McBride met them. "We're about ready," he said. "There's peepholes for all."
"Peepholes?"
"Unless you want to be in an airless room along with umpty-gewhillion electron volts. Better take a peephole."
McBride's hole was equipped with telescope and controls for the equipment. They set their eyes to the windows and watched. McBride explained: "First off, I open the space cock and let the vacuum of space in. Said vacuum drives the air out, leaving the place filled with hard nothing. That eliminates the possibility of corona with the voltages we are going to use."
Then he depressed the generator-on control button, and the pilot lights winked. He read the meters through the telescope, and adjusted the variable controls until a faintly outlined sphere formed between the radiator gravitodes of the generator. This sphere was invisible in that it reflected no light and was transparent, but the light from the wall beyond was refracted slightly, and the sphere was constantly changing in index of refraction, so that the sphere shimmered like heat waves over a meadow.
"We set the spherical warp, so. Now on the boom we insert the combustion tube containing the mix. The insertion of the boom is easy due to the heavy gravitic field, which attracts proportional to the square of the distance. I think it increases the inertia-constant—"
"Woah, Mac. Inertia is a property of matter, not a phenomenon."
"You can stir up a good argument later, here or at the annual meeting of the Gravitic Society. Right now I'm about to turn on the heat." McBride withdrew the boom, leaving the combustion tube in the warp, where it was fixed against the infinitesimal point of zero-attraction, with all sides of the boat in contracting-urge. He snapped the button and watched through the color-temperature meter. Then, as the color was reached, he threw over a series of controls, and the spherical field became a riot of color.
It fluoresced, as the bombardment of electrons hit it, coming from all sides. The sphere grew, and McBride tightened the warp by applying more power. Still it grew as the repulsion of the electrons tried to nullify the gravitic attraction, and McBride continued to step up the power of the electrogravitic generator to keep the sphere from expanding.
"Hannigan," he called. "Give me just a bit more?"