"Still got a toothache?" asked Russ.
"Never got a wink of sleep last night."
"You better run down to Frisco and have it yanked out," suggested the
scientist. "Can't have you laid up."
"Yeah, that's right," agreed Wilson. "Maybe I will. We got a lot to do."
Russ reached out and clamped his wrench on the nut, quickly backed it
off and slipped on the washer. Viciously he tightened it home. The
wrench stuck.
Gritting his teeth on the bit of his pipe, Russ cursed soundlessly. He
yanked savagely at the wrench. It slipped from his hand, hung for a
minute on the nut and then plunged downward, falling straight into the
heart of the new force field they had developed.
Russ froze and watched, his heart in his throat, mad thoughts in his
brain. In a flash, as the wrench fell, he remembered that they knew
nothing about this field. All they knew was that any matter introduced
in it suddenly acquired an acceleration in the dimension known as time,
with its normal constant of duration reduced to zero.
When that wrench struck the field, it would cease to exist! But
something else might happen, too, something entirely unguessable.
The wrench fell only a few feet, but it seemed to take long seconds as
Russ watched, frozen in fascination.
He saw it strike the hazy glow that defined the limits of the field, saw
it floating down, as if its speed had been slowed by some dense medium.
In the instant that hazy glow intensified a thousand times--became a
blinding sun-burst! Russ ducked his head, shielded his eyes from the
terrible blast of light. A rending, shuddering thud seemed to echo ...
in space rather than in air ... and both field and wrench were gone!
A moment passed, then another, and there was the heavy, solid clanging
thud of something striking metal. This time the thud was not in space,
but a commonplace noise, as if someone had dropped a tool on the floor
above.
Russ turned around and stared at Wilson. Wilson stared back, his mouth
hanging open, the smoldering, cigarette dangling from his mouth.
"Greg!" Russ shouted, his cry shattering the silence in the laboratory.
A door burst open and Manning stepped into the main laboratory room, a
calculation pad in one hand, a pencil in the other.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
"We have to find my wrench!"
"Your wrench?" Greg was puzzled. "Can't you get another?"
"I dropped it into the field. Its time-dimension was reduced to zero. It
became an 'instantaneous wrench'."
"Nothing new in that," said Greg, unruffled.
"But there is," persisted Russ. "The field collapsed, you see. Maybe the
wrench was too big for it to handle. And when the field collapsed the
wrench gained a new time-dimension. I heard it. We have to find it."
The three of them pounded up the stairs to the room where Russ had heard
the thump. There was nothing on the floor. They searched the room from
end to end, then the other rooms. There was no wrench.
At the end of an hour Greg went back to the main laboratory, brought
back a portable fluoroscope.
"Maybe this will do the trick," he announced bleakly.
* * * * *
It did. They found the wrench _inside the space between the walls_!
Russ stared at the shadow in the fluoroscope plate. Undeniably it was
the shadow of the wrench.
"Fourth dimension," he said. "Transported in time."
The muscles in Greg's cheeks were tensed, that old flame of excitement
burning in his eyes, but otherwise his face was the mask of old, the
calm, almost terrible mask that had faced a thousand dangers.
"Power and time," he corrected.
"If we can control it," said Russ.
"Don't worry. We can control it. And when we can, it's the biggest thing
we've got."
Wilson licked his lips, dredged a cigarette out of a pocket.
"If you don't mind," he said, "I'll hit for Frisco tonight. This tooth
of mine is getting worse."
"Sure, can't keep an aching tooth," agreed Russ, thinking of the wrench
while talking.
"Can I take your ship?" asked Wilson.
"Sure," said Russ.
Back in the laboratory they rebuilt the field, dropped little ball
bearings in it. The ball bearings disappeared. They found them
everywhere--in the walls, in tables, in the floor. Some, still existing
in their new time-dimension, hung in mid-air, invisible, intangible, but
there.
Hours followed hours, with the sheet of data growing. Math machines
whirred and chuckled and clicked. Wilson departed for San Francisco with
his aching tooth. The other two worked on. By dawn they knew what they
were doing. Out of the chaos of happenstance they were finding rules of
order, certain formulas of behavior, equations of force.
The next day they tried heavier, more complicated things and learned
still more.
A radiogram, phoned from the nearest spaceport, forty miles distant,
informed them that Wilson would not be back for a few days. His tooth
was worse than he had thought, required an operation and treatment of
the jaw.
"Hell," said Russ, "just when he could be so much help."
With Wilson gone the two of them tackled the controlling device, labored
and swore over it. But finally it was completed.
Slumped in chairs, utterly exhausted, they looked proudly at it.
"With that," said Russ, "we can take an object and transport it any
place we want. Not only that, we can pick up any object from an
indefinite distance and bring it to us."
"What a thing for a lazy burglar," Greg observed sourly.
Worn out, they gulped sandwiches and scalding coffee, tumbled into bed.
* * * * *
The outdoor camp meeting was in full swing. The evangelist was in his
top form. The sinners' bench was crowded. Then suddenly, as the
evangelist paused for a moment's silence before he drove home an
important point, the music came. Music from the air. Music from
somewhere in the sky. The soft, heavenly music of a hymn. As if an
angels' chorus were singing in the blue.
The evangelist froze, one arm pointing upward, with index finger ready
to sweep down and emphasize his point. The sinners kneeling at the bench
were petrified. The congregation was astounded.
The hymn rolled on, punctuated, backgrounded by deep celestial organ
notes. The clear voice of the choir swept high to a bell-like note.
"Behold!" shrieked the evangelist. "Behold, a miracle! Angels singing
for us! Kneel! Kneel and pray!"
Nobody stood.
* * * * *
Andy McIntyre was drunk again. In the piteous glare of mid-morning, he
staggered homeward from the poker party in the back of Steve Abram's
harness shop. The light revealed him to the scorn of the entire village.
At the corner of Elm and Third he ran into a maple tree. Uncertainly he
backed away, intent on making another try. Suddenly the tree spoke to
him:
"Alcohol is the scourge of mankind. It turns men into beasts. It robs
them of their brains, it shortens their lives ..."
Andy stared, unable to believe what he heard. The tree, he had no doubt,
was talking to him personally.
The voice of the tree went on: "... takes the bread out of the mouths of
women and children. Fosters crime. Weakens the moral fiber of the
nation."
"Stop!" screamed Andy. "Stop, I tell you!"
The tree stopped talking. All he could hear was the whisper of wind
among its autumn-tinted leaves.
Suddenly running, Andy darted around the corner, headed home.
"Begad," he told himself, "when trees start talkin' to you it's time to
lay off the bottle!"
* * * * *
In another town fifty miles distant from the one in which the tree had
talked to Andy McIntyre, another miracle happened that same Sunday
morning.
Dozens of people heard the bronze statue of the soldier in the courtyard
speak. The statue did not come to life. It stood as ever, a solid piece
of golden bronze, in spots turned black and green by weather. But from
its lips came words ... words that burned themselves into the souls of
those who heard. Words that exhorted them to defend the principles for
which many men had died, to grasp and hold high the torch of democracy
and liberty.
In somber bitterness, the statue called Spencer Chambers the greatest
threat to that liberty and freedom. For, the statue said, Spencer
Chambers and Interplanetary Power were waging an economic war, a
bloodless one, but just as truly war as if there were cannons firing and
bombs exploding.
For a full five minutes the statue spoke and the crowd, growing by the
minute, stood dumbfounded.
Then silence fell over the courtyard. The statue stood as before,
unmoving, its timeless eyes staring out from under the ugly helmet, its
hands gripping the bayoneted rifle. A blue and white pigeon fluttered
softly down, alighted on the bayonet, looked the crowd over and then
flew to the courthouse tower.
* * * * *
Back in the laboratory, Russ looked at Greg.
"That radio trick gives me an idea," he said. "If we can put a radio in
statues and trees without interfering with its operation, why can't we
do the same thing with a television set?"
Greg started. "Think of the possibilities of that!" he burst out.
Within an hour a complete television sending apparatus was placed within
the field and a receptor screen set up in the laboratory.
The two moved chairs in front of the screen and sat down. Russ reached
out and pulled the switch of the field control. The screen came to life,
but it was only a gray blur.
"It's traveling too fast," said Greg. "Slow it down."
Russ retarded the lever. "When that thing's on full, it's almost
instantaneous. It travels in a time dimension and any speed slower than
instantaneity is a modification of that force field."
On the screen swam a panorama of the mountains, mile after mile of
snow-capped peaks and valleys ablaze with the flames of autumn foliage.
The mountains faded away. There was desert now and then a city. Russ
dropped the televisor set lower, down into a street. For half an hour
they sat comfortably in their chairs and watched men and women walking,
witnessed one dog fight, cruised slowly up and down, looking into
windows of homes, window-shopping in the business section.
"There's just one thing wrong," said Greg. "We can see everything, but
we can't hear a sound."
"We can fix that," Russ told him.
He lifted the televisor set from the streets, brought it back across the
desert and mountains into the laboratory.
"We have two practical applications now," said Greg. "Space drive and
television spying. I don't know which is the best. Do you realize that
with this television trick there isn't a thing that can be hidden from
us?"
"I believe we can go to Mars or Mercury or anywhere we want to with this
thing. It doesn't seem to have any particular limits. It handles
perfectly. You can move it a fraction of an inch as easily as a hundred
miles. And it's fast. Almost instantaneous. Not quite, for even with
our acceleration within time, there is a slight lag."
By evening they had an audio apparatus incorporated in the set, had
wired the screen for sound.
"Let's put this to practical use," suggested Greg. "There's a show at
the New Mercury Theater in New York I've been wanting to see. Let's
knock off work and take in that show."
"Now," said Russ, "you really have an idea. The ticket scalpers are
charging a fortune, and it won't cost us a cent to get in!"
_CHAPTER FIVE_
Pine roots burned brightly in the fireplace, snapping and sizzling as
the blaze caught and flamed on the resin. Deep in an easy chair, Greg
Manning stretched his long legs out toward the fire and lifted his
glass, squinting at the flames through the amber drink.
"There's something that's been worrying me a little," he said. "I hadn't
told you about it because I figured it wasn't as serious as it looked.
Maybe it isn't, but it looks funny."
"What's that?" asked Russ.
"The stock market," replied Greg. "There's something devilish funny
going on there. I've lost about a billion dollars in the last two
weeks."
"A _billion_ dollars?" gasped Russ.
Greg swirled the whiskey in his glass. "Don't sound so horrified. The
loss is all on paper. My stocks have gone down. Most of them cut in
half. Some even less than that. Martian Irrigation is down to 75. I paid
185 for it. It's worth 200."
"You mean something has happened to the market?"
"Not to the market. If that was it, I wouldn't worry. I've seen the
market go up and down. That's nothing to worry about. But the market,
except for a slight depression, has behaved normally in these past two
weeks. It almost looks as if somebody was out to get me."
"Who'd want to and why?"
Greg sighed. "I wish I knew. I haven't really lost a cent, of course. My
shares can't stay down for very long. The thing is that right now I
can't sell them even for what I paid for them. If I sold now I'd lose
that billion. But as long as I don't have to sell, the loss is merely on
paper."
He sipped at the drink and stared into the fire.
"If you don't have to, what are you worrying about?" asked Russ.
"Couple of things. I put that stock up as collateral to get the cash to
build the spaceship. At present prices, it will take more securities
than I thought. If the prices continue to go down, I'll have the bulk of
my holdings tied up in the spaceship. I might even be forced to
liquidate some of it and that would mean an actual loss."
He hunched forward in the chair, stared at Russ.
"Another thing," he said grimly, "is that I hate the idea of somebody
singling me out as a target. As if they were going to make a financial
example of me."
"And it sounds as if someone has," agreed Russ.
Greg leaned back again, drained his glass and set it down.
"It certainly does," he said.
Outside, seen through the window beside the fireplace, the harvest moon
was a shield of silver hung in the velvet of the sky. A lonesome wind
moaned in the pines and under the eaves.
"I got a report from Belgium the other day," said Greg. "The spaceship
is coming along. It'll be the biggest thing afloat in space."
"The biggest and the toughest," said Russ, and Greg nodded silent
agreement.
The ship itself was being manufactured at the great Space Works in
Belgium, but other parts of it, apparatus, engines, gadgets of every
description, were being manufactured at other widely scattered points.
Anyone wondering what kind of ship the finished product would be would
have a hard time gathering the correct information, which, of course,
was the idea. The "anyone" they were guarding against was Spencer
Chambers.
* * * * *
"We need a better television set," said Russ. "This one we have is all
right, but we need the best there is. I wonder if Wilson could get us
one in Frisco and bring it back."
"I don't see why not," said Greg. "Send him a radio."
Russ stepped to the phone, called the spaceport and filed the message.
"He always stays at the Greater Martian," he told Greg. "We'll probably
catch him there."
* * * * *
Two hours later the phone rang. It was the spaceport.
"That message you sent to Wilson," said the voice of the operator,
"can't be delivered. Wilson isn't at the Greater Martian. The clerk said
he checked out for New York last night."
"Didn't he leave a forwarding address?" asked Russ.
"Apparently not."