"Campbell, John W Jr - The Space Beyond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

sphere-like the famous bathyspheres before they used parium submarines. Synthium-we've got enough now, since we cut up the power plant. But how-how to work. A propeller would do fine down in this air-but we haven't any wings, and we'd get into thinner air pretty quickly. But-how to work out of the thing-it will require mechanism-outside mechanism controlled from within-somehow.
"But-what to use-what to use- Are we no better off now?" Corliss stood looking at the greater generator they had made, working only lightly now, discharging to some extent at high voltage. A switch stood open, and the knife-blades were brushed with little blue fuzz, luminous blue like iron filings hanging stiffly onto a magnet. And then Bar Corliss saw the whole, complete answer, and laughed softly. It was so beautifully simple, effective-and inefficient. But he didn't mind that.
He just went on laughing when Riley asked for the secret, and showed him what he needed for the diving sphere. Riley and Martin started making it, and the men hi the "Corliss Two" announced then- generator was working, and started on a diving sphere too.
That took nearly two weeks, with all the magnets and motors and little gears and grips and welding arc apparatus. And Corliss made experiments in Thrumann's laboratory air-lock. The big lock was full of diving sphere. Riley wasn't too sure they could open that lock, with the steel gasket that had run like warm tar.
They sent the diving sphere out alone, first. It was more mobile than the ship itself! It had the little Corliss Generator and a dry cell for a power plant, and four motors and propellers for mobility, and it was made of solid synthium. They could open the lock-and the diving sphere resisted the pressure safely.
So they were ready for the things Riley had been cutting out of synthium at Corliss' directions, little Venturi tubes a foot long and three inches in maximum diameter, •vith electrical connections. He was making hundreds of them, making them till the synthium stock was gone, and then he cut up the furniture-made of synthium because synthium was stronger per pound than anything else ever began to be-and when that was gone, he cut up an empty water tank, and used that. Finally he had to stop. But he had a lot of the little things made. Corliss was
working still on Thrumann's lock-to the German's disappointment, because all his oxygen apparatus had been torn out.
Martin and Riley had the job, and they hated it. In that bubble of metal, steadied somewhat by a motor used as a gyroscope, driven by four little propellers, they had to maneuver around, and with a queer thing Corliss called a "mechanical hand," place the Venturi tubes as Corliss had directed, weld them onto the synthium wall with a sudden spot of energy (they had let the entire pressure of the outside atmosphere into the inter-hull again, so that the outer wall was bearing little strain) and place them correctly. Then-the leads, power leads of copper wire supported in synthium beta insulators, welded finally through the synthium-beta port in Thrumann's air-lock, into the ship itself. Then-they were done.
That was all.
It was rather difficult, the last few days. Because there wasn't any food at all left now, not even one of the cubes of concentrated nourishment.
It took them a month to do the final modifications, because the thing was incredibly difficult, working in a bubble of metal that turned and spun and jiggled un-predictably, no matter how they anchored it magnetically. Magnets on the end of mechanically jointed arms held the things they wanted to weld, and the electrodes always bobbed the other way, and when they were in the right position, the Venturi had twisted in the wrong orientation. By the time they had two of them in place, they had to go back to the ship, and have their leaky bubble re-exhausted, as the pressure crept up.
It was misery those last days, slowly starring.
They did it though, and the "Mercury" was ready. The ship turned around at 11:30 P.M., 221 days after she first touched Jupiter's atmosphere-under her own power now. At nearly thirty miles an hour she started on her long trek north. Two days later, the "Corliss Two" started south to meet her, also under her own power, and moving nicely. And behind each ship they'd spun long streamers of electric fire. They glowed beautifully. The "Two" reached the Equator first, and had the pleasure of plowing through the "heaves and bounces." It was not so bad though, because it made good time, and had some control.
They joined in about ten days, because they rose soon, out of the exceedingly dense lower atmosphere to a greater height where the air was not so dense. They had no wings to add drag, so they made good time-180 miles an hour up there.
That was speed. On Earth, they'd have circled the planet in less than seventy hours at their combined speed of 360 miles an hour-yet they spent 240 hours en route -and those hi the "Mercury" were very near dead when the two ships joined, and food could be obtained. Then Lombard and Corner from the "Two" worked together, and in three days, the men were well again.
And then-in all the little Venturi tubes, the electric flares started again-the little brush discharges that Corliss had visualized as he watched the brush discharges from the knife switch-that day long called, at times, the "electric breeze," never before used. But now the electric breeze started again, grew in power as the inexhaustible energy of the Corliss Energy Generator flowed stronger, and the two ships swung slowly upward, then faster and faster as they left the thicker air, faster and faster . . .
The region of storms had little terror for them now- they had control. They pounded up, at rising speed, for the electric breeze, a drive less than one percent efficient; but what matter, it was capable of thousands of miles an hour.
It was as good as a rocket, really, while a trace of atmosphere removed, for as they reached the last thin traces of Jupiter's atmosphere, the electric breeze became a terrific electric tornado from the electro-static discharge points, the ionized molecules flying out at thousands of miles a second.
The "Two" reached Satellite Five in ten hours. The "Mercury," with one burst tube, took twelve.
But they worried little about that. They made it, and Ganymede too.
Corliss looked out of the ports. Jupiter hung gigantic, steamy above them. Outside, terrific cold prevailed. Jupiter hung giant-and still mysterious.
"I'm going to go back there," said Corliss, "and it won't be the last thing I do. I can move there now, and by Great Jupiter, I will! I'm going back to Earth now- for a good ship.
"But that's all right, Jupe," he laughed, "the score's even! You knocked me about a bit-but you taught me.
"Brad-this expedition cost me thirty-seven million, five hundred and forty-two thousand, and several hundred. Brad-what do you think an energy generator's worth to the world?"


ALL

I

John Reid rose slowly as the radio clicked into silence under Grant's fingers. The nine other men at the table moved restlessly. John Reid the younger snubbed out a cigarette with a grinding, heavy persistence, slow and inexorable.
' "It is done," said old John Reid slowly. "America, last to fall, is fallen to Asia." He shook his massive white head slowly. "And by Fate's unkindest mockery, we reach our goal, reach it at the end of a course as difficult and as long as the course Asia's Nijihua led her men to reach their .goal-the Asian World, simultaneous in birth with America's death.
"Our goal is reached, Scientists. Before you the atom burns to silver light, silver energy, so safely, so control-lably, so irresistibly when we choose. The world needs it, needs it infinitely for peace as America needed it for war.
"Now-shall we sell it to Nijihua-and the world? Give it to the world-and Nijihua?"
Young John Reid rose slowly. His face was keen and his eyes intense; there was in his slowness of movement not the slowness of defeat and age and despair. His was of absolute determination, and known power. Blue eyes, young and strong, starred in the silver star-flecked light of the golden lamp, looked down the table to blue eyes under silver hair, thin and silky. "No," he said, soft and cold, "we will not sell, we will not give. At the crook of our finger, at the whisper of a word Nijihua would heap honor, power, on the one who mentioned the secret of the Atom to him. But Asians will come. They will find us here, even here. But it will be months, three months, six; for this Research Department 7-A was chosen by the American Government not unwisely, not without secrecy. We will have time before they find this lone, lost canyon. And when they come this will not be American Research Department 7-A. It will be something very, very different. And that we must work out. For we have tools, we have machines, and we have that Lamp of the Atoms, which is not a lamp alone. Inadequate they are to strike direct
at Nijihua and the Asian World we know, and useless when the spirit of America's unity is crushed.
"One thing we have done, we have lighted the lamp. Two things we must do; rebuild America into a unit, and strike at Nijihua. Now for this we have a tool, and the lamp we have lighted lights unguessed caverns of knowledge. Three days it has burned for us, and in that time we have seen lead melt to gold, raw rock to flaming radium, seen tearing bolts that shattered rock and metal. But does any man know this infinitely important thing; Why, three days ago, when Warren Lewellyn first lit that lamp, seven of us died in sudden silent rigidity while we eleven, who stood beside and among them, are here this hour?
"I know, radiations, radiations we have stopped by brute shielding, and brute ignorance. But we did not die, and they did. We know nothing of the thing we have found. But-I have thoughts on that.
"We will do much invention in these three months, and some will be artistic and some will be fantastic, some will be-the exploration of the caverns the light of the lamp reveals.
"We must have men, men of our own race to back us and aid us and hold what we conquer for them. And we must have something that will withstand the might of Nijihua's armies, and nothing will do that. Therefore we must deflect their fury until the time comes that we are ready.
"Now we would build a firm-knit political union of our people, and Nijihua would build a firm-knit union of all peoples for the benefit of his own. To do this, Nijihua has taken a leaf from the ancient books, and from Rome he has learned and from Persia, from Macedonia and Egypt who ruled world-girdling empires. All these have taught him many things, and the first of these is this: it is not swords which hold or overthrow empires, nor mighty leaders alone, but emotions and mobs and mass. It is the race, not the man. A well-fed and sheltered slave is a safer companion than the freest of starving wretches. The freedom man wants, is freedom to work and eat and live and think as he wills. To rule an empire then, each man must have his way in those things that matter no whit to the empire, and matter so much to the man. You have read the promises of the Emperor. What does he say?"
"To each man a home, a wife, a living, and peace to enjoy these things. To each man the right to learn, to think, to live, to worship as he will, so only he does not disturb the peace of the Emperor," old John Reid quoted slowly.
"To worship as we please! That, and that alone I shall demand!"
The nine men looked from father to son in puzzlement John Reid the younger pointed to the star-flecked silver lance of light that leapt in frozen grace from the golden lamp, and slowly their eyes deepened, and their faces set in a grim, sure knowledge.
"We want no converts of an alien race," said David Muir slowly. "How, John, do we turn them away?"
"If my guess be more than guess, though he come in skin-dyed white as ours, with hair like golden grain and eyes blue as liquid air, set straight and true across his face, though we make him gladly welcome, still no convert shall slip through to spy and warn and reveal!" said John Reid. "We have a thousand thousand inventions yet to make, and a hundred days to make them."
"Whom do we worship?" asked big, slow Tornsen.
"And that is not the least of our inventions," answered John Reid. "Let it be-All, Lord of Things that Are and Are to Be!"
"We build, then, the shrine of All, in whom everything that is, is." Old John Reid nodded slowly. "And All is manifest in the Flame. Yes. We must invent the Service of All. Which will be the Service of America.
"The Temple will be built."