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Ebook has 494 lines and 14023 words, and 10 pages

Special Delivery

Illustrated by Kramer

Don Channing grinned at his wife knowingly. Arden caught his glance and then laughed. Walt Franks leaned back and looked highly superior. "Go ahead and laugh, darn you. I tell you it can be done."

"Walt, ever since you tried that stunt of aerating soap with hydrogen to make a floating soap for shower baths, I've been wondering about your kind of genius."

"Oh no," objected Arden.

"Well, he wondered about it after nearly breaking his neck one morning."

"That I did," grinned Walt. "It's still a good idea."

"But the idea of transmitting matter is fantastic."

"Agreed," admitted Walt. "But so is the idea of transmitting power."

"It would come in handy if possible," remarked Don. "At slightly under 2-G, it takes only four hours to make Luna from Terra. On the other hand, shipping stuff from Melbourne, Australia, to New York City, or to the Mojave Spaceport takes considerably longer. With spacecraft as super stratosphere carriers it isn't too good, because you've got to run in a circle. In space you run at constant acceleration to mid-point and then decelerate the rest of the way. Fine for mile-eating, but not too hot for cutting circles."

"Well, having established the need of a matter transmitter, now what?"

"Go on, Walt. You're telling us."

"Well," said Walt, penciling some notes on the tablecloth, "it's like this. The Carroll-Baler power-transmission tube will carry energy. According to their initial experiments, they had some trouble."

"They had one large amount, if I recall."

"Specifically, I recall the incident of the hammer. Remember?"

"Barney Carroll got mad and swung a hammer at the tube, didn't he?"

"It was one of them, I don't recall which."

"No matter of importance," said Don. "I think I know what you mean. He hit the intake end--or tried to. The hammer was cut neatly and precisely off, and the energy of the blow was transmitted, somehow, to the wall."

"Through the wall," corrected Walt. "It cracked the plaster, but it went through so fast that it merely cracked it. The main blow succeeded in breaking the marble facade of the city hall."

"Um. Now bring us up to date. What have you in mind?"

"A tube which scans matter atom by atom, line by line, and plane by plane. The matter is removed, atom by atom, and transmitted to a sort of matter bank in the instrument."

"A what?"

"Matter bank," said Walt. "We can't transmit the stuff itself. That's out. We can't dissipate the atomic energy or whatever effect we might get. We can establish a balance locally by using the energy release to drive the restorer. According to some initial experiments, it can be done. We take something fairly complex and break it down. We use the energy of destruction to re-create the matter in a bank, or solid block of local stuff. Let it be a mass of stuff if it wants to, at any rate, the signal impulses from the breakdown will be transmitted, scanned, if you will, and transmitted to a receiver which reverses the process. It scans, and the matter bank is broken down and the object is rebuilt.

"I hope we can get free and unrestricted transmutation," offered Don. "You can't send a steel spring out and get one back made of copper."

"I get your point."

"The space lines will hate you," said Arden.

"Too bad. I wonder if it'll carry people."

"Darling," drawled Arden, "don't you think you'd better catch your rabbit first?"

"Not too bad a thought," agreed Don. "Walt, have you got any rabbit traps out?"

"A couple. I've been tinkering a bit. I know we can disintegrate matter through a power tube of slight modification, and reintegrate it with another. At the present state of the art, it is a mess."

"A nice mess," laughed Don. "Go ahead, though. We'll pitch in when the going gets hard."

"That's where I stand now. The going is tough."

"What's the trouble?"

"Getting a perfect focus. I want it good enough so that we can scan a polished sheet of steel--and it'll come out as slick as the original."

"Naturally. We'd better get Wes Farrell on the job."

"I wonder what by-product we'll get this time."

"Look, Walt. Quit hoping. If you get this thing running right, it'll put your name in history."

"After all," grinned Walt, "I've got to do something good enough to make up for that Channing Layer."

"Kingman is still fuming over the Channing Layer. Sometimes I feel sorry that I did it to him like that."

"Wasn't your fault, Don. You didn't hand him the thing knowing that the Channing Layer would inhibit the transmission of energy. It happened. We get power out of Sol--why shouldn't they? They would, except for the Channing Layer."

"Wonder what your idea will do."

"About the Channing Layer? Maybe your space-line competition is not as good as it sounds."

"Well, they use the power-transmission tubes all over the face of the Solar System. I can't see any reason why they couldn't ship stuff from Sidney to Mojave and then space it out from there."

"Do we have time to go into the old yarn about the guy who listened in and got replicas?" asked Arden.

"That's a woman's mind for you," grinned Channing. "Always making things complicated. Arden, my lovely but devious-minded woman, let's wait until we have the spry beastie by the ears before we start to make rabbit pie."

"It's not as simple as it sounds," warned Walt. "But it's there to worry about."

"But later. I doubt that we can reason that angle out."

"I can," said Arden. "Can we tap the power beams?"

"Wonderful is the mind of woman!" praised Don. "Positively wonderful! Arden, you have earned your next fur coat. Here I've been thinking of radio transmission all the time. No, Arden, when you're set up for sheer energy transmission, it's strictly no dice. The crimped-up jobs we use for communications can be tapped--but not the power-transmission beams. If you can keep the gadget working on that line, Walt, we're in and solid."

"I predict there'll be a battle. Are we shipping energy or communications?"

"Let Kingman try and find a precedent for that. Brother Blackstone himself would be stumped to make a ruling. We'll have to go to work with the evidence as soon as we get a glimmer of the possibilities. But I think we have a good chance. We can diddle up the focus, I'm certain."

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