Empire

by Clifford D. Simak

  _CHAPTER TWO_

  Russell Page squinted thoughtful eyes at the thing he had created--atransparent cloud, a visible, sharply outlined cloud of _something_. Itwas visible as a piece of glass is visible, as a globe of water isvisible. There it lay, within his apparatus, a thing that shouldn't be.

  "I believe we have something there, Harry," he said slowly.

  Harry Wilson sucked at the cigarette that drooped from the corner of hismouth, blew twin streams of smoke from his nostrils. His eyes twitchednervously.

  "Yeah," he said. "Anti-entropy."

  "All of that," said Russell Page. "Perhaps a whole lot more."

  "It stops all energy change," said Wilson, "as if time stood still andthings remained exactly as they were when time had stopped."

  "It's more than that," Page declared. "It conserves not only energy _intoto_, not only the energy of the whole, but the energy of the part. Itis perfectly transparent, yet it has refractive qualities. It won'tabsorb light because to do so would change its energy content. In thatfield, whatever is hot stays hot, whatever is cold can't gain heat."

  He scraped his hand over a week's growth of beard, considering. From hispocket he took a pipe and a leather pouch. Thoughtfully he filled thepipe and lit it.

  It had started with his experiments in Force Field 348, an experiment toobserve the effects of heating a conductor in that field. It had beenimpossible to heat the conductor electrically, for that would have upsetthe field, changed it, twisted it into something else. So he had used aBunsen burner.

  Through half-closed eyes, he still could see that slender strand ofimperm wire, how its silvery length had turned to red under the blueflame. Deep red at first and then brighter until it flamed in almostwhite-hot incandescence. And all the while the humming of thetransformer as the force field built up. The humming of the transformerand the muted roaring of the burner and the glowing heat in the lengthof wire.

  Something had happened then ... an awesome something. A weird wrench asif some greater power, some greater law had taken hold. A glove offorce, invisible, but somehow sensed, had closed about the wire andflame. Instantly the roaring of the burner changed in tone; an odor ofgas spewed out of the vents at its base. Something had cut off the flowof flame in the brass tube. Some force, _something_ ...

  The flame was a transparent cloud. The blue and red of flame and hotwire had changed, in the whiplash of a second, to a refractive buttransparent cloud that hung there within the apparatus.

  * * * * *

  The red color had vanished from the wire as the blue had vanished fromthe flame. The wire was shining. It wasn't silvery; it wasn't white.There was no hint of color, just a refractive blur that told him thewire was there. Colorless reflection. _And that meant perfectreflection!_ The most perfect reflectors reflect little more than 98 percent of the light incident and the absorption of the two per cent colorsthose reflectors as copper or gold or chromium. But the imperm wirewithin that force field that had been flame a moment before, wasreflecting _all_ light.

  He had cut the wire with a pair of shears and it had still hung,unsupported, in the air, unchanging within the shimmer that constitutedsomething no man had ever seen before.

  "You can't put energy in," said Page, talking to himself, chewing thebit of his pipe. "You can't take energy out. It's still as hot as itwas at the moment the change came. But it can't radiate any of thatheat. It can't radiate any kind of energy."

  Why, even the wire was reflective, so that it couldn't absorb energy andthus disturb the balance that existed within that bit of space. Not onlyenergy itself was preserved, but the very form of energy.

  But why? That was the question that hammered at him. Why? Before hecould go ahead, he had to know why.

  Perhaps the verging of the field toward Field 349? Somewhere in betweenthose two fields of force, somewhere within that almost non-existentborderline which separated them, he might find the secret.

  Rising to his feet, he knocked out his pipe.

  "Harry," he announced, "we have work to do."

  Smoke drooled from Wilson's nostrils.

  "Yeah," he said.

  Page had a sudden urge to lash out and hit the man. That eternaldrooling of smoke out of his nostrils, that everlasting cigarettedangling limply from one corner of his mouth, the shifty eyes, the dirtyfingernails, got on his nerves.

  But Wilson was a mechanical genius. His hands were clever despite thedirty nails. They could fashion pinhead cameras and three-gramelectroscopes or balances capable of measuring the pressure ofelectronic impacts. As a laboratory assistant he was unbeatable. If onlyhe wouldn't answer every statement or question with that nerve-racking'yeah'!

  Page stopped in front of a smaller room, enclosed by heavy quartz.Inside that room was the great bank of mercury-vapor rectifiers. Fromthem lashed a blue-green glare that splashed against his face andshoulders, painting him in angry, garish color. The glass guarded himfrom the terrific blast of ultra-violet light that flared from the poolof shimmering molten metal, a terrible emanation that would have flayeda man's skin from his body within the space of seconds.

  * * * * *

  The scientist squinted his eyes against the glare. There was somethingin it that caught him with a deadly fascination. The personification ofpower--the incredibly intense spot of incandescent vapor, the tinysphere of blue-green fire, the spinning surge of that shining pool, theintense glare of ionization.

  Power ... the breath of modern mankind, the pulse of progress.

  In an adjacent room were the accumulators. Not Interplanetaryaccumulators, which he would have had to rent, but ones he had boughtfrom a small manufacturer who turned out only ten or fifteen thousand ayear ... not enough to bother Interplanetary.

  Gregory Manning had made it possible for him to buy those accumulators.Manning had made many things possible in this little laboratory hiddendeep within the heart of the Sierras, many miles from any otherhabitation.

  Manning's grandfather, Jackson Manning, had first generated thecurvature field and overcome gravity, had left his grandson a fortunethat approached the five-billion mark. But that had not been all. Fromhis famous ancestor, Manning had inherited a keen, sharp, scientificmind. From his mother's father, Anthony Barret, he had gained an astutebusiness sense. But unlike his maternal grandfather, he had not turnedhis attention entirely to business. Old Man Barret had virtually ruledWall Street for almost a generation, had become a financial myth linkedwith keen business sense, with an uncanny ability to handle men andmoney. But his grandson, Gregory Manning, had become known to the worldin a different way. For while he had inherited scientific ability fromone side of the family, financial sense from the other, he likewise hadinherited from some other ancestor--perhaps remote and unknown--awanderlust that had taken him to the farthest outposts of the SolarSystem.

  * * * * *

  It was Gregory Manning who had financed and headed the rescue expeditionwhich took the first Pluto flight off that dark icebox of a world whenthe exploration ship had crashed. It was he who had piloted home thewinning ship in the Jupiter derby, sending his bulleting craft screamingaround the mighty planet in a time which set a Solar record. It wasGregory Manning who had entered the Venusian swamps and brought back,alive, the mystery lizard that had been reported there. And he was theone who had flown the serum to Mercury when the lives of ten thousandmen depended upon the thrumming engines that drove the shining shipinward toward the Sun.

  Russell Page had known him since college days. They had worked out theirexperiments together in the school laboratories, had spent long hoursarguing and wondering ... debating scientific theories. Both had lovedthe same girl, both had lost her, and together they had been bitter overit ... drowning their bitterness in a three-day drunk that made campushistory.

  After graduation Gregory Manning had gone on to world fame, had roamedover the face of every planet except Jupiter and Saturn, had visitedeve
ry inhabited moon, had climbed Lunar mountains, penetrated Venusianswamps, crossed Martian deserts, driven by a need to see and experiencethat would not let him rest. Russell Page had sunk into obscurity, hadburied himself in scientific research, coming more and more to aim hiseffort at the discovery of a new source of power ... power that would becheap, that would destroy the threat of Interplanetary dictatorship.

  Page turned away from the rectifier room.

  "Maybe I'll have something to show Greg soon," he told himself. "Maybe,after all these years...."

  * * * * *

  Forty minutes after Page put through the call to Chicago, GregoryManning arrived. The scientist, watching for him from the tiny lawn thatsurrounded the combined home and laboratory, saw his plane bullet intosight, scream down toward the little field and make a perfect landing.

  Hurrying toward the plane as Gregory stepped out of it, Russell notedthat his friend looked the same as ever, though it had been a year ormore since he had seen him. The thing that was discomfiting about Gregwas his apparently enduring youthfulness.

  He was clad in jodhpurs and boots and an old tweed coat, with abrilliant blue stock at his throat. He waved a hand in greeting andhurried forward. Russ heard the grating of his boots across the gravelof the walk.

  Greg's face was bleak; it always was. A clean, smooth face, hard, withsomething stern about the eyes.

  His grip almost crushed Russ's hand, but his tone was crisp. "Yousounded excited, Russ."

  "I have a right to be," said the scientist. "I think I have foundsomething at last."

  "Atomic power?" asked Manning. There was no flutter of excitement in hisvoice, just a little hardening of the lines about his eyes, a littletensing of the muscles in his cheeks.

  Russ shook his head. "Not atomic energy. If it's anything, it's materialenergy, the secret of the energy of matter."

  They halted before two lawn chairs.

  "Let's sit down here," invited Russ. "I can tell it to you out here,show it to you afterward. It isn't often I can be outdoors."

  "It is a fine place," said Greg. "I can smell the pines."

  The laboratory perched on a ledge of rugged rock, nearly 7,000 feetabove sea level. Before them the land swept down in jagged ruggednessto a valley far below, where a stream flashed in the noonday sun. Beyondclimbed pine-clad slopes and far in the distance gleamed shimmeringspires of snow-capped peaks.

  From his leather jacket Russ hauled forth his pipe and tobacco, lightedup.

  "It was this way," he said. Leaning back comfortably he outlined thefirst experiment. Manning listened intently.

  "Now comes the funny part," Russ added. "I had hopes before, but Ibelieve this is what put me on the right track. I took a metal rod, awelding rod, you know. I pushed it into that solidified force field, ifthat is what you'd call it ... although that doesn't describe it. Therod went in. Took a lot of pushing, but it went in. And though the fieldseemed entirely transparent, you couldn't see the rod, even after I hadpushed enough of it in so it should have come out the other side. It wasas if it hadn't entered the sphere of force at all. As if I were justtelescoping the rod and its density were increasing as I pushed, likepushing it back into itself, but that, of course, wouldn't have beenpossible."

  He paused and puffed at his pipe, his eyes fixed on the snowy peaks farin the purple distance. Manning waited.

  "Finally the rod came out," Russ went on. "Mind you, it came out, evenafter I would have sworn, if I had relied alone upon my eyes, that ithadn't entered the sphere at all. _But it came out ninety degreesremoved from its point of entry!_"

  "Wait a second," said Manning. "This doesn't check. Did you do it morethan once?"

  "I did it a dozen times and the results were the same each time. But youhaven't heard the half of it. When I pulled that rod out--yes, I couldpull it out--it was a good two inches shorter than when I had pushed itin. I couldn't believe that part of it. It was even harder to believethan that the rod should come out ninety degrees from its point ofentry. I measured the rods after that and made sure. Kept an accuraterecord. Every single one of them lost approximately two inches by beingshoved into the sphere. Every single one of them repeated the phenomenonof curving within the sphere to come out somewhere else than where I hadinserted them."

  * * * * *

  "Any explanation of it?" asked Manning, and now there was a cold chillof excitement in his voice.

  "Theories, no real explanations. Remember that you can't see the rodafter you push it into the sphere. It's just as if it isn't there.Well, maybe it isn't. You can't disturb anything within that sphere oryou'd change the sum of potential-kinetic-pressure energies within it.The sphere seems dedicated to that one thing ... it cannot change. Ifthe rod struck the imperm wire within the field, it would press the wiredown, would use up energy, decrease the potential energy. So the rodsimply had to miss it somehow. I believe it _moved into some higherplane of existence and went around_. And in doing that it had to turn somany corners, so many fourth-dimensional corners, that the length wasused up. Or maybe it was increased in density. I'm not sure. Perhaps noone will ever know."

  "Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?" demanded Manning. "I shouldhave been out here helping you. Maybe I wouldn't be much good, but Imight have helped."

  "You'll have your chance," Russ told him. "We're just starting. I wantedto be sure I had something before I troubled you. I tried other thingswith that first sphere. I found that metal pushed through the spherewill conduct an electrical current, which is pretty definite proof thatthe metal isn't within the sphere at all. Glass can be forced through itwithout breaking. Not flexible glass, but rods of plain old brittleglass. It turns without breaking, and it also loses some of its length.Water can be forced through a tube inserted in the sphere, but only whenterrific pressure is applied. What that proves I can't even begin toguess."

  "You said you experimented on the first sphere," said Manning. "Have youmade others?"

  Russ rose from his chair.

  "Come on in, Greg," he said, and there was a grin on his face. "I havesomething you'll have to see to appreciate."

  * * * * *

  The apparatus was heavier and larger than the first in which Russ hadcreated the sphere of energy. Fed by a powerful accumulator battery,five power leads were aimed at it, centered in the space between fourgreat copper blocks.

  Russ's hand went out to the switch that controlled the power. Suddenlythe power beams flamed, changed from a dull glow into an intense, almostintolerable brilliance. A dull grumble of power climbed up to a steadywail.

  The beams had changed color, were bluish now, the typical color ofionized air. They were just power beams, meeting at a common center, butsomehow they were queer, too, for though they were capable of slashingfar out into space, they were stopped dead. Their might was pouring intoa common center and going no farther. A splash of intensely glowinglight rested over them, then began to rotate slowly as a motor somewherehummed softly, cutting through the mad roar and rumble of power thatsurged through the laboratory.

  The glowing light was spinning more swiftly now. A rotating field wasbeing established. The power beams began to wink, falling and rising inintensity. The sphere seemed to grow, almost filling the space betweenthe copper blocks. It touched one and rebounded slightly toward another.It extended, increased slightly. A terrible screaming ripped through theroom, drowning out the titanic din as the spinning sphere came incontact with the copper blocks, as force and metal resulted in weirdfriction.

  With a shocking wrench the beams went dead, the scream cut off, the roarwas gone. A terrifying silence fell upon the room as soon as thesuddenly thunking relays opened automatically.

  * * * * *

  The sphere was gone! In its place was a tenuous refraction that toldwhere it had been. That and a thin layer of perfectly reflectivecopper ... colorless now, but Manning knew it was copper, fo
r itrepresented the continuation of the great copper blocks.

  His mind felt as if it were racing in neutral, getting nowhere. Withinthat sphere was the total energy that had been poured out by fivegigantic beams, turned on full, for almost a minute's time. Compressedenergy! Energy enough to blast these mountains down to the primal rockwere it released instantly. Energy trapped and held by virtue of somepeculiarity of that little borderline between Force Fields 348 and 349.

  Russ walked across the room to a small electric truck with rubbercaterpillar treads, driven by a bank of portable accumulators.Skillfully the scientist maneuvered it over to the other side of theroom, picked up a steel bar four inches in diameter and five feet long.Holding it by the handler's magnetic crane, he fixed it firmly in thearmlike jaws on the front of the machine, then moved the machine into aposition straddling the sphere of force.

  With smashing momentum the iron jaws thrust downward, driving the steelbar into the sphere. There was a groaning crash as the handler came to ahalt, shuddering, with only eight inches of the bar buried in thesphere. The stench of hot insulation filled the room while the electricmotor throbbed, the rubber treads creaked, the machine groaned andstrained, but the bar would go no farther.

  Russ shut off the machine and stood back.

  "That gives you an idea," he said grimly.

  "The trick now," Greg said, "is to break down the field."

  Without a word, Russ reached for the power controls. A sudden roar ofthunderous fury and the beams leaped at the sphere ... but this time thesphere did not materialize again. Again the wrench shuddered through thelaboratory, a wrench that seemed to distort space and time.

  Then, as abruptly as it had come, it was gone. But when it ended,something gigantic and incomprehensibly powerful seemed to rushsoundlessly by ... something that was felt and sensed. It was like agreat noiseless, breathless wind in the dead of night that rushed bythem and through them, all about them in space and died slowly away.

  But the vanished steel did not reappear with the disappearance of thesphere and the draining away of power. Almost grotesquely now, thehandler stood poised above the place where the sphere had been and inits jaws it held the bar. But the end of the bar, the eight inches thathad been within the sphere, was gone. It had been sliced off so sharplythat it left a highly reflective concave mirror on the severed surface.

  "Where is it?" demanded Manning. "In that higher dimension?"

  Russ shook his head. "You noticed that rushing sensation? That may havebeen the energy of matter rushing into some other space. It may be thekey to the energy of matter!"

  Gregory Manning stared at the bar. "I'm staying with you, Russ. I'mseeing this thing through."

  "I knew you would," said Russ.

  Triumph flamed briefly in Manning's eyes. "And when we finish, we'llhave something that will break Interplanetary. We'll smash theirstranglehold on the Solar System." He stopped and looked at Page. "Lord,Russ," he whispered, "do you realize what we'll have?"

  "I think I do, Greg," the scientist answered soberly. "Material energyengines. Power so cheap that you won't be able to give it away. Morepower than anybody could ever need."