"I just want you to talk," said Murfree. "Five dollars for half an hour, just for telling me about that outfit you built for somebody—that outfit that stops neutrons cold. Bud Gregory blinked at him.
"Neutrons," Murfree reminded him, "are the little bits of stuff that make the Geiger counter—the funny radio tube—conduct electricity. You made an outfit for somebody that would stop them."
Bud Gregory grinned.
"Now, how in heck did you know that?" he asked, marveling. "That fella wasn't likely to tell nobody, an' I ain't!"
"I know!" said Murfree grimly. "That fellow wasn't as smart as he thought he was. He's dead. That outfit killed him."
Bud Gregory was startled. Then his grin turned rueful.
"Serves 'im right," he said uncomfortably, "but it's his own fault. I told him it was dang'rous, but he done me a dirty trick. He swore he was gonna law me for the way I fixed his car. He said the way I fixed it, he couldn't sell it even if it would run.
"Then he says he'd call it square if I fixed up another kinda gadget for 'im, but I was gonna go to jail or have to pay for his car if I didn't. I told him it was dang'rous, but I didn't have no money to pay for his car. It run good, too! Better'n a new one!"
Murfree waited. He counted out five one-dollar bills.
"If he's dead," repeated Bud Gregory uncomfortably, "it ain't my fault! I told him it was dang'rous but he wanted it, so ruther'n try to pay a hundred an' a quarter or have a pack o' lawin', I done it. It took a time, too!"
Murfree handed over one one-dollar bill. "That's six minutes' talk," he said. "Go on."
Bud Gregory leaned back. He spat expansively.
"Don't mind this kind of work so much," he said appreciatively. "This fella come drivin' in just like you done. He'd skidded off a wet clay patch an' smashed his radiator all to smithereens. He wanted me to fix it. It was too tough a job.
"I told him I didn't aim to work myself to death, but he kept pesterin' me, so I says, `All right. I'll fix 'er so she can run for ten dollars.' I thought that'd scare him off, but he took me up. An' I didn't know how to fix it, but I knew I could figger out a way.
"So I got to thinkin', with him pacin' up an' down waitin' for me to set to work. An' I thought to myself, `Fixin' that radiator is a job of work! It'd be easier to figger out some other way to keep her cool!' An' then it come to me."
"What?"
"All a radiator does," drawled Bud Gregory, "is let the heat get out of the coolin' water. His radiator wasn't no good. If I fixed up some other way to take the heat out of the coolin' water, she'd run just as good an' I could bypass the radiator with a piece o' hose. So I done it. Took me near an hour."
"How'd you take the heat out of the water?" demanded Murfree.
"Shucks!" said Bud Gregory. "I got a knack for that kind of thing. Y'know you can heat a wire by passin' a current through it. I figured you can cool a wire by takin' current out of it.
"I fixed up a wire so the little hunks of stuff that metal's made of got all lined up. Then the heat tries to knock 'em out of line, an' makes 'em pass on them—uh—them little spinnin' things that a electric current is."
MURFREE felt a crawling sensation at the back of his skull. This was uncanny. Bud Gregory was speaking of the polarization of atoms in a metal wire—which cannot be done—so that the random movements imparted by heat—which he could not know anything at all about—would set up strains which could only be relieved by an exchange of electrons, which would in turn, mean a current of electricity.
He had simply reversed the normal process of turning current into heat, and had turned heat into electricity to cool a motor. The direct transformation of heat into electricity has been a scientists' dream for a hundred years, one never accomplished.
But Bud Gregory had done it to save himself the trouble of repairing a shattered radiator.
"So," said Bud Gregory, "I stuck that wire in a hose an' bypassed the radiator. It'd take out the heat an' give current. I strung some ordinary wire under the car to use up the current. That's all.
"The car run good. He went off, but a week later he come back ragin' that he couldn't sell his car. Nobody'd buy it without a regular radiator workin'. How long I been talk—
Murfee silently passed over another dollar bill. Bud Gregory was decidedly something that there is no word for. He knew intuitively the things that trained scientists have as yet only partly found out. Just as some men know by instinct where fish will be found and what bait they will rise to, Bud Gregory knew the behavior of atoms and electrons.
As freak mathematical marvels—some of them half-imbeciles otherwise—perform infinitely complex mathematics problems in their heads with no clear idea of the process, so Bud Gregory performed miracles in physics with no idea how he did it. He simply knew the right answer when a problem was presented.
Murfree felt an envy so acute that it was almost hatred. But back in the hills there was a thing that might make the world uninhabitable. And Bud Gregory had made it. He fondled the dollar bill, folding it.
"He wanted me to fix his car right, he says, an' I got mad. I told him it was righter than when it was made. An' it was! Then he says he's goin' to law me. But then he says, 'Look here! I was makin' a trip lookin' for some minerals.
" 'I got a thing that helps me find 'em, but part of it's got lost. You fix me another an' it'll save me a long trip out an' I'll forget about the car an' pay you ten dollars extra.' " He spat with an air of luxury.
"He had a dinkus like you got, only bigger. An' he'd had a sheet o' metal that was supposed to block off them little hunks of stuff that come down out of the sky. That's what'd got lost. He says if I can fix somethin' to take its place he'll call it square, but he'll law me otherwise."
Murfree interpreted mentally. Someone had been making a trip into the Smokies in search of minerals. He had a Geiger counter. He must have been working on a hunch that uranium could be found. It was not improbable.
When Bud Gregory fixed his car in an utterly improbable fashion—as he'd fixed Murfree's—this unknown other man had understood, like Murfree. But he'd come back in feigned rage and demanded the equivalent of a cadmium shield, knowing that cadmium was unavailable.
He'd realized what Bud Gregory was—a near-illiterate with intuitive knowledge of what subatomic particles could be made to do, a knowledge as unreasoning and as unconscious as the feats of mathematical geniuses. He'd demanded an impossibility because he knew Bud Gregory could achieve it. And Bud Gregory had!
"He made me plenty mad," said the lanky man, resentfully. "He stood there sneerin' at me, sayin' if I was so smart as to fix his car so it would run an' he couldn't sell it, maybe I could fix somethin' that he needed. Either that or else."
Murfree recognized something like genius in the unknown man too. He'd taken the one infallible course to make Bud Gregory work. Threaten his leisure and sneer at his ability. Of course the unknown got what he wanted!
"So?" said Murfree.
"I fixed him up!" said Bud Gregory in amiable spite. "I fixed up a couple of radio tubes—he had 'em—an' made 'em so that they made a kind of horn-shaped—uhblock. Nothin' could go through it. Nothin'! No matter what size you fixed it, the horn 'ud be the same shape, an' you could make it any size.
"Nothin' would get through the walls of that horn. Not even them little hunks of stuff you call—uh—neutrons. I set up the dinkus an' showed him.
"His clickin' dinkus didn't click any more. It stopped them neutrons dead. An' then I says, 'Just for extra, you can run a wire around the place you camp an' set this upside down an' not even bugs can get in to crawl on you. But it's dangerous! It's dangerous!'" He looked at Murfree, grinning.
"I figured it'd make him sick as a dog but I'd warned 'im! It ain't my fault if he stayed in it an' died!"