Short Fiction Poul Anderson (reading a book .TXT) 📖

would get you only so far, thereafter it was cut and try. Lancaster rolled up his sleeves with the rest and let Karen take over the leadership⁠—she was the best experimenter. He spent some glorious and all but sleepless weeks, greasy, dirty, living in a jungle of haywired apparatus with a restless slide rule. There were plenty of failures, a lot of heartbreak and profanity, an occasional injury⁠—but they kept going, and they got there.

The day came⁠—or was it the night?⁠—when Karen took a slab of darkly shining substance out of the furnace where it had been heat-aging. Rakkan sawed it into several chunks for testing. It was Lancaster who worked on the electric properties.

He applied voltage till his generator groaned, and watched in awe as meters climbed and climbed without any sign of stopping. He discharged the accumulated energy in a single blue flare that filled the lab with thunder and ozone. He tested for time lag of an electric signal and wondered wildly if it didn’t feel like sleeping on its weary path.

The reports came in, excited yells from one end of the long, cluttered room to the other, exultant whoops and men pounding each other on the back. This was it! This was the treasure at the rainbow’s end.

The substance and its properties were physically and chemically stable over a temperature range of hundreds of degrees. The breakdown voltage was up in the millions. The insulation resistance was better than the best known to Earth’s science.

The dielectric constant could be varied at will by a simple electric field normal to the applied voltage gradient⁠—a field which could be generated by a couple of dry cells if need be⁠—and ranged from a hundred thousand to about three billion. For all practical purposes, here was the ultimate dielectric.

“We did it!” Friedrichs slapped Lancaster’s back till it felt that the ribs must crack. “We have it!”

“Whooppee!” yelled Karen.

Suddenly they had joined hands and were dancing idiotically around the induction furnace. Lancaster clasped Rakkan’s talons without caring that it was a Martian. They sang then, sang till heads appeared at the door and the glassware shivered.

Here we go ’round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush⁠—

It called for a celebration. The end of a Project meant no more than filing a last report and waiting for the next assignment, but they ran things differently out here. Somebody broke out a case of Venusian aguacaliente. Somebody else led the way to a storeroom, tossed its contents into the hall, and festooned it with used computer tape. Rakkan forgot his Martian dignity and fiddled for a square dance, with Isaacson doing the calling. The folk from the other end of the station swarmed in till the place overflowed. It was quite a party.

Hours later, Lancaster was hazily aware of lying stretched on the floor. His head was in Karen’s lap and she was stroking his hair. The hardy survivors were following the Dufreres in French drinking songs, which are the best in the known universe. Rakkan’s fiddle wove in and out, a lovely accompaniment to voices that were untrained but made rich and alive by triumph.

“Sur ma tomb’ je veux qu’on inscrive:
‘Ici-git le roi des buveurs.’
Sur ma tomb’ je veux qu’on inscrive:
‘Ici-git le roi des buveurs.
Ici-git, oui, oui, oui,
Ici-git, non, non, non⁠—’ ”

Lancaster knew that he had never been really happy before.

Berg showed up a couple of days later, looking worried. Lancaster’s vacation time was almost up. When he heard the news, his eyes snapped gleefully and he pumped the physicist’s hand. “Good work, boy!”

“There are things to clean up yet,” said Lancaster, “but it’s all detail. Anybody can do it.”

“And the material⁠—what do you call it, anyway?”

Karen grinned. “So far, we’ve only named it ffuts,” she said. “That’s ‘stuff’ spelled backward.”

“Okay, okay. It’s easy to manufacture?”

“Sure. Now that we know how, anybody can make it in his own home⁠—if he’s handy at tinkering apparatus together.”

“Fine, fine! Just what was needed. This is the ticket.” Berg turned back to Lancaster. “Okay, boy, you can pack now. We blast again in a few hours.”

The physicist shuffled his feet. “What are my chances of getting reassigned back here?” he asked. “I’ve liked it immensely. And now that I know about it anyway⁠—”

“I’ll see. I’ll see. But remember, this is top secret. You go back to your regular job and don’t say a word on this to anyone less than the President⁠—no matter what happens, understand?”

“Of course,” snapped Lancaster, irritated. “I know my duty.”

“Yeah, so you do.” Berg sighed. “So you do.”

Leavetaking was tough for all concerned. They had grown fond of the quiet, bashful man⁠—and as for him, he wondered how he’d get along among normal people. These were his sort. Karen wept openly and kissed him goodbye with a fervor that haunted his dreams afterward. Then she stumbled desolately back to her quarters. Even Berg looked glum.

He regained his cockiness on the trip home, though, and insisted on talking all the way. Lancaster, who wanted to be alone with his thoughts, was annoyed, but you don’t insult a Security man.

“You understand the importance of this whole business, and why it has to be secret?” nagged Berg. “I’m not thinking of the scientific and industrial applications, but the military ones.”

“Oh, sure. You can make lightning throwers if you want to. And you’ve overcome the fuel problem. With a few ffuts accumulators, charged from any handy power source, you can build fuelless military vehicles, which would simplify your logistics immensely. And some really deadly hand guns could be built⁠—pistols the equivalent of a cannon, almost.” Lancaster’s voice was dead. “So what?”

“So plenty! Those are only a few of the applications. If you use your imagination, you can think of dozens more. And the key point is⁠—the ffuts and the essential gadgetry using it are cheap to make in quantity, easy to handle⁠—the perfect weapon for the citizen soldier. Or for the rebel! It isn’t enough to decide the outcome of