Thin Air

by George Simpson

  "I checked my watch. The whole process had taken only two minutes. The acceleration had built up slowly then made a final rush toward the moment of complete invisibility. I looked over at Kurtnauer and was surprised to see his face covered with perspiration. He said something about communications...that Warrington's voice had slowed down because the field was approaching the speed of light. It meant we wouldn't be able to communicate. We wouldn't know what was happening to the men."

  "You didn't expect that?" Hammond asked.

  "No. Some things, I regret to say, slipped by us. We stared at the empty space in the water for almost fifteen minutes. The gain on our radio was wide open, but nothing came over. Not even static. Not even the hum of the field generator.

  "Kurtnauer grabbed my arm and said, 'Bring them back!'" Rinehart closed his eyes and frowned to himself. "Using remote radio control, I cut in the reversing generator, which automatically slowed the forward velocity. The field had to build up acceleration again to pull itself back the other way. In a few moments, the Sturman blinked back into view, at first a hazy transparency on the water, then gradually solidifying...."

  Rinehart rubbed both knees now and rocked slightly, back and forth, relating the story as though he had lived it over and over all these years. Hammond watched him and wondered how he could have survived all this and not come out twisted.

  "Prior to the experiment, we had agreed on a procedure for allowing latent effects to wear off. So from two thousand yards away, we waited for three hours, observing through high-powered binoculars. We could see the crewmen on the forward deck, some standing, some sitting or lying down, a few wandering around aimlessly. But we couldn't raise anyone" aboard by radio.

  "When the three hours were up, we revved engines and plunged toward the Sturman, Kurtnauer, Traben, Sartog, and I boarded her. We climbed to the main deck and went forward, stopping to stare at the men.

  "They were ranged around the forward deck, most of them in a dazed stupor, but some clutching their heads and sobbing.

  "We found Warrington on the navigating bridge, slumped in a corner, glassy-eyed, his limbs gone rubbery. We tried to coax him back to consciousness. There was a crewman nearby who tried to tell us what had happened. He spoke in a kind of garbled drawl. There was something wrong with his speech: his tongue wouldn't work properly. He managed to tell us that Warrington had collapsed at the height of the effect. He'd been watching the men through the bridge window, had seen them going in and out of visibility. It seems the effect was somewhat erratic until it reached its ultimate velocity, then everything became uniform, transparent, and then a blackness settled outside the field—

  "But the men were screaming and stumbling around. Everyone panicked when the decks started to vanish and they thought they were going to fall through into the sea. Seeing the men standing like islands in empty Space, Warrington must have simply blacked out from fear.

  "It was too much for Kurtnauer. He left the bridge. But Sartog—I'll never forget the look on his face—was whispering to his old friend Warrington, trying to reassure him." Rinehart shook his head. "We were all sick and scared just being on that ship. The overwhelming fear these men had experienced hung over the Sturman like an infectious disease...but there was worse to come."

  "Worse?" echoed Hammond.

  "The latent residual effects, incredible recurrences—"

  "What do you mean?"

  Rinehart stood up, reached for the teapot. He stood silently a moment, his hand resting on it, then he spoke as if he were reliving the worst horror of all.

  "Within forty-eight hours, the men were suffering short periods of invisibility again...and without the triggering impulse of the force field."

  Hammond stared at him. The man was piling one incredible incident on top of another.

  "I saw it happen to Warrington myself. Kurtnauer was with me, Warrington was lying on a hospital cot right about where you are, talking about what had happened in as calm a voice as he could muster...when he just seemed to fade from view. We saw his outline under the sheet and when he realized he'd become invisible again—and that it was uncontrolled—he started screaming."

  Rinehart looked at Hammond with remembered terror in his eyes. "It was horrible," he said. "This disembodied voice coming from an empty bed. He kept on screaming until Kurtnauer had the presence of mind to grab his body and hold on, to give him some contact. He felt Warrington's hands clutching at him, and gradually the man came back into sight.

  "But that was the end of him," said Rinehart. "His mind was gone."

  13

  Rinehart threw another log on the fire and Hammond poked it for him while the old man went to brew another pot of tea. The Siamese had lost some of his skittishness and even leaped up on the mantel to watch Hammond work with the fire. It crackled noisily and spread warmth around the room. One of the dogs came off his bed of magazines and padded over to lie in front of it.

  Hammond sat back in his chair and flipped the tape over in the Uher, reflecting on the volumes of information Rinehart was so freely supplying. He was full of questions, but he thought it would be better not to start badgering at this stage. Let the old man finish telling it his way.

  Rinehart came back with a new pot of tea and the same box of crackers he had first offered Hammond. Gnawing hunger got the best of him; Hammond ate and drank eagerly. Rinehart sat down and resumed his story.

  "We had to commit Warrington," he said. "And he wasn't the only one. At least four other crew members followed him into the asylum almost immediately."

  "Did they ever get out?" asked Hammond.

  Rinehart shook his head. "They all died there. Several other men committed suicide. They couldn't handle the recurring invisibility. Never knew when to expect it, how extensive it would be or how long it would last....A couple of them manifested even stranger effects, first becoming invisible, then de-molecularized...."

  "De-what?"

  "De-molecularized. Without the gravitational control of the field generator, the invisible molecules tended to drift apart. Basic structure was lost. And they were susceptible to molecular mixing."

  Again Rinehart was going too fast for him. "What caused the recurring invisibility?" Hammond asked.

  "My God, Hammond, if we knew that all our problems would have been solved. We never found out."

  Hammond spread his hands. "Then what is this molecular mixing—?"

  Rinehart fixed him with a cold stare. "It gave the men the occasional ability, if you could call it that, to walk through walls."

  Hammond straightened. His mouth opened.

  "In actual fact, it meant that the body could drift through solid substance driven only by residual forward velocity. The action even defied gravity. The de-materialized man would simply continue motion in the direction he had been traveling, uninhibited by solids in his path. If he was walking across a room, he would continue to move right through the walls. If he was coming downstairs, he could drift right through the floor. No control, no way of stopping it."

  Hammond was aghast. "How did the men re-materialize?"

  "The effect simply wore off after a while. It was like being in a trance. We had to let it run its course."

  "Is it possible some of the men might still be going through this today?"

  "Doubtful," said Rinehart, shaking his head, "although possible. We found that the rate of recurrence diminished with time. But for a year and a half, we had some terrible cases. Of the original crew, only five men were living when the war ended. One man died in the strangest manner. He was suffering repeated invisibility and molecular breakdown. Most of the time, he would drift out of his house and down the street until he re-materialized on a neighbor's lawn, shaking and screaming his head off. But one morning, his wife happened to be watching when he went sort of transparent, not completely invisible, and drifted through a wall. He didn't clear it in time. His body re-materialized...fused into the wall."

  Rinehart paused, then explained, "His molecules
had mixed with the wood and plaster. Half of him was protruding, the other half..."

  Hammond gaped. His stomach shriveled in disgust.

  "His wife called—hysterical," Rinehart continued. "Traben and I rushed right over. We found him still alive, screaming with pain. His vital organs were still functioning but he'd lost his wits. The parts that protruded were blue and distended. He was struggling in vain to free himself—"

  Rinehart's face sagged. "He died before we could help him, though God knows what we could have done." He lapsed into morbid silence for a long moment, then added, "His wife had to be committed. Just as Well, because I don't know how else we could have kept the lid on."

  Hammond was so shocked he could say nothing. This day would provide him with nightmares for the rest of his life.

  "I'd rather not discuss the side effects anymore," said Rinehart. "I'm sure you can see they're nothing but gruesome."

  "I understand. I don't particularly want to hear anymore. But what did Kurtnauer do about all this?"

  "He protested. Vigorously. To me, to Traben, to Sartog, to Frank Knox. Traben felt we could get the bugs ironed out and resume experimenting within a few months. But at that time, the worst of the effects hadn't yet appeared. As things got worse, Kurtnauer intensified his pressure on us. He was screaming that we stop and reconsider while Traben was pushing for improvements and secretly working on them alone. When Traben came to tell me what he was doing and showed me on paper the changes he had in mind, I could only feel that Kurtnauer was being unproductive. Traben and I went to Sartog, who backed us up.

  "Kurtnauer decided the only way he could help was to concentrate his efforts on minimizing the side effects. He left the field theory for Traben to pursue. You must understand what this meant: Kurtnauer was literally abandoning the work he had developed from scratch.

  "By early '44, Traben was ready to resume experiments on the Sturman. Sartog personally took command of the ship. It was his penance for Warrington.

  "By this time, we had coined terminology for the side effects. 'Going zero' meant becoming invisible. 'Getting locked out' meant staying invisible. The first time that happened was in March. The Sturman and her new crew went zero for thirty-five minutes—there was no communication with them whatsoever. We tried radar from the observer ship—the Sturman proved undetectable while invisible. It looked like a major success. When the ship was brought back, one man was missing: Sartog. He had gone zero and somehow become locked out.

  "Traben and I searched the Sturman from top to bottom. We couldn't find a trace of him. The engineering officer, who had been standing with him on the navigating bridge, had seen him release the dead-man switch at the height of invisibility. No one ever knew why, but we thought he had probably been trying to recreate his friend Warrington's movements. He was last seen drifting backwards on the bridge, almost transparent, with this horrified expression...until he faded completely away."

  Rinehart took a deep breath and sighed. "We brought the Sturman back to the Yard and put her under maximum security in a covered drydock. For days afterwards, teams of machinists explored every inch of her, looking .for something out of place. They found nothing. Kurtnauer was with them...all the time. He never said a word to us.

  "Then one of the volunteers of that experiment went zero in his hospital quarters and was locked out for three days. He was found when someone inadvertently stepped into a corner of the room...and touched his invisible body. The contact is what brought him back. The laying-on of hands. At first, only the part of him that was being touched came into view. The attending orderly grabbed more of him and gradually he returned to normal solidity.

  "He wasn't aware three days had passed. He thought he'd been gone only a few seconds. He had been in a state of invisible suspension. Unfortunately, he died a week later. This new side effect was ironically termed 'deadlock.'"

  "You never found Sartog?" asked Hammond.

  Rinehart shook his head. Hammond grunted, then relaxed a little. His whole body ached from Rinehart's story. He felt weak, as if he had been through it all himself.

  "There was a crewman named Martin," Hammond said. "Was he another case of deadlock?"

  Rinehart smiled grimly. "That was later. Much later. We'll get to it." He sipped his tea, continuing his story with his free hand upraised, gesturing with the stub fingers. "The side effects mushroomed out of that one incident until we had as many as from the first experiment. Kurtnauer demanded we put a halt to everything."

  "Forgive me," said Hammond, "but what took you so long to see his point?"

  "The war, Commander. We were still at the height of it on both fronts. The tide had turned in our favor, but there was always that pressing urgency. I'll admit I was of half| a mind to close up shop. But Frank Knox was still backing us and Traben was more insistent than ever that all we needed was more time and money. So I capitulated. But I insisted we bring in a fresh eye. We needed a replacement for Sartog, a new Naval coordinator. Traben recommended a man he knew very well: Captain Richard B. Steinaker. He was approved by Knox, and I saw no reason to look elsewhere, so Steinaker moved in. And he quickly determined that Kurtnauer was too close to the project and not daring enough.

  "Then, in April, Frank Knox died and was replaced as Secretary of the Navy by Forrestal, who proceeded to cut our materiel acquisition fund virtually in half. Traben pointed out to Steinaker that if we didn't get back on the track soon, the Manhattan Project would suck up all our funding." Rinehart laughed. "The s.o.b. even stole one of Kurtnauer's favorite arguments from the early days, claiming that Project Thin Air was potentially a much more humane weapon than the atomic bomb. Steinaker fell for it. Kurtnauer, in the meantime, was still working on the side effects. He came up with a partial solution: hypnosis."

  Hammond sat up again, struck with the realization that Kurtnauer in 1944 may himself have set the stage for Dr. McCarthy.

  "He recommended tailored treatment for each man in what amounted to brainwashing the experiences out of them. He started with the few men from the second experiment who hadn't already committed suicide or gone to the loony bin. The method was primitive but effective on nearly all of them. What he managed to get under control was not the side effects, but the fear of latent effects. Several of these men continued to have zero experiences, even lockouts. Those who didn't lived in constant fear of them: these were the ones he was most able to help."

  "Did that recharge everyone's enthusiasm?" asked Hammond.

  "Hah! Kurtnauer wasn't about to drop the ball there! He came straight to Steinaker and me and showed us what he'd accomplished. He insisted on more time to perfect this before we resumed experiments. Traben learned about it and turned it into a sort of war, playing both ends against the middle. He would tell Kurtnauer that there was a freeze on experiments, then he would run to Steinaker and tell him that Kurtnauer was interfering with the forward progress. He was out to strip Kurtnauer of his authority."

  "Ambitious fellow," commented Hammond. "Was he like that when you hired him?"

  "He grew with the job," Rinehart said dryly. "In January of 1945, another experiment was approved. Kurtnauer protested and threatened public disclosure. He was immediately asked to resign. He refused and endured pressure for months, forcing Thin Air to a standstill.

  "Then the war in Europe ended and the Allies located the German concentration camps. The shock was too much for Kurtnauer. He realized that relatives he hadn't heard from in years must have been destroyed in those camps. When he learned of the ghastly experiments performed by Nazi camp doctors on Jewish prisoners, he saw a glaring parallel between their misdeeds and his own supposedly legitimate activities....

  "He threw in the towel. He resigned from Thin Air and returned to the University of Chicago and ultimately moved to Israel...where he probably still is, as far as I know."

  "Why didn't you resign?" asked Hammond.

  Rinehart tried to seem casual. "Morally, it was a sore point. Politically, we were justified. Besi
des, it soon became a lost cause. Thin Air was shelved as the Manhattan Project took precedence. And by August of 1945, when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, there no longer seemed to be any need for an invisible Navy.

  "But Traben still saw a future in it, and somehow he convinced Steinaker. They kept it alive with the advent of the Cold War. I had my own problems. My office had expanded and I was handling other projects. 1947 was the first year of flying-saucer sightings. I was getting all the reports as a matter of course. And then I had an idea and went to the newly organized Department of Defense with it. In those days, everyone was speculating about what flying saucers really were: people in government circles were almost willing to believe they could be of Russian origin. I felt that whatever they were we should be developing something similar for ourselves. I felt it strongly enough to put everything else aside and lobby for it twenty-four hours a day.

  "I left Thin Air in the hands of Steinaker and Traben. They couldn't have done better with a blank check. In 1948, they secured the cooperation of Naval Air to conduct invisibility experiments with aircraft. The first ones were done with radio-controlled, pilotless planes. And they were enormously successful. The next logical step was to employ manned aircraft."

  Rinehart poured himself more tea. Hammond refused another cup: he was starting to feel water-logged and drowsy. It was too warm in Rinehart's house, almost like a sauna.

  "I should have stopped it then," Rinehart was saying, "but I had lost control. Traben had set up the whole thing with Naval Air himself and they trusted him. And I...I was well on the way to becoming a laughingstock because of my stand on flying saucers.

  "So it looked like it was going to be their greatest victory. They got a young pilot, Lt. Albert Sinclair, to go up in an F-80 Shooting Star in June of '48. He zeroed for twenty-five minutes. He was completely undetectable on radar and came down with no side effects. You £an imagine Traben's excitement. They grounded Sinclair and the plane for one year and watched for repercussions. Nothing. Then in July of the following year, they sent him "back up in the same plane—no field generator, no experiment—just a simple cross-country flight to see that nothing would go wrong. Steinaker went with him.