The Impossible Invention

                       By Robert Moore Williams

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Astonishing Stories, June 1942.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


I had to admire this little guy's courage. Fradin, his name was--James
Arthur Fradin, with a string of letters after it that even the
alphabet agencies down at Washington could not have unscrambled. The
letters represented honorary degrees conferred on him by half a dozen
different colleges, and they should have entitled him to be heard with
respectful consideration, but they weren't. The assembled scientists of
the Institute of Radio Engineers were giving him merry hell.

"What you are saying, Fradin," one of the scientists interrupted hotly,
"is gross nonsense."

"It is absolutely impossible," another shouted.

"Faker!" somebody yelled, and a dozen voices took it up until the room
echoed with the sound.

I sat back and grinned to myself. If this meeting ended in a
free-for-all fight, which was what looked like was due to happen, I
would be able to make a swell human interest humorous yarn out of it.
My editor went for human interest stuff, which was largely why he had
sent me down to cover this meeting. He knew I wasn't likely to develop
any front page news here, scientific meetings being what they are. But
there might be a human interest angle that would be good for a laugh.
And the way these solemn scientists were calling Fradin a liar, it
looked like the laugh was coming.

There was one man who wasn't doing any name calling, I noticed, a tall,
cadaverous-looking individual sitting two seats down from me. He had
listened very carefully, almost eagerly, I thought, to everything the
speaker had said. Glancing at him, I got the impression that I should
know him, but at the moment I couldn't place him. Tall, bony face,
thin, hawk nose--yes, it seemed I should know him.

Fradin had stopped speaking when the storm of abuse broke over him. He
stood there on the platform, a little, white haired guy with a gentle
face.

"If you numbskulls will only be quiet for a moment," he said, when the
noise had subsided for an instant, "I will offer incontrovertible proof
to support my statement that radio waves are transmitted through what
I must, for lack of a better term to describe the undescribable, call
the fourth dimension."

What I mean, the roof must have been nailed down tight, or the
explosion that followed would certainly have lifted it off the
building. You never did see so many excited scientists in one group.
Normally a scientist is supposed to be cool, aloof, and impersonal.
But this group was anything else! They went right straight up in the
air. I couldn't tell whether they were angrier because he had called
them a bunch of numbskulls or because he had said that radio waves were
transmitted through the fourth dimension.

       *       *       *       *       *

One of them leaped to his feet. Ramsen, I think his name was. He was a
big shot in the field, almost as big as De Forest and Marconi.

"Fradin," he yelled, "that is the most preposterous statement I ever
heard from the lips of any man in his right senses. It raises the
immediate question of whether or not _you_ are in your right senses."

There was a buzz of approval following his statement. Fradin waited for
it to die down.

"Mr. Ramsen," he said, "you have chosen to challenge my theory.
Perhaps you can tell me what medium _does_ carry the electro-magnetic
radiations that we call radio waves?"

"Certainly," Ramsen answered. "Any schoolboy knows that."

"We are not here concerned with the knowledge of schoolboys," Fradin
gently replied. "Sound is carried in air and water and by many solid
substances. But we know that radio waves do not travel in air, because
they will pass through a perfect vacuum. In what medium do they travel,
Mr. Ramsen?"

Right here was where I began to pay close attention. Something about
Fradin's manner, his calmness, his certainty, gave me the impression
that he knew pretty much what he was talking about.

"Radio waves, Mr. Fradin," Ramsen answered, in the manner of a
scoutmaster revealing the facts of life to an errant Boy Scout, "travel
in the ether."

He was right. I was not assigned to cover this meeting by chance but
because I happen to have a pretty good groundwork in science. Radio
waves, all scientists admit, are propagated through the ether.

"And what," Fradin countered, "is the ether?"

"Why--" Ramsen answered. "It's--" He started to flounder. A sudden
silence fell in the room. Ramsen's face started to get red. "The
ether," he finished, "is--why it's the ether, that's what it is."

"What you are refusing to admit," Fradin crowed, "is that 'ether' is
a meaningless word invented by numbskulls such as are gathered here
to describe something about which they know absolutely nothing. The
ether is a word, nothing more. It does not exist. The Michelson-Morley
experiments conclusively proved that, if it existed, its nature
was such that it could not be detected by any physical experiment
whatsoever. In other words, that it exists only as a handy tool by
which scientists who ought to know better can conceal their own
ignorance. Gentlemen," he said, turning from the red-faced Ramsen to
the perturbed audience, "I can not only conclusively prove that radio
waves are transmitted through the fourth dimension--but I can also
prove that power, actual power, can also be transmitted through the
same medium!"

He stopped suddenly, biting his lips as if he had said more than he
had intended to. But I think only one man in the audience had caught
the full implication of Fradin's words. The rest of them were too busy
defending themselves against the accusation of being numbskulls to
notice the one really important thing he had said.

How that audience did boil! And they boiled because every man jack of
them, in his heart of hearts, knew that Fradin was right. I knew it the
minute he said it. And they knew it too. When he said that "ether" was
only a word used by fools to conceal their own ignorance, he had hit
the nail exactly on the head.

For that is precisely what it is. Nobody has ever seen the ether, felt
it, smelled it, heard it, touched it. Scientists of the past century,
needing a mechanical device to account for the observed propagation of
electro-magnetic radiations such as light and the then little known
radio waves, had invented the ether to carry those radiations, invented
it out of whole cloth. Fradin's hearers knew he was right. Taken
individually, when they were calm, they would have admitted it. But
they were in a group and he was calling them fools right out in public.
Mass hysteria got them. They boiled over and very promptly demanded
that he prove his statements.

He refused to do it. Absolutely refused.

       *       *       *       *       *

"We demand that you produce your proof," Ramsen howled. "You have
called us fools and said you could prove it. We demand that you _do_
prove it."

"I--" Fradin began. He wet his lips. His face had whitened. It wasn't a
gentle, kindly face any more. It was the face of a badly scared man.

Fradin was scared. But he wasn't scared of those engineers who were
shouting at him. He was scared of something else.

"Speak up," Ramsen roared. "Produce your proof!"

"I can show you mathematical proof," Fradin offered.

How they howled at that, all except the tall, thin, hawk-nosed
individual sitting two seats down from me. He took no part in the
demonstration. Instead he got up and very quietly went out of the room.

As he walked out, I again got the impression that I ought to know him.
But I still couldn't place him. A reporter sees too many people to
remember all of them.

"Mathematical proof, unless supported by incontrovertible experimental
evidence, is not sufficient," Ramsen thundered. "We demand that you
produce experimental proof."

By experimental proof, he meant an actual instrument of some kind to
demonstrate Fradin's claims--some gadget that they could see and feel
and examine, something they could take apart and put back together
again, something that they could watch in operation. Ramsen was quite
right in making such a demand, for without experimental evidence to
back it up, mathematical theory is more often than not just so much hot
air.

"Your demand is just," Fradin faltered. "I fear in the heat of argument
I made statements I do not care to support. I do not choose to produce
the experimental evidence that I have."

He didn't say another word. Instead, he turned and walked off the
platform, going out through a door at the back. Nor did he enter the
lecture hall where the meeting was being held. He walked out of the
room.

And he didn't come back.

Why had he refused to produce the evidence that he had? What had scared
him?

Questions were buzzing like gadflies in my mind. There was one
particularly persistent gadfly. Fradin had said something of which
I had almost caught the significance. Almost, but not quite. The
significant thing he had said kept buzzing in the back of my mind, but
I couldn't quite put a mental finger on it....

Then I remembered it.

I went out of that room at a dead run. I went up over the speaker's
platform and through the door Fradin had taken. How I did want to talk
to that tortured man!

What he had said, letting it slip accidentally, added up to one of
the biggest stories that ever splashed across the front page of a
newspaper. I had come down here looking for a human interest yarn.
Instead I had run straight into a story that could easily set the world
on fire, _if_ I could find Fradin and make him talk.

I didn't doubt that I would find him. He couldn't have gotten far away.
He hadn't had time. Not five minutes had passed after he had walked off
the platform until I was following him.

The door opened into a long hall, and in that hall I found Fradin.
He was down at the far end, getting into an elevator. A tall, thin
individual was with him.

I sprinted down the hall to try to catch them before the elevator doors
closed. The operator saw me coming and started to wait for me, but
something changed his mind for him. The two men were already in the
cage; I couldn't be positive of it, but I thought the tall man said
something to the operator. Just as I got there, the operator slammed
the door in my face. The cage started down.

"All right, smart guy," I yelled at the operator. "I'll give you a
smack in the snoot for this."

Probably I could have gotten down faster by waiting for another
elevator, but there was a stairway and I used that. I was in a hurry.

       *       *       *       *       *

I got to the first floor just in time to see Fradin and his companion
walk out of the front door.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Wait--"

I started to say, "Wait for me," but the words were choked off in my
throat. I recognized Fradin's companion. The hawk-faced man who had sat
two seats down from me and who had slipped unobtrusively out of the
meeting. He had gone around to the back of the hall and joined Fradin.

But the fact that he was with Fradin wasn't the thing that had choked
off my call. It was the way the two men were walking. Fradin was a
little ahead, and he wasn't looking to the right or the left. Just
walking. There was a stiffness about him that made me think of a
mechanical toy that has been wound up and is taking a walk for itself.

Hawk-face was following right behind him. Hawk-face had his hand in his
pocket. I didn't need to look twice to know that he had a gun in that
pocket too, pointing straight at the little inventor's back.

It wasn't a stick-up. It was a kidnap job. Hawk-face had also heard
the really important thing that Fradin had said in his speech. I had
missed it for a few minutes, but he hadn't missed it. He had instantly
realized how damned important it was. He had walked out of the meeting,
gone around to the back, waited for the scientist.

I should have called the police. But just then something happened that
upset me so badly I completely forgot all about police.

I recognized Hawk-face, and cold chills began to run up and down my
spine.

His name--or at least the name attached to the picture I had once
seen in the hands of an F.B.I. man--was Marvak. The name didn't mean
anything. He had others. A name to use in Asia, one for Russia, one for
Europe, all different.

Marvak was one of the names he used in America, but the F.B.I.
suspected he had others. They would cheerfully have hung him by any of
his names, if they could have caught him, but he didn't catch easily.
Compared to him, an eel was a rank amateur in slipperiness, and a
rattlesnake was man's best friend.

Right out in front of the building, on a crowded city street, he forced
Fradin into a cab. I was so close I could see the haunted, terrified
expression on the little scientist's face. But I didn't think then and
I know now that he wasn't afraid of the gun. He was afraid of something
even more horrible than Marvak.

The cab pulled away.

An eternity seemed to pass before I could collect my faculties and grab
the next cab in line.

"Follow that cab," I hissed at the hacker. "There's a ten-spot in it
for you if you don't lose it."

He didn't lose it. We followed Fradin and Marvak down to an old,
abandoned factory building on the outskirts of the city. They were
getting out of their cab when we drove up. Marvak, with his right hand
still in his coat pocket, was paying off the driver.

"Drive on past," I told my driver.

He went on past and around the block and I got out, but the driver had
to remind me about the ten-spot I had promised him. I paid off like a
slot machine.

       *       *       *       *       *

That shows how excited I was. I had stopped thinking about the story I
might get. The story was secondary now. What really mattered was that
Fradin had to be rescued, and fast. The thing he had let slip was too
big to fall into Marvak's hands under any circumstances. And I had to
be the one who rescued him. There wasn't time to go for the police.
Marvak would work fast.

Marvak did work fast.

I tried the front door first because that was the obvious thing to do.
If I got caught coming in the front door I could say I had the wrong
address and back out. But if I got caught at the back door, no amount
of explanation would do me any good.

The front door was unlocked. It opened into what had once been an
office. A flight of stairs led up to the second floor.

I listened--there wasn't a sound. "They went upstairs," I thought.

"Hold it, bud," a voice said behind me.

The voice had a chilled steel ring that sent my heart right down into
my shoes. There was no mercy in it, no compassion, no pity. It was
double-edged with the threat of death. It jerked my head around.

Marvak was standing there in the office. He had the gun out of his
pocket now, pointing it straight at me.

There was a closet in the office. Marvak had simply waited in the
closet until I entered. When I started up the stairs, he had stepped
out behind me.

"I--I must have got the wrong ad--address," I faltered.

His eyes, gray chilled steel, they were, drilled into me.

"No doubt," he said--but very doubtfully. "You're the reporter I
noticed at the meeting, aren't you? What are you doing here?"

How big a lie could I tell and still be safe? How close to the truth
could I come and not get one of those slugs between my eyes?

"I came out to interview Mr. Fradin," I blurted out.

He seemed to let it go, but back of those cold gray eyes I could see
his mind working as he decided what to do with me. Then I saw him reach
a decision.

First, he searched me. I didn't have a gun, which seemed to surprise
him.

"You can come along," he said. "If Fradin can demonstrate to my
satisfaction the discovery he claimed to have made, it will make the
headlines, _if_ you get a chance to write it."

With that, he dug the little inventor out of the closet, and with the
gun out, prodded both of us upstairs. There were only two floors to
this building and the entire second floor was Fradin's laboratory.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was crammed to the ceiling with the weirdest collection of
electrical equipment I have ever seen. Generators, dynamos, electric
motors. There was enough radio equipment to set up a modest
broadcasting station. And in one corner was something big enough to be
a cyclotron. Fradin had just about everything in his laboratory.

"Now," said Marvak to the little inventor, "you will please prove the
truth of your assertion that power can be transmitted by radio."

That was the thing that Fradin had said. Power by radio! It doesn't
sound like much, but let me tell you, it's plenty big. With it, science
could come darned close to remaking the face of the globe.

How?

This is the power age. Practically all of our industrial
achievements--and through them we have achieved what passes for
civilization--have come about through cheap power. Coal, the steam
engine, the dynamo, water power. Maybe, not so long in the future,
we'll have atomic power, but we don't have it yet. All we have now are
coal and water. And possibly 90% of the water power in this country and
probably 95% of the water power on earth are going to waste, simply
because the waterfalls are usually in mountains and the places where
the current is to be used are in cities hundreds and even thousands
of miles away. _Transmission losses over high lines are so great that
electrical energy cannot be efficiently transmitted very far._ So the
water power goes to waste.

But here we have radio transmitted power. No high lines, hence no high
line losses. Of course there would be other losses, but if Fradin said
power could be transmitted by radio, he would know how to cure the
losses. Radio transmitted power would make electricity so damned cheap
that every home in the country could have it.

And this is only part of the picture that Fradin's invention brought
into being. Supposing power could be transmitted by radio. Suppose
automobiles could pick it up and use it. Then the extremely expensive
internal combustion engine that goes into every car could be replaced
by cheap motors. The price of cars could be cut in half. Everybody
could have one. And operation costs would be next to nothing.

Ocean liners? No more bully, costly steam engines. Boats could take
their power out of the air.

And airplanes. There was the most important item of all. No gasoline
engines in planes, no engine failures, no crashes because the motor
conked out. Air flight spanning the globe.

That's what radio transmitted power ought to mean, that's what it would
mean--until Marvak entered the picture. When he appeared on the scene,
power by radio, instead of being a blessing, would become one of the
worst disasters that ever happened to humanity.

Marvak was a spy. Not a common, garden variety of spy, not a fifth
columnist, not a saboteur, but a sort of super-spy who sold his
services to the highest bidder. If you wanted a war started, he could
make all the arrangements to provide for an "incident." If you wanted
to take over a minor nation, he could pave the way for you; if your
enemy had a new and secret weapon, he could get the plans. Anything,
just so he was well paid for it.

If Fradin could really transmit power by radio, and if Marvak got
the plans, the waterfalls would not be harnessed, there wouldn't be
cheap automobiles, and handy power for ocean liners. There would be
power--unfailing power--for one thing: planes! Bombing planes, fighting
planes!

If you think several nations on this globe would not jump at the chance
to acquire such an invention, you have another think coming. And the
price they would be willing to pay for it, would be big enough to
interest even Marvak. It would be worth--well, what is the worth of
the British Empire, China, and the United States?

Fradin's invention had exactly the same value as those three nations
lumped together, if Marvak succeeded in peddling it in Europe. Bombers
over New York, bombers over Chicago. There would no longer be any
safety in three thousand miles of water. Bombers over London. New
bombers that would be almost invincible.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sweat was running down over my face, down over my body, down over my
soul. If Marvak got Fradin's invention, Johnny Holmes--that's me--go
hunt for an air-raid shelter, because you're sure going to need it.

"I was mistaken," Fradin faltered, his voice a whisper. "I
was--boasting. I cannot transmit power by radio."

"You're a liar!" Marvak snapped.

"I'm not a liar," Fradin whispered.

"Either or else," Marvak said, bringing up his gun until it pointed
right at the little inventor's forehead.

Fradin had something that a man could call courage. He looked that gun
in the eye. His face went a shade whiter, but his eyes did not drop.

"I'm afraid it will have to be else," he said. As he spoke the words,
he seemed to stiffen himself until he stood very straight. He looked
like a soldier standing at attention. "But if you shoot me you may find
it difficult to operate my invention."

Marvak's finger tightened around the trigger. His face was cold with
rage, his grey, killer eyes looked like icicles.

"Don't shoot him, you fool!" I hissed. "Then you'll never find out what
you want to know."

I was stalling for time, stalling for anything, stalling for a chance
to jump that gun. I was standing beside Fradin, but the gun covered
both of us.

"Shut up!" Marvak snarled at me.

The gun went off.

He had shot Fradin. It was cold blooded murder. But as he had shot the
little scientist, he had taken his eyes off me. I started to jump. The
gun instantly swung to cover me. I saw Marvak's face, with no mercy in
it. The gun froze me motionless.

Fradin didn't fall. There was a look of surprise on his face, but he
didn't fall. Then I saw what had happened. Marvak had shot him in the
shoulder instead of through his head.

"That's just a sample," Marvak said, "to show you that I mean business.
You're not badly hurt, but the next one will go through your knee-cap.
I understand that a bullet through the knee is very painful. Now are
you going to tell me what I want to know or are you going to need
further persuasion?"

Blood was running down Fradin's coat. He was clutching his shoulder
with the other hand, trying to stop the flow of blood. His face was
very white. And now there was fear on it, fear that had not been there
when he first faced Marvak's gun. I got the fleeting impression that
it was not fear of the spy nor of the weapon, but of something else. I
also got the impression that it was a terrible fear, a soul-consuming
fear, a bleaching, whitening, shuddering fear, a fear greater even than
the fear of death....

"All right," the little inventor whispered. "You win. I'll show you
what you want."

"That's better," Marvak said, in a satisfied tone. "I don't mind saying
that if I make a cleaning on this, I'm quite willing to cut you and the
reporter in on it."

He was lying. The only way he would cut us in would be to cut our
throats. Both Fradin and I knew it.

"I'm afraid," the inventor said, "that your shot has injured my arm so
badly that I will have to ask you to help me."

"Okay," Marvak said. "But remember I have an excellent knowledge of
electrical apparatus, so don't try any tricks, like electrocuting me by
accident."

"There won't be any trickery involved here," the little inventor
whispered through bloodless lips.

       *       *       *       *       *

I watched. There were two bulky instruments, one of them a transmitter,
the other a receiver. The current flow was seemingly directional. It
was sent out from the transmitter and caught by the receiver. There
was a meter on the transmitter to show how much current was being
transmitted and another on the receiver to show how much was getting
through.

There was a red line on the dial of the meter at the transmitter.

The purpose of the set-up was obviously to demonstrate that current
could be transmitted by radio.

Marvak made a complete examination of the apparatus. He knew what he
was doing, all right. You could tell from the way he went over the
instruments that he knew his stuff.

"I'm not interested in transmitting just a little power," Marvak
said. "If this thing is to be useful, it must be able to send lots of
kilowatts through the ether."

"I think," Fradin answered wearily, "it will handle all the power you
choose to put into it."

That was the thing Marvak had to know, that the power transmitted would
be adequate to keep a plane in the air. If only a little power was
transmitted, the invention, from a practical viewpoint, was useless. No
dictator would give a cent for it.

Marvak handled the transmitter, Fradin tried to operate the receiver
and to stanch the flow of blood from his shoulder at the same time.

Marvak turned a switch, and the power transmitter began to throb under
the load. Marvak consulted the meter on the transmitter, then ran
across the room to the receiver and examined the meter there.

"You've really got it!" he exulted. "There's enough power flowing
through the receiver to keep a plane in the air."

I was sick, sicker than I had ever been. Fradin's invention worked. And
when it worked, it spelled our doom. We would be killed, because it
worked. How many millions of others would also die, I could not begin
to guess.

"One plane is not enough," Marvak said. "It has to be strong enough to
supply current to a fleet of planes."

He started triumphantly back to the transmitter.

"I--" Fradin faltered. He started to say something but changed his mind
abruptly.

Marvak kicked over the handle of the rheostat that fed current into the
transmitter. The transformer groaned. I could see the hand of the meter
on the transmitter. It was moving forward as more and more current
flowed into that mysterious medium that transmits radio waves.

The needle on the dial touched the red mark.

Then--it happened.

If I live to be a thousand years old I'll never be able to describe
adequately what I saw happen, what I heard happen, what I felt happen.
It had never happened before.

Something that I can only describe as a lightning flash ran through
the room. It was a sharp, tearing crash, similar to the sound you hear
when a bolt of lightning hits near you. There was a flash of brilliant
light. Thunder seemed to smash my ear drums.

Fradin leaped--but not at Marvak. He leaped at me. The next instant he
was grabbing me, shoving me across the room. And all the tortures of
hell were breaking loose around that generator.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a blasting, howling roar of wind. It was the coldest wind
ever. It was, I suspect, the cold of absolute zero that struck through
that laboratory.

Out of nowhere, around that transmitter, a hole seemed to appear. It
seemed to be torn in space. It was black, with a curiously liquid kind
of blackness. It appeared around the transmitter, and Marvak was at the
transmitter.

The spy seemed to freeze. A look of amazed fright appeared on his face.

[Illustration]

Then he seemed to fall. The transmitter seemed to fall with him. Marvak
tried to leap, but the footing seemed to fall away under him. He fell
out of sight.

For a mad instant, while Fradin kicked and hauled me away from that
transmitter, the laboratory was hideous with the blast of thunder.

Then another murderous crash came, and....

Then there was silence. Utter silence. The only sound was Fradin
fighting for his breath. I looked across the room. The transmitter was
gone. It just wasn't there any more. Under it, in the floor of the room
was a neat, round hole. All the mass of wires that had led into it
were neatly severed. Wires came from the transformer to where the hole
began, then stopped.

Marvak wasn't there. Marvak was gone.

Suddenly I turned to Fradin. "You--" I gulped. "You were afraid this
would happen. My God, man, what was it?"

"It was," he answered, "a hole in the fourth dimension."

Then I got it. He had been trying to tell that convention of radio
engineers that radio waves were transmitted through the fourth
dimension, not through the "ether." He had been able to prove his point
but he had refused because he knew that this would happen.

"But even if radio waves do pass through the fourth dimension, nothing
like this has ever happened," I stammered.

"Ordinary broadcasting stations do not put enough power through their
transmitters to open this hole," he explained. "It takes power to do
it, lots of power. I had calculated how much power it would take.
There was a red mark on the input meter of the transmitter. That
red line marked the critical point. If more power was put through
the transmitter, it would break down the fabric of space between
this dimension and the fourth dimension. I knew it would happen.
That's why I refused to make a demonstration for the benefit of my
skeptical compatriots. If I told them what I had discovered, proved I
had discovered it, some fool would be sure to try it, with disastrous
results."

"But that cold wind," I protested.

"This particular region opens out into what must be interplanetary
space in the fourth dimension. That cold wind was simply the cold of
outer space rushing through what was in effect a window."

So that was it. There was a hole in space. And space is cold.

"Marvak!" I said weakly.

"Don't mention him," Fradin shuddered. "He was catapulted into the
fourth dimension. He's frozen solid by now."

I guess the human race will never have power by radio. Probably we will
be able to get along without it. Atomic power seems to be coming along,
and it's safe.

I took Fradin to the hospital. That slug through his shoulder had cost
him a lot of blood, but he recovered all right, only to discover that
the Institute of Radio Engineers had booted him right out of their
organization, for making the preposterous claim that radio waves are
transmitted through the fourth dimension instead of through the ether.
However, he never cared two whoops in hell about that. He knew what he
knew. And he was content with that.