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but things are better now. We got a lot of chops and steaks out of the last
battle."
The three Earthlings stopped eating for a moment and their eyes bulged as they
realized they were eating their former allies, then enemies, now reduced back
to their normal role of meat animals.
"It's as if we were fighting a war against Angus cows," Jerry explained,
speaking for them all. "We wouldn't let all those steaks go to waste just
because they were the enemy. And you know what happens to a bull after a
bullfight."
Thus reassured, they dived in with a will and cleaned their plates under the
benevolent and multiple eyes of their host. When the last scrap of food had
been consumed, both John and Sally crapped out on the spot and began to snore.
But not so Jerry, who knew his duty to rescue his comrade, so he staggered to
his feet; besides, he had to find the head. It proved to be an interesting
cubicle, and he couldn't figure out how anything really worked, but he did his
best and emerged ready for work. In a matter of minutes the particle
accelerator was fired up and calibrated and the ball of cheddar underwent the
barrage that transformed it into a new form of matter. Jerry spared time for
only one jubilant gaze before rushing to construct the necessary circuitry to
activate the cheddite to generate the kappa radiation. Here the eons-old
genius of the Garnishee came into play, and he was shown how to operate an
incredible machine that constructed other machines from an outline of their
functions drawn on a screen. In a matter of seconds it delivered a stronger,
yet miniaturized version of the original cheddite projector - no bigger than
an Earth flashlight. In fact, it looked very much like a five-cell flashlight
with the cheddite mounted in the evacuated chamber with a glass cover just
where the bulb would normally be. It could be mounted in delicate gimbals for
distant work and could also be used as a hand weapon whisking anything it was
pointed at into the lambda dimension, then depositing the whisked-away object
one hundred feet above the surface of the nearby sun. A potent weapon indeed.
The other two awoke, groaning, to a demonstration of the device.
"That's half the game." John eructated. "Now the Pleasantville Eagle must be
prepared as a space vessel to continue the chase."
"Some work while others sleep!" Jerry chuckled. "Just come and look what the
incredible Garnishee have done with their eons-old knowledge."
He led the way back to their plane, which looked superficially the same,
though it had been polished to a high gloss. However, major changes had been
made in the interior, not all of which were always visible to the naked eye.
"First off," explained Jerry, "the space between the inner and outer skin of
the plane has been filled with insulite, which is a better insulater than a
vacuum, I have been told. All the exterior windows are of transparent
armolite, which is clear as glass and as strong as steel. We won't need oxygen
for the engines, though there is now a supply for ourselves, since the fuel
tanks are filled with combustite, a fuel a thousand times more powerful than
our ordinary jet fuel and which does not need oxygen to burn. This is also
used for powerful jets under the tail that may come in handy someday. All
batteries have been
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replaced with ones made of Garnishee capacitite which seem to have unlimited
capacity for storing electrical energy. Back here the galley has been expanded
into a complete kitchen with hibachi and radar oven, and beyond it a frozen
food locker that could feed us for five years if need be. Farther back is a
completely outfitted laboratory and machine shop with stockpiles of raw
ingredients. In this locker are extra-powerful spacesuits, each almost a small
spaceship in itself, one for each of us and - gosh, I hope he uses it one for
Chuck as well." He hurried on so they would not hear the huskiness in his
voice, but they heard it nevertheless and understood.
"Up here on top, the flight deck has been expanded right back to take over the
entire first-class lounge; the bar's a deck below now, to hold all the new
equipment and controls. This chair here is for the gunner because
remote-controlled gun turrets have been installed in twelve positions and
armed with rapid-fire weapons firing pellets filled with destructite, an
explosive a thousand times more powerful than gunpowder."
He went on to point out the various controls and other devices far too
numerous to mention, though he promised to later, but he did point out and
take pride in one set of controls that filled an entire end of the compartment
"I don't know if we will ever need this," he opined, "but the old Eagle has
been equipped with a space drive, the same kind that the Lortonoi and everyone
else in the galaxy use, the only kind of space drive that cut the mustard
until the cheddite projector came down the pike and knocked it into a cocked
hat
It's called a space warper."
"How does it work?" John queried.
"By warping space. There is a great projector source which projects a beam of
energy through a disk of warpite. This produces a new form of radiation that
emerges in the form of warpicles, not wavicles, and is sent blasting through
space ahead of the ship. What it does is reach out and seize the very fabric
of space itself and pull it toward the ship until there is a great bulge in
space flattened out before the ship, which then flies through it as the warp
is released so that it emerges on the far side of the bulge, which is maybe a
light year or so ahead. Clear?"
"Clear!" John articulated. "I wish I had a bit of what you been smoking."
"All right, no need to get shirty; let me give you the example that the
Garnishee gave me. Imagine your spaceship as being a needle lying on a rug -
you with me so far?"
"The sarcasm we can live without," John huffed. "Get on with it."
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