"Holy St. Peter!" exploded McBride. Tommy winced in sympathy,
because he knew what was coming. "Doc Holmann! My father studied
electro-gravitics under him. He was an old fuddy-duddy then. The old
drip owns that university, that's why he's still in the E. G. chair.
I'll bet you a hunk of the lens itself that the old goat doesn't even
know that we are now using magneto-gravitics in the front lens element.
That's the stinker!"
"Is it so dangerous?" asked Tommy. "If she uses the usual methods of
coming to Pluto, she'll be going well towards ten thousand miles per
second by the time she passes the front surface."
"That's the trouble," groaned McBride. "Like all other space crates,
her hull will be made of cupralum alloy, which is as paramagnetic as
alnico is diamagnetic. She'll hit that magneto-gravitic warp that
makes up the fore element, with that antimagnetic hull and it will be
like a pane of glass being struck by a minute pellet of steel. She'll
cause the collapse of the front element, and with the load-loss,
the electro-gravitic elements of the aft element will fall out of
alignment. Heaven only knows what'll happen. Well, we'll all know soon
enough!"
"How long?" asked Tommy.
"Well, she left Terra Tuesday morning. She didn't say what time, but
there's little sense in finding out right now. That hop would take
sixty-eight hours at a standard 5-G from Sol. Say sixty-something,
and let's see, this is about Thursday evening--Greenwich Time, but
that screwball might give zonal time and have taken off from Hawaii
or Sevastopol as the fancy hit her. I'd say sit tight and expect
anything from attar of roses to total extinction within the next couple
of hours. Also get on the lens network and tell the gang to oil up
their trouble-wagons. Everything from spacesuits to hand generators.
Oh Peter! I'm going to quit this ding-busted job and take up truck
farming!"
"Ever hear of Sandra Drake before?" asked Tommy.
"Yeah, she's one of those fool females that isn't content with being
equal to any man--she's got to prove she's better! And she doesn't care
how many people she hurts doing it. If Sandra Drake gets through the
lens to Pluto, she'll get her ears toasted right."
"O.K., John. I'll get on the lens network and warn the boys to prepare
for trouble."
* * * * *
Messages began to fly around the periphery of the great lens, and
the station attendants swore and began to collect tools that would
be necessary to make any conceivable repairs. Small flitters were
powered and made ready, and everything that carried manual controls was
inspected and cleaned for action.
But Sandra Drake did not wait for the completion of the preparatory
work. It was three hours after the first message flew around the lens
that Sandra's ship, the _Lady Luck_, came roaring out of space and slid
its nose into the magneto-gravitic warp of the front surface.
The _Lady Luck_ came to a stop within five thousand miles, which was
remarkable, since she was hitting almost eight thousand miles per
second. If it were not for the fact that space itself was warped behind
the front surface, the _Lady Luck_ and Sandra Drake might both have
been reduced to a flaming mass; but no one really knows what goes on
behind the surface of a magneto-gravitic warp, and the laws that rule
mass, velocity, and inertia must operate under a new principle. Sandra
Drake, the ship no longer capable of any but minor operation, limped
aimlessly, and Sandra, semiconscious did not direct the _Lady Luck_.
In the twelve stations that made up the periphery of the fore element,
the electrical equipment went crazy. Fuses blew, and circuit breakers
crashed open. The magneto-gravitic warp collapsed, and the power
regulation of the generating equipment could not hold the power to a
safe level. Excesses went into the operating equipment and raised the
operating levels to overload values. Relays welded shut; relay coils
blew. Switches arced across their open contacts, and closed switches
took the overload until their contact points melted: the melting stub
ends made sputtering arcs of copper-green hue until the gap was too
wide. The pungent smell of burning insulation filled the stations,
and the personnel covered themselves with the space-suit helmets and
breathed canned air.
The careful positioning of the stations that held the warp of the
collapsed fore element was lost as the tractor-pressor beam system
took the unleashed overload current. The regular duodecagon pattern
warped into a space pattern as the alignment lost not only its
regularity of distance-between-stations, but its perfection of flatness.
Then as the raging current was stopped by open circuits, burned
or broken, the internal damage stopped also. The stations that
held the magneto-gravitic warp began to drift aimlessly, pulled at
cross-purposes by the undirected tractor-pressor system.
The electro-gravitic warp of the second element thickened as the
fore surface moved into the space formerly occupied by the fractured
lens. The effect was similar to that of restraining a spring and then
releasing it. The rear element went into a damped cycle of expansion
and contraction, alternately shortening and lengthening the focal
length. The series of stations that held the rear element were shaken
in long, sickening swells as the electro-gravitic warp oscillated back
and forth along the axis of the lens.
Here, in the stations that held this warp, there was no danger from
electrical failure. But the long swells of back and forth movement
shook the mechanical equipment until the bearings of rotating
machinery began to rattle. An occasional relay would snap shut for the
briefest of instants and make instantaneous circuits that caused minor
imperfections of the lens.
The cycle damped to zero in ten minutes, and then the men in the
second element stations surveyed their bruises and began to pick up
the mess; from every cabinet, from every bench, from every shelf,
tools, supplies, and instruments had been thrown. They lay in profusion
throughout the stations and must be replaced before the men could make
a move toward repair.
* * * * *
On Pluto, all was serene. Light that had passed through the distorted
lens had not reached the far planet yet, and so they did not know.
Men toiled in the uranium mines in the Styx Valley and men fought
the low passes of the Devil's Range to bring the ore to Mephisto,
and in Mephisto, children were just getting out of school. Women
were shopping, and chatting with their friends and haggling with the
shopkeepers over the prices and quality of their proposed dinners.
Two hundred miles down the River Styx, at the twin cities of Hell
and Sharon, men and women lolled in the warm river and played on the
perfect miles of beach. The Sulphur Sea, which was as misnamed as
any of the other places on Pluto, was dotted with the white sails of
pleasure craft, and the occasional white wake of a power speedboat.
A foursome on the fifth green at the Tantalus Country Club was arguing
about a handicap, since one of their number was ten strokes better than
the rest. A big league baseball game was in progress at Imps Park in
Hell, and the home team was beating the Red Devils by a score of 9 to
8. It cannot be recorded that Satan was pitching, though that would
have been a nice touch. The pitcher's name was a staid and simple Jones.
And there were the sordid sides, too. Three men and a woman had been
hit by automobiles during the course of the afternoon between the twin
cities. A burglar had plied his trade to the tune of thirty-three
hundred dollars from Faust's Playhouse, and was later apprehended
trying to make a getaway along the Road to Hell, which connected the
twin cities and was always spoken of as being named "The Road To Hell"
because it permitted the citizens of either city to go across the
bridge to the opposite side. The planned name of Bifrost Bridge now
appeared only on maps and formal writings since the informal name was
by far the more popular.
Then without warning, the scintillating sun went out, and left Pluto
once more the God of Darkness. It came on again, as the rear element
extended and shortened the focal length once more to a degree slightly
less than the length of the complex lens. It oscillated, and it
wavered, and it danced from spot to spot on Pluto. Where it touched
with perfect focus, it seared the ground and sent up huge gouts of
flame and tortured earth as the whole output of the sun bore down
upon a small circle. It hit the Sulphur Sea, and sent great steaming
clouds of vapor floating across the twin cities. It cut a sear across
the center of Bifrost Bridge, and cut the famed bridge in the middle
of the span. Bifrost broke and fell into the River Styx--and like the
famed tale of Ragnarok, the falling of Bifrost Bridge preceded a period
of terror.
The dancing spot of pure solar hell settled down, and with the
characteristic perversity of uncontrolled things, it came to a perfect
focal point of some six hundred feet in diameter, under which spot
everything went molten.
Without waiting for any further information, the astronomers at the
Pluto Observatory made rapid and precise calculations, and issued
orders to the effect that all people must evacuate along the expected
trail of destruction.
It was their quick work that stopped the casualty list short.
And Pluto, writhing in one tiny spot from terrific heat, began to cool
everywhere else. Men looked at one another in fear as the cooling
breezes began to sweep across the face of Pluto.
The production of uranium stopped, as did everything but the overworked
communications system.
* * * * *
John McBride glared at the telephone. "They should know by now," he
snapped, "that we can't take time to use the phone with all of this
devilment going on."
Tommy handed him a spacegram. "Someone knows," he said cryptically.
McBride tore the 'gram open. "Oh, great ache! Tommy, pass the word on
the lens network. Tell 'em to cut the electro-gravitic warp, too.
The thing is focused right on the middle of Pluto and is cutting a
six-hundred-foot swath across the face of Pluto like an oxy-atomic
torch cuts butter."
"Can't we refocus it?" asked Tommy anxiously.
"Not without moving the stations. Or playing hob with the
warp-generators. Either way would take a week to adjust. Tell Adkins to
pull the big switch and hope for the best. Oh yes! Tell every mother's
son not to tinker with the P-T network. When we get this mess cleaned
up, we're going to need the placement again and there's little sense
in letting the stations run free. Thank the Lord the warp will tend to
align them again, once it goes on, or we'd have a six-month's space
surveying job to do."
The lens-network phone rang, and McBride answered.
"John? This is Fuller on 9. We just found Carlson under the alphatron.
He's knocked colder than last week's wash and he's got a bad alpha
burn."
"Better get him into an interstation flitter and bring him over. Or is
Doc Caldwell there?"
"No, he isn't!"
"Bring him over anyway. I'll broadcast a call for the doc."
"What'll we do without him?" asked Fuller in a helpless tone.
"What'll you do with him in an unconscious condition?" asked McBride
unsympathetically. "Before Carlson can do anything, we've got to bring
him into the open. Besides, we won't be ready for Carlson until we get
the mess cleared up."
"O.K.," said Fuller in an abashed tone. He hung up, and McBride snapped
the button that sent a loud-speaker call through the entire system.
"Is Doc Caldwell within hearing? Call McBride."
Automatic tapes took up the call and repeated it at intervals until the
doctor heard and put in a call to McBride.
"Yes, John?"
"Doc, where are you?"
"Station 27."
"What's doing?"
"Few minor cuts and a fractured skull."
"What does that mean in time?"
"Half hour."
"Then take it, and then get to 1 as soon as you can. Carlson needs
attention."
"Right-o!"