Don Channing grinned at his wife knowingly. Arden caught his glance and
then laughed. Walt Franks leaned back and looked highly superior. "Go
ahead and laugh, darn you. I tell you it can be done."
"Walt, ever since you tried that stunt of aerating soap with hydrogen
to make a floating soap for shower baths, I've been wondering about
your kind of genius."
"Oh, no," objected Arden.
"Well, he wondered about it after nearly breaking his neck one morning."
"That I did," grinned Walt. "It's still a good idea."
"But the idea of transmitting matter is fantastic."
"Agreed," admitted Walt. "But so is the idea of transmitting power."
"It would come in handy if possible," remarked Don. "At slightly under
two G, it takes only four hours to make Luna from Terra. On the other
hand, shipping stuff from Melbourne, Australia, to New York City, or
to the Mojave spaceport takes considerably longer. Spacecraft as super
stratosphere carriers aren't too good, because you've got to run in a
circle. In space you run at constant acceleration to mid-point and then
decelerate the rest of the way. Fine for mile-eating, but not too hot
for cutting circles."
"Well, having established the need of a matter transmitter, now what?"
"Go on, Walt. You're telling us."
"Well," said Walt, pencilling some notes on the tablecloth, "it's like
this. The Carroll-Baler power-transmission tube will carry energy.
According to their initial experiments, they had some trouble."
"They had one large amount, if I recall."
"Specifically, I recall the incident of the hammer. Remember?"
"Barney Carroll got mad and swung a hammer at the tube, didn't he?"
"It was one of them. I don't recall which."
"No matter of importance," said Don. "I think I know what you mean.
He hit the intake end--or tried to. The hammer was cut neatly and
precisely off, and the energy of the blow was transmitted, somehow, to
the wall."
"Through the wall," corrected Walt. "It cracked the plaster, but it
went through so fast that it merely cracked it. The main blow succeeded
in breaking the marble facade of the city hall."
"Um. Now bring us up to date. What have you in mind?"
"A tube which scans matter, atom by atom, line by line and plane by
plane. The matter is removed, atom by atom, and transmitted by a sort
of matter bank in the instrument."
"A what?"
"Matter bank," said Walt. "We can't transmit the stuff itself. That's
out. We can't dissipate the atomic energy or whatever effect we might
get. We can establish a balance locally by using the energy release to
drive the restorer. According to some initial experiments, it can be
done. We take something fairly complex and break it down. We use the
energy of destruction to re-create the matter in the bank, or solid
block of local stuff. Let it be a mass of stuff if it wants to, at
any rate, the signal impulses from the breakdown will be transmitted,
scanned if you will, and transmitted to a receiver which reverses the
process. It scans, and the matter bank is broken down and the object is
reconstructed."
"I hope we can get free and unrestricted transmutation," offered Don.
"You can't send a steel spring out and get one back made of copper."
"I get your point."
"The space lines will hate you," said Arden.
"Too bad. I wonder if it'll carry people."
"Darling," drawled Arden, "don't you think you'd better catch your
rabbit first?"
"Not too bad a thought," agreed Don. "Walt, have you got any rabbit
traps out?"
"A couple. I've been tinkering a bit. I know we can disintegrate matter
through a power-tube of slight modification, and reintegrate it with
another. At the present state of the art, it is a mess."
"A nice mess," laughed Don. "Go ahead, though. We'll pitch in when the
going gets hard."
"That's where I stand now. The going is tough."
"What's the trouble?"
"Getting a perfect focus. I want it good enough so that we can scan a
polished sheet of steel--and it'll come out as slick as the original."
"Naturally. We'd better get Wes Farrell on the job."
"I wonder what by-product he'll get this time?"
"Look, Walt. Quit hoping. If you get this thing running right, it'll
put your name in history."
"After all," grinned Walt, "I've got to do something good enough to
make up for that Channing Layer."
"Kingman is still fuming over the Channing Layer. Sometimes I feel
sorry that I did it to him like that."
"Wasn't your fault, Don. You didn't hand him the thing knowing that the
Channing Layer would inhibit the transmission of energy. It happened.
We get power out of Sol--why shouldn't they? They would, except for the
Channing Layer."
"Wonder what your idea will do."
"About the Channing Layer? Maybe your spaceline competition is not as
good as it sounds."
"Well, they use the power-transmission tubes all over the face of the
Solar System. I can't see any reason why they couldn't ship stuff from
Sydney to Mojave and then space it out from there."
"What an itinerary! By Franks' matter transmitter to Mojave.
Spacecraft to Luna. More matter transmission from Luna to Phobos.
Then trans-shipped down to Lincoln Head, and by matter transmitter to
Canalopsis. _Whoosh!_"
"Do we have time to go into the old yarn about the guy who listened in
and got replicas?" asked Arden.
"That's a woman's mind for you," grinned Channing. "Always making
things complicated. Arden, my lovely but devious-minded woman, let's
wait until we have the spry beastie by the ears before we start to make
rabbit pie."
"It's not as simple as it sounds," warned Walt. "But it's there to
worry about."
"But later. I doubt that we can reason that angle out."
"I can," said Arden. "Can we tap the power beams?"
"Wonderful is the mind of woman," praised Don. "Positively wonderful!
Arden, you have earned your next fur coat. Here I've been thinking of
radio transmission all this time. No, Arden, when you're set up for
sheer energy transmission, it's strictly no dice. The crimped up jobs
we use for communications can be tapped--but not the power transmission
beams. If you can keep the gadget working on that line, Walt, we're in
and solid."
"I predict there'll be a battle. Are we shipping energy or
communications?"
"Let Kingman try and find a precedent for that. Brother Blackstone
himself would be stumped to make a ruling. We'll have to go to work
with the evidence as soon as we get a glimmer of the possibilities. But
I think we have a good chance. We can diddle up the focus, I'm certain."
Arden glowered. "Go ahead--have your fun. I see another couple of weeks
of being a gadgeteer's widow." She looked at Walt Franks. "I could
stand it if the big lug only didn't call every tool, every part, and
every effect either _she_ or _baby_!"
Walt grinned. "I'd try to keep you from being lonely, but I'm in this,
too, and besides, you're my friend's best wife."
"Shall we drag that around a bit? I think we could kill a couple of
hours with it sometime."
"Let it lie there and rot," snorted Channing cheerfully. "We'll pick it
up later. Come on, Walt. We've got work to do."
* * * * *
Mark Kingman glowered at the 'gram and swore under his breath. He
wondered whether he might be developing a persecution complex; it
seemed as though every time he turned around, Venus Equilateral was in
his hair, asking for something or other. And he was not in any position
to quibble about it. Kingman was smart enough to carry his tray very
level. Knowing that they were waiting for a chance to prove that he had
been connected with the late Hellion Murdoch made him very cautious.
There was no doubt in any mind that Murdoch was written off the books,
but whether Murdoch had made a sufficiently large impression on the
books of Terran Electric to have the connection become evident--that
worried Kingman.
So he swore at each telegram that came in, but quietly, and followed
each request to the letter. Compared to his former attitude toward
Venus Equilateral, Mark Kingman was behaving like an honor student in a
Sunday school.
Furthermore, behaving himself did not make him feel good.
He punched the buzzer, told his secretary to call in the shop foreman,
and then sat back and wondered about the 'gram.
He was still wondering when the man entered. Kingman looked up and
fixed his superintendent with a fishy glance. "Horman, can you guess
why the Venus Equilateral crowd would want two dozen gauge blocks?"
"Sure. We use Johannson blocks all the time."
"Channing wants twenty-four blocks. All three inches on a side--cubes.
Square to within thirty seconds of angle, and each of the six faces
optically flat to one-quarter wave length of cadmium light."
"_Whoosh!_" said Horman. "I presume the three-inch dimension must be
within a half wave length?"
"They're quite lenient," said Kingman bitterly. "A full wave length!"
"White of them," grunted Horman. "I suppose the same thing applies?"
"We're running over thin ice," said Kingman reflectively. "I can't
afford to play rough. We'll make up their blocks."
"I wonder what they want 'em for?"
"Something tricky, I'll bet."
"But what could you use two dozen gauge blocks for? All the same size."
"Inspection standards?" asked Kingman.
"Not unless they're just being difficult. You don't put primary blocks
on any production line. You make secondary gauges for production
line use and keep a couple of primaries in the check room to try the
secondaries on. In fact, you usually have a whole set of gauge blocks
to build up to any desired dimension so that you don't have to stock a
half-million of different sizes."
"It's possible that they may be doing something extremely delicate?"
"Possible," said Horman slowly. "But not too probable. On the other
hand, I may be one hundred percent wrong. I don't know all the
different stuff a man can make, by far. My own experience indicates
that nothing like that would be needed. But that's just one man's
experience."
"Channing and that gang of roughneck scientists have been known to make
some fancy gadgets," said Kingman grudgingly.
"If you'll pardon my mentioning the subject," said Horman in a
scathing tone, "you'd have been far better off to tag along with 'em
instead of fighting 'em."
"I'll get 'em yet."
"What's it got you so far?"
"I'm not too bad off. I've come up from the Chief Legal Counsel of
Terran Electric to controlling the company."
"And Terran Electric has slid down from the topmost outfit in the
system to a seventh rater."
"We'll climb back. At any rate, I'm better off personally. You're
better off personally. In fact, everybody that had enough guts to stay
with us is better off."
"Yeah--I know. It sounds good on paper. But make a bum move again,
Kingman, and we'll all be in jail. You'd better forget that hatred
against Venus Equilateral and come down to earth."
"Well, I've been a good boy for them once. After all, I did point out
the error in their patent on the solar beam."
"That isn't all. Don't forget that Terran Electric's patent was at
error, too."
"Frankly, it was a minor error. It's one of those things that is easy
to get caught on. You know how it came about?"
"Nope. I accepted it just like everybody else. It took some outsider to
laugh at me and tell me why."
Kingman smiled. "It's easy to get into easy thinking. They took power
from Sirius--believe it or not--and then made some there-and-back time
measurements and came up with a figure that was about the square of one
hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second. But you know that you
can't square a velocity and come up with anything that looks sensible.
The square of a velocity must be some concept like an expanding area."
"Or would it be two spots diverging along the sides of a right angle?"
queried Horman idly. "What was their final answer?"
"The velocity of light is a concept. It is based on the flexibility
of space--its physical constants, so to speak. Channing claims that
the sub-etheric radiation bands of what we have learned to call the
driver radiation propagates along some other medium than space itself.
I think they were trying to establish some mathematical relation--which
might be all right, but you can't establish that kind of relation
and hope to hold it. The square of C in meters comes out differently
than the square of C in miles, inches, or a little-used standard, the
light-second, in which the velocity of light is unity, or One. Follow?
Anyway, they made modulation equipment of some sort and measured the
velocity and came up with a finite figure which is slightly less than
the square of one hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second. Their
original idea was wrong. It was just coincidence that the two figures
came out that way. Anyway," smiled Kingman, "I pointed it out to them
and they quick changed their patent letters. So, you see, I've been of
some help."
"Nice going. Well, I'm going to make those gauges. It'll take us one
long time, too. Johannson Blocks aren't the easiest things in the world
to make."
"What would you make secondary standards out of?"
"We use glass gauges, mostly. They don't dinge or bend when
dropped--they go to pieces or not at all. We can't have a bent gauge
rejecting production parts, you know, and steel gauges can be bent.
Besides, you can grind glass to a half wave length of light with ease,
but polishing steel is another item entirely."
"I'm going to call Channing and ask him about glass blocks. It may
be that he might use them. Plus the fact that I may get an inkling
of the ultimate use. They have no production lines running on Venus
Equilateral, have they?"
"Nope. Not at all. They're not a manufacturing company."
"Well, I'm going to call."
Kingman's voice raced across Terra to Hawaii, went on the
communications beams of the sky-pointing reflectors, and rammed through
the Heaviside Layer to Luna. At the Lunar Station, his voice was
mingled in multiplex with a thousand others and placed on the sub-ether
beams to Venus Equilateral.