Part 1

Special Delivery

By GEORGE O. SMITH

Illustrated by Kramer

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Don Channing grinned at his wife knowingly. Arden caught his glance and then laughed. Walt Franks leaned back and looked highly superior. "Go ahead and laugh, darn you. I tell you it can be done."

"Walt, ever since you tried that stunt of aerating soap with hydrogen to make a floating soap for shower baths, I've been wondering about your kind of genius."

"Oh no," objected Arden.

"Well, he wondered about it after nearly breaking his neck one morning."

"That I did," grinned Walt. "It's still a good idea."

"But the idea of transmitting matter is fantastic."

"Agreed," admitted Walt. "But so is the idea of transmitting power."

"It would come in handy if possible," remarked Don. "At slightly under 2-G, it takes only four hours to make Luna from Terra. On the other hand, shipping stuff from Melbourne, Australia, to New York City, or to the Mojave Spaceport takes considerably longer. With spacecraft as super stratosphere carriers it isn't too good, because you've got to run in a circle. In space you run at constant acceleration to mid-point and then decelerate the rest of the way. Fine for mile-eating, but not too hot for cutting circles."

"Well, having established the need of a matter transmitter, now what?"

"Go on, Walt. You're telling us."

"Well," said Walt, penciling some notes on the tablecloth, "it's like this. The Carroll-Baler power-transmission tube will carry energy. According to their initial experiments, they had some trouble."

"They had one large amount, if I recall."

"Specifically, I recall the incident of the hammer. Remember?"

"Barney Carroll got mad and swung a hammer at the tube, didn't he?"

"It was one of them, I don't recall which."

"No matter of importance," said Don. "I think I know what you mean. He hit the intake end--or tried to. The hammer was cut neatly and precisely off, and the energy of the blow was transmitted, somehow, to the wall."

"Through the wall," corrected Walt. "It cracked the plaster, but it went through so fast that it merely cracked it. The main blow succeeded in breaking the marble facade of the city hall."

"Um. Now bring us up to date. What have you in mind?"

"A tube which scans matter atom by atom, line by line, and plane by plane. The matter is removed, atom by atom, and transmitted to a sort of matter bank in the instrument."

"A what?"

"Matter bank," said Walt. "We can't transmit the stuff itself. That's out. We can't dissipate the atomic energy or whatever effect we might get. We can establish a balance locally by using the energy release to drive the restorer. According to some initial experiments, it can be done. We take something fairly complex and break it down. We use the energy of destruction to re-create the matter in a bank, or solid block of local stuff. Let it be a mass of stuff if it wants to, at any rate, the signal impulses from the breakdown will be transmitted, scanned, if you will, and transmitted to a receiver which reverses the process. It scans, and the matter bank is broken down and the object is rebuilt.

"I hope we can get free and unrestricted transmutation," offered Don. "You can't send a steel spring out and get one back made of copper."

"I get your point."

"The space lines will hate you," said Arden.

"Too bad. I wonder if it'll carry people."

"Darling," drawled Arden, "don't you think you'd better catch your rabbit first?"

"Not too bad a thought," agreed Don. "Walt, have you got any rabbit traps out?"

"A couple. I've been tinkering a bit. I know we can disintegrate matter through a power tube of slight modification, and reintegrate it with another. At the present state of the art, it is a mess."

"A nice mess," laughed Don. "Go ahead, though. We'll pitch in when the going gets hard."

"That's where I stand now. The going is tough."

"What's the trouble?"

"Getting a perfect focus. I want it good enough so that we can scan a polished sheet of steel--and it'll come out as slick as the original."

"Naturally. We'd better get Wes Farrell on the job."

"I wonder what by-product we'll get this time."

"Look, Walt. Quit hoping. If you get this thing running right, it'll put your name in history."

"After all," grinned Walt, "I've got to do something good enough to make up for that Channing Layer."

"Kingman is still fuming over the Channing Layer. Sometimes I feel sorry that I did it to him like that."

"Wasn't your fault, Don. You didn't hand him the thing knowing that the Channing Layer would inhibit the transmission of energy. It happened. We get power out of Sol--why shouldn't they? They would, except for the Channing Layer."

"Wonder what your idea will do."

"About the Channing Layer? Maybe your space-line competition is not as good as it sounds."

"Well, they use the power-transmission tubes all over the face of the Solar System. I can't see any reason why they couldn't ship stuff from Sidney to Mojave and then space it out from there."

"What an itinerary! By Franks' matter transmitter to Mojave. Spacecraft to Luna. More matter transmission from Luna to Phobos. Then transshipped down to Lincoln Head, and by matter transmitter to Canalopsis. _Whoosh!_"

* * * * *

"Do we have time to go into the old yarn about the guy who listened in and got replicas?" asked Arden.

"That's a woman's mind for you," grinned Channing. "Always making things complicated. Arden, my lovely but devious-minded woman, let's wait until we have the spry beastie by the ears before we start to make rabbit pie."

"It's not as simple as it sounds," warned Walt. "But it's there to worry about."

"But later. I doubt that we can reason that angle out."

"I can," said Arden. "Can we tap the power beams?"

"Wonderful is the mind of woman!" praised Don. "Positively wonderful! Arden, you have earned your next fur coat. Here I've been thinking of radio transmission all the time. No, Arden, when you're set up for sheer energy transmission, it's strictly no dice. The crimped-up jobs we use for communications can be tapped--but not the power-transmission beams. If you can keep the gadget working on that line, Walt, we're in and solid."

"I predict there'll be a battle. Are we shipping energy or communications?"

"Let Kingman try and find a precedent for that. Brother Blackstone himself would be stumped to make a ruling. We'll have to go to work with the evidence as soon as we get a glimmer of the possibilities. But I think we have a good chance. We can diddle up the focus, I'm certain."

Arden glowered. "Go ahead--have your fun. I see another couple of weeks of being a gadgeteer's widow." She looked at Walt Franks. "I could stand it if the big lug only didn't call every tool, every part, and every effect either _she_ or _baby_!"

Walt grinned. "I'd try to keep you from being lonely, but I'm in this too, and besides, you're my friend's best wife."

"Shall we drag that around a bit? I think we could kill a couple of hours with it sometime."

"Let it lie there and rot," snorted Channing cheerfully. "We'll pick it up later. Come on, Walt. We've got work to do."

Mark Kingman glowered at the 'gram and swore under his breath. He wondered whether he might be developing a persecution complex; it seemed as though every time he turned around, Venus Equilateral was in his hair, asking for something or other. And he was not in any position to quibble about it. Kingman was smart enough to carry his tray very level. Knowing that they were waiting for a chance to prove that he had been connected with the late Hellion Murdoch made him very cautious. There was no doubt in any mind that Murdoch was written off the books. But whether Murdoch had made a sufficiently large impression on the books of Terran Electric to have the connection become evident--that worried Kingman.

So he swore at each telegram that came in, and then sent the desired object out with the next ship. Compared to his former attitude toward Venus Equilateral, Mark Kingman was behaving like an honor student in a Sunday school.

Furthermore, behaving himself did not make him feel good.

He punched the buzzer, told his secretary to call in the shop foreman, and then sat back and wondered about the 'gram.

He was still wondering when the man entered. Kingman looked up and fixed his superintendent with a fish glance. "Horman, can you guess why the Venus Equilateral crowd would want two dozen gauge blocks?"

"Sure. We use Johannson Blocks all the time."

"Channing wants twenty-four blocks. All three inches on a side--cubes. Square to within thirty seconds of angle, and each of the six faces optically flat to one quarter wave length of Cadmium light."

"_Whoosh!_" said Horman. "I presume the three-inch dimension must be within a half wave length?"

"They're quite lenient," said Kingman bitterly. "A full wave length!"

"White of them," grunted Horman. "I suppose the same thing applies?"

"We're running over thin ice," said Kingman reflectively. "I can't afford to play rough. We'll make up their blocks."

"I wonder what they want 'em for."

"Something tricky, I'll bet."

"But what could you use two dozen gauge blocks for? All the same size."

"Inspection standards?" asked Kingman.

"Not unless they're just being difficult. You don't put primary gauges on any production line. You make secondary gauges for production line use and keep a couple of primaries in the check room to try the secondaries on. In fact, you usually have a whole set of gauge blocks to build up to any desired dimension so that you don't have to stock a half-million of different sizes."

"It's possible that they may be doing something extremely delicate?"

"Possible," said Horman slowly. "But not too probable. On the other hand, I may be one hundred percent wrong. I don't know all the different stuff a man can make, by far. My own experience indicates that nothing like that would be needed. But that's just one man's experience."

* * * * *

"Channing and that gang of roughneck scientists have been known to make some fancy gadgets," said Kingman grudgingly.

"If you'll pardon my mentioning the subject," said Horman in a scathing tone, "you'd have been far better off to tag along with 'em instead of fighting 'em."

"I'll get 'em yet!"

"What's it got you so far?"

"I'm not too bad off. I've come up from the assistant chief legal counsel of Terran Electric to controlling the company."

"And Terran Electric has slid down from the topmost outfit in the system to a seventh rater."

"We'll climb back. At any rate, I'm better off personally. You're better off personally. In fact, everybody that had enough guts to stay with us is better off."

"Yeah--I know. It sounds good on paper. But make a bum move again, Kingman, and we'll all be in jail. You'd better forget that hatred against Venus Equilateral and come down to earth."

"Well, I've been a good boy for them once. After all, I did point out the error in their patent on the solar beam."

"That isn't all. Don't forget that Terran Electric's patent was at error too."

"Frankly it was a minor error. It's one of those things that is easy to get caught on. You know how it came about?"

"Nope. I accepted it just like everybody else. It took some outsider to laugh at me and tell me why."

Kingman smiled. "It's easy to get into easy thinking. They took power from Sirius--believe it or not--and then made some there-and-back time measurements and came up with a figure that was about the square of one hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second. But you know that you can't square a velocity and come up with anything that looks sensible. The square of a velocity must be some concept like an expanding area."

"Or would it be two spots diverging along the sides of a right angle?" queried Horman idly. "What was their final answer?"

"The velocity of light is a concept. It is based on the flexibility of space--its physical constants, so to speak. Channing claims that the sub-etheric radiation bands of what we have learned to call the driver radiation propagates along some other medium than space itself. I think they were trying to establish some mathematical relation--which might be all right, but you can't establish that kind of relation and hope to hold it. The square of C in meters comes out differently than the square of C in miles, inches, or a little-used standard, the light-second, in which the velocity of light is unity, or One. Follow? Anyway, they made modulation equipment of some sort and measured the velocity and came up with a finite figure which is slightly less than the square of one hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second. Their original idea was wrong. It was just coincidence that the two figures came out that way. Anyway," smiled Kingman, "I pointed it out to them and they quick changed their patent letters. So, you see, I've been of some help."

"Nice going. Well, I'm going to make those gauges. It'll take us one long time, too. Johannson Blocks aren't the easiest thing in the world to make."

"What would you make secondary standards out of?"

"We use glass gauges, mostly. They don't dinge or bend when dropped--they go to pieces or not at all. We can't have a bent gauge rejecting production parts, you know, and steel gauges can be bent. Besides, you can grind glass to a half wave length of light with ease, but polishing steel is another item entirely."

"I'm going to call Channing and ask him about glass blocks. It may be that he might use them. Plus the fact that I may get an inkling of the ultimate use. They have no production lines running on Venus Equilateral, have they?"

"Nope. Not at all. They're not a manufacturing company."

"Well, I'm going to call."

* * * * *

Kingman's voice raced across Terra to Hawaii, went on the communications beams of the sky-pointing reflectors, and rammed through the Heaviside Layer to Luna. At the Lunar Station, his voice was mingled in multiplex with a thousand others and placed on the sub-ether beams to Venus Equilateral.

Don Channing answered the 'phone. "Yes?"

"Kingman, Dr. Channing."

Don grunted. He did not care to be addressed by title when someone who disliked him did it. His friends did not, and Kingman's use of the title made it an insult.

"Look," said Kingman, "what do you want to use those blocks for?"

"We've got a job of checking dimensions."

"Nothing more? Do you need the metal for electrical reasons?"

"No," said Don. "What have you in mind?"

"Our toolshop is nicely equipped to grind glass gauges. We can do that better than making Jo-blocks. Can you use glass ones?"

"Hang on a minute." Channing turned to Walt. "Kingman says his outfit uses glass gauges. Any reason why we can't?"

"See no reason why not. I've heard of using glass gauges, and they've got some good reasons, too. Tell him to go ahead."

"Kingman? How soon can we get glass ones?"

"Horman, how soon on the glass blocks?"

"Two dozen? About a week."

"We'll have your blocks on the way within four days, Channing. Four days minimum, plus whatever wait is necessary to get 'em aboard a spacer."

"We'll check from this end on schedules. We need the blocks, and if the wait is too long, we'll send the _Relay Girl_ in for 'em."

Don hung up and then said: "Glass ones might be a good idea. We can check the transmission characteristics optically. I think we can check more, quickly, than by running analysis on steel."

"Plus the fact that you can get the blocks back after test," grinned Walt. "Once you tear into a steel block to check its insides, you've lost your sample. I don't know any other way to check the homogeneity than by optical tests."

"O.K. Well, four days for glass will do better than a couple of months on steel blocks."

"Right. Now let's look up Wes and see what he's come up with."

* * * * *

They found Farrell in one of the blister laboratories, working on a small edition of the power-transmission tubes. He was not dressed in spacesuit, and so they entered the blister and watched him work.

"Have a little trouble getting the focus to stay sharp through the trace," complained Wes. "I can get focus of atomic proportions--the circle of confusion is about the size of the atom nucleus, I mean--at the axis of the tube. But the deflection of the cone of energy produces aberration, which causes coma at the edges. The corners of an area look fierce."

"I wonder if mechanical scanning wouldn't work better."

"Undoubtedly. You don't hope to send life, do you?"

"It would be nice--but no more fantastic than this thing is now. What's your opinion?"

Wes loosened a set screw on the main tube anode and set the anode forward a barely perceptible distance. He checked it with a vernier rule and tightened the screw. He made other adjustments on the works of the tube itself, and then motioned outside. They left the blister, Wes closed the airtight, and cracked the valve that let the air out of the blister. He snapped the switch on the outside panel and then leaned back in his chair while the cathode heated.

"With electrical scanning, you'll have curvature of field with this gadget. That isn't too bad, I suppose, because the restorer will have the same curvature. But you're going to scan three ways, which means correction for the linear distance from the tube as well as the other side deflections and their aberrations. Now if we could scan the gadget mechanically, we'd have absolute flatness of field, perfect focus, and so forth."

Walt grinned. "Thinking of television again? Look, bright fellows, how do you move an assembly of mechanical parts in quanta of one atomic diameter? They've been looking for that kind of gadget for centuries. Dr. Rowland and his gratings would turn over in their graves with a contrivance that could rule lines one atom apart."

"On what?" asked Don.

"If it would rule one atom lines, brother, you could put a million lines per inch on anything rulable with perfection, ease, eclat, and savoir faire. You follow my argument? Or would you rather take up this slip of my tongue and make something out of it?"

"O.K., fella. I see your point. How about that one, Wes?"

Wes Farrell grinned. "Looks like I'll be getting perfect focus with the electrical system here. I hadn't considered the other angle at all, but it looks a lot tougher than I thought."

He squinted through a wall-mounted telescope at the set-up on the inside of the blister. "She's hot," he remarked quietly, and then set to checking the experiment. Fifteen minutes of checking, and making notes, and he turned to the others with a smile. "Not too bad that way," he said.

"What are you doing?"

"I've established a rather complex field. In order to correct the aberrations, I've got nonlinear focusing fields in the places where they tend to correct for the off-axis aberration. To correct for the height-effect, I'm putting a variable corrector to control the whole cone of energy, stretching it or shortening it according to the needs. I think if I use a longer focal length I'll be able to get the thing running right.

"That'll lessen the need for correction, too," he added, cracking the blister-intake valve and letting the air hiss into the blister. He opened the door and went inside, and began to adjust the electrodes. "You know," he added over his shoulder, "we've got something here that might bring in a few dollars on the side. This matter-bank affair produces clean, clear, and practically pure metal. You might be able to sell some metal that was rated 'pure' and mean it."

"You mean absolutely, positively, guaranteed, uncontaminated, unadulterated, perfectly chemically pure?" grinned Don.

"Compared to what 'Chemically Pure' really means, your selection of adjectives is a masterpiece of understatement," laughed Walt.

"I'm about to make one more try," announced Wes. "Then I'm going to drop this for the time being. I've got to get up to the machine shop and see what they're doing with the rest of the thing."

"We'll take over that if you wish," said Don.

"Will you? I'll appreciate it. I sort of hate to let this thing go when I feel that I'm near an answer."

"We'll do it," said Walt. "Definitely."

* * * * *

They left the laboratory and made their way to the elevator that would lift them high into the Relay Station where the machine shop was located. As they entered the elevator, Don shook his head.

"What's the matter?"

"Well, Friend Farrell is on the beam again. If he feels that we're close to the answer, I'll bet a hat that we're hanging right on the edge. Also, that kind of work would kill me dead. He likes to stick on one thing until the bitter end, no matter how long it takes. I couldn't do it."

"I know. About three hours of this and you're wanting another job to clear your mind. Then you could tackle that one for about three hours and take back on the first."

"Trying to do that to Farrell would kill both him and the jobs," said Don. "But you and I can keep two or three projects going strong. Oh well, Wes is worth a million."

"He's the best we've got," agreed Walt. "Just because he has a peculiar slant on life is no sign he's not brilliant."

"It's you and I that have the cockeyed slant on life," grinned Don. "And frankly, I'm proud of it." He swung the elevator door aside and they walked down the corridor. "This isn't going to be much to see, but we'll take a look."

The machine shop, to the man, was clustered around the one cabinet under construction. They moved aside to permit the entry of Channing and Franks.

"Hm-m-m," said Don. "Looks like a refrigerator and incinerator combined."

It did. It stood five feet tall, three feet square, and was sealed in front by a heavy door. There was a place intended for the tube that Farrell was tinkering with in the blister, and the lines to supply the power were coiled behind the cabinet.

"Partly wired?" asked Don.

"Just the power circuits," answered Walton. "We'll have this finished in a couple of days more. The other one is completed except for Wes Farrell's section."

Channing nodded, and said: "Keep it going." He turned to Walt and after the passage of a knowing glance, the pair left. "Walt, this waiting is getting on my nerves. I want to go down to Joe's and drink myself into a stupor which will last until they get something cogent to work on."

"I'm with you, but what will Arden say?"

"I'm going to get Arden. Self-protection. She'd cut my feet off at the knees if I went off on a tear without her."

"I have gathered that," grinned Walt. "You're afraid of her."

"Yeah," drawled Don. "After all--she's the cook."

"I'm waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"If and when. If you two go on as you have for another year without one of you turning up with a black eye, I may be tempted to go forth and track me down a dame of my own."

* * * * *

The cabinet stood in the north end of Venus Equilateral but it was not alone. It may even be the record for all times; certainly no other cabinet three by three by five ever had twenty-seven men all standing in a circle awaiting developments. The cabinet at the south end of Venus Equilateral was no less popular, though the number of watchers was less by one. Here, then, were winner and runner-up of inanimate popularity for the ages. The communicator system set in the walls of the two rooms carried sounds from the north room to the south, and those sounds in the south room could be heard in the north room. Channing grinned boyishly at Arden.

"This, my love, is a device which may make it quite possible for me to send you back to mother."