Читать книгу Arcot, Morey & Wade (Sci-Fi Classics) - John W. Campbell - Страница 10

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Again Morey and Arcot were looking at the great Jersey aerodrome, out on the fields that had been broad marshes centuries before. Now they had been filled in, and stretched for miles, a great landing field, close to the great city across the river.

The men in the car above were watching the field, hanging inert, a point of glistening metal, high in the deep velvet of the purple sky, for fifteen miles of air separated them from the Transcontinental machine below. Now they saw through their field glasses that the great plane was lumbering slowly across the field, gaining momentum as it headed westward into the breeze. Then it seemed to be barely clearing the great skyscrapers that towered twenty-four hundred feet into the air, arching over four or five city blocks. From this height they were toys made of colored paper, soft colors glistening in the hot noon sunlight, and around and about them wove lines of flashing, moving helicopters, the individual lost in the mass of the million or so swiftly moving machines. Only the higher, steadily moving levels of traffic were visible to them.

“Just look at that traffic! Thousands and thousands coming back into the city after going home to lunch—and every day the number of helicopters is increasing! If it hadn't been for your invention of this machine, conditions would soon be impossible. The airblast in the cities is unbearable now, and getting worse all the time. Many machines can't get enough power to hold themselves up at the middle levels; there is a down current over one hundred miles an hour at the 400-foot level in downtown New York. It takes a racer to climb fast there!

“If it were not for gyroscopic stabilizers, they could never live in that huge airpocket. I have to drive in through there. I'm always afraid that somebody with an old worn-out bus will have stabilizer failure and will really smash things.” Morey was a skillful pilot, and realized, as few others did, the dangers of that downward airblast that the countless whirring blades maintained in a constant roar of air. The office buildings now had double walls, with thick layers of sound absorbing materials, to stop the roar of the cyclonic blast that continued almost unabated twelve hours a day.

“Oh, I don't know about that, Morey,” replied Arcot. “This thing has some drawbacks. Remember that if we had about ten million of these machines hung in the air of New York City, there would be a noticeable drop in the temperature. We'd probably have an Arctic climate year in and year out. You know, though, how unbearably hot it gets in the city by noon, even on the coldest winter days, due to the heating effect of the air friction of all those thousands of blades. I have known the temperature of the air to go up fifty degrees. There probably will have to be a sort of balance between the two types of machines. It will be a terrific economic problem, but at the same time it will solve the difficulties of the great companies who have been fermenting grain residues for alcohol. The castor bean growers are also going to bring down their prices a lot when this machine kills the market. They will also be more anxious to extract the carbon from the cornstalks for reducing ores of iron and of other metals.”

As the ship flew high above the Transcontinental plane, the men discussed the economic values of the different applications of Arcot's discoveries from the huge power stations they could make, to the cooling and ventilating of houses.

“Dick, you mentioned the cooling effect on New York City; with the millions on millions of these machines that there will be, with huge power plants, with a thousand other different applications in use, won't the terrific drain of energy from the air cause the whole world to become a little cooler?” asked Fuller.

“I doubt it, Bob,” said Arcot slowly. “I've thought of that myself. Remember that most of the energy we use eventually ends up as heat anyway. And just remember the decillions of ergs of energy that the sun is giving off! True, we only get an infinitesimal portion of that energy—but what we do get is more than enough for us. Power houses can be established very conveniently in the tropics, where they will cool the air, and the energy can be used to refine metals. That means that the surplus heat of the tropics will find a use. Weather control will also be possible by the direction-control of great winds. We could set huge director tubes on the tops of mountains, and blow the winds in whatever direction best suited us. Not the blown wind itself, but the vast volume of air it carried with it, would be able to cool the temperate zones in the summer from the cold of the poles, and warm it in winter with the heat of the tropics.”

After a thoughtful silence, Arcot continued, “And there is another thing it may make possible in the future—a thing that may be hard to accept as a commercial proposition. We have a practically inexhaustible source of energy now, but we have no sources of minerals that will last indefinitely. Copper is becoming more and more rare. Had it not been for the discoveries of the great copper fields of the Sahara and in Alaska, we wouldn't have any now. Platinum is exhausted, and even iron is becoming more and more valuable. We are facing a shortage of metals. Do you realize that within the next two centuries we will be unable to maintain this civilization unless we get new sources of certain basic raw materials?

“But we have one other chance now. The solution is—there are nine planets in this solar system! Neptune and Uranus are each far vaster than Earth; they are utterly impossible for life as we know it, but a small colony might be established there to refine metals for the distant Earth. We might be able to build domed and sealed cities. But first we could try the nearer planets—Mars, Venus, or some satellites such as our Moon. I certainly hope that this machine will make it possible.”

For some time they sat in silence as they sped along, high above the green plains of Indiana. Chicago lay like some tremendous jewel far off on the horizon to the right and ahead. Five miles below them the huge bulk of the Transcontinental plane seemed a toy as it swung slowly across the fields—actually traveling over six hundred miles an hour. At last Morey spoke.

“You're right, Arcot. We'll have to think of the interplanetary aspects of this some day. Oh, there's Chicago! We'd better start the vacuum gas protector. And the radar. We may soon see some action.”

The three men immediately forgot the somewhat distant danger of the metal shortage. There were a number of adjustments to be made, and these were quickly completed, while the machine forged evenly, steadily ahead. The generator was adjusted to maximum efficiency, and the various tubes were tested separately, for though they were all new, and each good for twenty-five thousand hours, it would be inconvenient, to say the least, if one failed while they were in action. Each tested perfect; and they knew from the smooth functioning of the various relays that governed the generator, as the loads on it varied, that it must be working perfectly, at something less than one-half maximum rating.

Steadily they flew on, waiting tensely for the first sign of a glow from the tiny neon tube indicator on the panel before Morey.

“This looks familiar, Dick,” said Morey, looking about at the fields and the low line of the blue mountains far off on the western horizon. “I think it was about here that we took our little nap in the 'Flying Wheel chair', as the papers called it. It would be about here th—Look! It is about here! Get ready for action, Fuller. You're taking the machine gun, I'll work the invisibility disrupter, and Arcot will run the ship. Let's go!”

On the board before him the tiny neon tube flickered dully, glowed briefly like a piece of red-hot iron, then went out. In a moment it was glowing again, and then quickly its brilliance mounted till it was a line of crimson. Morey snapped the switch from the general radar to the beam receiver, that he might locate the machine exactly. It was fully a minute before the neon tube flashed into life once more. The pirate was flying just ahead of the big plane, very likely gassing them. All around him were the Air Guardsmen, unaware that the enemy was so near. As the disrupter beam could be projected only about a mile, they would have to dive down on the enemy at once; an instant later the great plane beneath them seemed to be rushing upward at a terrific speed.

The two radar beams were kept focused constantly on the Pirate's craft. When they were about two miles from the two planes, the neon tube blazed brilliantly with a clash of opposing energy. The Pirate was trying to maintain his invisibility, while the rapidly growing strength of the machine above strove to batter it down. In moments the ammeter connected with the disrupter beam began to rise so rapidly that Morey watched it with some concern. Despite the ten-kilowatt set being used to project the beam, the resistance of the apparatus on board the pirate ship was amazing.

Abruptly the three became aware of a rapidly solidifying cloud before them. The interference of the beam Morey was sending had begun breaking down the molecular oscillation that permitted the light to pass freely through the pirate's craft. Suddenly there was a circle of blue light about the shadow form, and a moment later the ionized air relapsed into normal condition as the pirate's apparatus broke down under the strain. At once Morey shut off his apparatus, convinced by the sudden change that the pirate's apparatus had blown out. He glanced up quickly as Arcot called to him, “Morey—look at him go!”

Too late. Already the plane had shot off with terrific speed. It had flashed up and to their left, at a rate of climb that seemed unbelievable—except that the long trail of flaming gas told the story! The plane was propelled by rockets! The terrific acceleration carried it out of their range of vision in an instant, and as Arcot swung the ship to bring him again within sight of the windows, they gasped, for already he was many miles away.

There was a terrific wrench as Arcot threw on all the power he dared, then quickly leveled the machine, following the pirate at lightning speed. He increased the acceleration further as the men grew accustomed to the force that weighed them down. Ahead of them the pirate was racing along, but quickly now they were overhauling him, for his machine had wings of a sort! They produced a tremendous amount of head resistance at their present velocity, for already the needle of the radio speedometer had moved over to one mile a second. They were following the fleet plane ahead at the rate of 3600 miles an hour. The roar of the air outside was a tremendous wave of sound, yet to them, protected by the vacuum of the double walls, it was detectable only by the vibration of the car.

Rapidly the pirate's lead was cut down. It seemed but a moment before he would be within range of their machine gun. Suddenly he nosed down and shot for the ground, ten miles below, in a power dive. Instantly Arcot swung his machine in a loop that held him close to the tail of the pirate. The swift maneuvers at this speed were a terrific strain on both men and machines—the acceleration seemed crushing them with the weight of four men, as Arcot followed the pirate in a wide loop to the right that ended in a straight climb, the rocket ship standing on its tail, the rocket blast roaring out behind a stream of fire a half mile long.

The pirate was climbing at a speed that would have distanced any other machine the world had ever seen, but the tenacious opponent behind him clung ever tighter to the tiny darting thing. He had released great clouds of his animation suspending gas. To his utter surprise, the ship behind him had driven right through it, entirely unaffected! He, who knew most about the gas, had been unable to devise a material to stop it, a mask or a tank to store it, yet in some way these men had succeeded! And that hurtling, bullet-shaped machine behind! Like some miniature airship it was, but with a speed and an acceleration that put even his ship to shame! It could twist, turn, dive, rise and shoot off on the straight-away with more flashing speed than anything aloft. Time and again he tried complicated maneuvers that strained him to the utmost, yet that machine always followed after him!

There was one more thing to do. In outer space his rockets would support him. In a straight climb he shot up to the blazing sun above, out into space, while the sky around him grew black, and the stars shone in solemn splendor around him. But he had eyes for only one thing, the shining car that was rising with more than equal speed behind him. He knew he must be climbing over two thousand miles an hour, yet the tracker came ever closer. Just out of sighting range for the machine gun now ... in a moment ... but, she was faltering!

The men in the machine behind sat white-lipped, tense, as the whirling shocks of sudden turns at terrific speed twisted the gyroscopic seats around like peas in a rolling ball. Up, down, left, right, the darting machine ahead was twisting with unbelievable speed. Then suddenly the nose was pointed for the zenith again, and with a great column of flame shooting out behind him, he was heading straight toward space!

“If he gets there, I lose him, Morey!” said Arcot. The terrific acceleration of the climb seemed to press them to their seats with a deadly weight. It was labor to talk—but still the car ahead shot on—slowly they seemed to be overhauling him. Now that the velocities were perforce lowered by the effects of gravity, and the air resistance of the atmosphere was well nigh gone, only the acceleration that the human body could stand was considered. The man ahead was pushing his plane ahead with an acceleration that would have killed many men!

Slowly the acceleration of the machine was falling. Arcot pushed the control over to the last ampere, and felt the slight surge, as greater power rushed through the coils momentarily. Soon this was gone too, as the generator behind faltered. The driving power of the atmospheric heat was gone. More than sixty miles below them they could see the Earth as a greenish brown surface, slightly convex, and far to the east they could distinguish a silvery line of water! But they had no eyes but for the column of shooting flame that represented the fleeing raider! Out in airless space now, he was safe from them. They could not follow. Arcot turned the plane once more, parallel to the Earth, watching the plane above through the roof window. Slowly the machine sank to the fifty-mile level, where there was just sufficient air to maintain it in efficient operation.

“Well, he beat us! But there is only one thing for us, to do. He must hang there on his rockets till we leave, and we can hang here indefinitely, if we can only keep this cabin decently warm. He has no air to cool him, and he has the sun to warm him. The only thing that is worrying him right now is the heat of his rockets. But he can throw most of that out with the gases. Lord, that's some machine! But eventually his rockets will give out, and down he will come, so we'll just hang here beneath him and—whoa—not so fast—he isn't going to stay there, it seems; he is angling his ship off a bit, and shooting along, so that, besides, holding himself up, he is making a little forward progress. We'll have to follow! He's going to do some speeding, it seems! Well, we can keep up with him, at our level.”

“Dick, no plane ever made before would have stood the terrific pulls and yanks that his plane got. He was steering and twisting on the standard type air rudders, and what strains he had! The unique type of plane must be extremely strong. I never saw one shaped like his before, though—it is the obvious shape at that! It was just a huge triangular arrowhead! Did you ever see one like it?”

“Something like it, yes, and so have you. Don't you recognize that as the development of the old paper gliders you used to throw around as a kid? It has the same shape, the triangular wings with the point in the lead, except that he undoubtedly had a slight curve to the wings to increase the efficiency. Something like the flying wings of fifty years ago. I hope that man is only a kleptomaniac, because he can be cured of that, and I may then have a new laboratory partner. He has some exceedingly intelligent ideas!

“He's an ingenious man, but I wish he didn't store quite so much fuel in his rocket tubes! It's unbearably cold in here, and I can't sacrifice any power just for comfort. The rocket ship up there seems to be getting more and more acceleration in the level. He has me dropping steadily to get air to run the generator. He is going fast enough!”

They followed beneath the pirate, faster and faster as the rockets of the ship began to push it forward more and more.

“Dick, why is it he didn't use all his rockets at first instead of gradually increasing the power this way?”

“If you were operating the ship, Morey, you'd understand. Look at the speedometer a moment and see if you can figure it out.”

“Hmmm—4.5 miles per second—buzzing right along—but I don't see what that—good Lord! We never will get him at this rate! How do you expect to get him?”

“I have no idea—yet. But you missed the important point. He is going 4.5 miles a second. When he reaches 5 miles a second he will never come down from his hundred and fifty mile high perch! He will establish an orbit! He has so much centrifugal force already that he has very little weight. We are staying right beneath him, so we don't have much either. Well, there he goes in a last spurt. We are falling behind pretty fast—there we are catching up now—no—we are just holding parallel! He's done it! Look!”

Arcot pulled out his watch and let go of it. It floated motionless in the air for a moment, then slowly drifted back toward the rear of the room. “I am using a bit of acceleration—a bit more than we need to maintain our speed. We are up high enough to make the air resistance almost nothing, even at this velocity, but we still require some power. I don't know—”

There was a low buzz, repeated twice. Instantly Morey turned the dials of the radio receiving set—again the call signal sounded. In a moment a voice came in—low, but distinct. The power seemed fading rapidly.

“I'm Wade—the Pirate—help if you can. Can you get outside the atmosphere? Exceed orbital speed and fall out? Am in an orbit and can't get out. Fuel reserve gage stuck, and used all my rockets. No more power. Can not slow down and fall. I am running out of compressed air and the generator for this set is going—will take animation suspending gas—will you be able to reach me before entering night?”

“Quick, Morey—answer that we will.”

“We will try, Pirate—think we can make it!”

“O.K.—power about gone—”

The last of his power had failed! The pirate was marooned in space! They had seen his rockets go out, leaving the exhaust tube glowing for a moment before it, too, was dark, and only the sun shining on the silvery ship made it visible.

“We have to hurry if we want to do anything before he reaches night! Radio the San Francisco fields that we will be coming in soon, and we need a large electro-magnet—one designed to work on about 500 volts D.C., and some good sized storage cells; how many will have to be decided later, depending on the room we will have for them. I'll start decelerating now so we can make the turn and circle back. We are somewhere west of Hawaii, I believe, but we ought to be able to do the trick if we use all the power we can.”

Morey at once set to work with the radio set to raise San Francisco airport. He was soon in communication with them, and told them that he would be there in about an hour. They promised all the necessary materials; also that they would get ready to receive the pirate once he was finally brought in to them.

It was nearer an hour and a quarter later that the machine fell to the great San Francisco landing field, where the mechanics at once set to work bolting a huge electro-magnet on the landing skids on the bottom of the machine. The most serious problem was connecting the terminals electrically without making holes in the hull of the ship. Finally one terminal was grounded, and the radio aerial used as the other. Fuller was left behind on this trip, and a large number of cells were installed in every possible position. In the power room, a hastily arranged motor generator set was arranged, making it possible to run the entire ship from the batteries. Scarcely had these been battened down to prevent sliding under the accelerations necessary, than Arcot and Morey were off. The entire operation had required but fifteen minutes.

“How are you going to catch him, Arcot?”

“I'll overtake him going west. If I went the other way I'd meet him going at over 10 miles a second in relation to his machine. He had the right idea. He told me to fall out to him at a greater than orbital speed. I will go just within the Earth's atmosphere till I get just under him, holding myself in the air by means of a downward acceleration on the part of the regular lifting power units. I am going to try to reach eight miles a second. We will be overhauling him at three a second, and the ship will slow down to the right speed while falling out to him. We must reach him before he gets into the shadow of the Earth, though, for if he reaches 'night' he will be without heat, and he'll die of cold. I think we can reach him, Dick!”

“I hope so. Those spare cells are all right, aren't they? We'll need them! If they don't function when we get out there, we'll fall clear off into space! At eight miles a second, we would leave Earth forever!”

The ship was accelerating steadily at the highest value the men aboard could stand. The needle of the speedometer crept steadily across the dial. They were flying at a height of forty miles that they might have enough air and still not be too greatly hindered by air resistance. The black sky above them was spotted with points of glowing light, the blazing stars of space. But as they flew along, the sensation of weight was lost; they had reached orbital speed, and as the car steadily increased its velocity, there came a strange sensation! The Earth loomed gigantic above them! Below them shone the sun! The direction of up and down was changed by the terrific speed! The needle of the speedometer was wavering at 7.8 miles a second. Now it held steady!

“I thought you were going to take it up to eight miles a second, Dick?”

“Air resistance is too great! I'll have to go higher!”

At a height of fifty miles they continued at 8.1 miles a second. It seemed hours before they reached the spot where the pirate's machine should be flying directly above them, and they searched the black sky for some sign of the shining dot of light. With the aid of field glasses they found it, far ahead, and nearly one hundred miles above.

“Well, here we go! I'm going to fall up the hundred miles or so, till we're right in his path; the work done against gravity will slow us down a little, so I'll have to use the power units somewhat. Did you notice what I did to them?”

“Yes, they're painted a dull black. What's the idea?”

“We'll have no air from which to get heat for power out here, so we'll have to depend on the sunlight they can absorb. I'm using it now to slow us down as much as possible.”

At last the tiny silver dot had grown till it became recognizable as the pirate plane. They were drawing up to it now, slowly, but steadily. At last the little machine was directly beneath them, and a scant hundred yards away. They had long since been forced to run the machine on the storage batteries, and now they applied a little power to the vertical power units. Sluggishly, as they absorbed the sun's heat, the machine was forced lower, nearer to the machine below. At last a scant ten feet separated them.

“All right, Morey.”

There was a snap, as the temporary switch was closed, and the current surged into the big magnet on the keel. At once they felt the ship jump a little under the impulse of the magnet's pull on the smaller machine. In a moment the little plane had drifted up to the now idle magnet, touched it and was about to bounce off, when Morey again snapped the switch shut and the two machines were locked firmly together!

“I've got him, Dick!” Morey exclaimed. “Now slow down till it falls. Then we can go and wait for it. Being a glider, it ought to be quite manageable!”

Now the energy of the power units on the roof of the machine began to slow down the two machines, the magnet grinding slightly as the momentum of the plane was thrust upon it. They watched the speedometer drop. The speed was sinking very slowly, for the area of the absorbing fins was not designed to absorb the sun's heat directly, and was very inefficient. The sun was indeed sinking below their horizon; they were just beginning to watch that curious phenomenon of seeing dawn backward, when they first struck air dense enough to operate the power units noticeably. Quickly the power was applied till the machines sank rapidly to the warmer levels, the only governing factor being the tendency of the glider to break loose from the grip of the magnet.

At fifty miles the generator was started, and the heaters in the car at once became more active. There was no heat in the car below, but that was unavoidable. They would try to bring it down to warm levels quickly.

“Whew, I'm glad we reached the air again, Dick. I didn't tell you sooner, for it wouldn't have done any good, but that battery was about gone! We had something like twenty amp-hours left! I'm giving the recharge generator all she will take. We seem to have plenty of power now.”

“I knew the cells were low, but I had no idea they were as low as that! I noticed that the magnet was weakening, but thought it was due to the added air strain. I am going to put the thing into a nose dive and let the glider go down itself. I know it would land correctly if it had a chance. I am going to follow it, of course, and since we are over the middle of Siberia we'd better start back.”

The return trip was necessarily in the lower level of the atmosphere, that the glider might be kept reasonably warm. At a height of but two miles, in the turbulent atmosphere, the glider was brought slowly home. It took them nearly twenty hours to go the short distance of twelve thousand miles to San Francisco, the two men taking turns at the controls. The air resistance of the glider forced them to go slowly; they could not average much better than six hundred an hour despite the fact that the speed of either machine alone was over twelve hundred miles an hour.

At last the great skyscrapers of San Francisco appeared on their horizon, and thousands of private planes started out to meet them. Frantically Arcot warned them away, lest the air blast from their props tear the glider from the magnet. At last, however, the Air Guard was able to force them to a safe distance and clear a lane through one of the lower levels of the city traffic. The great field of the Transcontinental lines was packed with excited men and women, waiting to catch a glimpse of two of the greatest things the country had heard of in the century—Arcot's molecular motion machine and the Air Pirate!

The landing was made safely in the circle of Air Guardsmen. There was a small hospital plane standing beside it in a moment, and as Arcot's ship released it, and then hung motionless, soundless above it, the people watched it in wonder and excitement. They wanted to see Arcot perform; they clamored to see the wonderful powers of this ship in operation. Air Guardsmen who had witnessed the flying game of tag between these two super-air machines had told of it through the press and over the radio.

* * * * *

Two weeks later, Arcot stepped into the office of Mr. Morey, senior.

“Busy?”

“Come on in; you know I'm busy—but not too busy for you. What's on your mind?”

“Wade—the pirate.”

“Oh—hmm. I saw the reports on his lab out on the Rockies, and also the psychomedical reports on him. And most particularly, I saw the request for his employment you sent through channels. What's your opinion on him? You talked with him.”

Arcot frowned slightly. “When I talked to him he was still two different identities dancing around in one body. Dr. Ridgely says the problem's settling down; I believe him. Ridgely's no more of a fool in his line than you and Dad are in your own lines, and Ridgely's business is healing mental wounds. We agreed some while back that the Pirate must be insane, even before we met him.

“We also agreed that he had a tremendously competent and creative mind. As a personality in civilization, he'd evidently slipped several cogs. Ridgely says that is reparable.

“You know, Newton was off the beam for about two years. Faraday was in a complete breakdown for nearly five years—and after his breakdown, came back to do some monumental work.

“And those men didn't have the help of modern psychomedical techniques.

“I think we'd be grade A fools ourselves to pass up the chance to get Wade's help. The man—insane or not—figured out a way of stabilizing and storing atomic hydrogen for his rockets. If he could do that in the shape he was then in...!

“I'd say we'd be smart to keep the competition in the family.”

Mr. Morey leaned back in his chair and smiled up at Arcot. “You've got a good case there. I'll buy it. When Dr. Ridgely says Wade's got those slipped cogs replaced—offer him a job in your lab staff.

“I'm a bit older than you are; you've grown up in a world where the psychomedical techniques really work. When I was growing up, psychomedical techniques were strictly rule of thumb—and the doctors were all thumbs.” Mr. Morey sighed. Then, “In this matter, I think your judgment is better than mine.”

“I'll see him again, and offer him the job. I'm pretty sure he'll take it, as I said. I have a suspicion that, within six months, he'll be a lot saner than most people around. The ordinary man doesn't realize what a job of rechecking present techniques can do—and Wade is, naturally, getting a very thorough overhaul.

“Somewhat like a man going in for treatment of a broken arm; in any decent hospital they'll also check for any other medical problems, and he'll come out healthier than if he had never had the broken arm.

“Wade seems to have had a mind that made friends with molecules, and talked their language. After Ridgely shows him how to make friends with people—I think he'll be quite a man on our team!”