Harry Harrison: Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers

"Give it some more juice," Jerry said, frowning at the meters hooked up to the output of the circuit.

"She's taking all we have now," Chuck answered, spinning the great theostat to its final stop.

"Well, then there's something mighty fishy here. Look. The current is pouring into the circuit – but it is not coming out! Not a needle has flickered from the stops. Where is all that energy going?"

Chuck scratched his wide jaw in puzzlement. "It's not coming out as volts or ohms or watts, that is for sure. So it must be radiant energy of a different kind. Let's hook up a hunk of aerial to that output and see what kind of signal it is putting out."

A handy metal coat hanger served that function well and was wired into the circuit while test instruments were set up around it.

"I'll give it just a millivolt first," Jerry said as he threw the switch.

What happened next was as soundless as it was shocking. The moment the current went into the circuit something was broadcast from the coat hanger-aerial, because a coat-hanger-shaped chunk of wall instantly vanished. It happened soundlessly and in a fraction of a second of time. Jerry hurled off the current, and they rushed to the wall. Through the new opening they could see the board fence that circled the backyard – and the same strange force had also taken a coat-hanger-shaped section from the fence as well.

"And spreading," Chuck mused. "That hole in the fence is two or three times as big as the first opening."

"Not only that," Jerry said, squinting along the edge of the hole. "If you look, you'll see a stub of a mast next door where the Grays' new color TV aerial used to be. And, let me think for a second, yes, I'm right. That missing section of fence is where the landlady's cat sleeps in the afternoon. And he was sleeping there when I came in."

"This will take some thinking out," Chuck said as they hammered boards over the opening in the wall "We had better keep it to ourselves for a while. I'll send an anonymous check to the Grays for their aerial."

"We better think about an anonymous cat for my landlady as well."

A sudden knocking on the door startled them both, and they exchanged glances, for it was the landlady calling to them. Mrs. Hosenpefer was a good woman, though advanced in years, a widow who had run her home as a boardinghouse ever since her husband, a switchman on the railroad, had met a tragic end under a boxcar that his advancing deafness had prevented hearing approach. Somewhat guiltily the two young men opened the door to face the white-haired widow wringing her hands with despair.

"I don't know what to do," she wailed, "and I know I shouldn't bother you out here, but something terrible has happened. My cat" – both listeners recoiled at the word "has been stolen. Poor Max, who would do that to a sweet harmless animal like that?"

"Just what do you mean 'stolen'?" Jerry asked, fighting desperately to keep the tension out of his voice. "I can't imagine why, some people will do awful things these days, it must be the drugs. Here I thought my Max was asleep on the fence out there" – the two listening men stirred ever so slightly at the words – "but he wasn't. Kidnapped. I just had a phone call from the sheriff in Clarktown that somebody had thrown Max through a window or something right into the middle of the Unreformed Baptist choir practice. Max was very angry and scratched the soloist. They caught him and called me because of the tag on his collar."

"This call came through now?" Jerry asked, innocently.

"Not a minute ago. I rushed right out here to ask for help."

"And Clarktown is eighty miles away," Chuck said, and the chums exchanged pregnant, significant glances.

"I know, an awful distance. How can I get my darling Max back?"

"Now don't you worry an instant," Jerry said, gently ushering the bereaved woman out. "We'll drive right over and get Max. It's in the bag." The closing door shut off her cries of gratitude, and the experimenters faced each other.

"Eighty miles!" Chuck shouted.

"Instantaneous transmission!"

"We've done it!"

"Done what?"

"I don't know – but whatever it is, I feel it is a great step forward for mankind!"

"We'll just have to go back to the old drawing board" Chuck sighed gloomily, looking at the large hole in the ground where the boulder had been and at the larger hole in the nearby hillside. "We just can't control the cheddite projector no matter how hard we try."

"Let me have one more go," Jerry muttered as he probed the depths of the device with a long-shanked screwdriver. For security's sake they had built their invention into a small portable Japanese television set, and so cunningly contrived the inner wiring that it still functioned as a TV as well. Jerry finished his adjustment and switched the set on. There was a quick glimpse of a vampire sinking his fangs into a girl's fair neck before a secret button activated the cheddite projector. The TV screen now displayed a complex wave form which changed shape as further adjustments were made.

"I think this is it." Jerry grinned as he sighted along the aerial. "I'm going to focus on that stick and move it over by the ridge there. Here goes."

There was no sound or visible radiation from the device, but the cheddite force sprang out, unseen yet irresistible. The stick did not move. However, a great rock a hundred yards away disappeared in a fraction of a second and reappeared over the lake behind them. The sudden tumultuous splashing was followed instantly by a wave of water that washed around their ankles.

"Our problem is control." Chuck grimaced unhappily, wiping off the TV set.

"There has to be a way," Jerry said, his words as firm as the set of his jaw. "We know that the cheddite produces a wave of kappa radiation that drops anything in its field through into the lambda dimension where space time laws as we know them do not exist. It appears from the mathe.matical model you constructed that this lambda dimension, while congruent with ours in every way, is really very much smaller. What was your estimate?"

"Roughly, our spiral galaxy which is about eighty thousand light-years across is, in the lambda dimension, about a mile and a half wide."

"Right. So anything moving a short distance in the lambda dimension will have moved an incredible distance in our own dimension when it emerges. That's the theory all right, and it checks out to fifteen decimal places – but why can't we make it work?"

It was then that Jerry realized that he was talking to himself. Chuck had that glazed look in his eyes that meant his brain was churning away busily at some complex mathematical theorem. Jerry recognized the signs and smiled understandingly as he packed the cheddite projector and test equipment into the back of their battered jeep. He had just finished doing this when Chuck snapped back to reality as suddenly as he had left.

"I have it. Molecular interference."

"Of course!" Jerry said gleefully, snapping his fingers.

"It's obvious. The kappa radiation is deflected ever so minutely by the atmosphere. No wonder we couldn't control the results. We'll have to carry on the rest of the experiments in a vacuum. But it will be some job to build a big vacuum chamber."

"There's one we can use not far away," Chuck said with a chuckle. "Just one hundred miles . . ."

They burst out laughing together as Jerry pointed straight up. "You're so right – there's all the vacuum we need up there. Just a matter of getting to it."

"The Pleasantville Eagle will take care of that. We'll say that we're testing, what? Navigational equipment. They'll let us borrow her ."

The Pleasantville Eagle was the plane that flew the football team to all its games. Since it was a 747, it flew most of the spectators as well. Both Jerry and Chuck were trained pilots, as well as superb rifle shots and champion polo players, so had relieved the pilot at the controls many times. They had modified and improved most of the electronic equipment on the big plane so it seemed only natural that they would have improvements for the navigational rig as well. They would have no trouble getting permission to test fly the plane, none at all. Particularly since Chuck's dad had donated the plane to the school in the first place.