"Gentlemen of the Cabinet: I have here a new machine that my laboratory has developed. I will demonstrate its action first." The light was switched on, throwing a brilliant shaft of light against the ceiling. Then Waterson snapped on the switch of the new machine, and there appeared a strange beam of blueish, ionized air. But unlike any other known ionizing beam, it was shot through with streamers of red fire, long, hair-thin streamers that wavered and flickered in the blue tube of the ionized air. It reached out, touched the light generator, and passed on, through a series of plates of different materials. But the instant that strange beam struck the light-machine, it went out. Then a moment later, when the new machine was turned off, the light snapped back on.
"Gentlemen, this machine will produce a field, directional in this case, that will so modify the properties of space as to make it utterly impossible to disintegrate matter into energy. There is some tendency to fix energy as matter. I think that will be interesting to us in the event that this war is successfully concluded. But at present we are interested in the properties of the beam in that it will stop the disintegration of matter. The process depends on the modification of the properties of space. It is well known that in ordinary space, such as we know, there are twenty coefficients of curvature. In ordinary empty space, ten of these have zero values, and the ten principal coefficients have certain non-zero values. This machine so affects space that it makes all the coefficients of space have non-zero values, and fixes these values to suit its own purposes. The results are amazing. I have done some things with this machine that makes me truly afraid. But we are interested in it because certain of the values we can assign operate to force space to take such curvatures, that any change of the condition of matter to condition of energy is impossible. On release of the ray, the space returns to its normal curvature.
"Working out the theory of this machine has been a tremendous task. Even the great calculating machine, the new integraph developed last year, and it is a far cry from that first one that M.I.T. developed in 1927, required many weeks of work to solve the problem in twenty coefficients of space. In so doing at one stage we had to assume a space of twenty dimensions in order that the correct values in the four true dimensions might be determined.
"But there is still a great deal of work to be done. We must develop practical machines of a range of many miles. There is no difficulty in using the ray, since, as it is a condition of space, not a vibration, it is impossible to stop it by any shield. There is only one way to work with it, to create it directionally. We make the field by projecting certain strains along a beam, then once started the field follows that line to a distance dependent on the strength of the generator.
"But this will require at least five days to get into working form. I suggest that in the meantime Venus makes several million of the long range Dis ray projectors, and distribute them all over the planet, to be turned on from a central station, or by their own separate crews. I have no doubt that the Sirians will attack that planet before we are ready to attack them. Earth, too, must be prepared. But in the meantime we can begin the work on the new de-activating field projectors, as I call them."
Waterson was right. It was three days later that the Sirian fleet left for Venus with a number of torpedo-ships so tremendous, it is absolutely inconceivable. There were over two hundred million of the ten-man machines! When they started to settle about Venus, the sky was so filled with them that it was literally dark for many miles. They attacked at Horacoles the System Capital, but the fields of the great Dis rays were too much for them. Neither bombs nor Dis rays could reach through. The air was dense, and filled with artificial smoke to prevent the transmission of heat rays and great winds were created for the purpose of carrying the heat away; but this was done automatically by the expanding air before long. They could not attack the city. All over the face of the planet were the great Dis ray emplacements. Great ships hung even over the great rolling oceans, sending the blue rays of ionized air up like some column that was to hold the Sirians from the Planet. And they did.
But now again they began to slow down the planet—not gently as they had had to before—but rapidly. The planet would have been pulled to pieces, except that the very attractor beams that were pulling on it tended to relieve the stress. But the cargo ships of Venus were pulling to keep the planet in motion. It was a strange thing to contemplate! Two mighty forces, one a fleet of two hundred million small ships, the other a force of as many thousand huge freight carriers, having a tug-o-war for a planet! But the odds were too great. Slowly the Sirians won. The planet was steadily dropping toward the sun. Now it seemed no fleet could come to aid them, and the Sirian fleet was being augmented constantly by a steady stream of ships from Mars. It was the sixth day after the announcement was made that Waterson had a fleet ready to attack the Sirians. The Venerians also had a fleet ready, prepared by the directions of Waterson's engineers sent by radio-television and radiophone. They were ready to attack, and the Terrestrian fleet arrived at Venus just six days after the announcement of the new weapon.
The practical projector of this new ray had been quite heavy, and they had been mounted in groups of twenty projectors on special hundred-man ships, using the same acceleration neutralizer used on the ten-man ships. They were arranged to throw a wide beam, so wide that the new ships with twenty, could prevent any action in a field of over two hundred miles depth, and in a cone with a base of six hundred miles diameter. The ships they had could approach within a hundred miles of the Sirian fleet, without being seen, for they were painted black therefore and showed no lights. In the darkness of the void they were easily hidden.
The entire expedition went as planned. The radio barrage had not been turned on, and they were in constant communication with the Venerians. The two fleets were to attack simultaneously, over different areas, so that between them they could wipe out so large a number of the enemy ships that the fleet of two million could easily handle the task.