“It’s O. K.,” Gallegher said. “You’re on top, at least. Look out that window.”
Smeith obeyed. He popped back in again, beaming.
“That hole—”
“Right. I didn’t cart the dirt away, either. I’ll give you a demonstration presently.”
“You will in jail,” Hopper said acidly. “I warned you, Gallegher, that I’m not a man to play around with. I gave you a thousand credits to do a job for me, and you neither did the job nor returned the money.”
Commander Wall was staring, his coffee cup, forgotten, balanced in one hand. An officer moved forward and took Gallegher’s arm.
“Wait a minute,” Wall began, but Smeith was quicker.
“I think I owe Mr. Gallegher some credits,” he said, snatching out a wallet. “I’ve not much more than a thousand on me, but you can take a check for the balance, I suppose. If this—gentleman—wants cash, there should be a thousand here.”
Gallegher gulped.
Smeith nodded at him encouragingly. “You did my job for me, you know. I can begin construction—and excavation—tomorrow. Without bothering to get a trucking permit, either.”
Hopper’s teeth showed. “The devil with the money! I’m going to teach this man a lesson! My time is worth plenty, and he’s completely upset my schedule. Options, scouts—I’ve gone ahead on the assumption that he could do what I paid
Smeith looked around. “But—I’ll stand good for Mr. Gallegher. I’ll reimburse—”
“No!” Hopper snapped.
“The man says no,” Gallegher murmured. “It’s just my heart’s blood he wants. Malevolent little devil, isn’t he?”
“You drunken idiot!” Hopper snarled. “Take him to the jail, officers. Now!”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Gallegher,” Smeith encouraged. “I’ll have you out in no time. I can pull a few wires myself.”
Gallegher’s jaw dropped. He breathed hoarsely, in an asthmatic fashion, as he stared at Smeith, who drew back.
“Wires,” Gallegher whispered. “And a… a stereoscopic screen that can be viewed from any angle. You said—wires!”
“Take him away,” Hopper ordered brusquely.
Gallegher tried to wrench away from the officers holding him. “Wait a minute! One minute! I’ve got the answer now. It must be the answer. Hopper, I’ve done what you wanted—and you, too, commander. Let me go.”
Hopper sneered and jerked his thumb toward the door. Narcissus walked forward, cat-footed. “Shall I break their heads, chief?” he inquired gently. “I like blood. It’s a primary color.”
Commander Wall put down his coffee cup and rose, his voice sounding crisp and metallic. “All right, officers. Let Mr. Gallegher go.”
“Don’t do it,” Hopper insisted. “Who are you, anyway? A space captain!”
Wall’s weathered cheeks darkened. He brought out a badge in a small leather case. “Commander Wall,” he said. “Administrative Space Commission. You”—he pointed to Narcissus—“I’m deputizing you as a government agent, pro tem. If these officers don’t release Mr. Gallegher ha five seconds, go on and break their heads.”
But that was unnecessary. The Space Commission was big. It had the government behind it, and local officials were, by comparison, small potatoes. The officers hastily released Gallegher and tried to look as though they’d never touched him.
Hopper seemed ready to explode. “By what right do you interfere with justice,. Commander?” he demanded.
“Right of priority. The government needs a device Mr. Gallegher has made for us. He deserves a hearing, at least.”
“He does not!”
Wall eyed Hopper coldly. “I think he said, a few moments ago, that he fcad fulfilled your commission also.”
“With that?” The big shot pointed to the machine. “Does that look like a stereoscopic screen?”
Gallegher said, “Get me an ultraviolet, Narcissus. Fluorescent.” He went to the device, praying that his guess was right. But it had to be. There was no other possible answer. Extract nitrogen from dirt or rock, extract all gaseous content, and you have inert matter.
Gallegher touched the switch. The machine started to sing “St. James Infirmary.” Commander Wall looked startled and slightly less sympathetic. Hopper snorted. Smeith ran to the window and ecstatically watched the long tentacles eat dirt, swirling madly in the moonlit pit below.
“The lamp, Narcissus.”
It was already hooked up on an extension cord. Gallegher moved it slowly about the machine. Presently he had reached the grooved wheel at the extreme end, farthest from the window.
Something fluoresced.
It fluoresced blue—emerging from the little valve in the metal cylinder, winding about the grooved wheel, and piling in coils on the laboratory floor. Gallegher touched the switch; as the machine stopped, the valve snapped shut, cutting off the blue, cryptic thing that emerged from the cylinder. Gallegher picked up the coil. As he moved the light away, it vanished. He brought the lamp closer—it reappeared.
“Here you are, commander,” he said. “Try it.”
Wall squinted at the fluorescence. “Tensile strength?”
“Plenty,” Gallegher said. “It has to be. Nonorganic, mineral content of solid earth, compacted and compressed into wire. Sure, it’s got tensile strength. Only you couldn’t support a ton weight with it.”
Wall nodded. “Of course not. It would cut through steel like a thread through butter. Fine, Mr. Gallegher. We’ll have to make tests—”
“Go ahead. It’ll stand up. You can run this wire around comers all you want, from one end of a spaceship to another, and it’ll never snap under stress. It’s too thin. It won’t—it can’t—be strained unevenly, because it’s too thin. A wire cable couldn’t do it. You needed flexibility that wouldn’t cancel tensile strength. The only possible answer was a thin, tough wire.”
The commander grinned. That was enough.
“We*U have the routine tests,” he said. “Need any money now, though? We’ll advance anything you need, within reason—say up to ten thousand.”
Hopper pushed forward. “I never ordered wire, Gallegher. So you haven’t fulfilled my commission.”
Gallegher didn’t answer. He was adjusting his lamp. The wire changed from blue to yellow fluorescence, and then to red.
“This is your screen, wise guy,” Gallegher said. “See the pretty colors?”
“Naturally I see them! I’m not blind. But—”
“Different colors, depending on how many angstroms I use. Thus. Red. Blue. Red again. Yellow. And when I turn off the lamp—”
The wire Wall still held became invisible.
Hopper closed his mouth with a snap. He leaned forward, cocking his head to one side.
Gallegher said, “The wire’s got the same refractive index as air. I made it that way, on purpose.” He had the grace to blush slightly. Oh, well—he could buy Gallegher Plus a drink later.
“On purpose?”
“You wanted a stereoscopic screen which could be viewed from any angle without optical distortion. And in color—that goes without saying, these days. Well, here it is.”
Hopper breathed hard.
Gallegher beamed at him, “Take a box frame and string each square with this wire. Make a mesh screen. Do that on all four sides. String enough wires inside of the box. You have, in effect, an invisible cube, made of wire. All right. Use ultraviolet to project your film or your television, and you have patterns of fluorescence, depending on the angstrom strength patterns. In other words—a picture. A colored picture. A three-dimensional picture, because it’s projected onto an invisible cube. And, finally, one that can be viewed from any angle without distortion, because it does more than give an optical illusion of stereoscopic vision—it’s actually a three-dimensional picture. Catch?”