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“Hello, father!” said the young man as he greeted his parent. “I met your red-headed Moscovy idiot again. When are you going to get rid of him? I just can’t look at him without disgust. He invariably spoils my temper, this Asiatic…”

The professor silently shrugged his shoulders.

At the table, Eitel began telling his father, who was listening very absent-mindedly, about his service, about the horses at the squadron- stables and about his fellow-soldiers, and he spoke with high esteem of his Colonel.

“By the way, he spoke of you with great respect; he said that Germany is much indebted to you and is expecting still more from you.”

The professor smiled. Queer though it was, yet it was pleasant to hear such recognition of his merits from the lips of a Hussar Colonel.

“But, what I was going to ask you, father,” he continued, “is to give me a general outline of your latest work. It seems to me that every Tom, Dick and Harry in our Casino knows more about it than I do.”

Flinder smiled again.

“I think you are right, my son. I shall do my best to enlighten you… Do you realize that man’s greatest problem on Earth is the struggle for energy, which he draws from nature in manifold forms?”

The Hussar shook his head.

“Each new explosive, each newly constructed machine, is a new, more convenient, cheaper, or more expedient method of pumping out new energy from the earth — that energy which moves our ships and trains, works our factories and mills, carries in the air our airplanes, drives our dirigibles, and hurls our projectiles over ranges of scores of miles. But the supply of the Earth’s coal is constantly diminishing; besides they have taken our coal away from us; nor have we oil… At the same time inexhaustible sources of energy are scattered all about us in abundance.”

“Where are they?”

“Everywhere; in this piece of iron lying on the table; in the puddles of filthy water in the streets; in the road- dust beneath our feet— wherever you turn your eyes.” “I do not understand.”

“Well — do you know what an atom is?”

Eitel smiled.

“I have heard something about it. I think it is something very small.”

“That’s right,” said the professor with an involuntary smile, “and in those infinitesimally small bricks, of which all bodies of the universe are made, all those colossal supplies of energy are stored. Atoms consist of concentrated, condensed electricity. They resemble an endless mass of miniature, tightly coiled springs, or, better still, little charges of powerful explosive matter. And when we learn to release the detent of those springs, to explode those charges and to control them and their energy, we will usher in a new era in the history of mankind; we shall enlist in our work the dormant power that lies about us; we shall flood the world with cheap and inexhaustible energy; we shall free mankind from the curse of unequal and strength- sapping toil; we shall direct it into new channels; we…”

“We shall first feed up our war weapons with that new power and dictate our terms to Paris and London…” interrupted Eitel, standing in the center of the room, with glittering eyes, threatening with his fists some region in space.

II

FLINDER turned on the current and shut the door of the laboratory behind him. A flood of light illumined the familiar picture, at once arresting one’s attention with the serenity and peacefulness of a working atmosphere. Wires in rigid lines stretched all over the walls; porcelain insulators, like ivory fingers, protruded here and there and between them; on the — tables and shelves sparkled glass utensils; brass parts of the apparatus glittered in yellow reflections; a marble switch board with its appliances and colored lamps, added a cold, yet solemn appearance to the spacious room.

Upon a large marble-top table, at the rear wall, stood a mechanical appliance, from which the work was to start. Flinder stopped before it with a feeling of inward satisfaction and throbbing expectation. Everything he saw before him was the reflection and incarnation of his thoughts. Each lever, each screw, each contact of the wires — everything to the minutest detail — up of atoms, by means of bombarding them with grains of helium, that are discharged by radioactive matter, he added the action of the electromagnetic field of high tension. This enhanced the speed of flight and the power of explosion of the miniature charges. And to-day he intended to test the influence of some admixtures upon activated nitrogen, admixtures that are dissolved in the tube with gas and represent minutest molecules.

He examined carefully the scheme of arrangement of the appliances and focused the microscope over the fluorescene stage over which the explosions were to register the path of the fragments of the atoms, and turned on the switch. A deep, heavy buzz of the transformer filled the room, as if a giant drone from out the wilderness of the night, beat his wings and whizzed upon the window-sill, shaking the concrete walls with his blows.