Robert Moore Williams

“ Fradin had just about everything in his laboratory.
"Now," said Marvak to the little inventor, "you will please prove the truth of your assertion that power can be transmitted by radio."
That was the thing that Fradin had said. Power by radio! It doesn't sound like much, but let me tell you, it's plenty big. With it, science could come darned close to remaking the face of the globe.
How?
This is the power age. Practically all of our industrial achievements—and through them we have achieved what passes for civilization—have come about through cheap power. ”

“ If Fradin could really transmit power by radio, and if Marvak got the plans, the waterfalls would not be harnessed, there wouldn't be cheap automobiles, and handy power for ocean liners. There would be power—unfailing power—for one thing: planes! Bombing planes, fighting planes!
If you think several nations on this globe would not jump at the chance to acquire such an invention, you have another think coming. And the price they would be willing to pay for it, would be big enough to interest even Marvak. ”

“ Marvak consulted the meter on the transmitter, then ran across the room to the receiver and examined the meter there.
"You've really got it!" he exulted. "There's enough power flowing through the receiver to keep a plane in the air."
I was sick, sicker than I had ever been. Fradin's invention worked. And when it worked, it spelled our doom. We would be killed, because it worked. How many millions of others would also die, I could not begin to guess.
"One plane is not enough," Marvak said. "It has to be strong enough to supply current to a fleet of planes." ”

“ You never did see so many excited scientists in one group. Normally a scientist is supposed to be cool, aloof, and impersonal. But this group was anything else! They went right straight up in the air. I couldn't tell whether they were angrier because he had called them a bunch of numbskulls or because he had said that radio waves were transmitted through the fourth dimension. ”

“ Nobody has ever seen the ether, felt it, smelled it, heard it, touched it. Scientists of the past century, needing a mechanical device to account for the observed propagation of electro-magnetic radiations such as light and the then little known radio waves, had invented the ether to carry those radiations, invented it out of whole cloth. Fradin's hearers knew he was right. ”

“ Ramsen was quite right in making such a demand, for without experimental evidence to back it up, mathematical theory is more often than not just so much hot air.
"Your demand is just," Fradin faltered. "I fear in the heat of argument I made statements I do not care to support. I do not choose to produce the experimental evidence that I have."
He didn't say another word. Instead, he turned and walked off the platform, going out through a door at the back. ”

“ There was a red mark on the input meter of the transmitter. That red line marked the critical point. If more power was put through the transmitter, it would break down the fabric of space between this dimension and the fourth dimension. ”

“ Boats could take their power out of the air.
And airplanes. There was the most important item of all. No gasoline engines in planes, no engine failures, no crashes because the motor conked out. Air flight spanning the globe. ”