The Cooling Effect is worthless as an anesthetic for surgery. While the sleeping guinea pigs don't awaken when I pick them up out of their cage and handle them, even pulling their legs, they do struggle. They resist, like sleeping animals, not wanting to be disturbed. Still, I pinched them and bounced them and they invariably slept through an approximate half-hour. It's shock, and it isn't. It's sleep, and it isn't.
But I certainly knew it was a weapon. A new weapon. And man alive, what a weapon!
I turned the guinea pigs loose in the patio, let them scamper, then tumbled them both with a quick sweep of the beam.
One man in ambush could knock over a whole company of marching troops!
The guns could be mounted on tripods with a rotating mechanism that kept them sweeping the area constantly. Anyone who approached within 900 yards would go down—then wake up, climb back to their feet, and go down again every half-hour. Man or animal. The guns could be strung out to cover a whole sector, then wired to a single main switch—and one lone observer could stop an infantry advance.
But they wouldn't stop guided missiles or even mortar fire. Nor would they deflect through peepholes on a tank or pillbox. There isn't quite that much "scatter" from the beam reflecting off a hard surface. However, there is some—I fired through the wire-screen openings of the cage and had the beam glance directly off the back wall, often knocking the guinea pigs down without hitting them directly. It went through a handkerchief easily, even when folded thick. A thin glass tumbler, however, stopped it.
You could take cover from it almost anywhere—if you knew when you were going to be shot at. You could wear a light plastic armor—if the joints were sealed and you kept it hooked to about a fifty-pound air-condition unit. No problem at all if you ride a motor scooter.
It wouldn't stop an invading army, but it could certainly raise the devil with the occupation. Almost anyone could make the gun. Given the components of a pocket radio, a few pieces of copper wire, a few sticks of chewing gum and a penknife, I could whittle one out of wood or put it into a plastic toy water-pistol.
But what the Armed Forces don't want right now is a new secret weapon! They have their manned satellite now, keeping its vigil over the arsenals of Earth, their big atomic missiles ready to jump off against preset targets—but with the frightful unknown of deep space chilling their backsides.