E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne by E. E. (Doc) Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

pillows and tucked blankets around him; then touched her lips lightly to his. ‘Goodnight, sweetheart,’ she whispered.
    His lips responded faintly to her caress, and, ‘… dnigh …’ he murmured in his sleep.
    It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Seaton, looking vastly better, came into the shop. When Crane saw him and called out a greeting, he returned it with a sheepish grin.
    ‘Don’t say a word, Martin; I’m thinking it all, and then some. I never felt so cheap in my life as when I woke up on the Vanemans’ couch this noon – where you helped put me, no doubt.’
    ‘No doubt at all,’ Crane agreed, cheerfully, ‘and listen to this. More of the same, or worse, if you keep on going as you were.’
    ‘Don’t rub it in – can’t you see I’m flat on my back with all four paws in the air? I’ll be good. I’m going to bed at eleven every night and I’m going to see Dottie every other evening and all day Sunday.’
    ‘Very fine, if true – and it had better be true.’
    ‘It will, so help me. Well, while I was eating breakfast this morning – this afternoon, rather – I saw that missing factor in the theory. And don’t tell me it was because I was rested up and fresh, either – I know it.’
    ‘I was refraining heroically from mentioning the fact.’
    ‘Thanks so much. Well, the knotty point, you remember, was what could be the possible effect of a small electric current in liberating the power. I think I’ve got it. It must shift the epsilon-gamma-zeta plane – and if it does, the rate of liberation must be zero when the angle theta is zero, and approach infinity as theta approaches pi over two.’
    ‘It does not,’ Crane contradicted, flatly. ‘It can’t. The orientation of that plane is fixed by temperature – by nothing except temperature.’
    ‘That’s so, usually, but that’s where the X comes in. Here’s the proof …’
    On and on the argument raged. Reference works littered the table and overflowed onto the floor, scratch-paper grew into piles, both computers ran almost continuously.
    Since the mathematical details of the Seaton-Crane Effect are of little or no interest here, it will suffice to mention a few of the conclusionsat which the two men arrived. The power could be controlled. It could drive – or pull – a spaceship. It could be used as an explosive, in violences ranging from that of a twenty-millimeter shell up to any upper limit desired, however fantastic when expressed in megatons of T.N.T. There were many other possibilities inherent in their final equations, possibilities which the men did not at that time explore.

VII
    ‘Say, Blackie,’ Scott called from the door of DuQuesne’s laboratory, ‘did you get the news flash that just came over on KSKM-TV? It was right down your alley.’
    ‘No. What about it?’
    ‘Somebody piled up a million tons of tetryl, T.N.T., picric acid, nitroglycerine, and so forth up in the hills and touched it off. Blooie! Whole town of Bankerville, West Virginia – population two hundred – gone. No survivors. No debris, even, the man said. Just a hole in the ground a couple of miles in diameter and God only knows how deep.’
    ‘Baloney!’ DuQuesne snapped. ‘What would anybody be doing with an atomic bomb up there?’
    ‘That’s the funny part of it – it
wasn’t
an atomic bomb No radioactivity anywhere, not even a trace. Just skillions and whillions of tons of high explosive and nobody can figure it. “All scientists baffled,” the flash said. How about you Blackie? You baffled, too?’
    ‘I would be, if I believed any part of it.’ DuQuesne turned back to his work.
    ‘Well, don’t blame
me
for it, I’m just telling you what Fritz Habelmann just said.’
    Since DuQuesne showed no interest at all in his news, Scott wandered away.
    ‘The fool did it. That will cure him of sucking eggs – I hope,’ he muttered, and picked up his telephone.
    ‘Operator? DuQuesne speaking. I am expecting a call here this