The Main Experiment by Christopher Hodder-Williams

Author:Christopher Hodder-Williams [Hodder-Williams, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi
Google: KEwIygEACAAJ
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 1966-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

She did look at me now. “How did you know I was going to say that?”

“I don’t know. What happened?”

“I couldn’t think, and I didn’t know where I was.”

“How long did this last?”

“I don’t know. It couldn’t have been very long. I had no sense of time. But I didn’t take very long to arrive here.”

A thought immediately occurred to me. “But you must have crossed the line when you drove back from the airstrip.”

“I know. But I didn’t feel anything that time.” She chucked the spoon into the sink. “You came more or less the same way. Didn’t you feel anything?”

“Nothing like that.”

She had been keeping a grip on herself with a great effort. Suddenly she let go.

She flung her arms round me and held on tight. Her tears showed the panic within her. “Darling, those animals! Don’t you see? They were running along that line!”

“I know,” I said quietly. I thought I could steady her if I gave some rhyme or reason to these dislodged events. She stayed perfectly still in my arms, giving no sign that she was listening or that she understood. But she was trusting me to give comfort and somehow I knew I couldn’t fail her. “Alb right. This is what happens. In some way or other, a beam is radiated by the main experiment. Sometimes it’s on, and sometimes it’s off. When it’s on, it’s capable first of causing Gerald Rome to bum his hands, second, of making the animals panic, third, of making the weather vane glow, and fourth, of melting the weather vane out of shape. Then you walk through the beam. It doesn’t harm you, but you feel confused. The next time you pass through the beam it doesn’t affect you at all. It doesn’t appear, so far, to have affected anyone else, and you’re all right now.” I gave her a little squeeze. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes darling.”

“Good.” I released her. “There is one more thing, though: as it frightened the animals—who were exactly on the line of the beam but the far side of the Plant—we should expect it to do more or less the same things there too. So I’d better go up there and find out.”

“Darling, please don’t.”

I took both her hands. “It didn’t hurt you, it just confused you—while you were there.”

“Yes, but please don’t go. You’re assuming it does the same thing to everybody. It might not.”

“I’m sure it won’t hurt me.” Something was unstable. What was this intermittent force, acting on the main experiment whenever it felt like it? Aloud, I said: “We were by the beacon when we saw the glow on the bam. They’re exactly in line so there must have been the same sort of radiation up there as well.”

She was silent for a while, and got interested in the spoon again. So she fished it out of the water and resumed the tapping. My nerves were less on edge because it didn’t bother me this time. Sally said: “But why is it so inconsistent?”

“Darling, you ask all the right questions.

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