Clifford D. Simak: Empire (Sci-Fi Classic)

Russ nodded. "That means we can create a field immediately ahead of the ship. The ship would fall into it constantly, with the concentration moving on ahead. The field would tend to break down in proportion to the strain imposed and a big ship, especially when you are building up speed, would tend to enlarge it, open it up. But the field could be kept tight by supplying energy and we have plenty of that ... far more than we'd ever need. We supply the energy, but that's only a small part of it. The body emitting the gravitational force supplies the fulcrum that moves us along."

"It would operate beyond the planets," said Greg. "It would operate equally well anywhere in space, for all of space is filled with gravitational stress. We could use gravitational bodies many light years away as the driver of our ships."

A half-wild light glowed momentarily in his eyes.

"Russ," he said, "we're going to put space fields to work at last."

He walked to the chair, picked it up and sat down in it.

"We'll start building a ship," he stated, "just as soon as we know the mechanics of this gravity concentration and control. Russ, we'll build the greatest ship, the fastest ship, the most powerful ship the Solar System has ever known!"

"Damn," said Russ, "that thing's slipped again."

He glared at the offending nut. "I'll put a lock washer on it this time."

Wilson stepped toward the control board. From his perch on the apparatus, Russ motioned him away.

"Never mind discharging the field," he said. "I can get around it somehow."

Wilson squinted at him. "This tooth is near killing me."

"Still got a toothache?" asked Russ.

"Never got a wink of sleep last night."

"You better run down to Frisco and have it yanked out," suggested the scientist. "Can't have you laid up."

"Yeah, that's right," agreed Wilson. "Maybe I will. We got a lot to do."

Russ reached out and clamped his wrench on the nut, quickly backed it off and slipped on the washer. Viciously he tightened it home. The wrench stuck.

Gritting his teeth on the bit of his pipe, Russ cursed soundlessly. He yanked savagely at the wrench. It slipped from his hand, hung for a minute on the nut and then plunged downward, falling straight into the heart of the new force field they had developed.

Russ froze and watched, his heart in his throat, mad thoughts in his brain. In a flash, as the wrench fell, he remembered that they knew nothing about this field. All they knew was that any matter introduced in it suddenly acquired an acceleration in the dimension known as time, with its normal constant of duration reduced to zero.

When that wrench struck the field, it would cease to exist! But something else might happen, too, something entirely unguessable.

The wrench fell only a few feet, but it seemed to take long seconds as Russ watched, frozen in fascination.

He saw it strike the hazy glow that defined the limits of the field, saw it floating down, as if its speed had been slowed by some dense medium.

In the instant that hazy glow intensified a thousand times—became a blinding sun-burst! Russ ducked his head, shielded his eyes from the terrible blast of light. A rending, shuddering thud seemed to echo ... in space rather than in air ... and both field and wrench were gone!

A moment passed, then another, and there was the heavy, solid clanging thud of something striking metal. This time the thud was not in space, but a commonplace noise, as if someone had dropped a tool on the floor above.

Russ turned around and stared at Wilson. Wilson stared back, his mouth hanging open, the smoldering, cigarette dangling from his mouth.

"Greg!" Russ shouted, his cry shattering the silence in the laboratory.

A door burst open and Manning stepped into the main laboratory room, a calculation pad in one hand, a pencil in the other.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

"We have to find my wrench!"

"Your wrench?" Greg was puzzled. "Can't you get another?"

"I dropped it into the field. Its time-dimension was reduced to zero. It became an 'instantaneous wrench'."

"Nothing new in that," said Greg, unruffled.

"But there is," persisted Russ. "The field collapsed, you see. Maybe the wrench was too big for it to handle. And when the field collapsed the wrench gained a new time-dimension. I heard it. We have to find it."

The three of them pounded up the stairs to the room where Russ had heard the thump. There was nothing on the floor. They searched the room from end to end, then the other rooms. There was no wrench.

At the end of an hour Greg went back to the main laboratory, brought back a portable fluoroscope.

"Maybe this will do the trick," he announced bleakly.

It did. They found the wrench inside the space between the walls !

Russ stared at the shadow in the fluoroscope plate. Undeniably it was the shadow of the wrench.

"Fourth dimension," he said. "Transported in time."

The muscles in Greg's cheeks were tensed, that old flame of excitement burning in his eyes, but otherwise his face was the mask of old, the calm, almost terrible mask that had faced a thousand dangers.

"Power and time," he corrected.

"If we can control it," said Russ.

"Don't worry. We can control it. And when we can, it's the biggest thing we've got."

Wilson licked his lips, dredged a cigarette out of a pocket.

"If you don't mind," he said, "I'll hit for Frisco tonight. This tooth of mine is getting worse."

"Sure, can't keep an aching tooth," agreed Russ, thinking of the wrench while talking.

"Can I take your ship?" asked Wilson.

"Sure," said Russ.

Back in the laboratory they rebuilt the field, dropped little ball bearings in it. The ball bearings disappeared. They found them everywhere—in the walls, in tables, in the floor. Some, still existing in their new time-dimension, hung in mid-air, invisible, intangible, but there.

Hours followed hours, with the sheet of data growing. Math machines whirred and chuckled and clicked. Wilson departed for San Francisco with his aching tooth. The other two worked on. By dawn they knew what they were doing. Out of the chaos of happenstance they were finding rules of order, certain formulas of behavior, equations of force.

The next day they tried heavier, more complicated things and learned still more.

A radiogram, phoned from the nearest spaceport, forty miles distant, informed them that Wilson would not be back for a few days. His tooth was worse than he had thought, required an operation and treatment of the jaw.

"Hell," said Russ, "just when he could be so much help."

With Wilson gone the two of them tackled the controlling device, labored and swore over it. But finally it was completed.

Slumped in chairs, utterly exhausted, they looked proudly at it.

"With that," said Russ, "we can take an object and transport it any place we want. Not only that, we can pick up any object from an indefinite distance and bring it to us."

"What a thing for a lazy burglar," Greg observed sourly.

Worn out, they gulped sandwiches and scalding coffee, tumbled into bed.

The outdoor camp meeting was in full swing. The evangelist was in his top form. The sinners' bench was crowded. Then suddenly, as the evangelist paused for a moment's silence before he drove home an important point, the music came. Music from the air. Music from somewhere in the sky. The soft, heavenly music of a hymn. As if an angels' chorus were singing in the blue.

The evangelist froze, one arm pointing upward, with index finger ready to sweep down and emphasize his point. The sinners kneeling at the bench were petrified. The congregation was astounded.

The hymn rolled on, punctuated, backgrounded by deep celestial organ notes. The clear voice of the choir swept high to a bell-like note.