“Huh? What? What time?”
“Oh, say about nine o’clock.”
Don showed up, along with apparently every human in the place and about half of Sir Isaac’s numerous family. Roger Conrad was in charge of the demonstration. He was busy at a control console which told the uninstructed observer nothing. He busied himself with adjustments, looked up and said, “Just keep your eyes on the birdie, folks-right over that bench.” He pressed a key.
There flicked into being over the bench, hanging in the air unsupported, a silvery ball some two feet across. It seemed to be a perfect sphere and a perfect reflector and, more than anything else in the world, it made Don think of a Christmas tree ornament. Conrad grinned triumphantly. “Okay, Tony—give it the ax!”
Tony Vincente, the most muscular of the laboratory crew, picked up a broad-bladed ax he had ready. “How would you like it split—up and down, or sideways?”
“Suit yourself.”
Vincente swung the ax over his head and brought it down hard.
It bounced off.
The sphere did not quiver, nor was there any mar on its perfect mirror surface. Conrad’s boyish grin got even wider. “End of act one,” he announced and pressed another button. The sphere disappeared, left nothing to show where it had been.
Conrad bent over his controls. “Act two,” he announced. “We now cancel out half the locus. Stand clear of the bench.” Shortly he looked up. “Ready! Aim! Fire!” Another shape took being, a perfect sphere otherwise like the last. Its curved outer surface was faced up. “Stick the props in, Tony.”
“Just a sec, while I light up.” Vincente lit a cigarette, puffed it vigorously, then propped it in an ash tray and slid it under the half globe. Conrad again manipulated his controls; the shape descended, rested on the bench, covering the burning cigarette on its tray. “Anybody want to try the ax on it, or anything else?” asked Conrad.
Nobody seemed anxious to tamper with the unknown. Conrad again operated his board and the silver bowl lifted. The cigarette still smoldered in the tray, unaffected. “How,” he asked, “would you like to put a lid like that over the Federation’s capital at Bermuda—and leave it in place until they decided to come to terms?”
The idea quite evidently met with unanimous approval. The members of the Organization present were all, or almost all, citizens of Venus, emotionally involved in the rebellion no matter what else they were doing. Phipps cut through the excited comment with a question. “Dr. Conrad—would you give us a popular explanation of what we have seen? Why it works, I mean; we can guess at its enormous potentials.”
Conrad’s face got very serious. “Mmm… Chief, perhaps it would be clearest to say that the fasarta modulates the garbab in such a phase relationship that the thrimaleen is forced to bast—or, to put it another way, somebody loosed mice in the washroom. Seriously, there is no popular way to explain it. If you were willing to spend five hard years with me, working up through the math, I could probably bring you to the same level of ignorance and confusion that I enjoy. Some of the tensor equations involved are, to put it mildly, unique. But the instructions were clear enough and we did it.”
Phipps nodded. “Thanks—if that is the word I want. I’ll ask Sir Isaac.”
“Do, please. I’d like to listen.”
Despite the proof that the lab crew had been able to jury-rig at least part of the equipment described by the message in the two wires, Don’s jitters got no better. Each day the sign in the mess hall reminded him that time was running out—and that he was sucking his thumb while it did so. He thought no more about trying to get them to send him back to the war zone; instead he began to make plans to get there on his own.
He had seen maps of the Great South Sea and knew roughly where he was. To the north there was territory uninhabited even by dragons—but not uninhabited by their carnivorous cousins. It was considered impassable. The way to the south around the lower end of the sea was much farther, but it was dragon country all the way right up to outlying human farms. With whistle speech and food enough to last at least a week he might get through to some settler who could pass him along to the next. As for the rest he had his knife and he had his wits and he was much more swampwise than he had been when he had made his escape from Bankfield’s men.