RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
Astonishing Stories, June 1940, with "Joshua's Battering Ram"
The Sonomagnet was an air-conditioner salesman's dream of perfection. There wasn't an office in the torrid city of New York that could afford to get along without it. But, like most other things in an imperfect world, it had its little faults.
"COME in here a minute, Charlie. I've got something pretty slick to show you." Charlie Hanscom had started for the elevator when Sam Burpel, Sales Manager for the New Era Air Conditioning Company, called to him. Wondering what bright idea his boss had hatched overnight, Hanscom flung his brief-case down on the nearest desk and went into his chief's private office. Near the window stood a crude-looking cabinet, suggesting a home-made combination radio and phonograph. On the front face of it was the mouth of a horn, resembling a loud speaker, and a tuning dial.
"Now here's something that has everything else on the market backed off the boards. Boy, have a look!" Burpel, always radiating professional enthusiasm, was outdoing himself this morning. He lifted the cover of the machine and twiddled a moment with something inside. Then he gave the control knob on the outside a twirl that put it hard over.
"It has a safety stop in here to keep the customers from freezing themselves to death. That's what I just released. Now keep your eye on that thermometer."
Charlie Hanscom glanced at the thermometer on the wall. It was at its customary seventy, although outside it was already approaching ninety. The thin red line began shrinking fast. In a moment Charlie shivered and turned up his coat collar. He did not have to keep on watching the thermometer; frost was beginning to form on the window. Cold!
"A couple more minutes of that," chuckled Burpel, triumphantly, "and you could see a brass monkey start to come apart right before your eyes!"
"Gosh!" exclaimed Hanscom, as Burpel turned the knob back to normal and reset the safety catch. "How far will that go?"
"I'd hate to find out," answered his boss, exuberantly, "absolute zero, I guess. At least that's what the inventor says. But that's not half of it. Sit down over there and listen."
TURPEL walked around between the window and the new air-conditioning unit. He picked up a large dish-pan that lay on the window sill, and began banging on it with a wooden ruler he had carried from his desk. Hanscom could see the ruler smacking against the bottom of the pan, but the clatter that should have been heard was simply not there. He could see, also, that Burpel's mouth was open, twisting into various shapes, and from the redness of his superior's face, Hanscom judged he was trying to shout. Yet there was no sound audible. The show he was putting on had the appearance of pantomime.
Burpel walked slowly forward, coming out from behind the unit, keeping up his facial contortions and the drubbing. As he came abreast of the machine, Hanscom began to be aware of a faint humming, and what sounded like a distant hallooing. Another step, and the loud clatter of the pounded dish-pan and his boss's shouts rang out in full normal volume. Burpel stopped, grinning from ear to ear.
"That's what it does to noise. I tell you, we've got something here. Why, if we can't sell these things, we couldn't sell parachutes on a burning air-liner!"
It was a convincing, but mystifying demonstration. Charlie looked at the three big windows through which the full morning sun was pouring. He knew the room had an enormous heat load, for he had computed it. Apparently this machine could handle any quantity of B.T.U.s. Yet, except for the cord to the electric outlet, there were no connections of any sort, no intake nor exhaust ducts. Furthermore, the complete annihilation of the noise was positively uncanny. Even with the windows closed, as they were, there had been considerable noise from outside. Now the room was almost oppressively silent, the words spoken by Burpel were hushed and echoless. The room was as "dead" as a radio studio.
"But where does the heat go?" demanded Hanscom. "It's got to go somewhere."
"Search me!" replied Burpel, "but who cares? Your prospect don't care a rap how it's done; will it do it, is what he wants to know."
Hanscom knew the truth of that well enough, but still he was a little troubled. Heat was energy of a definite and measurable kind. It couldn't be dismissed with a wave of the hand. The disposal of the heat removed from the air had always been a problem in air-conditioning. But here there did not appear to be anything in the nature of a condenser, with its circulation of fluid to carry away the heat. And no less puzzling was the way in which sound disappeared within the room. It was as if a sound wave bounced but once, straight into the machine, where it vanished—was gobbled up, so to speak. The name-plate bearing the word SONOMAGNET suggested a definite attraction for sound waves—a preposterous proposition.
"Let the engineers wrangle over the technicalities," continued Burpel, "our job is to make a market for them."
"That ought to be easy," agreed Hanscom, thinking of the miraculous properties of the conditioner. He had observed that it not only cooled and silenced the air, but was recirculating it vigorously, apparently purifying the air of the closed room as it passed through. But still....
"What's the catch?" demanded Hanscom. He had seen Burpel tread the clouds before.
"Well," admitted Burpel, "in the first place there are only three or four dozen of these machines assembled. And Haggledorn, the inventor, doesn't want to sell those, but rent 'em."
"What's the idea of that?"
"As near as I can find out, he is afraid to try for a patent. Says he'd rather keep it secret. Between you and me, I think he's a sort of a nut, but then again, he may be smarter than I give him credit for. If you'll take a look inside that cabinet, you'll see that all the inner works are locked up inside a steel chest. It's practically burglar proof—has a lock like a safe- deposit box. He wants us to distribute them, and he promises to go every week and service them. He says they get clogged up with heat and noise, and if he doesn't remove the excess, they won't work."
"Holy Cats! You talk about heat and noise like they were sand."
"He does! I've already said he's a little goofy, but you can't laugh off what the machine does. It eats up calories like nobody's business—and the loudest racket, too. His idea is sound enough. If he keeps title to them, and the keys, nobody can take one apart to see what makes it tick. All you have to do is lease 'em and collect your commissions."
"Yeah, I get it. An experiment. If it works, he goes into production and sales on his own. If they flop, or blow up..."
"That's his worry. You and I get ours on the barrelhead every time you bring a signed lease in. So look the thing over and make up your spiel, because you're the boy I've picked to handle 'em."
BY the time Hanscom left the office, the world looked rosier to him. The rental asked was high, but considering the performance, that did not matter. The commission rate was good and Hanscom's only regret was that there were so few machines available.
July had just begun and the town was rapidly becoming air- conditioning conscious. What appealed most to Hanscom was the silencing feature of the Sonomagnet In some parts of town noise conditions were almost unbearable. On his way to the elevator, he thought over his calling list and began marshalling his arguments. For the moment, he dismissed from his mind his perplexity as to what became of the abstracted heat units or how the sound came to be damped out so completely.
Outside it was muggy and steamy. The sidewalks were crowded with unhappy people shuffling along, listless in their damp, clinging garments. Ignoring the blast of superheated air that struck him as he emerged from the building, Hanscom stepped out briskly in the direction of Sixth Avenue.
That had always been his favorite territory. Over there, in the tall buildings that towered above the El structure were many prosperous firms that were trying to get their work done in the face of terrific odds. If they kept their windows open to keep from stifling, they let in all the clamor of the busy city, tearing at their jaded nerves in gusts of strident decibels.
The rattle and blare rose and fell, but it never was absent.
In the Chickasaw Building, on the third floor, were the law offices of Minsky, O'Hara, Palumbo, Lofgren, and Smith. They had a real problem in trying to carry on a law practice under conditions not unlike those in a boiler shop. Hanscom knew Smith, the junior partner, quite well. Earlier they had talked about air-conditioning, but Smith was unconvinced of its necessity. They had recently moved into the building and had not yet realized what a trial the summer could be.
Hanscom had hardly begun telling Smith about the wonderful Sonomagnet, when Smith made a signal to him to hold what he was saying for a moment. Smith was annoyed, but there was no help for it. Talk was impossible. The rumbling crescendo of noise outside had just reached its climax as an elevated train roared past the window, filling the office with dust and ear-splitting din. Hardly had the train drawn to a clattering stop at the station on the corner above, when Hanscom noted with a grin that a quartet of riveters in the frame of a growing building across the street had started heading up as many rivets. To add to the bedlam, an ambulance or a police car streaked through the street below, its siren wailing piercingly above the raucous medley of the usual traffic noises.
It was with many such interruptions and much yelling and gesticulating that Hanscom managed to get his sales talk across. He had met all of Smith's objections, one by one, and had reached the point of laying a contract form before him, tendering a fountain pen invitingly.
"But..." Smith tried to utter one more objection.
His words were drowned under the reverberations of another passing train, and before that clangor had begun to diminish, a succession of dull booms smote the air as a string of blasts were touched off in the subway under construction below the surface of the street outside.
"You win!" shouted Smith, in mock desperation, and reached for the pen. The first Sonomagnet deal was closed.
BEFORE the week was over, Hanscom had placed a number of the new machines. Their effect was nothing less than marvellous, as he learned when he called back to check up on their performance. Offices that had been practically useless during the summer on account of the inferno of noise about them were now quiet as the tomb, and as cool as the occupant desired. On one of his follow-up calls, Hanscom met Haggledorn coming out of his client's office. He was a queer looking person, exceedingly tall and stooped, and of a most repellent, sour visage. His long, curved nose and malignant expression made Hanscom think of the pictures in the children's books of evil witches on broomsticks.
Haggledorn made his rounds weekly, as he had agreed to do, followed by a husky porter carrying two large bags. Hanscom made several efforts to be present at one of the "servicings," but something always prevented. His friend Smith, though, told him that the operation seemed to be simple.
"First, he takes out a container—of water, I think—and empties it down the drain of the wash-room. Then he removes a big brick, then takes out a couple of reels or spools of silvery tape. They look a bit like reels of movie film, only one is wider and thicker than the other. Then he puts in fresh reels and a brick, and snaps the lid shut."
"I think the brick he takes out must be hot, because he wears gloves and handles it with tongs, and when it hits the air, it smokes. One of his bags is divided up into compartments to hold the bricks, and I judge the white stuff they are lined with is asbestos."
"So that's where the heat goes," thought Hanscom, but he was more puzzled than ever. It didn't make sense. A hot brick would give off heat, not absorb it. The emptying out of the water he understood readily enough. In chilling the air, it was forced to drop its moisture content. Otherwise, the Sonomagnet was an enigma.
A superficial examination revealed a big horn on the back side of it, next to the window, similar to the smaller one in front. They seemed to terminate in microphones attached to the inner steel box. Nothing could he seen inside the box, although Hanscom tried to peep through the louvres at its ends that permitted the passage of the circulating air.
By the time July had almost gone, Hanscom had placed most of Haggledorn's units and was devoting his time chiefly to the old standard line of equipment. The experimental units had all worked perfectly, and there had been but one accident. Burpel took charge of that, pacifying the customer and shutting off his complaints by pointing out that the machine had merely done what it was designed to do, only had done it too well.
It was an instance where a customer, bragging about his new installation while showing it off to a friend, had removed the stop and put the control over as far as it would go. When the room got almost too cold to bear, the friend had jokingly suggested that a Tom and Jerry was in order. The two went down to the bar—and forgot to come back.
In an hour, there was an inch of ice clinging to the window panes, and all the water pipes passing through the office were frozen solid, and split. When frost began forming on the walls of adjoining offices, neighbors turned in an alarm.
Two hours later, Haggledorn came rushing into the building, white and shaking, and plunged into the arctic cold of the office to coax his unit back to standard performance. That afternoon, much agitated, he made the rounds of all his users and riveted the stops in so firmly that a repetition of the occurrence was made impossible. The next day, he had resumed his customary air of sullen aloofness.
"The old boy looked like he'd seen a ghost, when he dashed in there," Burpel told Hanscom, when he saw him after the incident.
"I keep telling you," observed Hanscom cynically, "that there's bound to be a limit. No machine can drink up an infinite number of B.T.U.s. and not have something happen. The fact that the bird was so scared proves you can't overload even a miracle. It won't surprise me if one of these days you and I find ourselves on the wrong end of a whopping big damage suit."
IT was about a month after that that Hanscom found a memorandum on his desk saying that Mr. Smith of the law firm wanted to see him on an important matter. Hanscom went over at once, and was mildly surprised to find Smith meeting him at the door with his finger across his lips in the gesture of "Silence." Smith ushered him in, then went over to the Sonomagnet and deliberately pulled out the plug.
"It's cool enough in here, for a while, and we'll have to make the best of the noise. But I want to make sure we won't be overheard. That thing can hear!"
Hanscom looked at him in astonishment.
"At least, that's my reasoning. Now, I am going to talk plainly to you because I think I can trust you. Something has gone wrong, and maybe you can help out on it. Bluntly, there has been a leak of information, and one of my clients has been threatened with blackmail, and in a novel way. You appreciate that there may be conversations between a man and his attorney that would make very spicy reading if published. Such a conversation was recently held in this office, and must have been overheard. Now tell me, what do you know about this man Haggledorn?"
"Not much. But where does he come in ? Is he the one who approached your client?"
"I can't say, but I suspect him by the process of elimination. My client received through the mail a phonograph record of what we said here. With it was a typewritten note saying that the record was a copy and demanding a large sum of money for the destruction of the master record, or else a second copy would be sent to a certain person mentioned who would surely make trouble."
"There was no stenographer present, and I have searched the place thoroughly for a concealed dictaphone. There is no explanation of the leak whatever, unless there is some device concealed in that machine. I would like to know why it is necessary to service it weekly, and whether those metallic ribbons on the spools have anything to do with this."
"What do the police say?"
"I have kept this to myself, so far. It is a delicate matter, and involves several prominent people. I would prefer to handle it informally, if possible."
"I don't know," said Hanscom, thoughtfully. "Haggledorn is an unprepossessing looking fellow, I'll admit. But he has a potential gold mine in this invention of his, and it's legitimate. Why should he cut corners and risk criminal prosecution?"
Smith turned the question over in his lawyer's mind, then drily observed. "Unless his machine has some weakness that he knows and we don't—yet. Bear in mind that your whole campaign has been experimental, and the Sonomagnet itself is shrouded in mystery. Supposing he has found out that they won't stand up, or something, and has decided to make a quick clean-up before they are discredited?"
"Could be," grunted Hanscom, recalling Burpel's account of Haggledorn's obvious anxiety the day the machine went wild and froze an office. It was not an impossibility that some sound- recording device could be put in the machine. There were the horns and microphones in plain sight."
"I'll find out what I can, and let you know," promised Hanscom, as he left.
All afternoon he thought over what Smith had said. He found it hard to reconcile the notion of Haggledorn, the successful, if disagreeable, inventor, with the accusation of blackmail. Yet he himself had been suspicious and disgusted with the hush-hush policy of marketing the units. Admittedly, an electrically- operated cooling machine made an excellent mask for a dictaphone, if the man were inclined to use it as such, and a lawyer's office was an ideal spot to place it.
In the end, Hanscom resolved to take a couple of days off and do a little independent investigation. He knew where Haggledorn's shop was located, for on the lid of the locked chamber inside each Sonomagnet was a brass plate engraved "Warning. Do not attempt to open this box; serious damage may result. In emergency call Anton Haggledorn, Misco, N.Y."
THE next day, partially disguised by an old suit and a different type of hat than he usually wore, he trailed the inventor through town until the chase ended at Grand Central Station. Hanscom watched him pay off his porter and take the two bags away from him. Then, seeing that he was on his way to the train, Hanscom bought a ticket to Misco, and followed.
That night, Hanscom crouched against the wall of Haggledorn's barn-like workshop in the woods about a mile beyond the limits of the hamlet of Misco. The shades over the windows were tightly drawn, but he found a crack under one through which he could see the whole of the interior.
Directly before him was a large masonry furnace, topped by a peculiarly designed uptake that coiled upon itself like the turns of a tuba, ending finally in a straight, slim stack that went up through the roof. To the left of it was a long trough, with a vapor hood over it, leading to another stack that went upward and was lost in the gloom of the rafters. To the right was a wooden work bench, and before that, on a high stool, perched Haggledorn, his back to the window.
He was slowly cranking a standing reel that was feeding the silvery ribbon to another table reel, in the manner of a man examining a length of picture film. Beyond him, Hanscom could see the turntable of a recording phonograph. An unearthly stream of queer sound seemed to be coming from where Haggledorn was. Hanscom listened intently, trying to identify it. Weird as its effect was, there was something suggestive of the human voice about it, although the words, if they were words, were garbled beyond recognition. Once when Haggledorn moved slightly, Hanscom saw that the moving metal ribbon was passing across the flame of a bunsen burner, and there apparently was the source of the sound.
When the reel was empty, Haggledorn rose, reached over and made some adjustments to the turntable in front of him. Then a record began to play back. What had been gibberish now came back as an intelligible conversation. Hanscom could not hear more than snatches of it, but he gathered from the little he did pick up that the subject matter was a woman's recital of the wrongs done her by her husband, whom she was preparing to sue for divorce. A man's voice occasionally punctuated the narrative with a question or remark, and after hearing it several times, Hanscom recognized it as that of another of his Sonomagnet customers— also a lawyer.
As if satisfied with his recording, Haggledorn left the work bench and crossed the room to where his two big bags were lying. Using tongs, as Smith had described, he picked a brick from one of them and carried it to the trough. The brick was evidently still very hot, for it was smoking, and when it had been dropped into the trough and water turned on it, huge clouds of steam welled up, filling the hood overhead.
While the stream of water was cooling the brick, Haggledorn selected another reel from the other bag. This was a larger reel than the one on the work bench, and after a momentary examination of it, he took it to the side of the furnace. There he hung it on a frame and threaded the ribbon through a slot in the side of the furnace, and out through a corresponding slot on the other side and attached it to an empty reel. Then the inventor lit a bunch of oily waste and tossed it into the firebox, slammed the door shut, and turned a valve.
Hanscom could feel the thudding roar as the oil stream ignited, and no sooner had the gangling Haggledorn begun to wind the film through onto the empty reel than a tremendous trembling seemed to shake the whole fabric of the furnace. Outside the building where he was, Hanscom experienced a tickling sensation down the spine as he sensed faintly, as if it were muffled, some tremendous yet vaguely familiar sound. The eerie emotion was heightened by failure to identify it It was like the noise of a vast dream city—like New York, yet different—in a sense familiar, but strangely inverted.
Hanscom, fascinated by the resonant drumming, kept staring at the shuddering furnace. Could it be that the noise was in there, and the tortuous chimney a maze of baffles to dull and dampen the outpourings of sound?
THE more Hanscom saw, the more he was mystified. Burpel, that first day, had said that Haggledorn insisted that weekly servicing was needed to keep the units from becoming clogged with heat and sound. Did, then, these bricks "absorb" the heat, and the reels "absorb" the sound, and was the spectacle he was watching the process of ridding them of their load? It appeared so, certainly in the case of the brick, for the clouds of steam were still billowing up from it.
Granting countless calories were being washed out of it, how did they ever become concentrated there, the Second Law of Thermodynamics being what it is? And how could absorbed sound be coaxed out of the silvery ribbons?
Hanscom rode home that night on a late train. He had stayed long enough to see Haggledorn make another record, and cool more bricks. As to Smith's uneasiness about the attempt at blackmail, it was evident that here was the source of the trouble, although it was not equally evident what was the best course to pursue. Hanscom wanted to expose the man, but felt an embarrassment about doing it. People would laugh at him. If there had been an actual dictaphone, something that did not have to be reconciled with known physical laws, it would be easier. But to charge that a man got sound by passing a metal ribbon over a flame... that was absurd! The next day he told Smith what he had seen. After he had said it all they both sat thinking awhile. Finally Smith broke the silence.
"That's what I expected. Now that it is confirmed, I am not sure what I want to do about it. I've already told you there are good reasons why I am unwilling to bring formal charges against him. I wish there was some way we could break up his little game—out of court, as it were."
"When is he due to come here again?"
"Monday of next week."
"All right. Lend me your machine for a couple of days. I think I can work out a little surprise for Mr. Haggledorn."
THE Monday night Hanscom took Smith with him to Misco. Lying outside the workshop in the same place where Hanscom had hidden before, they watched Haggledorn unpack his bags. He threw a hot brick into the trough and started it to cooling, then went on to the bench and began rigging one of the small reels for pulling across the flame. Both men outside watched him set the wax record on the turntable.
"Here," said Hanscom, handing Smith a wad of cotton, "stick this in your ears. If that's the one he took out of your machine this morning, you're going to need it."
Haggledorn began slowly winding the tape across the flickering burner, and again the same topsy-turvy conglomeration of scrambled human voices was heard. The film had nearly run to its end when... BOOM! The building and the whole countryside shook as if by earthquake. Haggledorn staggered back from the table, clutching at the sides of his head, then collapsed as if flung to the floor. The watchers outside had never let their eyes stray from the inventor from the moment he had begun his operations, yet they had seen not the slightest sign of a flash. They ran around to the door, which now hung half open, on one hinge, its lock broken. Inside they examined the prostrate Haggledorn. He was stunned, but alive.
"He seems to be all right," muttered Smith. "While he's out, let's destroy those records."
The master records and some copies were found in the drawer of a cupboard, and Smith began breaking and stamping them into little pieces. While he was doing that, Hanscom seized the opportunity to unravel some of the secrets of the Sonomagnet.
He found a completely assembled unit standing against a side wall, its lid standing open. He peered into it to see the arrangement within. He saw that the reels were operated much like typewriter ribbons, feeding from a full spool to an empty one. The fat, thick ribbon ran across the inner face of the microphone in the larger horn in the back of the unit, while the thin, narrow one was threaded behind the small opening in front. Between them lay a smaller box, and when he reached in, he found that its lid came off.
Both the box and its lid was lined with heat-resisting lagging, such as magnesia or asbestos. Inside the box lay the brick, in contact with the terminal of a cable that led from a series of wire grids elsewhere in the cabinet, standing in the stream of the circulating fan. Between each of the grids there was a small transformer-like electrical device.
Knowing that the noise of the blast would undoubtedly soon bring inquisitive neighbors, Hanscom thought they had better leave without further delay. Hurriedly, he snatched up a section of the wire grid from the unit he was examining, and broke off a yard of the metallic tape. He rolled up the specimen and thrust it into his pocket. Then, remembering the vital part the brick seemed to play, he chipped the corner off of it with a chisel and pocketed that also. The fragment was cold. The machine it came from had evidently not yet been used.
"Come on," he urged Smith, "we've done all we can do here. This fellow's little game is all shot now. Let's forget it, and get out of here before he comes to."
THE morning papers mentioned briefly an unexplained explosion in the laboratory of one Anton Haggledorn, an eccentric inventor of Misco. The item reported that a number of windows were broken within a radius of several miles, and that the inventor himself had been taken to a hospital. It was understood that his ear-drums were ruptured and that he was suffering from general shock. "Deaf, huh?" grunted Hanscom, as he read it, and thought how appropriate the punishment was for the crime attempted.
He took his samples that morning to an analytical laboratory and told the head chemist there part of the story. "I'll have the report in a week," said the chemist, adding hesitantly, "I hope. These specimens seem a bit unusual; it may take longer."
Hanscom was unusually busy the next ten days. A week after the Misco expedition, there were three annual conventions of nation- wide organizations staged simultaneously in New York. The resulting crowds, making merry in the streets, added the last straw to the burdens of many harassed business men. Some, who had heretofore resisted the appeal of air-conditioning, capitulated in the face of the all-pervading din. An inquiring reporter with a sound-measuring truck cheerfully reported that the mean level of noise in the city was only twelve per cent below that of a passing subway express. It was a prosperous week for salesmen in Hanscom's line, for the tumult coincided with the season's most unbearable heat wave, even if it was a belated "Indian summer" one.
In the midst of this activity, he received a letter from the chemist telling him that his analysis was ready, if he would kindly call for it.
"These ribbons are made of audium," the chemist said, "a little known element that has very limited use. So far as I know, it is only used by the army, in their airplane detectors. Audium is very nearly inert, chemically. When subjected to vibration, such as sound-waves, in the presence of carbon- dioxide, a compound audium-carbide is formed. You can see that in the little grey spots on the strip. Sound is an unusual activating agency in chemical reactions, but it does occur, just as light affects silver salts in photography, or percussion initiates some explosions. The strip I have here actually acts as a sort of sound track, for one of the properties of audium carbide is that the elements become disassociated if heated, giving back the sound."
"Only backward," suggested Hanscom, recalling the garbled nature of the negative record he had overheard at Misco.
"Yes, and possibly quite violently, if the carbide is sufficiently concentrated and sufficient heat is applied. As to the other substance, we do not recognize it. We have examined it, though, and find it has an astonishingly high specific heat, I should think it could be profitably employed anywhere where it was desired to store large quantities of heat in a limited space."
"The wire grid that accompanies it is evidently a part of some type of heat injector. It is an inverted-resistance step-up transformer, if I may coin an expression. I mean by that, that just as you make an electrified wire radiate heat by increasing its resistance, you can, by perfect inversion, cause it to absorb heat by making its resistance negative. In other words, the grid may be employed as a cooling coil, extracting heat from the air, and passing it on to the next grid, boosting it step by step until its pressure is sufficient to make it enter the storage brick, whatever its temperature."
"Good Lord!" shouted Hanscom, as the full import of the analysis began to unfold itself in his brain. He thought of the blatant hubbub of the past week's conventions superimposed on the usual clamor of the city, and of the excessive heat conditions. Visions floated before him of tapes loaded with concentrated audium carbide, running alongside a little metal box that by now must contain an incandescent brick shielded only by a thin layer of lagging.
None of the machines had been touched for two weeks, since Haggledorn had been hurt. If he had paled at a single hour's overload, how would he behave if he knew the present situation? Hanscom shuddered.
ACTING swiftly, he grabbed a telephone and got Burpel on the wire.
"Quick! Get out your list of Sonomagnet users and phone them all to disconnect them—right now!... Never mind why, I'll tell you later. Put all the girls at it... I'm coming right over."
Hanscom bolted out of the office, leaving the gaping chemist without explanation or apology. He ran, twisting, through the congested traffic, eluding on-rushing taxis by a hair as he darted, half-stumbling across streets, as the pieces of the jig- saw puzzle began to fall into their places in his mind. Now he knew that the little reel was designed to absorb the office sounds, the fat one in the back the street ones. That was the one that was dangerous now. Now he understood why Haggledorn renewed these parts every week and took the saturated elements away with him. Hanscom had seen him strip the heat from the bricks by drenching under running water. Now he knew that the thunder in the furnace was the baking out of the trapped street sounds in the heavy noise reel. That elaborate stack was a muffler!
Breathless, he burst into Burpel's office.
"Keep your shirt on, kid, everything's under control," assured Burpel easily. "Got 'em all. That is, all but Doc Martin. No answer over there."
Hanscom heaved a sigh pf relief. All but one!
"I'll go over there myself and get the building super...."
It was not an audible explosion; it was too profound for that. It was something like a colossal diapason pipe in some vast cathedral that could only be sensed by the trembling air, rather than heard. Hanscom blinked as he pushed himself away from the wall against which he had been flung. An earthquake?
The sudden wave had half-stunned every one, sweeping them inward as the windfront of a hurricane. The startled salesmen and clerks stared vacantly at their windows, now innocent of glass. The panes were scattered in twinkling fragments all over the room. Outside, there were confused crashes, as of walls tumbling, and the tinkling of shredded falling glass.
Still dizzy, and with the sensation of walking in a dream, Hanscom staggered to the window and looked out across the square. All the buildings he could see seemed to be as before, except that they had an ominous look of vacancy until he found the explanation of it in the fact that there was not a single windowpane left in them. Below, people were running madly in circles, like angered ants, holding their hands to their ears as if in pain.
Ten minutes later, Hanscom was trying to fight his way through the police lines to get to the building where Dr. Martin's office had been located. They would not let him by, but he managed to worm through until he got close to a fire chief's car. There were many ambulances, too, rolling up and away. Ahead, the street was full of debris.
In here there was more than broken glass. Office buildings had shed their outer walls in places. The refugees of the district, filing out, dazed looking, wore clothes that hung in strips. Coats or shirts were split in many places, and Hanscom saw trousers ripped down each leg, from waist band to cuff.
"It's a new one on me," he overheard a fire official tell a reporter. "No fire, no trace of any explosive I've ever seen, and I think I've seen 'em all. Just a big noise! The doctor told me that all he's found so far are ear cases—dished-in eardrums, forty-four cases so far. What do you know about that?"
"It sure raised hell with the glass!" replied the reporter, noncommittally, looking at the ankle-deep litter of silica shards littering the street.
HANSCOM backed away and sought out Smith. He was feeling a little guilty over the multitude of deafened victims, for he was the one who had distributed the sound-concentrating units throughout the town. If only Dr. Martin had been in, this might have been averted.
Smith was obviously nervous, having suspected that there was a connection between the frantic telephone warning he had received, and the devastating explosion a few minutes afterward. Hanscom noticed with relief that Smith's cooling unit was disconnected, but also that his office was carpeted with broken glass, like every other one in Manhattan. He accepted a cigarette from Smith's trembling hand and lit it. He felt jittery himself.
"Oh, well," he philosophized, "hindsight is always better than foresight. Just think what it would have been like if the whole damn forty had gone off together and let loose the accumulation of two weeks' noise at once! I never realized before how much power canned racket has."
Smith laughed shortly, but there was not much humor in it.
"No wonder Haggledorn tried to cash in quick. By the way, what did you load the tape with, the night he got his? And how did you know how to do it ?"
"Hunch, pure hunch. I figured that it he was recording sound in the units, the proof of it was to plant some there, and check it as it came out. It had to be something I could recognise, and loud enough for me to hear, because I knew I would be outside. If you remember. I borrowed your machine a few days before that. I had noticed an item in the paper that morning announcing target practice for the Coast Artillery down at Sandy Hook. I took your Sonomagnet down there and set it up near the muzzle of a sixteen- inch gun."