With No Strings Attached | Page 6

hear the story--that is, if it isn't classified."
Colonel Dower chuckled. "Nothing classified about it. Just another
crackpot inventor. Had a little suitcase that he claimed was a
marvelous new power source. Wanted a million dollars cash for it, tax
free, no strings attached, but he wouldn't show us what was in it. Not
really very interesting."
"Go ahead, colonel," said Thorn. "I'm interested. Really I am."
"Well, as I said, there's nothing much to it," the colonel said. "He
showed us a lot of impressive-looking stuff in his laboratory, but it
didn't mean a thing. He had this suitcase, as I told you. There were a
couple of thick copper electrodes coming out of the side of it, and he
claimed that they could be tapped for tremendous amounts of power.
Well, we listened, and we watched his demonstrations in the lab. He
ran some heavy-duty motors off it and a few other things like that. I
don't remember what all."
"And he wanted to sell it to you sight-unseen?" Thorn asked.
"That's right," said the colonel. "Well, actually, he wasn't trying to sell
it to the Army. As you know, we don't buy ideas; all we buy is hardware,
the equipment itself, or the components. But the company he was trying
to sell his gadget to wanted me to take a look at it as an observer. I've
had experience with that sort of thing, and they wanted my opinion."
"I see," Thorn said. "What happened?"

"Well," said the colonel, "we wanted him to give us a demonstration
out in the Mojave Desert--"
* * * * *
"... Out in the Mojave Desert?" the inventor asked. "Whatever for,
Colonel Dower?"
"We just want to make sure you haven't got any hidden power sources
hooked up to that suitcase of yours. We know a place out in the Mojave
where there aren't any power lines for miles. We'll pick the place."
The inventor frowned at him out of pale blue eyes. "Look." He gestured
at the suitcase sitting on the laboratory table. "You can see there's
nothing faked about that."
Colonel Dower shook his head. "You won't tell us what's in that
suitcase. All we know is that it's supposed to produce power. From
what? How? You won't tell us. Did you ever hear of the Keely Motor?"
"No. What was the Keely Motor?"
"Something along the lines of what you have here," the colonel said
dryly, "except that Keely at least had an explanation for where he was
getting his power. Back around 1874, a man named John Keely
claimed he had invented a wonderful new power source. He called it a
breakthrough in the field of perpetual motion. An undiscovered source
of power, he said, controlled by harmony. He had a machine in his lab
which would begin to turn a flywheel when he blew a chord on a
harmonica. He could stop it by blowing a sour note. He claimed that
this power was all around, but that it was easiest to get it out of water.
He claimed that a pint of his charged water would run a train from
Philadelphia to New York and back and only cost a tenth as much as
coal."
The inventor folded his arms across his chest and looked grimly at
Colonel Dower. "I see. Go on."

"Well, he got some wealthy men interested. A lot of them invested
money--big money--in the Keely Motor Company. Every so often, he'd
bring them down to his lab and show them what progress he was
making and then tell them how much more money he needed. He
always got them to shell out, and he was living pretty high on the hog.
He kept at it for years. Finally, in the late nineties, The Scientific
Americanexposed the whole hoax. Keely died, and his lab was given a
thorough going over. It turned out that all his marvelous machines
were run by compressed air cleverly channeled through the floor and
the legs of tables."
"I see," repeated the inventor, narrowing his eyes. "And I suppose my
invention is run by compressed air?"
"I didn't say your invention was a phony," Colonel Dower said
placatingly. "I merely mentioned the Keely Motor to show you why we
want to test it out somewhere away from your laboratory. Are you
willing to go?"
"Any time you are, colonel."
A week or so later, they went out into the Mojave and set up the test.
The suitcase--
* * * * *
"... The suitcase," said the colonel, "was connected up to a hundred
hundred-watt light bulbs. He let the thing run for ten hours before he
shut it off." He chuckled. "He never would let us look into that suitcase.
Naturally, we wouldn't buy a pig in