Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 27: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BEAM PIRATE Ze the transmitter cathode. I’ve a hunch that this thing is not so much an inductor, but something sour in the way of. alloy- selectivity. If I’m right, I may cut this in half, and make two detectors, each of simi- lar characteristics. Shall I?” “Go ahead. We've established the fact that it is not the physico-electrical character- istics of that coil,” said Wes. “I, too, took my chances and rewound that same wire on a couple of other forms. So it doesn’t count as far as an inductance goes. So we can’t ruin anything but the total make-up of the wire. I think we may be able to re-establish the wire by self-welding if your idea doesn’t work. Now, unless we want to search the three planets for another hunk of wire to work like this one did, without knowing what to look for and therefore trying every foot of wire on three planets—” “Tl cut it,” said Channing with a smile. His cutters snipped, and then fastened one end of the wire to the coil, stripping the other portion off and handing it to Charley Thomas, who rewound it on another form. “Now,” said Don, “crank up your outfit and we'll try this hunk.” The beam tubes were fired up, and the smell of ozone began to make itself promi- nent. Channing cranked up the air-vent capacity to remove the ozone more swiftly. The men applied themselves to the detector circuits, and Wes, who recognized the results, said: “This hunk works. About as good as the whole coil.” Channing replaced the first coil with the second. Wes inspected the results and said: “Not quite as good, but it does work.” Walt nodded, and said: “Maybe it should be incandescent.” “That’s a thought. Our solar beam uses ° an incandescent dynode.” Channing re- moved the second coil and handed it to Freddy. “Take this thing down to the metallurgical lab and tell ’em to analyze it right down to the trace of sodium that seems to be in everything. I want quantita- tive figures on every element in it. Also, cut off a hunk and see if the crystallogra- phic expert can detect anything peculiar, that would make this hunk of copper wire different from any other hunk. Follow?” “Yup,” said Freddy. “We'll also. start making similar alloys with a few percent variation on the composition metals. Right?” “That’s the ticket. Wes, can we evacuate a tube with this wire in it and make it incandescent?” “Let’s evacuate the room. I like that stunt.” “You're the engineer on this trick. Do it your way.” “Thanks. I get the program, all right. Why not have Charley build us a modula- tor for the driver tube? Then when we get this thing perfected, we'll have some way to test it.” “Can do, Charley?” . “T think so. It’s easy. We'll just modulate the cathode current of the electron guns that bombard the big cathode. That is the way we adjust for drive; it should work as a means of amplitude-modulation.” “O.K.,” said Channing. “We’re on the rails for this one. We’ll get together as soon aS our various laboratories have their answers and have something further to work with.” Above Venus, Mark Kingman was listening to the wailing roar of alien sym- phony and cursing because he could hardly hear the voice of his Lunar accomplice saying: “V. E. Preferred just hit one hun- dred and two!” Fifteen minutes before the peak hit Nor- thern Landing, share after share was being dumped, and in addition, a message was on its way back to Terra. It went on the regular beam transmission through Venus Equilateral, carefully coded. It said: “Have sufficient stock and additional collateral to ply the first pressure. Apply phase two of plan. Kingman.” In the ten hours that followed, Venus Equilateral stock went down and down and down, passed through a deep valley, and started up again. Up it went. Up past the one hundred mark, up into the one hundred and fifties. It hovered there for a bit, and then started up again. Kingman’s crowd was Offering twice the market for the preferred stock, and there was little to have. It took a short-time dip at three hundred, and the few minutes of decline smoked a lot of stock out of the hands of people who looked upon this chance as the right time to make their money and get out. Then the stock began to climb again, and those people who thought that the price had been at its peak-and-passed were angrily trying to buy in again. That accelerated the climb, but Kingman’s crowd, operating on Venus and on Mars and on Terra were buying only, and selling not one share of Interplanetary Communications. Verran Electric stock took a gradual slide, for Kingman’s crowd needed additional Ccomiclooks.€c©