_Negative Matter_
For an instant their gaze held.
"Now," asked Carroll, "what is the Lawson Radiation?"
"Should I know?" she queried by way of reply.
"I think so."
"Why?"
"As an emissary, you should."
She laughed. "I'm still giving no evidence, James. I cannot. I am
human."
He looked down at her, and the recollection of her kiss was strong.
"There are times," he said ruminatively, "when you most certainly are!"
She let her eyes drop. Then she raised them again. "I know very little
about it," she told him. "And practically nothing but what you've told
me. A lot about alien mathematics and sciences. I think that somewhere
in the maze of data there will be the answer you seek."
"And that," he replied, "may be either a chance statement based upon
good prediction or the remark of an alien who knows where the body is
hidden but will say nothing more than, 'Getting warmer'."
"So what do we do?" she asked. "Shall we let this simmer down to the
old unanswerable argument as to my mental status or shall we forget
that and take to real investigation?"
"Investigation," he said. "You're a darned good librarian, Rhine. You
tabulate and I'll try to juggle it out."
Rhine went to the draftman's table and sat down.
"I've maintained all along that the Lawson Radiation was the by-product
of faster-than-light travel," he said. "Ignoring the argument of
aliens and such, we have good evidence at present. There is a body of
negative mass approaching Terra. This negative mass is approaching
Terra at a velocity not only exceeding the velocity of light but
traveling several hundred times the velocity of light."
He paused. Then he sat down--hard.
"What's the matter?" she asked, seeing the look of consternation on his
face.
"The photographs," he said bleakly.
"Yes?"
"Can a rifle bullet traveling faster than sound be heard before it
arrives?" he asked enigmatically.
"No."
"Then a body traveling faster than light cannot be seen before it
arrives! Those pictures show a region of the sky and a few stellar
catastrophes that took place years ago when the light left there
unless--"
"Unless what?"
"Unless the telescope made of the teleport mirror effect utilizes a
type of radiation that propagates faster than light."
Rhine nodded. "If celestial bodies can travel faster than light," she
said, "it stands to reason that some form of energy can travel faster
than light also. After all, matter is one form of energy."
Carroll smiled quietly. "This is negative matter," he said. "And so far
as I have been able to calculate, the only thing that can avoid the
Einstein increase in mass with increase in energy would be some object
having negative mass. But negative mass is as meaningless a term as
negative energy."
"A gentleman by the name of Dirac got the Nobel Prize for postulating
states of negative kinetic energy," said Rhine.
"The positron," nodded Carroll.
"Then it must make sense."
"It does. A normal body possessing energy tends to dissipate that
energy by transferring the excess to other bodies possessing less than
it does. A body possessing negative energy would demand that energy be
applied to it in order for it to acquire a state of energy equilibrium.
"The positron, according to Dirac, is a state of negative kinetic
energy which is satisfied only when the energy of an electron is
applied to it. In the process known as 'pair-production', where hard
gamma strikes matter and releases an electron and a positron, it is
actually a case of separating the electron from its positron, leaving
in effect a 'hole' in the level of energy.
"It is a man whose bills are not paid but are merely covered by written
and certified checks. Send away one check and you have a debit in the
man's account. The positron is satisfied very quickly, however, since
there is a large excess of free electrons to fall into place.
"These cancel the positron--and that process produces hard gamma rays
again--of the same energy content as required to cause the 'pair
production' in the first place. About one million electron volts plus,"
he added.
She hesitated a moment.
"Now--about this negative mass," she said.
"Simple," he said. "Very simple. A negative mass is the only thing
that can exceed the speed of light. Similarly negative energy is the
only kind that can propagate in excess of light. So now let's juggle
equations until we can reproduce the same."
Rhine nodded, picked up a pencil and then looked at him expectantly.
"Put down," he said with a smile, "the first equation that ever told
the truth about the relationship between mass and energy. Energy 'E'
equals Mass 'M' times the squared speed of light, 'C^2'."
"And from there?"
"And from there we start juggling until we find out how to introduce
the negative factor. And I do not mean by dividing by the square root
of minus one," he told her.
* * * * *
Doctor Pollard looked up at the man who stood before his desk. "Mr.
Galloway," he said, "You may believe yourself normally right but you
are ethically wrong."
"Morals and ethics be hanged!" snarled Rhine's brother. "That nut has
kidnaped my sister again."
"Not without her aid," smiled Pollard.
"Aid be hanged too!" shouted Kingston Galloway. "He tried to kill her
once and he may try again."
"Look," said Pollard quietly. "There are times when personality and
identity mean nothing. I think well of my life, as much as you think of
yours. Yet I'd feel less than human if I permitted myself and my ideas
to stand in the way of civilization."
"Stop talking like a superior being and come down to facts," yelled
Kingston Galloway.
"I am. James Forrest Carroll is the only man on earth who can save
Terra from certain destruction. Your sister can be of help to him."
"How?" demanded Kingston.
"Rita is an excellent librarian. She has the ability to recall facts
and figures beyond most people. She has almost an eidetic memory.
Whether Carroll is sane or completely schizophrenic-paranoid, his
statements and his theories are solid when based upon his own line of
reason.
"That his line of reason does not agree with heretofore known physical
facts is of no consequence since several of the unsound, unscientific,
un-factual reasonings have produced things that work. Unsound as they
may seem, they are not unreasonable--excepting to us who can not reason
that way."
"Get to the point."
"Whether Carroll urges Rita to display a horde of facts because he
thinks they come from an alien mind in a human body, or whether
he understands the truth--that they are merely repeats of his own
statements made when he does not recall them--the fact remains that
Rita is his tabulator, his encyclopedia of fact, his memory. She and
she alone can put down concurrently things he has reasoned out, once
when himself and next when he is--un-sane."
"But she's in danger!"
"So are we all," replied Pollard easily. "And Rita herself knows the
danger. And," he added with a snort of derision, "of what good is your
so-called moral integrity going to do you a year from today if James
Forrest Carroll is stopped from preventing the calamity due to erase
Sol from existence in a month?"
"He's a madman. How can you believe that this danger really exists?"
"The danger is what drove him mad."
"And made him believe that Rita and I are aliens?"
"Merely manifestations of the hallucination."
Kingston Galloway growled in his throat. "I ought to kill you," he
snarled. "Not only have you left my sister unprotected, but you've
condoned her kidnaping and now you sit there and tell me that the fate
of the world lies in the mind of a lunatic."
Pollard smiled. "There have been many historic times when civilization
was nearly torn down by a madman. Let history record once when
civilization was saved by one."
"At my sister's expense!" Kingston stormed, barely able to control his
rage.
* * * * *
Pollard shook his head. Then he said patiently, "James Forrest Carroll
was driven mad by this knowledge of inescapable doom, because his
subconscious mind knew that the answer was hidden in the realm of
physics termed 'unreasonable' to the true physicist.
"Once James Forrest Carroll has succeeded in removing this menace he
will know that amnesia and mental retreat are not necessary for the
preservation of his sanity. There will undoubtedly be evidences, too,
to support the 'unreasonable' physics in terms of what we know to
be true. Thus Carroll will be completely self-justified and will be
returned to normal."
"You talk a lot about self-justification," snarled Kingston.
"Everybody is self-justified," said Pollard. "Sanity is when the
self-justification of the individual is, within certain limits, similar
to the self-justification of the average human being. Insanity is when
the self-justification of the individual lies outside of reasonable
limits. Once Carroll's self-justification--which is one more way of
saying his 'viewpoint'--is reasonably similar to others, sanity will
return."
"And in the meantime, what about Rita?"
"Rita is at worst a good soldier," said Pollard. "At best, she alone
will realize the full truth. But just remember neither morals nor
ethics mean a thing to a civilization that has just perished before a
nova. And I have more than a little respect for the morals and ethics
of both Carroll and your sister under any circumstances."
"But she's my sister and he's--"
"Shut up. You're talking like a fool. They're doing nothing wrong.
Stop them and you'll destroy the earth. Perhaps if you'd left him
alone--them alone--Carroll might not have identified you with his
hallucinatory aliens."
"Yeah? And just what is an alien?" demanded Kingston.
"An alien," smiled Pollard, "is any man who does not think as you do!"
"Bah!" cried Kingston, turning on his heel. He left the office swearing
eternal vengeance.
An hour later, Majors came bursting into Pollard's office. "Pollard!"
he exclaimed. "Listen! That wildman Kingston Galloway has just
collected a gang of his cohorts, friends and buddies and they've all
taken off like wildmen. They're heading for Wisconsin!"
"The stupid idiot!" exploded Pollard, coming out of his chair. "Come
on!"
* * * * *
Rhinegallis clasped Carroll's arm tightly as she stood beside him
and looked at the almost-vibrant blackness that seemed to shimmer in
the encircling wire mounted on the wall. Carroll was too busy to pay
attention to her clasp.
He was busy adjusting knobs on a haywire equipment on the bench
beside him. The shimmering blackness flared briefly at one side,
turned milky for an instant near the top--and then a pinprick of
utter--nothingness--appeared to one side of the circle.
Carroll adjusted knobs, brought the spot of sheer black into the center
of the artificial plate and then expanded it. It was noticeable only
because it--as a circle of utter no-response--was less energetic than
the misty background.
"That," he said, "is it."
"The negative mass?"
He nodded. "Is the 'fence' ready?"
"Checked."
"Now's as good a time as any," he said laconically. He left the
vantage-point and went to another panel in the laboratory and began to
throw switches.
Five miles from Carroll's home a ten mile circle of wire came to life.
Set on insulators mounted on trees in a rough circle, the area ten
miles in diameter shimmered with a thin, misty film of energy--the same
energy as that of the teleport.
It thickened as Carroll adjusted the driving gear, thickened and
became more positive until it was as shiningly opaque as the teleport
screen-mirror. Trees in the circle, cut clean at the surface of the
mirror fell, impelled by gravity into the screen. Then above the
perfect plane of energy was nothing.
The trimmed trees fell helter-skelter into a deep gorge from a smaller
teleport plane twenty miles to the north.
Then the perfect plane bowed downward into a shallow paraboloid of
revolution. As it went down the up-thrusting trees were trimmed off
and the matter in them converted into energy. A minute but perfect
sphere appeared atop a pillar of energy not far from the rim of the
paraboloid.
Down went the center of the paraboloid, down into the bowels of the
earth, and the sphere of stored energy grew rapidly. Down went the
center, deep, until a perfect parabolic reflector ten miles in diameter
and twelve miles deep resulted. The cubic mile after cubic mile of
earth, rock, water, and forest were stored as energy in the sphere, now
a full three feet in diameter.
A landslide started near the rim, and earth rumbled forward down
the side of the depression, disappearing as it touched the outside
of the energy-shell that was Carroll's reflector. The rim of trees
that supported the energizing ring fell into the widening inverted
funnel but its job was over. The mirror was stable, held by the energy
contained in the perfect sphere on the column near its edge.
The rumbling stopped as stability came. The roar, all of it sheer
physical sound from tortured earth, died and left a hollow vacancy in
comparison.
Then Carroll took a small set of levers and manipulated them like a man
flying a drone airplane. The sphere of energy left the column and was
driven over the gaping maw of the mighty reflector. Down it dropped
until it was at the exact focus of the paraboloid. There it compressed
to almost a point.
"This," said Carroll, "is it!"
He reached for the master switch just as a flashing bolt of coruscating
energy dazzled across the room, searing his arm.
"King!" screamed Rhinegallis. "Don't!"