Sam Bending had been waiting for that question. He delivered his answer
with all the nonchalance of a man dropping a burnt match in an ash tray.
"Five hundred horsepower."
Olcott's face simply couldn't hold its expressionless expression against
something like that. His lips twitched, and his eyes blinked. "Five
hundred _what_?"
"I will not make the obvious pun," said Bending. "I said 'five hundred
horsepower'--unquote. About three hundred and seventy-five kilowatts,
maximum."
Olcott appeared to be unable to say anything. He simply stared at the
small, innocuous-looking Converter. Bending was unable to decide whether
Olcott was overawed by the truth or simply stricken dumb by what must
sound like a monstrous lie.
Olcott licked his lips with the tip of his small, pink tongue. "Five
hundred horsepower. Hm-m-m." He took a deep breath. "No wonder those
copper studs are so thick."
"Yeah," said Bending. "If I short 'em across at low voltage, they get
hot."
"_Short them across?_" Olcott's voice sounded harsh.
Bending was in his seventh heaven, and he showed it. His grin was
running as high an energy output as that he claimed for the Converter.
"Sure. The amperage is self-limiting. You can only draw about four
hundred amps off the thing, no matter how low you put the voltage. When
I said five hundred HP, I meant at a thousand volts. As a matter of
fact, the available power in horsepower is roughly half the voltage. But
that only applies to this small model. A bigger one could supply more,
of course."
"What does it weigh?" asked Olcott, in a hushed voice.
"Little over a hundred pounds," Bending said.
Olcott tore his eyes away from the fantastic little box and looked into
Sam Bending's eyes. "May I ask where you're getting power like that?"
"Sure. Hydrogen fusion, same as the stellarator."
"It's powered by deuterium?"
Bending delivered his bombshell. "Nope. Water. Plain, ordinary
aitch-two-oh. See those little vents at the side? They exhaust oxygen
and helium. It burns about four hundred milligrams of water per hour at
maximum capacity."
Olcott had either regained control of himself or had passed the
saturation point; Sam couldn't tell which. Olcott said: "Where do you
put the water?"
"Why put water in it?" Sam asked coolly. "That small whirring sound you
hear isn't the hydrogen-helium conversion; it's a fan blowing air
through a cooling coil. Even in the Sahara Desert there's enough
moisture in the air to run this baby."
"And the fan is powered--"
"... By the machine itself, naturally," said Bending. "It's a
self-contained unit. Of course, with a really big unit, you might have
to hire someone to hang out their laundry somewhere in the neighborhood,
but only in case of emergencies."
"May I sit down?" asked Olcott. And, without waiting for Sam Bending's
permission, he grabbed a nearby chair and sat. "Mr. Bending," he said,
"what is the cost of one of those units?"
"Well, that one cost several hundred thousand dollars. But the thing
could be mass produced for ... oh, around fifteen hundred dollars. Maybe
less."
Olcott absorbed that, blinked, and said: "Is it dangerous? I mean, could
it explode, or does it give out radiation?"
"Well, you have to treat it with respect, of course," Bending said. He
rubbed his big hands together in an unconscious gesture of triumph.
"Just like any power source. But it won't explode; that I can guarantee.
And there's no danger from radiation. All the power comes out as
electric current."
* * * * *
Sam Bending remained silent while Olcott stared at the little black box.
Finally, Olcott put his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes, as though
he'd been too long without sleep. When he removed his hands, his eyes
were focused on Bending.
"You realize," he said, "that we can't give you any sort of contract
until this has been thoroughly checked by our own engineers and research
men?"
"Obviously," said Sam Bending. "But--"
"Do you have a patent?" Olcott interrupted.
"It's pending," said Bending. "My lawyer thinks it will go through
pretty quickly."
Olcott stood up abruptly. "Mr. Bending, if this machine is actually what
you claim it to be--which, of course, we will have to determine for
ourselves--I think that we can make you a handsome--a _very_ handsome
settlement."
"How much?" Bending asked flatly.
"For full rights--millions," said Olcott without hesitation. "That would
be a ... shall we say, an advance ... an advance on the royalties."
"What, no bargaining?" Bending said, in a rather startled tone.
* * * * *
Olcott shook his head. "Mr. Bending, you know the value of such a device
as well as I do. You're an intelligent man, and so am I. Haggling will
get us nothing but wasted time. We want that machine--we _must_ have
that machine. And you know it. And I know you know it. Why should we
quibble?
"I can't say: 'Name your price'; this thing is obviously worth a great
deal more than even Power Utilities would be able to pay. Not even a
corporation like ours can whip up a billion dollars without going
bankrupt. What we pay you will have to be amortized over a period of
years. But we--"
"Just a minute, Mr. Olcott," Bending interrupted. "Exactly what do you
intend to do with the Converter if I sell it to you?"
Olcott hesitated. "Why ... ah--" He paused. "Actually, I couldn't say,"
he said at last. "A decision like that would have to be made by the
Board. Why?"
"How long do you think it would take you to get into production?"
"I ... ah ... frankly couldn't say," Olcott said cautiously. "Several
years, I imagine..."
"Longer than that, I dare say," Bending said, with more than a touch of
sarcasm. "As a matter of fact, you'd pretty much have to suppress the
Converter, wouldn't you?"
Olcott looked at Bending, his face expressionless. "Of course. For a
while. You know very well that this could ruin us."
"The automobile ruined the buggy-whip makers and threw thousands of
blacksmiths out of work," Bending pointed out. "Such things are
inevitable. Every new invention is likely to have an effect like that if
it replaces something older. What do you think atomic energy would have
done to coal mining if it weren't for the fact that coal is needed in
the manufacture of steel? You can't let considerations like that stand
in the way of technological progress, Mr. Olcott."
"Is it a question of money?" Olcott asked quietly.
Bending shook his head. "Not at all. We've already agreed that I could
make as much as I want by selling it to you. No; it's just that I'm an
idealist of sorts. I intend to manufacture the Converter myself, in
order to make sure it gets into the hands of the people."
"I assure you, Mr. Bending, that Power Utilities would do just that--as
soon as it became economically feasible for us to do so."
"I doubt it," Sam Bending said flatly. "If any group has control over
the very thing that's going to put them out of business, they don't
release it; they sit on it. Dictators, for instance, have throughout
history, promised freedom to their people 'as soon as it was feasible'.
Cincinnatus may have done it, but no one else has in the last
twenty-five centuries.
"What do you suppose would have happened in the 1940s if the movie
moguls of Hollywood had had the patent rights for television? How many
other inventions actually have been held down simply because the
interested parties _did_ happen to get their hands on them first?
"No, Mr. Olcott; I don't think I can allow Power Utilities to have a
finger in this pie or the public would never get a slice of it."
Olcott stood up slowly from the chair. "I see, Mr. Bending; you're quite
frank about your views, anyway." He paused. "I shall have to talk this
over with the Board. There must be some way of averting total disaster.
If we find one, we'll let you know, Mr. Bending."
* * * * *
And that was it. That was the line that had stuck in the back of
Bending's mind for two weeks. _If we find a way of averting total
disaster, we'll let you know, Mr. Bending._
And they evidently thought they'd found a way. For two weeks, there had
been phone calls from officers of greater or lesser importance in Power
Utilities, but they all seemed to think that if they could offer enough
money, Sam Bending would capitulate. Finally, they had taken the
decisive step of stealing the Converter. Bending wondered how they had
known where it was; he had taken the precaution of concealing it, just
in case there might be an attempt at robbery, and using it as power
supply for the lab had seemed the best hiding place. But evidently
someone at Power Utilities had read Poe's "Purloined Letter," too.
He smiled grimly. Even if the police didn't find any clues leading them
to the thieves who'd broken into his lab, the boys at Power Utilities
would find themselves in trouble. The second they started to open the
Converter, it would begin to fuse. If they were quick, whoever opened it
should be able to get away from it before it melted down into an
unrecognizable mass.
Sam Bending took the tape from the playback and returned it to his
files.
He wondered how the Power Utilities boys had managed to find where the
Converter was. Checking the power that had been used by Bending
Consultants? Possibly. It would show that less had been used in the past
two weeks than was normally the case. Only the big building next door
was still using current from the power lines. Still, that would have
meant that they had read the meter in the last two weeks, which, in
turn, meant that they had been suspicious in the first place or they
wouldn't have ordered an extra reading.