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

"Comes under head of low velocities. Doesn't matter, anyway, because you can tap the Sun for power. But it is providential that we don't have to obey the laws of physics when we use rockets. Otherwise we'd never have gotten anywhere.
"Now for a ship the size of the one we will have-about
five thousand tons, I calculated-since we are eliminating the heavy double hull, and most of the weight of the outer one, with the magnetic atmosphere-that will be helped any time we have an antigravity field, because the antigra-vity-I call it an 'aggie' field, by the way-tends to bounce anything coming toward it. The incoming gravitational field, which is what the meteor represents, is repelled by the aggie field.
"To go on; a large weight will be added, however, in the power stacks. We'll carry nearly a thousand tons cargo of power apparatus.-With that we can give a jolt that would smash a small planet."
"It would," agreed Spencer, "but inasmuch as it would also smash a large bank roll, tell me, pray, why your soul cries out for such luxuries. What's all that'power for?"
"Intense fields; there are peculiar'effects when the fields become intense. I might find the secret of the destruction of matter if I could get a sufficiently intense field. Remember, while this Sun-tapper beam is wonderfully better than a rocket, it's a darned inconvenient form of power supply."
"It would take you a year to charge the fool thing," objected Spencer, "even with the Sun beam. You couldn't carry that along your copper bus-bars fast enough."
"Quite true! That's why we'll use power beams. That and the fact that I want to see what power I can send through one of these accelerators. You know the beauty of this form of drive is that there is no feeling of acceleration, since, naturally, all the particles of matter are accelerated individually. You'll be quite weightless in this thing-except for artificial gravity.
"In the meantime, I'm at last ready to discuss this ship thoroughly," acceded Aarn with a smile.
"Uh-you are? Well, I'm ready to discuss that new device. I've got a ship on the ways; it's going to be the Daniel
Spencer and carry one thousand passengers. The present idea was to have it equipped with magnetic atmosphere, your so-called aggie field, and Sun-beam apparatus. By the way, that gave me a headache-trying to figure out a way to keep the beams pointed at the Sun, and yet not be able to cut across the ship accidentally on a sudden turn. A complicated mess of gyroscopes that's worse than the automatic navigational control, but it will do the job. And now this new stuff has to go on her right away."
"Her? I thought you said it was the Daniel Spencer!" Aarn said mildly. "At any rate, I'll have to give you data for it. There's plenty of work on the calc before you can begin. The installation depends on the mass, distribution of mass, and so forth. Now look-"
Carlisle listened patiently for half an hour, then fell into a peaceful, resting sleep.
V
THE OFFICIAL TITLE of the craft was to be "Spencer Laboratories No. 6." Being human, Aarn wanted to make it capable of a lot more than merely plugging around in space and experimenting. He loaded the design with plenty of aggie power storage coils, and he made the momentum-wave drive apparatus a lot more powerful than was really necessary. The antigravrty apparatus was designed to be able to lift the mass of the ship laboratory away from the very surface of the Sun, against a gravitational acceleration of thirty earth-gravities.
All in all, Aarn made that ship an extremely powerful machine. But then-she was designed for experiments.
She was three months building on the Spencer ways. They rushed her construction, too, for many of the devices that Aarn planned to incorporate in later designs needed testing in actual operation. Her hull of beryl-steel was finished within two months, but the new labor of installing the strange devices took time and experimentation, careful, accurate balancing, lest failure be due not so much to defect in .plan, as defect in execution.
The final test, her maiden flight in space, Aarn wanted to make alone. "I can operate this thing alone, just as well as I can with a crowd along. I'll let Canning here go-I might need one technical assistant."
"The air apparatus might break down," suggested Carlisle, grinning. "You'll have to take me to be safe."
"The financial apparatus has nearly broken down already,
so you'll have to take me. I need a rest." Spencer groaned. "They say I'd be bankrupt now if it weren't that I've got' so many orders coming in we can't fill 'em. Man, you may be good in physics, but you don't know how good you are at spending money. I've spent three or four fortunes having dies cut for -the apparatus in this boat. This is my little ray of light and hope-if it doesn't come back, I never want to know it. I'm going along."
"Maybe some pirates will hold you up for ransom," suggested Carlisle cheeringly.
"Speaking of your little ray of light and hope and pirates makes me think. This thing needs a name-not a designation, a name. This is our little Sunbeam-and may she raise some blisters. She would, by the way, if she hit something going at her maximum," suggested Aarn.
"And if you insist on the whole neighborhood coming, bring Martin, anyway. I want some more meals. If you really want to know why I wanted to go alone, I wanted to go back to Jupiter. For once in my life I could go home without almost having to buy the ship that took me there.
"If you are so insistent, come along, and we'll make it a party."
Three days later,, the Sunbeam, with five aboard her, took off gently. Up through the great ceiling of the Spencer plant, she angled slowly. She was rising on pure lack of weight, by centrifugal throw. Presently a Spencer salvage ship came over, dropped a huge tow-magnet on the ship, and both rose swiftly into the air. Aarn was afraid to try out the new drive on so powerful a ship when near a planet.
Her crew on that trip that was to lead them to infinity and beyond consisted of Aarn Munro, Carlisle, Spencer, Canning, Aarn's chief technical assistant, and Henry Martin, chief cook and bottlewasher for the expedition.
The tow ship carried her out of the atmosphere and then fell well behind. Gently Aarn stirred in his seat. "And now comes the test. Do we move too slow or so fast we can't handle it? I'd hate to have to charge and rebalance these circuits. Anyway-"
Gingerly he advanced the acceleration control. Softly, behind them the great transpon beams began to hum. Inau-dible, invisible, almost indetectable momentum waves began to bite deep into space and thrust the great mass" of the ship forward.
The control at one, the Sunbeam moved off under one earth-gravity acceleration. Aarn moved his control to two. A frown came across his face, then a soft whistle of surprise. His accelerometer had moved over to eight!
"Sweet spirits of space! I was over-conservative. I thought I might not have that figured quite right-and I didn't. I'll have to cube every one of these readings here-and the top one is one thousand!"
"A million gravities! We can't stand that, can we?" "Well, if the ship can deliver it as a momentum wave, we can stand it. Right now I'm going to take a little run down to old Sol and charge up."
Aarn turned the Sunbeam till the electric-blue flame of the heart of - the solar system flared in the forward control window. Slowly Aarn advanced his control. At first no visible change occurred, save that Earth fell away; then it was lost from view as it. came almost directly behind. Only the one-hundred-million-mile-distant Sun remained visible. Then, slowly, even it began to change; more and more swiftly it expanded till Spencer sat gripping the arm rests fiercely. The tremendous distance to the Sun was being cut down visibly.
"Fifteen hundred miles per second," said Aarn comfortably, "and rising smoothly. Heaven help the meteor we
THE MIGHTIEST MACHINE
hit. I've got the magnetic atmosphere at full force and tied it in with the whole aggie-coil system. If we hit anything now, it'll get hit first by the magnetic atmosphere, then the antigravity field, and finally the whole impact of our . momentum-wave system. We've got the momentum of a major planet packed into a space one mile in diameter!"
"Yes, but suppose we do hit something-the Sun, at the rate you're going now-and get cooked?" suggested Carlisle uncomfortablly.
"I'm slowing." Aarn laughed happily. "Spence, you've got a ship as never was before I"
"Don't I know it? The system record for speed is only one thousand, six hundred and thirty-one miles per sec." "Was, Spence, was-we're doing about eighteen now. And I'm going to stop her dead I"
Aarn threw over a tiny tumbler-his emergency brake. Instantly a terrible crashing roar thundered out of the power room behind, as the transpon beams suddenly felt the impact of countless billions of horse power. Under an acceleration of one million earth-gravities, the Sunbeam came to rest and stopped. Not the slightest sign of strain or stress did the men aboard her feel as their "weight" was suddenly increased to around one-hundred thousand tons each.
"The Sunbeam," decided Aarn judiciously, "is thirsty. We'll give her a drink at the fountain of power-old Sol!"
The Sunbeam had started out with barely one tenth of her maximum charge. This had been brought in laboriously by the smaller ships, the Spencer salvage corps. These ships had been equipped with aggie-coil power racks, and transpon beams. The small coils had been charged, then drained into the greater coils of the Sunbeam-a ferry system for power, since the transpon beam to the Sun could not safely be used through the atmosphere.
Now the Sunbeam was about to drink deep of solar power.
38
THE MIGHTIEST MACHINE <
A brief roar of sound from the power room told of the establishment of the powerful fields that were projecting the transpon condition through space at the maximum velocity
-one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. The Sun loomed gigantic, unbearable, less than thirty million miles away.
Swiftly the silent minutes passed as the five men waited for the return of the power up the beam. Four-five minutes
-then with a terrific roar that dwarfed the former protest as the Sunbeam was brought to a dead stop, the power came in.
For ten long minutes the roar continued, before Aarn swiftly cut- it down, and as he cut it, the hitherto invisible transpon beam reaching from ship to Sun became visible as the excess energy flared off in waste light and heat. In three minutes more, the Sunbeam was fully charged.