Chapter XIV: Explosive!

Now it was silent in the computation laboratory, save for the occasional clicking of the super calculator that lined one wall of the room. Pages and pages of equations were piled high in the file box and Bronson sat in the control console of the big machine and worked. Hour after hour he alternated moments of quick activity over the keyboard with periods of quiet contemplation and reasoning as the answers to his mathematical problems came clicking back.

Dimly he heard the door open behind him and he accepted it vaguely--disinterestedly--because the problem at hand was far more important. He felt her presence beside him and she was silent as she read his notes.

He set up another problem on the keyboard and leaned back, looking up at her.

"Found something?" she asked.

"No," he replied. "Except that the space-resonant elements do not make sense in the mass spectrograph."

"I know," she said. "We've known that for years."

Bronson waved a book. "And I'm a little shocked at the lack of true basic research to be found on Earth Three."

"What?" asked Virginia.

"It seems as though they know a lot," he explained. "But they know no more about this stuff than the nineteen hundreds knew about the electricity they used."

"That's natural," she said. "People are always willing to use something beneficial though they know little about its basic fundamentals. One out of a thousand automobile drivers really knows anything about the internal combustion engine. The rest are merely drivers, controlling a mammoth they know nothing about."

"Well, perhaps," he said. "Also it is entirely possible that what I'm seeking has no true answer."

"You hope to learn why the space-resonant elements cannot be separated?"

"Right," said Bronson. He was silent for some time while he digested the answer that had come clicking from the calculator. Then he sent forth another equation and the machine went to work again. "I'd like to try analysis."

"Won't work. As far as we can tell there is really only one element."

"By analysis," he nodded. He had been reading what Earth Three knew about it and they, too, said as much. "However, the mass spectrograph separates elements according to their atomic masses and according to their atomic charge.

"Now why do we have a dispersion of atomic mass--making the space-resonant series of elements seem to be merely isotopes of the same element--and at the same time get a dispersion of atomic charge, which would make them seem like isobars of different elements?"

"Heaven knows what we can expect in the transuranic series," observed Virginia.

He grunted. "Run down the physical properties of the stable elements," he said, "and you'll run into about every conceivable idea. Metals that melt at room temperature, metals that resist acid and alkali.

"Metals that conduct electricity in proportion to the light falling on them, elements that combine with almost any other element--and elements so valently self-satisfied that they will not even combine with themselves. Elements as hard as all get-out and others that can be cut into stove lengths with a soft thumbnail.

"But," he continued reflectively, "I'm of the opinion that the answer lies here--that this indivisible property of the space-resonant elements is the answer to a lot of questions."

Then Bronson put his head in his hands. "And I'm supposed to find out all this to save my world--when the best brains of that same world in another time-plane have known about the stuff for thirty years and still cannot--"

"That is not fair," she said. "After all, how many years did Enrico Fermi seek the answer for his experiments with the fission of uranium? They numbered a good many transuranic elements before they discovered that these new elements were actually the fissioned products and were well-known elements halfway down the atomic chart."

"That's true," he nodded. "Also it is against all theory that an element should display more than one atomic identity."

"Right. Unless they are incomplete atoms--a house built of brickbats."

Bronson shrugged. "I'm trying that."

"How?" puzzled Virginia.

"I've got the mass spectrograph running again but each slit is loaded to the scuppers with neutron absorber."

"What do you expect?" asked Virginia.

"I don't really know. I sort of hope it may lead to something. Come on--let's try it."

Taking his last three pages of calculations, Ed Bronson led the way to the analytic laboratory....

* * * * *

Leader Kingston smiled grimly at Maddox and shoved the button home. "That'll fix 'em!" he said savagely.

On Earth Two the pillar of fire flickered a measurable bit--and the downtown district of New York City vomited flame in a thunderous roar. To the stratosphere billowed the ice cap, followed instantly by an up-reaching column of incandescent gas.

Into the vitals of the rock the gnawing atomic flame went and perceptibly--perceptibly to some all-powerful deity that could withstand a holocaust which put the sun to shame--the crater expanded as the substance of Earth Two fed the atomic flame.

Kingston set the steering control once more and shoved the button. The Mall between the Washington Monument and the Capitol erupted in another atomic cancer to feed on Earth Two. The buildings that lined the Mall were blasted to bits--the National Archives, the Smithsonian Institution, all of them gone in one mighty blast.

Then, as the fury of blast subsided, the pillar of fire undulated to the sky. It fed, then, on the inert substance of a dead city for, as in Manhattan, no man remained alive to see.

With cruel disregard for humanity, Leader Kingston set the dials once more and the acres of land enclosed by Chicago's Loop roared skyward. The edges of the crater rimmed Lake Michigan and the waters of the lake began to pour toward the breach. They did not reach the ravening crater for they turned into steam long before they could fall across the lip of the crater.

From Lake Bluff to Gary the lake-front was a scene of molten death.

"That's but the beginning," said Kingston. "Four will become eight and eight will become sixteen. It will not be long before they are reaching one another."

"You'll have a lot of the space-resonant crystals to pass along to Earth One, though," said Maddox.

"We will apply the same principle," said Kingston. "One brings two and each brings two more. My men on Earth One will assemble the four subcritical masses tomorrow for instructions," said Kingston. "This is the one weak link. But once we start, we can move the stuff like fury."

"What do you fear?" asked Maddox.

"Bronson! He has your laboratory. Complete. He is well hidden somewhere and, until we can locate him, we are treading on dangerous ground. For I know that he is keeping an eye on everything we do. And until we locate him we can do nothing."

"Why doesn't he do something, then?"

Kingston laughed bitterly. "Probably because he doesn't quite know what to do."

Maddox grinned. "Also because you've got the key to Earth One. And," he said grimly, "it might be that he has been ignorant until just now when you've shown him how to fight this war."

Kingston whitened in fear. He shook his fist at the flaming horror on the viewer plate and said, "I wish Bronson were in that!"

* * * * *

Virginia Carlson reeled back from the viewer with a cry. Bronson left his work and came to stand beside her.

"What?" he asked.

Slowly Virginia shook her head. "Kingston has just transmitted a bit of the atomic flame to New York," she said.

Bronson made the natural error. To him, New York was New York and he considered no other city. What stopped him was the belief that Kingston could not transmit anything across the barrier without the presence of a focal mass.

"How?" he asked Virginia.

"With the space resonator," she said.

"But there is no focal mass."

"In New York?" replied Virginia in surprise. "There must be several thousand."

"But--oh! It was the New York of Earth Two."

"Yes."

Bronson looked out of the window and shook his head. "I find it difficult to believe that this terrain is not my own world," he said. "And yet it is, in a sense."

Then he turned from the window to face Virginia. "Ginger-girl," he said slowly, "I know what is wrong with Earth Three!"

Virginia swung the steering control swiftly until a distant view of New York was visible. "That is what is wrong with Earth Three," she said bitterly. "Avaricious, hateful and cruel."

Bronson shook his head. "You're not fair," he said. "He's done nothing that you or I would not do to protect our own worlds. And," smiled Bronson, "remember that Earth Two is already doomed."

Virginia whirled on him. "Because a man is slated to die as all men are, is that an excuse to commit murder?"

"No," he said. "But life is still a matter of the survival of the fittest. I deplore Kingston's act but remember that Kingston knows that it is either kill or be killed."

"Then there is nothing wrong with Earth Three," snapped Virginia with deep bitterness.

"Oh but there is. Virginia, on your world, where every scientific endeavour is directed along the one line of safety in the face of that pillar of fire at Alamogordo, does your government know the location of all equipment?"

"Of course," she said. "Save for a very minute percentage of stuff that has been lost, strayed or stolen."

He turned to the screen. "Did anybody ever think of that?" he asked, pointing to the fire that was consuming Manhattan.

"Yes--but where would we put it?" she asked.

"On the moon," he said simply.

"But there is no focal mass of space resonant elements on the moon," she objected.

"There could have been," he said, "if Earth Two had proceeded to develop the rocket! But no, since no planet is habitable."

"That isn't all," said Virginia. "Earth Three has developed the transmission resonator to the highest degree. We've never been able to speed it up. They can transmit anything in a matter of microseconds. Ours takes hours sometimes.

"Remember, if we start to shove that pillar of raw energy through a resonator of our type we must build it to withstand raw atomic energy for a long period. But tell me what is wrong with Earth Three."

* * * * *

He frowned. "Remember the day I nearly killed myself because I was poking into an amplifier without knowing all about it?"

"Yes."

"In similar sense, Earth Three is plunging forward into a sea of uncharted danger. Rapid progress in the face of high competition. No control whatsoever. In the cast of Earth Two, progress has been hampered because it has had too much control.

"Had you been free to tinker and investigate the transmission bands you'd have discovered Earth Three and you might have had the idea of rotating that Alamogordo Flame into Earth Three.

"As of now, Virginia, tell me--could Earth Two reduce all of its space-resonant elements to subcritical masses in a case of danger?"

"We could, save for those that were lost, as I've said before."

Bronson smiled cryptically. "Can Leader Kingston?"

Virginia shook her head. She recalled the myriad uses that Earth Three had developed for the space resonant elements. Each home with many devices, each device containing a supercritical mass.

To eliminate entirely all critical masses of the dangerous elements would be the exact equal to a complete breakdown of all means of transportation and communication. For the space resonator had replaced in nearly all but isolated cases the common automobile, telephone, train, radio and allied arts.

Such a project was impossible to contemplate, and even less possible to accomplish in any reasonable time. It would require the rebuilding of the former modes of life--almost a return to horse-and-buggy days.

"But every science has its danger," objected Virginia.

Bronson nodded. "But remember that every science grows like a tree. One does not start on a high technical plane."

"But what has that to do with it?"

"Just this," explained Bronson patiently, "In earlier days no man could develop anything too dangerous to his fellows if it got out of hand. Many embryonic chemists have left the face of the earth in a gout of smoke and flame but, when they left, they took only a small section of the neighborhood with them.

"Here, then, we have Alamogordo and the Bomb. It took the combined resources of a nation, its people and years of study and work to develop the atomic bomb. Obviously this is no backyard project like the nitration of glycerine.

"But here we have Earth Three," he continued, "plunging forward without control--a juggernaut with no one at the helm. In their homes, in their laboratories, in their very lives, they have supercritical masses of the space-resonant elements. Leader Kingston has just shown us how he hopes to destroy both Earth One and Two to leave Three supreme."

"In doing that he has given us the answer we seek. For in his attack," said Bronson exultantly, "he has displayed not only his weakness but the fundamental weakness of a culture based upon complete freedom. Not that freedom is wrong. Freedom is an ideal, and complete freedom will be attained only when every man can assume the responsibility of being noble."

"I'm not quite certain," said Virginia.

Bronson laughed. "How long would it be before one of Kingston's men discover the secret of unlocking the energy of the atom with a gadget the size of your wrist watch? Hah! Every man his own atom-bomb!" he snorted. "Well, remember this, Virginia, on Earth Three every chunk of space-resonant material is more deadly than the Alamogordo Flame!"