After a time three left the room. Vaneman took Crane into his study to show him a rare folio; Mrs. Vaneman went upstairs, remarking plaintively that she had to finish writing that article, and if she put it off much longer she’d never get it done.
Dorothy said, “I skipped practice today, Dick, on account of traipsing out there after you two geniuses. Could you stand it to have me play at you for half an hour?”
“Don’t fish, Dottie Dimple. You know there’s nothing I’d like better. But if you want me to beg you I’ll be glad to. Please—PUH-LEEZE—oh fair and musicianly damsel, fill ye circumambient atmosphere with thy tuneful notes.”
“Wilco. Roger,” she snickered. “Over and out.”
She took up a violin—Crane’s violin—and played. First his favorites: crashing selections from operas and solos by the great masters, abounding in harmonies on two strings. Then she slowly changed her playing to softer, simpler melodies, then to old, old songs. Seaton, listening with profound enjoyment, relaxed more and more. Pipe finished and hands at rest, his eyes closed of themselves and he lay back at ease. The music changed again, gradually, to reveries; each one softer, slower, dreamier than the last. Then to sheer, crooning lullabies; and it was in these that magnificent instrument and consumate artist combined to show their true qualities at their very best.
Dorothy diminuendoed the final note into silence and stood there, bow poised, ready to resume; but there was no need. Freed from the tyranny of the brain that had been driving it so unmercifully, Seaton’s body had begun to make up for many hours of lost sleep.
Assured that he was really asleep, Dorothy tiptoed to the door of the study and whispered, “He’s asleep in his chair.”
“I believe that,” her father smiled. “That last one was like a bottle of veronal—it was all Crane and I could do to keep each other awake. You’re a smart girl.”
“She is a musician,” Crane said. “What a musician!”
“Partly me, of course, but—what a violin! But what’ll we do with him? Let him sleep there?”
“No, he’d be more comfortable on the couch. I’ll get a couple of blankets,” Vaneman said.
He did so and the three went into the living room together. Seaton lay motionless, only the lifting and falling of his powerful chest showing that he was alive.
“You take his . . .”
“Sh . . Sh!” Dorothy whispered, intensely. “You’ll wake him up, dad.”
“Bosh! You couldn’t wake him up now with a club. You take his head and shoulders, Crane—heave-ho!”
With Dorothy anxiously watching the proceedings and trying to help, the two men picked Seaton up out of the chair and carried him across the room to the couch. They removed his outer clothing; the girl arranged pillows and tucked blankets around him, then touched her lips lightly to his. “Good night, sweetheart,” she whispered.
His lips responded faintly to her caress, and, “. . . dnigh . . .” he murmured in his sleep.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Seaton, looking vastly better, came into the shop. When Crane saw him and called out a greeting, he returned it with a sheepish grin.
“Don’t say a word, Martin; I’m thinking it all, and then some. I never felt so cheap in my life as when I woke up on the Vanemans’ couch this noon—where you helped put me, no doubt.”
“No doubt at all,” Crane agreed, cheerfully, “and listen to this. More of the same, or worse, if you keep on going as you were.”
“Don’t rub it in—can’t you see I’m flat on my back with all four paws in the air? I’ll be good. I’m going to bed at eleven every night and I’m going to see Dottie every other evening and all day Sunday.”
“Very fine, if true—and it had better be true.”
“It will, so help me. Well, while I was eating breakfast this morning—this afternoon, rather—I saw that missing factor in the theory. And don’t tell me it was because I was rested up and fresh, either—I know it.”
“I was refraining heroically from mentioning the fact.”
“Thanks so much. Well, the knotty point, you remember, was what could be the possible effect of a small electric current in liberating the power. I think I’ve got it. It must shift the epsilon-gamma-zeta plane—and if it does, the rate of liberation must be zero when the angle theta is zero, and approach infinity as theta approaches pi over two.”
“It does not,” Crane contradicted, flatly. “It can’t. The orientation of that plane is fixed by temperature—by nothing except temperature.
“That’s so, usually, but that’s where the X comes in. Here’s the proof. . . .”
On and on the argument raged. Reference works littered the table and overflowed onto the floor, scratch-paper grew into piles, both computers ran almost continuously.
Since the mathematical details of the Seaton-Crane Effect are of little or no interest here, it will suffice to mention a few of the conclusions at which the two men arrived. The power could be controlled. It could drive—or pull—a space-ship. It could be used as an explosive, in violences ranging from that of a twenty-millimeter shell up to any upper limit desired, however fantastic when expressed in megatons of T.N.T. There were many other possibilities inherent in their final equations, possibilities which the men did not at that time explore.
Chapter 7
“SAY, Blackie,” Scott called from the door of DuQuesne’s laboratory, “did you get the news flash that just came over on KSKM-TV? It was right down your alley.”
“No. What about it?”
“Somebody piled up a million tons of tetryl, T.N.T., picric acid, nitroglycerine, and so forth up in the hills and touched it off. Blooie! Whole town of Bankerville, West Virginia—population two hundred—gone. No survivors. No debris, even, the man said. Just a hole in the ground a couple of miles in diameter an God only knows how deep.”
“Baloney!” DuQuesne snapped. “What would anybody be doing with an atomic bomb up there?”
“That’s the funny part of it—it wasn’t an atomic bomb. No radioactivity anywhere, not even a trace. Just skillions and whillions of tons of high explosive and nobody can figure it. ‘All scientists baffled,’ the flash said. How about you, Blackie? You baffled, too?”
“I would be, if I believed any part of it.” DuQuesne turned back to his work.
“Well, don’t blame me for it, I’m just telling you what Fritz Habelmann just said.”
Since DuQuesne showed no interest at all in his news, Scott wandered away.
“The fool did it. That will cure him of sucking eggs—I hope,” he muttered, and picked up his telephone.
“Operator? DuQuesne speaking. I am expecting a call here this afternoon. Please have the party call me at my home, Lincoln six four six two oh. . . . Thank you.”
He left the building and got his car out of the parking lot. In less than half an hour he reached his house on Park Road, overlooking beautiful Rock Creek Park, in which he lived alone save for an elderly colored couple who were his servants.
In the busiest part of the afternoon Chambers rushed unannounced into Brookings’ private office, his face white, a newspaper in his hand.
“Read that, Mr. Brookings!” he gasped.
Brookings read, his face turning gray. “Ours, of course.”
“Ours,” Chambers agreed, dully.
“The fool! Didn’t you tell him to work with very small quantities?”
“I did. He said not to worry, he was taking no chances, he wouldn’t have more than one gram of copper on hand at once in the whole laboratory.”
“Well . . . I’ll . . . be . . . jiggered!” Turning slowly to the telephone, Brookings called a number and asked for Doctor DuQuesne; then he called another.
“Brookings. I would like to see you as soon as possible. . . . I’ll be there in about an hour. . . . Good-bye.”
Brookings arrived and was shown into DuQuesne’s study. The two shook hands perfunctorily and sat down. The scientist waited for the other to speak.
“You were right, doctor,” Brookings said. “Our man couldn’t handle it. I have contracts here. . . .”
“At twenty and ten?” DuQuesne’s lips smiled, a cold, hard smile.
“Twenty and ten. The Company expects to pay for its mistakes. Here they are.”
DuQuesne glanced over the documents and thrust them into a pocket. “I’ll go over them with my attorney tonight and mail one copy back to you if he says to. In the meantime we may as well get started.”
“What do you suggest?”
“First, the solution. You stole it, I—”
“Don’t use such language, doctor!”
“Why not? I’m for direct action, first, last, and all the time. This thing is too important to mince words. Have you got it with you?”
“Yes. Here it is.”
“Where’s the rest of it?”
“All that we found is here, except for half a teaspoonful our expert had in his laboratory. We didn’t get it all; only half of it. The rest was diluted with water, so it wouldn’t be missed. We can get the rest of it later. That will cause a disturbance, but it may become. . . .”