"E.Voiskunsky, I.Lukodyanov. The Crew Of The Mekong (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

A tumbler clicked. Inside the glass vessel the little motor slowly
turned the micrometer screw, bringing the point of the needle closer and
closer to the cube.
Opratin and Benedictov kept their eyes glued to the magnifying glass.
A bell tinkled as the tip of the needle came into contact with the
cube. The automatic recorders were switched on. The point continued to move,
penetrating into the steel. But the sensitive instruments did not record any
force. The needle was entering the steel cube without meeting resistance!
That lasted only a moment.
The next instant Opratin and Benedictov were flung against the wall.
The glass chamber was shattered to smithereens.
Benedictov looked round. He was overwhelmed. Had it all been a dream?
Opratin rose to his feet. His face was pale. Blood trickled down his
forehead.
"The cube!" he cried. "Where is it?"
They found the cube in a corner beside fragments of the screw-clamp.
When they examined it under a microscope they could not find the slightest
trace of a hole made by the needle. But the automatic recorder, an impartial
witness, told them that the needle had penetrated into the steel to a
distance of three microns.
The two scientists sank into armchairs facing each other. For a time
they were silent.
"What," Benedictov finally said, "do you think of the whole thing?"
"I think it was a great moment." Opratin spoke in a calm voice and his
face now wore a somewhat detached expression. "We achieved penetrability for
an instant by weakening the bonds of the substance of the cube. But the
energy that created those bonds was released-and that was what hit us."
After a long pause he continued, his voice calmer than ever: "We've
made a start, Anatole. But we won't get anywhere working at home. Once we're
invading the structure of matter there's no telling what kind of blasts may
be produced. We must build a big installation. We'll need a Van de Graaff
generator without fail. We're going to conduct a great many experiments."
"What do you propose?"
"I can arrange matters so that I work by myself, without any outsiders
poking their noses in. But what about you? You aren't a member of our staff,
unfortunately." Opratin fell silent. Then he said bluntly: "You'll have to
join the staff of the Research Institute of Marine Physics."


Nikolai and Yura had been experimenting with mercury in the small
glassed-in gallery in Cooper Lane for several days. They had put together a
"mercury heart", an old-fashioned apparatus used to demonstrate how electric
current builds up surface tension.
The device was assembled on one pan of a laboratory scales. A large
drop of mercury was covered with a solution that would conduct electricity.
A screw with a needle lay so that the point of the needle touched the
mercury. The drop of mercury was connected by the conducting solution to the
anode of a storage battery and the needle was wired to the cathode.
A weight on the other pan kept the scales balanced.
The electric current increased the surface tension, making the drop of