Arcot pointed toward a glass of water sitting nearby. "Why do things
look distorted through the water? Because the light rays are bent. Why
are they bent? Because as each wave front moves from air to water, _it
slows down_. The electromagnetic and gravitational fields between those
atoms are strong enough to increase the curvature of the space between
them. Now, what happens if we reverse that effect?"
"Oh," said Fuller softly. "I get it. By changing the curvature of the
space surrounding you, you could get any velocity you wanted. But what
about acceleration? It would take years to reach those velocities at any
acceleration a man could stand."
Arcot shook his head. "Take a look at the glass of water again. What
happens when the light comes _out_ of the water? It speeds up again
_instantaneously_. By changing the space around a spaceship, you
instantaneously change the velocity of the ship to a comparable velocity
in that space. And since every particle is accelerated at the same rate,
you wouldn't feel it, any more than you'd feel the acceleration due to
gravity in free fall."
Fuller nodded slowly. Then, suddenly, a light gleamed in his eyes. "I
suppose you've figured out where you're going to get the energy to power
a ship like that?"
"He has," said Morey. "Uncle Arcot isn't the type to forget a little
detail like that."
"Okay, give," said Fuller.
Arcot grinned and lit up his own pipe, joining Wade in an attempt to
fill the room with impenetrable fog.
"All right," Arcot began, "we needed two things: a tremendous source of
power and a way to store it.
"For the first, ordinary atomic energy wouldn't do. It's not
controllable enough and uranium isn't something we could carry by the
ton. So I began working with high-density currents.
"At the temperature of liquid helium, near absolute zero, lead becomes a
nearly perfect conductor. Back in nineteen twenty, physicists had
succeeded in making a current flow for four hours in a closed circuit.
It was just a ring of lead, but the resistance was so low that the
current kept on flowing. They even managed to get six hundred amperes
through a piece of lead wire no bigger than a pencil lead.
"I don't know why they didn't go on from there, but they didn't.
Possibly it was because they didn't have the insulation necessary to
keep down the corona effect; in a high-density current, the electrons
tend to push each other sideways out of the wire.
"At any rate, I tried it, using _lux_ metal as an insulator around the
wire."
"Hold it!" Fuller interrupted. "What, may I ask, is _lux_ metal?"
"That was Wade's idea," Arcot grinned. "You remember those two
substances we found in the Nigran ships during the war?"
"Sure," said Fuller. "One was transparent and the other was a perfect
reflector. You said they were made of light--photons so greatly
condensed that they were held together by their gravitational fields."
"Right. We called them light-metal. But Wade said that was too
confusing. With a specific gravity of 103.5, light-metal was certainly
not a light metal! So Wade coined a couple of words. _Lux_ is the Latin
for light, so he named the transparent one _lux_ and the reflecting one
_relux_."
"It sounds peculiar," Fuller observed, "but so does every coined word
when you first hear it. Go on with your story."
Arcot relit his pipe and went on. "I put a current of ten thousand amps
through a little piece of lead wire, and that gave me a current density
of 10^{10} amps per square inch.
"Then I started jacking up the voltage, and modified the thing with a
double-polarity field somewhat similar to the molecular motion field
except that it works on a sub-nucleonic level. As a result, about half
of the lead fed into the chamber became contraterrene lead! The atoms
just turned themselves inside out, so to speak, giving us an atom with
positrons circling a negatively charged nucleus. It even gave the
neutrons a reverse spin, converting them into anti-neutrons.
"Result: total annihilation of matter! When the contraterrene lead atoms
met the terrene lead atoms, mutual annihilation resulted, giving us pure
energy.
"Some of this power can be bled off to power the mechanism itself; the
rest is useful energy. We've got all the power we need--power, literally
by the ton."
Fuller said nothing; he just looked dazed. He was well beginning to
believe that these three men could do the impossible and do it to order.
"The second thing," Arcot continued, "was, as I said, a way to store the
energy so that it could be released as rapidly or as slowly as we needed
it.
"That was Morey's baby. He figured it would be possible to use the
space-strain apparatus to store energy. It's an old method; induction
coils, condensers, and even gravity itself are storing energy by
straining space. But with Morey's apparatus we could store a lot more.
"A torus-shaped induction coil encloses all its magnetic field within
it; the torus, or 'doughnut' coil, has a perfectly enclosed magnetic
field. We built an enclosed coil, using Morey's principle, and expected
to store a few watts of power in it to see how long we could hold it.
"Unfortunately, we made the mistake of connecting it to the city power
lines, and it cost us a hundred and fifty dollars at a quarter of a cent
per kilowatt hour. We blew fuses all over the place. After that, we used
the relux plate generator.
"At any rate, the gadget can store power and plenty of it, and it can
put it out the same way."
Arcot knocked the ashes out of his pipe and smiled at Fuller. "Those are
the essentials of what we have to offer. We give you the job of figuring
out the stresses and strains involved. We want a ship with a cruising
radius of a thousand million light years."
"Yes, sir! Right away, sir! Do you want a gross or only a dozen?" Fuller
asked sarcastically. "You sure believe in big orders! And whence cometh
the cold cash for this lovely dream of yours?"
"That," said Morey darkly, "is where the trouble comes in. We have to
convince Dad. As President of Transcontinental Airways, he's my boss,
but the trouble is, he's also my father. When he hears that I want to go
gallivanting off all over the Universe with you guys, he is very likely
to turn thumbs down on the whole deal. Besides, Arcot's dad has a lot of
influence around here, too, and I have a healthy hunch he won't like the
idea, either."
"I rather fear he won't," agreed Arcot gloomily.
A silence hung over the room that felt almost as heavy as the pall of
pipe smoke the air conditioners were trying frantically to disperse.
The elder Mr. Morey had full control of their finances. A ship that
would cost easily hundreds of millions of dollars was well beyond
anything the four men could get by themselves. Their inventions were the
property of Transcontinental, but even if they had not been, not one of
the four men would think of selling them to another company.
Finally, Wade said: "I think we'll stand a much better chance if we show
them a big, spectacular exhibition; something really impressive. We'll
point out all the advantages and uses of the apparatus. Then we'll show
them complete plans for the ship. They might consent."
"They might," replied Morey smiling. "It's worth a try, anyway. And
let's get out of the city to do it. We can go up to my place in Vermont.
We can use the lab up there for all we need. We've got everything
worked out, so there's no need to stay here.
"Besides, I've got a lake up there in which we can indulge in a little
atavism to the fish stage of evolution."
"Good enough," Arcot agreed, grinning broadly. "And we'll need that
lake, too. Here in the city it's only eighty-five because the aircars
are soaking up heat for their molecular drive, but out in the country
it'll be in the nineties."
"To the mountains, then! Let's pack up!"