Almost Complete Short Fiction by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Author:Stanley G. Weinbaum [Weinbaum, Stanley G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

HE FROWNED thoughtfully, trying to phrase his answer in words that a girl would understand.

“It’s an application of Morelle’s experiment with electrical eddy currents,” he said. I’m a botanist, not an electrical engineer, but I know that the idea involves the refraction of lines of magnetic force.

“It works like this: Over each army on the Alaskan front the scientists have created a dome of electrical tension—a magnetic field. Any shell or drop bomb passing through this magnetic field is instantly heated to white heat by the electrical eddy currents induced in it by the field, and is thus caused to explode in mid-air.

“Every city is likewise protected by a Beckerley field. You know how each auto-copter, on leaving the city limits of San Francisco, has to stop and be pushed through an iron-shielded subway until it’s beyond the Beckerley field? Well, that’s because the gasoline in the tank would be heated to the flash point by the walls of its container.”

“How about solid shot?” asked Sally.

“That can pass through a field, of course, but what chance has solid shot of doing much damage? Our own copters could down any possible fleet of enemy planes long before they could drop enough solid missiles to do appreciable harm to a city; and as for the Alaskan front, the most that either side could do would be to chip a few rocks in the Yukon Hills.

“No, the situation’s a deadlock; the Khan is swept from the sea, but his enormous army prevents our invading Asia, and neither side can advance an inch in Alaska because of the Beckerley fields. It can’t even become a war of attrition, because both the Asiatic Union and the United States are entirely self-supporting, and can never be starved into submission.”

“Do you think so?” asked Sally Amber in an odd voice. Suddenly she shrugged her smooth, brown shoulders as if to change the subject. “Will Admiral Allen be here Saturday?” she asked casually.

“Why, no, I don’t think—” Lister caught himself abruptly. Allen had told him, in the very strictest of confidence, of a proposed attempt to cut the Asiatic supply line to Alaska by a concentrated attack on Behring Strait, The Pacific fleet, idle since the engagement near the Marianas, was to sail secretly before dawn on Saturday.

He glared. “Why do you ask such a question?” he snapped. “If I knew, I shouldn’t tell, and you know it.”

Sally laughed. “Silly!” she chided. “It was just that I was considering having him and you and that flying detective, Jim Cass, to a little dinner at my apartment Saturday. You see, I still haven’t met Jim Cass, and you’ve spoken of him so often that I’m curious. After all, if he’s a friend of yours, Dick——”

She smiled very tenderly at him.

Lister shook his head. “Captain Cass is no friend of mine,” he declared. “He’s just an officer of the military intelligence who breezes into my laboratory from time to time, and pokes around looking for clues and trouble. He gives me the creeps.

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