Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930Various
Science
Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930
Various
Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
"His calculations covered a large sheet before he had finished. At
last he underscored three intricate combinations of letters and
figures and carried the answers to his private radio apparatus. This
operated on a wave length far outside the range of all others and
insured him against interference. With it he was able to speak at any
time with his assistants in Washington or Boston or with both at once.
He threw the switch that sent his call into the air. An answer came
instantly, and Drayle begin to talk to his distant lieutenants.
* * * * *
"'We've been interrupted, gentlemen,' he said, 'but I think we may
continue now. We'll reassemble in the Boston laboratory. Have you
arranged the elements? The coefficients are....' And he gave a
succession of decimals.
"A voice replied that all was ready. Drayle said 'Excellent,' went
back to his invention and twisted a black knob on the board before
him.
"With this trifling movement all hell seemed to crash about us. The
ghastly cacophony that I had experienced in the same room some months
previously was as nothing. These stupendous waves of sound pounded us
until it seemed as if we must disintegrate beneath them. Wails and
screams engulfed us. Mrs. Drayle dropped to her knees beside her
husband. The doctor seized my arm and I saw the knuckles of his hand
turn white with the pressure of his grip, yet I felt nothing but the
awful vibrations that drummed like riveting machines upon and through
my nerves and body. It was not an attack upon the ears alone; it
crashed upon the heart, beat upon the chest so that breathing seemed
impossible. My brain throbbed under the terrific pulsations. For a
while I imagined the human system could not endure the ordeal and that
all of us must be annihilated.
"Except for his slow turning of the dials Drayle was motionless before
the machine. Below the bandage about his forehead I could see his
features drawn with anxiety. He had wagered a human life to test his
theory and I think the enormity of it had not struck him until that
moment.
"What I knew and hoped enabled me to imagine what was taking place in
the Boston laboratory. I seemed to see man's elementary dust and
vapors whirled from great containers upward into a stratum of
shimmering air and gradually assume the outlines of a human form that
became first opaque, then solid, and then a sentient being. At the
same instant I was conscious that the appalling pandemonium had ceased
and that the voice of Drayle's Boston assistant was on the radio.
* * * * *
"'Congratulations, Chief! His reassemblage is perfect. There's not a
flaw anywhere.' "'Splendid,' Drayle answered. 'Bring him here by
plane right away; his wife is worried about him.'
"Then Drayle turned to me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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