by Harl
Vincent
Illustrated by M. Marchioni
SPRAWLED through countless passages and oversized rooms in the ninety-seventh and ninety-eighth levels, the Metropolitan Museum of twenty-third-century New York occupied much valuable housing space in the city center just north of the one hundred and tenth crosstown way.
At one time and another, various syndicates and political bosses had conspired to wrest from its trustees full or part title to the space, but always without success. Ancient and honorable tradition persisted, preserving the museum's curious relics of bygone days, regardless of the fact that the premises were very little frequented by the lackadaisical and pleasure-seeking citizenry of the time.
Confreres of Arnold Dale would have been certain to mark him as somewhat eccentric had they known he was a regular visitor in these dingy rooms and corridors. Not that their opinion or ridicule would have mattered to Dale; his failure to tell them of his visits was occasioned only by his natural habit of keeping his own counsel.
Occupied now with the most serious problem confronting the eleven cities of United North America, he was prowling among the ancient specimen cases of the museum for inspiration. An unusual procedure, perhaps, but Dale was an unusual fellow. The foremost scientist of his generation, he yet refused to accept any theory of his fellow savants or predecessors unless it was susceptible of positive demonstration in the laboratory. But he would adopt as basic and important fact the most antiquated of proved laws, however trivial they seemed. In addition, he was easily the hardest working of the nation's thinkers, seldom leaving his labors until long after the allotted three-hour day had passed.
Tall and spare, habitually stooped, and with an almost totally bald crown, he was anything but a prepossessing figure. His clothes fitted him loosely, seeming several sizes too large.
Pausing now in his quest before a glass case which had often drawn his attention, he peered through the dusty panes at an antique model of the Bohr atom. He studied the three-hundred-year-old relic in silence, pondering on the representations of nuclear components and electronic orbits as if he had never seen them before.
His next stop was in a remote corner of the museum where a number of technical books of the same period were preserved. He observed a volume he had not before noticed, a twentieth-century dictionary, its pages yellowed and cracked, but still partly legible. Under its glass inclosure, the book was open at the caption: "Endecagon, engineer."
Dale read aloud from the pages, with bated breath : "En'e-my, en"er-ge'sis, en"er-gu'men. . . .En'er-gy. .... 1 . The power by which anything acts effectively to move Or change other things or—readiness for effective action. Energy is work and every other thing which can arise from work or be converted into work—"
Not much to quicken the imagination, this archaic definition, yet it served to arouse Dale to sudden activity. He hurried from the museum and made for the lift which would carry him to the topmost level of the city, his thoughts racing with his steps.
Energy! He had worked with it ever since his university days. Energy, synonymous with the power furnished to the eleven cities by the huge generators of the government-controlled power syndicate. Electrical energy, most important of the essential commodities, the power which throbbed in the motors of the stratosphere planes, provided light, heat, and conditioned air in the vast, continuous city edifices, and actuated the mechanical brains and steel sinews of the robots that in turn produced all things necessary for the welfare and sustenance of the human population. Energy, that essential which was becoming increasingly difficult to supply in sufficient quantity on account of the rapid depletion of natural-fuel resources.
That had been the problem—to find a means of overcoming the alarming shortage of power. And now, after years of fruitless search, Dale was near to the solution. Now—well, he'd put it up to Carson; he had arrived at his office.
THE PRESIDENT of the power syndicate, a figurehead whose position had been obtained by political maneuvering, sat at his desk asleep. His pudgy hands, crossed over his mountainous paunch, rose and fell in precise rhythm with the strange sounds which issued from between his loosely parted lips.
"Carson!" Dale called sharply.
The executive blinked himself awake and straightened his unwieldly form in the overstuffed cushions of his office chair, putting on an owlish expression of dignity.
"Hm-m! Er—ah—oh, hello, Dale! Must have dozed off. What can I do for you?"
"It's what I can do for you I came about—what can be done for all of United North America."
Carson's beady eyes glittered with real interest. "You've found a new fuel, a new source?"
"Not fuel; I'm planning to harness subatomic energy."
"Dale, you're crazy. They gave that up more than two centuries ago. Disrupting atoms—“
"I know," Dale interrupted impatiently. "No experimenter has been able to utilize nuclear energy efficiently by the destructive method, because the energy obtained is so little in excess of that required in the disruption of the atom. Besides, such a process requires the continual expenditure of energy to produce energy, whereas my building-up process will be progressive of itself, once started. You see, I'm not speaking of the destruction of atoms; I plan to create them."
"Create them!" Carson's lower lip became quiveringly pendulous.
"Yes; I mean to build up atoms of helium from atoms of hydrogen in the same manner as this is accomplished in the sun's interior."
"Impossible! The temperature cannot be duplicated on earth."
"I believe it can, and the necessary pressure as well. Listen, Carson, you don't appreciate the enormity of the possibilities. Why, man, get this—the nucleus of an atom of helium is an endothermic compound emitting one point seventy-five multiplied by the eleventh power of ten gram-calories of energy per gram when it is formed from four protons and two electrons. The energy per atom is four point six multiplied by the minus fifth power of ten ergs, this being almost three times the kinetic energy of the swift alpha particle of range eight point six centimeters of air, from thorium C prime. That lets out the possibility of forming helium atoms by bombardment."
Carson coughed violently to hide his embarrassment. "So—"
"So I come to the necessity of duplicating conditions existing in the sun."
"Hm-m, yes." Carson nodded with forced vigor—to keep himself awake, Dale conjectured. "Seems to me I recall a theory that a small rate of formation of helium from hydrogen may be responsible for the maintenance of the sun's heat."
"Exactly! And do you recollect the figures on the amount of energy available in such a process?"
"Uh, no."
"It is inconceivably great. By calculation, the equivalent of one million horse power for an hour would be liberated if we could build up only four grams—about one seventh of an ounce —of helium from hydrogen. Think of it!"
Carson blinked and fidgeted. "Er—ah—what do you want of me?"
Definitely Dale abandoned hope of conveying understanding to the so-called king of the kilowatts. "Merely the use of the furnaces in the thirty-seventh metallurgical section," he replied wearily.
"Oh!" Carson sighed his relief—the effort to think seriously had exhausted him—and scribbled something on a card, sliding the pasteboard across his desk. "That'll pass you in and permit of anything you want to do down there. See Miss—ah—oh, yes, Miss Haines. She's the robot supervisor and knows about the furnaces. But, Dale, those furnaces are good for only about eight thousand degrees Fahrenheit, you know."
"I've a way of stepping up the temperature." Dale rose to leave. "Thanks for the pass."
There was no answer. Already the kilowatt king's multiple chin had gravitated chestward.
A SPINSTER in her early thirties, Dorothea Haines was an atavism; she was so unlike the young women of her generation as to have lived almost the life of a recluse. She was of the thinker class and took her responsibilities as seriously as did ever a female department-store manager of the long-forgotten twentieth century.
Her disposition had been soured by much disapproving, if long-range, observation of the looseness and aimlessness of modern life in the eleven cities, and by a firm and growing conviction that the genus homo, as typified by the peoples of United North America, had lost not only its physical vigor but mental capability and ambition as well. Life had become too easy.
She sniffed contemptuously at the prescribed three-hour workday of the thinkers, the only class which toiled to any marked extent at all in this age of the robots. And if only to show her disrespect of the lawmakers, she, like Dale, whom she knew only by repute, often kept to her own tasks for two or three times the legal period.
Miss Haines was not a beauty by any standard of ancient or modern times.
She was flat-chested, narrow of shoulder and hip, although, it must be said, with a certain grace of movement. Her complexion was sallow, her face pinched, and exhibited high cheek bones. Thick lenses enormously enlarged her eyes when she stared directly at any one addressing her, invariably causing the addresser to retire in confusion or to forget what was to have been said.
Her personality and appearance made not the slightest difference to the thirtyseventh-level robots she supervised. Automatic machines, all of them, and many bearing no resemblance whatever to mankind, these were creatures of steel and glass and intricate whirring parts, especially designed and constructed to perform the amazingly complex tasks of this vast laboratory in New York's vitals.
Stationed at her central control board or stalking through the long aisles of the laboratory with microphone clamped to her meager bosom, Miss Haines was queen of all she surveyed.
She knew metallurgy, and she knew robots. She thought she knew men and women, but she did not. She did not even know herself, as subsequent events were to prove.
DROPPING seventy levels in the speedy lift, then whisking several miles downtown through the pneumatic tube. Dale was thinking only in the most technical terms of certain phases of the problem he had to work out.
The human aspect of conditions throughout the nation did not enter his mind; he was concerned only with the need of the machines of the eleven cities for energy and more energy. He must and would produce electrical energy in ever-increasing rather than diminishing amount, and at lower cost; it was no affair of his if the mechanizing of the cities and the developing of labor-saving devices were making of mankind a lazy swarm of weaklings.
He shot out across the huge pit which, down through the years, had retained the historical name of Cooper Square. The lounging groups of congenitally feeble-minded, and now stagnating because unoccupied, inhabitants of the sublevels below him, went unnoticed. Dale did note, peering through the transparent wall of the pneumatic tube, that the normal sunglo illumination of the Square had been reduced to about one half its usual brilliance on account of the power shortage.
Impatient to be at work, he stumbled from the car as soon as it halted on the far side of the Square and hustled into the great laboratory of the research-bureau metallurgical section. He was greeted by a prim little female of most forbidding aspect.
"Miss uh—" Dale began, having forgotten the name Carson had mentioned to him.
"Haines," the spectacled robot supervisor supplied crisply. "Who are you and what do you want here?"
Amused, Dale returned the stare of the accusing eyes. It did not occur to him until later, but those eyes of Miss Haines were not blue but violet—deep violet, with little warning flecks of red in them. His gaze held hers.
It was the first time a man had not quailed under her professional glare. Miss Haines experienced a momentary shiver of apprehension. This man was not human; he was without feeling, like one of her robots.
"Ye-es," he drawled. "Miss Haines; Carson told me. I'm Arnold Dale." The pasteboard changed hands.
"Oh, I see!" Miss Haines glanced at the pass.
"I need one of your furnaces for an experiment. Probably will want a little assistance as well."
"Very well," with a tightening of the lips. "This way, please; I'll let you have as many robot aids as you need—technics."
Dale sensed the woman's antagonism, but immediately forgot it. There was work to do here, and the tools with which to do it. He fell into a brown study before one of the induction furnaces.
Here was a machine that would serve his purpose well, with a few additions and modifications. The huge surrounding coils would have to be reinsulated for higher voltage, and the high-frequency generator speeded up and reconnected for a greatly increased frequency.
The actual heating chamber was not, of course, in evidence, but Dale knew that the touch of a switch would set up the inclosing sphere of force waves which, though invisible, formed an infusible compartment capable of withstanding enormous internal pressures as well as temperatures. This furnace was a most modern one, developed during the past decade for temperatures beyond the melting point of any known material.
"This will do nicely, Miss Haines," he approved, scratching the lobe of his left ear ruminatively. "I should like to—“
Turning, he saw at his side not Miss Haines but one of her technics, a humanlike robot with staring television lenses for eyes and a black disk pick-up microphone below the amplifier mouth. Dale grunted, seeing that the little robot supervisor had made her disappearance. Then, shrugging a shoulder, he issued his orders in the conventional monotone employed for the instruction of the mechanical servants.
AFTER THAT, Dale gave no further thought to the unfriendly woman who was supervisor of the great laboratory. That he had a streak of humor somewhere beneath the coldly scientific exterior is evidenced by the fact that he promptly christened his first robot assistant "Friday," remembering vaguely an ancient voice-vision recording surreptitiously enjoyed in his boyhood.
In truth, he had no immediate need of Miss Haines' assistance or advice. Friday responded promptly and efficiently to every order, acting as foreman of a group of lesser mechanicals drafted for the work of remodeling the furnace to suit his needs. Dale had but to calculate the mathematics of the alterations, which were more extensive than he had at first thought, and dictate his instructions to Friday, who in turn marshaled his forces and directed the detail work on the apparatus.
The mechanicals, some of them huge machines on wheels and comprising a myriad of delicately balanced relays, motors, manipulating arms, and sensitive tentaclelike appendages, dismantled coil windings, prepared new insulating material, and rewound them in accordance with the computed values. Others tinkered with the governor of the frequency generator, replaced the step-up transformers already in the circuit with others of greater ratio, or toiled at the brazing of copper cables and bus bars.
Dale worked almost unceasingly with his emotionless mechanical assistants, talking occasionally to Friday as he would to a human aid. Twenty hours at a stretch, with four hours of sleep there on the premises, then he would resume the grind and repeat the schedule. Only at long intervals did he send Friday for synthetic food pellets and water. At length the furnace was ready for its trial.
"Friday," he croaked gleefully, "we're finished with this part of the job. Get me a tank of hydrogen."
Relays clicked in rapid succession, there was a whir, and Friday replied stridently: "Yes, master."
"Wait!" Dale's irritated tone betrayed his weariness.
Again relays clicked, and Friday halted his clanking stride. "Yes, master."
"Dammit!" exploded Dale. "I'm sick of hearing your 'yes, master.' Where's that fool woman who was around here when I came? I'm itching for the sound of a human voice."
Friday's television lenses regarded him unblinkingly, but the robot made no reply. In that adding-machine brain of his was no place for the sequence of relays that would have permitted him to answer a question like Dale's.
"Oh, go ahead!" grunted the scientist. "Get the hydrogen."
"Yes, master." Friday lumbered off into the gloom of the laboratory. It was an off-work period.
Had Dale listened carefully, he might have heard a half-smothered giggle from out of the shadows.
AN HOUR later, accompanied by the throb of heavily overloaded generators, a pin point of superbrilliance took form within the dazzling confines of the sphere of force, a blinding microscopic magnificence such as had never been viewed by man from close at hand. It heralded the birth of a single atom of helium under conditions such as those existing in the sun itself, pressure and temperature conditions created by the genius of Arnold Dale.
Clothed in heavy asbestos and peering through the dark eyepiece of a welder's helmet, the scientist watched it with breathless interest. He had not observed the small figure, attired in garments like his own, which was crouched at his side. Dorothea Haines had been unable to curb her woman's curiosity.
"What is it?" she demanded, unable longer to hold her peace.
Startled, Dale wheeled upon the ghostlike figure. "Oh, it's you!" he exclaimed. Then, raising his voice above the throb of machinery, he shouted: "Raw energy. At least I think it's raw energy, produced by creating helium from hydrogen. Watch this."
He increased the rate of hydrogen feed to the sphere of force and immediately the tiny center of radiation swelled to the size of a pea, emitting a roar which drowned out the sound of the great generators and set the very structure of the city vibrating about them. Miss Haines recoiled a step, then held her ground.
Dale shut off the power, and the roar subsided. But the energy center maintained its solar brilliance, lighting the surroundings of the laboratory with an intensity many times greater than a magnesium flare. The ball of energy continued to take on mass until he stopped the flow of hydrogen to the force sphere, when it remained suspended in the exact center of the in-closing field, in apparent defiance of the law of graviation.
"It is raw energy!" breathed Dale. "Weightless. Pure energy, the basis of all matter."
Miss Haines sniffed, a bit nervously. "Raw energy, maybe. But what's it good for?"
Dale bridled. "Good for? Why—why, woman, don't you realize what this means?"
"It means you've succeeded with a pretty laboratory experiment, as far as I can see."
"Why, dammit, Miss Haines—you—“ Then, unaccountably, Dale laughed. "I'm sorry, truly I am. Suppose we screen off the radiation of the thing and talk it over. I'll appreciate your opinions."
"Very well."
Not much encouragement in the words or tone, but at least Miss Haines did not stage another disappearing act.
Dale built up the frequency of the supplementary generator until he was able to superimpose on the force field a heterodyning wave of the proper beat frequency to neutralize exactly the light radiations from the energy center. Instantly it became invisible, although the feeling of pulsation it had communicated to the air surrounding them persisted, giving proof that it was still there.
They removed their helmets and bulky clothing, then stared soberly at each other.
"We had better go to your office," suggested Dale. "I am not sure of the effect some of these radiations may have on the human body."
Nodding perfunctorily, Miss Haines led the way.
"YOU SEE," Dale told her later, "we are dealing with a thing none of us knows anything about. The structure of the atom has long been known, and it has been proved that its constituent protons and electrons and other so-called particles are merely charges of energy. Exactly what that energy is has never been determined; it has never before been isolated in its raw state.
"Now I have isolated it, I can calculate its potentialities, but I do not yet know how to convert these enormous forces into useful work. That is the job ahead—to segregate the various radiations and develop methods of confining them and utilizing them for the good of mankind."
He had touched a sore spot.
Miss Haines said coldly: "For the good of mankind, you say. I presume by that you mean to generate more electrical energy in order that our already-enervated population will be provided with still more leisure time. For the ruination of mankind, you had better say."
Dale stared. This woman with whom he had to deal was certainly a queer one. He would be forced to humor her; after all, he did need her assistance and advice.
"Perhaps," he conceded. "But, in any event, a certain amount of electrical energy must be produced to keep things as they are. And that cannot be continued for long with our fuel running as low as it is. This new process of mine opens the way to save the situation."
"Suppose there was no more power —then what?" Miss Haines was obdurate.
Dale eyed the thin line of her mouth reflectively. He would chance a further argument.
"Life in the cities would be impossible. There'd be no light, no air to breathe, no water, no robot servants or workmen, and consequently no synthetic food—nothing. Transportation would cease, not only in the pneumatic tubes and lifts of the cities, but in the stratosphere lanes between them. The population would be compelled to take to the wilderness, where men and women would die like the wild dogs of the outlands, tearing one another to pieces in the madness that comes of starvation."
"The fittest would survive."
It was Dale's turn to shiver inwardly. Forgetting that this was the first time he had given a thought to die human aspect of the power problem, he was aghast at the unfeelingness of the woman's words. He lost his temper.
"Look here, Miss Haines," he blazed. "I don't intend to sit quarreling with you. I've a job to carry through, and I've the authority to draft you as my assistant. But I'd rather not do that; I prefer to have you work willingly with me. What do you say?"
If Dale expected an explosion, he was disappointed. Seated on a corner of her desk, Miss Haines was tapping the floor with one sensibly shod foot.
"Very well," she said, after a tense moment. "I'll work with you. But only because I'm afraid you might otherwise overlook an opportunity."
Being uncertain how to construe her last remark, Dale let it pass. After that, the strangely assorted pair began to plan the work which was to be done.
A MONTH passed by, and the situation in the eleven cities became acute.
There had been a drought, and most of the sources of hydro-electric power were no longer able to broadcast energy. Coal, which of late had arrived at the large central generating stations in lesser and lesser amounts, was now almost entirely shut off from them due to the final exhaustion of the West Virginia and Pennsylvania deposits. The long pipe lines from the oil fields of Texas and Louisiana were operating with lower and lower pressure as the supply petered out.
In New York, as in all of the other cities, a rigorous program of energy conservation was inaugurated. In the public ways and meeting places of the sublevels, the sunglo illumination was reduced to one quarter of its normal value and was shut off entirely for a period of ten hours during each twenty-four. The pneumatic tube and lift service in the sublevels was drastically curtailed.
All newscast and television radio equipment below the thirtieth level was cut out of service. In the intermediate levels, the levels of the mechanicals, manufacturing and synthesizing was cut to the absolute necessities, and even these were reduced in quantity, especially in so far as the needs of the lower levels were concerned.
In the upper levels, where were the dwelling quarters and amusement places of the political and thinker classes, hardly any change in normal life was to be observed. Those in power had no thought of submitting themselves to any hardships.
Commerce between the cities had practically ceased. Stratosphere planes consume enormous amounts of broadcast energy in flight, and the regular service, excepting for the junketing trips of politicians and the pleasure jaunts of influential members of the upper-level elite, were quite definitely a thing of the past.
IT WAS at this stage that Carson had a caller, Gregg Twichell, the vice president of the union. As usual, the king of the kilowatts was nodding in his deeply cushioned office chair. Twichell wakened him none too gently.
"What is being done about this matter of the power shortage?" he demanded. "Get your wits together, man. This isn't any time to be asleep on the job."
Carson blinked away a part of his stupor. "You needn't have shaken my teeth loose," he grumbled. "I remember the time I've seen you with your head on your desk."
"Uh, that's different. There's an emergency now."
"Hm-m, yes, Twichell. Quite right, quite right."
The vice president, a small, dapper man with a continuously quivering waxed mustache, became red-faced from the exertion with which he pounded Carson's desk.
"Quite right!" he squeaked. "Quite right, the man says, and the country's going to the dogs! Carson, I ask you, what's being done?"
"Er—ah—oh, yes, I remember." The kilowatt king managed to get himself erect in his chair. "Y-yes; let's see now; Arnold Dale is working on it; he'll be able to straighten out the mess."
"Uh, what does he report?"
A frown of ineffectual anxiety deepened the creases in Carson's brow. "He hasn't reported," he admitted weakly.
"In how long?" Twichell's mustache vibrated threateningly.
"Er—let me see—it's about a month, I guess."
"Guess! The man guesses while the country is going to the dogs! Where's he working on the problem?"
Carson slumped into an attitude of deep meditation. "Ah—now—oh, yes; he's in the thirty-seventh-level metallurgical section."
It seemed that the veins in Twichell's temples must burst under the pressure of blood which dilated them. "Ye gods! The man only now recalls—after a month. Get him, Carson, get him at once and find out how things are progressing."
Languidly the king of the kilowatts asked for a voice-vision connection through to Arnold Dale. Twichell waited nervously for the lighting of the vision screen, but Carson was not yet fully aroused. At length the scientist's features materialized before them.
"You're getting fat," Carson greeted Dale. "Don't look like yourself."
"Think so?" drawled the scientist.
"Ask him," sputtered Twichell. "Ask him how he's coming."
"I heard you," said Dale. "And to answer the question, I'm coming fine. Be ready to demonstrate a new and inexhaustible source of energy to-day."
"To-day!" Carson was fully aroused now. "We'll be right down there to witness it—Twichell and myself."
Dale shrugged. "Suit yourself. I'll be waiting."
The vision screen went blank. "Carson!" Twichell leaned forward. "You and I—do you realize what we can do with this thing in our hands? That is, if Dale really has what he says."
"Why—why no." Belying his words, Carson's pig eyes gleamed with understanding. "He has it, all right, if he says so."
"Listen, Carson, control of a thing like this—unlimited energy for the needs of the nation—will enable us to overthrow the present government. We can take it in our hands and hold it as long as we wish. You and I, Carson—and possibly Dale, if he's reasonable."
"Sh-h !" The kilowatt king looked nervously behind him.
Twichell tiptoed to the door and closed it, whereupon the two went into a whispered and more than usually animated discourse.
IN THE thirty-seventh-level laboratory, Dale and Miss Haines were at work in a specially insulated cubicle before an instrument panel which incorporated every known variety of indicating and recording apparatus known to the science of engineering. In a corner of the cubicle, an energy center of eight centimeters' diameter spun within the invisible confines of a force sphere which depended from a triad of enormous spirally wound electrodes. The intense brilliance of the energy center was dimmed to an orange glow by neutralizing vibrations.
Clanking ponderously into the room, Friday rasped mechanically: "Honorable Gregg Twichell and Dudley Carson to see Mr. Dale."
"Bring them in." Dale did not look up from his calculation book.
"Yes, master."
"I'll make myself scarce," said Miss Haines. "They'll talk more freely if you're alone." She rose and hustled away.
Dale went through with his calculation to the final result, giving no heed to the meaning throat-clearings of his visitors when they had entered. Eventually he looked up from his work.
"Mr. Twichell, Mr. Dale," offered Carson.
"Yes; I know," drawled the scientist. "Greetings!"
"Well," sputtered the king of the kilowatts. "Tell us about it."
"Yes, do." Twichell grimaced, his mustache tremulous. "How good is your discovery? Does it solve the power problem?"
For answer, Dale pulled a switch and there was a surge of energy which set every instrument on his panel into oscillation. "Right at the moment," he told them casually, "the energy center you see back there is radiating more than a billion kilowatts of energy per hour. Of this, eighty-five per cent is convertible into electrical energy at transmission voltage by means of the recovery screens and transformers I've developed." Carson peered at the instruments as if he knew the meaning of their indications. Twichell fluttered about like a mother bird in defense of its young. "What is it?" he demanded. "How does it work? Can you duplicate it?" Dale chuckled, unimpressed by the man's empty title. "Too many questions all at once, Twichell. But I'll try to answer them. The suspended ball over there beneath the force sphere electrodes, the ball of what looks like heated metal, is a concentration of raw energy, brought into being by the building up of helium atoms from hydrogen. It radiates two hundred and forty forms of energy, most of them usable and of great value to science.
"I can duplicate the energy center as often as desired, and each replica of the one you see will provide an inexhaustible source of its various energies if supplied at infrequent intervals with minute charges of hydrogen at the proper pressure and temperature. Larger energy centers can be produced if required, a single center sufficiently large for the supplying of power for one of our entire cities being easily built up."
"Why, Dale, it's a miracle!" clucked Twichell. "It's just what we need—what we've been searching for. Isn't it, Carson?"
The kilowatt king nodded as vigorously as the folds of his triple chin would permit. "Ah—it is, indeed; the very thing."
Twichell's fidgetings quieted to an electric tenseness. His voice lowered. "Go ahead, Carson. Tell him."
"You tell him."
"No, you—oh, all right!" Twichell cleared his throat, facing Dale purposefully. "We—Carson and I—have a proposition to put up to you, Dale. A stupendous proposition, a thing made possible by this discovery of yours."
The scientist raised his eyebrows, letting his right hand stray to the lobe of his left ear. "Yes?" he proffered helpfully.
Twichell came to the point: "It's like this. The three of us here, you and Carson and I, are in a position to take national affairs in our own hands. We can form a triumvirate, a dictatorship, and control commerce, industry, government, as we choose, merely by virtue of the absolute monopoly we shall have of the electrical power upon which our modern civilization depends so absolutely. All wealth and power is ours for the taking, all—"
"Stop!" bellowed Dale. He had been listening in open-mouthed astonishment, even though, knowing Carson as he did, he was not entirely unprepared for just such a move as this. "You're talking to the wrong man, Twichell, although, there's more truth than poetry in some of your words. The big mistake in your speech is the use of the word `we'; in that you have erred, and sadly. Now you listen to me, both of you; I've something to get off my chest."
The so-called men of affairs and influence listened.
DALE SPOKE swiftly and incisively: "Something has awakened in me, gentlemen, something I did not know was in my make-up. I have come to take a personal interest in the welfare of our nation and of mankind in general. I like your idea of a dictatorship immensely and shall lose no time in adopting it, but I shall be the dictator in United North America, not 'we.'
"Conditions are rotten, as you well know; they'd be worse if you two old vultures acquired any real authority. Twenty-odd years ago there was supposed economic reform in this country; wealth was divided equally among all classes and a new era was promised. But what happened?
"Political grafters and criminally-minded sharpers soon took all of the government vouchers and credits away from those of the sublevels, and poverty was again the lot of the under dog, probably in worse degree than ever before in our history. Nobody starved, on account of the meager doles to the downtrodden masses by those in power, but a miserable condition has existed and still exists in the lower levels.
"Things are still worse in the upper levels, where men and women are living in luxurious uselessness and physical and moral degeneracy. Our people have lost their physical vigor and stamina, because all the tasks they should rightfully perform are done for them by the robots. We are a nation of effeminate and despicable men and scatter-brained women. Something must be done to save us from ourselves.
"And something shall be done. There is to be a dictator, as you so nimbly suggested, Twichell, and that dictator will be Arnold Dale. I shall control the power industry; I shall so proportion the feeding of energy to the various uses as to benefit rather than harm our unfortunate people. Robot labor will be reduced, human labor gradually increased, political bossism and thievery abolished, a new and equable economic system established."
"You're crazy, Dale," whined Carson. “I—I’ll put you in irons; I'll call out the robot police—I'll—"
Dale towered over his two visitors. "You'll do nothing of the kind. I have the power; don't forget it. I can neutralize the energy of the power syndicate. In an instant I can shut off the activating power from all the robots; then you are helpless, you and all of your kind. Watch this."
The scientist closed a switch, and the room reverberated to the roar of the energy center with the discontinuance of the inclosing force sphere vibrations. Its dazzling light beat shut their eyelids; its emanations set their blood aboil in their veins. The thing was a seething inferno of pure energy, of incalculable destructive force. Carson and Twichell yelped with pain and terror.
"Turn it off!" begged the kilowatt king. "Please, Dale, turn it off! I believe you; I quit."
Grinning, Dale opened the switch, and the energy center was once more confined. Twichell, he saw, had slumped weakly into Carson's arms, and that worthy, his elephantine legs planted widely apart, was just able to support the wizened form of the vice president.
"Friday," the scientist called to his robot aid, "you may show the gentlemen out?'
"Yes, master."
MISS HAINES came out from her hiding place behind the instrument panel. Her cheeks were aglow with excitement, and something more. For the first time, Dale observed that she was no longer wearing the thick-lensed spectacles.
"You heard it all, then?" he asked her.
"I did. Mean it, Arnold?"
"You bet I mean it."
Miss Haines sighed blissfully. "You were wonderful; it's too good to be true."
"Nonsense! Let's get back to work."
But Miss Haines was in no working mood. She tugged at Dale's arm, forcing him to look at her. "Arnold Dale," she accused him, "you don't even know what's happened—to us."
Dale stared and stammered: "To—to us?"
"That's what I said. Have you seen your reflection in a mirror lately? Have you given me more than a passing glance?"
Dale had done neither, it seemed. He now surveyed his coworker carefully, his gaze starting at the floor and not resting until it came to the piquant face under the mass of glorious hair. Miss Haines was a new woman, filled out and rejuvenated, with alluring curves, rounded cheeks, and red lips, now tremulously parted. Those violet eyes, now softly agleam with warm light; were like no eyes Dale had ever seen.
"Dorothea!" he gasped. "You—you're beautiful!"
"It's the energy center," she gurgled. "Radiation one thirty-nine—the one I've been experimenting with by myself. Look what it's done for us—for you." She prodded his arm. "That's not fat, it's good firm muscle. Carson didn't know what he was talking about when he said you, were getting fat. You have been remade physically by the energy ; so have I.
"In this new program of yours we can do more for our fellow men even than you planned. We can remake them, give them back the energy and physical fitness they've lost. That's the energy I call important; not your old electrical energy."
At last Dale saw the light. He and Dorothea Haines—why, it was a miracle if ever there had been one—they were completely transformed in appearance, in nature. He had told the truth when he said she was beautiful. And his own physical and mental rehabilitation now was evident to himself.
He and Dorothea—the connection repeated itself over and over in. his thoughts—they belonged to each other. They'd mate legally, and work together till the end of all things. It was the greatest of the rewards that had come from his labors with the raw-energy process. His being was swept by a new and vehement accession of energy, the energy which fires a man when he desires a mate.
Reaching eager arms for the willing girl, his gaze encountered the staring electric-eye lenses of his first robot assistant.
"Friday," he said softly, "you may leave the room."
"Yes master."