Prescription for Chaos (57 page)

As Alarik gazed at the shiny form, a hurrying figure coming toward him from the base of The Beast drew his attention.

Alarik nodded in foreboding. Now it would start. He had been allowed this moment of beautiful tranquility in order to give a contrasting background against which the day's misfortunes would stand out to better effect. As a check, he glanced around toward the turbine plane. Sure enough, here came a second hurrying figure. To further test the auguries, he glanced up. A tiny cloud was materializing just about on a line between Observation 10 and the projected path of The Beast as it arced out over the ocean. That would foul up the whole launch, unless the cloud moved on.

But the cloud showed no sign of moving on. It seemed to be shredding away on one end, and forming again on the other end, and at the same time gliding steadily forward, so that the net result, fantastic as it might seem, was just the same as if it didn't move at all. But it was getting bigger, he was sure of that. Alarik squinted at the cloud, then shook his head. Even in this modern day, the only truly intelligent life form in the universe had no more control over the weather—or real basic understanding of it—than on the distant day when a remote ancestor peered out the burrow mouth and some spark of intelligence suggested that that smoldering stubble from the grass could be put to use.

What had it been, thought Alarik, the fear of some digging enemy, or—

The chain of philosophical speculation was snapped as two hurrying pairs of feet arrived from opposite directions.

"Sir, the triggering clock is seventeen sixty-fourths off, halfway through the cycle, and the An. Comp. boys say she'll burn up on re-entry. We've tried re-setting, but that throws the clock off on both ends, and Comp. tells us then she won't go into orbit. We've got a new clock checked out, but all the control wires have to be reset, and that's going to take the rest of the morning. If we lift off this afternoon, she'll land in the pick-up area at night, unless we reset the clock. But if we reset that clock, we won't be able to lift off till tonight."

"What about Ganner's magnesium flare?"

"Sir, we tried it out three times last week and it worked fine. We installed it last night and ran a test check on a Pup rocket. Nothing happened."

Alarik gripped his chin. "It came down with no signal?"

"Oh, the siren was on. And this morning the ocean was red for a hundred spans in all directions from where she hit. The underwater sound ship picked up a good solid
ping
from the noisemaker. But all that stuff is too slow and uncertain. When the boys got there, she was sunk."

"Scrub the flight. We'll try again tomorrow."

"Sir, Weather says—"

Alarik glanced at the cloud. There was now a smaller cloud trailing it, and the first cloud looked bigger. He looked away angrily.

"When did Weather ever know what it was talking about? If we don't get clear weather for a month, that's just so much more time to perfect our equipment. And get me the name of the contractor who sold us that clock."

"Yes, sir." He turned and sprinted back toward the gleaming shaft of The Beast.

Alarik considered that he had got off easy. What if the clock had gone sour after she took off? The odds were that with his luck the An. Comp. boys would be wrong and instead of burning up on re-entry, she would make a freak re-entry, and come down through the roof of a metropolitan temple with the chief priest in charge and the benches crammed with notables.

Someone cleared his throat, and Alarik realized he wasn't safe in the burrow yet. He looked up and waited.

"Sir, the Babe's got a malfunction."

"What is it this time?"

"The hydraulic columns that control the impact-fuse-igniters. There's an overflow for excess temperature. Well, somehow air worked back into the lines, and now they're spongy. As sure as anything, we're going to get up there, let her loose, and dig ourselves a crater."

Alarik could hear more feet approaching, this time from behind.

"How long," he said, "to bleed the lines?"

"Considering how cramped it is in there, it's an all day job. What we need is some simpler way to ignite the tubes."

"I know. We've got research teams working on it. But for now, we'll just have to put up with more delay."

"Yes, sir. We should be able to get off tomorrow for sure."

Alarik nodded, and turned to find his assistant, Kubic, holding a small earnest-looking man by the arm.

"Sir," said Kubic, "this fellow claims to have some reliable method of setting off fuses with constant-length wires."

Alarik shrugged. "It's been tried. I doubt that if our teams of trained chemists couldn't find the ideal solution, a lone researcher could."

Kubic nodded. "Yes, sir, I know. But we've had so much trouble—"

"No doubt about that," said Alarik with feeling. He glanced at the newcomer.

Kubic glanced at him, too, then cleared his throat. "Any hole in a hurry," he said.

The fellow certainly looked unprepossessing. But then, you could never tell with a chemist. Some of the best dispensed with appearance and pretense entirely. You just couldn't tell.

"All right," said Alarik. "Go ahead. What's your solution. Remember, these wires curl back through both hot and cold regions alike. The fuses don't ignite easily. It takes a sharp crack to ignite them. They aren't supposed to ignite one at a time, but a bunch together. And we don't want any fishnet of wires in there. The thing has to be reasonably simple. To keep your tension constant is no easy problem."

"I know." The newcomer beamed and nodded.

"We don't want any maze of springs and pulleys. The present system is bad enough, what with the need for special heat-resistant plastics, double-lines, heat-stable liquids, and so on. A terrific amount of the highest type of chemistry has gone into it."

"I realize that," said the newcomer. "I don't claim to be a true chemist. I just like to follow my interest. I've been sort of an amateur chemist since childhood, and . . . well, I got to playing around with strips of zinc and copper one day, and put them into some dilute sulfuric acid, and for some reason, I laid another strip of copper across the tops of the strips standing in the acid."

Alarik smiled. "And you got bubbles on the copper strip. It's a standard experiment."

"Yes, but I wondered about it.
Why
did I get bubbles?"

"It's a well known chemical fact. Immerse copper and zinc in acid, let there be contact, and bubbles form on the copper. The bubbles are hydrogen gas." Alarik smiled tolerantly. "Go ahead. What next?"

"I wondered, why must there be
contact
?"

Alarik blinked. "What's that?"

"Bubbles formed
when I joined zinc and copper strips
. Why did these strips
have to be joined
?"

Kubic glanced at Alarik's frown, and said hastily. "The Director's time is limited. Now, if you'll come to the practical aspect of your idea—"

"Wait," said Alarik. "He's got a point. Why
does
there have to be contact? I performed that experiment, too, but that question never occurred to me." He looked at the man with new respect. "I would say that you must be a natural-born chemist. You are, I suppose, associated with the university nearby, at Kerik Haven?"

"No, no." A stricken look crossed the visitor's face. "Please, I am nobody. All that matters is this discovery, which I happened across purely by accident."

Kubic cleared his throat, and said uncomfortably, "The fellow is a janitor at the University."

"Well, in that position, he could, I suppose, observe, experiment, learn—"

"In the Dance Workshop," said Kubic.

Alarik frowned.

Their guest hung his head. "I was thrown out of the Chemistry Program as a student. I hung on, got a job as a janitor, and they threw me out of that job, too. But I've got a friend in the stockroom. He helps me get what I need."

Alarik considered the possibility that the man was a suppressed genius. It had happened often enough in the past, heaven knew. But in this enlightened age, such things were said to be impossible. Chemical talent was searched for eagerly, coaxed along with scholarships, rewarded lavishly with high pay.

Their visitor seemed to sense Alarik's line of thought. "Please," he said, "don't think that I am trying to present myself as a chemist of any kind. I think . . . I think I have some skill, some insight, but it is of a different type. At school, my teachers told me that I asked the wrong questions. I disagreed. I was more combative then." For a moment, he lifted his head. His eyes flashed. Then he shrugged, and looked down at the dirt. "It's all gone now." There was bitterness in his voice. Then he smiled suddenly. "But I can solve your igniter problem for you."

"How does this wire of yours work?" said Alarik.

"Well, to explain it completely, I would have to describe to you a great deal of work I did with the two strips of metal." A wary look crossed his face. "But I've found that it's better not to go into that."

Kubic said, "Just tell us the practical details."

"Well, essentially, it is this. You run a wire from the pilot's compartment back to the fuse. When the pilot wishes that particular fuse to ignite, he presses a button."

Alarik frowned. "This is a very stiff wire."

"No, not especially."

"Then it is a reasonably stiff wire enclosed within a casing?"

"No. Oh, well, yes. There is a fibrous sheath over the wire."

"How will that stiffen it?"

"It doesn't need to be stiff," the newcomer answered.

"Then what moves it?"

"It doesn't move."

Alarik scowled at him. Kubic frowned.

"Then," said Alarik, "why does the pilot punch the button?"

"Because—He does it to—Well, that's what I'm coming to."

"Wait a minute," said Alarik. "A push is communicated along this wire, is that right?"

"No, sir."

Alarik stared at him. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. "It
twists
, is that it? You've found a way to convert a push into a twist, and then—"

"No. No, it
doesn't
twist. It doesn't move at all."

"
Doesn't move at all?
"

"That's the point. It
heats
."

Kubic groaned.

Alarik shook his head. "No good. No, it won't work."

"But why not? Heat will trigger off the fuse."

Alarik felt faintly sick. He glanced at Kubic, and jerked his head toward the gate. That, he thought, was the trouble with these unsung geniuses. They wanted to sing for an audience and they didn't even know the scale.

Kubic put his hand firmly on the man's arm.

"Ah, I see," said the fellow suddenly. "Not the
whole
wire. Just the
end
."

Alarik forced a smile. "It happens to be the
other
end we're interested in."

Kubic turned him around, and led him off forcibly.

Alarik could hear them in the distance. Kubic's voice was a series of low monosyllables. The other man's voice rose in loud complaint, and as the wind happened to be from that direction, he could hear him almost to the inner gate.

"But," the man cried, "it's the
fuse
end I'm talking about!"

Kubic muttered something or other.

"No, no, you don't understand! Friction has nothing to do with it! It's
not
heat conduction along the wire! That's not
it
!"

Kubic paused to take a better grip on his guest's sleeve.

Alarik frowned. If it wasn't friction, what
was
it? Here is a man who pushes a button attached to a wire. The wire is not stiff, but is enclosed in some kind of sleeve. The wire gets hot. Then it would burn the sleeve, wouldn't it? But wait a minute. Only the
end
gets hot. The rest of the wire doesn't move at all, doesn't twist—
How
does the end get hot?

"No! No! No! No!" came the voice, climbing higher. "It isn't that at all! I can show you!"

Alarik came to a sudden decision. He was hung around the neck with chemists of the most exalted rank. They all thought alike. They were the elite of the elite, but maybe he needed a fresh mind. What if the man's approach
wasn't
truly chemical? Just let it work, that's all. He cupped his hands to his mouth to shout to Kubic.

Abruptly the visitor ripped free of Kubic's grip. His voice carried in an almost hysterical shout:

"You're hidebound! You're blind as bats, the lot of you! I've begged for just a chance to
prove
there's such a thing as current, and there
is
! I can prove it! It's staring you in the face! But you won't listen! You fools! A
current
flows through that wire, and when it goes through the constricted end,
then
the end heats! No, it's not chemical. You can't argue against it because it's not chemical! It's potentially just as great as anything that
is
chemical! I try to tell you,
it's a whole new field of knowledge!
"

Alarik lowered his hands. He shook his head and shrugged. He glanced around at the towering evidence of chemistry in a chemical world. Chemistry was the study of matter, and matter was everywhere. Everything that was, was made of matter. There was nothing else,
could
be nothing else but matter. Oh, there was light, and sound, and lightning, but the best minds held that these were just disturbances in matter, or in finer forms of matter. There was the field of atmospheric chemistry, for instance, and the field of aetheric chemistry, but there was some doubt as to whether these fringe studies, particularly the latter, were really chemical at all.

How, all considered, could any other field of knowledge possibly
hope
ever to compare with the study of matter? Builders, mechanicians, physicians—all had important work to do, but they admitted they were only quasi-chemists, not truly chemical. Only the mathematicians held aloof, proclaiming a loftier discipline. But in actual practice, they were tied in knots. They couldn't accomplish a thing without a thousand trials, errors, and reservations. Matter just was not amenable to their theories, except in rare special cases.