Islands of Space John W. Campbell (best ereader for manga .txt) đ
- Author: John W. Campbell
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âAnd who worked out the math for the interplanetary ships? I did! Without me they would never have been built!â He turned dramatically, as though he were playing King Lear. âAnd what do I get for it?â He pointed an accusing finger at Arcot. âWhat do I get? He is called âEarthâs most brilliant physicistâ, and I, who did all the hard work, am referred to as âhis mathematical assistant.âââ He shook his head solemnly. âItâs a hard world.â
At the table, Wade frowned, then looked at the ceiling. âIf youâd make your quotations more accurate, theyâd be more trustworthy. The news said that Arcot was the âSystemâs most brilliant physicistâ, and that you were the âbrilliant mathematical assistant who showed great genius in developing the mathematics of Dr. Arcotâs new theoryâ.â Having delivered his speech, Wade began stoking his pipe.
Fuller tapped his fingers on the table. âCome on, you clowns, knock it off and tell me why you called a hardworking man away from his drafting table to come up to this play room of yours. What have you got up your sleeve this time?â
âOh, thatâs too bad,â said Arcot, leaning back comfortably in his chair. âWeâre sorry youâre so busy. We were thinking of going out to see what Antares, Betelguese, or Polaris looked like at close range. And, if we donât get too bored, we might run over to the giant model nebula in Andromeda, or one of the others. Tough about your being busy; you might have helped us by designing the ship and earned your board and passage. Tough.â Arcot looked at Fuller sadly.
Fullerâs eyes narrowed. He knew Arcot was kidding, but he also knew how far Arcot would go when he was kiddingâ âand this sounded like he meant it. Fuller said: âLook, teacher, a man named Einstein said that the velocity of light was tops over two hundred years ago, and nobodyâs come up with any counter evidence yet. Has the Lord instituted a new speed law?â
âOh, no,â said Wade, waving his pipe in a grand gesture of importance. âArcot just decided he didnât like that law and made a new one himself.â
âNow wait a minute!â said Fuller. âThe velocity of light is a property of space!â
Arcotâs bantering smile was gone. âNow youâve got it, Fuller. The velocity of light, just as Einstein said, is a property of space. What happens if we change space?â
Fuller blinked. âChange space? How?â
Arcot pointed toward a glass of water sitting nearby. âWhy do things look distorted through the water? Because the light rays are bent. Why are they bent? Because as each wave front moves from air to water, it slows down. The electromagnetic and gravitational fields between those atoms are strong enough to increase the curvature of the space between them. Now, what happens if we reverse that effect?â
âOh,â said Fuller softly. âI get it. By changing the curvature of the space surrounding you, you could get any velocity you wanted. But what about acceleration? It would take years to reach those velocities at any acceleration a man could stand.â
Arcot shook his head. âTake a look at the glass of water again. What happens when the light comes out of the water? It speeds up again instantaneously. By changing the space around a spaceship, you instantaneously change the velocity of the ship to a comparable velocity in that space. And since every particle is accelerated at the same rate, you wouldnât feel it, any more than youâd feel the acceleration due to gravity in free fall.â
Fuller nodded slowly. Then, suddenly, a light gleamed in his eyes. âI suppose youâve figured out where youâre going to get the energy to power a ship like that?â
âHe has,â said Morey. âUncle Arcot isnât the type to forget a little detail like that.â
âOkay, give,â said Fuller.
Arcot grinned and lit up his own pipe, joining Wade in an attempt to fill the room with impenetrable fog.
âAll right,â Arcot began, âwe needed two things: a tremendous source of power and a way to store it.
âFor the first, ordinary atomic energy wouldnât do. Itâs not controllable enough and uranium isnât something we could carry by the ton. So I began working with high-density currents.
âAt the temperature of liquid helium, near absolute zero, lead becomes a nearly perfect conductor. Back in nineteen twenty, physicists had succeeded in making a current flow for four hours in a closed circuit. It was just a ring of lead, but the resistance was so low that the current kept on flowing. They even managed to get six hundred amperes through a piece of lead wire no bigger than a pencil lead.
âI donât know why they didnât go on from there, but they didnât. Possibly it was because they didnât have the insulation necessary to keep down the corona effect; in a high-density current, the electrons tend to push each other sideways out of the wire.
âAt any rate, I tried it, using lux metal as an insulator around the wire.â
âHold it!â Fuller interrupted. âWhat, may I ask, is lux metal?â
âThat was Wadeâs idea,â Arcot grinned. âYou remember those two substances we found in the Nigran ships during the war?â
âSure,â said Fuller. âOne was transparent and the other was a perfect reflector. You said they were made of lightâ âphotons so greatly condensed that they were held together by their gravitational fields.â
âRight. We called them light-metal. But Wade said that was too confusing. With a specific gravity of 103.5, light-metal was certainly not a light metal! So Wade coined a couple of words. Lux is the Latin for light, so he named the transparent one lux and the reflecting one relux.â
âIt sounds peculiar,â Fuller observed, âbut so does every coined word when you first hear it. Go on with your story.â
Arcot relit his pipe and went on. âI put a current of ten thousand
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