"Murray Leinster - The Mole Pirate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

to marry Jack and wanted to share in this triumph.
Her father and half the higher-ups of American Electric came in after the professor. Gail's face
stiffened when her father's eyes fell upon her. He did not approve of Jack Hill.
'Ach, my young friend!' said Professor Eisenstein blandly.
A flash bulb flared as he shook hands with Jack. A news photographer changed plates in his camera
and abstractly envisioned the caption. It would be 'Eisenstein Congratulates Youthful American
Scientist', if this demonstration came out all right, and 'Eisenstein Condoles' if it didn't.
'You go on with your explanation,' said Eisenstein cordially. 'I sit at your feet and listen.
Presently I make an announcement which will surprise eferybody.'
He sat down benignly. Gail looked at him, at her father, and back to Eisenstein. A moment later
she appeared to be puzzled and uneasy. Her eyes remained on Eisenstein.
'I had just explained to these gentlemen,' said Jack, 'the object of my experimenting, the co-
ordination of atom poles and what might be expected to result. I think all of you are familiar
with the reasoning, since there's been a good deal of controversy about it. It was suggested that
any co-ordinated matter would collapse into something like neutronium. Fortunately, it doesn't.'
He flung a switch and vacuum tubes glowed. A curious, ghostly light appeared above the white-
painted sheet of metal on the table.
"The field of force,' he explained, 'which arranges the atoms in any substance so that they all
point the same way.'
He switched off the tubes. The light died. He picked up the block of brass that was on the table.
He placed it where the light had been.
'I am going to co-ordinate all the atom poles in this piece of brass,' he observed. 'Around the
shop, here, the men say that a thing treated in this way is dematerialized. Watch!'
He flung the switch again and as the eerie white light flared on, the solid mass of brass seemed
to glow of itself. Its surfaces ceased to reflect a brazen colour. They emitted the ghostly hue of
the field light. Then it seemed that the block glowed within. The light seemed to come from inside
the block as well as from its outer edge.
The whole thing took place in only the part of a second. A swift, smooth, soundless glowing of the
block, which began at the outside and seemed to move inward - and cease. Then there was nothing
visible at all but the queer glow itself.
Jack turned off the field. The light vanished. But the metal block did not spring back into view.
Instead of a solid cube of polished brass there was the tenuous, misty outline of a cube. It
looked unsubstantial, fragile. It looked like the ghost of a block of metal.
'It's still there,' said Jack, 'but you're looking past the edges of the atoms, so it's very
nearly transparent. It's just as solid, in its way, as it ever was. It weighs as much. It conducts
electricity just as well. But it's in a state that isn't usual in nature, just as megnetism isn't
usual. The poles of its atoms all point the same way. Now look!'
He swept his hand through the misty block. He lighted a match and held it in the middle of the
phantom. It burned, where Jack had claimed there was solid brass. A sceptical silence hung among
the reporters.
Then the Mirror man said: 'That's a good trick, but if it wasn't phony -'
'What?'
'If that brass were still there, an' it would pass through anything else, it'd slide right through
that sheet metal an' drop through the floor!'
'Radioactivity,' said Jack. 'The only exception. When coordinated matter is bombarded by
radioactive particles, some of the atoms are knocked halfway back to normal. This paint has


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