this cold first, so I can get it moving up and down smoothly, then go through it with the whole works.”
He moved his hand back smoothly, in a professional manner that drew no attention to it. The model lifted from the table—then crashed back down.
“The thread broke,” Kaner said.
“You jerked it, instead of pulling smoothly,” Biff said and knotted the broken thread. “Here let me show you how to do it.”
The thread broke again when Biff tried it, which got a good laugh that made his collar a little warm. Someone mentioned the poker game.
This was the only time that poker was mentioned or even remembered that night. Because very soon after this they found that the thread would lift the model only when the switch was on and two and a half volts flowing through the joke coils. With the current turned off the model was too heavy to lift. The thread broke every time.
“I still think it’s a screwy idea,” the young man said. “One week getting fallen arches, demonstrating those toy ships for every brat within a thousand miles. Then selling the things for three bucks when they must have cost at least a hundred dollars apiece to make.”
“But you did sell the ten of them to people who would be interested?” the older man asked.
“I think so, I caught a few Air Force officers and a colonel in missiles one day. Then there was one official I remembered from the Bureau of Standards. Luckily he didn’t recognize me. Then those two professors you spotted from the university.”
“Then the problem is out of our hands and into theirs. All we have to do now is sit back and wait for results.”
“What results?! These people weren’t interested when we were hammering on their doors with the proof. We’ve patented the coils and can prove to anyone that there is a reduction in weight around them when they are operating. …”
“But a small reduction. And we don’t know what is causing it. No one can be interested in a thing like that—a fractional weight decrease in a clumsy model, certainly not enough to lift the weight of the generator. No one wrapped up in massive fuel consumption, tons of lift and such is going to have time to worry about a crackpot who thinks he has found a minor slip in Newton’s laws.”
“You think they will now?” the young man asked, cracking his knuckles impatiently.
“I know they will. The tensile strength of that thread is correctly adjusted to the weight of the model. The thread will break if you try to lift the model with it. Yet you can lift the model—after a small increment of its weight has been removed by the coils. This is going to bug these men. Nobody is going to ask them to solve the problem or concern themselves with it. But it will nag at them because they know this effect can’t possibly exist. They’ll see at once that the magnetic-wave theory is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We don’t know. But they will all be thinking about it and worrying about it. Someone is going to experiment in his basement—just as a hobby of course—to find the cause of the error. And he or someone else is going to find out what makes those coils work, or maybe a way to improve them!”
“And we have the patents. …”
“Correct. They will be doing the research that will take them out of the massive-lift-propulsion business and into the field of pure space flight.”
“And in doing so they will be making us rich—whenever the time comes to manufacture,” the young man said cynically.
“We’ll all be rich, son,” the older man said, patting him on the shoulder. “Believe me, you’re not going to recognize this old world ten years from now.”
Down to Earth
“Gino … Gino … help me! For God’s sake, do something!”
The tiny voice scratched in Gino Lombardi’s earphone, weak against the background roar of solar interference. Gino lay flat in the lunar dust, half buried by the pumice-fine stuff, reaching far down into the cleft in the rock. Through the thick fabric of his suit he felt the edge crumbling and pulled hastily back. The dust and pieces of rock fell instantly, pulled down by the light lunar gravity and unimpeded by any trace of air. A fine mist of dust settled on Glazer’s helmet below, partially obscuring his tortured face.
“Help me, Gino—get me out of here,” he said, stretching his arm up over his head.
“No good—” Gino answered, putting as much of his weight onto the crumbling lip of rock as he dared, reaching far down. His hand was still a good yard short of the other’s groping glove. “I can’t reach you—and I’ve got nothing here I can let down for you to grab. I’m going back to the Bug.”
“Don’t leave …” Glazer called, but his voice was cut off as Gino slid back from the crevice and scrambled to his feet. Their tiny helmet radios did not have enough power to send a signal through the rock; they were good only for line-of-sight communication.
Gino ran as fast as he could, long gliding jumps one after the other back towards the Bug. It did look more like a bug here, a red beetle squatting on the lunar landscape, its four spidery support legs sunk into the dust. He cursed under his breath as he ran: what a hell of an ending for the first moon flight! A good blast off and a perfect orbit, the first two stages had dropped on time, the lunar orbit was right, the landing had been right—and ten minutes after they had walked out of the Bug Glazer had to fall into this crevice hidden under the powdery dust. To come all this way—through all the multiple hazards of space—then to fall into a hole. … There was just no justice.
At the base of the ship Gino flexed his legs and bounded high up towards the top
