The Second IF Reader of Science Fiction Read online

  “Yes, I imagine Bloom thinks a finite field will do, if it can be properly applied. Still, however ingenious he is,” and Priss smiled narrowly, “we needn’t take him to be infallible. His grasp on theory is quite faulty. He—he never earned his college degree, did you know that?”

  I was about to say that I knew that. After all, everyone did. But there was a touch of eagerness in Priss’s voice as he said it, and I looked up in time to catch animation in his eye, as though he were delighted to spread that piece of news. So I nodded my head as if I were filing it for future reference.

  “Then you would say, Professor Priss,” I prodded again, “that Bloom is probably wrong and that antigravity is impossible?”

  And finally Priss nodded and said, “The gravitational field can be weakened, of course, but if by anti-gravity we mean a true zero-gravity field—no gravity at all over a significant volume of space—then I suspect antigravity may turn out to be impossible, despite Bloom.” And I rather had what I wanted.

  III

  I wasn’t able to see Bloom for nearly three months after that, and when I did see him he was in an angry mood.

  He had grown angry at once, of course, when the news first broke concerning Priss’s statement. He let it be known that Priss would be invited to the eventual display of the anti-gravity device as soon as it was constructed and would even be asked to participate in the demonstration.

  Some reporter (not me, unfortunately) caught him between appointments and asked him to elaborate on that, and he said:

  “I’ll have the device eventually; soon, maybe. And you can be there, and so can anyone else the press would care to have there. And Professor James Priss can be there. He can represent Theoretical Science, and after I have demonstrated anti-gravity, he can adjust his theory to explain it. I’m sure he will know how to make his adjustments in masterly fashion and show exactly why I couldn’t possibly have failed. He might do it now and save time, but I suppose he won’t.”

  It was all said very politely, but you could hear the snarl under the rapid flow of words.

  Yet he continued his occasional game of billiards with Priss, and when the two met they behaved with complete propriety. One could tell the progress Bloom was making by their respective attitudes to the press. Bloom grew curt and even snappish, while Priss developed an increasing good humor.

  When my umpteenth request for an interview with Bloom was finally accepted, I wondered if perhaps that meant a break in Bloom’s quest. I had a little daydream of him announcing final success to me.

  It didn’t work out that way. He met me in his office at Bloom Enterprises in upstate New York. It was a wonderful setting, well away from any populated area, elaborately landscaped, and covering as much ground as a rather large industrial establishment. Edison at his height, two centuries ago, had never been as phenomenally successful as Bloom.

  But Bloom was not in a good humor. He came striding in ten minutes late and went snarling past his secretary’s desk with the barest nod in my direction. He was wearing a lab coat, unbuttoned.

  He threw himself into his chair and said, “I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, but I didn’t have as much time as I had hoped.” Bloom was a born showman and knew better than to antagonize the press, but I had the feeling he was having a great deal of difficulty at that moment in adhering to this principle.

  I made the obvious guess. “I am given to understand, sir, that your recent tests have been unsuccessful”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I would say it was general knowledge, Mr. Bloom.”

  “No, it isn’t. Don’t say that, young man! There is no general knowledge about what goes on in my laboratories and workshops. You’re stating the professor’s opinions, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m—”

  “Of course you are! Aren’t you the one to whom he made that statement—that anti-gravity is impossible?”

  “He didn’t make the statement that flatly.”

  “He never says anything flatly. But it was flat enough for him. And not as flat as I’ll have his damned rubber-sheet universe before I’m finished.”

  “Then does that mean you’re making progress, Mr. Bloom?”

  “You know I am,” he said with a snap. “Or you should know. Weren’t you there at the demonstration last week?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  I judged Bloom to be in trouble, or he wouldn’t be mentioning that demonstration. It worked, but it was not a world beater. Between the two poles of a magnet a region of lessened gravity was produced.

  It was done very cleverly. A Mossbauer Effect Balance was used to probe the space between the poles. If you’ve never seen an M-E Balance in action, it consists primarily of a tight monochromatic beam of gamma rays shot down the low-gravity field. The gamma rays change wavelength slightly but measurably under the influence of the gravitational field and if anything happens to alter the intensity of the field, the wavelength-change shifts correspondingly. It is an extremely delicate method for probing a gravitational field, and it worked like a charm. There was no question but that Bloom had lowered gravity.

  The trouble was that it had been done before by others. Bloom, to be sure, had made use of circuits that greatly increased the ease with which such an effect had been achieved (his system was typically ingenious and had been duly patented), and he maintained that it was by this method that anti-gravity would become not merely a scientific curiosity but a practical affair with industrial applications.

  Perhaps! But it was an incomplete job, and he didn’t usually make a fuss over incompleteness. He wouldn’t have done so this time if he didn’t have to display something.

  I said, “It’s my impression that what you accomplished at that, preliminary demonstration was 0.82 g, and better than that was achieved in Brazil last spring.”

  “That so? Well, calculate the energy input in Brazil and here and then tell me the difference in gravity decrease per kilowatt-hour. You’ll be surprised.”

  “But the point is, can you reach 0 g; zero gravity? That’s what Professor Priss thinks may be impossible. Everyone agrees that merely lessening the intensity of the field is no great feat.”

  Blooms fist clenched. I had the feeling that a key experiment had gone wrong that day and he was annoyed almost past endurance. Bloom hated to be balked by the universe.

  He said, “Theoreticians make me sick.” He said it in a low, controlled voice, as though he were finally tired of not saying it, and he was going to speak his mind and be damned. “Priss has won two Nobel Prizes for sloshing around a few equations, but what has he done with it? Nothing! I have done something with it and I’m going to do more with it, whether Priss likes it or not.

  I’m the one people will remember. I’m the one who gets the credit. He can keep his damned title and his Prizes and his kudos from the scholars. Listen, I’ll tell you what gripes him. Plain old-fashioned jealousy. It kills him that I get what I get for doing. He wants it for thinking.

  “I said to him once—We play billiards together, you know—”

  (It was at this point that I quoted Priss’s statement about billiards and got Bloom’s counter-statement. I never published either. That was just trivia.)

  “We play billiards,” said Bloom, when he had cooled down, “and I’ve won my share of games. We keep things friendly enough, what the hell—college chums and all that—though how he got through I’ll never know. He made it in physics, of course; and in math. But he got a bare pass—out of pity, I think—in every humanities course he ever took.”

  “You did not get your degree, did you, Mr. Bloom?” (That was sheer mischief on my part. I was enjoying his eruption.)

  “I quit to go into business, damn it! My academic average, over the three years I attended, was a strong B. Don’t imagine anything else, you hear? Hell, by the time Priss got his Ph.D., I was working on my second million.”

  He went on, clearly irritated. “Anyway, we were playing billiards, and I said
to him, “Jim, the average man will never understand why you get the Nobel Prize when I’m the one who gets the results. Why do you need two? Give me one!’ He stood there, chalking up his cue, and then he said in his soft namby-pamby way, “You have two billion, Ed. Give me one.’ So you see, he wants the money.”

  I said, “I take it you don’t mind his getting the honor?” For a minute, I thought he was going to order me out. But he didn’t. He laughed instead, waved his hand in front of him, as though h j were erasing something from an invisible blackboard in front of him. “Oh, well, forget it All that is off the record. Listen, do you want a statement? Okay! Things didn’t go right today, and I blew my top a bit, but it will clear up. I think I know what’s wrong. And if I don’t, I’m going to know.

  “Look, you can say that I say we don’t need infinite electromagnetic intensity. We will flatten out the rubber sheet. We will have zero gravity. And when we get it, I’ll have the damnedest demonstration you ever saw, exclusively for the press and for Priss, and you’ll be invited. And you can say it won’t be long. Okay?”

  I had time after that to see each man once or twice more. I even saw them together when I was present at one of their billiard games. As I said before, both of them were good.

  But the call to the demonstration did not come as quickly as all that. It arrived six weeks less than a year after Bloom gave me his statement

  And at that, perhaps it was unfair to expect quicker work.

  I had a special engraved invitation, with the assurance of a cocktail hour first. Bloom never did things by halves, and he was planning to have a pleased and satisfied group of reporters on hand. There was an arrangement for tri-dimensional TV, too. Bloom felt completely confident, obviously; confident enough to be willing to trust the demonstration in every living room on the planet.

  I called up Professor Priss, to make sure he was invited, too. He was!

  “Do you plan to attend, sir?”

  There was a pause, and the professor’s face on the screen was a study in uncertain reluctance. “A demonstration of this sort is most unsuitable where a serious scientific matter is in question. I do not like to encourage such things.”

  I was afraid he would beg off, and the dramatics of the situation would be greatly lessened if he were not there. But then, perhaps, he decided he dared not play the chicken before the world. With obvious distaste, he said, “Of course, Ed Bloom is not really a scientist, and he must have his day in the sun. I’ll be there.”

  “Do you think Mr. Bloom can produce zero gravity, sir?”

  “—uh—Mr. Bloom sent me a copy of the design of his device and—and I’m not certain. Perhaps he can do it, if—uh—he says he can do it. Of course—” he paused again for quite a long time. “I think I would like to see it.”

  So would I, and so would many others.

  The staging was impeccable. A whole floor of the main building at Bloom Enterprises—the one on the hilltop—was cleared. There were the promised cocktails and a splendid array of hors d’oeuvres, soft music and lighting, and a carefully dressed and thoroughly jovial Edward Bloom playing the perfect host, while a number of polite and unobtrusive menials fetched and carried. All was geniality and amazing confidence.

  James Priss was late, and I caught Bloom watching the comers of the crowd and beginning to grow a little grim about the edges. Then Priss arrived, dragging a volume of colorlessness in with him, a drabness that was unaffected by the noise and the absolute splendor (no other word would describe it—or else it was the two martinis glowing inside me) that filled the room.

  Bloom saw him, and his face was illuminated at once. He bounced across the floor, seizing the smaller man’s hand and dragging him to the bar.

  “Jim! Glad to see you! What’ll you have? Hell, man, I’d have called it off if you hadn’t showed. Can’t have this thing without the star, you know.” He wrung Priss’s hand. “It’s your theory, you know. We poor mortals can’t do a thing without you few, you damned few few, pointing the way.”

  He was being ebullient, handing out the flattery, because he could afford to do so now. He was fattening Priss for the kill.

  Priss tried to refuse a drink, with some sort of mutter, but a glass was pressed into his hand; and Bloom raised his voice to r. bullroar.

  “Gentlemen! A moment’s quiet, please. To Professor Priss, the greatest mind since Einstein, two-time Nobel Laureate, father of the Two-Field Theory, and inspirer of the demonstration we are about to see—even if he didn’t think it would work and he had the guts to say so publicly.”

  There was a distinct titter of laughter that quickly faded out, and Priss looked as grim as he could manage.

  “But now that Professor Priss is here,” said Bloom, “and we’ve had our toast, let’s get on with it Follow me, gentlemen!”

  IV

  The demonstration was in a much more elaborate place than had housed the earlier one. This time it was on the top floor of the building. Different magnets were involved—smaller ones, by heaven—but as nearly as I could tell, the same M-E Balance was in place.

  One thing was new, however, and it staggered everybody, drawing much more attention than anything else in the room. It was a billiard table, resting under one pole of the magnet. Beneath it was the companion pole. A round hole about a foot across was stamped out of the; very center of the table; and it was obvious that the zero-gravity field, if it was to be produced, would be produced through that hole in the center of the billiard table.

  It was as though the whole demonstration had been designed, surrealist-fashion, to point up the victory of Bloom over Priss. This was to be another version of their everlasting billiards competition, and Bloom was going to win.

  I don’t know if the other newsmen took matters in that fashion, but I think Priss did. I turned to look at him and saw that he was still holding the drink that had been forced into his hand. He rarely drank, I knew, but now he lifted the glass to his lips and emptied it in two swallows. He stared at that billiard ball, and I needed no gift of ESP to realize that he took it as a deliberate snap of fingers under his nose.

  Bloom led us to the twenty seats that surrounded three sides of the table, leaving the fourth free as a working area. Priss was carefully escorted to the seat commanding the most convenient view. Priss glanced quickly at the tri-di cameras which were now working. I wondered if he were thinking of leaving but deciding that he couldn’t in the full glare of the eyes of the world.

  Essentially, the demonstration was simple; it was the production that counted. There were dials in plain view that measured the energy expenditure. There were others that transferred the M-E Balance readings into a position and a size that were visible to all. Everything was arranged for easy tri-di viewing.

  Bloom explained each step in a genial way, with one or two pauses in which he turned to Priss for a confirmation that had to come. He didn’t do it often enough to make it obvious, but just enough to turn Priss upon the spit of his own torment. From where I sat I could look across the table and see Priss on the other side.

  He had the look of a man in Hell.

  As we all know, Bloom succeeded. The M-E balance showed the gravitational intensity to be sinking steadily as the electromagnetic field was intensified. There were cheers, when it dropped below the 0.52 g mark. A red line indicated that on the dial.

  “The 0.52 g mark, as you know,” said Bloom, confidently, “represents the previous record low in gravitational intensity. We are now lower than that at a cost in electricity that is less than ten per cent what it cost at the time that mark was set. And we will go lower still.”

  Bloom (I think deliberately, for the sake of the suspense) slowed the drop toward the end, letting the tri-di cameras switch back and forth between the gap in the billiard table and the dial on which the M-E Balance reading was lowering.

  Bloom said, suddenly, “Gentlemen, you will find dark goggles in the pouch on the side of each chair. Please put them on now. The zero-gravity field
will soon be established, and it will radiate a light rich in ultraviolet.”

  He put goggles on himself, and there was a momentary rustle as others went on, too.

  I think no one breathed during the last minute, when the dial reading dropped to zero and held fast. And just as that happened a cylinder of light sprang into existence from pole to pole through the hole in the billiard table.

  There was a ghost of twenty sighs at that. Someone called out, “Mr. Bloom, what is the reason for the light?”

  “It’s characteristic of the zero-gravity field,” said Bloom smoothly, which was no answer of course.

  Reporters were standing up now, crowding about the edge of the table. Bloom waved them back. “Please, gentlemen, stand clear!”

  Only Priss remained sitting. He seemed lost in thought, and I have been certain ever since that it was the goggles that obscured the possible significance of everything that followed. I didn’t see his eyes. I couldn’t.

  And that meant neither I nor anyone else could even begin to make a guess as to what was going on behind those eyes.

  Well, maybe we couldn’t have made such a guess, even if the goggles hadn’t been there, but who can say?

  Bloom was raising his voice again. “Please! The demonstration is not yet over. So far, we’ve only repeated what I have done before. I have now produced a zero-gravity field and I have shown it can be done practically. But I want to demonstrate something of what such a field can do. What we are going to see next will be something that has never been seen, not even by myself. I have not experimented in this direction, much as I would have liked to, because I have felt that Professor Priss deserved the honor of—”

  Priss looked up sharply, “What—what—”

  “Professor Priss,” said Bloom, smiling broadly, “I would like you to perform the first experiment involving the interaction of a solid object with a zero-gravity field. Notice that the field has been formed in the center of a billiard table. The world knows your phenomenal skill in billiards, Professor, a talent second only to your amazing aptitude in theoretical physics. Won’t you send a billiard ball into the zero-gravity volume?”