The Trojan Beam

by John Wyndham

  He sighed relievedly, and then turned to meet the Chinese soldiers who were advancing from cover, grinning and holding short swords.

  THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF THE 'WAKAMATSU'

  George Saltry would have liked to smile, but he had spent a number of years of his life in learning dissimu­lation. One did not smile when engaged in offi­cial deal­ings with men of high rank; it imme­diately roused all their suspi­cions and lessened their confi­dence. A facade of unrelieved stem dignity was required, even though every­one knew it was only a facade. Particularly, one did not smile at Japa­nese head­quarters.

  So it came about that George, as he waited in an ante­room for admis­sion to the presence of an impor­tant man, main­tained an expres­sion as unin­form­ative as that of the Japanese officers around him. But he was not un­aware of the thoughts passing behind their motion­less faces. He could feel their hosti­lity and he knew its causes — first, that he was a man with­out offi­cial rank and yet apparently un­ashamed of the fact; secondly, that he was a Euro­pean, and for all Euro­peans they felt a contempt mingled with mis­trust.

  In the half-hour he waited no one spoke. The Japa­nese scarcely moved. They sat gazing steadily before them as if in con­tem­pla­tion. It was, he thought, appro­priate, for where the Emperor is both military and divine, his officers must be his priests.

  At the other end, a door flanked by two sentries with fixed bayonets opened enough to admit a head. A secretary hurried across and exchanged a few low-toned words. He turned and came back. With a perfunctory bow, he informed George that the General was ready to see him.

  George was aware of the close scrutiny of three staff officers to whom he paid no atten­tion. Before the General's desk he bowed slightly and waited.

  General Kashai­hoto was a short man begin­ning to go bald. He lifted a round face deco­rated with a thin, dark drooping mous­tache and studied the Euro­pean face before him with a pair of bright, intelli­gent eyes. George, return­ing the gaze, could see behind the General's eyes a sugges­tion of reluc­tance and faint distaste, but he was used to that and no longer allowed it to disturb him.

  He knew that the military man dislikes the spy and the informer, but that he must use him. He knew, more­over, that that dislike arises from the uncer­tainty of the spy's status as much as from uncer­tainty of his loyalty. A secret agent to do good work must be partly in the confi­dence of his employ­ers and more in that of the other side, but, it is to the interest of the employers to keep that confi­dence down to the mini­mum.

  In a war between nations of the same stock, where a man of one nationality may pass as one of the other, it is not too difficult to find reliable agents, but in a racial war where each man of the alien race is an obvious suspect to the other side it is more difficult. One must either depend on the unsatis­factory method of bribing members of the enemy race and bribing them heavily, or one must employ the services of a third party whose interests are commer­cial only. It was as such an agent that George Saltry was employed at present. As a member of a neutral race his appearance did not iden­tify him with either cause. There were English­men helping the Japanese and there were English­men helping the Chinese. He could, if circum­spect, pass in either country as a friend.

  General Kashaihoto deplored this necessity for using foreign agents; one could appeal to nothing but their acquisi­tive­ness and one was never quite sure whether the enemy might not have made a higher bid. However, this man Saltry had a use­ful record and on this occa­sion it was not necessary to confide impor­tant secrets — merely a few occurrences which were being with­held from general public know­ledge. He said severely:

  “You should have reported yesterday.”

  “Yes,” George agreed.

  “Why did you not?”

  “Because my house was watched. It is an un­neces­sary risk to have me report here at all,” he added shortly.

  The General frowned. It was not a tone he liked or expected. He looked harder at the young man, but George Saltry knew better than to have his gaze borne down. He waited.

  One of the aides brought a note and the situ­ation was relieved. The General read it, gave instruct­ions and then turned back to George.

  “The Chinese have been using a new weapon,” he said.

  “So I understand,” George nodded.

  “You understand? And where did you hear it from?” demanded the General.

  George shrugged his shoulders.

  “These things leak out. It is my job to hear about them.”

  The General frowned. It was true that such was an agent's job, but one preferred it to be prac­tised on one side only.

  “What have you heard?” he said.

  George admitted to know­ing no details. He had heard only rumours, but the kind of rumours which obviously had something behind them. He had tried to learn more but with­out success. The General looked more pleased.

  “You had heard nothing from the other side?” he asked.

  George shook his head.

  “No,” he said truth­fully. “That has been puzzling me. If it really is impor­tant, the secret was unusually well kept.”

  “It's important, all right,” he was assured.

  General Kashai­hoto described several of the occa­sions when the weapon had been employed.

  The first recorded instance had been during a tank attack at the beginning of December. Ten heavy tanks and about a score of smaller ones had inex­plic­ably gone out of control. All of them had deviated precisely the same degree of the south of their planned course and made for a river. Sub­sequently, the Chinese had pulled them out of the river and were now using them — all save one which was intelli­gently destroyed by its commander — against their former owners.

  On another occasion an infantry attack had been completely dis­orga­nized. The one or two survivors had told an extraordinary tale. Their rifles and bayo­nets had been suddenly wrenched from their hands, and their steel helmets from their heads. The helmets had rolled away ahead just as though the level ground were sloping down­hill. The rifles had clattered a few feet and then come to rest. When they picked them up they had to hold them back as against a strong pull. It was impossible to aim them or wield them for bayonet work. In the face of a counter-attack the men could not resist, and the pull was too strong for them to bring them back, so they had to be aban­doned.

  “What weapons did the Chinese carry in the counter­attack?” George wanted to know.

  But the General could not tell him that. Those who had been close enough to see had not been those who returned.

  Another disaster, the General went on, had been the fate of the cruiser Waka­matsu. The Waka­matsu had been on patrol in the Hsing-hwa Sound in the province of Fu-Kien. She was cruising at about ten knots some three miles off shore but in sheltered waters on a perfectly calm day when she suddenly began to make great lee­way on the shore side.

  Course was altered at once and speed increased, but the drift shore­ward continued. More speed made little difference. The magnetic compass was jammed, the entire elec­trical system of the ship includ­ing the wire­less was out of order. Before long she was pointed out to sea with her engines going full ahead, but even her whole power was not enough to break the hold of what­ever was pulling, she was still going astern at a rate of some­thing between a quarter and a half knot.

  Once the hold seemed to be broken. The Wakamatsu shuddered all through and leaped forward, but the force gripped again almost imme­diately and continued to hold. The commander ordered a bombard­ment of the shore astern. This was accom­plished with diffi­culty, for the pull on the shells was immense, making them extremely diffi­cult to handle; but with­out result, The pull on the cruiser conti­nued. As she neared the shore her propellers were smashed on sub­merged rocks, and imme­diately orders were given to scuttle her rather than surrender.

  There were, the General implied, more instances that he could give, but he did not proceed with them. I
nstead, he looked up at the young man sharply.

  “Well, what do you make of it?” he said, watching him closely.

  “Sounds to me like some direct­ional magnetic force,” George told him. “But what I should like to know is what happened to the shells the Waka­matsu fired. If it is magnetic, each of them should have made a direct hit.”

  The General approved. “That's observant of you,” he said. “We also think it is mag­netic, but we fancy it is capable of being reduced to a narrow field. If that is so, the trajec­tory of the shells would carry them out of the field a moment after they left the muzzles — it would, in fact, have practi­cally no effect at all on them at muzzle velocity. In any case, the observers on the ship did not notice a deflec­tion of aim.”

  “I see,” said George thought­fully. “Yes, a narrow beam would explain that. It sounds,” he added, “as though you are up against some­thing pretty difficult to tackle.”

  The General did not seem unduly depressed. He replied with a touch of fata­lism:

  “All new weapons are diffi­cult to tackle — at first. But there's always a way. More­over, this thing is clearly of limited and pri­marily defen­sive use. How­ever, we must learn its power and its limita­tions before we can consider methods of defence.”

  “And it is my job to find out for you, I suppose?”

  General Kashai­hoto nodded and fixed George with his bright eyes again.

  “That is so, Mr. Saltry. We want to know as much as you can find out, and as soon as possible.”

  “All right. You shall,” said George.

  THE BEAM PROJECTOR

  George Saltry, agent for Top-Notch Tinned Foods, disappeared from Shanghai on one of his periodic trips. He was generally under­stood to be negotia­ting new agencies in the Philip­pines or Celebes. He had been seen off on the Shanghai-Hong-Kong boat and his name was on the passenger list of another from Hong-Kong to Manila. In fact, there was actually a passenger who responded to that name and looked passably like the George Saltry who had left Shanghai.

  Meanwhile a spectacled and earnest young medical mission­ary was travel­ling north by train through Kwang-Tung province. His name was George White, and he was conducting a tour of personal inspection on behalf of the Charleston and Savannah Oriental Endeavour League. He was untidy, a little bewildered, a little short-sighted and he talked with the soft, pleasant speech of South Carolina. In his pocket was an American passport and he carried nothing which would connect him with Mr. Saltry of London.

  George rather enjoyed the personality of Mr. White save when it led him into tech­nical discus­sions of social wel­fare with other phi­lan­thropic exiles.

  After a five-hundred-mile journey, he left the train at Chang-sha. A few hours later he sat in a plane headed north-west, looking over the waters of the Tung-ting-hu which appeared more like an inland sea than a lake. A few hours more, and he was able to see the rushing yellow waters of the great Yangtze. Shortly before night fell, they landed at the great flying-field of Kwei-chow in Hu-Peh.

  The next morning Mr. George White made appli­cation in proper form to the mili­tary gover­nor for per­mission to travel in Hu-Peh. The Governor considered a personal inter­view desirable and Mr. White presented him­self. The former waited until the door had closed behind his secre­tary before he remarked:

  “How do you do, George?”

  He rose, came round the desk and extended his hand. George took it. He replied in English and his voice had lost its southern accent.

  “How are you, Li? You're looking well.”

  Pang Li was a few years older than he, but they had been con­tem­porary at Oxford. Facing him now, George thought, not for the first time, how much better the Chinese was suited by his long silk coat than by a mili­tary uni­form, or by the suits he had worn in England.

  Pang Li waved his visitor to a chair with a decanter and cigarettes on a small table beside it. He himself returned to his seat behind the desk.

  “We have been expecting you before this,” he said. The tone was one of inquiry. George answered as to a question.

  “And I expected to be here sooner, Li. To tell you the truth, I was beginning to be a bit worried at their not sending me.”

  The Chinese looked across the desk seriously.

  “They are losing faith in you?”

  “I don't know. I don't think they have a great deal to lose. But I am still very use­ful to them. However, I suppose it is natural for them to put it to their most reliable men first.”

  Pang Li nodded. “I expect you are right. You are not the first to come after it, George. There have been several in the last week or two.”

  “After what?” George inquired, innocently.

  “My dear George” — Li smiled — “there is only one thing to bring you all this way at this time.”

  “They didn't get it?”

  “No. They got bullets.”

  There was a pause. George broke it by asking:

  “What is this thing Li? A magnetic force?”

  The Chinese nodded again.

  “That is so. It is a controlled magnetic beam. An amazing discovery. Wu-Chin-tan, who used to be Professor of Physics at Chang-Chow, worked it out, and Ho Tang-hsi applied it.”

  “Entirely a Chinese discovery?” said George.

  A faint shadow of impa­tience showed for a moment on Pang Li's face and then vanished.

  “Unlikely as it may seem — a Chinese discovery,” he said.

  George flushed at the tone.

  “I didn't mean that, Li.”

  Li looked at him.

  “You implied it, my friend. Confess that to your­self. You Euro­peans and Ameri­cans are always sur­prised when a discovery of prac­tical use is made in the East. You feel that mech­anical invent­ion is the mono­poly of the West — and yet we have made many dis­coveries in the past, gun­powder and the compass among them. This magnetic beam is our dis­covery, and, at present our exclu­sive know­ledge.”

  “It seems to me that it is of limited use in war,” George told him, “that is, unless you can reverse it and repel to an equal extent. It will mean a greater use of non-ferrous metals by an enemy, of course, but what else?”

  “It cannot be used repul­sively,” Pang Li admitted. “Perhaps you are right in think­ing it a minor and not a great weapon. If it could be made repellant it would indeed be more use­ful. But you take a short view in think­ing of it only as a weapon. When this war is over and the Japa­nese barba­rians are driven back to their islands the true value of the beam will be seen all over the world, Wu-Chin-tan's name will be more famous than that of Edison.”

  “How?” George wanted to know.

  Pang Li shrugged.

  “Who can tell?” he replied. “But I can suggest just one application of it which will alter trans­port in many countries. The beam is highly efficient — that is to say it requires a small consumption of fuel for the power it produces —also, for lower power it can be made very compact. I fore­see that if iron sections were set in the roads at, say, 100 yards inter­vals, a vehicle gene­rating the beam would be able to pull itself along by means of them with great eco­nomy. All the power at present lost in trans­mission would be gained and the beam would be far cheaper to gene­rate than the present rotary motion. I can think, too, of many ways in which it could be used to simplify haulage and hand­ling of goods. There are appli­ca­tions, too, to the docking of ships, and the handling of aero­planes on the ground. But those are matters for the techni­cians. I know only that where a cheap source of power is available it will in some way or other be used.”

  “I see.” George was less interested in the future develop­ments of the beam than in its present use. He turned the con­ver­sa­tion back. “You know why I am here, Li. What do you want me to tell them?”

  “How much did they ask you to find out?”

  “Everything, naturally.”

  “They would like to make beam pro­jec­tors for them­selves
if they could?”

  “Of course.”

  Pang Li appeared to consider.

  “I will show you one in action,” he said, and struck a gong to summon his secre­tary.

  The machine was not impres­sive. To begin with, there was little to see. The gene­ra­tor was enclosed in a cubical brass box some twenty inches high. This was clamped by braces, which seemed of absurdly dispro­por­tion­ate strength, to a wall of concrete six feet thick.

  “The pull on the machine is of course equal to the pull on the object,” Pang Li explained, “and the moving of heavy objects there­fore necessi­tates a firm anchorage. The beam,” he added, “passes through the wall which is thus made to serve the double purpose of holding back the machine and of protec­ting it.”

  Together they walked fifty yards or more at right angles to the beam's path. The Chinese carried a control box with wires reach­ing back to the gene­rator. They stopped and he pointed to a heap of scrap iron a quarter of a mile away over the barren ground.

  “Watch,” he said.

  He tipped over a switch and advanced a rheostat slightly. In the distance, the pile of scrap stirred slightly, and a faint squeak of rusty pieces rubbing together floated across the open ground.

  “A little more power,” said Pang Li, turning the knob.

  The heap seemed to flatten out. The lighter pieces, old cans and rusty mud­guards began to roll towards the wall. Li gave still more power, and now all the pieces were in motion, scurrying and tumbling over the ground for all the world as if they were blown by a gale. Suddenly, half­way to the gene­rator, they were stopped.

  “Now,” said Li. “Full power.”

  He turned the control as he spoke. Instant­aneously the scrap iron leapt for­ward. It flew as though it had been fired from a gun. It hit the wall with a shattering crash and remained glued to the concrete face.

  The two walked back.

  “Try to pull it away,” Li suggested.

  George laid hold of an old cooking pot and put his full weight behind the tug he gave. It wrenched his arm, but the pot did not move.