A Century of Science Fiction

by Damon Knight

  “Yes, Hulser! I know all that! But what’s this have to do with your wonderful idea?”

  Hulser took a deep breath. “Sir, I can build a projector on the principle of the L.D. suits that will produce an artificial substitution reaction in any explosive. I’m sure I can!” “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, sir. For example, I could set up such a reaction in Trinox that would produce fluorine and ionized hydrogen—

  in minute quantities, of course, but sufficient that any nearby field source would detonate—”

  “How would you make sure there was such a field in the enemy’s storage area?”

  “Sir! Everybody wears L.D. shields of one kind or another! They’re field generators. Or an internal-combustion motor . . . or . . . or just anything! If you have an explosive mixture collapsing from one system into another in the presence of fluorine and hydrogen—” he shrugged—“it’d explode if you looked cross-eyed at it!”

  Lipari cleared his throat. “I see.” Again he leaned back against the wall. The beginnings of an eyestrain headache tugged at his temples. Now the put-up-or-shut-up, he thought. He said, “How do we build this wonderful projector, Corporal?”

  “Sir, I’ll have to sit down with some machinists and some E-techs and—”

  “Corporal, I’ll decide who sits down with whom among my men. Now, I’ll tell you what you do. You just draw up the specifications for your projector and leave them with me. I’ll see that they get into the proper hands through channels.”

  “Sir, it’s not that simple. I have all of the specs in my head now, yes, but in anything like this you have to work out bugs that—”

  “We have plenty of technical experts who can do that,” said Lipari. And he thought, Why doesn’t he give up? I gave him the chance to duck out gracefully! Scribble something on some paper, give it to me. That’s the end of it!

  “But, sir—”

  “Corporal! My orderly will give you paper and pencil. You just—r”

  “Sir! It can’t be done that way!”

  Lipari rubbed his forehead. “Corporal Hulser, I am giving you an order. You will sit down and produce the plans and specifications for your projector. You will do it now.”

  Hulser tasted a sourness in his mouth. He swallowed. And that’s the last we’d ever hear of Corporal Larry Hulser, he thought. Tony the Lip would get the credit.

  He said, “Sir, after you submit my plans, what would you do if someone asked, for example, how the polar molecules of—”

  “You will explain all of these things in your outline. Do I make myself clear, Corporal?”

  “Sir, it would take me six months to produce plans that ' could anticipate every—”

  “You’re stalling, Corporal!” Major Lipari pushed himself forward, came to his feet. He lowered his voice. “Let’s face it, Hulser. You’re faking! I know it. You know it. You just had a bellyful of war and you decided you wanted out.” Hulser shook his head from side to side.

  “It’s not that simple, Corporal. Now, I’ve shown you in every way I can that I understand this, that I’m willing to—” “Begging the Major’s pardon, but—”

  “You will do one of two things, Corporal Hulser. You either produce the diagrams, sketches or whatever to prove that you do have a worthy idea or you will go back to your unit. I’m done fooling with you!”

  “Sir, don’t you under—”

  “I could have you shot under the Articles of War!”

  And Lipari thought, That’s what he needs—a good shock! Bitter frustration almost overwhelmed Hulser. He felt the same kind of anger that had goaded him to attack Sergeant Chamberlain. “Major, enough people know about my idea by now that at least some of them would wonder if you hadn’t shot the goose that laid the golden egg!”

  Lipari’s headache was full-blown now. He pushed his face close to Hulser’s. “I have some alternatives to a firing squad, Corporal!”

  Hulser returned Lipari’s angry glare. “It has occurred to me, sir, that this project would suddenly become ‘our’ project, and then ‘you*’ project, and somewhere along the line a mere corporal would get lost!”

  Lipari’s mouth worked wordlessly. Presently he said, “That did it, Hulser! I’m holding you for a general court! There’s one thing I can do without cooking any goose but yours!”

  And that ends the matter as far as I’m concerned, thought Lipari. What a day!

  He turned toward the door of his dugout. “Sergeant!”

  The door opened to admit Chamberlain’s beanpole figure. He crossed the room, came to attention before Lipari, saluted. “Sir?”

  “This man is under arrest, Sergeant,” said Lipari. “Take him back to area headquarters under guard and have him held for a general court. On your way out send in my orderly.”

  Chamberlain saluted. “Yes, sir.” He turned, took Hulser’s arm. “Come along, Hulser.”

  Lipari turned away, groped on a corner shelf for his aspirin. He heard the door open and close behind him. And it was not until this moment that he asked himself, Could that crackpot actually have had a workable idea? He found the aspirin, shrugged the thought away. Fantastic!

  Hulser sat on an iron cot with his head in his hands. The cell walls around him were flat, riveted steel. It was a space exactly the length of the cot, twice as wide as the cot. At his left, next to the foot of the bed, was a barred door. To his right, at the other end of the floor space, were a folding washbasin with water closet under. The cell smelled foul despite an overriding stink of disinfectant.

  Why don’t they get it over with? he asked himself. Three days of this madhouse! How long are they—

  The cell door rattled.

  Hulser looked up. A wizened figure in a colonel’s uniform stood on the other side of the bars. He was a tiny man, grayhaired, eyes like a curious bird, a dried parchment skin. In the proper costume he would have looked like a medieval sorcerer.

  A youthful M.P. sergeant stepped into view, unlocked the door, stood aside. The colonel entered the cell.

  “Well, well,” he said.

  Hulser came to his feet, saluted.

  “Will you be needing me, sir?” asked the M.P. sergeant. “Eh?” The colonel turned. “Oh. No, Sergeant. Just leave that door open and—”

  “But, sir—”

  “Nobody could get out of this cell block, could they, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir. But—”

  “Then just leave the door open and run along.”

  “Yes, sir.” The sergeant saluted, frowned, turned away. His footsteps echoed down the metal floor of the corridor.

  The colonel turned back to Hulser. “So you’re the young man with the bright idea.”

  Hulser cleared his throat. “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel glanced once around the cell. “I’m Colonel Page of General Savage’s staff. Chemical warfare.”

  Hulser nodded.

  “The General’s adjutant suggested that I come over and talk to you,” said Page. “He thought a chemist might—”

  “Page!” said Hulser. “You’re not the Dr. Edmond Page who did the work on pseudolithium?”

  The colonel’s face broke into a pleased smile. “Why, yes, I am.”

  “I read everything about your work that I could get my hands on,” said Hulser. “It struck me that if you’d just . . His voice trailed off.

  “Do go on,” said Page.

  Hulser swallowed. “Well, if you’d just moved from organic chemistry into inorganic . . .” He shrugged.

  “I might have induced direct chemical rather than organic reactions?” asked Page.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That thought didn’t occur to me until I was on my way over here,” said Page. He gestured toward the cot “Do sit down.”

  Hulser slumped back to the cot.

  Page looked around, finally squeezed past Hulser’s knees, sat down on the lid of the water closet “Now, let’s find out just what your idea is.”

  Hulser stared at his hands.

/>   “I’ve discussed this with the General,” said Page. “We feel that you may know what you’re talking about. We would deeply appreciate a complete explanation.”

  “What do I have to lose?” asked Hulser.

  “You may have reason for feeling bitter,” said Page. “But after reading the charges against you I would say that you’ve been at least partly responsible for your present situation.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “Now tell me exactly how you propose to detonate munitions at a distance—this projector you’ve talked about.”

  Hulser took a deep breath. This is a chemist, he thought. Maybe I can convince him. He looked up at Page, began explaining.

  Presently the colonel interrupted. “But it takes enormous amounts of energy to change the atomic—”

  “I’m not talking about changing atomic structure in that sense, sir. Don’t you see it? I merely set up an artificial condition as though a catalyst were present. A pseudo catalyst. And this brings out of the static mixture substances that are already there: ionized hydrogen from moisture—fluorine from the actual components in the case of Trinox. White phosphorus from Ditrate. Nitric oxide and rhombic sulfur from common gunpower.”

  Page wet his lips with his tongue. “But what makes you think that, in a nonorganic system, the presence of the pseudo catalyst—” He shook his head. “Of course! How stupid of me! You’d first get a polar reaction—just as I did with pseudolithium. And that would be the first step into—” His eyes widened and he stared at Hulser. “My dear boy, I believe you’ve opened an entirely new field in nonorganic chemistry!”

  “Do you see it, sir?”

  “Of course I see it!” Page got to his feet. “You’d be creating an artificial radical with unstable perimeter. The presence of the slightest bit of moisture in that perimeter would give you your ionized hydrogen and—” he clapped his hands like a small boy in glee—“kapowie!”

  Hulser smiled.

  Page looked down at him. “Corporal, I do believe your projector might work. I confess that I don’t understand about field lattices and these other electronic matters, but you apparently do.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How did you ever stumble onto this?” asked Page.

  “I was thinking about the lattice effect in our Life Detector systems, when suddenly there it was: the complete idea!”

  Page nodded. “It was one of those things that had to remain dormant until the precisely proper set of circumstances.” Page squeezed past Hulser’s knees. “No, no. Stay right there. I’m going to get up a meeting with Colonel Allen-by of the L.D. section, and I’ll get in someone with more of a mechanical bent—probably Captain Stevens.” He nodded. “Now, Corporal, you just stay right here until—” His glance darted around the cell, and he laughed nervously. “Don’t you worry, young man. We’ll have you out of here in a few hours.”

  Hulser was to look back on the five weeks of the first phase in “Operation Big Boom” as a time of hectic unreality. Corps ordered the project developed in General Savage’s reserve area after a set of preliminary plans had been shipped outside. The thinking was that there’d be less chance of a security leak that close to a combat zone, and that the vast barrens of the reserve area offered better opportunity for a site free of things that could detonate mysteriously and lead to unwanted questions.

  But Corps was taking no chances. They ringed the area with special detachments of M.P.s. Recording specialists moved in on the project, copied everything for shipment stateside.

  They chose an open tableland well away from their own munitions for the crucial test. It was a barren, windy place: gray rocks poking up from frozen earth. The long black worm of a power cable stretched away into the distance behind the test shelter.

  A weasel delivered Hulser and Page to the test site. The projector box sat on the seat between them. It was housed in a green container two feet square and four feet long. A glass tube protruded from one end. A power connection, sealed and with a red “Do not connect” sign, centered the opposite end. A tripod mounting occupied one side at the balance point. .

  The morning was cold and clear with a brittle snap to the air. The sky had a deep-cobalt quality, almost varnished in its intensity.

  About fifty people were gathered for the test. They were strung out through the shelter—a long shed open along one side. An empty tripod stood near the open side and almost in the center. On both sides of the tripod technicians sat before recording instruments. Small black wires trailed away ahead of them toward an ebony mound almost a mile from the shed, and directly opposite the open side.

  General Savage already was on the scene, talking with a stranger who had arrived that morning under an impressive air cover. The stranger had worn civilian clothes. Now he was encased in an issue parka and snow pants. He didn’t look or act like a civilian. And it was noted that General Savage addressed him as “sir.”

  The General was a brusque, thick-bodied man with the overbearing confidence of someone secure in his own ability. His face held a thick-nosed, square-jawed, bulldog look. In fatigues without insignia he could have been mistaken for a sergeant. He looked the way a hard, old-line sergeant is expected to look. General Savage’s men called him “Me Tarzan,” mainly because he took snow baths, mother naked, in subzero weather.

  A white-helmeted security guard ringed the inside of the test shed. Hulser noted that they wore no side arms, carried no weapons except hand-held bayonets. He found himself thinking that he would not have been surprised to see them carrying crossbows.

  General Savage waved to Page as the colonel and Hulser entered the shed. Colonel Page returned the gesture, stopped before a smooth-cheeked lieutenant near the tripod.

  “Lieutenant,” said Page, “have all explosives except the test stack been removed from the area?”

  The lieutenant froze to ramrod attention, saluted. “Yes, sir, Colonel.”

  Page took a cigarette from his pocket. “Let me have your cigarette lighter, please, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.” The lieutenant fumbled in a pocket, withdrew a chrome lighter, handed it to Page.

  Colonel Page took the lighter in his hand, looked at it for a moment, hurled both lighter and cigarette out into the snow. The lighter landed about sixty feet away.

  The lieutenant paled, then blushed.

  The colonel said, “Every cigarette lighter, every match. And check with everyone to see that they took those special pills at least four hours ago. We don’t want any internal combustion without a motor around it.”

  The lieutenant looked distraught. “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Lieutenant, stop the last weasel and have the driver wait to cart the stuff you collect out of our area.”

  “Yes, sir.” The lieutenant hurried away.

  Page turned back to Hulser, who had mounted the projector on its tripod, now stood beside it.

  “All ready, sir,” said Hulser. “Shall I connect the cable?”

  “What do you think?” asked Page.

  “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

  “O.K. Connect it, then stand by with the switch in your hands.”

  Hulser turned to comply. And now, as the moment of the critical test approached, he felt his legs begin to tremble. He felt sure that everyone could see his nervousness.

  A tense stillness came over the people in the shed.

  General Savage and his visitor approached. The General was explaining the theory of the projector. His visitor nodded.

  Seen close up, the other man gave the same impression of hard competence that radiated from General Savage—only more competent, harder. His cheekbones were like two ridges of tan rock beneath cavernous sockets, brooding dark eyes.

  General Savage pointed to the black mound of explosives in the distance. “We have instruments in there with the explosives, sir. The wires connect them with our recorders here in the shed. We have several types of explosives to be tested, including kerosene, gasoline, engine oil. Everything we could lay o
ur hands on except atomics. But if these things blow, then we’ll know the projector also will work on atomics.”

  The visitor spoke, and his voice came out with a quality like a stick dragged through gravel. “It was explained to me that—the theory being correct—this projector will work on any petroleum fuel, including coal.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Savage. “It is supposed to ignite coal. We have a few lumps in a sack to one side. You can’t see it because of the snow. But our instruments will tell us which of these things are affected—” he glanced at Hulser—“if any.”

  Colonel Page returned from checking the recording instruments.

  Savage turned to the colonel. “Are we ready, Ed?”

  “Yes, General.” He glanced at Hulser, nodded. “Let’s go, Larry. Give it power.”

  Hulser depressed the switch in his hand, involuntarily closed his eyes, then snapped them open and stared at the distant explosives.

  A low humming arose from the projector.

  Page spoke to the General. “It’ll take a little time for the effect to build u-”

  As he started to say “up” the mound of explosives went up in a giant roaring and rumbling. Colonel Page was left staring at the explosion, his mouth shaped to say “p.”

  Steam and dust hid the place where the explosives had been.

  The gravel voice of the visitor spoke behind Hulser. “Well, there goes the whole shooting match, General. And I do mean shooting!”

  “It’s what we were afraid of, sir,” said Savage. “But there’s no help for it now.” He sounded bitter.

  Hulser was struck by the bitterness in both voices. He turned, became conscious that the lieutenant whom Page had reprimanded was beating at a flaming breast pocket, face livid. The people around him were laughing, trying to help.

  Page had hurried along the line of recorders, was checking each one.

  The significance of the lieutenant’s antics suddenly hit Hulser. Matches! He forgot his spare matches after losing his cigarette lighter! Hulser glanced to where the colonel had thrown the lighter, saw a black patch in the snow.