A Thousand Degrees Below Zero, Murray Leinster [beginner reading books for adults txt] 📗

water. It will make that second mass of water hot, so hot that it will turn into steam at a high temperature."

"Then Varrhus," said the reporter thoughtfully, "was taking the heat from a big bunch of water and putting it into a small bunch, and the small bunch went up in steam. Is that right?"

"Precisely." Teddy turned to a file on which hung a number of sheets of paper covered with figures. "Here are the professor's calculations. We could only figure approximately, but we knew the size and depth of the ice cake, very nearly the temperature of the water that had been frozen, and naturally it was not hard to estimate the number of calories that had had to be taken out of the harbor water to make the ice cake. To check up, we figured out how much water that number of calories would turn into steam. The professor appealed to the government scientists who had watched the cake from the first. He found that from the size of the plume and the other means of checking its volume, he had come within ten per cent of calculating the amount of water that had actually poured out in the shape of steam."

"But—but that's amazing!" said the reporter.

"It was good work," Teddy said in some satisfaction. "Then we knew what Varrhus had done, and it remained to find out how he'd done it. Nothing like that had ever happened before. He couldn't very well have an engine working there in the water. The professor took to his mathematics again. Assume that I have a stove here that will make it just so warm at a distance of five feet. I'm leaving warm air out of consideration now and only thinking of radiated heat. If I put my thermometer ten feet away how much heat will I get?"

"Half as much?" asked the reporter.

"One-quarter as much," said Teddy. "Or three times away I'll get one-ninth as much, or four times away I'll get one-sixteenth as much. You see? If I want to make the ends of an iron bar hot, and I can only heat the middle, the middle has to be red-hot or white-hot to make the ends even warm. If I have to make the middle of a bar red-hot to have the ends warm, you see in order to make the ends cold the middle would have to be very cold indeed."

"Y-yes, I understand."

"Well, the professor worked on that principle. He knew the temperature of the edges, and he knew the size of the ice cake. It was easy to figure what the temperature must be in the middle. It worked out to within two degrees of absolute zero!"

"What's that?"

"There isn't any limit to high temperatures. You can go up two thousand degrees, three thousand, four, or five. Some things almost certainly produce a temperature of as much as eight thousand degrees. But high temperatures are produced by putting more heat in—by stuffing the thing with calories. I make an iron bar red-hot by putting calories in. I make it cold by taking calories out."

"Well?"

"If you keep that up you reach the point where there aren't any more calories left to take out. When you get to that point you have a temperature of 425° Centigrade, or one thousand and seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit below zero. That's absolute zero."

Teddy spoke quite casually, but the reporter blinked.

"Rather chilly, then."

"Rather," Teddy agreed. "But our calculations told us that Varrhus had reached and was using a temperature within two degrees of that in the center of his ice cake. And right next to that temperature he had a very high one, as evidenced by the plume of steam."

"I can't see how you got anywhere," said the reporter hopelessly. "I'm all mixed up."

"It's very simple," said Teddy cheerfully. "On one side of a wall the man had what amounted to a thousand and some odd degrees below zero. On the other he had probably as much above zero. Evelyn—Miss Hawkins, you know—made the suggestion that solved the problem. She showed us this."

Teddy picked up what seemed to be a square bit of opaque glass.

"Smoked glass?"

"Yes, and no." Teddy smiled. "You can't see through it, can you?"

"No."

"Come around to this side and look."

The reporter made an exclamation of astonishment.

"It's clear glass!"

"It's a piece of glass on which a thin film of platinum has been deposited. It lets light through in one direction, but not in the other. Evelyn suggested that Varrhus had something which did the same thing with heat. It would let heat through in one direction, but not in the other. Of course if it would take all the heat from the air on one side and wouldn't let any come back from the other——"

"It would be cold?"

"On one side. The glass looks black because it lets the light go through and lets none come back. The surface, we have assumed, would be almost infinitely cold because it would let heat go through and would let none come back. We decided that Varrhus had made a hollow bomb of some shape or other, composed of this hypothetical material. Heat from the outside would be radiated into the interior because the surface absorbed heat like this glass absorbs light. It would act as a surface at more than a thousand below zero. Because something had to be done with the heat that would come in, Varrhus made the bomb hollow and left two openings in it. The inside of the bomb is intensely hot from the heat that has been taken out of the surrounding water. The hole at the bottom radiates a beam of heat straight downward which melts a very small quantity of ice and lets the water flow into the bomb, where it is turned into steam. Naturally, it flows out of the other hole at the top. There you have the whole thing."

"And you stopped it——"

"By dropping a T. N. T. bomb down the steam shaft. It went off and blew the cold bomb to bits. The iceberg will break up and melt now."

The reporter stood up.

"I'd like to thank you for this, but it's too big," he said feverishly. "Man, just wait till I wave this before the city editor's eyes!" He rushed out of the house.

The newspapers that afternoon had frantic headlines announcing the destruction of the steam plume and the fact that noticeable signs of melting had begun to show themselves on the ice cake. Smaller captions told of the dynamiting that had begun and of the destruction of the Yokohama and Folkestone bergs by soldiers acting on cabled instructions. The Straits of Gibraltar were cleared by salvos fired from the heavy guns on the Rock at the three great plumes of steam. The world congratulated itself on the speedy nullification of the menace to its democratic governments. It did not neglect, however, to rush detachments of men with trench mortars and hand bombs to its reservoirs, prepared to destroy any possible cold bombs on their first appearance. The aviation forces, too, made themselves ready to fight the black flyer on its next appearance, despite the mysterious means by which it had killed the American pilot.

This state of affairs lasted for possibly a week, when, within three hours of each other, the papers found two occasions to issue extras. The first extra announced the death by heart failure of Professor Hawkins, who had been found by his daughter, dead in his laboratory, holding in his hands an antique silver bracelet he had just opened at the clasp. The second, three hours later, announced the formation of an ice cake in the Narrows which grew in size even more rapidly than the original one, and was entirely unattended by the steam plume which gave Teddy Gerrod an opportunity to destroy the first. Within three hours the Narrows were closed, and the ice floe was creeping up toward New York.

In rapid succession came the news that Norfolk harbor was frozen over and Hampton Roads closed, that Charleston was blocked, then Jacksonville. The next morning delayed cablegrams declared that the Panama Canal was a mass of ice, and almost simultaneously the Straits of Gibraltar were again admitted to be firmly locked.

CHAPTER V.

Teddy put his hand comfortingly on Evelyn's shoulder.

"There isn't anything I can say, Evelyn," he said awkwardly, "except that I couldn't have loved him more if he'd been my own father, and it hurts me terribly to have him go like this."

Evelyn looked up.

"Teddy," she said bravely, trying to hold back her sobs, "I've been fearing this for a long time, but—I can't believe it wasn't caused by that fearful Varrhus."

"The professor did work very hard over that problem," admitted Teddy.

"I don't mean that the work he did caused his heart to fail. I mean I think Varrhus killed father." Evelyn's eyes were dark and troubled as she looked at Teddy Gerrod.

"But, Evelyn, why do you think such a thing? You knew his heart was weak."

Tears came again into Evelyn's eyes, but she forced them back determinedly.

"Will you go upstairs and look at his fingers—inside? I was—crossing his hands—on his breast. Please look."

Teddy went soberly up the stairs to where the professor lay quietly on the bed he was occupying for the last time. Teddy turned back the sheet that covered the figure and looked at the gentle old face. A lump came in his throat, and he hastily turned his eyes away. He lifted the sheet until the professor's thin hands came into view. He looked, at the fingers, then lifted one of the white hands and examined the inside. Small but deep burns disfigured the finger tips. When Teddy went down-stairs his face was white and set, and a great anger burned in him.

"You are right, Evelyn," he said grimly. "Where is the bracelet he was holding when he was found?"

"On the acids table. He was lying beside it when—when I saw him." Evelyn was grief-stricken, but she forced herself to be calm. "Do you think you know what happened?"

"I'm not sure."

Teddy went quietly into the laboratory and found the massive silver bracelet lying where Evelyn had said. He looked at it carefully before he touched it, and when he lifted it it was in a pair of wooden tongs.

"That thermo-couple, Evelyn, please. And start the small generator, won't you?"

The two worked on the bracelet for half an hour, then stopped and stared at each other, their suspicions confirmed.

"Varrhus," said Teddy slowly. "Varrhus caused your father's death. This earth has gotten too small for both Varrhus and me to live on."

"He knew father could wreck his plans," Evelyn said in a hard voice, "and he wished to rule the world. So he killed my father."

Teddy's lips were compressed.

"Before God," he burst out, "before God, I'm going to kill Varrhus!"

The bell rang, and in a moment the commandant of the forts was ushered in.

"Mr. Gerrod, Miss Hawkins," he nodded to them, and then said: "They tell me Professor Hawkins is dead. The Narrows are frozen over again. Hampton Roads is frozen over. Charleston is frozen over. The Panama Canal is frozen over! There's no steam plume to blow up. Washington is worried. They're calling me to clear out the channel. The navy department is going crazy. If it were a case of fighting men I'd know something, but I can't fight a chemical combination. What's to be done, since the professor is dead? Who on earth can fill his place?"

He looked from one to the other, already beginning to show the strain under which he was laboring.

"Professor Hawkins," said Teddy quietly, "was murdered by Varrhus some four hours ago."

"Murdered! Varrhus has been here!"

"No, Varrhus has not been here, but we may be able to trace him. I'll get the police. Then we'll talk about ice floes. We know Varrhus' method now. We'll soon be able to anticipate him."

"But in the meantime," the commandant snapped angrily, "he'll play the devil with the world."

"We'll play the devil with him when he is caught," said Teddy evenly. "I've no intention of letting Varrhus get away. Just now there's a possibility of catching him in the ordinary way. He mailed a present to the professor, an antique bracelet. Ancient jewelry was the professor's hobby. He examined the bracelet and died.

"I heard he was dead," said the commandant restlessly. "The paper said heart failure."

"So did the doctor." Teddy took down the receiver of the telephone. "Give me police emergency, please."

In a few moments he hung up again. The statement that Professor Hawkins had been murdered and that there was a chance of catching Varrhus was all he needed to say. Hardly five minutes had passed before the commissioner of police himself was in the room with two of his keenest men.

"You'll have to explain what happened," he said at once