A Brand New World by Ray Cummings

On the afternoon of March 3, Freddie and I, in Miami, were summoned by the War Department, which was installed here in temporary quarters after the flight from Washington. We were greeted by the secretary, who introduced us to a dozen or more grave-faced officials who were seated around a large table in a cold, badly illuminated room. They were under the impression that I had recently been to Porto Rico with my father; they wanted further details from me, as an eyewitness, to supplement the information which had been furnished them concerning the captive girl from Xenephrene.

I had not been to Porto Rico; I could tell them nothing, but I remained at the conference with Freddie. Of him, they wanted a demonstration of his invention. The War Secretary laughed, but it was a very hollow, mirthless laugh.

"You see, young man, we are almost in the position of grasping at straws."

By the general public, who reads of war conferences and grave official decisions given with calm dignity in times of national crisis, the inner workings of a government are never understood. The people naturally picture men of great intellect, calmly, judicially weighing problems of international law, and quietly giving their decisions, as though the whole matter were controlled by some giant, insensate machine of precision, incapable of error, undisturbed by human feeling.

It is not so. Or, at least, I can vouch for the fact that in the darkness of this afternoon of March 3, 1953, in the United States War Department at Miami, it most certainly was not so.

These gray-haired men were very human. Most were unshaved, with rumpled hair and reddened eyes. Distraught, harassed; undecided; doubtful of everything; striving to do the best they could, with the welfare of millions of their people at stake. Conditions of unprecedented disaster had for weeks assailed them. Under this culminating blow -- invaders from another world landing to attack what was once our greatest city -- they were all but broken.

Very human indeed! The Secretary of the Navy sat savagely chewing on the stump of an old cigar, blowing on his hands, cursing the cold intervals. The Air Secretary was pouring hot coffee at the end of the table, shoving a litter of papers out of his way to make room for the cups. The stooped, middle-aged, haggard gentleman pacing the floor was our President.

"Grasping at a straw," said the War Secretary.

In a sudden silence, through an open doorway to the room adjoining, I could hear the clatter of the southern telegraphs, telephone bells, the hiss and splutter of the radio and television instruments.

"Close that door," the secretary added querulously. "You've brought your model, Smith? Put it here on the table -- tell us about it."

Freddie opened his apparatus and explained it briefly. His so-called thermodyne principle. Though ultimately he had hoped to adapt it into a motor of revolutionary design, his present model was merely a small projector.

"Projector of what? " demanded the President irritably.

"Of heat, sir," Freddie answered. "I'll show you. This is a very small model, of course, but it demonstrates the principle."

They did not want any technicalities from Freddie. He explained only that his apparatus, in this present small form, took a tiny electric spark and built it up into a new form of radiant heat.

"It is," said Freddie, "heat of totally different properties from the kind with which we commonly deal. It travels -- radiates, by the diffusion of its electrons, more like light than heat. At a great speed -- I think possibly, at over a hundred thousand miles a second."

He opened his apparatus. It consisted of a small, flat, metallic box, curved to fit a man's chest. A disk, like a small electrode, to be pressed against the skin. Freddie bared his chest and strapped it on.

"I use," he said, "the tiny electrical impulse which the human body itself furnishes. This, I amplify, build up and store in a battery. " Wires from the generator led to a small box which he opened to show his audience -- a box of coils, and a tiny row of amplifying tubes. He put this in his pocket, with wires leading to the battery and the projector. These were both in one piece -- the projector a small metallic funnel, with a trigger; a grid of wires was across its opened end; it had a long metallic handle, in the hollow interior of which was the battery where the charge was concentrated.

"Electrons of heat under pressure," said Freddie.

"Show us," said some one.

Freddie erected a screen across the room -- an insulating screen to kill the heat-beam so that it could not injure the wall. The men moved aside.