THE SECOND SHELL
By JACK WILLIAMSON
_By the Author of "The Alien Intelligence," "The Girl from Mars"_
[Illustration: JACK WILLIAMSON]
_Here the well-known author of "The Alien Intelligence" and other
thrilling stories presents his latest symphony, a fine piece of
aerial fiction._
_Few authors have Jack Williamson's knack to pack their stories
with so much adventure and with so much imaginative science. And
while it may be fantastic today, most of it we know, sooner or
later, will have become reality._
_All scientists for decades have been wondering what the mysterious
Heaviside Layer is. Radio engineers know of the Heaviside Layer
from its effect on radio waves. It is very much of a fact, yet no
one has ever been able to get near it, due to its distance above
the surface of the earth, and till we have penetrated it, we cannot
be sure what lies above it._
_We know you will enjoy the present story, which easily bears
re-reading from time to time._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Air Wonder Stories November 1929
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was two o'clock in the morning of September 5, 1939. For a year
and a half I had been at work on the San Francisco _Times_. I had
come there immediately after finishing my year's course at the army
officers' flying school at San Antonio, on the chance that my work
would lead me into enough tong wars and exciting murder mysteries to
make life interesting.
The morning edition had just been "put to bed" and I was starting out
of the office when the night editor called me to meet a visitor who had
just come in. The stranger came forward quickly. Roughly clad in blue
shirt and overalls, boots, and Stetson, he had the bronze skin, clear
eyes, and smooth movements of one who has spent his life out-of-doors.
He stopped before me and held out his hand with a pleasant smile. I saw
that his hair was gray; he was a little older than I had thought at
first--fifty, perhaps. I liked the fellow instinctively.
"Robert Barrett?" he questioned in a pleasant drawl. I nodded.
"I'm Bill Johnson," he said briefly. "I want to see you. Secret Service
business. _Sabe?_" He let me glimpse a badge, and we walked out into
the night. As we started down the silent street it occurred to me that
I had heard of this man before.
"Are you the William Johnson who unearthed the radio station of the
revolutionaries in Mexico in 1917?"
"I guess so. I've been in Mexico thirty years, and I've helped Uncle
Sam out a time or two. It's a case like that one, or worse, that I'm up
here to see about now. I need a partner. I've been told about you. Are
you game for a little adventure?"
"You've found your man."
"They call you 'Tiger Bob Barrett,' don't they?" he said irrelevantly.
"I used to play football."
He laughed. I have always been sensible about that nickname.
"Well, here's the situation. I've been at Vernon's mine in Durango,
Mexico. Called El Tigre. Gold and thorium. There's a little mystery--"
"Vernon? Is it Doc Vernon, the scientist. His daughter inherited a
mine--"
"_Si, Señor._ Ellen Vernon is some young lady!"
"I knew them at Texas University. I was in Vernon's chemistry class
before he went daft on his death ray machine, and left to work on that."
"The Doc is still at work on the machine. In fact, that is a part of
the mystery.
"The mine is in an old corner of the desert, about fifty miles south
of Mocolynatal--the big mountain. And there's something queer going on
about that mountain!
"Ellen got herself a radio set to pass away the time with. She got
to picking up strange stuff. Sounds we couldn't make out! Not just a
strange lingo. They don't sound like the human voice at all! Strange
chirps and squeaks! Doc and I rigged up a directional set, and found
that the calls were sent from Mocolynatal.
"The mountain's in sight, to the north of us. I got to watching
it, and found out something else. There have been airplanes flying
about it--queer red machines with short stubby wings! They flew off
mostly to the west. I did a little more investigation, and found that
a line of run-down Jap tramp steamers has been hauling cargoes of
the-lord-knows-what, and unloading somewhere along the Pacific coast of
Mexico--evidently making connections with the red machines.
"Now, the Doc has his machine where he thinks it will be the end of
the world if anybody gets hold of it. We've seen one or two of the red
planes over the mine, and he is afraid they have found out about it,
somehow. He got nervous, and sent me up to see Uncle Sam. It is all
news to the State Department, and we are going to investigate.
"One of the Jap tramps is leaving here tomorrow, and there will be
a couple of destroyers on the trail, to see what they unload, and
where. I've got hold of a new airplane--a queer little machine called
the Camel-back, that I'm taking along on board. A jewel for mountain
work--you could land it on a handkerchief. I needed a partner, and the
Doc told me about you. Want to go along?"
"You bet I do! I've been longing for something to turn up."
"Well, be at the landing field at nine tomorrow--this morning, rather,
ready for anything. This may be interesting before we're through.
_Buenas Noches._"
A Raid and a Mystery
The old fellow left me, and I walked on toward my apartment, thinking
over what I had heard. Dr. Vernon's invention a success at last! I
remembered very clearly my days with the nervous, stammering little
scientist, always sure that tomorrow would bring the great secret. And
I thought of Ellen--indeed, I had often done so in the two years since
I had heard from her. I wondered why she and her father had left Austin
so suddenly, and why their destination had been kept a secret from all
their friends.
As for the matter of the red planes, I could suppose nothing but that
the outs in Mexican politics were preparing a little military surprise
for the ins. There have been too many military forces raised secretly
in Mexico for one of them to be much of a novelty. Then I thought of
the queer radio messages. They did not fit in very well. But my mind
returned to Ellen again. I thought no more of the red machines. I had
no thought--no one on earth had warning--of the terrible force that was
rising to menace the world.
In the morning, when I came down to the lobby, I found a curious clamor
going. There was a hum of conversation, and people were passing around
red-paper "extras". It was five minutes before I could get one to read
the screaming headlines:
RED PLANES RAID FACTORY
THREE HUNDRED DEAD
MILLION DOLLAR STOCK OF
THORIUM TAKEN
The account went on to describe the raid, at four o'clock that morning,
of a fleet of red airplanes upon the Rogers Gas Mantle Factory, at St.
Louis. It was stated that three hundred people had been killed, and
that the entire stock of thorium nitrate on hand, worth over a million
dollars, had been carried off.
Much of a mystery was made of it. Police had failed to identify three
of the four red-uniformed corpses left behind. Fingerprints identified
the other as a noted criminal recently out of Leavenworth.
No one seemed to have any idea why the thorium had been taken, since
the chief use of that radioactive metal, which is similar to radium,
but far less active, is in the manufacture of gas mantles.
It was farther stated that the raiders had released "clouds of a
luminous purple gas," which had caused most of the fatalities, and
which seemed to have destroyed the gravity of metallic objects about.
It was said that the factory building was curiously wrecked, as if the
heavy machinery had gone up through the roof.
At first it struck me that this must be simply a newspaper canard. Then
I remembered what Bill Johnson had told me of the strange red airplanes
in Durango, and of the mystery of the secret radio station. Then I was
not so sure. I ate a little breakfast and hurried out to the landing
field. I found Bill with a copy of the paper in his hand. His wrinkled
face had a look of eager concentration on it.
"Howdy, Bob," he drawled. "This looks interesting. Have you seen it?" I
nodded. "It must be the same red planes. Let's get off."
We walked out on the field, where the "Camel-back" plane was waiting.
It was the first one I had seen; one of the first models built, I
believe. It was based on Cierva's _Autogiro_, or "windmill plane". But
there was an arrangement by which the rotating mast could be drawn into
the fuselage, the rotation stopped, and the vanes folded to the side,
so that the machine, in the air, could be transformed into an ordinary
monoplane, capable of a much higher flying speed than the _Autogiro_.
When the pilot desired, a touch of a button would release the mast and
vanes, and the machine became an _Autogiro_, which could spiral slowly
or drop almost perpendicularly to a safe landing on a small spot of
ground.
The machine had a further innovation in the shape of a Wright turbine
motor. This had but a single important moving part, the shaft which
bore the rotors, the flanged wheel that drew the mixture into the
combustion chamber, and the propeller. Because of its extreme light
weight and high efficiency, the internal combustion turbine engine now
promises to come into general use.
The name of the machine, "the Camel-back," was due to the peculiar hump
to the rear of the mast, covering the levers for raising and lowering
the rotating "windmill."
The plane carried a .50 calibre machine gun in the forward cockpit.
"Get aboard, Bob, and we're off," Bill said as we got on our
parachutes. "The tramp weighed anchor at four this morning, and the
destroyers left an hour later. We'll be able to pick them up."
Five minutes later our trim little machine was rolling forward with the
"windmill" spinning. It swept smoothly upward, Bill moved into gear
the device that brought down the mast, and soon we were over the cold
gray Pacific, with the city fading into the haze of the blue northern
horizon.
Bill was flying the ship, and my thoughts turned back to Dr. Vernon
and his daughter. The Doctor was a pudgy, explosive little man, who
thought, ate, and breathed science. His short, restless figure always
bore the marks of laboratory cataclysms, and his life had been marred
by the earlier lack of success in perfecting the terrible machine to
which he was devoting his life. I had always thought it strange that a
man so mild and tender-hearted should toil so to build a death-dealing
instrument, and I wondered what he would do with it now if he had it
completed.
It was five years since I had seen Ellen. She had been but a spritely,
elfin girl. I remembered her chiefly as having been instrumental, one
day at a party, in getting me to drop myself into a supposed easy
chair, which turned out to be a tub of ice water.
CHAPTER II
The Menace of the Mist
The little Camel-back plane was a wonder. The soft whispering hum of
the turbine engine belied its tremendous power. The slender, white
metal wings cut the air at the rate of two and a half miles per minute.
Presently we saw a smudge of smoke where the blue sea met the bluer
sky ahead, and soon the little machine had dropped on the deck of a
destroyer.
The sister vessel was four or five miles to starboard. The two ships
were plowing deliberately along, at about ten knots, keeping some
twenty-five miles behind the tramp steamer they were shadowing. One of
the officers took us up on the little bridge, and we learned that the
little ships were keeping track of the tramp with their radio equipment.
The radio man took us in and let us listen to the calls between the
tramp and some point far ahead. Those were the strangest sounds I have
ever heard. Thin, stuttering, stridulating squeaks and squeals! Even
allowing for distortion in transmission, it was hard to imagine what
might make them.
"That's something talking," Bill said. "And human beings don't make
noises like that."
"It may be," the operator said, "that what we hear is just an ordinary
conversation, 'scrambled' to keep us from understanding it, and
'unscrambled' by the receiver. Such devices have been in use for years."
But there was no conviction in his voice. And certainly, those strange
noises sounded to me like the communication of some alien beings. But
what might they be?
Later in the day, Bill and I took turns in going up with the Camel-back
to keep tab on the movements of the tramp, since the radio calls had
ceased. The day passed, and the white sun sank back of the glittering
western waves. During the hot, moonless night, the ether was still,
and we could do nothing but steam on in the same direction. I went up
twice, but the tramp was showing no lights, and I failed to locate her.
At midnight Bill came on deck, and I went below to a bunk.
It was just after dawn that the alarm was sounded. I was awakened by
the roar of the little ship's forward gun. It was firing steadily as I
went on deck, and I heard a confusion of sounds--the siren was blowing,
and there was a medley of shouts, orders, and curses, punctuated with
the reports of small arms.
I saw that the Camel-back was gone from the deck. Bill was up again.
As I stepped on deck there was a great clanging roar from below. The
propellers had been lifted from the water! The engines raced madly for
a minute, and then were stopped. I ran to the rail to see what had
happened to throw the organization of the crew into such confusion. And
indeed it was an amazing sight that met my eyes!
The ship was floating in the air, a hundred feet above the waves! The
air was still, the sea was smooth and black.... The eastern sky was
lit by the silver curtain of the dawn, with the old moon hanging in
it. Before us, and below, two hundred yards away, was a queer luminous
hill--a shining cloud of red-purple vapor that rolled spread heavily
upon the black water. I saw two similar twisting mounds of gas astern,
gleaming with a painful radiance.
And the ship was rising into the air!
It was drifting swiftly up, through the still air, so that a wind
seemed to blow down upon us. I saw a rifle hanging in the air ten feet
above me, and a steel boat rising a dozen feet over the mast. Suddenly
it came to me that something had negated the gravity of the metal parts
of the ship. I thought of the story of the gravity-destroying bombs
used in the raid of the night before upon the thorium stores.
The forward gun was still firing steadily, though the terrorized men
had deserted the others. I saw a man point above us, and looked. A red
airplane, with thick fuselage and short wings, was flying silently
and swiftly across our bows. As it passed, something fell from it. It
was a dark object that fell and exploded just above us, bursting into
a thick, roily cloud of shining purple mist. The light of it hurt my
eyes. And the ship plunged upward faster.
In view of what happened later, there can be no doubt that the luminous
gas was a radioactive element derived by the forced acceleration of
the decomposition of thorium. It was similar to the inert radioactive
gas niton, or "radium emanation," which is formed by the expulsion of
an alpha particle from the radium atom. And there can be no doubt that
its emanations affected the magnetic elements, iron, nickel, cobalt,
and oxygen in such a manner as to reverse the pull of gravity. With the
invention of permalloy and other similar substances in the past decade,
such a thing is much less incredible than it might have seemed ten
years ago.
In a few moments the red ship had passed out of sight. Looking
dazedly to the west, I saw a number of bright points of purple fire
against the deep blue of the sky--radioactive clouds sending out the
gravity-nullifying radiations. The dark shape of the other destroyer,
upside down, was floating up among them. It must have been almost a
mile up, already.
As I stood there astounded, the officers seemed to be making a furious
attempt to restore order. Then men were running about, babbling and
cursing in utter confusion. I saw one man don a life belt and jump
insanely over the rail--to plunge like a plummet to the water five
hundred yards below. A dozen more poor fellows followed him before the
mate could stop the rush. And perhaps their fate is as good as that of
the others.
Suddenly a wild-eyed seaman sprang at my throat. In spite of my
amazement, I was able to stop him with a punch at the jaw. In a moment
I realized what he was after. The parachute that I had worn on my last
flight in the Camel-back was strapped to me. As the fellow got up to
charge again, the deck tilted (probably the ship was upset by the
recoil of the gun).
Presently I found the rip-cord and jerked it. The white silk bellowsed
out behind me, while my unfortunate shipmates fell, dwindling dark
specks, to make white splashes in the sea below. The ill-fated ship
must have been half a mile high then. I glimpsed it once or twice, a
vanishing black dot--driven out into space!
By the time I had struck the chill water I almost wished that I had
fallen with the others. I contrived to cut the harness loose, and to
get rid of my coat and shoes; and set myself to the task of keeping
afloat as long as possible.
On to the Mine
It must have been an hour later that I heard the hum of the
Camel-back's propeller, and saw the little machine skimming low over
the waves. Bill leaned out and waved a hand in greeting. In a few
minutes he had brought the machine down lightly in the water beside me,
and hauled me aboard.
"I went up at three o'clock," he said, "to see if I could locate the
Jap. I was coming down when the red machines began to let loose their
shining clouds. The plane went up. I stopped the engine, and still it
went up. Its weight was gone. I almost froze before it started falling."
"Those ships may go on to the moon! They may become minor satellites
themselves!"
"You saw the red machines dealing out the dope?"
"One of them. Who could it--"
"It's our job to find out. We better head back for the mine, to see
what's happened there."
The trim little machine skimmed smoothly over the level sea, and easily
took the air. We flew southwest. It was not many hours before we
sighted land that must have been the lower tip of Lower California.
In an hour more we were flying over Mexico, the most ancient, and
paradoxically, the least known country on the continent.
We flew over a broad plain checkered with the bright green of fields,
over ancient cities and mean adobe villages, and over the vast forests
of pine, cut with twisting canyons, that cover the slopes of the mighty
mountains that rose before us. As we went on, the green valleys of the
rushing mountain streams grew narrower; and the grim wild peaks that
rimmed them, higher and more frequent. Sheer jagged summits rose above
steep, forest-covered slopes. We were reaching the heart of the Sierra
Madre range.
At last the vast bare conical mountain loomed up to the north of us,
that Bill told me was Mocolynatal--the place of the hidden radio
station. Its sheer black slopes tower fifteen thousand feet above the
sea. From its appearance, it was not hard to guess that it had a crater
of considerable dimensions.
The mountain crept around to our left, as we flew on toward the mine.
Suddenly Bill shouted and pointed toward the peak. I looked. Above
the dark outline of the cone, a huge globe of blue light was rising,
flaming with an intense brilliance that gave a ghastly tint of blue to
all that desert wilderness of peaks! Like a great moon of blue fire, it
rose swiftly into the sky! It dwindled, faded, was gone!
I felt the hair rise on my neck. I was glad that our plane was swift
and far away. If it was a human power with which we had to deal, I
thought, it must have made strange advances. And then I remembered the
strange noises upon the ether--sounds more like the stridulations of
great insects than the voices of men!
"That has happened twice before," Bill said. "But I didn't tell anybody
about it in the States. It's too damned unbelievable."
At the Thorium Mine
In half an hour we were fifty miles south of Mocolynatal, circling
over the mine. El Tigre Mine is near the center of a rocky, triangular
plateau. Northwest and southwest, the Sierra Madre rises. On the east
side of the triangle is the river, a tributary of the Nazas, in a
canyon deep enough to hold the stream a hundred times. Perhaps a dozen
square miles are so enclosed. It is a desert of sand and rocks, cut up
with dry arroyos, scantily covered with yucca, mesquite, and cactus.
The mine buildings stand on the little stream that cuts a track of
vivid green across the neutral gray of the waste to the canyon below.
Sitting there on the dull-hued plain, with the Cordillerras rising
so abruptly a few miles back, the buildings looked very tiny and
insignificant. Across the stream from the shaft-house, the shops, and
the quarters of the men is a square, fortress-like two story residence
of rough gray stone.... The narrow-gauge railroad track runs from it
down toward the canyon like thin black threads.
As we flew over the buildings, a trim white figure appeared on the
roof of the residence, and waved a slender arm. I knew that it must be
Ellen, and I felt oddly excited at the thought of seeing her again.
Bill touched the button that released the rotor, and the machine
settled lightly to earth near the main building. A short waddling
person and a slender active one--the Doctor and Ellen--came out of the
house and hurried toward us.
"Why h-h-h-h-hello, Bob, I'm s-sur-surprised to see you," the Doctor
rattled off. I have always had the opinion that he wouldn't stammer
if he would take time to talk, but he is always in a hurry. "You're
w-w-w-welcome, though. Looks like a new m-ma-ma-machine you have, Bill.
The red ship c-c-c-came again while you were gone. I've got something
to t-t-t-t-tell you. But get out and come in to the shade."
He hurried us toward the house. He was just as I remembered him--a
short man, a little stout, with a perpetual grin on his moon-face,
and movements as short and jerky as his speech. He was panting with
excitement, and very glad to see us.
Ellen Vernon was, if possible, even more beautiful than she had been to
my boyish eyes. Her dark eyes still held the flame of restless mischief
that had brought me the icy plunge. I believe a recollection of the
incident passed through her mind as she saw me, for her eyes suddenly
met mine engagingly, and then were briefly turned away, while a quick
soft flush spread over her glowing, sun-colored cheek. I got a subtle
intoxication even out of watching the smooth grace of her movements.
We shook hands with the Doctor, and Ellen offered me her strong cool
hand.
"I'm glad to see you, Bob," she said simply. "I've often thought of
you. And you've come in at an interesting time. Dad turned loose his
ray yesterday, and brought down one of the red machines. I guess Bill
has told you--"
"Yes," the Doctor interrupted, "the th-th-th-thing had come sneaking
around here once too often. I tried the tube on it and it fell about
a mile up the creek. Funny thing about it. The red ship struck the
ground, and then something left it and went b-b-b-b-back into the air!"
"Something like a bright blue balloon carried the thing up in the air,"
Ellen added. "It saved itself with that, just like a man wrecked in the
air uses a parachute. But it was not a man that sailed up under that
ball of blue light! It was a queer twisting purple thing! I used the
field glasses--"
"It's not m-m-m-men that fly the red ships," the Doctor said. "It's
c-cre-cre-creatures of the upper air!"
We stepped up on the broad, shady verandah, and Bill and the Doctor
stopped by the steps, comparing notes. Ellen gave me a welcome drink of
icy water from the wind-cooled earthen _olla_ hanging from the roof.
Straight, and tanned, she looked very beautiful against the desert
background. She was the same girl she had always been--bright, daring,
and alluring. Neither she nor the Doctor seemed unduly excited over the
astounding news they had just delivered.
The desert lay away to the eastward, undulating in the heat like a
windswept lake. Gray or dully green with the yucca and manzanita upon
it, it was sharply cut by the rich green mark of the wandering stream.
Its vastness tired the eyes, like a limitless weird dead sea. North
and south the mountains rose, gripping the plain in a grim and ancient
grasp. The hills were still tinted with the blues and purples of the
morning shades, save where some higher peak caught the sunlight and
reflected it in a fiercer, redder gleam. Far in the north, above the
nearer peaks, I made out the distantly mysterious, dull blue outline
of Mocolynatal--the mountain of the hidden menace.
In such a wild and primitive setting, human civilization seemed a
distant, unimportant issue. The menace of the desert, of naked nature,
alone seemed real. No wild tale was incredible there.
And the wonderful girl before me, smiling, cool and resourceful, seemed
to fit in with that rough scenery, seemed almost a part of it. Ellen
was the kind of woman who can master her environment.
"Coming down here was a pretty severe change for a campus queen, wasn't
it?" I asked her.
"The royal blood never flowed too freely in my veins," she said. "I
rather like it here. The ore train from Durango brings the mail twice a
week, and I read a lot. Then, I'm beginning to love the desert and the
mountains. Sometimes I feel almost like worshipping old Mocolynatal.
They say the Indians did."
"I wonder if it's ever been climbed?"
"I think not. Unless by the owners of the red airplanes. Dad thinks
they are things that have come down out of the upper air to attack the
earth. I've always been sorry I wasn't here when the tiger was killed,
but this promises a bigger adventure yet! And I'll be right in the
middle of it!" She laughed.
The Death Ray
"I hadn't heard of the tiger's misfortune," I said, a little amused at
her eagerness for adventure.
"You know Uncle Jake had a ranch down on the Nazas. Once he trailed a
tiger up here with his hounds. He killed him right here, and happened
to see the glitter of gold in the blood-stained quartz. He named the
mine El Tigre--The Tiger. Along with the gold ore are deposits of
_monazite_--thorium ore. Dad began to work them when we came to get
thorium to use in his experiments."
"Say, Bob," the Doctor called, "I want to sh-sh-sh-show you something.
Come on in the lab." The little man took my arm and hurried me down the
long cool hall, and up a flight of steps to a great room on the second
floor. It suggested an astronomical observatory; it was circular, and
the roof was a great glass dome. In the center and projecting through
the dome was a huge device that resembled a telescope. About the walls
a variety of scientific equipment.
"That's my r-r-r-ray machine," he said. "Modified adaptation of the old
Coolidge tube, with an electrode of molten _Vernonite_. _Vernonite_
is my invention--an alloy of thorium with some of the alkaline earth
metals. When the alloy is melted there is a comparatively rapid
atomic disintegration of the radioactive thorium, and the radiation
is modified by passages through a powerful magnetic field, and by
polarization with quartz prisms. The Vernon Ray has characteristics
controllable by the adjustment of the apparatus, generally resembling
those of the ultra-violet or actinic rays of sunlight, but intensified
to an extreme degree.
"The chemical effects are marvelous. The Vernon Ray will bleach indigo,
or the green of plant leaves. It stimulates oxidation, and has a
tendency to break up the proteins and other complex molecules.
"This tube has a range of five miles, and will penetrate a foot of
lead. I have killed animals with it by breaking up the haemoglobin in
the blood. By special adjustment, its effects would be fatal at even
greater range. It might be set to break the body proteins into the
split protein poisons--there are a thousand ways it might kill a man,
quickly or by hideous lingering death.
"Used in war, the Vernon Ray would not only kill men, but destroy or
ignite such useful chemicals as fuels and explosives. It would destroy
vegetation and food supplies. In fact, it would make war impossible,
and it is my hope that it will end war altogether!"
"But what if the wrong fellow gets hold of it?"
He nodded to a safe at the wall. "Plans locked up there. And nobody
knows about it. Even if someone had the plans, he could hardly secure
the large quantities of thorium required without attracting attention."
I thought of the raid on the gas mantle factory.
"I mean to turn it over to the American government pretty soon, but
I hope to make another development. Ordinary heat and light waves
set up molecular disturbances in matter; in fact, heat is merely
molecular vibration. I hope to discover a frequency in the spectrum
that will stimulate atomic vibration to such an extent as to break
down the electronic system. Objects upon which such a ray is directed
will explode with incredible violence. In my earlier experiments with
_Vernonite_, the molten alloy in the tube, I almost had a catastrophe
from the atomic explosion of the electrode. It would have blown El
Tigre off the map! The radioactivity of thorium is slight; I must
increase it vastly. The adjustment is delicate."
He let me look into the apparatus. It was plainly electrical. There
were motors, generators, coils, transformers, mirrors and lenses in
a lead housing, vast condensers, and a huge vacuum tube which seemed
to have a little crucible of glowing liquid for the anode. Back of it
was a great parabolic reflector which must have sent out the beam of
destruction.
"The idea of atomic force as a d-d-d-d-destructive agency is not new,"
he went on, again almost too enthusiastic to talk. "The sun is thought
to ob-ob-ob-obtain its boundless energy from the process of atomic
disintegration, and m-m-m-m-m-men of science long since agree that
any instrument using intra-atomic energy would be a t-t-t-t-terrible
weapon!"