Adventure stories; Science fiction; Time travel -- Fiction
I may say, though, unquestionably, that without the notes that were
left us by Cannell, we could never have achieved the success we did
achieve. Those notes, brief and unsatisfactory as they were, were
yet enough to set our feet on the right path, in our quest of the
time-traveling secret. To us, then, the problem was one of accelerating
electronic activity, and all our experiments were directed toward that
goal.
Fortunately, Lantin had virtually a free hand at the Foundation, and we
were able to use the matchless resources of its great laboratories to
further our quest. Working constantly together and maintaining complete
secrecy regarding the object of our experiments, we sought for some
force capable of controlling the movement and speed of electrons, at
will.
The weeks dragged by, and we seemed no nearer success than ever. And at
the Foundation, some curiosity was being evinced regarding our work,
which ill-fitted with our desires. We had made trial of every form
of vibration, it seemed, and all without success, for none affected
the electronic movement in the way we wished. In the end, it was by a
combination of electro-magnetic waves and light rays that we finally
achieved success.
I say "we," but it was Lantin's triumph. He had the inspiration to
combine high-frequency Hertzian vibrations and light-rays, merging the
two dissimilar vibrations into a single wave, which we called "the
time wave" and which had power to affect the very electronic structure
of matter, all electronic movement within its radius being stimulated
and accelerated by it. And with it, we proved the correctness of
Cannell's theory, for when we turned the wave upon small objects on
the laboratory table, they vanished, reappearing a few seconds later,
having been driven into the future for those few seconds by the force
of the time-wave.
By reversing the action of the wave, the electronic movement was
reversed also, and thus the basis of our needs was found and we had a
force that could sweep all things in its radius into past or future at
will. Then it was that Lantin began to speak of a car, a car containing
a time-wave projector powerful enough to convey the car and all its
occupants into past or future. It was vitally necessary, he thought,
that such a car should be able to move in space, as well as time, and
to acquire this power we had recourse to a discovery accidentally made
in the course of our experiments.
In our efforts to change the movement of electrons, we had found that
when a stream of them was shot out in a concentrated ray, in any one
direction, it produced an invisible but powerful repulsion. It was
on this fact that Lantin relied to move our car in space, directing
electron-streams toward the ground to raise and hold us in space, and
directing other rays obliquely down toward earth, to move the car from
side to side in any direction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account