Invaders from the Infinite | Page 4

here. What we want you to
do, of course, is the usual job of rearranging the stuff so that the
apparatus can be made from dies, and put into quantity production. As
the Official Designer for the A.A.L. you ought to do that easily." Arcot

grinned as Fuller looked in amazement at the apparatus Arcot had
picked up from the bench in the "workshop."
"Don't get worried," laughed Morey, "that's got a lifting unit
combined--just a plain ordinary molecular lift such as you see by the
hundreds out there." Morey pointed through the great window where
thousands of those lift units were carrying men, women and children
through the air, lifting them hundreds, thousands of feet above the
streets and through the doors of buildings.
"Here's an ordinary molecular pistol. I'm going to put the suit on, and
rise about five feet off the floor. You can turn the pistol on me, and see
what impression it makes on the suit."
Fuller took the molecular ray pistol, while Wade helped Arcot into the
suit. He looked at the pistol dubiously, pointed it at a heavy casting of
iron resting in one corner of the room, and turned the ray at low
concentration, then pressed the trigger-button. The casting gave out a
low, scrunching grind, and slid toward him with a lurch. Instantly he
shut off the power. "This isn't any ordinary pistol. It's got seven or eight
times the ordinary power!" he exclaimed.
"Oh yes, I forgot," Morey said. "Instead of the fuel battery that the
early pistols used, this has a space-distortion power coil. This pistol has
as much power as the usual A-39 power unit for commercial work."
By the time Morey had explained the changes to Fuller, Arcot had the
suit on, and was floating five or six feet in the air, like a grotesque
captive balloon. "Ready, Fuller?"
"I guess so, but I certainly hope that suit is all it is claimed to be. If it
isn't--well I'd rather not commit murder."
"It'll work," said Arcot. "I'll bet my neck on that!" Suddenly he was
surrounded by the faintest of auras, a strange, wavering blue light, like
the hazy corona about a 400,000-volt power line. "Now try it."
Fuller pointed the pistol at the floating man and pushed the trigger. The

brilliant blue beam of the molecular ray, and the low hum of the air,
rushing in the path of the director beam, stabbed out toward Arcot. The
faint aura about him was suddenly intensified a million times till he
floated in a ball of blue-white fire. Scarcely visible, the air about him
blazed with bluish incandescence of ionization.
"Increase the power," suggested Morey. Fuller turned on more power.
The blue halo was shot through with tiny violet sparks, the sharp odor
of ozone in the air was stifling; the heat of wasted energy was making
the room hotter. The power increased further, and the tiny sparks were
waving streamers, that laced across the surface of the blue fire. Little
jets of electric flame reached out along the beam of the ray now.
Finally, as full power of the molecular ray was reached, the entire halo
was buried under a mass of writhing sparks that seemed to leap up into
the air above the man's head, wavering up to extinction. The room was
unbearably hot, despite the molecular ray coolers absorbing the heat of
the air, and blowing cooled air into the room.
Fuller snapped off the ray, and put the pistol on the table beside him.
The halo died, and went out a moment later, and Arcot settled to the
floor.
"This particular suit will stand up against anything the ordinary
commercial sets will give. The system now: remember that the rays are
short electrical waves. The easiest way to stop them is to interpose a
wave of opposite phase, and cause interference. Fine, but try to get in
tune with an unknown wave when it is moving in relation to your
center of control. It is impossible to do it before you yourself have been
rayed out of existence. We must use some system that will
automatically, instantly be out of phase.
"The Hall effect would naturally tend to make the frequency of a wave
through a resisting medium change, and lengthen. If we can send out a
spherical wave front, and have it lengthen rapidly as it proceeds, we
will have a wave front that is, at all points, different. Any entering
wave would, sooner or later, meet a wave that was half a phase out, no
matter what the motion was, nor what the frequency, as long as it lies
within the comparatively narrow molecular wave band. What this

apparatus, or ray screen, consists of, is a machine generating a spherical
wave front of the