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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Stories April 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
_For a while it was kick backwards, then a shove at the safe._]
The Einstein See-Saw
By Miles J. Breuer
* * * * *
[Sidenote: In their pursuit of an unscrupulous scientist, Phil andIone are swung into hyperspace--marooned in a realm of strange sightsand shapes.]
Tony Costello leaned glumly over his neat, glass-topped desk, on whicha few papers lay arranged in orderly piles. Tony was very blue anddiscouraged. The foundations of a pleasant and profitable existencehad been cut right out from under him. Gone were the days in which thebig racket boss, Scarneck Ed, generously rewarded the exercise ofTony's brilliant talents as an engineer in redesigning cars to givehigher speed for bootlegging purposes, in devising automatic electricapparatus for handling and concealing liquor, in designingbeam-directed radios for secret communication among the gangs. Yes,mused Tony, it had been profitable.
Six months ago the Citizens' Committee had stepped in. Now the policedepartment was reorganized; Scarneck Ed Podkowski was in jail, and hiscorps of trusty lieutenants were either behind the bars with him orscattered far and wide in flight. Tony, always a free spender, hadnothing left but the marvelous laboratory and workshop that ScarneckEd had built him, and his freedom. For the police could find nothinglegal against Tony. They had been compelled to let him alone, thoughthey were keeping a close watch on him. Tony's brow was as dark as themahogany of his desk. He did not know just how to go about making anhonest living.
With a hand that seemed limp with discouragement, he reached into hispocket for his cigarette-case. As he drew it out, the lackadaisicalfingers failed to hold it firmly enough, and it clattered to the floorbehind his chair. With the weary slowness of despondence, he draggedhimself to his feet and went behind his chair to pick up thecigarette-case. But, before he bent over it, and while he was lookingfully and directly at it, his desk suddenly vanished. One moment itwas there, a huge ornament of mahogany and glass; the next momentthere was nothing.
* * * * *
Tony suddenly went rigid and stared at the empty space where his deskhad stood. He put his hand to his forehead, wondering if his financialtroubles were affecting his reason. By that time, another desk stoodin the place.
Tony ran over this strange circumstance mentally. His mental processeswere active beneath, though dazed on the surface. His desk had stoodthere. While looking fully at it, all his senses intact, he had seenit vanish, and for a moment there had been nothing in its place. Whilehe stared directly at the empty space from which the desk haddisappeared, another desk had materialized there, like a flash.Perhaps, there had been a sort of jar, a tremor, of the floor and ofthe air, of everything. But the point was that his own desk, at whichhe had been working one moment, had suddenly vanished, and at the nextmoment another desk had appeared in its place.
And what a desk! The one that now stood there was smaller than his ownpalatial one, and shabbier. A raw, unpleasant golden-oak, muchscratched and scuffed. Its top was heaped and piled full of books andpapers. In the middle of it stood a photograph of a girl, framed inred leather. Irresistibly, the sunny beauty of the face, the brighteyes, the firm little chin, the tall forehead topped by a shining massof light curly hair, drew Tony's first glance. For a few moments hiseyes rested delightedly on the picture.
In a moment, however, Tony noticed that the books and papers on thedesk were of a scientific character; and such is the nature ofprofessional interest, that for the time he forgot his astonishment athow the desk had got there, in his absorption in the things heaped ontop of it.
Perhaps it isn't fair to give the impression that the desk was indisorder. It was merely busy; just as though someone who had beendeeply engaged in working had for the moment stepped away. There was arow of books across the back edge, and Tony leaned over eagerly toglance at the titles.
"'Theory of Parallels,' Lobatchevsky; 'Transformation of ComplexFunctions,' Riemann; 'Tensors and Geodesics,' Gauss," Tony read."Hm--old stuff. But here's modern dope along the same line. 'Tensors,'by Christoffel; 'Absolute Differential Calculus,' by Ricci and LeviCivita. And Schroedinger and Eddington and D'Abro. Looks likesomebody's interested in Relativity. Hm!"
* * * * *
He bent over, his constantly increasing interest showing in theattitude of his body; he turned over papers and opened notebookscrowded full of handwritten figures. Last of all he noted the batch ofmanuscript directly in front of him in the middle of the front edge ofthe desk. It was typewritten, with corrections and interlineations allover it in purple ink.
A title, "The Parallel Transformations of Equations for Matter,Energy, and Tensors," had been crossed out with purple ink, and "TheIntimate Relation between Matter and Tensors" substituted. Tony bentover it and read. He was so fascinated that it did not even occur tohim to speculate on the happy circumstance that the mysteriouslyappearing desk had brought its own scientific explanation with it. Thetitle of the paper told him that its sheets would elucidate theapparently supernatural phenomenon, and all he did was to plungebreathlessly ahead in his eager reading. The article was short, aboutseven typewritten sheets. He took out his pencil and followed throughthe mathematical equations readily. Tony's mind was a brilliant, eventhough an erring one.
Under the first article lay a second one. One glance at the titlecaused Tony to stiffen. Then he picked up the typewritten script andcarried it across the big room of his laboratory, as far away from thedesk as he could get. He put the girl's photograph in his pocket. Thenhe took heaps and armfuls of papers, books and notes and carried themfrom the desk to a bench in the far corner. For, as soon as he hadread the title, "A Preliminary Report of Experimental Work in thePhysical Manipulation of Tensors," a sudden icy panic gripped hisheart lest the desk and its papers suddenly disappear before he hadfinished reading to the end of the fascinating explanation.
We might add that it did not. For many weeks the desk remainedstanding in Tony's shop and laboratory, and he had the opportunity tostudy its contents thoroughly. But it took him only a few hours tograsp its secret, to add his own brilliant conception to it, and toform his great resolve. Once more Tony faced the world hopefully andenthusiastically.
PART II
_Vanishing Valuables_
The police understood Tony's share in the exploits of Scarneck Edthoroughly, and, chagrined at their failure to produce proof thatwould hold in court, they maintained a close and constant watch onthat gifted gentleman long after crime matters in the city seemed tohave been cleaned up and forgotten. For one thing, they still hadhopes that something would turn up to enable them to round off theirwork and lock him up with his former pals; for another, they did notfully trust his future behavior. Nevertheless, for three or fourmonths it seemed as though Tony had genuinely reformed. He lived inand for his laboratory and shop. All day the scouts could see himlaboring therein, and far into the night he bent over benches andmachines under shaded lights. Then, some other astonishing occurrencesdistracted their attention from Tony to other fields.
One morning Mr. Ambrose Parakeet, private jewel broker, walked brisklyout of the elevator on the fourteenth floor of the North AmericanBuilding and unlocked the door of his office. He flung it open andstarted in, but stopped as if shot, uttered a queer, hoarse gurgle,and
staggered against the door-casing. In a moment he recovered andbegan to shout:
"Help! Help! Robbers!"
Before long, several people had gathered. He stood there, gasping,pointing with his hand into the room. The eagerly peering onlookerscould see that beside his desk stood an empty crate. It was somewhatold and weatherbeaten and looked as though it might have come from abuffet or a bookcase. He stood there and pointed at it and gasped, andthe gathering crowd in the corridor wondered what sort of strangemental malady he had been seized with. The elevator girl, with trainedpromptness had at once summoned the manager of the building, whoelbowed his way through the crowd and stood beside Mr. Parakeet.
* * * * *
"There! There! Look! Where is it?" Mr. Parakeet was gasping slowly andgazing round in a circle. He was a little gray man of about sixty, andseemed utterly dazed and overcome.
"What's