"What does this do?" asked Murfree.
He looked at it and enviously admitted to himself that every single part of it was meaningless. He saw a switch which was a light-switch from Bud's wrecked car. He saw a bare iron wire which he guessed would turn white with frost when the device was turned on to reveal that it was absorbing heat and yielding electricity. But every other part seemed nonsense.
"This here dinkus," said Bud Gregory hopefully, "it—uh—you know, Mr. Murfree, how the hunks of stuff that things are made of stick together, suh. They kinda pull on each other."
Murfree nodded. Bud Gregory referred to interatomic and intermolecular attraction. The force which holds atoms together in molecules and molecules in crystals and ultimately makes planets possible.
"When you—uh—break somethin'," said Bud Gregory, "the parts you break it into stop pullin' at each other. They' too far away from each other."
Here Bud Gregory referred to the inexorable operation of the law of inverse squares Atoms draw each other only at atomic distances. Molecules adhere only at distances comparable to the diameter of molecule Otherwise all objects would fuse together immovably.
"This—uh—kinda changes that," said Bt Gregory, his forehead creased in the effort to explain. "It makes 'em still pull at each other, even far away."
"If you break a nail or a piece of glass an' put one piece in this place here it kinda gets in focus, Mr. Murfree. An' if you point the dinkus at the other piece—uh—no matter how far away the other part is, it—uh—pulls back to the one that's in focus."
Murfree felt incredulous but he suppressed it. In his mind, he knew that if Bud Gregory said it, it was so. Of course it violated all known laws of physics. . . .
"It ain't," said Bud Gregory, "because they used to be one piece of stuff, but because they're the same kinda stuff."
THEN Murfree felt as if he'd been jolted all the way down to his shoe-soles. A steel magnet will draw another steel magnet itself, not because they are steel but because they are magnets.
But Bud Gregory was saying that a bit of iron in the focus of his gadget would draw other bits of iron whether there was magnetism or not. More, he said that glass would draw glass! Murfree knew that Bud Gregory could do anything, but he could not believe that!
"I don't see how—"
"I'll show you, suh," said Bud Gregory anxiously. "I'll put a drop o' water right here where it focuses, suh, an' point it at the inlet yonder. It'll draw water."
He put a drop of water on a plate behind the straightened-out section of gas-line tubing. He pointed the device at the broad waters of this inlet of Puget Sound. He turned the switch.
Water splashed from the protective metal baffle-plate at the end of the gadget's base—quantities of water. It splashed as if a fire-hose played upon the baffle-plate. Murfree, goggling, saw a straight pencil of pure liquid water, impossibly defying gravity, coming toward the gadget from an indefinite distance out in the Sound.
It flowed through emptiness, through space, through the air itself as if it were in an invisible hose. It came in a mathematically straight line from the inlet beyond the shore. It hit the baffle and splashed. And Lurfree knew that, since water was in the focus of the gadget, therefore water had been drawn from wherever the tube pointed.
Bud Gregory flipped off the switch. Water used to splash. A half-mile-long cable of water, stretched taut in mid-air, abruptly dropped. There was a wet streak across the ground toward the inlet. There was a long path of pock-markings where a straight line of water had fallen back into the inlet.
"M-my gracious!" said Murfree, dazed even though he knew Bud Gregory's gifts. "You've got a sort of artificial gravity! Only—only it's selective! You can pull any element toward you."
"Yes, suh," said Bud Gregory. He sweated. Looking uncertainly at Murfree. "I—uh—I figured, suh, that if we could get up a liddle bit of that dust, we could kinda put it in this focus place, suh, an' we could sweep this dinkus all around an' all the dust that was the same kind as that in the focus would get pulled up an' stop against this plate that stopped the water.
"I put that plate on last," he added ruefully. "First time I turned on this thing I tried water an' I got soakin' wet. I hadda put somethin' on to catch the stuff that was bein' pulled."
Murfree stared, stunned, at the completely impossible device. No wonder Bud Gregory hadn't wanted it seen lest it make him liable to a charge of witchcraft! Such a charge was more likely in his native Appalachians, but even here—
"You think that'll do what you want, Mr. Murfree?" asked Bud Gregory hopefully.
Murfree opened his mouth to speak exultantly. Then he realized—he became tormented by the ruthless reasoning which told him of the present uselessness of this device, even while he was filled with envy of the man who had been able to make it and with admiration for the achievement itself.
"No-o-o-o," said Murfree reluctantly. "It won't do because there'd be the job of getting a sample of the dust. It would take weeks to gather up a carload of top-soil and separate the radioactive dust from it. We couldn't allow impurities such as humus or sand, or it would pull humus and sand with the dust.
"And if it took weeks we wouldn't have the dust itself but the stuff the dust had turned into. And even besides that—what would happen if you pulled into that gadget all the radioactive matter intended for a day's dose of poison for a continent!"
Bud Gregory's shoulders drooped.
"I reckon," he admitted, "that it would sure kill anybody who was workin' the dinkus."
"Definitely," said Murfree. "So far, no good."
There was a pause.
"Mr. Murfree," said Bud Gregory anxiously, "let's drink a little beer an' just set a while, suh. Maybe you'll think of somethin'."
Murfree followed him grimly back to the shack. He was in the completely maddening position now of having Bud Gregory's complete cooperation and having no idea how it could possibly be used.
Bud would make anything Murfree asked but Murfree could not imagine a device which would defeat the weapon in use against the United States. And the weapon had to be defeated before any search could be made for those who wielded it!
Murfree sat with a glass of beer in his hands. He racked his brains vainly. Bud Gregory sat beside him, drinking beer. Presently he spoke dreamily.
"Y'know, suh, I'm thinkin' that maybe instead o' buyin' a car outa that ten dollars' a day I got comin' to me, maybe I'll get me a boat. You can set a lot more comfortable in a boat than in a car you got to be drivin' all the time. Yes, suh, I'm gain' to think about buyin' me a boat!" ...
The tuna-boats worked valorously for the murder of a nation. Their crews knew joyfully that the last of their fellows who had remained in the United States—to test the results of their campaign—had left that country. The intensity of radioactivity which should result in mutations and monsters had almost been reached.
Sterility would follow, then death. And of course those who worked to murder America would cheerfully sacrifice their lives to accomplish it if necessary. Hatred is a stronger force than patriotism.
But there was no need and every man wanted to survive for the hellish satisfaction of knowing that all North America was a place of corpses—not even rotting because even the bacteria of putrefaction were dead too.
The tuna-boats towed their lead torpedoes away from the island where atom-piles made poison for them to scatter on the wind. They scattered that poison and returned for more. Enthusiasm mounted and mounted. Plans began for such a celebration as would befit the destruction of the greatest nation upon earth.