Page:Amazing Stories Volume 07 Number 08.djvu/40

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HIS question still puzzled me when I left in a government rocket ship after moon-set that night. I had taken more than ordinary precaution, and was sure that it would be impossible to trace me. No human being except myself knew where I was going; even my official superiors would not know until morning that I had left on another of my indefinitely prolonged investigations.

I rose to about twenty-five miles, and travelling rapidly, found myself over Dane's farmhouse just as the sun was rising.

The place was one of the abandoned farmhouses common in that region. In the early part of the war, before the discovery of the detector ray put a stop to it, raiding rocket ships had frequently been able to slip over our lines from the enemy stronghold in upper New York State. The entire region had been quickly evacuated, and even now, that the danger was past, few cared to return.

As I brought my plane down, I realized how well chosen the place was. It filled all of Dane's requirements perfectly. It cost nothing, an important consideration for Dane’s lean pocketbook, was lonely enough to afford the necessary secrecy and yet easily accessible from several large cities for equipment and supplies; and best of all, was close to the power lines that carried the twenty million odd kilowatts generated at the Niagara plant.

The great Falls of Niagara, but a few years before one of the wonders of the world, were now only a trickle of water when rainfall was exceptionally heavy. But for the wonder of the mighty waterfall had been substituted the greater wonder of the world’s largest power plant. Fifteen two million kilowatt turbine generator units spun unceasingly in great chambers hollowed out of the rock face at the foot of the Falls. Monster flumes, cut through the solid rock, supplied them with all the water that had once fallen over the lip of the falls, to spend its precious energy in noise and turbulence.

This was our supply of energy, and great though it was, Dane and I were soon to find it pitifully meager to supply our needs.

I landed upon a level space between a large frame farmhouse of the colonial type and a tremendous, strongly built, barn-like structure. Dane, attracted by the roar of the rockets, was waiting for me as I stepped out. He was the most pleased human I had ever seen, and gave me an effusive greeting.

Dane lived in a few rooms of the farmhouse with the colored housekeeper and cook that had cared for his bachelor lodgings since his appointment to professorship. In her capacity of cook, this worthy had a substantial breakfast ready, to which I did full justice, since I had been up since two o'clock that morning. As we ate, Dane talked enthusiastically about the coming experiment, and I had a good opportunity to study the man who claimed to have done the impossible.

Physically, there was nothing impressive about Dane. He was of average size and weight, about fifty, and could easily have been mistaken for some underpaid clerk, with shoulders somewhat rounded from years of bending over a desk. In his face, however, there was ample indication of the tremendous mental powers I was soon to find that he possessed. He had the exceptionally high and broad forehead that physiognomists call the indication of a powerful and logical mind. His blue eyes, set far apart, normally showed a calm good humor, but could sparkle with intense animation when he was excited.

Great men are popularly supposed to be very dignified. This may be true enough of the general run of successful business men or politicians, in whose cases surface show of superiority is more important than the real thing. Dane was certainly not dignified. His enthusiasms, as at the solving of a knotty equation, were as intense and unrestrained as those of a child. He combined the warm, variable temperament and quick perception of an artist with an incredibly patient, plodding persistence that could keep him pounding away at the same problem year after year.

I liked him from the beginning, and I believe he also liked me. This must have been so, because instead of an initial period of feeling me out before he trusted me completely, he immediately plunged into the heart of the time-machine's theory.

He first described the method of generating the gravitational field. The principle was so simple, and followed so logically from facts that had been widely known as early as 1950, that I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself. I and the rest of the scientific world were a choice collection of puddingheads; what we had so positively called impossible had been right under our noses for over twenty years.

When Professor Dane had finished his hearty laugh at my obvious discomfiture, I asked him about that other problem— of getting information from the future back to the present time.

"Come along," he said, "I'll run off the experiment for you now, and you can see for yourself. Seeing’s believing, you know. But seriously, I am not sure that I know just why it works the way it does, although I have a theory that seems to fit all the facts." And he would say no more about it, telling me that he would look forward to discussing that question further when I had seen the experiment.

As we walked toward the barn in which the equipment for the experiment was set up, the Professor happened to glance toward the point where his improvised but elaborately insulated power leads left the three hundred foot towers of the main line from Niagara. He grinned broadly, and turning to me remarked, "They'll be looking for another arc-over or ground in a few hours." I stared blankly for a moment, and then the solution of a mystery that had puzzled us at the Standards Bureau dawned upon me.

Only a part of the power output of the Niagara station was used for lighting, power, etc. The remainder of the available power was used in making various synthetic compounds and special explosives. The direct power and lighting requirements fluctuated between wide limits, and was always given the preference over the less pressing demands of the synthesizing plants.

Now, four times in the last month, at periods when the direct demand was about one quarter the output, a load that slowly raised this demand to full power had unexpectedly come on. A checkup showed that none of the usual consumers had taken more than the normal amount of current during this period. Investigation of the lined proved it quite intact, with no trace of an arc or ground that might have been responsible. Some blamed the whole thing upon spies working to damage the line, but if this were the case, why should they have repaired whatever damage they did after only a few hours of trouble making?