The Ultimate Weapon

by Jr. John W. Campbell

  XI

  Buck Kendall entered the Communications room rather furtively. He hatedthe place. Cole was there, and McLaurin. Mac was looking tired anddrawn, Cole not so tired, but equally drawn. The signals were comingthrough fairly well, because most of the disturbance was rising wherethe signals rose, and all the disturbance, practically, was magneticrather than electric.

  "Deenmor is sending, Buck," McLaurin said as he entered. "They're downto the last fifty-five tons. They'll have more time now--a rest whilePhobos sinks. Mars Center has another 250 tons, but--it's just aquestion of time. Have you any hope to offer?"

  "No," said Kendall in a strained voice. "But, Mac, I don't think menlike those are afraid to die. It's dying uselessly they fear. Tell'em--tell 'em they've defended not alone Mars, but all the system, inholding up the Strangers on Mars. We here on Luna have been saferbecause of them. And tell--Mac, tell them that in the meantime, whilethey defended us, and gave us time to work, we have begun to see thetrail that will lead to victory."

  "_You have!_" gasped McLaurin.

  "No--but they will never know!" Kendall left hastily. He went and stoodmoodily looking at the calculator machines--the calculator machines thatrefused to give the answers he sought. No matter how he might modifythat original idea of his, no matter what different line of attack hemight try in solving the problems of Space and Matter, while he used thesystem he _knew_ was right--the answer came down to that deadly,hope-blasting expression that meant only "uncertain."

  Even Buck was beginning to feel uncertain under that constant crushingof hope. Uncertainty--uncertainty was eating into him, and destroying--

  From the Communications room came the hum and drive of the great senderflashing its message across seventy-two millions of miles of nothing."B-u-c-k K-e-n-d-a-l-l s-a-y-s h-e h-a-s l-e-a-r-n-e-d s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-gt-h-a-t w-i-l-l l-e-a-d t-o v-i-c-t-o-r-y w-h-i-l-e y-o-u h-e-l-db-a-c-k t-h-e--"

  Kendall switched on a noisy, humming fan viciously. The too-intelligiblesignals were drowned in its sound.

  "And--tell them to--destroy the apparatus before the last of the poweris gone," McLaurin ordered softly.

  The men in Deenmor station did slightly better than that. Gradually theycut down their magnetic shield, and some of the magnetic bombs tore andtwisted viciously at the heavy metal walls. The thin atmosphere of Marsleaked in. Grimly the men waited. Atomic bombs--or ships to investigate?It did not matter much to them personally--

  Gresth Gkae smiled with his old vigor as he ordered one of the greatinterstellar ships to land beside the powerless station, approachingfrom such an angle that the still-active Mars Center station could notattack. One of the fleet of Phobos rose, and circled about the planet,and settled gracefully beside the station. For half an hour it lay therequietly, waiting and watching. Then a crew of two dozen Mirans startedacross the dry, crumbly powder of Mars' sands, toward the fort.Simultaneously almost, three things happened. A three-foot UV beam wipedout the advancing party. A pair of fifteen-foot beams cut a great gapinghole in the wall of the interstellar ship, as it darted up, like astartled quail, its weapons roaring defiance, only to fall back,severely wounded.

  And the radio messages pounded out to Earth the first description of theMiran people. Methodically the men in Deenmor station used all but oneton of their power to completely and forever wreck and destroy theinterstellar cripple that floundered for a few moments on the sands abare mile away. Presently, before Deenmor was through with it, theatomic bombs stopped coming, and the atomic shells. The magnetic shieldthat had been re-established for the few minutes of this last, dyingsting, fell.

  Deenmor station vanished in a sudden, colossal tongue of blue-greenlight as the ton of atomically distorted mercury was exploded by aprojector beam turned on the tank.

  * * * * *

  It was long gone, when the first atomic bombs and magnetic bombs droppedfrom Phobos reached the spot, and only hot rock and broken metalremained.

  Mars Center failed in fact the next time Phobos rode high over it. Theapparatus here had been carefully destroyed by technicians with a viewof making it indecipherable, but the Mirans made it even more certain,for no ship settled here to investigate, but a stream of atomic bombsthat lasted for over an hour, and churned the rock to dust, and the dustto molten lava, in which pools of fused tungsten-beryllium alloy bubbledslowly and sank.

  "Ah, Jarth--they are a brave race, whatever we may say of their queershape," sighed Gresth Gkae as the last of Mars Center sank in bubblinglava. "They stung as they died." For some minutes he was silent.

  "We must move on," he said at length. "I have been thinking, and itseems best that a few ships land here, and establish a fort, while sometwenty move on to the satellite of the third planet and destroy the fortthere. We cannot operate against the planet while that hangs above us."

  Seven ships settled to Mars, while the fleet came up from Jupiter tojoin with Gresth Gkae's flight of ships on its way to Luna.

  An automatically controlled ship was sent ahead, and began thebombardment. It approached slowly, and was not destroyed by the UV beamstill it had come to within 40,000 miles of the fort. At 60,000 GresthGkae stationed his fleet--and returned to 150,000 immediately as thetitanic UV beams of the Lunar Fort stretched out to their maximum range.The focus made a difference. One ship started limping back to Jupiter,in tow of a second, while the rest began the slow, methodical work ofwearing down the defenses of the Lunar Fort.

  Kendall looked out at the magnificent display of clashing, warringenergies, the great, whirling spheres and discs of opalescent flame, andturned away sadly. "The men at Deenmor must have watched that for days.And at Mars Center."

  "How long can we hold out?" asked McLaurin.

  "Three weeks or so, at the present rate. That's a long time, really. Andwe can escape if we want to. The UV beams here have a greater range thanany weapon the Strangers have, and with Earth so near--oh, we couldescape. Little good."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I," said Buck Kendall, suddenly savage, "am going to consign all themath machines in the universe to eternal damnation--and go ahead andbuild a machine anyway. I _know_ that thing ought to be right. Themath's wrong."

  "There is no other thing to try?"

  "A billion others. I don't know how many others. We ought to get atomicenergy somehow. But that thing infuriates me. A hundred things that mathhas predicted, that I have checked by experiment, simple little things.But--when I carry it through to the point where I can get somethinguseful--it wriggles off into--uncertainty."

  Kendall stalked off to the laboratory. Devin was there working over thecalculus machines, and Kendall called him angrily. Then more apologetic,he explained it was anger at himself. "Devin, I'm going to make thatthing, if it blows up and kills me. I'm going to make that thing if thiswhole fort blows up and kills me. That math has blown up in my face forfour solid months, and half killed me, so I'm going to kill it. Come on,we'll make that damned junk."

  Angrily, furiously, Kendall drove his helpers to the task. He had workedout the apparatus in plan a dozen times, and now he had the plans turnedinto patterns, the patterns into metal.

  Saucily, the "S Doradus" made the trip to and from Earth with patterns,and with metal, with supplies and with apparatus. But she had to dodgeand fight every inch of the way as the Miran ships swooped down angrilyat her. A fighting craft could get through when the Miran fleet waswithdrawn to some distance, but the Mirans were careful that noheavy-loaded freighter bearing power supply should get through.

  And Gresth Gkae waited off Luna in his great ship, and watched thesteady streams of magnetic bombs exploding on the magnetic shield of theLunar Fort. Presently more ships came up, and added their power to theattack, for here, the photo-cell banks could gather tremendous energy,and Gresth Gkae knew he would need to overcome this, and drain theaccumulated power.

  Gresth Gkae felt certain if he could once crack this nut, break downEarth, he would have the system. This was th
e home planet. If this fell,then the two others would follow easily, despite the fact that the fewforts on the innermost planet, Mercury, could gather energy from the sunat a rate greater than their ships could generate.

  It took Kendall two weeks and three days to set up his preliminaryapparatus. They had power for perhaps four days more, thanks to the factthat the long Lunar day had begun shortly after Gresth Gkae's impatientattack had started. Also, the "S Doradus" had brought in several hundredtons of charged mercury on each trip, though this was no great quantityindividually, it had mounted up in the ten trips she had made. The"Cepheid," her sister ship, had gone along on seven of the trips, andadded to the total.

  But at length the apparatus was set up. It was peculiar looking, and itemployed a great deal of power, nearly as much as a UV beam in fact.McLaurin looked at it sceptically toward the last, and asked Buck: "Whatdo you expect it to do?"

  "I am," said Kendall sourly, "uncertain. The result will be uncertaintyitself."

  Which, considering things, was a surprisingly accurate statement.Kendall gave the exact answer. He meant to give an ironic comment. Forthe mathematics had been perfectly correct, only Buck Kendallmisinterpreted the answer.

  "I've followed the math with mechanism all the way through," heexplained, "and I'm putting power into it. That's all I know. Somewhere,by the laws of cause and effect, this power _must_ show itselfagain--despite what the damn math says."

  And in that, of course, Kendall was wrong. Because the laws of cause andeffect didn't hold in what he was doing now.

  "Do you want to watch?" he asked at length. "I'm all set to try it."

  "I suppose I may as well." McLaurin smiled. "In our close-knit littlecommunity the fate of one is of interest to all. If it's going to blowup, I might as well be here, and if it isn't, I want to be."

  Kendall smiled appreciatively and replied: "Let it be on thy own head.Here she goes."

  He walked over to the power board, and took command. Devin, and a squadof other scientists were seated about the room with every conceivabletype and combination of apparatus. Kendall wanted to see what this wasdoing. "Tubes," he called. "Circuits A and D. Tie-ins." He stopped, thepreliminary switches in. "Main circuit coming." With a jerk he threwover the last contact. A heavy relay thudded solidly. The hum of astraining atostor. Then--

  An electric motor, humming smoothly stopped with a jerk. "This," itremarked in a deep throaty voice, "is probably the last stand ofhumanity."

  The galvanometer before which Devin was seated apparently agreed. In arather high pitched voice it pointed out that: "If the Lunar Fort falls,the Earth--" It stopped abruptly, and an electroscope beside Douglasstook up the thread in a high, shrill voice, rather slurred, "--will bedirectly attacked."

  "This," resumed the motor in a hoarse voice, "will certainly mean theend of humanity." The motor gave up the discourse and hummed violentlyinto action--in reverse!

  "My God!" Kendall pulled the switch open with a sagging jaw and staringeyes.

  The men in the room burst into sudden startled exclamations.

  Kendall didn't give them time. His jaw snapped shut, and a blazing lightof wondrous joy shone in his eyes. He instantly threw the switch inagain. Again the humming atostor, the strain--

  Slowly Devin lifted from his seat. With thrashing arms and startled,staring eyes, he drifted gently across the room. Abruptly he fell to thefloor, unhurt by the light Lunar gravity.

  "I advise," said the motor in its grumbling voice, "an immediateexodus." It stopped speaking, and practiced what it preached. It was afifty-horse motor-generator, on a five-ton tungsten-beryllium base, butit rose abruptly, spun rapidly about an axis at right angles to the axisof its armature, and stopped as suddenly. In mid air it continued itsinterrupted lecture. "Mercury therefore is the destination I wouldadvise. There power is sufficient for--all machines." Gently it inverteditself and settled to the middle of the floor. Kendall instantly cut theswitch. The relay did not chunk open. It refused to obey. Settled in themiddle of the floor now, torn loose from its power leads, themotor-generator began turning. It turned faster and faster. It wasshrilling in a thin scream of terrific speed, a speed that should havetorn its windings to fragments under the lash of centrifugal force.Contentedly it said throatily. "Settled."

  The galvanometer spoke again in its peculiar harsh voice. "Therefore,move." Abruptly, without apparent reason, the stubborn relay clickedopen. The shrilly screaming motor stopped dead instantly, as though ithad had no real momentum, or had been inertialess.

  Startled, white-faced men looked at Kendall. Buck's eyes were shiningwith an unholy glee.

  "_Uncertainty!_" he shouted. "Uncertainty--uncertainty--uncertainty,you fools! Don't you see it? All the math--it said uncertainty--man,man--_we've got just that--uncertainty_!"

  "You're crazy," gasped McLaurin. "I'm crazy, everything's gone crazy."

  Kendall roared with sudden, joyous laughter. "Absolutely. Everythinggoes crazy--_the laws of nature break down_! Heisenberg's principleshowed that the law of cause and effect weren't absolute. We've madethem absolutely uncertain!"

  "But--but motors _talking_, instruments giving lectures--"

  "Certainly--or rather uncertainly--anything, absolutely anything. Thedestruction of the laws of gravity, freedom from inertia--why, merelypicking up a radio lecture is nothing!"

  Suddenly, abruptly, a thousand questions poured in on him. Jubilantly heanswered what he could, told what he thought--and then brought order."The battle's still on, men--we've still got to find out how to usethis, now we've got it. I have an idea--that there's a lot more. I knowwhat I'll get this time. Now help me remake this apparatus so we don'tbroadcast the thing."

  At once, ten times the former pace, work was done. On the radio, newswas sent out that Kendall was on the right track after all. In two hoursthe apparatus had been vastly altered, it was in the final stage, and anentirely different sort of field set up. Again they watched as Buckapplied the power.

  The atostor hummed--but no strange tricks of matter happened this time.The more concentrated, altered field was, as Buck was to find out later,"Uncertainty of the Second Degree." It was molecular uncertainty. In afield a foot and a half in diameter, Buck saw the thing created--andsuddenly a brilliant green-blue flame shot up, and a great dark cloud ofterrible, red-brown deadly vapor. Then an instant later, Kendall hadopened the relay. Gasping, the men ran from the laboratory, shutting thedeadly fumes in. "N{2}O{4}" gasped Morton, the chemist, as they reachedsafety. "It's exothermic--but it formed there!"

  In that instant, Kendall grasped the meaning the choking fumes carried."Molecular uncertainty!" he decided. "We're going back--we're gettingthere--"

  He altered the apparatus again, added another atostor in series, reducedthe size of his sphere of forces--of strange chaos of uncertainty.Within--little was certain. Without--the laws of nature applied as ever.

  Again the apparatus was started, cautiously this time. Only a strangejumbled ionization appeared this time, then a slow, rising blue flamebegan to creep up, and burn hot and blue. Buck looked at it for amoment, then his face grew tense and thoughtful. "Devin--give me ahalf-dollar." Blankly, Devin reached in his pocket, and handed over themetal disc. Cautiously Buck Kendall tossed it toward the sphere offorce. Instantly there was a flash of flame, soundless and soft-colored.Then the silver disc was outlined in light, and swiftly, inevitablycrumbling into dust so fine only a blue haze appeared. In less than twoseconds, the metal was gone. Only the dense blue fog remained. Then thisbegan to go, and the leaping blue flame grew taller, and stronger.

  "We're on the track--I'm going to stop here, and calculate. Bring thedata--"

  Kendall shut off the machine, and went to the calculation room. Swiftlyhe selected already prepared graphs, graphs of the math he had workedon. Devin came soon, and others. They assembled the data and with tablesand arithmetical machines turned it into graphs.

  Then all these graphs were fed into the machine. There were curves, andsine-curves, abrup
t breaking lines--but the answer that came when allwere compounded was a perfect diagram of a flight of four steps,descending in unequal treads to zero.

  Kendall looked at it for long minutes. "That," he said at length, "iswhat I expected. There are four degrees of uncertainty, we generated'Uncertainty of the First Degree,' 'Mass Uncertainty,' when we started.That, as here shown, takes little energy concentration. Then weincreased the energy concentration and got 'Uncertainty of the SecondDegree,' 'Molecular Uncertainty.' Then I added more power, and reducedthe field, and got 'Uncertainty of the Third Degree'--'AtomicUncertainty.' There is 'Uncertainty of the Fourth Degree.' It is barelyattainable with our atostors. It is--utter uncertainty.

  "In the First Degree, the laws of mass action fail, the greatbroad-reaching laws. In the Second Degree, the laws of the molecules, afiner organization, break down, and anything can happen in chemistry. Inthe Third Degree, the laws of atomic physics break down slowly. The atomis tough. It is very compact, and we just barely attained theconcentration needed with that apparatus. But--in the Third Degree, whenthe Atomic Laws break down into utter uncertainty, the atoms break, andonly hydrogen can exist. That was the blue flame.

  "But the Fourth Degree--_there is no law whatsoever_, nothing in all theUniverse can exist. It means--_the utter destruction and release of theenergy of matter_!" Kendall paused for a moment. "We have won, withthis. We need only make up this apparatus--and maybe make it into aweapon. You know, in the Fourth Degree, nothing in all the Universecould resist, deflect, or control it, if launched freely, andself-maintaining. I think that might be done. You see, no law affectsit, for it breaks down the law. Magnetism cannot attract or repel itbecause magnetic fields cannot exist; there is no law of magnetic force,where this field is.

  "And you know, Devin, how I have analyzed and duplicated their magneticball-fields. This should be capable of formation into a ball-field.

  "We need only make it up now. We will install it in the 'S Doradus' andthe 'Cepheid' as a weapon. We need only install it as an energy sourcehere. Let us start."