The Wailing Asteroid | Page 9

to worry about. The
wall-garden he'd made for Interiors, Inc., would fit neatly into whatever
final result he got-- if he got a final result. He had a manufacturing
process available for glass-wool and plastics. If he could get hold of an
inertia-controlled computer he'd be all set, but he doubted that he could.
The crucial item was a memo he'd made from a memory of the dream
weapon. It concerned certain oddly-shaped bits of metal, with fine
wires wound eccentrically about them, which flew explosively to
pieces when a current went through them. That was something to worry
about right away.
At three o'clock in the morning, then, Burke routed out the laboratory
notes on the small-sized metal-stamping machine he had designed for
American Tool. He'd tried to do the job with magnets, but they flew
apart. He'd wound up with blank cartridges to provide the sudden,
explosive stamping action required, but the notes on the quasi-magnets
were complete.
He went through them carefully. An electromagnet does not really
attain its full power immediately after the current is turned on. There is
an inductive resistance, inherent in a wound magnet, which means that
the magnetism builds up gradually. From his memory of the elements
in a transparent-plastic hand-weapon barrel, Burke had concluded that
it was possible to make a magnet without inductive resistance. He tried
it. When the current went on it went to full strength immediately. In
fact, it seemed to have a negative-induction effect. But the trouble was
that it wasn't a magnet. It was something else. It wound up as scrap.

Now, very reflectively, he plugged in a metal lathe and carefully turned
out a very tiny specimen of the peculiarly-shaped magnetic core. He
wound it by hand, very painstakingly. It was a tricky job. It was six
o'clock Saturday morning when the specimen was finished. He
connected the leads to a storage battery and threw the switch. The small
object tore itself to bits, and the core landed fifteen feet from where it
had been. Burke beamed.
He wasn't tired, but he wanted to think things over so he drove to a
nearby diner and got coffee and a roll and reflected with satisfaction
upon his accomplishment. At the cost of several hours' work he'd made
a thing like a magnet, which wasn't a magnet, and which destroyed
itself when turned on. As he drank his coffee, a radio news period came
on. He listened.
The signals still arrived from space, punctually, seventy-nine minutes
apart. At this moment, 6:30 A.M., they were not heard an the Atlantic
coast, but the Pacific coast still picked them up and they were heard in
Hawaii and again on the South Pacific island of Kalua.
Burke drove back to the plant. He was methodical, now. He reactivated
the prototype wall-garden which he'd neglected while building the
larger one for Interiors, Inc. The experimental one had been made in
four sections so he could try different pumping systems and nutrient
solutions. Now he set the pumps to work. The plants looked ragged, but
they'd perk up with proper lighting and circulation of the hydroponic
liquid.
Then he went into the plant's small office building and sat down with
drawing instruments to modify the design of the magnetic core. At
eleven he'd worked out a rough theory and refined the design, with
curves and angles all complete. At four the next morning a second,
modified magnet-core was formed and polished.
He'd heard the first newscast on Friday night. It was now early Sunday
morning, and although he was tired, he was still not sleepy. He worked
on doggedly, winding fine magnet wire on a noticeably complicated
metal form. Just before sunrise he tested it.

When the current went on the wire windings seemed to swell. He'd held
it in a small clamp while he tested it. The clamp overturned and broke
the contact with the battery before the winding wire stretched to
breaking-point. But it had not torn itself or anything else to bits.
He was suddenly enormously weary and bleary-eyed. To anyone else in
the world, the consequence of this second attempt to make what he
thought of as a negative-induction magnet would seem an absolute
failure. But Burke now knew why the first had failed and what was
wrong with the second. The third would work, just as the unfired
hand-weapon of his dream would have worked. Now he could justify to
himself the association of a recurrent dream with a message from outer
space. The dream now had two points of contact with reality. One was
the sounds from emptiness, which matched those in the dream. The
other was the hand-weapon of the dream, whose essential working part
now plainly did something unknown in a normal world.
But it would