Fire in the Heavens (1958)

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Fire in the Heavens (1958) Page 5

by George O. Smith


  “Was there anything in these preliminary specifications that might key together and give Benson a hint of what we’ve got in your laboratory?”

  “I doubt it. There were a couple of incidental gadgets, some isolated testing circuits and so on. But nothing that might be correlated into the final overall picture.”

  “Might there be enough to set a man to thinking?”

  “Obviously.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Lucille.

  Phelps smiled. “Benson is a bright young man. A top-notch physicist and engineer. A meticulous workman, and one with a wealth of patience that I have often envied.”

  “We don’t particularly like Benson,” snapped Lucille Roman. “Supposing you restrict your eulogy to telling us how those few details might lead a man to think?”

  “Well,” smiled Phelps, “disliking Benson isn’t going to make him any less of a good workman.”

  “Granted, Now go on from there ”

  “When you hand a good technical man something mysterious in the way of physical gadgetry, his first impulse is to inspect it objectively and critically to see what it will do. Once that is done his next thought is to try to figure out why such a thing is needed. And in what sort of device.”

  “And from that he might—?”

  “He might get a rough idea that we have something new and different.”

  Lucille turned to Hannegan. “Tell him what you’ve learned from Benson.”

  Hannegan, who had been trying to unravel his mixed-up thoughts, shook his head. They were even more muddled than before and would probably become more and more confused as he attempted to clarify them.

  He made a couple of false starts and then gave a rambling jumble of solar power, the conservation of energy, four million tons of mass-energy per second, a device, to average several temperature readings, standard cells, sunspots, and crystal detectors for early radio sets. It made little sense to Lucille but Phelps nodded.

  “Obviously he was fishing for fact,” he said. “Benson knows something.”

  Lucille groaned. “Ye Gods!” she said. “I can see myself with two males on my hands.”

  “Huh?” grunted Hannegan.

  “ Horne and Benson are in cahoots,” she told Phelps. “I’m keeping Horne busy now. I’ll have to see to it that Jeff Benson has a fine opportunity to tell me all he knows. While we’re at it, are you ready to start work on Hornes aluminum interest?”

  “I’ve started. I’ve laid all the groundwork quietly while you were baiting the trap, Miss Roman. Now we can go ahead if you’re certain that Horne is about to forget business for awhile.”

  “You may go ahead,” she said with positiveness. “And you, Doctor Phelps, might give thought to some fancy tale that will salve Mister Benson’s curiosity. Have you any ideas?”

  ‘Tm afraid that anything I said would only lead him closer to the truth. If you recall, my jet was the outcome of an attempt to devise a detector for neutrinos.”

  Lucille Roman shook her head. “Forget it,” she said. “We’ll close this subject right now.”

  Hannegan nodded, then said to Phelps, “Can I drive you home?”

  “No thanks. I have my own car here.”

  They left Lucille Roman’s apartment together.

  CHAPTER VI

  Jeff Benson set his pencil down with a groan. For the fiftieth time he had just gone through the calculations of Fermi and Pauli, which were supposed to show just cause for the difference between the observed energy from radiophosphorus and its calculated potential energy. For the fiftieth time Jeff Benson groaned because he could not make the figures fit properly.

  Years ago Pauli and Fermi had observed this discrepancy. It was a well-known phenomenon.

  Phosphorus thirty-two is beta-ray radioactive, emitting positive electrons and breaking down into stable sulfur thirty-two. The difference in mass between radiophosphorus thirty-two and stable sulfur thirty-two is known and the positive electrons should be emitted with energy equivalent to the mass-energy equivalent of this mass-difference. This is a simple thing to calculate and, because no other radio products are present, it was easy to measure the energy of the emitted positive electrons.

  They all should have been of a single energy—that of the mass-difference.

  But they were not. The energies were spread all the way from the lowest energy that could be measured to the calculated value. The question then was, where did the missing energy go? For here were positive electrons with half of the calculated energy, some with one-third the right energy, and others with fractions. How about the rest of the energy?

  Fermi and Pauli had given the matter thought and decided to postulate a new nuclear particle called the “neutrino” which was to have the mass of an electron. Like the neutron, it possessed no electric charge. Since the neutrino had no electric charge and inconsiderable mass, it could not be detected.

  Convenient but not too satisfying, at least to Jeff Benson, Agreeing that it was impossible to detect the neutrino, Jeff had never begun that experiment. Instead Jeff Benson had gone into physical phenomena to see whether or not there was a discrepancy between calculated energy conversions and the resulting observed energies.

  A similar discrepancy would have given many men thought. But all Jeff had to go upon was a rather broad scatter-pattern on a graph that seemed to lean in one direction. It was far less difficult to measure the mass of atoms and the energies of emitted particles than it was to bum a ton of oil and measure accurately the resulting heat. Oil costs money.

  And so Jeff was stuck at this point and had been limited to collecting mere statistical hints for years,

  “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed,” he grunted.

  Well, according to what Jeff Benson believed and what Fermi and Pauli offered, if matter and energy could neither be created nor destroyed, where did they go, those bits of energy that were lost?”

  And, he considered bitterly, if we accept the Fermi and Pauli theory and these quantities of energy that escape from a nuclear reaction undetected are sent forth in the neutrino, what difference does it make?

  Does a thing exist if it is undetectable, if it exerts absolutely no effect upon its surroundings, if it does nothing but exist because someone thinks it is needed? Is relegating lost energy to some never-never land where it is undetectable and unrecoverable any better than losing it entirely?

  Forgetting the neutrino, where did the energy go? Or, permitting the neutrino to take off the energy, where did the neutrino go?

  “Where,” said Jeff aloud to the empty laboratory, “does the vast store of neutrinos-energized by Sol go? Or, forgetting the neutrino, where does this energy go—without benefit of neutrino?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I can postulate a sub-space,” he said to no one in particular. “A particularly handy subspace where the lost energy is stored and where the suns of the galaxy pour their fatal fraction of loss until the subspace is strained to the bursting point. Then we have a nova.

  “Or,” he went on sourly, “I’m thinking aloud again. Maybe Fermi and Pauli are right, and we do have neutrinos. Let ‘em exist. But if we have neutrinos I still say that the neutrinos do not account for all this undetectable ‘loose’ energy!”

  Then the doorbell rang. He went to the door cheerfully, and was completely floored to see Lucille Roman standing there.

  “Why—hello,” he stammered.

  “Hello,” she replied brightly.

  “And what brings you here?” he asked.

  Lucille came in before answering. ‘Tm just curious, I suppose.”

  “Good enough reason,” replied Jeff. “Curious about what?” “I suppose it is brash and bold of me, but I was curious about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Don’t look so surprised, Jeff. I might sound insulting if I said that I wonder how the other half lives.”

  “But I-”

  Lucille smiled. “Not that, Jeff. It’s just that I am surrounded by
people who all think alike and act alike. Stocks and bonds and corporations and finance. People who pull strings and make puppets dance—who sit in ornate offices and dictate corporation policy and read reams of reports and listen to the stock ticker. I’m completely at sea regarding people like yourself.”

  “Shake,” grinned Jeff, offering a hand. “I’m just as lost in a fog about people who only think in stockmarket quotations.”

  Lucille took his hand and found it lithe yet gentle—soft enough but rough in two or three very small patches where callouses protected the technician’s flesh against screwdriver and pliers.

  “Make you a deal,” she laughed, looking up into his eyes. I’ll swap you a hot tip on the market for a hot tip on the latest thing in science.”

  Jeff laughed, joining her. “I must say that of all the people who might have hit that doorbell, I least expected you.” “I’d have been here sooner,” she told him. “But I’ve been busy.”

  “Oh?”

  “Is that strange?”

  “Perhaps not, but—”

  Lucille smiled at him. “I do owe you a favor,” she said. “Forget it.”

  “Not entirely. I don’t intend to do anything rash about

  it, so you needn’t be worried. Now/’ she added, sobering,

  “let me explain myself. I—”

  “Forget the whole thing/’ he told her firmly. “And start from there/’

  “Now we’re near to quarreling,” she smiled. “I don’t want that.”

  “Nor do I, but unless we skip the whole thing, we’ll go on apologizing for nothing until our teeth fall out. So we’ll go on from there. I’ll mix a drink on it.”

  “Here?”

  “Now it’s your turn not to be surprised. What do you think I live on, electrons and methyl-methacrylate?”

  “Electrons and what?”

  “Lueite, to you.” He grinned. He led her into the portion of the large garage that had once been used for office space. It was a sort of mezzanine, overlooking the garage floor on on one side and looking into a former automobile showroom in front.

  Now, in place of automobiles were a few well-kept tables with instruments on them. Just a few, complete with labels and other assorted gear to demonstrate how they worked and what they did. In the back was Jeff’s own workshop and private project.

  The former office space had been completely remodeled. It now provided a comfortable three-room apartment and bath. “This is where the body parks between electrons,” he told her.

  It was quite neat but lacked the home-like touches that a woman would have brought in.

  From the refrigerator Jeff took ice cubes and soda. “Parties always end up in the kitchen,” he said. “So that’s where I always begin. It saves the period of migration.”

  He mixed the drink deftly and served it to her on the polished enamel of the table top.

  Lucille was looking around with interest. It may have been living quarters but on the rear wall was a late model of the periodic chart of the atoms which included the transplutonium series up to one-hundred-three. A book on high-frequency transmission lines was stacked beside a well-used copy of a cook book atop the refrigerator, and a pad of paper and a pencil were in a niche near the table. The pinup-girl calendar on the wall caught her eye and one eyebrow rose pointedly.

  “I’m an idealist,” he said with a chuckle.

  “And what phase of science does that represent?”

  “A series of fourth-order equations in solid geometry depicted on a two-dimensional medium in color,” he said drily.

  “And that’s that—disposed of in a single definition. I’m interested, truly,” she said. “I’d hardly know what to do with myself if business did not keep me busy, I can hardly understand what anybody else does.”

  “I manage to keep busy,” he said. “I’ll show you the works. Come on—bring your glass along.”

  “I didn’t realize what you did until I met you with Charles Horne yesterday. He was good enough to tell me some of it.”

  “Oh? Does he know?”

  “He seems to.”

  “Perceptive gent,” said Jeff. “He was only here for an hour or so.”

  “I gathered that he knew his way around here.”

  “Not at all. I’ve only met him twice, you know. And the first time I met Horne we had very few things to say to one another.”

  “I saw that.”

  He laughed. “Horne came to apologize for his rather unethical attitude. Then we went to lunch and we met you.”

  Lucille tapped a yawn back into her mouth. “I remember that, too,” she said. The yawn hinted that she and Horne had not parted until late, and Jeff caught the implication.

  Lucille was quite baffled by the workshop. She wandered around aimlessly, clapping her hands in pleased glee at something that caught her eye, was properly unimpressed by things that were true feats of scientific note. And while she was asking foolish question and toying with this knob or that lever, she had a very sharp eye cocked for a trace of the type of equipment that brought forth the lancet of energy which burned in Phelps’ laboratory.

  She saw nothing, yet she realized that Jeff had not had much time to do anything even if he had suspected the truth. Lucille decided upon a bold stroke.

  “What about that job you scurried off to yesterday?”

  “Job—did I mention that?”

  “Just that you had your work cut out for you for some time. Can I see something that you’re just working on? Which is it?” Lucille peered into the averaging thermocouple instrument, lying there with its case open. “This—?”

  “No,” said Jeff. “The job fizzled out.”

  “Oh? I imagine that was quite a disappointment. What happened?”

  “Well, there’s not too much to tell, They delivered some specifications in the morning and before I had much chance to do more than riffle through them Horne came calling. We had some chit-chat. Luncheon, meeting Lucille Roman, and so on took up the next couple of hours.

  “Then I came back here and took that averaging thermocouple apart, and while I was working on that the gentleman returned, for his specifications, saying that since he’d spoken to me his outfit had decided upon a speeded-up program. So that was that.”

  “Too bad. Who was it—or is it a secret?”

  “It is a secret, and furthermore I know no more than the gentleman’s name who gave me the specs.”

  “Do people do business that way?”

  “Only initially, and if they’re working on something they want it kept quiet. After they let the contract, the contractor naturally has to know enough to do the job. But whatever he’s told is in strict confidence, of course.”

  Lucille thought it over. She had little reason to believe that Jeff hadn’t run through the specs rather thoroughly. She admired his ability to dissemble and made up her mind that if she had not already known Jeff Benson and Charles Horne were hand in glove, she would certainly have believed Jeff’s story completely. It certainly sounded like the truth.

  The fact was that one missing key would have unlocked a lot of the hidden truths. And that key was in Horne’s own brain. He had followed Hannegan around for some weeks, hoping to learn just what Lucille Roman was up to in buying the Hotchkiss Laboratories.

  That was why he had been missing from his usual haunts for weeks on end and, when Hannegan entered Jeff Benson’s laboratory, Horne had hoped to find the truth there. Which was why and how Lucille Roman had met them together.

  Suspicion was pyramiding high, and all because Horne, at the auction, had tried to connive with his cronies.

  And it was growing higher, for Lucille believed nothing of what Jeff said. She swore inwardly to think of how close she had been to disclosing her plans to the enemy. And if Jeff had nothing to show of his studies of the specs, that was no sign that he would not start soon.

  Lucille determined to keep one eye on Jeff Benson.

  Tm having some people for drinks on Saturday afterno
on,” she said. “Please come.”

  “If I’m not up to my eyebrows in electrons.”

  “It will do you good to escape from them for a bit. Some people from the Lab will be there, and Charles will too, you know.”

  “I didn’t know. But I’ll try.”

  No doubt, she thought. “Now,” she laughed brightly, “it’s my turn to say that I’ve work to do, I must fly. And thank you for a pleasant and a very interesting afternoon.”

  Jeff Benson saw her to the door.

  CHAPTER VII

  It was high noon in California. The sun blazed out of a cloudless sky and heated the ground and the backs of people who basked in it.

  It seemed quite normal. People who had been there for years did not realize that the sun had begun to grow brighter at eleven o’clock, and had arrived at a figure almost three per cent higher in brilliance by noon. At the level of energy that Sol puts out, the additional three per cent would be noticed only by trained scientists. What could a plus of a tiny three one-hundredths mean to the average person, when the sun was already almost intolerable? So the change, insufficiently abrupt to excite general attention, went unnoticed by the majority of sweltering citizens.

  At noon it leveled off, then gradually began to resume its age-old level of output.

  One laboratory caught the change and the superintending solar physicist swore at the recording film and wrote a tart letter to the film company for not producing consistent film. Another laboratory head raised hob with a student for not paying attention to his work. A third laid the incident to the unseen devils that creep into any experimentation and make it necessary to do anything fifty times before a result could be assumed.

  Professor Lasson looked meaningly at Harry Welton and shook his head.

  At three o’clock in the afternoon Sol was once more his bright, consistent self. The matter was either forgotten or ignored by all save Lasson and his student assistant.

  “That proves something,” said Harry Welton.

  “It does,” Lasson nodded.

 

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