Empire (Sci-Fi Classic). Clifford D. Simak

      CHAPTER III

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      Russ hunched over the keyboard set in the control room of the Comet and stared down at the keys. The equation was set and ready. All he had to do was tap that key and they would know, beyond all argument, whether or not they had dipped into the awful heart of material energy; whether, finally, they held in their grasp the key to the release of energy that would give the System power to spare.

      His glance lifted from the keyboard, looked out the observation port. Through the inkiness of space ran a faint blue thread, a tiny line that stretched from the ship and away until it was lost in the darkness of the void.

      One hundred thousand miles away, that thread touched the surface of a steel ball bearing ... a speck in the immensity of space.

      He thought about that little beam of blue. It took power to do that, power to hold a beam tight and strong and steady through the stress of one hundred thousand miles. But it had to be that far away ... and they had that power. From the bowels of the ship came the deep purr of it, the angry, silky song of mighty engines throttled down.

      He heard Harry Wilson shuffling impatiently behind him, smelled the acrid smoke that floated from the tip of Wilson's cigarette.

      "Might as well punch that key, Russ," said Manning's cool voice. "We have to find out sooner or later."

      Russ's finger hovered over the key, steadied and held. When he punched that key, if everything worked right, the energy in the tiny ball bearing would be released instantaneously. The energy of a piece of steel, weighing less than an ounce. Over that tight beam of blue would flash the impulse of destruction....

      His fingers plunged down.

      Space flamed in front of them. For just an instant the void seemed filled with an angry, bursting fire that lapped with hungry tongues of cold, blue light toward the distant planets. A flare so intense that it was visible on the Jovian worlds, three hundred million miles away. It lighted the night-side of Earth, blotting out the stars and Moon, sending astronomers scurrying for their telescopes, rating foot-high streamers in the night editions.

      Slowly Russ turned around and faced his friend.

      "We have it, Greg," he said. "We really have it. We've tested the control formulas all along the line. We know what we can do."

      "We don't know it all yet," declared Greg. "We know we can make it work, but I have a feeling we haven't more than skimmed the surface possibilities."

      Russ sank into a chair and stared about the room. They knew they could generate alternating current of any frequency they chose by use of a special collector apparatus. They could release radiant energy in almost any quantity they desired, in any wave-length, from the longest radio to the incredibly hard cosmics. The electrical power they could measure accurately and easily by simple voltmeters and ammeters. But radiant energy was another thing. When it passed all hitherto known bonds, it would simply fuse any instrument they might use to measure it.

      But they knew the power they generated. In one split second they had burst the energy bonds of a tiny bit of steel and that energy had glared briefly more hotly than the Sun.

      "Greg," he said, "it isn't often you can say that any event was the beginning of a new era. You can with this—the era of unlimited power. It kind of scares me."

      Up until a hundred years ago coal and oil and oxygen had been the main power sources, but with the dwindling of the supply of coal and oil, man had sought another way. He had turned back to the old dream of snatching power direct from the Sun. In the year 2048 Patterson had perfected the photo-cell. Then the Alexanderson accumulators made it possible to pump the life-blood of power to the far reaches of the System, and on Mercury and Venus, and to a lesser extent on Earth, great accumulator power plants had sprung up, with Interplanetary, under the driving genius of Spencer Chambers, gaining control of the market.

      The photo-cell and the accumulator had spurred interplanetary trade and settlement. Until it had been possible to store Sun-power for the driving of spaceships and for shipment to the outer planets, ships had been driven by rocket fuel, and the struggling colonies on the outer worlds had fought a bitter battle without the aid of ready power.

      Coal and oil there were in plenty on the outer worlds, but one other essential was lacking ... oxygen. Coal on Mars, for instance, had to burned under synthetic air pressures, like the old carburetor. The result was inefficiency. A lot of coal burned, not enough power delivered.

      Even the photo-cells were inefficient when attempts were made to operate them beyond the Earth; that was the maximum distance for maximum Solar efficiency.

      Russ dug into the pocket of his faded, scuffed leather jacket and hauled forth pipe and pouch. Thoughtfully he tamped the tobacco into the bowl.

      "Three months," he said. "Three months of damn hard work."

      "Yeah," agreed Wilson, "we sure have worked."

      Wilson's face was haggard, his eyes red. He blew smoke through his nostrils.

      "When we get back, how about us taking a little vacation?" he asked.

      Russ laughed. "You can if you want to. Greg and I are keeping on."

      "We can't waste time," Manning said. "Spencer Chambers may get wind of this. He'd move all hell to stop us."

      Wilson spat out his cigarette. "Why don't you patent what you have? That would protect you."

      Russ grinned, but it was a sour one.

      "No use," said Greg. "Chambers would tie us up in a mile of legal red tape. It would be just like walking up and handing it to him."

      "You guys go ahead and work," Wilson stated. "I'm taking a vacation. Three months is too damn long to stay out in a spaceship."

      "It doesn't seem long to me," said Greg, his tone cold and sharp.

      No, thought Russ, it hadn't seemed long. Perhaps the hours had been rough, the work hard, but he hadn't noticed. Sleep and food had come in snatches. For three months they had worked in space, not daring to carry out their experiments on Earth ... frankly afraid of the thing they had.

      He glanced at Manning.

      The three months had left no mark upon him, no hint of fatigue or strain. Russ understood now how Manning had done the things he did. The man was all steel and flame. Nothing could touch him.

      "We still have a lot to do," said Manning.

      Russ leaned back and puffed at his pipe.

      Yes, there was a lot to do. Transmission problems, for instance. To conduct away such terrific power as they knew they were capable of developing would require copper or silver bars as thick as a man's thigh, and even so at voltages capable of jumping a two-foot spark gap.

      Obviously, a small machine such as they now had would be impractical. No matter how perfectly it might be insulated, the atmosphere itself would not be an insulator, with power such as this. And if one tried to deliver the energy as a mechanical rotation of a shaft, what shaft could transmit it safely and under control?

      "Oh, hell," Russ burst out, "let's get back