The Occurrence Of The Impossible

: The Skylark Of Space

Petrified with astonishment, Richard Seaton stared after the copper

steam-bath upon which he had been electrolyzing his solution of "X," the

unknown metal. For as soon as he had removed the beaker the heavy bath

had jumped endwise from under his hand as though it were alive. It had

flown with terrific speed over the table, smashing apparatus and bottles

of chemicals on its way, and was even now disappearing through the open
< r /> window. He seized his prism binoculars and focused them upon the flying

vessel, a speck in the distance. Through the glass he saw that it did

not fall to the ground, but continued on in a straight line, only its

rapidly diminishing size showing the enormous velocity with which it was

moving. It grew smaller and smaller, and in a few moments disappeared

utterly.



The chemist turned as though in a trance. How was this? The copper bath

he had used for months was gone--gone like a shot, with nothing to make

it go. Nothing, that is, except an electric cell and a few drops of the

unknown solution. He looked at the empty space where it had stood, at

the broken glass covering his laboratory table, and again stared out of

the window.



He was aroused from his stunned inaction by the entrance of his colored

laboratory helper, and silently motioned him to clean up the wreckage.



"What's happened, Doctah?" asked the dusky assistant.



"Search me, Dan. I wish I knew, myself," responded Seaton, absently,

lost in wonder at the incredible phenomenon of which he had just been a

witness.



Ferdinand Scott, a chemist employed in the next room, entered breezily.



"Hello, Dicky, thought I heard a racket in here," the newcomer remarked.

Then he saw the helper busily mopping up the reeking mass of chemicals.



"Great balls of fire!" he exclaimed. "What've you been celebrating? Had

an explosion? How, what, and why?"



"I can tell you the 'what,' and part of the 'how'," Seaton replied

thoughtfully, "but as to the 'why,' I am completely in the dark. Here's

all I know about it," and in a few words he related the foregoing

incident. Scott's face showed in turn interest, amazement, and pitying

alarm. He took Seaton by the arm.



"Dick, old top, I never knew you to drink or dope, but this stuff sure

came out of either a bottle or a needle. Did you see a pink serpent

carrying it away? Take my advice, old son, if you want to stay in Uncle

Sam's service, and lay off the stuff, whatever it is. It's bad enough to

come down here so far gone that you wreck most of your apparatus and

lose the rest of it, but to pull a yarn like that is going too far. The

Chief will have to ask for your resignation, sure. Why don't you take a

couple of days of your leave and straighten up?"



Seaton paid no attention to him, and Scott returned to his own

laboratory, shaking his head sadly.



Seaton, with his mind in a whirl, walked slowly to his desk, picked up

his blackened and battered briar pipe, and sat down to study out what he

had done, or what could possibly have happened, to result in such an

unbelievable infraction of all the laws of mechanics and gravitation. He

knew that he was sober and sane, that the thing had actually happened.

But why? And how? All his scientific training told him that it was

impossible. It was unthinkable that an inert mass of metal should fly

off into space without any applied force. Since it had actually

happened, there must have been applied an enormous and hitherto unknown

force. What was that force? The reason for this unbelievable

manifestation of energy was certainly somewhere in the solution, the

electrolytic cell, or the steam-bath. Concentrating all the power of his

highly-trained analytical mind upon the problem--deaf and blind to

everything else, as was his wont when deeply interested--he sat

motionless, with his forgotten pipe clenched between his teeth. Hour

after hour he sat there, while most of his fellow-chemists finished the

day's work and left the building and the room slowly darkened with the

coming of night.



Finally he jumped up. Crashing his hand down upon the desk, he

exclaimed:



"I have liberated the intra-atomic energy of copper! Copper, 'X,' and

electric current!



"I'm sure a fool for luck!" he continued as a new thought struck him.

"Suppose it had been liberated all at once? Probably blown the whole

world off its hinges. But it wasn't: it was given off slowly and in a

straight line. Wonder why? Talk about power! Infinite! Believe me, I'll

show this whole Bureau of Chemistry something to make their eyes stick

out, tomorrow. If they won't let me go ahead and develop it, I'll

resign, hunt up some more 'X', and do it myself. That bath is on its way

to the moon right now, and there's no reason why I can't follow it.

Martin's such a fanatic on exploration, he'll fall all over himself to

build us any kind of a craft we'll need ... we'll explore the whole

solar system! Great Cat, what a chance! A fool for luck is right!"



He came to himself with a start. He switched on the lights and saw that

it was ten o'clock. Simultaneously he recalled that he was to have had

dinner with his fiancee at her home, their first dinner since their

engagement. Cursing himself for an idiot he hastily left the building,

and soon his motorcycle was tearing up Connecticut Avenue toward his

sweetheart's home.