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

"Hmmm-pardonable mistake. They thought that brass and copper would be unaffected by the magnetic field. Stripped off the iron evidently."
Aarn was busy. He was checking, instrumentally, a dozen circuits. At last he called out: "Canning-test circuit MM 433-a."
"That's it," came back the reply. "Compensator broke down. The damping effect when the meteor struck was too great for it. Needs a whole new circuit. Take me at least four hours. Shall I start right now?"
"Well, if you can think of some other way of making this bathtub move, all right, but I thought fixing it might be best," suggested Aarn gently. "What else might we do? Get going."
Aarn was busy with something else. He had the television device working now and was rapidly fitting the heavy mirror-polish steel shutters over the ports of the control room.
"Martin-hey, Martin! Get busy slapping on the port shutters. Fast!"
"Why? Rays do you think?" Carlisle asked anxiously. "We have no defense at all."
"Yes-rays of a sort-light rays; nothing much more dangerous. But light rays could blind us. Remember that the televisor eye there is a photo-cell of the newest Dinwiddie type. They can handle the Sun's radiation at the surface, fifty horse power per square inch. Also, curiously, they are supersensitive. Result-we have an eye out there now that can stand anything any projectors they have can handle."
"Suppose it's a heat ray?" suggested Carlisle.
"Suppose it's your grandmother's pet boogey! Get this through your head, Carlisle: Any weapon that depends on pure energy to destroy is a double-ended weapon, as deadly at the sending end as at the receiving, and probably more so. In other words, to project a heat ray requires the projection of, at least, ten thousand horse power in a beam of not more than half a square foot of cross section. That's not going to be any too bad. But if it's half a square foot at the receiving end, it can't be larger at the sending end,
and will probably be smaller. Then it is bound to be more deadly to the projector than to the receiving surface.
"Same's true of anything of the sort. Bombs are like that. They blow themselves- Ah-here he comes."
A ray of light. It was a terrific, stabbing searchlight intended for the sole purpose of blinding the enemy, if it was humanly possible. It would have been effective but for the fact that the televisor simply arranged itself for trie necessary load, and showed each ship as a single point of bluish light, not too bright. Then a series of splashes of reddish light began to spread over the surface of the magnetic atmosphere.
"I only fear we are like the oyster and the starfish." Aarn sighed. 'They. can't break our shell at the present rate, but, on the other hand, we can't run away for a while. But if they just go right on pulling long enough, they may open us up eventually."
The pyrotechnic display stopped abruptly, the searchlights went black, and the television screen showed again the simple ships, their tiny noses an almost impossible target for any weapon.
"Those," said Aarn at length, "are what the old navies would have called destroyers. Speedy probably, fairly powerful fighting weapons, and a very small target"
"What are they going to do next?"
"How in blazes do I know? I guessed the searchlights because it's obvious. The next may be anything from a radio-frequency pencil of energy designed to heat us generally -that being a possibility because, Carlisle, it starts out as electric forces, and doesn't become destructive, unmanageable heat till it's absorbed, but it can't be used as a concentrated beam for cutting holes, because it won't focus that sharply. Or their next attack may be some kind of
a tractor beam with which to tow us home where the big battleships can be turned loose on us, to crack the nut; or open the oyster, as I said before."
"What do we do in that case?"
"We help Canning with his repairs as much as possible. And at the end of about four hours, we run away from
• the bad boys. By the way, we're turning slowly, and we get a peek at the sun in a few minutes. I didn't look when I was back.
"Hmmm-our friends evidently chose the tractor beam. In this case a series of powerful electromagnets on the ends of cables."
The enemy ships were lowering something cylindrical, and roughly fashioned, at the end of long cables toward them. The devices came from somewhere behind, for the cables hung along the side of the ships.
Aam smiled. "My brethren, we shall now demonstrate the old Australian custom, or 'How to Make a Boomerang Go Home and Spank Papa.' They went to the trouble of making those bar electromagnets to act on our unipolar field. Nice of them-"
Aarn was adjusting something, and he had a switch-a two-way switch-under his hand. The bar magnets the enemy were lowering were taut on their cables now, straining at the powerful unipolar field of the Sunbeam.
And with a gentle sigh, Aarn reversed the Sunbeam's magnetic pole. Instantly, the half-ton magnets were under the influence of a tremendous magnetic field of the same sign
-and they were repelled with all the power that had attracted them, plus a little extra Aarn had added to the field.
Straight and true the great lumps of steel shot backward and toward the needle ships. Two ships avoided their fly-
ing magnets, four were struck and dented, one actually torn by the great flying projectile.
"How sweet the uses of adversary!" misquoted Aarn. "But they won't assume we are dead any longer. The fact of life has been adequately proved."
Whoever "they" may have been, "they" didn't. The six ships spun with startling speed into a hemisphere, all ships pointing toward the Sunbeam, but so arranged as to offer the absolute minimum target, and the absolute optimum of effectiveness. Then they began running through their armory vigorously.
They started with shells. And they weren't all metal shells this time; a lot of them were evidently made of synthetic plastics and they shot through the magnetic atmosphere unhindered, but now Aarn had re-established an anti-gravity field, and the great shells bounced one after another into flaming destruction.
The terrific searchlights flamed again. And spheres of blue radiance. They shot out swiftly from the ships, sped straight toward the Sunbeam-and then started circling it. They circled steadily, swiftly, expanding slowly, growing brighter, and staying at a uniform distance from the ship-a distance of about half a mile.
A shell struck one of them, and a shell and blue sphere
of radiance vanished together in terrific electric flame. Half
a hundred of the strange spheres spun about harmlessly
"now, and when they came near each other, they shied
violently away.
"Wavering planetary paths! That's controlled ball lightning! What I'd give for the secret of that!" gasped Aarn.
"Why isn't it striking us?"
"Circulating in the magnetic field. Say-look!"
The thermometer was rising. It was rising smoothly, and
steadily. The room was getting uncomfortably hot, and their own bodies began to get warmer, perspiration stood out on them, and little blue sparks began to jump from bead to bead of that perspiration. Then their keys, their coins, all their metal objects began to have live sparks like a halo about them.
"Damn-ouch-" Aarn reached and held firmly to his controls. "Radio frequency-and plenty. Well-our turn now."
Something hummed vividly in the power room behind. A sudden explosion of air as tremendous power leaped into a transpon beam that smashed its way through the ship's atmosphere.
And a sudden white-hot globule of molten metal where an enemy ship had been.
The hum died, and the air exploded back into the partial vacuum the beam had cut in it.
Again a whine, a clap of thunder, and a blazing white-hot spot of light where a ship had been, exploding light.
"How sweet!" murmured Aarn and swept his deadly probe about through space. He was using no power till the beam met resistance. "It's the transpon beam working in reverse. It's supposed to take the power from a sun for our coils. I'm taking power from the" coils, and making miniature suns out of those ships."