"Could be. As soon as we oil the think-tank, we'll know for sure."
"What does he mean?" asked Barney.
Joe smiled. "They all have laboratories and draftsmen and textbooks,"
he said. "But for real engineering, they use my tablecloths. Three more
problems and I'll have a complete tablecloth course in astrophysics,
with a sideline in cartooning and a minor degree in mechanical
engineering."
"Oh?"
"Sure. Give 'em a free hand, and a couple of your tubes and a
tablecloth and they'll have 'em frying eggs by morning. When I came out
here, they demanded a commercial bond and I thought they were nuts. Who
ever heard of making a restaurateur post a bond? I discovered that all
of their inventions are initially tinkered out right here in the dining
room--I could steal 'em blind if I were dishonest!" Joe smiled hugely.
"This is the only place in the System where the tablecloths have been
through blueprint machines. That," he said confidentially to Barney,
"is why some of the stuff is slightly garbled. Scotch mixed with the
drawings. They have the cloths inspected by the engineering department
before they're laundered; I lose a lot of tablecloths that way."
Joe left cheerfully amid laughter.
The Three Moons came next, and then Don began to sketch. "Suppose we
make a driver tube like this," he said. "And we couple the top end,
where the cathode is, to the input side of the relay tube. Only the
input side will require a variable-impedance anode, coupled back from
the cathode to limit the input to the required value. Then the coupling
anodes must be served with an automatic-coupling circuit so that the
limiting power is passed without wastage."
Barney pulled out a pencil. "If you make that automatic-coupling
circuit dependent upon the output from the terminal ends," he said,
"it will accept only the amount of input that is required by the power
being used from the output. Over-cooling these two anodes will inhibit
the power-intake."
"Right," said Wes. "And I am of the opinion that the power available
from Sol is of a magnitude that will permit operation over and above
the limit."
"Four million tons of energy per second!" exploded Walt. "That's
playing with fire!"
"You bet. We'll fix 'em with that!"
"Our experience with relay tubes," said Farrell slowly, "indicates that
some increase in range is possible with additional anode-focussing.
Build your tube-top with an extra set of anodes, and that'll give us
better control of the beam."
"We're getting farther and farther from the subject of communications,"
said Channing with a smile. "But I think that we'll get more out of
this."
"How so?"
"Until we get a chance to tinker with those tubes, we won't get
ship-to-ship two ways. So we'll gadgeteer up something that will make
Terran Electric foam at the mouth, and swap a hunk of it for full
freedom in our investigations. Or should we bust Terran Electric
wholeheartedly?"
"Let's slug 'em," said Walt.
"Go ahead," said Wes. "I'm utterly disgusted, though I think our
trouble is due to the management of Terran Electric. They like legal
tangles too much."
"We'll give 'em a legal tangle," said Barney. He was adding circuits to
the tablecloth sketch.
Channing, on his side, was sketching in some equations, and Walt was
working out some mechanical details. Joe came over, looked at the
tablecloth, and forthright went to the telephone and called Warren. The
mechanical designer came, and Channing looked up in surprise. "Hi," he
said, "I was just about to call you."
"Joe did."
"O.K. Look, Warren, can you fake up a gadget like this?"
Warren looked the thing over. "Give me about ten hours," he said.
"We've got a spare turnover driver from the _Relay Girl_ that we can
hand-carve. There are a couple of water-boilers that we can strip, cut
open, and make to serve as the top end. How're you hoping to maintain
the vacuum?"
"Yes," said Wes Farrell, "that's going to be the problem. If there's
any adjusting of electrodes to do, this'll take months."
"That's why we, on Venus Equilateral, are ahead of the whole
ding-busted Solar System in tube development," said Don. "We'll run the
thing out in the open--and I do mean open! Instead of the tube having
the insides exhausted, the operators will have their envelopes served
with fresh, canned air."
"Like a cartoon I saw somewhere," grinned Walt. "Had a bird in full
armor tinkering with a radio set. The caption was: 'Why shield the
set?'"
"Phooey," said Warren. "Look, Tom Swift, is this another of the Franks'
brainchildren?"
"Tom Swift?" asked Wes.
"Yeah. That's the nom de plume he invents under. The other guy we call
Captain Lightning."
"Oh?" asked Farrell. "Do you read him, too?"
"Sure," grinned Warren. "And say, speaking of comics, I came upon
an old, old volume of Webster's International Dictionary in a
rare-edition library in Chicago a couple of months ago, and they define
'Comic' as amusing, funny, and ludicrous; not imaginative fiction. How
things change."
"They do."
"But to get back to this goldberg, what is it?"
"Warren," said Channing soberly, "sit down!" Warren did. "Now," grinned
Channing, "this screwball gadget is an idea whereby we hope to draw
power out of the sun."
Warren swallowed once, and then waved for Joe. "Double," he told the
restaurateur. Then to the others he said, "Thanks for seating me. I'm
ill, I think. Hearing things. I could swear I heard someone say that
this thing is to take power from Sol."
"That's it."
"Um-m-m. Remind me to quit Saturday. This is no job for a man beset by
hallucinations."
"You grinning idiot, we're not fooling!"
"Then you'd better quit," Warren told Don. "This is no job for a bird
with delusions of grandeur, either. Look, Don, you'll want this in the
experimental blister at south end? On a coupler to the beam-turret so
that it'll maintain direction at Sol?"
"Right. Couple it to the rotating stage if you can. Remember, that's
three miles from south end."
"We've still got a few high-power selsyns," said Warren, making some
notations of his own on the tablecloth. "And thanks to the guys who
laid out this station some years ago, we've plenty of unused circuits
from one end to the other. We'll couple it, all right. Oh, Mother.
Seems to me like you got a long way off of your intended subject.
Didn't you start out to make a detector for driver radiation?"
"Yup."
"And you end up tapping the sun. D'ye think it'll ever replace the
horse?"
"Could be. Might even replace the coal mine. That's to be seen. Have
you any idea of how long you'll be?"
"Make it ten hours. I'll get the whole crew on it at once."
"Fine."
"But look. What's the reason for this change in program?"
"That's easy," said Don. "First, we had a jam session. Second, we've
come to the conclusion that the longest way 'round is the shortest
way home. We're now in the throes of building something with which to
dazzle the bright-minded management of Terran Electric and thus make
them susceptible to our charm. We want a free hand at the transmission
tubes, and this looks like a fair bit of bait."
"I get it. Quote: 'Why buy power from Terran Electric? Hang a Channing
Power Beam on your chimney pot and tap the sun?' Whoa, Mazie. Bring
on the needle, Watson. Hang out the flags, fire the cannon, ring the
bells; for Venus Equilateral is about to hang a pipeline right into
four million tons of energy per second! Don, that's a right, smart bit
of power to doodle with. Can you handle it?"
"Sure," said Channing with a wave of his hand, "we'll hang a fuse in
the line!"
"O.K.," said Warren, sweeping the tablecloth off the table like Mysto,
the Magician, right out from under the glasses. "I'll be back--wearing
my asbestos pants!"
Wes Farrell looked dreamily at the ceiling. "This is a screwy joint,"
he said idly. "What do we do for the next ten hours?"
"Red Herring stuff," said Channing with what he hoped was a
Machiavellian leer.
"Such as?"
"Making wise moves with the transmission tubes. Glomming the
barrister's desk with proposed ideas for his approval; as many as
we can think of so that he'll be kept busy. We might even think of
something that may work, meanwhile. Come, fellow conspirators, to
horse!" Channing picked up his glass and drained it, making a wry face.
"Rotten stuff--I wish I had a barrel of it!"
* * * * *
Channing surveyed the set-up in the blister. He inspected it carefully,
as did the others. When he spoke, his voice came through the helmet
receivers with a slightly tinny sound: "Anything wrong? Looks O.K. to
me."
"O.K. by me, too," said Farrell.
"Working in suit is not the best," said Don. "Barney, you're the
bright-eyed lad, can you align the plates?"
"I think so," came the muffled booming of Barney's powerful voice.
"Gimme a screwdriver!"
Barney fiddled with the plate-controls for several minutes. "She's
running on dead center alignment, now," he announced.
"Question," put in Wes, "do we get power immediately, or must we wait
whilst the beam gets there and returns?"
"You must run your power line before you get power," said Walt. "My
money is on the wait."
"Don't crack your anode-coupling circuit till then," warned Wes. "We
don't know a thing about this; I'd prefer to let it in easy-like
instead of opening the gate and letting the whole four million tons per
second come tearing in through this ammeter!"
"Might be a little warm having Sol in here with us," laughed Channing.
"This is once in my life when we don't need a milliameter, but a
million-ammeter!"
"Shall we assign a pseudonym for it?" chuckled Walt.
"Let's wait until we see how it works."
The minutes passed slowly, and then Wes announced: "She should be here.
Check your anode-coupler, Barney."
Barney advanced the dial, gingerly. The air that could have grown
tense was, of course, not present in the blister. But the term is just
a figure of speech, and therefore it may be proper to say that the air
grew tense. Fact is, it was the nerves of the men that grew tense.
Higher and higher went the dial, and still the meter stayed inert
against the zero-end pin.
"Not a wiggle," said Barney in disgust. He twirled the dial all the way
'round and snorted. The meter left the zero pin ever so slightly.
Channing turned the switch that increased the sensitivity of the meter
until the needle stood halfway up the scale.
"Solar power, here we come," he said in a dry voice. "One-half ampere
at seven volts! Three and one-half watts. Bring on your atom-smashers!
Bring on your power-consuming factory districts. Hang the whole load
of Central United States on the wires, for we have three and one-half
watts! Just enough to run an electric clock!"
"But would it keep time?" asked Barney. "Is the frequency right?"
"Nope--but we'd run it. Look, fellows, when anyone tells you about
this, insist that we got thirty-five hundred milliwatts on our first
try. It sounds bigger."
"O.K., so we're getting from Sol just about three-tenths of the soup
we need to make the set-up self sustaining," said Walt. "Wes, this
in-phase anode of yours--what can we do with it?"
"If this thing worked, I was going to suggest that there is enough
power out there to spare. We could possibly modulate the in-phase anode
with anything we wanted, and there would be enough junk floating around
in the photosphere to slam on through."
"Maybe it is that lack of selectivity that licks us now," said Don,
"Run the voltage up and down a bit. There should be D. C. running
around in Sol, too."
"Whatever this power-level is running at," said Barney, "we may get
in-phase voltage--or in-phase power by running a line from the power
terminal back. Move over, boys, I'm going to hang a test clip in here."
Barney's gloved hands fumbled a bit, but the clip was attached. He
opened the anode-coupler once again, and the meter slammed against the
full-scale peg.
"See?" he said triumphantly.
"Yup," said Channing cryptically. "You, Bernard, have doubled our
input."
"Mind if I take a whack at aligning it?" asked Wes.
"Go ahead. What we need is a guy with eyes in his fingertips. Have you?"
"No, but I'd like to try."
Farrell worked with the deflection plate alignment, and then said,
ruefully: "No dice, Barney had it right on the beam."
"Is she aligned with Sol?" asked Channing.
Walt squinted down the tube. "Couldn't be better," he said, blinking.
"Could it be that we're actually missing Sol?" asked Don. "I mean,
could it be that line-of-sight and line-of-power aren't one and the
same thing?"
"Could be," acknowledged Wes. Walt stepped to the verniers and swung
the big intake tube over a minute arc. The meter jumped once more, and
Channing stepped the sensitivity down again. Walt fiddled until the
meter read maximum and then he left the tube that way.
"Coming up," said Channing. "We've now four times our original try. We
now have enough juice to run an electric train--toy size! Someone think
of something else, please. I've had my idea for the day."
"Let's juggle electrode-spacing," suggested Wes.
"Can do," said Walt, brandishing a huge spanner wrench in one gloved
hand.
Four solid, futile hours later, the power output of the solar beam was
still standing at a terrifying fourteen watts. Channing was scratching
furiously on a pad of paper with a large pencil; Walt was trying
voltage-variations on the supply-anodes in a desultory manner; Barney
was measuring the electrode spacing with a huge vernier rule, and Wes
was staring at the sun, dimmed to seeable brightness by a set of dark
glasses.
Wes was muttering to himself. "Electrode-voltages, O.K. ... alignment
perfect ... solar power output ... not like power-line electricity ...
solar composition ... Russell's mixture--"
"Whoooo said that!" roared Channing.
"Who said what?" asked Barney.
"Why bust our eardrums?" objected Walt.
"What do you mean?" asked Wes, coming to life for the moment.
"Something about Russell's Mixture. Who said that?"
"I did. Why?"
"Look, Wes, what are your cathodes made of?"
"Thorium, C. P. metal. That's why they're shipped in metal containers
in a vacuum."
"What happens if you try to use something else?"
"Don't work very well. In fact, if the output cathode and the input
dynode are not the same metal, they won't pass power at all."
"You're on the trail right now!" shouted Channing. "Russell's Mixture!"
"Sounds like a brand of smoking tobacco to me. Mind making a noise like
an encyclopedia and telling me what is Russell's Mixture?"
"Russell's Mixture is a conglomeration of elements which go into the
making of Sol--and all the other stars," explained Don. "Hydrogen,
Oxygen, Sodium, and Magnesium, Iron, Silicon, Potassium, and Calcium.
They, when mixed according to the formula for Russell's Mixture, which
can be found in any book on the composition of the stars, become the
most probable mixture of metals. They--Russell's Mixture--go into
the composition of all stars, what isn't mentioned in the mix isn't
important."
"And what has this Russell got that we haven't got?" asked Walt.
"H, O, Na, Mg, Fe, Si, K, and Ca. And we, dear people, have Th, which
Russell has not. Walt, call up the metallurgical lab and have 'em whip
up a batch."
"Cook to a fine edge and serve with a spray of parsley? Or do we cut it
into cubes--"
"Go ahead," said Channing. "Be funny. You just heard the man say that
dissimilar dyno-cathodes do not work. What we need for our solar beam
is a dynode of Russell's Mixture so that it will be similar to our
cathode--which in this case is Sol. Follow me?"
"Yeah," said Walt, "I follow, but, brother, I'm a long way behind.
But I'll catch up," he promised as he made connection between his
suit-radio and the station communicator system. "Riley," he said, "here
we go again. Can you whip us up a batch of Russell's Mixture?"
Riley's laugh was audible to the others, since it was broadcast by
Walt's set. "Yeah, man, we can--if it's got metal in it? What, pray
tell, is Russell's Mixture?"
Walt explained the relation between Russell's Mixture and the
composition of Sol.
"Sun makers, hey?" asked Riley. "Is the chief screwball up there?"
"Yup," said Walt, grinning at Don.
"Sounds like him. Yeah, we can make you an alloy consisting of
Russell's Mixture. Tony's got it here, now, and it doesn't look hard.
How big a dynode do you want?"
Walt gave him the dimensions of the dynode in the solar tube.
"Cinch," said Riley. "You can have it in two hours."
"Swell."
"But it'll be hotter than hell. Better make that six or seven hours. We
may run into trouble making it jell."
"I'll have Arden slip you some pectin," said Walt. "Tomorrow morning,
then?"
"Better. That's a promise."
Walt turned to the rest. "If any of us can sleep," he said, "I suggest
it. Something tells me that tomorrow is going to be one of those days
that mother told me about. I'll buy a drink."
* * * * *
Walt opened the anode-coupler circuit, and the needle of the output
ammeter slammed across the scale and wound the needle halfway around
the stop pin. The shunt, which was an external, high-dissipation
job, turned red, burned the paint off of its radiator fins, and then
proceeded to melt. It sputtered in flying droplets of molten metal.
Smoke spewed from the case of the ammeter, dissipating in the vacuum of
the blister.
Walt closed the coupler circuit.
"Whammo!" he said. "Mind blowing a hundred-amp meter?"
"No," grinned Don. "I have a thousand-amp job that I'll sacrifice in
the same happy-hearted fashion. Get an idea of the power?"
"Voltmeter was hanging up around ten thousand volts just before the
amp-meter went by."
"Um-m-m. Ten thousand volts at a hundred amps. That is one million
watts, my friends, and no small potatoes. To run the station's
communicating equipment we need seven times that much. Can we do it?"
"We can. I'll have Warren start running the main power bus down here
and we'll try it. Meanwhile, we've got a healthy cable from the
generator room; we can run the non-communicating drain of the station
from our plaything here. That should give us an idea. We can use a
couple of million watts right there. If this gadget will handle it,
we can make one that will take the whole load without groaning. I'm
calling Warren right now. He can start taking the load over from the
generators as we increase our intake. We'll fade, but not without a
flicker."
Walt hooked the output terminals of the tube to the huge cable blocks,
using sections of the same heavy cable.