by Earl
“In a short time, our ship leaves upon its last journey, homeward. When it lands on Pluto, I shall be free from the duties that now bind me. In the meantime, you can be my guests or prisoners, as your own actions warrant. I hope it will be the former. All this apparatus you see will be left behind. You can then take all the pictures you want to your hearts content. In the interim, anything you will wish to know I will with pleasure enlighten you about.
“Still one more thing. If you should want to wander about camp, let me know. I will then detail a guard for you. Now that is just for appearances’ sake. It is a formality that I cannot neglect to save my face before my men. If you wish to be my guests, I will trust you implicitly. And now I have work to do, so I must leave you. Jack will show you your quarters and he can answer many questions, for in the past year, I have told him practically all there is to know.” He arose.
“One thing, Koor Laro,” said Bill. “Just how soon do you expect to leave here?”
“I am not sure. Anywhere from ten days to two months.”
Koor Laro left the room while Sam and Bill looked at each other blankly. Then Bill hauled out his notebook and began writing.
“Didn’t I tell you he was a great chap?” spoke up Berry some minutes later as they sat smoking.
Bill Nevers looked up from his notebook. “Great? Say, that’s mild Berry, mild. Why, he’s the king of all Plutonians!” He continued writing.
“You mean Isotians, don’t you?” Sam chirped up.
“Listen, Lanky, argue the point with Jack. I got work to do. Besides, you’ve got nothing to do but think up wisecracks while Jack has as little to do except someday shave himself, so you’re a couple. Fight, talk, play pinochle, or jump off the tower, but for old Aunt Gussy’s sake, leave me alone, savvy?”
“Sure, big Chief Sign-Talk,” Sam roared. He winked at Berry and motioned him over and the two whispered together.
Bill gave Sam a deadly look but bent to his work.
A moment later, a roar of laughter split the air.
Bill Nevers winced but kept on writing.
CHAPTER VI
Power from the Sun
l Five days passed, days in which Bill Nevers was busier than he had ever been before in all his life. Wonders were spread before his eyes that were hard to believe. He and Sam had plenty of time to inspect everything and Bill’s insatiable curiosity left nothing out. They were both enjoying themselves immensely.
On the second day, they decided to take a look at the icefield generators where the enormous power was produced which was needed for the stupendous undertaking. Bill had often wondered that first day from where they derived the juice to run all the different machinery. Dressing warmly, they entered the speed demon. Jack Berry took the controls. There were three Plutonian guards, very silent and very morose, with shock guns along with them.
It took them over an hour to get there, five hundred miles from the Plutonian camp. It was necessary to set up the icefield generators that far away because the Plutonian camp was in the night region. Daylight was necessary to run the generators.
The cold was intense and all were glad they had dressed warmly against it. The plane’s heating plant was useless against this freezing temperature. As they looked behind at the rapidly dwindling circle of green light, they beheld a very pretty sight. The soft green and the glinting silvery tower looked like a precious gem resting in a setting of white agate. Soon it was lost to sight and all about them was the eternal ermine landscape of the Arctic.
Jack Berry was most enthusiastic about the icefield generators and explained as well as he could their construction and operation. It certainly was a most unique and ingenious method of harnessing electricity. Below, in a vast level expanse in the day side of this region, they beheld a marvel.
They saw what looked like huge tables with only one center leg. The table surfaces were gigantic plates of aluminum, turned at an angle so as to always face the low sun. Around the central leg, which was buried deep in the snow and ice, was wound a thick cable of bright white metal. There were about fifty of the units and from each led a cable all of which joined into a huge central cable which ran for a ways toward the Plutonian camp and then was lost beneath freshly fallen snow. The air above each of the generators was a brilliant dazzle of scintillating colors. The enormous current produced ionized the surrounding air and flashes of purple and violet continuously arose.
Jack Berry began to speak. “Those plates of aluminum you see facing the sun are motored and clocked to turn with the sun so as to always get the maximum light from it. The central post is the counterplate and is sunk deep into the ice. The difference in temperature between the lighted end and the buried end induces a current in the surrounding beryllium coils. They had to make them big because they needed so much current. The current from here is sent back to the gravity ship by that big cable that you can see running toward the camp. In the gravity ship, the transformers step up the low voltages received to the high voltages that they need. Then the rectified current is dispensed as needed throughout the camp.”
They landed on a strip of smooth ice that had been wind-blown and cleared of snow and stepped out into the wind. At Bill’s suggestion, they walked to the nearest generator to get a closer look at the structure. Standing beside it, they realised for the first time how really gigantic it was. For twenty feet upwards, the central post extended and the top plate was all of forty feet in diameter.
Sam Peters, who was something of a dabbler in amateur science, suddenly exclaimed out loud in disbelief. “Say, fellows, I just happened to think of it. These cables that lead off from these generators and also that big main one that goes to camp. . . . they’re not insulated! What in the name of the one-eyed jacks keeps the current from leaking right into the ground?”
Bill Nevers knew enough about things electrical to realize that the cables should be insulated by all the laws of nature. But there they were, as bare as you please!
Jack Berry laughed as he spoke. “Looks are deceiving, Sam. They do look bare, I’ll admit, but actually they are coated with a thin layer of a special insulating material that the Plutonians have which is more effective than a foot of rubber, and is perfectly transparent. Once put on, it becomes as hard as diamond and sticks to the metal like glue, so there you have something that would make a fortune back in America.” Just to show his confidence, Berry stooped and touched his hand to the thick cable. Sam found it hard to believe that those hundreds—or was it thousands?—of amperes of current were so effectively screened off from grounding.
“But Jack, come to think of it, up in the Arctic here, the length of the day depends on the position. The camp back there is due for several weeks of night and this spot can’t possibly get more than four or so hours of daylight,” Sam again spoke.
“Three hours, to be exact, and twenty-one hours of night. You see, these icefield generators produce such an enormous current that three hours running out of twenty-four is enough for their purposes. The current is stored back at the gravity ship and distributed as required.”
Bill Nevers looked at the three guards speculatively and wondered how any members of such a dumb—almost brutal—looking race could be the designers of such high-class work as these polished generators. He would have had his precious notebook and pencil out except that it was too cold to write. He could hardly wait to put these monstrous solenoids down in writing. Well protected by the invisible insulation, the coil was resting right on the snow and hard ice.
“Say, Jack, how is it the coil doesn’t melt its way through the ice?”
“For the simple reason there is no heat produced. That coil is made of beryllium, the best conductor of electricity known, and its size is enough so that it will handle the current with the production of a very little heat, so little that it is fully dissipated by the cold air and doesn’t give it a chance to melt the ice.”
“Did they set up all these generators with the ice and snow all around, or did they use the g
reen ray and work in warmth like back at the camp?” asked the Missouri-natured Sam.
“All this work was done in the raw cold. They have cranes and derricks for use in snow. You see, Sam, the ice here is probably hundreds of feet thick. This is a sort of shallow sea, frozen hard. The camp back there is an island; that’s why they struck hard ground after they had gone down a few feet. We’re not at the North Pole, you know, not exactly. The Pole is actually two hundred miles on the other side of the camp and is in the middle of an ocean or sea which comprises all of the tip of the world except for a few islands here and there. If all this region could be melted down, it would look like the middle of the Pacific around the Hawaiian Islands.” Jeck Berry was in his element on that subject. He had spent-a lifetime exploring the frozen North.
When Berry and Sam were finally driven back to the ship by the effects of continued exposure to the cold winds, after discussing various aspects of the icefield generators, they found Bill Nevers inside scribbling away as fast as his blue fingers would let him.
“By the million hairs on a human head, but I’ve got a description that will slay ’em, positively slay ’em, so help me! Listen to this, Sam surrounding the top node is a halo of flashing color, scintillating like the rarest of diamonds, a medley of indescribable—”
“That’s it,” cut in the heartless Sam, “indescribable. So why are you wasting your time trying to do it?”
“Listen, funnybone, you haven’t got enough. . . . enough esthetic—that’s it—esthetic sense to appreciate the poetical beauty of a scene like that,” retaliated the reporter.
“Oh, no? Well, neither are you a poet You better stick to your natural calling. . . . Indian sign language!”
The roar of the starting motor at the hands of Berry cut off the flood of invective from the wounded Bill Nevers. He shot glance after glance of deadly venom at the smiling Sam on the trip back and mentally stored the quip up as another black mark against Sam’s future wellbeing. By the time they arrived back, however, his mood had changed to his natural state, one of intense energy again to observe and record.
CHAPTER VII
Still Incredulous
l The Plutonians had struck pay dirt about a quarter of a mile down. The operation of a mine was forever a wonder to Sam and Bill. Mining methods on Pluto consisted of melting the ore, scooping it up molten, and molding it into uniform blocks to be stored on the gravity ship. Above the various mines (there were only three being operated when Bill and Sam arrived) were structures resembling the oil-well drillers of Texas, except that they supported also a box in which the operators of the melters and scoops worked. The melter was a cylinder twenty feet long and five feet in diameter, pierced all about by one-inch holes. It was suspended from the hut on the tower by cables which lowered and raised it into the shaft. From these holes shot the heat ray which brought the cold rock and mineral to a molten state in a very few seconds. From the bottom of the melter came the strongest of the heat rays so that the bottom of the shaft was a continuous pool of molten rock, into which the scoops dipped in regular order to draw up the fiery liquid. The scoops were automatically timed so that, as they passed the melter, the heat rays on that side would turn off till it was past. The scoops were suspended on cables and were simply lowered into the lake of molten rock and again raised with the fuming, hissing liquid. This was emptied into monorail cars which continuously ran from a shaft to the outer edge of the green circle, to dump their worthless rock into the snow and ice.
A separate set of larger scoops also periodically sank into the deep pit and came up with molten material, but this was dumped into other monorail cars which disappeared into the gravity ship. That was the malachite from the side shafts. At certain points along the wall of the fifty-foot-in-diameter main shaft, there were made side shafts formed by concentrated blasts from the melter, into which was lowered, during a cessation of the activity of the melter, an affair resembling a war tank. In this tank sat three operators who handled the melter beams to bore deeper into the side wall, the scoops and buckets on flexible arms, and the various engines to run the tank and the other things.
Each scoopful taken in by the tank was tested for malachite by a “flash” test, and then either stored in the back as waste or stored in the front as good pay dirt. Periodically, the tank made a trip to the edge of the central shaft and ejected a full load of waste matter, which was constantly kept in a molten condition for ease of handling. Periodically, the pay-ore, also kept molten, was delivered to the central shaft where waiting scoops picked it up and conveyed it to the surface. If a certain side shaft proved rich in ore, a system of monorails was installed to eliminate trips by the cumbersome tank back and forth between the central shaft and the point of mining pay-ore.
And constantly, the central melter worked deeper and deeper till no further ore was found. Operation in the side shafts then continued till they petered out. Then the shaft was abandoned entirely and a new one started. As pit after pit was dug, exploited, and abandoned, the tripod had been moved on its motored legs to melt away the ice and snow to reveal new regions in which to dig.
As Sam and Bill stood at a respectful distance from one of the three remaining shafts in use, they stared open-mouthed at the maze of cables, scoops, monorail cars, and cranes centered about the shaft. It seemed to them to be a senseless confusion like the first glance at the works of a clock, but everything proceeded smoothly and efficiently. Bill was all for running closer, but the watchful Plutonian guard caught his arm and motioned him back.
“Hello, boys,” the cheery voice of Jack Berry greeted them. “Would you like to have a bird’s-eye view of the mining? Come on, I’ll take you up in that little bird-cage.”
Berry, who had much authority, it seemed, with the glowering Plutonians, led them up the ladder to the operating room of the melter and scoops. Here ten Plutonians labored at the control boards of the various machines which activated the different mining units. They had a televisor whose large screen showed them the bottom of the pit as clearly as if one were down there.
“How in the wide world do they televise a scene that has no broadcasting apparatus?” asked the puzzled Sam.
“That’s one thing I can’t even begin to explain,” admitted Berry. “All I know is that radium is used in the process.”
Bill was looking at the screen. The view, which was changed every few seconds by the operator to get perspective, showed the huge melter hanging like a dead, inanimate thing, but Bill realized that from its pitted surface was streaming a medley of hell-hot rays. The glowing sides of the shaft dripped steadily into the lake of liquid rock at the bottom.
“Gosh, it seems hot in here,” he said.
Sam burst out laughing. “Talk about imagination. Just because you’re looking at that shot of hell’s only twin, you get hot by remote control.”
“I wouldn’t call it entirely imagination,” Berry put in. “You see, a lot of that heat streaming out of the mouth of that shaft below us gets up here to this little place.”
Bill turned triumphantly to Sam. “And not only that, smarty, but you’ve got sweat rolling down your own sassy mug.”
“AH right, Shrimp.”
And then started one of those battles of caustic wit that continued all the way back to the ship and kept Berry in constant laughter.
“Aha!” Bill had suddenly stopped and exclaimed.
“What’s up?” asked Sam.
“Just thought of something. Sam, this explains the temperature changes in the northern hemisphere. Don’t you see. . . . the hot air produced here by the tripod constantly rises, is replaced by cold air, and that’s the origin of the winds that sweep down on us back home. That’s one big mystery explained.”
“You’re right,” agreed Berry. “There’s been a lot of hot air produced here in the past three years.”
“Yes, and now that Bill’s here, there’s twice as much hot air,” interjected Sam who had come out somewhat the worse in the battle of words befo
re and felt he ought to even it up.
“Aw, nertz,” was all Bill replied. He was wondering if the only hot air Koor Laro made was that from the mines. He made a sudden decision to have another talk with him. But he had to wait two hours till the Koor was at leisure.
“And now, my friends,” began Gest Laro, “I am at your service.”
l Bill had his notebook out and pencil poised, “Koor Laro, malachite is just an ore of copper, I suppose it’s the copper that you’re looking for. How is it possible for your world to have so little of copper that you have completely run out of it?”
“You forget that our world, or rather our civilization, is much older than yours and so we’ve had much more time to mine. But that isn’t the best reason why we went out in search of copper. You see, Bill, Pluto was first to be flung away from the sun in the dim past when the solar system was being formed and was composed of lighter materials than the later-formed planets as Earth here. By lighter, I mean lighter in atomic weight.
“On Pluto all of the heavy metals which are more or less abundant on earth are rare. Copper, silver, gold, platinum, zinc, lead, tin, etc., are curiosities to most of my people. We have used aluminum, magnesium, and beryllium for most things you use the Others for.”
“How about iron?” asked Sam.
“Rare on Pluto. We use beryllium and its alloys with equal success.”
“But you can’t get along without iron entirely, can you?” Sam persisted. He couldn’t see how iron could be left out when on earth it was such a universal necessity.
“We’ve always managed to mine enough to get along with. Of course, lately, in the last fifty years, our mines have been depleted of a number of the important heavy metals. In the case of copper, it was dire necessity for us to go out and get some because it is used in our synthetic food processes. That came first; the other metals we could take our time about.”