The Untouchable

: The Untouchable

"You can see it--you can watch it--but mustn't touch!" And what could

possibly be more frustrating ... when you need, most violently, to get

your hands on it for just one second....





The man finally entered the office of General George Garvers. As the

door closed behind him, he saw the general, who sprang from his chair to

greet him.



"Max! You finally came."


br /> "Got here as soon as I could. I wager half my time was taken up by the

security check points. You are certainly isolated in here."



"All of that," agreed the general. "Have a seat, won't you?" he asked,

indicating a chair.



His friend sank into it gratefully. "Now, what's this vital problem you

called me about? You weren't too specific."



"No," said Garvers, "I wasn't. This is a security matter, after a

fashion. It's vitally important that we get technical help on this

thing, and since you and I are friends, I was asked to call you in."



"Well?"



"I'm afraid I'll have to make a story of it."



"Quite all right by me, but don't mind if I interject a question now and

then. Mind if I smoke?"



"Go right ahead," said Garvers, fumbling out a lighter. "Just don't

spill ashes on the rug.



"This all began on the Third of May. I was working here on some

top-security stuff. I had suddenly got the feeling of being watched. I

know it seems silly, what with all the check points that a potential spy

would have to go through to get here, but that's just how I felt.



"Several times I glanced around the office, but of course it was empty.

Then I began to think that it was my nerves."



"You always were a bit of a hypochondriac," observed his friend.



"Be that as it may," continued Garvers, "it was the only explanation I

had at the time. Either someone was watching me, which seemed

impossible, or I was beginning to crack under the strain.



"Well, I put my papers away and tried to take a short break. I was

reaching into my drawer where I keep magazines when, so help me, a man

stepped out of the wall into my office."



"What? It seems as if you just said a guy stepped out of the wall."



"That's just what I did say. It sounds crazy, but let me finish, will

you? I'm not kidding, and I'll show you proof later if necessary.



"Anyway, this bird stepped straight out of the wall as if it had been a

waterfall or something, but the wall itself was undamaged. The only

proof I had that he had actually done it was the fact that he was in my

office, but that was proof enough.



"To put it mildly, I was thunderstruck. After jumping to my feet, I

could only stand there like an idiot. I was so shaken that I couldn't

speak a word. But he spoke first.



"'General Garvers?' he asked, just as if he had run into me at a

cocktail party or on the street.



"I told him he was correct, and asked him who he was and what he

wanted. And how he got into my office.



"He identified himself as a Henry Busch and explained that he was acting

in behalf of a good friend of his, the late Dr. Hymann Duvall. Have you

ever heard of Duvall, Max?"



His friend twisted his face in thought. "Can't say that I have,

off-hand. But the name seems to ring a bell somewhere."



"Well, anyway, he said that Duvall had perfected an invention of great

national importance shortly before his death and asked Busch to deliver

it to the government if anything should happen to him. Then Duvall died

suddenly of a heart attack."



"And what was this invention?"



"Isn't it obvious? A machine that would enable a man to walk through

walls. And Busch has no idea how the thing works, other than the general

explanation that Duvall gave him. And Busch was poles apart from Duvall.

They were friends from college, but not because of professional

interests. It seems they were both doublecrossed by the same girl.



"Duvall was a brilliant but obscure nuclear and radiation physicist. He

was one of those once-in-a-lifetime fellows like Tesla. He was so shy

that he didn't bring himself to anybody's attention, save for a few

papers he published in the smaller physical societies' magazines. It was

only because he had inherited a considerable amount of money that he

could do any research whatsoever."



"Hm-m-m. I seem to remember a paper about wave propagation in one of the

quarterlies. Quite unorthodox, as I recall," said Max.



"Could be. But anyway, about Busch.



"Busch majored in psychology at college, but took special courses after

he graduated and took a Master's in English. He has written two novels

and three collections of poems under various pen names. At the time of

Duvall's death, he was working on the libretto of an opera. He has had

no technical training, unless you want to count a year of high school

general science. So he wasn't too much help in explaining how Duvall's

instrument works.



"And, just to make matters more juicy, Duvall kept no notes. He had

total recall and a childlike fear of putting anything into writing that

had not been experimentally verified."



"And this machine, how is it supposed to work?"





Garvers got up and began to pace. "According to Busch, Duvall devised

the instrument after stumbling into an entirely new branch of physics.



"This device of Duvall's is a special case of a new theory of matter and

energy. Matter is made up of subnuclear particles--electrons, protons

and the like. However, Duvall said that these particles are in turn made

up of much smaller particles grouped together in aggregate clouds. The

size ratio of these particles to protons is somewhat like the ratio of

an individual proton to a large star. They seem to be composed of tiny

clots of energy from a fantastically complex energy system, in which

electromagnetism is but a small part. Each energy-segment is represented

by a different facet of each particle, and the arrangement of the

individual particles to each other determines what super-particle they

will form, such as an electron. Duvall called these sub-particles

'lems'.



"Busch says he was told that a field of a special nature could be

generated so as to make the individual lems in the particles of matter

rotate in a special way that would introduce a 'polarization field', as

Duvall called it. This field seems to be connected somehow with gravity,

but Busch wasn't told how.



"The upshot is that matter in the initial presence of the field is

affected so that it is able to pass through ordinary matter--"



"Hold on," interrupted Max. "If a device can do that, then the user

would immediately fall towards the center of the Earth."



"Just you hold on. You didn't let me finish. A single plane of atoms,

at the base of the treated object is the point of contact. It remains

partially unaffected because it is closest to the 'gravetostatic field

center', which I guess is the Earth's center of attraction. This plane

of 'semi-treated' atoms can be forced through an object, if it is moved

horizontally, but its 'untreated' aspect prevents the subject wearing

the device from falling through the floor.



"Busch demonstrated this device to me, turning it on and strolling

through various objects in this room. Think of it! No soldier could be

killed or held prisoner. And--"



"Now hang on," objected Max. "Let's not run away with ourselves. He may

have perfected a device that would enable a soldier to avoid capture,

but there would certainly be other ways to kill him than by bullets.

Let's see now: suppose that the enemy shot a flamethrower at him. The

burning materials might pass through him, but he would be cooked anyway.

Or poison gas--"



"Hm-m-m. As far as gas goes, I suppose a gas mask would be necessary.

Busch doesn't know about the breathing mechanism, except that he had to

take breaths. But as far as fire or radiation goes, the man's protected.

If the radiation is either harmful by nature or by amount, the field

merely reflects it. It is something called the 'lemic stress' of the

field that causes the phenomenon.



"That's why we need your help."



Max scratched his head thoughtfully. "I don't understand."



Garvers looked pained. "When Busch had finished his demonstration, he

carelessly tossed the device on my desk. The thing skidded and hit my

paperweight so that the switch was thrown on again. So now the device

and my desk are both untouchable.



"Go over to the desk and try to touch it," said Garvers dryly.



His friend got up and ambled over to the desk. There he saw a small

black box resting near a paperweight. Its toggle switch was at the "on"

position, and it was lying on its side. He tried to pick the box up, but

his hand slid effortlessly through it as if it were so much air.



"Well!" Max said. He passed his hand through the desk again. "Well,

well. Are you sure Busch told you everything?"



"Busch! He honestly wants to help and we have taken him through the

mill. Pentathol, scopolamine and the like; hypnotism and the polygraph.

We've dug that man deeper than we have ever dug anybody before."



"And have you conducted any experiments of your own?"



"Certainly. That's what is so frustrating. We try to X ray the thing,

and we don't get a thing. We bombarded it with every radiation we could

think of, from radio to gamma and it just reflected them. We can detect

no radiation coming out of it. Magnetic fields don't effect it, nor do

heat and cold. Nuclear particles are ignored by it; it just sits there

thumbing its nose at us. And we can't even wait for it to run down.

According to Busch, the power requirements of the thing are funny and

once the field is established, it takes no additional energy to maintain

it. And the collapsing power remains indefinitely until it is time to

turn the machine off, but it's unreachable by any means we have.



"It's pure frustration. There's no way we can analyze it until we can

handle it, and no way we can handle it until we can turn it off. And

there's no way we can turn it off until we have analyzed it. If it were

alive, I'd think that it was laughing at us.



"Do you have any ideas?" asked Garvers hopefully.



"Nothing that would help a solution at present," said Max. "But do you

remember the legend of King Tantalus?"



"Slightly. What about it?"



"Well ... if he were here," said Max thoughtfully, "he'd ...

sympathize."



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