"No. I've been tinkering with an idea of mine. If we had another month
to work on it, I think we might be able to clip Murdoch's ears."
"Just what are you using in this super weapon, chum?"
Franks explained.
"Mind if I put in an oar?" asked Channing.
"Not at all. So far we might be able to fry a smelt at twenty feet, or
we could cook us a steak. But I haven't been able to do a thing yet.
We had it working once, and I think we heated a meteor somewhat, but
the whole thing went blooey before we finished the test. I've spent the
last week and a half fixing the thing up again, and would have tried it
out on the next meteor, but your message brought a halt to everything
but cleaning up the mess and making ready just in case we might think
of something practical."
"I'll put in my first oar by seeing the gadget. Wait till I find my
pants, and I'll go right along."
Don inspected the installation and whistled. "Not half bad, sonny, not
half bad."
"Except that we haven't been able to make it work."
"Well, for one thing, you've been running on the wrong track. You need
more power."
"Sure," grinned Walt. "More power, he says. I don't see how we can cram
any more soup into this can. She'll melt."
"Walt, what happens in a big gun?"
"Powder burns; expanding products of combustion push--"
"Functionally, what are you trying to accomplish? Take it on the basis
of a solid shot, like they used to use back in the sailing ship days."
"Well," said Walt thoughtfully, "I'd say they were trying to heave
something large enough to do damage."
"Precisely. Qualifying that statement a little, you might say that the
projectile transmits the energy of the powder charge to its objective."
"Right," agreed Walt.
"And it is possible to transmit that energy mechanically. I think
if we reason this idea out in analogy, we might be able to do it
electrically. First, there is the method. There is nothing wrong with
your idea, functionally. Electron guns are as old as radio. They--"
The door opened and Arden entered. "Hi, fellows," she said, "What's
cooking?"
"Hi, Arden. Like marriage?" Walt asked.
"How long do people have to be married before people stop asking that
darn fool question?" asked Arden.
"O.K., how about your question?"
"I meant that. I ran into Warren, who told me that the brains were down
here tinkering on something that was either a brilliant idea or an
equally brilliant flop--he didn't know which. What goes?"
"Walt has turned Buck Rogers and is now about to invent a ray gun."
"No!"
"Yes!"
"Here's where we open a psychopathic ward," said Arden sadly. "So far,
Venus Equilateral is the only community that hasn't had a village
idiot. But no longer are we unique. Seriously, Walt?"
"Sure enough," said Channing. "He's got an idea here that may work with
a little tinkering."
"Brother Edison, we salute you," said Arden. "How does it work?"
"Poorly. Punk. Lousy."
"Well, sound recording has come a long way from the tinfoil cylinder
that scratched out: 'Mary had a little lamb!' And transportation has
come along swell from the days of sliding sledges. You may have the
nucleus of an idea, Walt. But I meant its operation instead of its
efficiency."
"We have an electron gun of super size," explained Walt. "The cathode
is a big affair six feet in diameter and capable of emitting a
veritable storm of electrons. We accelerate them by means of properly
spaced anodes of the proper voltage level, and we focus them into a
nice bundle by means of electrostatic lenses--"
"Whoah, Tillie, you're talking like the venerable Buck Rogers himself.
Say that in words of one cylinder, please," chuckled Arden.
"Well, any voltage gradient between electrodes of different voltage
acts as a prism, sort of. When you have annular electrodes of the
proper size, shape, and voltage difference, they act as a lens."
"In other words, the ring-shaped electrodes are electrostatic lenses?"
"Nope. It is the space between them. With light or electrons a convex
lens will converge the light no matter which direction the light is
coming from."
"Uh-huh. I see in a sort of vague manner. Now, fellows, go on from
there. What's necessary to make this dingbat tick?"
"I want to think out loud," said Channing.
"That's nothing unusual," said Arden. "Can't we go into Joe's? You
can't think without a tablecloth, either."
"What I'm thinking is this, Walt. You've been trying to squirt
electrons like a fireman runs a hose. Walt, how long do you suppose
a sixteen-inch rifle would last if the explosives were constantly
replaced and the fire burned constantly?"
"Not long," admitted Walt.
"A gun is an overloaded machine," said Don. "Even a little one. The
life of a gun barrel is measured in seconds; totalling up the time of
transit of all the rounds from new gun to worn barrel gives a figure
expressed in seconds. Your electron gun, Walt, whether it be fish,
flesh, or fowl, must be overloaded for an instant."
"Is overload a necessary requirement?" asked Arden. "It seems to me
that you might be able to bore a sixteen-inch gun for a twenty-two.
What now, little man?"
"By the time we get something big enough to do more than knock paint
off, we'll have something bigger than a twenty-two," grinned Channing.
"I was speaking in terms of available strength versus required punch.
In the way that a girder will hold tremendous overloads for brief
instants, a gun is overloaded for milliseconds. We'll have a problem--"
"O.K., aside from that, have you figured out why I haven't been able
to do more than warm anything larger than a house brick?"
"Sure," laughed Channing. "What happens in a multi-grid radio tube when
the suppressor grid is hanging free?"
"Charges negative and blocks the electron stream ... hey! That's it!"
"What?" asked Arden.
"Sure," said Walt. "We fire off a batch of electrons, and the first
contingent that arrives charges the affair so that the rest of the beam
sort of wriggles out of line."
"Your meteor is going to take on a charge of phenomenal negative value,
and the rest of your beam is going to be deflected away, just as your
electron lenses deflect the original beam," said Channing. "And now
another thing, old turnip. You're squirting out a lot of electrons.
That's much amperage. Your voltage--velocity--is nothing to rave about
even though it sounds high. Watts is what you want, to corn a phrase."
"_Phew_," said Walt. "Corn, he says. Go on, prodigy, and make with the
explanations. I agree, we should have more voltage and less quantity.
But we're running the stuff at plenty of voltage now. Nothing short
of a Van Der Graf generator would work--and while we've got one up on
the forty-ninth level, we couldn't run a supply line down here without
reaming a fifty-foot hole through the station, and then I don't know
how we'd get that kind of voltage down here without ... that kind of
stuff staggers the imagination. You can't juggle a hundred million
volts on a wire. She'd squirt off in all directions."
"Another thing, whilst I hold it in my mind," said Channing,
thoughtfully. "You go flinging electrons off the station in basketful
after basketful, and the next bird that drops a ship on the landing
stage is going to spot-weld himself right to the south end of Venus
Equilateral. It wouldn't be long before the station would find itself
being pulled into Sol because of the electrostatic stress--if we didn't
run out of electrons first!"
"I hardly think that we'd run out--but we might have a tough time
flinging them away after a bit. Could it be that we should blow out a
fist full of protons at the same time?"
"Might make up a concentric beam and wave positive ions at the target,"
said Channing. "Might help."
"But this space-charge effect. How do we get around that?"
"Same way we make the electron gun work. Fire it off at a devilish
voltage. Run your electron velocity up near the speed of light; the
electrons at that speed will acquire considerable mass, in accordance
with Lorenz's equation which shows that as the velocity of a mass
reaches the speed of light, its mass becomes infinite. With a healthy
mass built up by near-light velocities, the electrons will not be as
easy to deflect. Then, too, we can do the damage we want before the
charge can be built up that will deflect the stream. We ram 'em with
a bundle of electrons moving so fast that the charging effect can not
work; before the space charge can build up to the level required for
self-nullification of our beam, the damage is done."
"And all we need is a couple of trillion volts. Two times ten to the
twelfth power. _Grrr._"
"I can see that you'll need a tablecloth," said Arden. "You birds can
think better over at Joe's. Come along and feed the missus, Don."
Channing surveyed the instrument again, and then said: "Might as well,
Walt. The inner man must be fed, and we can wrangle at the same time.
Argument assists the digestion--and vice versa."
* * * * *
"Now," said Channing as the dishes were pushed aside, clearing a space
on the table. "What are we going to do?"
"That's what I've been worrying about," said Walt. "Let's list the
things that make our gun ineffective."
"That's easy. It can't dish out enough. It's too dependent upon
mobility. It's fundamentally inefficient because it runs out of
ammunition too quick, by which I mean that it is a sort of gun with
antiseptic bullets. It cures its own damage."
"Prevents," said Arden.
"All right, it acts as its own shield, electrostatically."
"About this mobility," said Walt, "I do not quite agree with that."
"You can't whirl a hunk of tube the size and weight of a good-sized
telescope around fast enough to shoot holes in a racing spaceship,"
said Channing. "Especially one that is trying to dodge. We've got to
rely upon something that can do the trick better. Your tube did all
right following a meteor that rung in a course that can be predicted,
because you can set up your meteor spotter to correct for the
mechanical lag. But in a spaceship that is trying to duck your shot,
you'll need something that works with the speed of light. And, since
we're going to be forced into something heavy and hard hitting, its
inertia will be even more so."
"Heavy and hard hitting means exactly what?"
"Cyclotron, betatron or synchrotron. One of those dinguses that whirls
nucleons around like a stone on a string until the string breaks and
sends the stone out at terrific speed. We need a velocity that sounds
like a congressional figure."
"We've got a cyclotron."
"Yeah," drawled Channing, "A wheezy old heap that cries out in anguish
every time the magnets are charged. I doubt that we could move the
thing without it falling apart. The betatron is the ticket."
"But the cyclotron gives out with a lot more soup."
"If I had to increase the output of either one, I could do it a lot
quicker with the betatron," said Channing. "In a cyclotron, the
revolution of the ions in their acceleration period is controlled by an
oscillator, the voltage output of which is impressed on the D chambers.
In order to speed up the ion stream, you'd have to do two things. One:
Build a new oscillator that will dish out more power. Two: Increase the
strength of the magnets.
"But in the betatron, the thing is run differently. The magnet is built
for A. C. and the electron gun runs off the same. As your current
starts up from zero, the electron gun squirts a bouquet of electrons
into a chamber built like a pair of angel's food cake tins set rim to
rim. The magnet's field begins to build up at the same time, and the
resulting increase in field strength accelerates the electrons and at
the same time, its increasing field keeps the little devils running
in the same orbit. Shoot it with two-hundred-cycle current, and in
the half cycle your electrons are made to run around the center a few
million times. That builds up a terrific velocity--measured in six
figures, believe it or not. Then the current begins to level off at
the top of the sine wave, and the magnet loses its increasing phase.
The electrons, still in acceleration, begin to whirl outward. The
current levels off for sure and begins to slide down--and the electrons
roll off at a tangent to their course. This stream can be collected
and used. In fact, we have a two-hundred-cycle beam of electrons at a
couple of billion volts. That, brother, ain't hay!"
"Is that enough?"
"Nope."
"Then how do you hope to increase this velocity? If it is easier to run
this up than it would be the cyclotron, how do we go about it?"
Channing smiled and began to draw diagrams on the tablecloth. Joe
looked over with a worried frown, and then shrugged his shoulders.
Diagrams or not, this was an emergency--and besides, he thought, he
needed another lesson in high powered gadgetry.
"The nice thing about this betatron," said Channing, "is the fact that
it can and does run both ends on the same supply. The current and
voltage phases are correct so that we do not require two supplies which
operate in a carefully balanced condition. The cyclotron is one of the
other kinds; though the one supply is strictly D. C., the strength
of the field must be controlled separately from the supply to the
oscillator that runs the D plates. You're sitting on a fence, juggling
knobs and stuff all the time you are bombarding with a cyc.
"Now let us inspect the supply of the betatron. It is sinusoidal.
There is the catch. There is the thing that makes it possible.
That single fact makes it easy to step the power up to terrific
quantities. Since the thing is fixed by nature so that the output is
proportional--electron gun initial velocity versus magnetic field
strength--if we increase the input voltage, the output voltage goes up
without having to resort to manipulistic gymnastics on the part of the
operator."
"Go on, Professor Maxwell."
"Don't make fun of a great man's name," said Arden. "If it wasn't for
Clerk Maxwell, we'd still be yelling out of the window at one another
instead of squirting radio beams all over the Solar System."
"Then make him quit calling me Tom Swift."
"Go on, Don, Walt and I will finish this argument after we finish
Hellion Murdoch."
"May I?" asked Channing with a smile. He did not mind the interruption;
he was used to it in the first place and he had been busy with his
pencil in the second place. "Now look, Walt, what happens when you
smack a charged condenser across an inductance?"
"You generate a damped cycle of the amplitude of the charge on the
condenser, and of frequency equal to the L, C constants of the
condenser and inductance. The amplitude decays according to the factor
Q, following the equation for decrement--"
"Never mind, I've got it here on my whiteboard," smiled Channing,
pointing to the tablecloth. "You are right. And the purity of the wave?"
"Sinusoidal ... hey! That's it!" Walt jumped to his feet and went to
the telephone.
"What's 'it'?" asked Arden.
"The betatron we have runs off of a five-hundred-volt supply," chuckled
Channing. "We can crank that up ten to one without running into any
difficulty at all. Five-hundred-volt insulation is peanuts, and the
stuff they put on wires nowadays is always good for ten times that
just because it wouldn't be economical to try to thin the installation
down so that it only protects five hundred. I'll bet a crank that he
could crank the input up to fifty thousand volts without too much
sputtering--though I wouldn't know where to lay my lunch hooks on
a fifty-thousand-volt condenser of any appreciable capacity. Well,
stepping up the rig ten to one will dish us out just shy of a couple of
thousand million volts, which, as Brother Franks says, is not hay!"
Walt returned after a minute and said: "Warren's measuring the
inductance of the betatron magnet. He will then calculate the value
of C required to tune the thing to the right frequency and start to
achieve that capacity by mazing up whatever high-voltage condensers we
have on the station. Now, Don, let's calculate how we're going to make
the thing mobile."
"That's a horse of a different color. We'll have to use electromagnetic
deflection. From the constants of the electron stream out of our
souped-up Suzy, we'll have to compute the necessary field to deflect
such a beam. That'll be terrific, because the electrons are hitting it
up at a velocity approaching that of light--maybe a hundred and seventy
thousand miles per--and their mass will be something fierce. That again
will help to murder Murdoch; increasing mass will help to keep the
electrons from being deflected, since it takes more to turn a heavy
mass--et cetera, see Newton's laws of inertia for complete statement.
Have 'em jerk the D plates out of the cyc and bring the magnet frame
down here--to the turret, I mean--and set 'em up on the vertical. We'll
use that to run the beam up and down, we can't possibly get one hundred
and eighty degree deflection, of course, but we can run the deflection
over considerable range. It should be enough to catch a spaceship that
is circling the station. For the horizontal deflection, what have we
got?"
"Nothing. But the cyc magnet is a double pole affair. We could break
the frame at the D plates and set one winding sidewise to the other and
use half on each direction."
"Sure. Have one of Warren's gang fit the busted pole pieces up with
a return-magnetic frame so that the field will be complete. He can
weld some girders on and around in an hour. That gives us complete
deflection properties up and down; left and right. We should be able to
cover a ninety-degree cone from your turret."
"That'll cover all of Murdoch's ships," said Walt.
"Too bad we haven't got some U-235 to use. I'd like to plate up one of
his ships with some positive ions of U-235 and then change the beam to
slow neutrons. That might deter him from his life of crime."
"Variations, he wants," said Arden. "You're going to impale one ship on
a beam of electrons; one ship on a beam of U-235 ions; and what will
you have on the third?"
"I'll think of something," said Channing. "A couple of hundred pounds
of U-235 should make things hum, though."
"More like making them disappear," said Franks. "_Swoosh!_ No ship.
Just an incandescent mass falling into the Sun. I'm glad we haven't any
purified U-235 or plutonium in any quantity out here. We catch a few
slow neutrons now and then, and I wouldn't be able to sleep nights.
The things just sort of wander right through the station as though it
weren't here at all; they stop just long enough to register on the
counter upstairs and then they're gone."
"Well, to work, people. We've got a job to do in the next three and a
half days."
Those days were filled with activity. Hauling the heavy parts down to
the turret was no small job, but it was accomplished after a lot of
hard work and quite a bit of tinkering with a cutting torch. The parts
were installed in the outer skin, and the crew with the torch went back
over the trail and replaced the gaping holes they left in the walls
and floors of Venus Equilateral. The engineering department went to
work, and for some hours the place was silent save for the clash of
pencil on paper and the scratching of scalps. The most popular book in
the station became a volume on nuclear physics, and the second most
popular book was a table of integrals. The stenographic force went
to work combing the library for information pertaining to electronic
velocities, and a junior engineer was placed in as buffer between the
eager stenographers and the harried engineering department. This was
necessary because the stenographers got to the point where they'd send
anything at all that said either "electrons" or "velocity," and one of
the engineers read halfway through a text on atomic structure before
he realized that he had been sold a bill of goods. Wire went by the
mile down to the turret, and men proceeded to blow out half of the
meters in the station with the high-powered beam. Luckily, the thing
was completely nonspectacular, or Murdoch might have gained an inkling
of their activities. The working crew manipulated constants and made
haywire circuits, and finally announced that the beam would deflect--if
the calculations were correct.
"They'd better be," said Channing. He was weary. His eyes were puffed
from lack of sleep, and he hadn't had his clothing off in three days.
"They are," said Franks. He was in no better shape than Don.
"They'd better be right," said Channing ominously. "We're asking for a
kick in the teeth. The first bundle of stuff that leaves our gun will
energize Murdoch's meteor spotter by sheer electrostatic force. His
gun mounts, which you tell me are coupled to the meteor detector for
aiming, will swivel to cover the turret out here. Then he'll let us
have it right in the betatron. If we don't get him first, he'll get us
second."
"Don," said Walt in a worried voice. "How are we going to replace the
charge on the station? Like the bird who was tossing baseballs out of
the train--he quit when he ran out of them. Our gun will quit cold when
we run out of electrons--or when the positive charge gets so high that
the betatron can't overcome the electrostatic attraction."
"Venus Equilateral is a free grid," smiled Channing. "As soon as we
shoot off electrons, Old Sol becomes a hot cathode and our station
collects 'em until the charge is equalized again."
"And what is happening to the bird who is holding on to something
when we make off with a million volts? Does he scrape himself off the
opposite wall in a week or so--after he comes to--or can we use him for
freezing ice cubes? Seems to me that it might be a little bit fatal."
"Didn't think of that," said Channing. "There's one thing, their
personal charge doesn't add up to a large quantity of electricity. If
we insulate 'em and put 'em in their spacesuits, they'll be all right
as long as they don't try to grab anything. They'll be on the up and
down for a bit, but the resistance of the spacesuit is high enough
to keep 'em from draining out all their electrons at once, I recall
the experiments with early Van Der Graf generators at a few million
volts--the operator used to sit in the charged sphere because it was
one place where he couldn't be hit by man-made lightning. It'll be
rough, but it won't kill us. Spacesuits, and have 'em sit in plastic
chairs, the feet of which are insulated from the floor by china dinner
plates. This plastic wall covering that we have in the apartments is a
blessing. If it were all bare steel, every room would be a miniature
hell. Issue general instructions to that effect. We've been having
emergency drills for a long time; now's the time to use the grand
collection of elastomer spacesuits. Tell 'em we give 'em an hour to get
ready."
Hellion Murdoch's voice came over the radio at exactly the second of
the expiration of his limit. He called Channing and said:
"What is your answer, Dr. Channing?"
Don squinted down the pilot tube of the meteor spotter and saw the
_Hippocrates_ passing. It was gone before he spoke, but the second ship
came along, and the pilot tube leaped into line with it. Don checked
meters on the crude panel before him, and then pressed the plastic
handle of a long lever.
There was the crash of heavy-duty oil switch.
Crackles of electricity flashed back and forth through the station, and
the smell of ozone arose. Electric light filaments leaned over crazily,
trying to touch the inner walls of the glass. Panes of glass ran blue
for an instant, and the nap of the carpets throughout the station
stood bolt upright. Hair stood on end, touched the plastic helmet
dome, discharged, fell to the scalp, raised again and discharged, fell
once more, and then repeated this raising and falling, again and again
and again. Electric clocks ran crazily, and every bit of electronic
equipment on the station began to act in an unpredictable manner.
Then things settled down again as the solar emission charged the
station to equilibrium.
Aboard the ship, it was another story. The celestial globe of the
meteor spotter blazed once in a blinding light and then went completely
out of control. It danced with pin points of light, and the coupler
that was used to direct the guns went crazy. Turrets tried to swivel,
but the charge raised hob with the electronic controls, and the guns
raised once, and then fell, inert. One of them belched flame, and the
shell went wild. The carefully balanced potentials in the driver tubes
were upset, and the ship lost headway. The heavy ion stream from the
driving cathode bent and spread, touching the dynodes in the tubes. The
resulting current brought them to a red heat, and they melted down and
floated through the evacuated tube in round droplets. Instruments went
wild, and gave every possible answer, and the ship became a bedlam of
ringing bells and flashing danger lights.
But the crew was in no shape to appreciate this display. From
metal parts in the ship there appeared coronas that reached for
the unprotected men, and seared their flesh. And since their
gravity-apparent was gone, they floated freely through the air, and
came in contact with highly charged walls, ceilings and floors; to say
nothing of the standard metal furniture.
It was a sorry bunch of pirates that found themselves in a
ship-without-motive-power that was beginning to leave their circular
course on a tangent that would let them drop into the Sun.
"That's my answer, Murdoch!" snapped Channing. "Watch your second ship!"
"You young devil!" snarled Murdoch. "What did you do?"
"You never thought that it would be an electronics engineer that made
the first energy gun, did you, Murdoch? I'm now going to take a shot at
No. 3!"
No. 3's turrets swiveled around and from the guns flashes of fire came
streaming. Channing punched his lever savagely, and once again the
station was tortured by the effects of its own offensive.
Ship No. 3 suffered the same fate as No. 2.
Then, seconds later, armor-piercing shells began to hit Venus
Equilateral. They hit, and because of the terrific charge, they began
to arc at the noses. The terrible current passed through the fuses, and
the shells exploded on contact instead of boring in before detonation.
Metal was bent and burned, but only a few tiny holes resulted. As the
charge on the station approached equilibrium once more, men ran with
torches to seal these holes.
"Murdoch," said Channing, "I want you!"
"Come and get me!"
"Land--or die!" snapped Channing in a vicious tone. "I'm no
humanitarian, Murdoch. You'd be better off dead!"
"Never!" said Hellion Murdoch.
Channing pulled the lever for the third time, but as he did, Murdoch's
ship leaped forward under several G. The magnets could not change in
field soon enough to compensate for this change in direction, and
the charge failed to connect as a bull's eye. It did expend some
of its energy on the tail of the ship. Not enough to cripple the
_Hippocrates_, but the vessel took on a charge of enough value to make
things hard on the crew.
Metal sparked, and instruments went mad. Meters wound their needles
around the end pegs. The celestial globe glinted in a riot of color and
then went completely dead. Gun servers dropped their projectiles as
they became too heavily charged to handle, and they rolled across the
turret floors, creating panic in the gun crews. The pilot fought the
controls, but the charge on his driver tubes was sufficient to make his
helm completely unpredictable. The panel sparked at him and seared his
hands, spoiling his nervous control and making him heavy-handed.
"Murdoch," cried Channing in a hearty voice, "that was a miss! Want a
hit?"
Murdoch's radio was completely dead. His ship was yawing from side to
side as the static charges raced through the driver tubes. The pilot
gained control after a fashion, and decided that he had taken enough.
He circled the station warily and began to make a shaky landing at the
south end.
Channing saw him coming, and with a glint in his eye, he pressed the
lever for the fourth and last time.
Murdoch's ship touched the landing stage just after the charge had been
driven out into space. The heavy negative charge on the _Hippocrates_
met the heavy positive charge on Venus Equilateral. The ship touched,
and from that contact, there arose a cloud of incandescent gas. The
entire charge left the ship at once, and through that single contact.
When the cloud dissipated, the contact was a crude but efficient welded
joint that was gleaming white-hot.