Radiation, that is. From thosehydrogen hordes outside." He let the object rest for a moment, moppinghis head while he talked. "Can you hide it in here? I'm not reallyanxious to have Budget Control know where some of this stuffwent--even though I have honorable intentions of returning thecomponents later--and the good captain down there on the bridge mightnot consider its shielding important, either, if he knew I'dsabotaged his beautiful evacuation plan to bring my pet along!" Thetone of Ishie's voice indicated his uncertainty as to Mike'sreception.
The idea of Dr. Y Chi Tung worrying about any components he might have"requisitioned" seemed almost irreverent to Mike. Budget Control wouldgladly have given that eminent physicist a good half of the entirespace station, if he had expressed his needs through the properchannels--as a matter of fact, anything on board that wasn't actuallyessential to the lives of those on the satellite.
* * * * *
But Ishie seemed genuinely unaware of his true status, and the highregard in which he was held. Besides, Mike suspected in him aconstitutional inability to deal through channels.
Recognizing the true sensitivity that underlay Ishie's constant humorand ridicule of himself, Mike kept himself from laughing aloud at thestealth of the man who could have commanded the assistance of thecaptain himself in shielding whatever he thought it necessary toshield.
Instead, he carefully kept his face solemn while he commented: "Itought to fit in that rack over there." He pointed to a group ofhalf-filled racks. "We can slip a fake panel on it. Nobody will beable to tell it from any of the other control circuits."
Ishie heaved a deep sigh of relief and grinned his normal grin."Confusion say," he declared, "that ninety-six pound weakling whostruggle down shaft with six hundred pound object, even in free fall,should have stood in bed."
It took the two of them the better part of half an hour to get theunit into place; to disguise its presence; and to make proper powerconnections. Ishie had objected at first to connecting it up, and Mikeexplained his insistence by saying that "If it looks like somethingthat works, nobody will look at it twice. But if it looks likesomething dead, one of my boys is apt to take it apart to see whatit's supposed to be doing." He didn't mention his real reason--a headydesire to run a few tests on the instrument himself.
The job done, the two sat back on their heels, admiring theirhandiwork like bad boys.
"Coffee?" asked Mike.
"Snarl. Honorable ancestor Confusion doesn't even need to tell me whatto do now. My toy is safe. I am going to bed. I have worked withoutstopping for two days and now the flare has stopped me.
"Confusion decide to relent. He tell me now: 'He who drive self likeslave for forty-eight hours is nuts and should be sent to bed.' Ihope," he added, "that the hammocks are soft; but I don't think Ishall notice. I know just where to go for I checked in once to foolthe Sacred Cow before I went to get my beautiful. Now I go backagain."
And without so much as a thank-you, he staggered out, grasping forhand-holds to guide himself in a most unspacemanlike manner.
* * * * *
Mike craftily sat back, still on his heels beside the object, andwatched until Ishie had disappeared, and then turned his full interestto the playtoy that fortune had placed in his shop.
Without hesitation he removed the false front they had so carefullyput in place. He still had a long tour of duty ahead, and it was veryunlikely that he would be interrupted, or, if interrupted, that anyonewould question the object on which he worked. It would be assumed thatthis was just another piece of equipment normally under his care.
Carefully he looked over the circuits, checking in his mind thefunction of each. Then he went to his racks and began selecting testequipment designed to fit in the empty racks around it. Oscilloscope,signal generator, volt meters and such soon formed a bank around theoriginal piece of equipment, in positions of maximum access.
Gingerly he began applying power to the individual circuits, checkingcarefully his understanding of each component.
The magnetic field effect, Ishie had explained; but this three-phaseRF generator--that puzzled him for a while.
Then he remembered some theory. Brute strength alone would not causethe protons to tip. Much as a top, spinning off-center on its point,will swing slowly around that point instead of tipping over, thespinning protons in the magnetic field would precess, but would nottip and line up without the application of a rotating secondarymagnetic field at radio frequencies which would make the feat oflining them up easy.
There, then, were two of the components that Ishie had built into hisdevice. A strong magnetic field supplied by the magnaswedgecoils--stolen magnaswedge coils if you please--and a rotating RF fieldsupplied by the generator below the chassis.
But this third effect? The DC electric field? That one was new to him.
In his mind he pictured the tiny gyroscopes all brought into alignmentby the interplay of magnetic forces; and around each proton the tiny,planetary electrons.
Yet it was very well to think of the proton nucleus of the hydrogenatom as a simple top, he reminded himself; but they were more complexthan that. Each orbiting electron must also contribute something tothe effect.
At that point, Mike remembered, the electron itself would be spinning,a lighter-weight gyroscope, much as Earth has a lighter weight thanthe Sun. The electron, too, had a magnetic field; more powerful thanthe proton's field because of its higher rate of spin, despite itslighter mass. The electron could also be lined up.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Mike remembered having read ofanother effect. The electron's resonance. Electron para-magneticresonance.
It, too, could be controlled by radio frequencies in a magneticfield--but the frequencies were different, far up in the microwaveregion; about three centimeters as Mike recalled--and he went back tohis supply cabinet to get another piece of equipment, a spare klystronthat actually belonged to the radar department but that was "stored"in his shop.
At these frequencies, the three centimeter band of the electromagneticspectrum, energy does not flow on wires as it does in the lowerfrequency regions. Here plumbing is required. But Mike, amongst otherthings, was an expert RF plumber.
Even experts take time to set up klystrons, and it was three hourslater before Mike was ready with the additional piece of haywireequipment which carefully piped RF energy into the plastic block.
This refinement by itself had been done before; but some of the othersthat Mike applied during his investigation probably hadn't--at leastnot to any such tortured piece of plastic as now existed between thepole faces of the device.
To have produced the complete alignment of both the protons and theelectrons within a mass might have been attempted before. To have appliedan electrostatic field in addition to this had perhaps been attemptedbefore. To have done all three, at the same time to the same piece ofplastic, and then to have added the additional tortures that Mike thoughtup as he went along, was perhaps a chance combination, repeatable once ina million tries, one of those experimental accidents that sometimesprovide more insight into the nature of matter than all of the carefulresearch devised by multi-million-dollar-powered teams of classicalresearchers.
When the contraption was in full operation, he simply sat on his heelsand watched, studying out in his mind the circuits and their effects.
The interruption of the magnetic resonance by the electrostaticfield--by the DC--with the RF plumbing--twisted by--each time theconcept came towards the surface, it sank back as he tried to pull itinto consciousness.
Churkling to itself, the device continued applying its alternatefields and warps and strains.
"It's a Confusor out of Confusion by Ishie, who is probably as great acreator of Confusion as you could ask," Mike told himself, forgettinghis own part in the matter, watching intently, waiting for the conceptto come clear in his mind.
Presently he went over to his console, to his pads of paper andpencils, and began sketching rapidly, d
rawing the interlocking andrepulsing fields, the alignments, mathing out the stresses--in anattempt to visualize just what it was that the Confusor would now bedoing....
* * * * *
In the Confusor itself, a tiny chunk of plastic, four by four inchessquare and one-half inch thick, resting in the middle of the machinebetween the carefully aligned pole-faces of the magnet, was subjectedto the cumulatively devised stresses, a weird distortion of its ownstresses and of the inertia that was its existence.
Each proton and electron within the plastic felt an urge to be whereit wasn't--felt a pseudo-memory, imposed by the outside stresses, ofhaving been traveling at a high velocity towards the north star, onwhich the machine chanced to be oriented; felt the new inertia of thatvelocity....
Each proton and electron fitted itself more snugly against the northpole face and pushed with the entire force of its