It is not my intention to relate here the details of the work that
occupied our attention in the following weeks. It has been dealt
with at length in two technical treatises by Lantin and myself. The
theoretical side of our work has been very fully discussed in those
two books, but the concrete details are purposely slurred over. The
most valuable part of our achievement, the time-wave itself, is hardly
mentioned in them.
There is a reason for this, and that reason is the firm intention of
Dr. Lantin and myself not to impart any information that would enable
anyone to duplicate our own experiment. Thus it is of necessity that
parts of this present record are vague and indefinite.
I may say, though, unquestionably, that without the notes that were
left us by Cannell, we could never have achieved the success we did
achieve. Those notes, brief and unsatisfactory as they were, were
yet enough to set our feet on the right path, in our quest of the
time-traveling secret. To us, then, the problem was one of accelerating
electronic activity, and all our experiments were directed toward that
goal.
Fortunately, Lantin had virtually a free hand at the Foundation, and we
were able to use the matchless resources of its great laboratories to
further our quest. Working constantly together and maintaining complete
secrecy regarding the object of our experiments, we sought for some
force capable of controlling the movement and speed of electrons, at
will.
The weeks dragged by, and we seemed no nearer success than ever. And at
the Foundation, some curiosity was being evinced regarding our work,
which ill-fitted with our desires. We had made trial of every form
of vibration, it seemed, and all without success, for none affected
the electronic movement in the way we wished. In the end, it was by a
combination of electro-magnetic waves and light rays that we finally
achieved success.
I say "we," but it was Lantin's triumph. He had the inspiration to
combine high-frequency Hertzian vibrations and light-rays, merging the
two dissimilar vibrations into a single wave, which we called "the
time wave" and which had power to affect the very electronic structure
of matter, all electronic movement within its radius being stimulated
and accelerated by it. And with it, we proved the correctness of
Cannell's theory, for when we turned the wave upon small objects on
the laboratory table, they vanished, reappearing a few seconds later,
having been driven into the future for those few seconds by the force
of the time-wave.
By reversing the action of the wave, the electronic movement was
reversed also, and thus the basis of our needs was found and we had a
force that could sweep all things in its radius into past or future at
will. Then it was that Lantin began to speak of a car, a car containing
a time-wave projector powerful enough to convey the car and all its
occupants into past or future. It was vitally necessary, he thought,
that such a car should be able to move in space, as well as time, and
to acquire this power we had recourse to a discovery accidentally made
in the course of our experiments.
In our efforts to change the movement of electrons, we had found that
when a stream of them was shot out in a concentrated ray, in any one
direction, it produced an invisible but powerful repulsion. It was
on this fact that Lantin relied to move our car in space, directing
electron-streams toward the ground to raise and hold us in space, and
directing other rays obliquely down toward earth, to move the car from
side to side in any direction.
The work went on. Six weeks after the seizure of Cannell, our car was
nearing completion, and a strange-appearing vehicle it was. It was a
short, thick cylinder of steel, tapering to a point at each end, its
greatest diameter some five feet and with a total length of fifteen,
from point to point. Windows of heavy glass were set at regular
intervals along its length, and entrance into the car's interior was
through a circular door or manhole in its upper surface, the car being
quite air-tight when this was closed.
Inside, the cylinder's bottom was flat-decked and covered with
upholstery, since the small diameter of the cylinder made it necessary
for us to either sit or lie on that floor, when operating the car. The
time-wave apparatus, covered by a metal shield, was placed in the fore
end of the cylinder, with the mechanism that produced the repulsion ray
beside it. A small, square switch-board held the centered controls of
both these.
In the back end of the car was an oxygen-producing apparatus, which
gave us independence of outside air for some hours, though normally our
car was intended to be ventilated from the outside. A small heater held
place beside this, and it was our intention to place what equipment we
took with us in that end of the car.
Complete, the car weighed several thousand pounds. We had kept to
secrecy in the making of it, having the main shell and other parts of
it made for us by different firms, and assembling them in a room of
Lantin's apartment. The actuating mechanisms we installed ourselves,
and finally the car lay complete on the roof of the building, secured
from prying eyes or hands by a padlocked cover of heavy wood.
One trial we made of the car's abilities, testing its power to move in
space. Waiting until darkness concealed our trial, we entered the car
and rose easily some five hundred feet above the city, the heavy car
easily upheld and moved by the powerful repulsion rays. Then, circling
once or twice, Lantin pointed the car east and opened up the power. A
whistling gale rose outside as we rocketed across the Atlantic with
tremendous speed, attaining a velocity of almost five hundred miles an
hour, speeding through the atmosphere like a pointed bullet. We made no
trial of the time-wave apparatus, postponing that until our real start,
and returned to the roof of Lantin's apartment building without being
sighted.
In a few days after that test flight, we had gathered our outfit and
placed it in the car. Besides a complete but very compact camping
outfit, we carried compressed foods that would be sufficient for a
long period to keep us from starving. Our weapons were two high-power
repeating rifles, with ample ammunition. Besides the rifles, we each
carried a heavy automatic in a belt-holster.
Our last preparation was to stow away in the car apparatus with
which it would be possible to construct a duplicate of the time-wave
mechanism of the car. We intended taking no chance of being stranded in
some age of the future.
Every detail of the car's working mechanism was given a final test
and found satisfactory, a leave of absence from the Foundation was
asked for and granted, and so, at last, two months after the seizure
of Cannell, our preparations were completed and we stood on the very
threshold of our unparalleled adventure.
_CHAPTER 6_