Murray Leinster

“ Palo Bajo was too small a town to rate an atomic bomb, so in the tavern were clerks and business men and laborers—fathers of families and loudly shirted young men and men who were trying to forget the menace that hung over the country, and men who did not even try to think about it. ”

“ Bud Gregory could devise some defense. He could probably make the defense. If he did, he, Murfree, would guarantee that he would have money enough to live on for all the rest of his life.
"But you're a gov'ment man," said Bud Gregory unhappily. "You're a good fella but I don't want no truck with the gov'ment."
Murfree sweated. Promises of a fortune meant nothing to Bud Gregory. But Murfree had a hundred and fifty dollars left. He offered that for a device that would protect America against atomic bombardment. Millions had no meaning to Bud Gregory. A hundred and fifty dollars was concrete. ”

“ It give my car a lot more power."
Murfree was not astonished. Bud Gregory could not astonish him now. Of course if all the molecules of a substance move in the same direction the substance itself moves in that direction. Using the molecular motion generated by heat, you should get practically limitless acceleration, quite independent of traction.
It should start a car off at any imaginable speed, it should climb any hill, it should stop a car with unbelievable suddenness, and if the motion could be controlled—and hence the thrust—it could keep a car from turning over, and from skidding. ”

“ Whole industries shut down for lack of workers and executives. There was privation and unemployment because death was in the air. There had not been so much as a fire-cracker set off, but the United States faltered in its stride and its life came almost to a standstill because of the imminence of atomic war. ”

“ If somebody announced an atomic engine, a clipping came to Murfree. If an automobile had a freak accident, he saw the news account. If a souped-up motor made history at an outboard-motor racing meet, or an inventor made extravagant claims for some new device, or there was an explosion without plain cause, or somebody reported having seen something impossible—the last especially—Murfree was sure to be poring over the news account as soon as it reached print. ”

“ But the owners of roadside taverns grew rich, and county fairs flourished, and roller-coaster proprietors bought new diamonds, and—dirt-track auto races in small towns were thronged with patrons. And Bud Gregory followed the dirt-track races. He had a trick that brought in plenty of money, nowadays. Plenty! Ten, fifteen, sometimes even twenty dollars in a single day, and without his doing a tap of work. He sat in blissful somnolence beside his antique car. ”

“ They were the guided missiles which were to destroy America. They carried atomic bombs. They should make the better part of the continent into blasted, radioactive craters.
From the nations which were satellites of the European Power other columns of vapor streaked skyward. More bombs. They should surge furiously through the air to the chill emptiness beyond it, and they should circle a good part of the earth and then drive furiously down and spout ravening atomic flames! ”

“ If Congress took his note as it deserved to be taken—as a threat of war—he would nod his head and possibly half of the population in America would be dead within hours. The United States was as well-armed as any other Power in the world, perhaps better-armed. ”

“ The truck thundered around that curve—and ran slap into a rattletrap car with a flapping fabric top and an incredible load of children and household goods. Ran slap into it, that is, to the extent that a collision was inevitable. The jalopy was on the wrong side of the road.
The truck could not turn out, nor the jalopy turn in, in time. So the truck-driver froze, and saw the rattletrap vehicle swerve out still farther on the wrong side of the road—ride out until only its inner wheels were on the highway and its outer wheels spun merrily over vacancy. ”

“ Beaches and camps and cottage towns, trailer-camps and mountain hotels and lakeside resorts, all hummed and boomed with refugees from the cities, while the cities themselves were like cities of death. ”

“ So sooner or later Murfree hoped to receive a newspaper clipping of some preposterous event which he, and only he, would know meant Bud Gregory was at work. But it came to be grim work, waiting, and endlessly hoping.
A second sharp note arrived from the European Power, declaring that there was reason to believe the United States had secretly prepared for war. If the Atlantic carrier fleet remained invisible, it would have to be assumed that the ships had set out on a mission to loose plane-carried atomic bombs on the complaining nation. ”

“ He's bound to be some mechanic because the car he's got ain't any better than this one, and it goes faster and makes turns no car has a right to make. He watches it night and day—blast him—and you won't get nowhere, but you can talk to him."
Murfree handed over five dollars. He limped toward the shed that had been pointed out. A bulky man with squint eyes reared up as he approached. A grease-monkey looked at him suspiciously.
"No visitors!" the big man snarled. "Clear out!"
"I've got a car in a ditch," said Murfree, "and the motor's frozen. I'll pay a hundred bucks for a mechanic to fix it." ”

“ The European Power was waging a war of nerves. Its purpose was the harassment of the American public—from disorganization, unemployment, and ultimate famine—to the point where it would welcome any possible change. Its plan was to make the American people themselves demand the changes in its social system that the European Power desired. ”

“ Murfree, so's they can't shoot you," Bud said shakily as he worked. Sweat rolled down his face and panic filled his eyes. "It's a dinkus that makes those little hunksa stuff that metal's made of, all travel the same way. It makes some stuff that bounces around in any metal it comes to. I—I got to make it travel where I want it to through the air." He panted. Almost he sobbed. "All I ever wanted, Mr. Murfree, was not to bother nobody. If those fellas get killed, you got to tell the sheriff it ain't my fault!" ”

“ The United States could not make war without Congressional action unless attacked. So it could not make war until attacked, and an attack with atomic bombs by two-thousand-mile guided missiles—
The country almost disintegrated, so far as the larger cities were concerned. The little towns, though, which were not important enough to be bombed, throve in their impunity. Farm-houses and boarding-houses accustomed to take in summer boarders fairly bulged at their seams. ”

“ Bud Gregory rolled unhappy eyes at him.
"Honest, Mr. Murfree, I didn't know they was goin' to act like this," he said miserably. "They offered me a hundred dollars and ten dollars a day to soup up their sedan."
The car sped along the incredibly populated roadside. There were people everywhere. When cities empty, people have to go somewhere. Small towns swarmed. Villages overflowed. Even the highways were lined with groups of people with picnic-blankets and blanket shelters. Murfree rubbed his head to clear it, and closed his eyes at the anguish which came of the movement. ”

“ It's a layer of ionized air that covers the whole earth about fifteen miles up. You're going to make a dinkus that will fix the whole Heaviside Layer so that anything that's shot into it will be bounced right back where it came from, just like those bullets did. If you don't I'll either kill you or tell the sheriff on you."
Bud Gregory blinked at him.
"I don't have to make a big one, Mr. Murfree," he said plaintively. "This here one will fix anything. It don't take no power. The power comes from the things that get flung back. All I got to do is this, Mr. Murfree!" ”

“ When it was clear that there was no further danger to America, he turned off Bud Gregory's device and packed it in a car, the same car in which he'd been taken to the hideout. And he drove Bud Gregory down to Los Angeles, where he intended to try to get passage back to Washington. People were flocking back to the cities everywhere, then, and police were regulating the flow of returning refugees. ”

“ Large numbers of the population would be uprooted, the cities would be nearly or quite deserted, commerce would stop and generally such a state of affairs would exist that—so a European would reason—presently the American public would be willing to accept any possible surrender of principle just to get things going again. ”

“ He had barely two hundred dollars in the world, and this man was not Bud Gregory. But Murfree was sure he was on the right track. A car that went impossibly fast and made impossible turns. His own car, of course, was imaginary, but he looked worn-out and dusty and very convincing. ”

“ If we'd shot you we mighta had some trouble gettin' away ourselves."
"What's the idea?" asked Murfree drearily, "Are you spies, or just plain traitors?"
"Huh!" scoffed the man in front. "You talk like the movies! We're just honest guys pickin' up a livin' how we can. Your friend there, has got a little trick that'll be useful to us. He can fix up a car to go faster, stop shorter, turn sharper and have more pick-up—"
The beefy man, at the wheel, growled at him. ”

“ Murfree. I told you about it. All the little hunks in metal that stuff gets in, have to move the same way. I made it make my car climb hills, and then I fixed it so I could make them little hunksa stuff act as brakes, too. They could even push the car backwards, if I wanted 'em to. And I—been makin' a livin' bettin' on a fella I fixed the dinkus on his racin'-car. That—that fella—I had his car fixed so it couldn't turn over, either."
Murfree listened in an unnatural calm. He knew all this, of course. Bud Gregory was not a genius. ”

“ Also it would be action without a re-action, and it would serve equally to power an ancient jalopy or an aeroplane. Only, an aeroplane wouldn't need wings because the same molecular thrust could lift it, and that meant that it could furnish a drive for a spaceship and provide the direct means for the conquest of the stars. ”

“ But since the fools had belatedly shown dangerous intelligence, and were preparing to fight rather than be destroyed by their traditional reluctance to take the offensive—why, they would have to be smashed before they could get ready to resist. ”

“ He'd created an invention which could go far toward making Earth a paradise and mistress of far-flung planets—and he used it to win dirt-track races so he could bet two or four or five dollars at a time and so live without working! ”