In Our Hands the Stars Page 5

  “I’ll say good-bye, then,” Skou said. “I think it will be most comfortable traveling in the cabin.”

  “Traveling where?”

  Skou left without answering and began to untie the mooring lines. Nils shrugged, then bent over to get through the low cabin door. He dropped onto the bench inside and discovered, tardily because of the dim light that filtered through the small portholes, that he was not alone.

  “Good afternoon,” he said to the muffled figure on the far end of the other bench, and received a noncommittal answer in return. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized that there was a suitcase at the other man’s feet and that he was wearing a black coat and dark beret.

  “How about that,” Nils laughed. “Looks like they caught you too. We’re wearing the same uniform.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” the other said testily, pulling off the beret and jamming it into his pocket. Nils moved along the bench to sit opposite him.

  “Oh yes you do. That Skou with his mysterious ways. Very little imagination though when it comes to disguise. I’ll bet you were drafted for a secret job in a big hurry and rushed over here.”

  “How do you know that?” the. other asked, sitting up.

  “Instinct.” Nils pulled off his beret and pointed to it—then looked closer at the other man’s face. “Don’t I know you from somewhere? A party or something—no, from the magazine. You’re the submarine fellow who helped salvage that Seven-oh-Seven off the coast. Carlsson, Hefiriksen or something….”

  “Henning Wilhelmsen.”

  “Nils Hansen.”

  They shook hands automatically after this exchange of names, and the air of tension lessened. It was warm in the tiny cabin and Nils opened his coat. The motor chugged steadily as they pulled away from shore. Wilhelmsen looked at the other’s uniform.

  “Now isn’t that interesting,” he said. “A naval commander and an SAS pilot wallowing out into the Øresund aboard a scow. What could this possibly mean?”

  “Maybe Denmark has an aircraft carrier we don’t know about?”

  “Then why me? It would have to be a submarine aircraft carrier, and that I would have heard something about. How about a drink?”

  “The bar isn’t open.”

  “It is now.” Wilhelmsen pulled a leather-covered flask from his side pocket. “The motto of the submarine service is ‘Be prepared.’ “

  Nils smacked his lips unconsciously as dark liquid was poured into the metal cup. “I can’t if I’m going to fly in the next twelve hours.”

  “Little chance of that out here, unless this barge sprouts wings. Besides, this is navy rum, alcohol free.”

  “I accept your offer.”

  The rum tasted quite good and put a better temper to the afternoon. After a certain amount of circling around the topic they exchanged information, only to discover this merely doubled their lack of knowledge. They were going somewhere for reasons unknown. After squinting at the setting sun they agreed that the only bit of Danish landscape that lay in this direction was the island of Bornholm, which was an impossibility in their light craft. A half-hour later their question was answered when the launch’s engine was cut and the portholes on the starboard side suddenly darkened.

  “A ship, of course,” Henning Wilhelmsen said, and poked his head out of the door. “The Vitus Bering.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “I certainly have. It’s a Marine Institute ship. I was aboard her last year when she was mother ship for Blaeksprutten, the small experimental sub. I did the trial runs.”

  Feet thudded to the deck and a sailor poked his head in and asked for their baggage. They passed it out, then followed him up the heaving ladder. A ship’s officer invited them to the wardroom, then showed them the way. There were more than a dozen uniformed men waiting there, representatives of all the armed forces, as well as four civilians. Nils recognized two of them, a politician he had once had as a passenger, and Professor Rasmussen, the Nobel prize winner.

  “If you will sit down, gentlemen,” Ove Rasmussen said, “I’ll tell you why we are all here.”

  * * *

  By dawn the next morning they were far out in the Baltic, in international waters, a hundred miles from land. Arnie had slept badly, he wasn’t much of a sailor and the pitching of the ship had kept him awake. He was the last one on deck, and he joined the others as they watched Blaeksprutten being swung up out of the hold.

  “Looks like a toy,” Nils Hansen said. The big pilot, although he wore his SAS cap was, like all of the others, now dressed in high rubber boots, sweaters, and heavy wool pants to stop the cutting arctic wind. It was a lowering winter day with the clouds pressing down and the horizon close by.

  “She’s no toy—and she’s bigger than she looks,” Wilhelmsen defended warmly. “With a crew of three she can still carry a couple of observers. Dives well, good control, plenty of depth …”

  “No propellers though,” Nils said gloomily, winking at the others. “They must have got broken off…”

  “This is a sub, not one of your flying machines! It has water impellers, jets, just like those stupid great things of yours. That’s why it’s called Blaeksprutten—it moves by jetting water just like a squid.”

  Arnie caught Ove’s eye and motioned him aside.

  “A perfect day for the trials,” Ove said, pushing at his new front teeth with his tongue; they still felt strange. “The visibility is down and nothing at all on the radar. An Air Force plane overflew us earlier and reported the nearest ship to be over a hundred and forty kilometers distant. Just a Polish coastal freighter at that.”

  “I would like to be aboard for the tests, Ove.”

  Ove took him lightly by the shoulder. “Don’t think I don’t know that. I don’t want to take your place. But the Minister thinks that you are too valuable a man to be risked this First time out. And I guess that he is right. But I would still change if I could—only they won’t let me. The admiral knows the order and he’ll see that it is obeyed. Don’t worry—I’ll take good care of your baby. We’ve eliminated that harmonic trouble and there’s nothing else that can go wrong. You’ll see.”

  Arnie shrugged with submission, knowing that further argument would be useless.

  With much waving and shouted instructions the small sub was swung out and lowered into the sea. Henning Wilhelmsen was down the ladder almost before it touched, leaping aboard. He vanished down the hatch on top of the conning tower, and a few minutes later there was an underwater rumbling as her engines started. Henning popped up through the hatch and waved. “Come aboard,” he called out.

  Ove took Arnie’s hand. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “Since we installed the Daleth unit, we have checked it over a dozen different times.”

  “I know, Ove. Good luck.”

  Ove climbed down the ladder with Nils Hansen right behind him. They entered and closed the hatch.

  “Cast off,” Henning said, his voice booming from the loudspeaker that, connected to the short-range, low-powered radio, had been installed on deck. The lines were pulled free and the little sub turned and began to move away. Arnie took up the microphone and pressed to talk.

  “Take it out about three hundred meters before beginning the test.”

  “Ja vel!”

  The ship’s engines had been stopped, and the Vitus Bering rolled in the easy sea. Arnie held tight to the railing and watched the sub move away. His face was as composed as always, but he could feel his heartbeat, faster than he ever remembered. Theory is one thing, practice another. As Skou might say. He smiled to himself. This was the final test.

  There were field glasses around his neck and he fumbled them to his eyes as the sub turned and began to circle the mother ship in a wide circle. Through the glasses the craft was very clear, moving steadily, its hull barely awash as the waves broke against it.

  Then-yes, it was true—the waves were splashing against the side and more of the hull was visible. It
appeared to be rising higher and higher in the water, floating unnaturally high-then rising even further.

  Until, like a great balloon, it rested on the surface.

  Rose above the surface. Went up gracefully five, ten, thirty meters. Arnie dropped the glasses on their strap and held the rail tightly, looking, frozen.

  With all the grace of a lighter-than-air craft, the twenty-ton, thick-hulled submarine was floating a good forty meters above the sea. Then it seemed to rotate on some invisible bearing until it pointed directly at the mother ship. Moving slowly it drifted their way, sliding over their upturned faces, a spray of fine droplets falling from its still dripping hull. No one spoke-struck speechless by the almost unbelievable sight—and the stuttering of the submarine’s diesel engines could be clearly heard. Without turning his eyes away, Arnie groped for the microphone and switched it on.

  “You can bring it in now. I think that we can call the experiment a success.”

  7

  With the blackboard behind him and the circle of seated, eager listeners before him, Arnie felt very much at home. As though he were back in a classroom at the university, not the wardroom of the Vitus Bering. He resisted the impulse to turn and write his name, ARNIE KLEIN, in large letters upon the board. But he did write DALETH EFFECT very clearly at the top, then the Hebrew letter after it.

  “If you will be patient for a moment, I must give you a small amount of history in order to explain what you witnessed this morning. You will remember that Israel conducted a series of atmospheric research experiments with rockets a few years ago. The tests served a number of functions, not the least of which was to show the surrounding Arab countries that we … that is they, Israel … had home-manufactured rockets and did not depend upon the vagaries of foreign supplies. Due to the physical limitations imposed by the surrounding countries, and the size of Israel, there was very little choice of trajectories. Straight up and straight back down was all that we could do, and some very exacting control techniques had to be worked out to accomplish this. But a rocket that rose vertically and stayed directly above the launch site on the ground proved an invaluable research device for a number of disciplines. A trailing smoke cloud supplied the meteorologists with wind direction and speed at all altitudes, while internal instrumentation recordings later coordinated this with atmospheric pressure and temperature. Once out of the atmosphere there were even more experiments, but the one that we concern ourselves with now is the one that inadvertently revealed what can only be called gravimetric anomalies.” He started to write the word on the blackboard, but controlled himself at the last moment.

  “My interest at this time was in quasars, and the possible source of their incomprehensible energies. Even the total annihilation of matter, as you know, cannot explain the energy generation of quasars. But this became almost incidental because—completely by chance—this rocket probe was out of the atmosphere when a solar flare started. It was there for almost fifty minutes. Other probes, in the past, have been launched as soon as a flare has been detected, but this means a lag of an hour at least after the original explosion of energy. Therefore I had the first readings to work with on the complete buildup of a solar flare. Magnetometer, cosmic ray particles—and something that looked completely irrelevant at the time: the engineering data. This drew my attention because I had been working for some years on certain aspects of the Einsteinian quantum theory that relate to gravity. This research had just proven to be a complete dead end, but it was still on my mind. So when the others discarded some of the data because they believed the telemetry was misreading due to the strong magnetic fields, I investigated in greater detail. The data was actually sound, but it showed that a wholly inexplicable force operating that seemingly reduced the probe’s weight, but not its mass. That is to say that its gravitational mass and inertial mass were temporarily unequal. I assigned the symbol Daleth to this discrepancy factor and then sought to find out what it was. To begin with, I at once thought of the Schwarzchild mass, or rather the application of this to the four-dimensional continuum of the Minkowski universe….”

  The baffled expressions on all the faces finally drew Arnie’s attention—including one high-ranking officer whose eyes were glazed, almost bulging—and he slowed and stopped. He coughed into his fist to cover his confusion. These were not physics students after all. Turning to the board he added another underscore to the Daleth.

  “Not to go into too many details, I will attempt to explain this observation in simple language. Though you must understand that this is an approximation only of what occurred. I had something that I could not explain, though it was something that was obviously there. Like taking a dozen chicken eggs and hatching them and having an eagle come out of one. It is there, clearly enough, but why and how we do not know.”

  A relieved chuckle moved across the wardroom, and there were even a few smiles as they finally found themselves understanding something that was being said. Encouraged, Arnie stayed on common ground.

  “I began to work with the anomaly, first setting up mathematical models to determine its nature, then some simple experiments. In physics, as in all things, knowing just what you are looking for can be a great aid. For example, it is easier to find a criminal in a city if you have a description or a name. Once helium had been detected in the spectrum of the sun its presence was uncovered here on Earth. It had been here all the time, unnoticed until we knew what to look for. The same is true of the Daleth effect. I knew what to look for and I found answers to my questions. I speculated that it might be possible to control this …” He groped for a word. “It is not true, and I should not do it, but for the moment let us call it an ‘energy’. Remembering all the time that it is not an energy. I set up an experiment in an attempt to control this energy which had rather spectacular results. Control was possible. Once tapped, the Daleth energy could be modulated; this was little more than an application of current technology. You saw the results this morning when Blaeksprutten rose into the air. This was a very limited demonstration. There is no reason why the submarine could not have traveled above the atmosphere at speeds of our own choosing.”

  A hand was raised, with positive assurance, and Arnie nodded in that direction. At least someone was listening closely enough to want to ask a question. It was an Air Force officer, looking young for the high rank that he held.

  “You’ll pardon my saying this, Professor Klein, but aren’t you getting something for nothing? Which I have been taught is impossible. You are negating the Newtonian laws of motion. There is not enough power in the sub’s engines, no matter how applied, other than by a block and tackle, to lift its mass and hold it suspended. You mentioned relativity, which is based solidly on the conservation of momentum, mass energy, and electric charge. What appears to have happened here must throw at least two out of the three into doubt.”

  “Very true,” Arnie agreed. “But we are not ignoring these restrictions; we are simply using a different frame of reference in which they do not apply. As an analogy I ask you to consider the act of turning a valve. A few foot pounds will open a valve that will allow compressed gas to leave a tank and expand into a bag and cause a balloon to rise. An even better comparison might be to think of yourself as hanging by a cord from that bag, high above the Earth. An ounce or so of pressure on a sharp blade will cut the cord and bring you back to the ground with highly dramatic effects.”

  “But cutting the cord just releases the kinetic energy stored by lifting me to that height,” the officer said warmly. “It is the gravity of the Earth that brings me down.”

  “Precisely. And it was the released gravity of Earth that permitted Blaeksprutten to fly.”

  “But that is impossible!”

  “Impossible or not, it happened,” an even higher ranking Air Force officer called. “You damned well better believe your own eyes, Preben, or I’ll have you grounded.”

  The officer sat down, scowling at the general laughter, which died away as Admiral Sander-La
nge began to speak.

  “I believe everything you say about the theory of your machine, Professor Klein, and I thank you for attempting to explain it to us. But I hope you will not be insulted when I say that, at least for me, it is not of the utmost importance. Many years, back I stopped trying to understand all the boxes of tricks they were putting on my ships and set myself the task of only understanding what they did and how they could be used. Could you explain the possibilities, the things that might be accomplished by application of your Daleth effect?”

  “Yes, of course. But I hope that you will understand that there are still a number of ‘ifs’ attached. If the effect can be applied as we hope-and the next experiment with Blaeksprutten will determine that—and if the energy demands are within reason to obtain the desired results, then we will have what might be called a true space drive.”

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” Sander-Lange asked.

  “First consider the space drive we now use, reaction rockets such as the ones that power the Soviet capsule that is now on its way to the Moon. Rockets move through application of the law of action-and-reaction. Throw something away in one direction and you move in the other. Thousands of pounds of fuel, reaction mass, must be lifted for every pound that arrives at its destination. This process is expensive, complicated, and of only limited usage. A true space drive, independent of this mass-to-load ratio, would be as functionally practical as an automobile or a seagoing ship. It would power a true spacegoing ship. The planets might become as accessible as the other parts of our own world. Since reaction mass is not to be considered, a true space drive could be run constantly, building up acceleration to midpoint in its flight, then reversing direction and decelerating continuously until it landed. This would make a simply incredible difference in the time needed to fly to the Moon or the planets.”