“Until your enemy gets his hands on that weapon too.”
“True. But if the weapon were sufficiently terrible, the mere fact of its existence might serve as a deterrent to hostilities.”
Newcombe swallowed nervously, tongue-tied. “What sort of… um, device… did you have in mind?”
“Ah, you are curious then. I would expect no less.”
Barron gestured to the waiters again, who in turn began clearing away the soup bowls. Newcombe realized that he hadn’t even tasted the vichyssoise, and when several large platters of prime rib were placed on the table, he found that he could barely look at them. His appetite was gone.
The champagne flutes were cleared away as well, replaced by wine glasses, into which the waiters began decanting a rich, dark red wine. Newcombe heard one of the waiters telling Lafayette the vintage — something French — and the writer clucked disapprovingly, but it meant nothing to the scientist.
As the rest of the party indulged in the repast, Barron resumed speaking. “General Vaughn tells me that you are quite familiar with the work of Nikola Tesla.”
The apparent shift in topics momentarily cheered the scientist. “I am indeed. The man is a genius.”
“He is of course most well-known for his work as an inventor of electrical devices, but some of his work focused on mechanically produced resonance waves.”
“Ah, that business with the earthquake machine,” said Lafayette. “Tesla claims that back in the 1880s he built a vibrational device that shook a building apart and caused a minor earthquake. He even said that he could build a device, small enough to fit in his pocket, that would shake the Empire State Building to its foundation. He told the story a couple years back in order to get money to build some newfangled device that would allow him to see through the earth, or some such nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense,” objected Newcombe. “By measuring the rate at which energy waves travel through an unknown medium, you can determine the composition of the mass. Seismic waves, such as are generated in earthquakes, travel through the entire planet. Tesla was proposing to use these reliable properties to create a device that might be used to find subterranean mineral deposits.” He turned his blurry gaze back to Barron. “A tool, not a weapon.”
“And yet, the very genesis of this technology was a device capable of shaking buildings apart and creating earthquakes, was it not? Such is the curious marriage of science and war.”
“A machine that can create earthquakes,” added Vaughn. “If you had that, no one would mess with you. That’s how you put an end to war, Newcombe.”
The scientist frowned. “Well, Mr. Barron, it would seem to me that if you want to build this earthquake machine, you’d be better served giving your money to Tesla. It’s really not my area of expertise.”
Barron waved his hand, dismissively. “The device is already built. I have a working prototype in the laboratory here aboard the Majestic. In tests, it has produced vibrational waves that can liquefy solid ground.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“It’s a matter of scale. The prototype is far too small to generate the kind of energy waves necessary for my purposes. It would be analogous to throwing a pebble in a still lake. Although the ripples from that pebble will spread out across the entire lake, they would have very little effect on, say a drifting rowboat. Throw in a larger stone, however, and the effect is much more pronounced.”
“So just build a bigger machine,” Lafayette suggested around a mouthful of meat.
“Would that it were so simple. To return to my analogy, it is an easy thing for anyone to pick up a pebble and toss it into the lake. But in order to produce a wave capable of overturning the rowboat, a large stone… a boulder perhaps… is needed.”
“You’re talking about the limitations of energy,” Newcombe exclaimed. “Dodge and I wrote about that in our column on death rays. The amount of energy necessary to generate such an effect is always going to be greater than the amount energy it actually produces. In your example, it would much easier to simply swim out and tip the boat over, than to try to lift a boulder up and heave it into the lake.”
“You misapprehend my meaning, Dr. Newcombe.” Barron pushed away from the table and stood, holding up the crystal wine glass by the base. “Observe.”
He dipped a fingertip into his wine, and then began rubbing the rim of the glass in slow but deliberate circles. Almost immediately, a high-pitched hum filled the dining room. Barron’s finger began moving faster and the hum quickly built to ear-splitting intensity. Then, just as Newcombe was about to give into the impulse to cover his ears, the flute shattered in a splash of wine and leaded crystal splinters.
Barron settled back into his chair, brushing the debris away with a napkin. “The wave device functions in much the same way as what I have demonstrated. Energy is not the limiting factor. The problem we are having with the larger scale version of the machine is that the resonance waves it produces are as destructive to the machine as they are to the intended target. The waves literally rip the machine apart at a molecular level. Thus far, we have found no material capable of withstanding the waves at the desired intensity.”
“Then again, I must ask, what do you expect me to accomplish?” Newcombe’s tone was exasperated, but secretly he felt a measure of relief. “I cannot create some miracle alloy that will permit you to contravene the laws of physics. Perhaps your earthquake machine simply isn’t meant to be.”
Barron seemed not to have heard him. “There exists however, one type of metal that may allow us to surmount this obstacle. And you are unquestionably the expert on that substance.”
“And what might—” Suddenly, Newcombe knew the answer. He cast an accusing glance down the table at Vaughn. “You told him? You were sworn to secrecy.”
“Don’t lecture me on breaking oaths,” snarled the former military officer.
“What on earth…?” Lafayette’s question barely penetrated the tension hovering above the table, and in a rare display of self-control, he decided to keep his mouth shut.
“Dr. Newcombe!” Barron’s deep voice rumbled like a thunderclap. “General Vaughn violated no secrets. The President himself informed me of the existence of this miracle metal of yours, and told me everything else about the… what did your friend Dalton call it? The Outpost?”
Newcombe sagged back in his chair. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you again, Mr. Barron, but the objects we recovered from the Outpost, what few still remain, have all ceased functioning. And the metal is impervious. We’ve never succeeded in melting it down or manipulating it in any other way.”
“I’m aware of that,” Barron replied calmly. “But the metal is nonetheless terrestrial, is it not?”
“Terrestrial?” That gave him pause. He scratched his head thoughtfully. “I suppose it must be. The only other possibility would be some sort of meteoric metal, but most metallic meteorites are made of the metals commonly found on earth, anyway.”
“So would you agree that at some point, a metallurgist or artisan was able to refine and cast the metal?”
“I…?” Newcombe shrugged.
“Are you familiar with titanium metal, doctor?”
“I am, and I can assure you that the objects from the Outpost were not made of it.”
“Titanium is, ounce for ounce, one of the strongest metals in existence, with an extremely high melting point. When it is refined by a chemical process and cast, it is almost impossible to cut, melt or reshape again. I propose that this may also be true of the metal used in the creation of the objects you studied.”
“The ancients called it adamantine!”
The cheerful voice, with just a hint of an Irish brogue, came from a woman sitting to Newcombe’s right, and startled the scientist. It was the first time any of the other dinner guests had spoken, and he had almost forgotten that they were not alone. He turned sideways and squinted at her. He could tell that she had brown hair, and was wearing a black gown, but not much else.