_By Joe Gibson_
_Illustrated by H. W. McCauley_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds March
1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_What if you invented a space ship? Would you give it to the world?
And what if you decide NOT to! Are you a criminal to be hunted down?_
Bill Morrow fished his cigarettes out, shook one loose, and poked it
between his lips. He lighted it with hands that shook badly, he leaned
back on the workbench and blew smoke in a long, heavy sigh.
His gaze remained fixed on the compact little chunk of glittering
grids, coils, and metal loops that floated in the center of the room.
Floated, by Isaac Newton--_floated!_
It worked. It worked beautifully! He'd merely inserted the four
dry-cell flashlight batteries into their clamps and thumbed the switch
on the little face-panel. The tiny pilot-light winked on, the needle
jiggled on the single instrument dial--
And it worked. It had risen gently from the workbench, floating into
the air....
Then, seemingly, it had fostered a dislike for the workbench. It slid
off and bounced toward the floor--bounced, up and down in the air,
gently--and floated on across the cellar toward the oil furnace in the
corner.
But as it approached the oil furnace, it had decided it didn't like
that either--so it deflected its course and floated toward the concrete
cellar wall.
But it didn't like the wall. So it reversed its course and retreated to
the center of the room. There it hovered, four feet above the cement
floor, four feet below the rafters of the cellar roof.
It hovered in mid-air.
Morrow stared at it, critically. He could capture it--get it between
himself and the wall, and reach out and grab it before it could slip
away--and touching it wouldn't harm him. The magneto-gravitic coils
didn't need high voltage.
It was working on its lowest "volume" setting. The only word applicable
was "volume" because he used an ordinary volume-control grid and knob
to adjust its power--and, again, "power" was the only applicable word.
He might have to invent a few new words for it.
But on its lowest volume setting, it was supporting its own
weight--suspending itself in the Earth's gravitic field.
And since gravitic forces were also magnetic forces, he would weigh a
fraction of a pound lighter when he grabbed hold of the mechanism--just
he, himself, since he wore rubber-soled shoes. If he turned up its
volume, it would exert greater influence on the molecular structure
of itself and of his body--and perhaps of a few grains of dust on
the cement floor beneath his feet--by simple mass-attraction and
conductivity.
Of course, "mass-attraction" and "conductivity" were also obsolete
terms--except that they described two different results of the
same natural phenomenon. The floating mechanism affected the basic
phenomenon itself--
And [equation] was the closest Einstein could come to explaining that!
Still, a word could be invented for it, Morrow supposed. Not that he
understood what the new word was supposed to define--but then, had
Edison known what electricity was? No! He had merely experimented and
learned what it would do, and then designed mechanisms which would
utilize it.
Morrow didn't know what "gravity and magnetic moment" was, either--nor
"angular momentum"--but he had discovered what it would do. _It_, not
they--it was all the same thing. And he designed a mechanism. And the
mechanism worked.