Complete Venus Equilateral (1976) SSC

by George O. Smith

  “Nothing more? Do you need the metal for electrical reasons?”

  “No,” said Don. “What have you in mind?”

  “Our tool shop is nicely equipped to grind glass gauges. We can do that better than grinding Jo-blocks. Can you use glass ones?”

  “Hang on a minute.” Channing turned to Walt. “Kingman says his outfit uses glass gauges. Any reason why we can’t?”

  “See no reason why not. I’ve heard of using glass gauges, and they’ve got some good reasons, too. Tell him to go ahead.”

  “Kingman? How soon can we get glass ones?”

  “Herman, how soon on the glass blocks?”

  “Two dozen? About a week.”

  “We’ll have your blocks on the way within four days, Channing. Five days minimum, plus whatever wait is necessary to get ‘em aboard a spacer.”

  “We’ll check from this end on schedules. We need the blocks, and if the wait is too long, we’ll send the Relay Girl in for ‘em.”

  -

  Don hung up and then said: “Glass ones might be a good idea. We can check the transmission characteristics optically. I think we can check more, quicker, than by running analysis on steel.”

  “Plus the fact that you can get the blocks back after test,” grinned Walt. “Once you tear into a steel block to check its insides, you’ve lost your sample. I don’t know any better way to check homogeneity than by optical tests.”

  “O.K. Well, four days for glass blocks will do better than a couple of months on steel blocks.”

  “Right. Now let’s look up Wes and see what he’s come up with.”

  They found Farrell in one of the blister laboratories, working on a small edition of the power-transmission tubes. He was not dressed in spacesuit, and so they entered the blister and watched him work.

  “Have a little trouble getting the focus to stay sharp through the trace,” Wes complained. “I can get focus of atomic proportions—the circle of confusion is about the size of the atom nucleus, I mean—at the axis of the tube. But the deflection of the cone of energy produces aberration, which causes coma at the edges. The corners of an area look fierce.”

  “I wonder if mechanical scanning wouldn’t work better.”

  “Undoubtedly. You don’t hope to send life, do you?”

  “It would be nice—but no more fantastic than this thing is now. What’s your opinion?”

  Wes loosened a set screw on the main tube anode and set the anode forward a barely perceptible distance. He checked it with a vernier rule and tightened the screw. He made other adjustments on the works of the tube itself, and then motioned outside. They left the blister, Wes closed the airtight, and cracked the valve that let the air out of the blister. He snapped the switch on the outside panel and then leaned back in his chair while the cathode heated.

  “With electrical scanning, you’ll have curvature of field with this gadget. That isn’t too bad, I suppose, because the restorer will have the same curvature. But you’re going to scan three ways, which means correction for the linear distance from the tube as well as the other side deflections and their aberrations. Now if we could scan the gadget mechanically, we’d have absolute flatness of field, perfect focus, and so forth.”

  Walt grinned. “Thinking of television again? Look, bright fellows, how do you move an assembly of mechanical parts in quanta of one atomic diameter? They’ve been looking for that kind of gadget for centuries. Dr. Rowland and his gratings would turn over in their graves with a contrivance that could rule lines one atom apart.”

  “On what?” asked Don.

  “If it would rule one-atom lines, brother, you could put a million lines per inch on anything rulable with perfection, ease, éclat, and savoir faire. You follow my argument? Or would you rather take up this slip of my tongue and make something out of it?”

  “O.K., fella, I see your point. How about that one, Wes?”

  Wes Farrell grinned. “Looks like I’d better be getting perfect focus with the electrical system here. I hadn’t considered the other angle at all, but it looks a lot tougher than I thought.” He squinted through a wall-mounted telescope at the setup on the inside of the blister. “She’s hot,” he remarked quietly, and then set to checking the experiment. Fifteen minutes of checking, and making notes, and he turned to the others with a smile. “Not too bad that way,” he said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve established a rather complex field. In order to correct the aberrations, I’ve got non-linear focusing fields in the places where they tend to correct for the off-axis aberrations. To correct for the height effect. I’m putting a variable corrector to control the whole cone of energy, stretching it or shortening it according to the needs. I think if I use a longer focal length I’ll be able to get the thing running right. “That’ll lessen the need for correction, too,” he added, cracking the blister-intake valve and letting the air hiss into the blister. He opened the door and went inside, and began to adjust the electrodes. “You know,” he added over his shoulder, “we’ve got something here that might bring a few dollars on the side. This matter-bank affair produces clean, clear, and practically pure metal. You might be able to sell some metal that was rated ‘pure’ and mean it.”

  “You mean absolutely, positively, guaranteed, uncontaminated, unadulterated, perfectly chemically pure?” grinned Don.

  “Compared to what ‘chemically pure’ really means, your selection of adjectives is a masterpiece of understatement,” Walt laughed.

  “I’m about to make one more try,” announced Wes. Then I’m going to drop this for the time being. I’ve got to get up to the machine shop and see what they’re doing with the rest of the thing.”

  “We’ll take that over if you wish,” said Don.

  “Will you? I‘ll appreciate it. I sort of hate to let this thing go when I feel that I’m near an answer.”

  “We’ll do it,” said Walt, definitely.

  They left the laboratory and made their way to the elevator that would lift them high into the relay station, where the machine shop was located. As they entered the elevator, Don shook his head.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, friend Wes is on the beam again. If he feels that we’re close to the answer, I’ll bet a hat that we’re hanging right on the edge. Also, that kind of work would kill me dead. He likes to stick on one thing till the bitter end, no matter how long it takes. I couldn’t do it.”

  “I know. About three days of this and you’re wanting another job to clear your mind. Then you could tackle that one for about three hours and take back on the first.”

  “Trying to do that to Farrell would kill both him and the jobs,” said Don. “But you and I can keep two or three projects going strong. Oh, well, Wes is worth a million.”

  “He’s the best we’ve got,” agreed Walt. “Just because he has a peculiar slant on life is no sign he’s not brilliant.”

  “It’s you and I that have the cockeyed slant on life.” Don grinned. “And frankly, I’m proud of it.” He swung the elevator door aside and they walked down the corridor. “This isn’t going to be much to see, but we’ll take a look.”

  The machine shop, to the man, was clustered around the one cabinet under construction. They moved aside to permit the entry of Channing and Franks.

  “Hm-m-m,” said Don. “Looks like a refrigerator and incinerator combined.”

  It did. It stood five feet tall, three feet square, and was sealed in front by a heavy door. There was a place intended for the tube that Farrell was tinkering with in the blister, and the lines to supply the power were coiled behind the cabinet.

  “Partly wired?” asked Don.

  “Just the power circuits,” answered Michael Warren. “We’ll have this finished in a couple of days now. The other one is completed except for Wes Farrell’s section.”

  Channing nodded, and said: “Keep it going.” He turned to Walt and, after the passage of a knowing glance, the pair left. “Walt, this is get
ting on my nerves. I want to go down to Joe’s and drink myself into a stupor that will last until they get something cogent to work on.”

  “I’m with you, but what will Arden say?”

  “I’m going to get Arden. Self-protection. She’d cut my feet off at the knees if I went off on a tear without her.”

  “I have gathered that,” grinned Walt. “You’re afraid other.”

  “Yeah,” drawled Don. “After all—she’s the cook.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “If and when. If you two go on as you have for another year without one of you turning up with a black eye, I may be tempted to go forth and track me down a babe of my own.”

  The cabinet stood in the north end of Venus Equilateral but it was not alone. It may even be the record for all times: certainly no other cabinet three by three by five ever had twenty-seven men all standing in a circle awaiting developments. The cabinet at the south end of Venus Equilateral was no less popular, though the number of watchers was less by one. Here, then, were winner and runner-up of inanimate popularity for the ages. The communicator system set in the walls of the two rooms carried sounds from the north room to the south, and those sounds in the south room could be heard in the north room.

  Channing grinned boyishly at Arden.

  “This, my love, is a device which may make it quite possible for me to send you back to Mother.”

  Arden smiled serenely. “No dice,” she said. “Mother went back to Grandmother last week. When is this thing going to cook?”

  “Directly.”

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “Walt.”

  I’m ready,” came Walt’s voice through the speaker.

  “About time, slowpoke.”

  “Really, it was not his fault,” Wes objected. “I wanted to check the scanner synchronization.”

  “He’s precious,” chortled Arden in Don’s ear. “He wouldn’t think of letting Walt, the big bum, take the blame for anything that wasn’t Walt’s fault.”

  “That’s a good line,” grinned Don. “Walt’s faults. After we set this thing aside as a finished project, we’ll set that ‘Walt’s Faults’ to music. Ready, Walt?”

  “Right. I am now slipping the block into the cabinet. The door is closed. Have you got the preliminary synchronizing signal in tick?”

  Channing called: “Wait a minute, I’m lagging a whole cycle.”

  “Cut your synchronization input and let the thing catch up.”

  “O.K. Um-m-m—Now, Walt.”

  “Has anyone any last words to say?” asked Walt.

  No answer.

  “Then since no one has any objections at this time, I assume that everything may be run off. Silence, people, we are going on the air!”

  “There was a very faint odor of corn in Walt’s last remark,” said Don.

  “I think the corn was on his breath,” said Arden.

  “Done!” Walt announced. “Don, crack the door so that the rest of us can laugh if it don’t work.”

  Channing swaggered over and opened the door. He reached inside and took out the—object.

  He held it up.

  “Walt,” he said, “what are you giving me?”

  “Huh!”

  “I presume that you shipped me one of the cubes?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, what we got at this end would positively scare the right arm off of a surrealist sculptor.”

  “Hang on to it. I’ll be right up.”

  “Hang on to it?” laughed Don. “I’m afraid to touch it.”

  It was three miles from one end of Venus Equilateral to the other and Walt made it in six minutes from the time he stepped into the little runway car to the time he came into the north-end laboratory and looked over Channing’s shoulder at the—thing—that stood on the table.

  “Um,” he said. “Sort of distorted, isn’t it?”

  “Quite,” said Don. “This is glass. It was once a three-inch cube of precision, polish, and beauty. It is now a combination of a circular stairway with round corners and a sort of accordion pleat. Hell’s bells!”

  “Be not discouraged,” gurgled Walt. “No matter what it looks like, we did transmit matter.”

  Arden tapped Don on the shoulder. “May I say it now?”

  “You do!”

  “Then I won’t say it doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m ignoring your crude remark. Walt, we did accomplish something. It wasn’t too good. Now let’s figure out why this thing seems to have been run over with a fourth dimensional caterpillar-tread truck.”

  “Well, I can hazard a guess. The synchronizing circuits were not clamped perfectly. That gives the accordion-pleat effect. The starting of the trace was not made at the same place each time due to slippage. We’ll have to beef up the synchronization impulse. The circular-staircase effect was probably due to phase distortion.”

  “Could be,” said Don. “That means we have to beef up the transmission band so it’ll carry a higher frequency.”

  “A lower impedance with corrective elements?”

  “Might work. Those will have to be matched closely. We’re not transmitting on a line, you know. It’s sheer transmission-tube stuff from here to there. Well, gang, we’ve had our fun. Now let’s widen the transmission band and beef up the sync. Then we’ll try number two.”

  -

  Number two was tried the following afternoon. Again, everybody stood around and watched over Don’s shoulder as he removed the cube from the cabinet.

  “Nice,” he said, doing a little war dance.

  Franks came in puffing, took the cube from Don’s fingers, and inspected it. “Not too bad,” he said. “Perfect.”

  “Not by a jug full. The index of refraction is higher at this edge than at the other. See?” Walt held the cube before a newspaper and they squinted through the glass block.

  “Seems to be. Now why?”

  “Second harmonic distortion, if present, would tend to thin out one side and thicken up the other side. A sine-wave transmission would result in even thickness, but if second harmonic distortion is present, the broad loops at the top create a condition where the average from zero to top is higher than the average from zero to the other peak. Follow?”

  “That would indicate that the distortion was coming in at this end. If both were even, they would cancel.”

  “Right. Your scanning at one end is regular—at the other end it is irregular, resulting in non-homogeneity.”

  “The corners aren’t sharp,” objected Arden.

  “That’s an easy one. The wavefront isn’t sharp either. Instead of clipping sharply at the end of the trace, the signal tapers off. That means higher-frequency response is needed.”

  “We need a term. Audio for sonics; radio for electronics; video for television signals—”

  “Mateo,” said Arden.

  “Um—sounds sort of silly,” Walt grinned.

  “That’s because it’s strange. Mateo it is,” said Don. “Our mateo amplifier needs higher-frequency response in order to follow the square wavefront. Might put a clipper circuit in there, too.”

  “I think a clipper and a sharpener will do more than the higher frequency,” said Farrell. He was plying a vernier caliper, and he added: “I’m certain of that second harmonic stuff now. The dimension is cockeyed on this side. Tell you what, Don. I’m going to have the index of refraction measured within an inch of its life. Then we’ll check the thing and apply some high-powered math and see if we can come up with the percentage of distortion.”

  “Go ahead. Meanwhile, we’ll apply the harmonic analyzer to this thing and see what we find. If we square up the edges and make her homogeneous, we’ll be in business.”

  “The spacelines will hate you to pieces,” said Arden.

  “Nope. I doubt that we could send anything very large. It might be more bother to run a huge job than the money it costs to send it by spacer. But we have a market for smal
l stuff that is hard to handle in space because of its size.”

  “I see no reason why Keg Johnson wouldn’t go for a hunk of it,” Wes Farrell offered.

  “I’ve mentioned it to Keg; the last time I was in Canalopsis,” said Walt. “He wasn’t too worried—provided he could buy a hunk.”

  “Interplanet is pretty progressive,” mused Don. “There’ll be no reason why we can’t make some real handy loose change out of this. Well, let’s try it again tomorrow.”

  “O.K. Let’s break this up. Will we need any more blocks from Terran Electric?”

  -

  It was less than a month later that a newspaper reporter caught the advance patent notice and swallowed hard. He did a double take, shook his head, and then read the names on the patent application and decided that someone was not fooling. He took leave and made the run to Venus Equilateral to interview the officials. He returned not only with a story, but with a sample glass block that he had seen run through the machine.

  The news pushed one hatchet murder, a bank robbery, a football upset, and three political harangues all the way back to page seven. In terms more glowing than scientifically accurate, the matter transmitter screamed in three-inch headlines, trailed down across the page in smaller type, and was embellished with pictures, diagrams, and a description of the apparatus. The latter had been furnished by Walt Franks, and had been rewritten by the reporter because Walt’s description was too dry.

  The following morning Venus Equilateral had nine rush telegrams. Three were from cranks who wanted to go to Sirius and set up a restorer there to take people; four were from superstitious nuts who called Channing’s attention to the fact that he was overstepping the rights given to him by his Creator; one was from a gentleman who had a number of ideas, all of which were based on the idea of getting something for nothing and none of which were legal; and the last one was a rather curt note from Terran Electric, pointing out that this device came under the realm of the power-transmission tube and its developments and that they wanted a legal discussion.

  “Have they got a leg to stand on?” asked Walt.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Then to the devil with them,” Walt snapped. “We’ll tell ‘em to go jump in the lake.”