Galactic Dreams

“It’s, well, an uninterpreted logical calculus, a special discipline. I warned you, I’m not very good at explaining these things though I can work them out well enough on paper. That is my hobby, really, what some people call higher mathematics; and I know that if I were working at a big school I would have no time to devote to it.”

“How do you know? Maybe they would have one of those big computers — wouldn’t that help you?”

“Perhaps, of course, but I’ve worked out ways of getting around the need for one. It takes a little more time, that’s all.”

“And how much time do you have left?”

Charlie asked quietly, then was instantly sorry he had said it when he saw the older man lower his head without answering. “I take that back, I’ve got a big mouth, I’m sorry. But I get so angry. How do you know what you might have done if you had had the training, the facilities…”

He shut up, realizing that he was getting in deeper every second.

There was only the murmur of distant traffic in the hot, dark silence, the faint sound of music from the radio behind the bar. The bartender stood, switched the radio off, and opened the trap behind the bar to bring in another case of beer. From nearby the sound of the music continued like a remembered echo. Charlie realized that it was coming from the cigar box on the table before them.

“Do you have a radio in that?” he asked, happy to change the subject.

“Yes — well really no, though there is an RF stage.”

“If you think you’re making sense — you’re not. I told you, I’m majoring in economics.”

Sam smiled and opened the box, pointing to the precisely wired circuits inside. “My nephew made this, he has a little `I fix it’ shop, but he learned a lot about electronics in the air force. I brought him the equations and we worked out the circuit together.”

Charlie thought about a man with electronic training who was forced to run a handyman’s shop, but he had the sense not to mention it. “Just what is it supposed to do?”

“It’s not really supposed to do anything. I just built it to see if my equations would work out in practice. I suppose you don’t know much about Einstein’s unified field theory…?”

Charlie smiled ruefully and raised his hands in surrender. “It’s difficult to talk about. Putting it the simplest way, there is supposed to be a relation between all phenomena, all forms of energy and matter. You are acquainted with the simpler interchanges, heat energy to mechanical energy as in an engine, electrical energy to light ….”

“The light bulb!”

“Correct. To go further, the postulation has been made that time is related to light energy, as is gravity to light, which has been proved, and gravity to electrical energy. That is the field I have been exploring. I have made certain suppositions that there is an interchange of energy within a gravitic field, a measurable interchange, such as the lines of force that are revealed about a magnetic field by iron particles — no, that’s not a good simile — perhaps the ability of a wire to carry a current endlessly under the chilled condition of superconductivity.”

“Professor, you have lost me, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Could you maybe give me an example-like what is happening in this little radio here?”

Sam made a careful adjustment and the music gained the tiniest amount of volume. “It’s not the radio part that is interesting, that stage really just demonstrates that I have detected the leakage — no, we should call it the differential — between the Earth’s gravitic field and that of the lump of lead there in the corner of the box.”

“Where is the battery?”

Sam smiled proudly. “That is the point-there is no battery. The input current is derived ….”

“Do you mean you are running the radio off gravity? Getting electricity for nothing?”

“Yes … really, I should say no. It is not quite like that ….”

“It sure looks like that!”

Charlie was excited now, crouching half across the table so he could look into the cigar box. “I may not know anything about electronics but in economics we learn a lot about power sources. Couldn’t this gadget of yours be developed to generate electricity at little or no cost?”

“No, not at once, this is just a first attempt ….”

“But it could eventually and that means-” Sam thought that the young man had suddenly become sick. His face, just inches away, became shades lighter as the blood drained from it, his eyes were staring in horror as he slowly dropped back and down into his seat. Before Sam could ask him what was the matter a grating voice bellowed through the room.

“Anyone here seen a boy by name of Charlie Wright? C’mon now, speak up, ain’t no one gonna get hurt for tellin’ me the truth.”

“Holy Jesus …”

Charlie whispered, sinking deeper in the seat. Brinkley stamped into the bar, hand resting on his gun butt, squinting around in the darkness. No one answered him.

“Anybody try to hide him gonna be in trouble!” he shouted angrily. “I’m gonna find that black granny dodger!”