Fire in the Heavens (1958)

by George O. Smith

“Phelps never made one this size,” smiled Jeff serenely. There was a mad scramble to get out of the line of fire from that mighty solar jet. “Have no fear,” said Jeff. “This is not dangerous. Not unless I make it so.”

  “Get away from that switch!” stormed Doctor Logan. Jeff laughed. “This jet, put into full operation, would produce a searing pillar of flame three feet in diameter and about a half mile long, A flame at nearly ten million degrees centigrade.”

  “Lord! What a weapon.”

  “Weapon, my foot!” grunted Jeff. “If I turned this on, not only everything in the path of the flame would go up almost instantly in sheer nothing, but none of us could live within a thousand yards of it.

  “The end-result would be a radioactive path for miles along the axis of the flame, and the byproducts would be devastating to the earth for miles around. The very air would bum and explode into its component nuclear particles.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It is a window into sub-space!”

  “A what?” exploded Doctor Logan.

  “A window into sub-space. Look!”

  Jeff thrust the switch home. Down the tube by half its length a shimmering curtain appeared for a bare instant—to fade into a veritable well of blackness. Pinpoints of light dotted the background. They looked like stars.

  Jeff nodded. “They do look like stars,” he said in echo of their thoughts. “This is proof that my theory does hold true. The flaw in the conservation of energy really exists! Every pinpoint of light out there is the focal point of a star being hurled through the veil that separates us from that universe, to pile up there until sub-space is strained by forces it was never created to take.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “That natural laws mean nothing in another universe— which this is. We now know what causes a nova.”

  “Go on.”

  “Like the lifting of a stone, you store potential energy in it which is returned when it is dropped back to earth. When, in this universe, energy is converted from one medium to another, part of that energy is thrust into this other universe which I call sub-space.

  “The energy required to lift the stone is not entirely consumed in the job of lifting the stone. Some of it enters this space, forced there by the effort. When the stone drops and hits the earth, then that energy returned to the co-ordinate system is also not fully used. Some of it is forced into subspace.

  “There is pressure against this forcing of energy and this pressure builds up until sub-space is too weak to contain it. Then this storehouse of energy bursts through and the star explodes.”

  “And a supernova?” prompted Doctor Logan.

  “We are all familiar with the fact that a supernova is supposed to occur when the dying sun gets cold enough to collapse, according to Chandrasekhar’s theory. But when the mass starts to collapse toward zero volume, which it will do if the mass is only a half million times the mass of terra, the collapse forces raw matter into this sub-space.

  “Ton after ton of raw matter, millions of tons of raw matter composed of mere nuclei crammed together in a dissolute state, are forced into this universe and instantly become that mass-equivalent of raw energy.”

  “Logical. Logical. But have you proof?”

  “As I said, most of the laws of celestial mechanics in this other universe do not hold according to our theories that seem to govern this one. Look—I take this miniature jet and walk to the far end of the tube.”

  The black tunnel glowed with intolerable light that blinded them all. The light, ponderable and deadly, lashed against an invisible plane that barred the tube where the shimmering curtain had been when Jeff turned the equipment on. It was a sight to dizzy the mind. Fifteen feet down the latticework of steel and glass was a circle of blinding energy. Nothing could be seen through it. Outside of the tube was Jeff’s laboratory. There was no intolerable light flashing back towards the end where Jeff held the jet. His face was not even illuminated.

  “But what is this thing?”

  “This thing is a modification of the jet,” explained Jeff. “Phelps never reached this point. The jet is controllable in intensity by simple means. What you see, gentlemen, is the controlling surface that separates or bars the energy from coming in a single devastating burst.”

  “But what is that awful light?”

  “You are looking through a window into sub-space.” Jeff smiled. He returned to face them and as he turned the corner at the far end of the tube the light died. It was just as though Jeff had been carrying the light in his hands. Now that he was no longer at the far end of the hollow tunnel the light was no longer visible. But it did not die quickly, like a lantern carried out of the line of sight around a corner or behind an eclipsing mass. It died slowly—fading until gone.

  “That is raw energy,” explained Jeff. “Energy in the essential state. Either gamma heterodyned by my machine here or energy particles bombarding the material that separates the universe we know from this universe you now look into. In either case,” and Jeff turned to the Undersecretary of State, who might not be able to follow the higher scientific discussion, “the energy is rendered visible by the device here.”

  “But it followed you.”

  Jeff nodded. “That energy is alien to that universe. If you can liken the situation to the inflation of a balloon, you might say that the energy is driven into that alien space. It will always try to return, to get out again, just as the gas in a balloon does.”

  Doctor Logan shook his head dubiously. “You speak of energy being driven in. And that too takes energy, doesn’t it?”

  “Of course, And like the energy required to establish a magnetic field, which is returned when the field is permitted to collapse, this energy is returned when the lost energy comes back to our universe.

  “In fact,” said Jeff seriously, “it is this portion of the energy that causes the interspacial strain that eventually ruptures and results in a nova. It is sort of like a back E. M. F.”

  Then the fact that you were carrying an orifice for the energy to return brought that collection of energy particles and raw energy to the vicinity of the opening?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what do you hope to do with it?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Out there are no planets that I know of,” he said in a low voice. “Yet, from what I’ve seen, there is no limiting velocity such as we have here in this universe. If we can discover a means of entering and traversing that sub-space—then we can migrate.”

  The Undersecretary of State looked out through the tube once more. He peered at one of the distant smudges of light and shook his head.

  “Go ahead and experiment,” he said. “I’ll incarcerate no man who can bring his own sunshine into jail with him.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  In a remote section of the Rocky Mountains Lucille Roman was tasting the first bitter elements of defeat in her hitherto self-centered and victorious life. Her ship was unspaceworthy, for the young woman lacked both the skill and equipment necessary to weld the bullet holes in its hull.

  Even had the ship been spaceworthy, she knew of no place to go.

  Through all of her life she had been a winner. This had been often sheer luck, though more frequently it was the result of her native shrewd ability to manipulate and coerce people through her beauty and the power of her wealth, She had often been close to defeat, but its proximity had merely served to steel her will and force her to fight vigorously enough to win.

  Now she was hunted and hated by every man.

  She did not know of more recent developments because she had long since forsaken the radio, thanks to its constant dirge of impending disaster.

  For all of her ability to handle and control people, none would listen to her and she had lost the power to coerce. Instead of fawning upon her riches or acknowledging her managerial ability, people would now attack her viciously for the disaster they believed her to be responsible for.

  Of course, Lucille was n
ot at all a scientist. She knew little of it and admitted it. She had always been able to buy the best in brains. She preferred this to cramming her head with what were to her dull and boring facts and theories. Better that brains be used for what they were best fitted.

  Let the thinker think and the doer do. He who could buy brains could buy brains of those who could not, or preferred not, to use them to amass wealth. In that way, science was paid for and the financier gained his end as well.

  But here she was, utterly ignorant of the facts and about ready to accept the responsibility for having started Sol on its way towards the nova. If prominent men said it had been the Roman Jet, who was Lucille Roman to argue the matter with them?

  So while radio, video and newspaper were explaining Jeff Benson’s theory of nova, Lucille Roman sat in a remote and lonely spot and mentally chewed her fingernails— and inexorably ran out of food and water.

  She opened her last can of pate de fois gras and laughed a little at the irony of Lucille Roman eating out of a can instead of dining luxuriously from Royal Crown Derby china with candlelight and sterling silver and a butler to serve.

  She drained some water from the tank and drank it, though she would have preferred a bath. Then, facing starvation, Lucille Roman took the lesser evil and decided to risk going where food and water might be procured.

  She lifted the spacecraft and headed south toward the small industrial town which owed its being to the large dam that furnished irrigation for the district and the power for three states. . . .

  Big Ed was first in line when the newspapers arrived from the city. The spot news broadcasts were sketchy, and for a fully satisfying meal of the facts, so he could enjoy tasting them, then mulling them over, he preferred the newspapers. So when the bundles were heaved off the train, Big Ed and most of the people in town were waiting.

  As is usually the case, the out-of-town edition of the Blade was thin in editorial matter of purely local city interest. But the story of Lucille’s being cleared of charges regarding solar instability were, naturally, played down. The big news was the latest facts and speculations about the sun’s blowup.

  A picture newspaper, the tabloid might have emblazoned Lucille Roman being escorted from jail, because Lucille Roman made excellent picture material. But Lucille Roman was not to be found, let alone escorted from durance vile —so no timely picture was available.

  Instead there were pictures of Jeff Benson and his equipment, a full page of shots showing the progress of sun spots and some prints of solar prominences exhumed from the newspaper’s morgue and used because they were exciting when retouched and reworked by artists with more imagination than scientific knowledge, and when they were floridly recaptioned.

  To give them due credit, the reporters did as well as they could in presenting Jeff Bensons theories to the public. That they misplaced emphasis and botched the job is no fault of theirs. Had they been capable of understanding the theory in its entirety, they would have been scientists rather than newspapermen.

  So the account said in part:

  Energy converted or loosed or changed from potential to kinetic energy, or from kinetic to potential energy, is not completely transferred, according to the theory of the well-known young physicist, Jefferies Benson. Some small percentage of that energy is forced into a sub-space, where it is stored like the air blown into a child’s balloon.

  When the amount of energy reaches the breaking-point, sub-space is ruptured, much as a toy balloon explodes when too much air is forced into it. And when sub-space is ruptured, the stored energy is released to come back to this universe. This is the cause of the nova.

  Such was the meat of the theory. But what the newsmen failed to convey with proper clarity and emphasis, was the ridiculous disproportion between the energy converted in the core of the sun, and the energy converted in the most massive of man-made power plants.

  So Big Ed turned to his neighbor, and mumbled, “Energy, huh?”

  His neighbor nodded, “Let’s stop it!” he cried.

  Thirty seconds later they were armed and heading for the big dam and its hydro-electric plant. They forgot that they would convert as much energy destroying it as it was converting now. And they were ignorant of the fact that the hydro-electric plant could have run from then until eternity without matching the solar output for a single second.

  Lucille Roman hung poised over the dam, watching. The men who tended it stood in the vast concrete runway atop the structure and waved at her. None of them drew a gun nor did they seem in the least bit angry. Their gestures were friendly signals of greeting without expression of anger.

  It might be a trap but Lucille had to have help or die, and dying was inevitable anyway. So Lucille Roman, with little to lose, dropped her spacecraft onto a concrete slab at one end of the big dam and waited. The men scurried across the runway and ran to the base of the ship.

  Gingerly, Lucille opened the door and peered out.

  “Come on out!” called the foremost.

  Lucille stood in the doorway, quivering with fear, driven by necessity.

  ‘I’m Tom Lichty—foreman here. Anything we can do for you?”

  “I need food and water. But—?”

  “We just heard the news. You’re sure lucky, Miss Roman.”

  Lucille blinked. Lucky? She dropped to the concrete. “What is it?” she asked eagerly.

  “Whats the matter? No radio in that thing?”

  Lucille nodded. “There is but all I could hear was how much they offered for my head. I turned it off.”

  “Oh. Then you don’t know the news. A guy named Jeff Benson just convinced the State Department that your jet did not cause the nova. You’re no longer a criminal. You’re free as a bird.”

  Lucille leaned back against her ship and took a deep breath. Relief from strain was instantaneous and the reaction terrific. Her flight had been her first experience of being the quarry for the professional man-hunters of the know world. It had been a nerve-wracking ordeal.

  Lucille Roman had never run afoul of the law before and the experience of paralyzing fear and absolute helplessness, of knowing neither where to go nor to whom to turn was both bitter and shocking.

  And it was Benson again! Lucille shook her head slowly. She was forced to admit that the young scientist cared little for her own values, and the shrewd manipulation of financial pawn and rook against an adversary meant nothing in his busy life.

  She knew he was honest and truthful—that if Jeff Benson believed the Roman Jet was not responsible for the nova, the fact that he had every reason to dislike its owner would not stop him from releasing her from the responsibility. Another type of man would have been slyly happy to gloss over the truth for the inward satisfaction of knowing that she was in trouble.

  But that did not help her to understand Jeff. The fact that she recognized his desire to be honest did not enable her to understand why. He might have been able to gain, otherwise, though she could not see just how at this point. What made him tick?

  Lucille could not know, since she had been brought up in a life where honesty was best when tempered with profit, where being legally right was more important to success than being ethically right.

  Not that Lucille Roman would stoop to foreclosing on the homestead and throwing the poor unlucky indigent out onto the snow when the mortgage came due. But she considered clipping another financier in a clear game of big money and stock manipulation as the fairest sort of play. That way it was more of a sport, even though economic empires were at stake and no holds were barred.

  “So Tm free?” she breathed.

  Lichty nodded. “You sure are.”

  “Can I buy water and food?”

  Lichty laughed. “Here’s a nice lake behind the dam. I doubt that you’ll lower the level of it by filling your water tanks. We’ve got a company store here. We’ll sell you some canned grub—enough to get you to the nearest storehouse for a real fill-up. You can lower a hose?”

  “Th
ere’s a watercock but I’ve no hose.”

  Lichty spoke to his men and they went into the blockhouse near the ship. Lichty climbed into the spacelock, inspected the watercock and nodded. He went with his men into the blockhouse and, as they came out with a case of canned food, Lichty followed with a length of hydraulic hose.

  It fitted, and in a minute or so, water was being pumped into the storage tanks from the lake behind the dam.

  They were all busy and so they did not hear the first rumblings of the oncoming horde. When Big Ed led his crew of angry townspeople over the crest of the nearby hill, Lucille was standing in the spacelock and Lichty and his crew were resting while Lichty wrote a brief bill of sale on a sheet of notebook paper.

  Big Ed’s crowd roared.

  Lucille screamed.

  Lichty whirled around and shouted, “Hey! Stop!”

  One of the uniformed guards went down, overwhelmed by the crowd because he chose to fend them off instead of counter-attacking instantly. Lichty ran toward them, shouting. The crew behind him spread out cautiously.

  But Lucille had seen a mob before. She snapped the switch that closed the lock and by the time Big Ed came to the concrete slab, the spacelock was closed.

  “There’s Roman!” came a cry and once again the spacecraft was pelted by stones and pierced by bullets.

  She lifted the ship above them and poised indecisively. Lichty and his crew went down and were carried to the back of the howling mob and tied so that they could not interfere.

  Big Ed and his helpers broke into the blockhouse and emerged, rolling a large red steel barrel before them.

  Lucille shook her head. Dynamite or nitro, she supposed. She understood that a barrel of explosive would make no more than a tiny dent in the massive concrete dam. If it did do real damage there would be great loss of life in the artificial valley as well as disaster in the many cities that depended upon the hydro-electric plant for light and power.

  She dropped her spacecraft lower and put a glistening, eye-searing curtain of pure power between Big Ed and the dam.

  One man ran forward and fell sprawling before he came within twenty feet of the power of the eight massed jets.