Sixth Column Read Free

in order to find out. Brooks returned
    as precipitately as he had left. The exertion caused him to pant and interfered
    with articulation. "Major Ardmore! Dr. Calhoun! Gentlemen!" He paused and
    caught his breath. "My white mice are alive!"
    "Huh? What of it?"
    "Don't you see? It's an important datum, perhaps a crucially important
    datum. None of the animals in the biological laboratory was hurt! Don't you
    see?"
    "Yes, but-Oh! Perhaps I do-the rat was alive and your mice weren't
    killed, yet men were killed all around them."
    "Of course! Of course!" Brooks beamed at Ardmore.
    "Hm-m-m. An action that kills a couple of hundred men through rock
    walls and metal, with no fuss and no excitement, yet passes by mice and the
    like. I've never before heard of anything that would kill a man but not a
    mouse." He nodded toward the apparatus. "It looks as if we had big medicine
    in that little gadget, Calhoun."
    "So it does," Calhoun agreed, "if we can learn to control it."
    "Any doubt in your mind?"
    "Well-we don't know why it killed, and we don't know why it spared six of
    us, and we don't know why it doesn't harm animals."
    "So-Well, that seems to be the problem." He stared again at the simple appearing enigma. "Doctor, I don't like to interfere with your work right from
    scratch, but I would rather you did not close that switch without notifying me
    in advance." His gaze dropped to Ledbetter's still figure and hurriedly shifted.
    Over the coffee and sandwiches he pried further into the situation. "Then
    no one really knows what Ledbetter was up to?"
    "You could put it that way," agreed Calhoun. "I helped him with the
    mathematical considerations, but he was a genius and somewhat impatient
    with lesser minds. If Einstein were alive, they might have talked as equals,
    but with the rest of us he discussed only the portions he wanted assistance
    on, or details he wished to turn over to assistants."
    "Then you don't know what he was getting at?"
    "Well, yes and no. Are you familiar with general field theory?"
    "Criminy, no!"
    "Weld-that makes it rather hard to talk, Major Ardmore. Dr. Ledbetter
    was investigating the theoretically possible additional spectra-"
    "Additional spectra?"
    "Yes. You see, most of the progress in physics in the last century and a
    half has been in dealing with the electromagnetic spectrum, light, radio, Xray-"
    "Yes, yes, I know that, but how about these additional spectra?"
    "That's what I am trying to tell you," answered Calhoun with a slight note
    of annoyance. "General field theory predicts the possibility of at least three
    more entire spectra. You see, there are three types of energy fields known to
    exist in space: electric, magnetic, and gravitic or gravitational. Light, X-rays,
    all such radiations, are part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Theory
    indicates the possibility of analogous spectra between magnetic and gravitic,
    between electric and gravitic, and finally, a three-phase type between
    electric-magnetio-gravitic fields. Each type would constitute a complete new
    spectrum, a total of three new fields of learning.
    "If there are such, they would presumably have properties quite as
    remarkable as the electromagnetic spectrum and quite different. But we have
    no instruments with which to detect such spectra, nor do we even know that
    such spectra exist."
    "You know," commented Ardmore, frowning a little, "I'm just a layman in
    these matters and don't wish to set my opinion up against yours, but this
    seems like a search for the little man who wasn't there. I had supposed that
    this laboratory was engaged in the single purpose of finding a military
    weapon to combat the vortex beams and A-bomb rockets of the PanAsians. I
    am a bit surprised to find the man whom you seem to regard as having been
    your ace researcher engaged in an attempt to discover things that he was not
    sure existed and whose properties were totally unknown. It doesn't seem
    reasonable. "
    Calhoun did not answer; he simply looked