one pink inch is Saturn—or Uranus—perturbed other than by the known flanking planets.”

  Osgood munched a vitamin pellet thoughtfully. “But if it is there, Wade!”

  “Then it has no mass—like your brain. No, Archie, it can’t exist. We’re turning back to-morrow, a couple of second—and second-rate—Columbuses who looked for a double-damned world in the wrong place in space.”

  BUT Welton was wrong. The next day a blue-green pin point spawned out of the void, flanked by Castor and Pollux. A mystery body that enlarged and outshone the stars. Its rapid inflation gave them a visual indication of their velocity. Welton muttered to himself at the discovery, but made no coherent answer to Osgood’s sly ribbing.

  “Pretty low albedo.” Welton’s puffed, sleepless eyes, after thirty hours of vigilant deceleration, stared at the approaching world. “Archie, get ready for some fancy maneuvering and a lot of piled-up inertia. I’m going to get on a tangent and slow down to three miles a second, which ought to be below the escape velocity of this Ethiopian member of the solar system. Ready?”

  Osgood groaned in anticipation and tightened his belts. “Let her go, Wade. But I wish I could anchor my stomach down while you prove Euclid was a sissy with his straight line geometry.”