Into A Sun
:
Skylark Three
As Rovol and Seaton approached the physics laboratory at the beginning
of the period of labor, another small airboat occupied by one man drew
up beside them and followed them to the ground. The stranger, another
white-bearded ancient, greeted Rovol cordially and was introduced to
Seaton as "Caslor, the First of Mechanism."
"Truly, this is a high point in the course of Norlaminian science, my
young friend,
Caslor acknowledged the introduction smilingly. "You have
enabled us to put into practice many things which our ancestors studied
in theory for many a wearisome cycle of time." Turning to Rovol, he went
on: "I understand that you require a particularly precise directional
mechanism? I know well that it must indeed be one of exceeding precision
and delicacy, for the controls you yourself have built are able to hold
upon any point, however moving, within the limits of our immediate solar
system."
"We require controls a million times as delicate as any I have
constructed," said Rovol, "therefore I have called your surpassing skill
into co-operation. It is senseless for me to attempt a task in which I
would be doomed to failure. We intend to send out a fifth-order
projection, something none of our ancestors ever even dreamed of, which,
with its inconceivable velocity of propagation, will enable us to
explore any region in the galaxy as quickly as we now visit our closest
sister planet. Knowing the dimensions of this, our galaxy, you can
readily understand the exact degree of precision required to hold upon a
point at its outermost edge."
"Truly, a problem worthy of any man's brain," Caslor replied after a
moment's thought. "Those small circles," pointing to the forty-foot hour
and declination circles which Seaton had thought the ultimate in precise
measurement of angular magnitudes, "are of course useless. I shall have
to construct large and accurate circles, and in order to produce the
slow and fast motions of the required nature, without creep, slip, play,
or backlash, I shall require a pure torque, capable of being increased
by infinitesimal increments.... Pure torque."
He thought deeply for a time, then went on: "No gear-train or chain
mechanism can be built of sufficient tightness, since in any mechanism
there is some freedom of motion, however slight, and for this purpose
the director must have no freedom of motion whatever. We must have a
pure torque--and the only possible force answering our requirements is
the four hundred sixty-seventh band of the fourth order. I shall
therefore be compelled to develop that band. The director must, of
course, have a full equatorial mounting, with circles some two hundred
and fifty feet in diameter. Must your projector tube be longer than
that, for correct design?"
"That length will be ample."
"The mounting must be capable of rotation through the full circle of arc
in either plane, and must be driven in precisely the motion required to
neutralize the motion of our planet, which, as you know, is somewhat
irregular. Additional fast and slow motions must, of course, be provided
to rotate the mechanism upon each graduated circle at the will of the
operator. It is my idea to make the outer supporting tube quite large,
so that you will have full freedom with your inner, or projector tube
proper. It seems to me that dimensions X37 B42 J867 would perhaps be as
good as any."
"Perfectly satisfactory. You have the apparatus well in mind."
"These things will consume some time. How soon will you require this
mechanism?" asked Caslor.
"We also have much to do. Two periods of labor, let us say: or, if you
require them, three."
"It is well. Two periods will be ample time: I was afraid that you might
need it today, and the work cannot be accomplished in one period of
labor. The mounting will, of course, be prepared in the Area of
Experiment. Farewell."
"You aren't going to build the final projector here, then?" Seaton asked
as Caslor's flier disappeared.
"We shall build it here, then transport it to the Area, where its
dirigible housing will be ready to receive it. All mechanisms of that
type are set up there. Not only is the location convenient to all
interested, but there are to be found all necessary tools, equipment and
material. Also, and not least important for such long-range work as we
contemplate, the entire Area of Experiment is anchored immovably to the
solid crust of the planet, so that there can be not even the slightest
vibration to affect the direction of our beams of force, which must, of
course, be very long."
He closed the master switches of his power-plants and the two resumed
work where they had left off. The control panel was soon finished. Rovol
then plated an immense cylinder of copper and placed it in the
power-plant. He next set up an entirely new system of refractory
relief-points and installed additional ground-rods, sealed through the
floor and extending deep into the ground below, explaining as he worked.
"You see, son, we must lose one one-thousandth of one per cent of our
total energy, and provision must be made for its dissipation in order to
avoid destruction of the laboratory. These air-gap resistances are the
simplest means of disposing of the wasted power."
"I get you--but say, how about disposing of it when we get the thing in
a ship out in space? We picked up pretty heavy charges in the
Skylark--so heavy that I had to hold up several times in the ionized
layer of an atmosphere while they faded--and this outfit will burn up
tons of copper where the old ones used ounces."
"In the projected space-vessel we shall install converters to utilize
all the energy, so that there will be no loss whatever. Since such
converters must be designed and built especially for each installation,
and since they require a high degree of precision, it is not worth while
to construct them for a purely temporary mechanism, such as this one."
* * * * *
The walls of the laboratory were opened, ventilating blowers were built,
and refrigerating coils were set up everywhere, even in the tubular
structure and behind the visiplates. After assuring themselves that
everything combustible had been removed, the two scientists put on under
their helmets, goggles whose protecting lenses could be built up to any
desired thickness. Rovol then threw a switch, and a hemisphere of
flaming golden radiance surrounded the laboratory and extended for miles
upon all sides.
"I get most of the stuff you've pulled so far, but why such a light?"
asked Seaton.
"As a warning. This entire area will be filled with dangerous
frequencies, and that light is a warning for all uninsulated persons to
give our theater of operations a wide berth."
"I see. What next?"
"All that remains to be done is to take our lens-material and go,"
replied Rovol, as he took from a cupboard the largest faidon that Seaton
had ever seen.
"Oh, that's what you're going to use! You know, I've been wondering
about that stuff. I took one back with me to the Earth to experiment on.
I gave it everything I could think of and couldn't touch it. I couldn't
even make it change its temperature. What is it, anyway?"
"It is not matter at all, in the ordinary sense of the word. It is
almost pure crystallized energy. You have, of course, noticed that it
looks transparent, but that it is not. You cannot see into its substance
a millionth of a micron--the illusion of transparency being purely a
surface phenomenon, and peculiar to this one form of substance. I have
told you that the ether is a fourth-order substance--this also is a
fourth-order substance, but it is crystalline, whereas the ether is
probably fluid and amorphous. You might call this faidon crystallized
ether without being far wrong."
"But it should weigh tons, and it is hardly heavier than air--or no,
wait a minute. Gravitation is also a fourth-order phenomenon, so it
might not weigh anything at all--but it would have terrific mass--or
would it, not having protons? Crystallized ether would displace fluid
ether, so it might--I'll give up! It's too deep for me!" said Seaton.
"Its theory is abstruse, and I cannot explain it to you any more fully
than I have, until after we have given you a knowledge of the fourth and
fifth orders. Pure fourth-order material would be without weight and
without mass; but these crystals as they are found are not absolutely
pure. In crystallizing from the magma, they entrapped sufficient numbers
of particles of the higher orders to give them the characteristics which
you have observed. The impurities, however, are not sufficient in
quantity to offer a point of attack to any ordinary reagent."
"But how could such material possibly be formed?"
"It could be formed only in some such gigantic cosmic body as this, our
green system, formed incalculable ages ago, when all the mass comprising
it existed as one colossal sun. Picture for yourself the condition in
the center of that sun. It has attained the theoretical maximum of
temperature--some seventy million of your centigrade degrees--the
electrons have been stripped from the protons until the entire central
core is one solid ball of neutronium and can be compressed no more
without destruction of the protons themselves. Still the pressure
increases. The temperature, already at the theoretical maximum, can no
longer increase. What happens?"
"Disruption."
"Precisely. And just at the instant of disruption, during the very
instant of generation of the frightful forces that are to hurl suns,
planets and satellites millions of miles out into space--in that instant
of time, as a result of those unimaginable temperatures and pressures,
the faidon comes into being. It can be formed only by the absolute
maximum of temperature and at a pressure which can exist only
momentarily, even in the largest conceivable masses."
"Then how can you make a lens of it? It must be impossible to work it in
any way."
"It cannot be worked in any ordinary way, but we shall take this crystal
into the depths of that white dwarf star, into a region in which obtain
pressures and temperatures only less than those giving it birth. There
we shall play forces upon it which, under those conditions, will be able
to work it quite readily."
"Hm--m--m. I want to see that! Let's go!"
They seated themselves at the panels, and Rovol began to manipulate
keys, levers and dials. Instantly a complex structure of visible
force--rods, beams and flat areas of flaming scarlet energy--appeared at
the end of the tubular, telescope-like network.
"Why red?"
"Merely to render them visible. One cannot work well with invisible
tools, hence I have imposed a colored light frequency upon the invisible
frequencies of the forces. We will have an assortment of colors if you
prefer," and as he spoke each ray assumed a different color, so that the
end of the projector was almost lost beneath a riot of color.
The structure of force, which Seaton knew was the secondary projector,
swung around as if sentient, and a lurid green ray extended itself,
picked up the faidon, and lengthened out, hurling the jewel a thousand
yards out through the open side of the laboratory. Rovol moved more
controls and the structure again righted itself, swinging back into
perfect alignment with the tube and carrying the faidon upon its
extremity, a thousand yards beyond the roof of the laboratory.
"We are now ready to start our projection. Be sure your suit and goggles
are perfectly tight. We must see what we are doing, so the light-rays
must be heterodyned upon our carrier wave. Therefore the laboratory and
all its neighborhood will be flooded with dangerous frequencies from the
sun we are to visit, as well as with those from our own generators."
"O. K., chief! All tight here. You say it's ten light-years to that
star. How long's it going to take us to get there?"
"About ten minutes. We could travel that far in less than ten seconds
but for the fact that we must take the faidon with us. Slight as is its
mass, it will require much energy in its acceleration. Our projections,
of course, have no mass, and will require only the energy of
propagation."
person, hurtling through space at a pace, beside which the best effort
of the Skylark seemed the veriest crawl.]
Rovol flicked a finger, a massive pair of plunger switches shot into
their sockets, and Seaton, seated at his board and staring into his
visiplate, was astounded to find that he apparently possessed a dual
personality. He knew that he was seated motionless in the operator's
chair in the base of the rigidly anchored primary projector, and by
taking his eyes away from the visiplate before him, he could see that
nothing in the laboratory had changed, except that the pyrotechnic
display from the power-bar was of unusual intensity. Yet, looking into
the visiplate, he was out in space in person, hurtling through space
at a pace beside which the best effort of the Skylark seemed the
veriest crawl. Swinging his controls to look backward, he gasped as he
saw, so stupendous was their velocity, that the green system was only
barely discernible as a faint green star!
* * * * *
Again looking forward, it seemed as though a fierce white star had
separated from the immovable firmament and was now so close to the
structure of force in which he was riding that it was already showing a
disk perceptible to the unaided eye. A few moments more and the
violet-white splendor became so intense that the watchers began to build
up, layer by layer, the protective goggles before their eyes. As they
approached still closer, falling with their unthinkable velocity into
that incandescent inferno, a sight was revealed to their eyes such as
man had never before been privileged to gaze upon. They were falling
into a white dwarf star, could see everything visible during such an
unheard-of journey, and would live to remember what they had seen! They
saw the magnificent spectacle of solar prominences shooting hundreds of
thousands of miles into space, and directly in their path they saw an
immense sunspot, a combined volcanic eruption and cyclonic storm in a
gaseous-liquid medium of blinding incandescence.
"Better dodge that spot, hadn't we, ace? Mightn't it be generating
interfering fourth-order frequencies?" cried Seaton.
"It is undoubtedly generating fourth-order rays, but nothing can
interfere with us, since we are controlling every component of our beam
from Norlamin."
Seaton gripped his hand-rail violently and involuntarily drew himself
together into the smallest possible compass as, with their awful speed
unchecked, they plunged through that flaming, incandescent photosphere
and on, straight down, into the unexplored, unimaginable interior of
that frightful and searing orb. Through the protecting goggles, now a
full four inches of that peculiar, golden, shielding metal, Seaton could
see the structure of force in which he was, and could also see the
faidon--in outline, as transparent diamonds are visible in equally
transparent water. Their apparent motion slowed rapidly and the material
about them thickened and became more and more opaque. The faidon drew
back toward them until it was actually touching the projector, and eddy
currents and striae became visible in the mass about them as their
progress grew slower and slower.
"'Smatter? Something gone screwy?" demanded Seaton.
"Not at all, everything is working perfectly. The substance is now so
dense that it is becoming opaque to rays of the fourth order, so that we
are now partially displacing the medium instead of moving through it
without friction. At the point where we can barely see to work; that is,
when the fourth-order rays will be so retarded that they can no longer
carry the heterodyned light waves without complete distortion, we shall
stop automatically, as the material at that depth will have the required
density to refract the fifth-order rays to the correct degree."
"How can our foundations stand it?" asked Seaton. "This stuff must be a
hundred times as dense as platinum already, and we must he pushing a
horrible load in going through it."
"We are exerting no force whatever upon our foundations nor upon
Norlamin. The force is transmitted without loss from the power-plant in
our laboratory to this secondary projector here inside the star, where
it is liberated in the correct band to pull us through the mass, using
all the mass ahead of us as anchorage. When we wish to return, we shall
simply change the pull into a push. Ah! we are now at a standstill--now
comes the most important moment of the entire project!"
All apparent motion had ceased, and Seaton could see only dimly the
outlines of the faidon, now directly before his eyes. The structure of
force slowly warped around until its front portion held the faidon as in
a vise. Rovol pressed a lever and behind them, in the laboratory, four
enormous plunger switches drove home. A plane of pure energy, flaming
radiantly even in the indescribable incandescence of the core of that
seething star, bisected the faidon neatly, and ten gigantic beams, five
upon each half of the jewel, rapidly molded two sections of a
geometrically-perfect hollow lens. The two sections were then brought
together by the closing of the jaws of the mighty vise, their edges in
exact alignment. Instantly the plane and the beams of energy became
transformed into two terrific opposing tubes of force--vibrant, glowing
tubes, whose edges in contact coincided with the almost invisible seam
between the two halves of the lens.
Like a welding arc raised to the nth power these two immeasurable and
irresistible forces met exactly in opposition--a meeting of such
incredible violence that seismic disturbances occurred throughout the
entire mass of that dense, violet-white star. Sunspots of unprecedented
size appeared, prominences erupted to hundreds of times their normal
distances, and although the two scientists deep in the core of the
tormented star were unaware of what was happening upon its surface,
convulsion after Titanic convulsion wracked the mighty globe, and
enormous masses of molten and gaseous material were riven from it and
hurled far out into space--masses which would in time become planets of
that youthful and turbulent luminary.
Seaton felt his air-supply grow hot. Suddenly it became icy cold, and
knowing that Rovol had energized the refrigerator system, Seaton turned
away from the fascinating welding operation for a quick look around the
laboratory. As he did so, he realized Rovol's vast knowledge and
understood the reason for the new system of relief-points and
ground-rods, as well as the necessity for the all-embracing scheme of
refrigeration.
Even through the practically opaque goggles he could see that the
laboratory was one mass of genuine lightning. Not only from the
relief-points, but from every metallic corner and protuberance the
pent-up losses from the disintegrating bar were hurling themselves upon
the flaring, blue-white, rapidly-volatilizing ground-rods; and the very
air of the room, renewed second by second though it was by the powerful
blowers, was beginning to take on the pearly luster of the
highly-ionized corona. The bar was plainly visible, a scintillating
demon of pure violet radiance, and a momentary spasm of fear seized him
as he saw how rapidly that great mass of copper was shrinking--fear that
their power would be exhausted with their task still uncompleted.
But the calculations of the aged physicist had been accurate. The lens
was completed with some hundreds of pounds of copper to spare, and that
geometrical form, with its precious content of semi-neutronium, was
following the secondary projector back toward the green system. Rovol
left his seat, discarded his armor, and signaled Seaton to do the same.
"I've got to hand it to you, ace--you sure are a blinding flash and a
deafening report!" Seaton exclaimed, writhing out of his insulating
suit. "I feel as though I'd been pulled half-way through a knot-hole and
riveted over on both ends! How big a lens did you make, anyway? Looked
as though it would hold a couple of liters; maybe three."
"Its contents are almost exactly three liters."
"Hm--m--m. Seven and a half million kilograms--say eight thousand tons.
Some mass, I'd say, to put into a gallon jug. Of course, being inside
the faidon, it won't have any weight, but it'll have all its full quota
of inertia. That's why you're taking so long to bring it in, of course."
"Yes. The projector will now bring it here into the laboratory without
any further attention from us. The period of labor is about to end, and
tomorrow we shall find the lens awaiting us when we arrive to begin
work."
"How about cooling it off? It had a temperature of something like forty
million degree centigrade before you started working on it; and when you
got done with it, it was hot."
"You're forgetting again, son. Remember that the hot, dense material is
entirely enclosed in an envelope impervious to all vibrations longer
than those of the fifth order. You could put your hand upon it now,
without receiving any sensation either of heat, or of cold."
"Yeah, that's right, too. I noticed that I could take a faidon right out
of an electric arc and it wouldn't even be warm. I couldn't explain why
it was, but I see now. So that stuff inside that lens will always stay
as hot as it is right now! Zowie! Here's hoping she never explodes!
Well, there's the bell--for once in my life, I'm all ready to quit when
the whistle blows," and arm in arm the young Terrestrial chemist and the
aged Norlaminian physicist strolled out to their waiting airboat.