11: Fields
“Okay. Your duties are as follows: Get Breen. I don't care how you get him, but get him soon. That faker! He posed for twenty years as a scientist without ever being apprehended. Well, I'm going to do some apprehending that'll make all previous apprehending look like no apprehension at all. You with me?”
“Yes,” said Battle, very much confused. “What's that thing you have?”
“Piggy-back heat-ray. You transpose the air in its path into an unstable isotope which tends to carry all energy as heat. Then you shoot your juice light, or whatever along the isotopic path and you burn whatever's on the receiving end. You want a few?”
“No,” said Battle. “I have my gats. What else have you got for offense and defense?” Underbottam opened a cabinet and proudly waved an arm. “Everything,” he said.
“Disintegraters, heat-rays, bombs of every type. And impenetrable shields of energy, massive and portable. What more do I need?”
From THE REVERSIBLE REVOLUTIONS by Cecil Corwin, Cosmic Stories, March 1941. Art by Morey, Bok, Kyle, Hunt, Forte. Copyright expired.
Contributors and Attributions
Benjamin Crowell (Fullerton College). Conceptual Physics is copyrighted with a CC-BY-SA license.