The Daleth Effect

“Are not a field trial. We are going to try that now. Let me know when I am to start.”

Ove followed the telephone wire up through the ship and, when he opened the outer door, was pelted in the face by a flurry of fine snow. It was carried by a biting wind that made him close his coat tightly and turn up the collar. From the top of the gangway he could see the huddle of dark figures against the far wall of the quay. Skou was waiting for him when he came down.

“If you are ready they would be pleased if you started. Admiral Sander-Lange there is in his seventies, and we have two generals not much younger.”

“The Prime Minister… ?”

“Decided at the last minute not to come. But there is his representative. The Air Force people are here, everyone on the list.”

“We are all ready then. If you bring the phone over, I’ll brief them and we can begin.”

“I would like some explanation,” the admiral said when Ove came up, more than an echo of command still in his old man’s voice.

“I’ll be happy to, sir. What we hope to do here is to demonstrate the Daleth effect.”

“Daleth?” a general asked.

“The fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The symbol that Professor Klein had assigned to the factor in the equation that led to the discovery.”

“What discovery?” someone asked, puzzled.

Ove smiled, his features barely visible in the snow-obscured light of the overhead lamp.

“That is what we are here to observe. The Daleth effect has been proven in theory, and in limited laboratory experiments. This is the first time that it has been attempted on a large enough scale to prove whether it will be universally applicable or not. Since there was so much physical difficulty, and security, in setting up this trial, it was decided that observers should be present even if there were a chance of failure.”

“Failure of what?” an irritated voice asked.

“That will be obvious enough in a few minutes…” The telephone rang and Ove broke off. “Yes?”

“Are you ready to start?”

“Yes. Minimum power to begin with?”

“Minimum power. Beginning”

“If you gentlemen will watch the ship,” Ove said, covering the mouthpiece.

There was very little to see. Flurries of fine snow swept through the cones of light along the quay. The Isbjorn’s gangplank had been raised, as had been instructed, and men stood by on the fore and aft cables, which had been slacked off. The tide had carried the ship away from the quay so that a gap of dark water could be seen. Waves gurgled and slapped between the hull and the stone wall of the quay.

“Nothing yet,” Ove said.

“I’m turning up the output”

The men were stamping their feet in the cold and there was an undertone of irritated murmuring. One of them turned to Ove, a complaint ready on his lips, when a sudden high-pitched whining filled the air. It seemed to come from all directions at once, sourceless and irritating, making them feel as though the bones in their skulls were vibrating. This painful aspect of the sound passed quickly, though the vibration itself remained, at a lower pitch, like the string on some celestial bass viol, humming to itself behind the backdrop of the world.

As this first sound died away, a creaking began in the Isbjorn, sounding first one part of the hull then the other. There were excited shouts on deck. Something like a shudder passed through the ship and tiny waves broke all around it and sucked at the hull.

“Good Christ, look!” someone gasped. They looked. It was incredible.

As though mounted on a giant underwater piston, the entire mass of the bulky icebreaker was slowly rising in the water. First the Plimsoll line appeared, then the red-leaded bottom of her hull. Dim blots of barnacles spotted it here and there and then, further down, hanks of weed trailed limply. At the stern the lower, barnacled part of the rudder appeared, as well as the propeller, rising steadily until all of its dripping blades were clear of the water. The seamen on shore quickly payed out line as the cables grew taut.

“What is happening? What is this?” one of the observers called out, but his voice was drowned out as others shouted with excitement.

The snow was lessening, blowing away in gaps and swirls; the lights on the quay now shone clearly on the ship and the sea. Water ran in continuous streams, louder than the slap of waves against the stone.

The keel of the ship was now a good meter above the surface of the Yderhavn channel.

“Arnie, that’s it. You’ve done it!” Ove clutched the phone, looking at the multi-thousand-tonned mass of the ship before him that floated, unsupported, in the air. “It’s a meter above the surface at least! Reduce power now, reduce…”

“I am.” The voice was strained. “But there is a harmonic building up, a standing wave…”

His words were drowned in a groan of metal from the Isbjorn and the ship seemed to shudder. Then, with frightening suddenness, the stern dropped into the water as though some invisible support had been removed, sliding back and down.

The sound was the crash of a giant waterfall, a crescendo of noise. In an instant, rearing up like an attacking animal, a wave of black water surged high over the edge of the quay, hung poised, one meter, two meters above—then plunged. Changing instantly to a bubbling, knee-high foaming tide that tore at the observers and splashed high against the rear wall. It swept the men off their feet, jumbled them together, hurled them apart, left them stranded like beached fish as it drained away iii a wide sheet of darkness.

As it subsided the groans and cries went up, and the shouts were echoed aboard the ship.

“Over here, my God, it’s the admiral!”

“Don’t touch him—that leg’s broken at least, maybe worse.”

“Get off me… !”

“Someone call an ambulance, this man’s hurt!”

Heavy boots hammered on the stone as the guards ran up: someone was shouting into a police radio. Aboard the Isbjorn there was the clang of metal as she wallowed back and forth, and her captain’s voice could be clearly heard above the others.

“Taking water aft—the wooden plugs, you fools—when I get my hands on the people who did this!”

The ear-hurting bahh-boo of police cars grew louder, and in the distance there was the rapid clanging of ambulance bells. Headlights raced down the length of the quay as water ran from its edge in a hundred tiny waterfalls.

Ove was dazed, washed against the wall, soaked to the skin and tangled in the wire from the telephone. He pushed himself to a sitting position, back against the rough stone, looking at the frantic scene of shouting men with the Isbjorn still rocking in the background. He was shocked by the suddenness of disaster, the wounded, possibly dead men near him. This was terrible; it should not have happened.

At the same time he was filled with such a rising feeling of exultation that he almost shouted aloud. It worked! They had done it! The Daleth effect was as Arnie had predicted it would be.

There was something new in the world, something that had never existed before this night, and from this moment onward the world would never be the same again. He smiled into the darkness, unaware of the blood that was running down his chin, and of the fact that four of his front teeth had been knocked out.

* * *

Snow still drove past spasmodically, first dropping a sheet of obscurity and then lifting it for a tantalizing glimpse. The man on the other side of the channel of the Yderhavn cursed to himself in a continuous guttural monotone. This was the best he could do with such short notice, and it was just not good enough.

He was on the roof of a warehouse, just across the half-mile-wide channel from the Langelinie quay. This area was almost completely deserted after dark, and he had had no trouble avoiding the few night watchmen and police who came by. His glasses were good, the best Zeiss-Ikon 200 mm wide-field night glasses, but they could see nothing if nothing was there. The snow had started soon after the official cars had pulled up on the quay and