by Earl
CHAPTER I
An Amazing Invention
MILTON SANDER read the title of the thin sheaf of neatly-clipped typewritten sheets without recognizing any special meaning in the words: “B Mass-Energy Conversion Unit.”[1]
As recording clerk of the Bureau of Patents, he saw many enigmatic titles that in most cases camouflaged something invented and patented a hundred times before. Quack inventors were always trying to slip something over on the Bureau, not realizing that the department had hundreds of well-trained employees for the purpose of preventing duplication of patents, and to weed out utterly worthless mechanisms and devices that worked only in the originator’s optimistic mind.
A Patent Bureau clerk’s job was supposed to be intriguing, but Sander often found it boring. He yawned and glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes to go before quitting time.
Each day seemed longer and more tiresome to Sander, as he endlessly recorded patent applications, spurious and otherwise. If only he had enough money to throw up the job and try easy living for a change. Sander was not particularly industrious, but he was ambitious. The stock market appealed to him as a game worth while—if he only had money to start the ball rolling.
Disinclined to do any more work, Sander idly began reading the author’s notes heading his diagrams and formulae.
“Atomic Power.”
Sander chuckled aloud cynically as he read those two words. “So that’s what he meant by that pretty title! Another crackpot. Perpetual Motion machines used to hold the application record, but I think lately Atomic Power engines have taken first place. When will these poor fish learn you can’t get something for nothing?”
He read on, to kill time.
“Theoretically, it is possible to transform matter completely into energy.
“It is with some pride, therefore, that I submit herewith the plans and complete specifications for such a power unit, guaranteed to deliver 500 horsepower from a pound of sand. The energy is released almost entirely as infra-red heat radiation, suitable for steam engines. The efficiency of this unit cannot be increased beyond the point specified because of the danger of explosion.”[2]
Sander chuckled. “500 horsepower from a pound of sand—I’ll be blowed! This fellow has imagination—should write stories. Wonder what a handful of common dirt would do. Run a car from here to Halifax, I suppose.”
Sander yawned again with one eye on the clock and saw he had five minutes to waste yet. He glanced over the carefully filled out application blank.
“John Tarkton, Ph.D., former Professor of Atomic Physics,” mumbled Sander as he read. “22 Vine St., Jamesville, Indiana. Age 48. Unmarried. Retired; private research.”
Sander sighed. “Retired. Must have money. And the poor sap putters around in a laboratory, inventing air castles, when he could play the stock market and really do things! Professor Tarkton, you’re a nitwit, a—”
His eyes caught a note at the bottom of the application in the “remarks” column. It read: “In the event of my death in the interim, all patent rights are to be turned over to Dr. Henry Lewis, 1480 Grand Ave., Oak Park, 111.”
Sander snorted. “Huh, the man actually believes he’s got something here, like it was sure to be accepted for patent. But then they all do. I’ll never forget the day that chap stormed in and threatened to sue the government for turning down his gadget for making gold out of brass. This guy—”
Sander broke off and jumped up with alacrity. Time to go at last. He tossed the sheaf of papers in his “no-rush” basket, for entry sometime the next day. He left, milling out of the building with hundreds of others.
That evening, alone in his room, Sander devoured the stock market reports in his daily newspaper, mentally counting the winnings he had made with non-existent money.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright. His eye fell on an obscure item buried on page 19.
“Jamesville, Indiana. At four PM. today a gigantic explosion destroyed the laboratory-home of John Tarkton, probably from some dangerous experiment. He was known to be in at the time of the catastrophe, but his body was not found due to the violence of the explosion, which left not one stone on another. Fortunately, the nearest house, a block away, suffered no more than shattered windows. His in the Main Bank, states that he has no close relatives and leaves his entire estate to Dr. Henry Lewis—”
Sander jumped up and began pacing the room, thinking rapidly. Today he had read the submitted plans for an Atomic Power process, by this man who now lay dead. But more remarkable than the coincidence was the manner of his death.
Explosion!
“Lord!” breathed Sander. “That fellow has—had—the real thing. Atomic Power!”
Though not a scientist, Sander had enough native intelligence to realize that a workable Atomic Power process was priceless. The paper those formulae and diagrams were written on was worth its weight in radium!
“Just think,” mused Sander, “on my desk right now lies a discovery about like radio, or X-rays. It’ll sure turn things topsy-turvy in the industrial world, with power produced ten times cheaper than now. Lucky stiff: Dr. Henry Lewis. He gets the patent rights and a mint, right in his lap!”
Envy radiated from Sander’s voice. “What I couldn’t do with money if I got that break!” He shrugged. “Oh well, maybe I’ll win the Irish Sweeps next week.”
He turned back to the newspaper, but could not seem to get his mind off that strange coincidence, and its results.
As though he had been stabbed, he suddenly turned pale and began to tremble like a leaf.
Fool! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? No one really knew the plans were on his desk!
Sander lay awake most of that night, feverishly scheming. Next day, at his desk early, he slipped Tarkton’s manuscript into his coat pocket. That night he was again awake, laboriously typing the notes and transcribing the mathematical formulae of the dead scientist’s papers.
Sander had made up his mind to play opportunity to the limit. The plans had two possible markets, both as an industrial prodigy and as a military secret, for what could explode once could explode again! He would sell them to the undercover agents who were always ready to pirate useful inventions. Sander saw his chance to play a double game and come out winner twice.
A week later Milton Sander had departed for Europe, three hundred thousand dollars to the good. Among the many courses open to fate in this matter, it had taken one of the strangest. The plans for Tarkton’s invention were in the hands of two unscrupulous foreign interests—
CHAPTER II
A Tremendous Responsibility
DR. HENRY LEWIS opened the packet of registered mail in deep wonder, noticing it was from Jamesville, Indiana. In it were three items. The first, a small wooden box that contained something heavy, was marked “Do not open!” The second was a large envelope bulging with papers. Last he picked up a smaller envelope with his name written across it and marked, “Please read this first!”
Though he realized these were from a man who was dead, and who had been his friend, Lewis could not help smiling a little at the eccentric nature displayed.
Tarkton had always been a secretive, mysterious sort.
The day before Lewis had received a letter from the Main Bank of Janesville, informing him that Tarkton had been killed, and that they were forwarding certain items he had left in their care.
“Damn fool!” Lewis had muttered sorrowfully, after the initial shock was over, “I knew he’d blow himself up some day!”
Now, Lewis gazed down at these last messages from his friend and sighed deeply. They had not seen much of each other in the past ten years, but a lasting bond of friendship forged in college days had never been broken. They had corresponded regularly, Tarkton telling of his researches in subatomic physics, Lewis telling of his academic work.
Picking up the envelope so meticulously marked for his initial attention, Lewis opened it and read the contents. Amazement came into his face with the first few lines and remaine
d rooted there to the end.
Lewis:
You are reading this letter only in the event of my death!
Yes, my death, Lewis, for I cannot stop now and the trail ahead lurks with danger! I have reached a milestone and beyond beckons a vast new field of exploration!
Lewis, my results were crowned with success, breath-taking and sudden, seemingly all at once. Yet I realize it was from the twenty years of effort I put into this task. But that is the way of scientific discovery—through years of trial and error, bitterness and defeat.
Six months ago it came to me, and I realized I had—ATOMIC POWER!
I did not inform you, for you are the rankest of skeptics, though my dearest friend, and would have classed it as wishful-thinking.
At any rate, you’ll remember my theory—that the way of disintegrating the atom is to use a resonant gamma-ray frequency to shake it apart, as sonic vibrations will shatter the molecules of gross matter.
I never did put much stock in the theories of the atom-smashing school. They have been taking every subatomic particle they could lay their hands on as artillery to bomb the atoms. But that is like taking the asteroids and shooting them through the solar system at random. The chances of a hit with anything are pitifully small. And they must use more energy to propel their subatomic bombs than is released from the collisions.
Vibration was the true answer. Vibration penetrates everywhere, strikes everything. There can be no misses. Yet twenty years of labor with all conceivable vibrations brought little result.
My obstacle was lack of PURE vibration. The sound wave that shatters a glass is a bell-tone—sweet and unmixed. I had to devise carborundum—silicon carbide—crystal capable of dividing the spectrum of gamma-radiation into infinitely graduated frequencies. Thus I was able to get pure, single “tones” of the gamma-group, and concentrate a great deal of power into them without energy-loss in vagrant harmonics, overtones, and heterodyning cancellations.
I installed this in my vibro-projector and played it on a few grains of monazite sand. After a few shiftings of the frequency, I was rewarded. A puff of heat-energy arose that singed off my eyebrows. I examined the grains spectroscopically and found that the rare-earth metals in them—gadolinium, neodymium, lanthanum, etc.—had vanished! The silicon dioxide base was unaffected.
I made controlled tests with a calorimeter and found most of the energy given off as heat—infra-red radiation. The process is inefficient, no more than .0004, but is still ten times more productive than the burning of an equal
amount of coal.
All these experiments, readjustments, tests, occupied the last six month. Finally, I drew up a set of blue-prints of the vibro-projector and crystal, recorded the mathematics involved, and prepared to send it in for patent.
Of course, the industrial application of this Atomic Power unit will have to be done with extreme caution. I have salted my papers with frequent warnings and notes to that effect. Undoubtedly there will be some unfortunate disasters in the experimental stage, but the technologists and engineers of industry will eliminate them.
Thus, my duty is done. My duty to civilization in this matter. I can now go on with my researches. There are unnameable powers and energies lurking just beyond my reach. Powers that will truly make man the master of the universe! I will seek them!
Dr. Henry Lewis stopped reading for a moment, shaking his head slowly. Just like the visionary he was, Tarkton must plunge onward into the sea he had newly discovered. He had arranged for the patent of the process as a perfunctory matter, and would probably have sold it for a paltry sum if he had lived.
If he had lived! Lewis bowed his head for a moment. Death so soon after victory! It was ironical that this genius could not have lived to see at least the first fruits of his prodigious efforts. Lewis turned back to the letter.
But the trail ahead, my friend, is an uncertain one. Perhaps I will be destroyed in my search for new, secret powers. Realizing this, decided to conduct my affairs as though I were already gone. I made a copy of my complete researches so far, and you will find them in the large envelope that accompanies this letter. My will has been duly made out, with you as beneficiary, since I have no relatives closer than cousins whom I have never met. The patent application that I am about to mail to Washington is also to go under your name, if it is my fate to leave this life suddenly.
I have deposited these things with my solicitors, who will conduct these matters if the time comes. Lastly, I am writing this letter which is to be forwarded to you only upon my death.
Yet do not think of this as beneficence, awarded you simply because you arc my friend. It is really a great responsibility. I have picked you for your sterling qualities, as the one man I can trust to carry on with this grave affair.
Yes, I repeat—GRAVE!
Atomic Power is something perhaps more far-reaching than dynamite, or the invention of the steam-engine. When the patent of my process comes through, it must be turned over to the worldwide Society for Advancement of Science. They alone must be allowed to distribute its plans, AND CARRY ON ANY FURTHER RESEARCH. The patent must not get into the hands of one industrial concern, or in the hands of one group of any sort, political, financial, or warlike.
I am entrusting you with this mission, Lewis, in the event I am not alive to do so. The patent application data and date of mailing are noted below. Also a duplicate is in the large envelope.
Perhaps it would have been best for Atomic Power to be buried still-born. I debated the pro and con of it with myself and finally decided its benefits should triumph, if only care is taken. The thing that finally decided me in that course was a chance discovery in line with my subatomic researches. It is this—
Lewis read on, still more amazed than at the previous revelations.
The letter ended:
The use of this instrument is left entirely to your judgment. I deeply hope that you will never have to employ it. That is all I have to say. If you are reading this, I am dead. Goodbye, my friend.
(signed) John Tarkton.
Dr. Henry Lewis, fifty years old and kindly of nature, held the chair of physics at Oak Park University, in which institution he had taught for twenty years. He had always told his pupils, “The advance of science is like a glacier, slow but decisive. Truly great discoveries are made at long intervals. Do not expect what the romanticists call Atomic Power for another century, if then.”
Now, after reading the letter from his old friend, Lewis felt the sensation of shock almost as though he had been through a harrowing experience. He was a practical man and did not believe in optimistic day-dreaming about so matter-of-fact a thing as science. He had scoffed in emphatic fashion, in his letters to Tarkton, about the illusion of unlocking the storehouse of power within matter.
Yet here it was, like a bursting bomb—Atomic Power! And he, Henry Lewis, held within his hand the authority to disperse this great discovery to mankind! Authority—and responsibility!
Lewis almost felt himself aging on the spot. Suddenly his sheltered, staid world seemed dissolving around him. He seemed to hear already the slow grinding of immense world events being started. The frightful, inconceivable energies of the atom to be given to a civilization whose keynote was power—and whose methods of balancing that power were none too gentle. The results were not predictable at all.
Lewis tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the box marked “Do not open!” Finally he picked it up gingerly and looked it in his desk drawer. Then, because he was practical, he took out the thick sheaf of papers in the large envelope, rolled up his sleeves and began checking over the mathematical notes. It might be that Tarkton, overworked, had suffered under hallucination over the whole thing.
Lewis soon saw that there was no bit of illusion to it. The cold, hard, incisive formulae spoke aloud their story to his trained mind. Hours later he was still at it, amazed at the genius displayed. It was two lifetimes of daring research, done by one ingenious intellect.
Le
wis was startled to hear the voice of his wife over his shoulder. “Heavens—what complicated looking formulae! What do they represent—the end of the world? It’s past midnight—”
CHAPTER III
Atomic Power, Inc.
THE letter from the Patent Bureau said: “No patent application by the title of Basic Mass-Energy Conversion Unit has been entered in this office in the past year. We suggest you send a duplicate copy.”
Puzzled, Lewis sent the duplicate that Tarkton had provided. It was a month after receiving Tarkton’s post-death mission, and Lewis had sent a letter of inquiry, wondering at the delay.
His answer came this time promptly. “A device exactly similar to the one described by you, with the same specifications and formulae, was patented under the title ‘Atomic-Power Unit’ a week ago. We therefore cannot grant the patent to you.”
Lewis clutched at the edge of his desk and read it again with a punch-drunk expression. What did it mean?
“Good God!” he exploded finally. “Someone else stole that patent! Atomic Power is in the hands of some unscrupulous person or group—the very thing Tarkton warned against. I must find out—” He jumped up.
“Where are you going?” his wife asked anxiously.
“To Washington!”
“But, dear, your classes—”
“Hang the classes!”
That night a speeding plane was carrying Dr. Henry Lewis, face set grimly, to Washington. A deep sense of foreboding rode with him. He did not know what had happened to upset the normal procedure of events; did not know of the bland-faced youth lounging in a Parisian Cafe, flushed with wine and money. But Lewis did have the feeling that the juggernaut of fate had taken a sharp twist. How much so he was soon to learn.
First of all, upon arrival in Washington, Lewis spent a day making inquiries at the Bureau of Patents, passing from person to person in the attempt to find out what miscarriage there had been with Tarkton’s application. No one had seen or heard of it.
The next day he was finally given an audience with a high official, who crisply asked his business.