"Go to it, by all means," Verger urged him. "And, by the way, Professor, just what is the nature of that contraption of yours?"
"I call it a High Frequency Sound Projector. If you're interested, just step into my laboratory and I'll explain it to you while I am working on it."
A moment later, when they were in the tiny stateroom which Anderson facetiously called his laboratory, the scientist began: "My High Frequency Sound Projector is merely a device for producing, focussing and projecting supersonic vibrations, or waves which are similar to sound, but have enormously greater frequencies. No doubt you know that vibrations which are audible to the human ear range from 24 per second to about 40,000 per second. My device develops frequencies as high as a million vibrations per second."
"Did you originate the idea?" Verger asked.
"Indeed not," Anderson hastened to state. "All I did was to carry on the work of other scientists. Early in the Twentieth Century, during the so-called 'World War,' supersonics were used to detect the presence of hostile submarines. While these high-frequency sound-waves were being employed for this purpose, thousands of dead fishes were found floating on the surface of the ocean. It was suggested that these fishes might have been killed by the supersonic vibrations, and this assumption was subsequently verified by laboratory experiments."
"And is that what your dohickey is for—just to kill fishes?" Verger asked.
"It ought to do a great deal more than that," Anderson smiled. "The supersonics which killed small fishes had relatively low frequencies—only about 50,000 vibrations per second. My device develops frequencies of over a million vibrations per second."
"Does that mean that your gimmick will kill larger animals?"
The scientist answered, "I haven't tested it yet. But, reasoning by analogy, I believe it would be absolutely fatal to any larger animal, such as a human being, an elephant, or—"
"Or one of those Callisto devils!" the captain exclaimed. "Jumping Jupiter! Maybe you've got something there, Professor! No weapon that has been tried so far has been able to stop one of those babies; but perhaps your supersonic thing-a-ma-gig will do the trick!"