With No Strings Attached | Page 4

sighed. "Don't worry, Mr. Sorensen. We don't have any ulterior designs on your invention." He did not add that the investigators of NAC&M had already assumed that anyone who was asking one million dollars for an invention which was, in effect, a pig in a poke, would be expected to take drastic methods to protect his gadget. But there would be no point in telling Sorensen that his protective efforts had already been anticipated and that the technicians had already been warned against touching the Black Suitcase any more than necessary to connect the leads. Giving Sorensen that information might make him even more touchy.
Thorn only hoped that the bomb, or whatever it was that Sorensen had put in the suitcase, was well built, properly fused, and provided with adequate safeties.
When everything was set up, Sorensen walked over to his device and turned it on by shoving the blade of a heavy-duty switch into place. "O.K.," he said.
One of the technicians began flipping other switches, and a bank of ordinary incandescent light bulbs came on, four at a time. Finally there were one hundred of them burning, each one a hundred-watt bulb that glowed brightly but did not appear to be contributing much to the general brightness of the Utah sun. The technicians checked their recording voltmeters and ammeters and reported that, sure enough, some ten kilowatts of power at a little less than one hundred fifteen volts D.C. was coming from the Black Suitcase.
Sorensen and Thorn sat in the tent which had been erected to ward off the sun's rays. They watched the lights shine.
* * * * * * * * * *
One of the technicians came in, wiping his forehead with a big blue bandana. "Well, there she goes. Mr. Sorensen, if that thing is dangerous, hadn't we better back off a little way from it?"
"It isn't dangerous," Sorensen said. "Nothing's going to happen."
The technician looked unhappy. "Then I don't see why we couldn't've tested the thing back in the shop. Would've been a lot easier there. To say nothing of more comfortable."
Thorn lit a cigarette in silence.
Sorensen nodded and said, "Yes, Mr. Siegel, it would've been."
Siegel sat down on one of the camp stools and lit a cigarette. "Mr. Sorensen," he asked in all innocence, "have you got a patent on that battery?"
The humorous glint returned to Sorensen's eyes as he said, "Nope. I didn't patent the battery in that suitcase. That's why I don't want anybody fooling around with it."
"How come you don't patent it?" Siegel asked. "Nobody could steal it if you patented it."
"Couldn't they?" Sorensen asked with a touch of acid in his voice. "Do you know anything about batteries, Mr. Siegel?"
"A little. I'm not an expert on 'em, or anything like that. I'm an electrician. But I know a little bit about 'em."
Sorensen nodded. "Then you should know, Mr. Siegel, that battery-making is an art, not a science. You don't just stick a couple of electrodes into a solution of electrolyte and consider that your work is done. With the same two metals and the same electrolyte, you could make batteries that would run the gamut from terrible to excellent. Some of 'em, maybe, wouldn't hold a charge more than an hour, while others would have a shelf-life, fully charged, of as much as a year. Batteries don't work according to theory. If they did, potassium chlorate would be a better depolarizer than manganese dioxide, instead of the other way around. What you get out of a voltaic cell depends on the composition and strength of the electrolyte, the kind of depolarizer used, the shape of the electrodes, the kind of surface they have, their arrangement and spacing, and a hundred other little things."
"I've heard that," Siegel said.
* * * * * * * * * *
[Illustration]
Thorn smoked in silence. He had heard Sorensen's arguments before. Sorensen didn't mind discussing his battery in the abstract, but he was awfully close-mouthed when it came to talking about it in concrete terms. He would talk about batteries-in-general, but not about this-battery-in-particular.
Not that Thorn blamed him in the least. Sorensen was absolutely correct in his statements about the state of the art of making voltaic cells. If Sorensen had something new--and Thorn was almost totally convinced that he did--then he was playing it smart by not trying to patent it.
"Now then," Sorensen went on, "let's suppose that my battery is made up of lead and lead dioxide plates in a sulfuric acid solution, except that I've added a couple of trifling things and made a few small changes in the physical structure of the plates. I'm not saying that's what the battery is, mind you; I'm saying 'suppose'."
"O.K., suppose," said Siegel. "Couldn't you patent it?"
"What's to patent? The Pb-PbO2-H2SO4 cell is about half as old