"Campbell, John W Jr - The Mightiest Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

JOHN W. CAMPBELL first started writing in 1930 when his first short story, When the Atoms Failed, was accepted by a science-fiction magazine. At that time he was twenty years old and still a student at college. As the title of the story indicates, he was even at that time occupied with the significance of atomic energy and nuclear physics.
For the next seven years, Campbell, bolstered by a scientific background that ran from childhood experiments, to study at Duke University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote and sold science-fiction, achieving for himself an enviable reputation in the field.
In 1937 he became the editor of Astounding Stories magazine and applied himself at once to the task of bettering the magazine and the field of s-f writing in general. His influence on science-fiction since then has been great. Today he still remains as the editor of that magazine's evolved and redesigned successor, Analog.
by JOHN W. CAMPBELL
ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10036
THE MIGHTIEST.MACmNE
Copyright, 1935, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
Copyright, 1947, by John W. Campbell, Jr.
An Ace Book, by arrangement with the author.
All Rights Reserved
Cover by Podwil.
John W. Campbell has also written: THE BLACK.STAR PASSES (F-346)
Printed in U.S.A.
I
"I SUPPOSE," SAID Don Carlisle with a look of disapproval, "that this, too, is the 'latest and greatest achievement of interplanetary transportation engineers.' They turn out a new latest and greatest about once every six months -as fast as they build new ships in other words."
"You should talk!" Russ Spencer laughed. "One of the features of that ship is the new Carlisle air rectifiers, guaranteed to maintain exactly the right temperature, ion, oxygen, and ozone content as well as humidity control. But, anyway," he went on, turning to his friend, "I wish you could have made this discovery just two years earlier. It was the dream of dad's life to build the first meteor-pro6f ship in the, Spencer Rocketship Yards. You physicists were
mighty slow about that. You've done the miracle now-I hope -but I wish you could have done it sooner."
Big Aarn Munro smiled his slow smile. "I wish I could have, Russ. But remember, physics is like a chain-you can't add the last link till all the earlier ones are in place. You don't know, perhaps, how much depends on that one discovery of the magnetic atmosphere. I couldn't have done it two years before, because then the necessary background hadn't been developed. Now, the magnetic atmosphere development of mine will serve as background for other developments. While you engineers have been working on this ship, I have, despite Carlisle's contemptuous references, been trying to prepare for another 'latest and greatest.' "
They had reached now, the base of the huge metal ways that supported the newly completed Procyon, the Spencer Rocket Co.'s latest product. Nearly seven hundred feet long, two hundred and fifty in diameter, a huge, squat cylinder, it loomed gigantic. The outer hull of aluberyl gleamed with faint iridescent color in the light of the few great lamps scattered about the huge construction shed.
The hum and rattle of saws and welders was subdued here, all the work was being done inside now, and fleets of heavy freight planes were dropping gently into place on the helicopters, bearing loads of furnishings. Lights glowed in some of the ports now, and six huge, twisting cables snaked off across the littered yards to the main power board. The distant rhythm of the great power plant outside echoed faintly even here.
"She taking off on time, Russ?" asked Aarn, looking up at her.
"She should." The engineer nodded. "Barrett said he was sure of his end. Trial run tomorrow starting at 13:57:30 o'clock. Just to Luna City and back. And let's hope, Aarn, that your idea is right." A note of real earnestness had en-
tered Spencer's voice now. "Aside from the fact that she means nearly ten million credits investment, which no one will insure on this trip, there will -necessarily be seventy-three men aboard. And I'm taking your word for it and testing her in the worst of the Leonids."
Aarn nodded silently. Then he spoke again: "Physics says they will be safe from anything short of a ton. And meteors weighing even a hundred pounds are mighty rare."
""But it takes only one," Spencer reminded him, "and that one would mean near ruin to me. My grandfather and my father have built up this business. I've had mighty little to do with it-only the last two years since dad died-but I don't want to see the tradition die. My grandfather built the first rocket to reach the Moon back in 1983. Dad built the first rocket to reach Mars back in 2036. Your father rode the first rocket to reach the surface of Jupiter. And mine built it. But naturally the old Spencer rocket had plenty of competition. The Deutsche Rakete people being the worst -or best. They'll be on my neck if I lose this. But the little ships worked and, despite what they say about the big field not holding, I'm trusting your figures."
"I'm going along," Aarn smiled. "I'll bet my neck on it, anyway. Physics is generally a pretty safe bet."
"Uhmm-maybe so," Carlisle put in. "But you physicists have done a poor job on the subject of the atom. You've been promising us atomic energy and transmutation for a century, and you can't even tell why a chemical combination takes place."
"I hear," said Aarn slowly, "that you chemists have a theory that will account for it. And that theory also says that tungsten, in an X-ray tube, should radiate in the 'pale pink,' as Morgenthal expressed it."
"Well-that's as good as your physics atoms will do. You predict, similarly, that carbon will combine only with elec-
tro-negative elements. And X-rays in the 'pale pink' are no worse than denying the very useful hydrocarbons. And we chemists have produced rocket fuels for terrestrial rockets, while you physicists haven't yet produced atomic energy for interplanetary rockets. Oh, you have a sort of bad compromise in the accumulator-"
"The accumulator is a'very useful and compact device," Aarn interrupted, "which holds no less than thirty thousand kilowatt hours per pound-just a wee bit better than you chemists have ever hoped to do. I well remember that we Jovians waited twenty-two long years for release. Chemists made fuels eventually, that would lift a ship from Earth to Phobos-Mars to Jupiter, but couldn't even begin to lift it back. So a few spirits like dad and mother and the rest of the people there just marooned themselves and waited twenty-two years till physics rescued them. Chemistry got them in, but couldn't get them out again."
"Yes; but chemistry made their synthetic foods for them meanwhile"
"Foul things," said Aarn with a grimace. "I was nineteen before I tasted food."
"They seemed to agree with you," said Spencer with a slight smile.
Aarn Munro stood some five feet seven in height, and, to those who did not know him and his remarkable history, appeared exceedingly fat. He was nearly five feet in circumference, while his arms and legs stuck out at peculiar angles. And they seemed misshapen.
Jupiter, a world of two and a half times the gravity of Earth, required strength in its people, and speed, too. On Earth, Aarn weighed nearly three hundred and fifty pounds. For the first twenty years of his life he had lived on the giant of the system, and had developed such strength as no
Terrestrian ever dreamed of. More than once he had proved his ability to lift and walk off with a ton and a half of lead. "They did, chemically," Aarn acknowledged. "But I wasn't sorry to see a ship come in that could get out again."
"But," said Spencer, "if It wasn't for the nice stepladder of satellites, by the way, even Aarn's vaunted physics couldn't get a ship loose from old Jove's grip."
"That's true," returned Aarn, "but it doesn't enter the question, you see, because the satellites are there. Nine of 'em. So it's just a case of Jupiter to Five to Europa to Six to Mars. And what better could you ask?"
"I can ask a lot better," Spencer said, his voice suddenly sharp and annoyed. They had reached the main entrance port of the Procyon, but Spencer stopped where he was, damming up a stream of workmen, to talk. "I can ask for antigravity apparatus. If physics is any good, it ought at least to be able to say 'Here's the way to do it, but we can't just yet because of this or that," and then find out how to overcome those difficulties,
"And I could ask for a machine that could generate power. Power from atoms, perhaps. This thing, this big hulking brute, it's a waste of water that this planet may need some day. Look at Mars-dry as dust. Almost impossible to get rocket water there. If it wasn't for the photo cells that give them power direct from the Sun, and make it possible to cook water out of gypsum, they couldn't live. Some day Earth will need water as badly, and this wasting of thousands of tons of water is a crime and a thousand other things.
"Damn it all, Aarn, why don't you do something? Chemistry is helpless. It's a job for physics, and you know it, and so does Carlisle, for all his bluffing. Why don't you do it, though?
"You've done a miracle already in making that magnetic
atmosphere, and I know it. The way it stops meteors and burns them into gas is a miracle; but not enough, we need more."
"We do, Russ, and I know it. That magnetic atmosphere was a by-product. It was a first "step on the road, just the metal of which the key is made, purely incidental. I haven't been saying much, but I've been doing some extremely interesting work. And-I'm going to tell you a story.
"I saw a machine. It was the mightiest machine that could ever exist. It was an atomic, better, a material engine. It burned matter to energy. Most of the energy was electrical in nature at one stage of the process, but it was converted to heat and light and other forms of energy. And one of those forms of energy was a curious field of force that could tear great holes in tremendous masses of matter, and there appeared coincidentally with that a force that seemed to hurl masses of matter greater than a dozen worlds like Earth, greater than mighty Jupiter, a million miles into space.
"It was a wonderful, pulsing, rhythmic machine, and operated in a wonderful adjustment more delicate than any machine man ever made. Controlling unimaginable billions of billions of horSe power, it remained in perfect balance with a variation in its output of less than one per cent. Controlling forces that could have hurled this planet about like a bit of dust, it remained in perfect equilibrium.
"It was a star. Any star. It was the Sun, the mightiest machine man ever observed. A titanic, inconceivable generator handling the power of three millions of tons of destroyed matter every second-and maintaining equilibrium. The explosion of more than three million tons of matter, really, regulated and controlled. Save that occasionally a great rent appears in its surface that could swallow all the planets of the system, and not be filled, or a tongue of flame a quarter