THE WORLD-MOVER
Feature Novel by
GEORGE O. SMITH
Les Ackerman, unbelievably alive after a nuclearexplosion, finds himself sought after by the denizensof three possible worlds, all contending that Ackermanalone can adjust the incredible situation he hascreated. Only Les doesn't know what he's done!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Future combined with Science Fiction Stories November 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
To the present sitting, there were three hundred thousand words in thereport on the new transuranic element that Les Ackerman was studying.This took months of painstaking work, but Ackerman viewed his resultswith satisfaction. To date, the report covered about all that was tobe known regarding the physical and chemical properties of this newelement; there remained only the nuclear properties to investigate.
Nuclear properties were always left to last. Nuclear bombardmentdefiled the element and rendered it unsuitable for the undestructivechemical analysis and physical investigations.
So Les Ackerman closed his notebook with a slam and checked therefrigerator. The deuterium-ice—frozen heavy water—for the cyclotrontarget was in fine shape. He could start at once.
He took both the ice-target and the sample to the big, enclosed roomand inserted them in the proper places in the cyclotron set-up. Thenhe fired up the big cyclotron, and high-energy deuterons bombarded thedeuterium-ice target, releasing free neutrons that in turn bombardedthe sample.
That was to be his last job for the night; the registering counterswould record the radioactivity while he slept, and in the morningthe sample would probably be 'cold' enough to handle. He consultedhis prospectus in the notebook and checked the bombardment-time forthis first nuclear test. One half hour. At the end of one half hour,Ackerman could turn off the cyc and go to bed. The automatic counterswould quietly record the diminishing activity of the 'hot' sample.
The click of the counting-rate meter sounded. The first atoms of thesample were being attacked properly. Ackerman nodded to himself, therein the operating chamber, separated from the real activity by solidyards of concrete, water, and paraffin.
Unluckily, Ackerman could not be in the cyc chamber itself to watch. Asit was, it would have been no more dangerous for Les to stand in theradioactivity-laden cyclotron room than it was for him here in what allcyclotron mechanics considered more than safe from harm.
As the neutrons raced invisibly into the new element, a tiny,glistening sphere expanded, millimeter by millimeter. It was a strangefield of energy, a true freak of Nature. Unpredicted and unknown, ithovered at nine centimeters radius as the sample swallowed neutrons bythe uncounted million. It expanded again, slowly, slowly, slowly untilthe critical proportion of sample and transmuted nuclei was attained.
Then the glistening sphere of energy expanded with an accelerationthat drove it to the ends of the infinite universe in a matter ofmicroseconds. Too swift to be seen, to register—if there had been ameans of detecting it—and too swift even to leave a trace of evidenceon the physical universe.
Its effect, however, was evident to Ackerman. The others who came latersaw only what they found remaining. Les was on the spot,