With No Strings Attached | Page 8

of the space was taken up by batteries.
And every single one of the cells was a familiar little cannister. They
were small, rechargeable nickel-cadmium cells, and every one bore the
trademark of North American Carbide & Metals!
One of the other men in the lab said: "What kind of a joke is this?"
"Do you mean, Mr. Sorensen," Thorn asked with controlled precision,
"that your million-dollar process is merely some kind of gimmickry
with our own batteries?"
"No," said Sorensen. "It's--"
"Wait a minute," said one of the others, "is it some kind of hydrogen
fuel cell?"
"In a way," Sorensen said. "Yes, in a way. It isn't as efficient as I'd like,
but it gets its power by converting hydrogen to helium. I need those
batteries to start the thing. After it gets going, these leads here from the

reactor cell keep the batteries charged. The--"
He was interrupted by five different voices all trying to speak at once.
He could hardly--
* * * * *
"... He could hardly get a word in edgewise at first," said Thorn. He
was enjoying the look of shocked amazement on Colonel Dower's face.
"When Sorensen finally did get it explained, we still didn't know much.
But we built another one, and it worked as well as the one he had. And
the contract didn't specifically call for a battery. He had us good, he
did."
"Now wait--" Colonel Dower said. "You mean to say it wasn't a battery
after all?"
"Of course not."
"Then why all the folderol?"
"Colonel," Thorn said, "Sorensen patented that device nine years ago.
It only has eight years to run. But he couldn't get anyone at all to
believe that it would do what he said it would do. After years of beating
his head against a stone wall, years of trying to convince people who
wouldn't even look twice at his gadget, he decided to get smart.
"He began to realize that 'everybody knew' that hydrogen fusion wasn't
that simple. It was his theory that no one would listen to. As soon as he
told anyone that he had a hydrogen fusion device that could be started
with a handful of batteries and could be packed into a suitcase, he was
instantly dismissed as a nut.
"I did a little investigating after he gave us the full information on what
he had done. (Incidentally, he signed over the patent to us, which was
more than the contract called for, in return for a job with our outfit, so
that he could help develop the fusion device.)

"As I said, he finally got smart. If the theory was what was making
people give him the cold shoulder, he'd tell them nothing.
"You know the results of that, Colonel Dower. At least he got somebody
to test the machine. He managed to get somebody to look at what it
would do.
"But that wasn't enough. He didn't have, apparently, any legitimate
excuse for keeping it under wraps that way, so everyone was
suspicious."
"But why tell you it was a battery?" asked Captain Lacey.
"That was probably suggested by Colonel Dower's reaction to the tests
he saw," Thorn said. "Somebody--I think it was George Gamow, but
I'm not certain--once said that just having a theory isn't enough; the
theory has to make sense.
"Well, Sorensen's theory of hydrogen fusion producing electric current
didn't make sense. It was true, but it didn't make sense.
"So he came up with a theory that did make sense. If everyone wanted
to think it was 'nothing but a battery', then, by Heaven, he'd sell it as a
battery. And that, gentlemen, was a theory we were perfectly willing to
believe. It wasn't true, but it did make sense.
"As far as I was concerned, it was perfectly natural for a man who had
invented a new type of battery to keep it under wraps that way.
"Naturally, after we had invested a million dollars in the thing, we
had_ to investigate it. It worked, and we had to find out why and how."
"Naturally," said Colonel Dower, looking somewhat uncomfortable. "I
presume this is all under wraps, eh? What about the Russians? Couldn't
they get hold of the patent papers?"
"They could have," Thorn admitted, "but they didn't. They dismissed
him as a crackpot, too, if they heard about him at all. Certainly they

never requested a copy of his patent. The patent number is now top
secret, of course, and if anyone does write in for a copy, the Patent
Office will reply that there are temporarily no copies available. And the
FBI will find out who is making the request."
"Well," said Colonel Dower, "at least I'm glad to hear that I was not the
only one who didn't believe