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

"Why not do as I say, and fold them, Brad? I'm not nuts, even if I do say funny things. The air is denser than water. The rocks float in it down a little lower. We're frozen in- a hailstone now, and can't break loose. But if you aren't going to use the wings, why not fold them?" Corliss .spoke ironically. There was no answer. Finally he spoke again. "All right, go ahead. But close off the barometers when they start exploding. Synthium's the only stuff that can stand the pressure."
"That pitching's pretty severe-God-that pinion gear is strained. Pull in the wings!"
"They won't move now, sir," a faint voice replied. "The rack's-" The voice was drowned in a rending, crashing thunder.
Silence returned in a few seconds. "The wings go off?" asked Corliss sweetly. "Ours did too. Right about where you are. Will you order the barometers closed off now? And don't try to fire your rockets when you get any lower because the air's too dense. It will burst the tubes, and if you melt a hole in the synthium rocket-housing, you'll die in a thousandth of a second, and we would like someone to talk to."
"Close all barometer valves," conceded Brad's voice at last. "Where are you, Bar? I thought you must be mad." "We're frozen in a hailstone about a mile thick, I guess. We're on the south polar ice cap. Where are you?"
"Forty-five degrees north. It doesn't matter because we're falling freely, and we'll smash when we hit."
"No you won't. The air's too thick. If you just had your wings, you could stop like landing in a featherbed. You'll float as it is. Take my advice and drop some kind of an anchor in the hydrosphere. What ship are you in?" " 'Two,'" replied the radio voice. "But we haven't any anchor."
"Heave out that magnet if you've still got it. It might do some good, though I doubt it. But stay north. The equator is a region of storms-bounces and heaves. It will
make you sick. If you get in the snow regions, use the rockets to push out. But you won't hit. You'll float in the air."
Two hours later the "Corliss II" was bobbing slowly in Jupiter's atmosphere, in just about the position the "Mercury" had occupied. And there she stuck.
"Isn't there anything we can do, Bar?" asked Brad, from the "Corliss II."
"Well, maybe you can, but we spent six months and didn't get far. Our food, by the way, will give out in about a month. Not that it will make much difference."
"But there must be some way out?"
"Straight up," said Corliss ironically. "But don't use your rockets. They'll burst, as ours did. Thrumann has a system for getting the oxygen out of the air if you're interested. Personally, I don't think its worth while. I've got something rankling in my head, and I'm going to start working on it to pass the time. It's impossible of course, so it's just the sort of thing to get us out of this impossible situation on this impossible planet. It's so impossible I'm going to work on it. Goodbye. Talk to Riley for a while. Personally, I'm rather disgusted with you for being a rather complete nitwit, and for disobeying the orders I gave you. You knew we must be wrecked; you might at least have waited till we gave you the details. Then, if you didn't believe us, you could come on in, with some reason."
Corliss turned disgustedly from the microphone and looked slowly at the men around him. "Don't get all hot and pepped up about what I said. It's impossible to begin with; it's impossible to do any work here because we haven't anything to work with, and I think it would still be impossible to get out if I made what I want to."
Corliss retreated to the motors room, and locked the door. Then he sat down and started calculating, and playing with a pencil and paper, and drawing diagrams. Gradually, as hours went by, the diagrams started to become modifications of one general pattern. Ten hours later there was one, finely finished little diagram, with pages of notes explaining each little arrowed and numbered part. Corliss had seen daylight-and was beginning to dissolve the word impossible out of his vocabulary.
He ate finally, having locked everybody else out of the motors room, and went to sleep. When he got up, he ate
V.J
again, and returned to the motors room. The men in the radio-corner were carrying on a lengthy talk with the "Corliss II," giving advice. Aboard the "Two" they were building a pump now to force the leakage out again. Riley and Martin were trying to explain just how it was made, but they couldn't give diagrams, and they couldn't point with their fingers, and they had to develop a whole new nomenclature. There was too strong a tendency to use the words "this," "that," and "gadget." They were well occupied all the morning.
And Corliss worked in the motor room, looking up data and working the calculators. About four hours after he went hi, he stuck his head out of the door, and spoke for the first time that "day." There was a broad grin on his face.
"Riley-come here will you? I think-well, come here anyway." Riley came. And the door was locked again. Martin looked after them sourly, then spoke into the microphone.
"Bar's hauled Riley in with him now. (He had a grin on his blasted face, but he won't share whatever it is with us. Maybe he's inventing more ways to use that pet 'impossible' of his."
He wasn't though. He and Riley were discussing actively, swiftly, their words clicking out like the clash of rapiers. And two hours later, a group of apparatus was being set up, the machines were turning out new pieces, and the room was being warmed so that they could work without clumsy heated suits.
The super-efficient engine wasn't really complex. It was simply the science that led to it, that had stopped all men who went before. Man had already defied the law of conservation of energy in one way, on a grand scale which was still a small scale. They had learned to defy it on a small scale which was actually a grand scale!
Whoever had first discovered the principle that made rocket ships possible had overlooked the fact that they were irrelevant, relative to nothing in the universe. Since the work they did was the product of the distance traveled times the force applied, a formula known to physics for a thousand years, nearly, it worked out in the rocket peculiarly. The first second it might travel 1,000 feet, and use t force of 1,000 tons. That would be a million foot-tons of work. But later, when it reached a speed of 10,000 feet
a second, it would do ten million foot-tons of work, and yet burn the same quantity of fuel. This led sooner or later, by the steady building up of this mathematics, to a condition where the ship was getting more work out of the fuel than was originally in it.
It had originally been shown to the physicists of Earth in this form: A ship moving one mile a second relative to Earth is, at the same time, moving ten miles a second relative to Mars. It accelerates at a velocity of one mile a second, and so moves two miles a second relative to Earth, and eleven miles a second relative to Mars. How much work has it done? They knew how to calculate kinetic energy: K E = Ґ2 MV2. But if they calculated the work with respect to Earth, it was three units, while calculated with respect to Mars, the. ship had done twenty-one units of work!
In hopeless mathematical confusion, they were forced to admit that the rocket cannot be justly related to anything, until it actually comes in contact with it. Then, and then only, can it be calculated on.
So rockets had sailed through space, super-efficient engines landing with more energy than they began with.
And Corliss, remembering that rankling statement of his that they needed an engine more than 100% efficient -had built one! The first Corliss Energy Generator. In principal it replaced Earth with one electrode, where power was fed in the rocket ship by a charged atom that dissipated its charge in propelling itself, and Mars with a.second electrode that absorbed the kinetic energy of the moving atom to electric power.
The first engine wasn't completed till nearly nightfall of the third Jovian day, twenty-four hours after they started. They had swallowed a few tablets and cubes of the compressed food, and worked steadily.
They opened the locked door finally, and called the others in. Corliss was laughing, almost insanely. Riley was standing with blurry eyes looking at it and shaking his head. Neither one would talk sensibly. The others came in and stared and wondered what the thing was all about, and looked at the roaring three-inch arc that thundered and thudded and threw out heat that warmed the whole room. Corliss actually told more in his laughter than Riley in his dumb incomprehension of his own handiwork.
"It's super-efficient-super-efficient!" Corliss chortled.
"The dry-cell there is running it-a thousand amperes at twenty thousand volts from a six-volt dry cell! The current goes in, and it is multiplied, because the thing's more than 100% efficient; then it is sent in again, and through again, and each time, because this model is 198% efficient, it gets nearly twice as powerful-and finally it's that!"
Lombard gave Corliss some amytaline to make him sleep, and Riley got some more, and the others sat and stared at the instrument, afraid to shut it off, and afraid to let it run, for fear it would burn itself out, so it ran on, and thundered and roared, and they sat and gaped at it. Presently they took off their heated suits because it was getting too warm! And the beads of ice on the walls had accumulated till they became a layer of clear slippery ice a half inch thick, and a wet, dank layer on the floor, began to melt and run down. And the flame roared on and on.
They called the "Corliss Two," and told them about the flame, and worried, and ran around helplessly because they were afraid the power would be used up! The inexhaustible, everlasting, infinite power of the first Corliss Energy Generator!
Corliss Woke finally, to a ship that was stifling hot, and stank with the sharp, biting tang of ozone. He woke, forgetful of what had happened the previous "day," and heard the roar of the arc, and almost ran to the motors room. The arc roared on, the terminals glowing almost white hot, a fearful heat flooding out, for the tungovan terminals were radiating at a temperature close to that of the sun's surface.
"Thank God-Bar!" said Martin. "Can you shut it off?"
"Certainly," said Bar, remembering suddenly. And he opened the circuit to the little dry cell. Instantly the arc stopped, and their ears, deafened by hours of the noise, rang in the silence that followed. "The battery ran it," he explained. Then, slowly, as the enormous thought of it came home to him. "The battery-ran that! How long?"
"Thirteen and a half hours, Bar," said Lombard softly. "The ice outside the ship is melted for two feet around."
"We'll melt it!" Corliss almost shouted. "We'll melt it for a thousand feet around-we'll drill our way out of here!"
"Can we, Bar," begged Martin, "can we? We can't work outside. Even with power, we can't work outside."
"We will, now. Somehow we will," said Corliss. "But first we've got to make a bigger generator. By Great Jupiter, it is a generator-the first, for it generates energy!"
Martin and Riley and Corliss started making it, and they started telling the men in "Corliss Two" how to make one, and in five more days, they had it finished. They ripped out the old steam "generating" plant, and cut it up to make the-new power plant. Then they connected it, one great lead to the stern rocket tube, and one great lead to the nose of the ship. One million amperes they pounded through it, till the leads turned dull red, and the skin of the ship grew warm to the touch.
And the power came from a storage battery! They charged the battery from the power lines, and Corliss roared in laughter as he saw the impossible being done! They charged a storage battery from the power it generated, and heated the whole ship so hot, the water outside melted the ice. And they ran the pump as fast as they could, with two motors, and pumped out the biter-hull. They lightened the ship by that much, and slowly it floated up, up, up through the ice and water.
In two days it worked its way through the ice ball that held it, and rose slowly, grandly, nearly two hundred feet till it struck a balance again. They were free! Free-and with power unlimited, and infinite.
"We'll work the rockets-gently, very gently-oh so inefficiently-and we won't give one single little hoot in all Hades how inefficient they may be! And we'll reach
the Two'!
"And in the meantime, damned if I can't work out some way to use the power we've got now." Corliss laughed in vast triumph as he looked at the little twelve-volt storage battery that was emergency power for the radio set-turning out a power that fused a great block of ice, and raised the ship-running a hundred and fifty horsepower of motors as a minor job.
Oxygen was pouring in again from Thrumann's apparatus. Corliss walked slowly through the ship, looking vaguely about him, seeking, seeking, seeking ... an inspiration. Riley watched him steadily, saying nothing. Corliss looked, and finally spoke, half to himself. "We could get out-we could make a diving bell-or rather