But it was going to be his investigation. If nothing came of it, nothing need be said. If on the other hand it turned out to be important, he could with immense modesty and impressive clarity bring the matter to the attention of the Colonel; and perhaps then the Colonel might be persuaded to revise his opinion of ROTC Lieutenants. So he made a field trip on his own time and discovered an area wherein to varying degrees his pocket voltmeter would not work properly. And it dawned on him that what he had found was something which inhibited magnetism. The rugged but sensitive coils and relays in the proximity fuses, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist when they passed this particular hillside lower than forty yards. Permanent magnets were damped just as electromagnets.
Nothing in Barrows’ brief but brilliant career had even approached this incredible phenomenon in potential. His accurate and imaginative mind drank and drank of it and he saw visions: the identification and analysis of the phenomenon (Barrows Effect, perhaps?) and then a laboratory effort—successful of course—to duplicate it. Then, application. A field generator which would throw up an invisible wall of the force; aircraft and their communications—even their intercoms—failing with the failure of their many magnets. Seeking gear on guided missiles, arming and blasting devices, and of course the disarming of proximity fuses… the perfect defensive weapon for the electromagnetic age… and how much else? No limit to it. Then there would be the demonstrations of course, the Colonel introducing him to renowned scientists and military men: ‘ This, gentlemen, is your ROTC man!’
But first he had to find what was doing it, now that he knew where it was being done; and so he designed and built a detector. It was simple and ingenious and very carefully calibrated. While engaged in the work, his irrepressible mind wrought and twisted and admired and reworked the whole concept of ‘contramagnetism’. He extrapolated a series of laws and derived effects just as a mathematical pastime and fired them off to the Institute of Electrical Engineers, who could appreciate them and did; for they were later published in the Journal. He even amused himself in gunnery practice by warning his men against low-elevation shelling over his area, because ‘the pixies would degauss (demagnetize) their proximity fuses’. And this gave him a high delight, for he pictured himself telling them later that his fanciful remark had been nothing but the truth and that had they the wit God gave a goose they could have gone out and dug up the thing, whatever it was, for themselves.
At last he finished his detector. It involved a mercury switch and a solenoid and a variable power supply and would detect the very slightest changes in the field of its own magnet. It weighed about forty pounds but this mattered not at all since he did not intend to carry it. He got the best ordnance maps of the area that he could find, appointed as a volunteer the stupidest-looking Pfc he could find, and spent a long day of his furlough time out on the range, carefully zigzagging the slope and checking the readings off on his map until he located the centre of the degaussing effect.
It was in a field on an old abandoned farm. In the middle of the field was an ancient truck in the last stages of oxidation. Drought and drift, rain and thaw had all but buried the machine and the Lieutenant flogged himself and his patient soldier into a frenzy of explosive excavation. After sweaty hours, they had dug and scraped and brushed until what was left of the truck stood free and clear; and under it they found the source of the incredible field.
From each corner of the frame ran a gleaming silvery cable. They came together at the steering column and joined and thence a single cable ran upward to a small box. From the box protruded a lever. There was no apparent power source but the thing was operating.
When Barrows pushed the lever forward, the twisted wreck groaned and sank noticeably into the soft ground. When he pulled the lever back, it crackled and creaked and lifted up to the limits of its broken springs and wanted to lift even more.
He returned the lever to neutral and stepped back.
This was everything he had hoped to find certainly and made practical the wildest of his dreams. It was the degaussing generator, awaiting only his dissection and analysis. But it was all these things as a by-product.
Lever forward, this device made the truck heavier. Lever back, lighter.
It was anti-gravity!
Anti-gravity: a fantasy, a dream. Anti-gravity, which would change the face of the earth in ways which would make the effects of steam, electricity, even nuclear power, mere sproutings of technology in the orchard this device would grow. Here was skyward architecture no artist had yet dared to paint; here was wingless flight and escape to the planets, to the stars, perhaps. Here was a new era in transportation, logistics, even the dance, even medicine. And oh, the research… and it was all his.
The soldier, the dull-witted Pfc, stepped forward and yanked the lever full back. He smiled and threw himself at Barrows’ legs. Barrows kicked free, stood, sprang so his knees crackled. He stretched, reached, and the tips of his fingers touched the cool bright underside of one of the cables. The contact could not have lasted longer than a tenth of a second; but for years afterwards, for all the years Barrows was to live, part of him seemed to stay there in the frozen instant, his fingertips on a miracle, his body adrift and free of earth.
He fell.
Nightmare.
First the breast-bursting time of pounding heart and forgotten breathing, the madness of an ancient ruin rising out of its element, faster and faster, smaller and smaller into the darkening sky, a patch, a pot, a speck, a hint of light where the high sunlight touched it. And then a numbness and pain when the breath came again.
From somewhere the pressure of laughter; from somewhere else, a fury to hate it and force it down.
A time of mad shouting arguments, words slurred into screams, the widening crescents of laughing eyes, and a scuttling shape escaping him, chuckling. He did it… and he tripped me besides.
Kill…
And nothing to kill; racing into the growing dark and nothing there; pound-pound of feet and fire in the guts and flame in the mind. Falling, hammering the uncaring sod.
The lonely return to the empty, so empty, so very empty hole in the ground. Stand in it and yearn upward for the silver cables you will never see again.
A yellow-red eye staring. Bellow and kick; the detector rising too, but only so high, turning over and over, smashed, the eye blind.
The long way back to barracks, dragging an invisible man called Agony whose heavy hands were clamped upon a broken foot.
Fall down. Rest and rise. Splash through, wallow, rise and rest and then the camp.
HQ. Wooden steps, the door dark; hollow hammering; blood and mud and hammering. Footsteps, voices: astonishment, concern, annoyance, anger.
The white helmets and the brassards: MP. Tell them, bring the Colonel. No one else, only the Colonel.
Shut up, you’ll wake the Colonel.
Colonel, it’s anti-magnetron, to the satellite, and freight; no more jets!
Shut up, ROTC boy.
Fight them then and someone screamed when someone stepped on the broken foot.
The nightmare lifted and he was on a white cot in a white room with black bars on the windows and a big MP at the door.
‘Where am I?’
‘Hospital, prison ward, Lieutenant.’
‘God, what happened?’
‘Search me, Sir. Mostly you seemed to want to kill some GI. Kept telling everybody what he looks like.’