George O. Smith

“ All you have to do is to shoot your gun right in this end and the force is dissipated over quite an area out of that end. In the meantime you blow out all of the powerhouses on the planet. If a hammer blow can raise such merry hell, what do you think the output of a sixteen-inch rifle would do? Probably stop the planet in its tracks. D'ye know what I think?"
"No, do you?"
"Barney, I think that we aren't even close as to the operation and use of this device."
"For that decision, Jim, you should be awarded the Interplanetary Award for Discovery and Invention—posthumously!" ”

“ They met in Barney's place to confer.
"What's cooking?" asked Jim.
"The meters are all going crazy in my end," said Barney. "I seem to be sucking power out of everything in line with my tube."
"The so-called relay station is firing away at full power and doing nothing but draining plenty of power from the line," complained Christine.
"And on my end, I was beginning to scorch the wallpaper again. I don't understand it. With no receiver-end, how can I scorch wallpaper?"
"Ask the Martians. They know."
"You ask 'em. What shall we do, invent a time machine and go back sixty centuries?" ”

“ The block fell until it came inside of the influence of the tube. Then it slowed in its fall and approached the table slowly. It did not hit the table, it touched and came to rest.
"What happens if we wind up a spring and tie it?" asked Jim.
They tried it. Nothing happened.
"Works on kinetic energy, not potential energy," said Barney.
He picked up a heavy hammer and tried to hit the table. "Like swinging a club through a tub of water," he said.
"Be a useful gadget for saving the lives of people who are falling," said Jim thoughtfully. ”

“ Three planes had to make dead-tube landings in the center of the city; power went dead for no good reason for about ten minutes. Façade of the City Hall caved in. Power plants running wild all over the place. Ten thousand dollars' worth of electrical equipment blown out. Automobiles stalled in rows for blocks."
Jim looked at Barney. "Got a bear by the tail," he said.
"Could be," admitted Barney.
"Are you two blithering geniuses going to work all night?" asked Christine.
"Nope. We're about out of ideas. Except the one that Barney had about the gadget being some sort of signaling system." ”

“ Barney removed the BFO from the vicinity of sixty cycles and Jim extinguished the burning wallpaper.
"Now we're getting somewhere," said Barney.
"This is definitely some sort of weapon," said Jim. "She's not very efficient right now, but we can find out why and then we'll have something hot."
"What for?" asked Barney. "Nobody hates anybody any more."
"Unless the birds who made this thing necessary return," said Jim soberly. His voice was ominous. "We know that only one race of Martians existed, and they were all amicable. ”

“ After Sargon of Akkad, there would come sixty centuries of climbing before men reached the stars and found not only that there had been men upon them, but that a civilization on Mars had reached its peak four thousand years before Christ and was now but a memory and a wealth of pictographs that adorned the semipreserved Temples of Canalopsis. ”

“ We've bunged up a dozen meters. And now we've ripped up a trench in the middle of the street."
"Somewhere in this set-up, there is a return circuit," said Jim thoughtfully. "We've been taking power out of the line, and I've been oblivious of the fact that a couple of hundred amperes is too high to get out of our power line without trouble. What we've been doing is taking enough soup out of the public utility lines to supply the losses only. The power we've been seeing on our meters is the build-up, recirculated!" ”

“ Go ahead, Barney. Crack the big switch!"
Altas held up a restraining hand as Than grasped the main power switch. "Wait," he said. "Does one stand in his sky flier and leave the ground at full velocity? Or does one start an internal combustion engine at full speed?"
"No," said the youngster. "We usually take it slowly."
"And like the others, we must tune our tube. And that we cannot do under full power. Advance your power lever one-tenth step and we'll adjust the deflection anodes."
"I'll get the equipment," said Than. "I forgot that part."
"Never mind the equipment," smiled Altas. "Observe." ”

“ Of course the pictographs on the Temple at Canalopsis shows one tower between what appear two cities. Wavy lines run from one city to the tower and to the other city. Say! I'll bet a cooky that this is some sort of signaling device!"
"A beam transmitter?" asked Jim skeptically. "Seems like a lot of junk for just signaling. Especially when such a swell job can be done with standard radio equipment. A good civilization—such as the Martians must have had—wouldn't piddle around with relay stations between two cities less than a couple of thousand miles apart. ”

“ Watch the meters, and when they read full power, you may throw the cut-over switch and make the tube self-sustaining. Our tower will then be in perfect service, and you and I may return to our home below."
Than performed the operations, and then they left, taking the old tube with them.
And on Terra, Sargon of Akkad watched ten thousand slaves carry stone for one of his public buildings. He did not know that on one of the stars placed in the black bowl of the evening sky for his personal benefit, men were flinging more power through the air than the total output of all of his slaves combined. ”

“ We think we're modern. We are, and we never think that some day some poor bird will try to decipher our technical works. Why, if Volta himself came back and saw the most perfect machine ever invented—the transformer—he'd shudder. No connection between input and output, several kinds of shorted loops of wire; and instead of making a nice simple electromagnet, we short the lines of force and on top of that we use a lot of laminations piled on top of one another instead of a nice, soft iron core. We completely short the input, et cetera, but how do we make with a gadget like that? ”

“ The tower is in the midst of the Red Desert. There is nothing but sand that assays high in iron oxide between Canalopsis, at the junction of the Grand Canal and Lincoln Head. Might be hid, of course, just as this one was, and we'll send out a crew of expert sub-sand explorers with under-surface detectors to cover the ground for a few hundred miles in any direction from the place where we found this. Somehow, I doubt that we'll find much."
"And how do you ... ah, there's the lights again ... deduce that?" asked Jim.
"This gadget is or was of importance to the Martians. ”

“ By keying the transmitter tube, meters in the receiver tube were made to read in accordance. Then they had another conclave.
"Nothing brilliant," said Jim. "We could use super-output voice amplifiers and yell halfway across the planet if we didn't have radio. We can radio far better than this cockeyed system of signaling." ”

“ It was not long before Than had the tube connected properly. "Now," said Altas, "turn it on one-tenth power and we shall align it."
"Shall I use the meters?"
"I think it best. This requires perfect alignment now. We've much power and considerable distance, and any losses will create great amounts of heat."
"All right," said Than. He left the tower top to get the meters.
Barney Carroll spoke into a conveniently placed microphone. "Are you ready?" he asked.
"Go ahead," said Christine.
"We're waiting," said Jim.
"You're the bird on the transmitter," said Barney to Jim. "You make with the juice." ”

“ No damage will be done; they can get along without us for an hour. In fact, at this time of night, only the people who are running the city will know that we are out of service. And it is necessary that the tube be maintained at full capability. We can not chance a weakened tube; it might fail when it is needed the most."
Than carried the tube to the top of the tower, and Altas remained to contact the necessary parties concerning the shut-off for replacement purposes. ”

“ They used to build junk like this."
"Hook up the sand-blower," suggested Jim Baler. "We'll clear some of this rubble away and see what she really looks like. Can't see much more than what looks like a high-powered searchlight."
Barney hauled equipment out of the flier and hitched it to a small motor in the plane. The blower created a small storm for an hour or so, its blast directed by suit-clad Barney Carroll. Working with experience gained in uncovering the remains of a dozen dead and buried cities, Barney cleared the shifting sand from the remains of the tower. ”

“ Altas picked up a long screw-driverlike tool and inserted it into the maze of wiring that surrounded the tube. Squinting in one end of the big tube, he turned the tool until the cathode surface brightened slightly. He adjusted the instrument until the cathode was at its brightest, and then withdrew the tool.
"That will do for your experimental set-up," smiled Altas. "The operation in service is far more critical and requires equipment. ”

“ We've caused a couple of emergency flier-landings within the city limits. We've blown fuses and circuit breakers all the way from here to the main powerhouse downtown. We've stalled a few dozen automobiles. We've torn or burned or cut the end off of one hammer and have fractured the wall with it ... where did that go, anyway, the hammerhead? We've burned wallpaper. We've run our electric bill up to about three hundred dollars, I'll bet. ”

“ Where are you going to cut them?"
"The transmitter will start just before the cathode and the receiver will end just after the ... uh, cathode."
"Huh?"
"Obviously the cathode is the baby that makes with the end product. She seems to be a total intake from the intake end and a complete output from the opposite end. Right?"
"Right, but it certainly sounds like heresy."
"I know," said Barney thoughtfully, "but the thing is obviously different from anything that we know today. Who knows how she works?" ”

“ Every time someone gets an idea, everyone says, 'Call Channing!' He gets called for everything from Boy Scout wigwag ideas to super-cyclotronic-electron-stream beams to contact the outer planets. Based upon the supposition that people will eventually get there, of course. ”

“ Then we'd only have the anvil and hammer to haul around. This thing is like hauling a fifty-thousand-watt radio transmitter around. Power supplies, BFO, tube, meters, tools, and a huge truck full of spare fuses for the times when we miss the insect. Might be good for a central heating system. ”

“ Useful power transmission is a minute percentage of the total output of the gadget. Absolutely impractical, especially when copper and silver are so plentiful to string along the scenery on steel towers. ”

“ Wonder if she'd stop anything more powerful than a clock."
"I've got a quarter-horse motor here. Let's wind that up and try it."
The motor was installed on a bench nearby, and the experiment was tried again. At sixty cycles the motor groaned to a stop, and the windings began to smolder. But at the same time the big tube began to exhibit the signs of strain. Meters raced up their scales once more, reached the stops and bent. Barney shut off the motor, but the strains did not stop in the tube. ”

“ I've got 'em set in the middle of the range."
"Turn us on half voltage and diddle one of 'em."
"That much of a change shouldn't make the difference," objected Barney.
"Brother, we don't know what this thing is even for," reminded Jim. "Much less do we know the effect of anything on it. Diddle, I say."
"O.K., we diddle." Barney turned on half power and reached into the maze of wiring and began to tinker with one of the screws. "Hm-m-m," he said after a minute. "Does things, all right. She goes through some kind of resonance point or something. There is a spot of minimum current here. There! ”