Empire | Page 6

sphere. It's just as if it isn't there. Well, maybe
it isn't. You can't disturb anything within that sphere or you'd change
the sum of potential-kinetic-pressure energies within it. The sphere
seems dedicated to that one thing... it cannot change. If the rod struck
the imperm wire within the field, it would press the wire down, would
use up energy, decrease the potential energy. So the rod simply had to
miss it somehow. I believe it moved into some higher plane of
existence and went around. And in doing that it had to turn so many
corners, so many fourth-dimensional corners, that the length was used
up. Or maybe it was increased in density. I'm not sure. Perhaps no one

will ever know."
"Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?" demanded Manning. "I
should have been out here helping you. Maybe I wouldn't be much
good, but I might have helped."
"You'll have your chance," Russ told him. "We're just starting. I wanted
to be sure I had something before I troubled you. I tried other things
with that first sphere. I found that metal pushed through the sphere will
conduct an electrical current, which is pretty definite proof that the
metal isn't within the sphere at all. Glass can be forced through it
without breaking. Not flexible glass, but rods of plain old brittle glass.
It turns without breaking, and it also loses some of its length. Water can
be forced through a tube inserted in the sphere, but only when terrific
pressure is applied. What that proves I can't even begin to guess."
"You said you experimented on the first sphere," said Manning. "Have
you made others?"
Russ rose from his chair.
"Come on in, Greg," he said, and there was a grin on his face. "I have
something you'll have to see to appreciate."
* * *
The apparatus was heavier and larger than the first in which Russ had
created the sphere of energy. Fed by a powerful accumulator battery,
five power leads were aimed at it, centered in the space between four
great copper blocks.
Russ's hand went out to the switch that controlled the power. Suddenly
the power beams flamed, changed from a dull glow into an intense,
almost intolerable brilliance. A dull grumble of power climbed up to a
steady wail.
The beams had changed color, were bluish now, the typical color of
ionized air. They were just power beams, meeting at a common center,

but somehow they were queer, too, for though they were capable of
slashing far out into space, they were stopped dead. Their might was
pouring into a common center and going no farther. A splash of
intensely glowing light rested over them, then began to rotate slowly as
a motor somewhere hummed softly, cutting through the mad roar and
rumble of power that surged through the laboratory.
The glowing light was spinning more swiftly now. A rotating field was
being established. The power beams began to wink, falling and rising
in intensity. The sphere seemed to grow, almost filling the space
between the copper blocks. It touched one and rebounded slightly
toward another. It extended, increased slightly. A terrible screaming
ripped through the room, drowning out the titanic din as the spinning
sphere came in contact with the copper blocks, as force and metal
resulted in weird friction.
With a shocking wrench the beams went dead, the scream cut off, the
roar was gone. A terrifying silence fell upon the room as soon as the
suddenly thunking relays opened automatically.
* * *
The sphere was gone! In its place was a tenuous refraction that told
where it had been. That and a thin layer of perfectly reflective copper...
colorless now, but Manning knew it was copper, for it represented the
continuation of the great copper blocks.
His mind felt as if it were racing in neutral, getting nowhere. Within
that sphere was the total energy that had been poured out by five
gigantic beams, turned on full, for almost a minute's time. Compressed
energy! Energy enough to blast these mountains down to the primal
rock were it released instantly. Energy trapped and held by virtue of
some peculiarity of that little borderline between Force Fields 348 and
349.
Russ walked across the room to a small electric truck with rubber
caterpillar treads, driven by a bank of portable accumulators. Skillfully
the scientist maneuvered it over to the other side of the room, picked up

a steel bar four inches in diameter and five feet long. Holding it by the
handler's magnetic crane, he fixed it firmly in the armlike jaws on the
front of the machine, then moved the machine into a position straddling
the sphere of force.
With smashing momentum the iron jaws thrust downward, driving the
steel