The Trojan Beam

THE BEAM PROJECTOR

George Saltry, agent for Top-Notch Tinned Foods, disappeared from Shanghai on one of his periodic trips. He was generally under­stood to be negotia­ting new agencies in the Philip­pines or Celebes. He had been seen off on the Shanghai-Hong-Kong boat and his name was on the passenger list of another from Hong-Kong to Manila. In fact, there was actually a passenger who responded to that name and looked passably like the George Saltry who had left Shanghai.

Meanwhile a spectacled and earnest young medical mission­ary was travel­ling north by train through Kwang-Tung province. His name was George White, and he was conducting a tour of personal inspection on behalf of the Charleston and Savannah Oriental Endeavour League. He was untidy, a little bewildered, a little short-sighted and he talked with the soft, pleasant speech of South Carolina. In his pocket was an American passport and he carried nothing which would connect him with Mr. Saltry of London.

George rather enjoyed the personality of Mr. White save when it led him into tech­nical discus­sions of social wel­fare with other phi­lan­thropic exiles.

After a five-hundred-mile journey, he left the train at Chang-sha. A few hours later he sat in a plane headed north-west, looking over the waters of the Tung-ting-hu which appeared more like an inland sea than a lake. A few hours more, and he was able to see the rushing yellow waters of the great Yangtze. Shortly before night fell, they landed at the great flying-field of Kwei-chow in Hu-Peh.

The next morning Mr. George White made appli­cation in proper form to the mili­tary gover­nor for per­mission to travel in Hu-Peh. The Governor considered a personal inter­view desirable and Mr. White presented him­self. The former waited until the door had closed behind his secre­tary before he remarked:

“How do you do, George?”

He rose, came round the desk and extended his hand. George took it. He replied in English and his voice had lost its southern accent.

“How are you, Li? You're looking well.”

Pang Li was a few years older than he, but they had been con­tem­porary at Oxford. Facing him now, George thought, not for the first time, how much better the Chinese was suited by his long silk coat than by a mili­tary uni­form, or by the suits he had worn in England.

Pang Li waved his visitor to a chair with a decanter and cigarettes on a small table beside it. He himself returned to his seat behind the desk.

“We have been expecting you before this,” he said. The tone was one of inquiry. George answered as to a question.

“And I expected to be here sooner, Li. To tell you the truth, I was beginning to be a bit worried at their not sending me.”

The Chinese looked across the desk seriously.

“They are losing faith in you?”

“I don't know. I don't think they have a great deal to lose. But I am still very use­ful to them. However, I suppose it is natural for them to put it to their most reliable men first.”

Pang Li nodded. “I expect you are right. You are not the first to come after it, George. There have been several in the last week or two.”

“After what?” George inquired, innocently.

“My dear George” — Li smiled — “there is only one thing to bring you all this way at this time.”

“They didn't get it?”

“No. They got bullets.”

There was a pause. George broke it by asking:

“What is this thing Li? A magnetic force?”

The Chinese nodded again.

“That is so. It is a controlled magnetic beam. An amazing discovery. Wu-Chin-tan, who used to be Professor of Physics at Chang-Chow, worked it out, and Ho Tang-hsi applied it.”

“Entirely a Chinese discovery?” said George.

A faint shadow of impa­tience showed for a moment on Pang Li's face and then vanished.

“Unlikely as it may seem — a Chinese discovery,” he said.

George flushed at the tone.

“I didn't mean that, Li.”

Li looked at him.

“You implied it, my friend. Confess that to your­self. You Euro­peans and Ameri­cans are always sur­prised when a discovery of prac­tical use is made in the East. You feel that mech­anical invent­ion is the mono­poly of the West — and yet we have made many dis­coveries in the past, gun­powder and the compass among them. This magnetic beam is our dis­covery, and, at present our exclu­sive know­ledge.”

“It seems to me that it is of limited use in war,” George told him, “that is, unless you can reverse it and repel to an equal extent. It will mean a greater use of non-ferrous metals by an enemy, of course, but what else?”

“It cannot be used repul­sively,” Pang Li admitted. “Perhaps you are right in think­ing it a minor and not a great weapon. If it could be made repellant it would indeed be more use­ful. But you take a short view in think­ing of it only as a weapon. When this war is over and the Japa­nese barba­rians are driven back to their islands the true value of the beam will be seen all over the world, Wu-Chin-tan's name will be more famous than that of Edison.”

“How?” George wanted to know.

Pang Li shrugged.

“Who can tell?” he replied. “But I can suggest just one application of it which will alter trans­port in many countries. The beam is highly efficient — that is to say it requires a small consumption of fuel for the power it produces —also, for lower power it can be made very compact. I fore­see that if iron sections were set in the roads at, say, 100 yards inter­vals, a vehicle gene­rating the beam would be able to pull itself along by means of them with great eco­nomy. All the power at present lost in trans­mission would be gained and the beam would be far cheaper to gene­rate than the present rotary motion. I can think, too, of many ways in which it could be used to simplify haulage and hand­ling of goods. There are appli­ca­tions, too, to the docking of ships, and the handling of aero­planes on the ground. But those are matters for the techni­cians. I know only that where a cheap source of power is available it will in some way or other be used.”

“I see.” George was less interested in the future develop­ments of the beam than in its present use. He turned the con­ver­sa­tion back. “You know why I am here, Li. What do you want me to tell them?”

“How much did they ask you to find out?”

“Everything, naturally.”

“They would like to make beam pro­jec­tors for them­selves if they could?”

“Of course.”

Pang Li appeared to consider.

“I will show you one in action,” he said, and struck a gong to summon his secre­tary.

The machine was not impres­sive. To begin with, there was little to see. The gene­ra­tor was enclosed in a cubical brass box some twenty inches high. This was clamped by braces, which seemed of absurdly dispro­por­tion­ate strength, to a wall of concrete six feet thick.

“The pull on the machine is of course equal to the pull on the object,” Pang Li explained, “and the moving of heavy objects there­fore necessi­tates a firm anchorage. The beam,” he added, “passes through the wall which is thus made to serve the double purpose of holding back the machine and of protec­ting it.”

Together they walked fifty yards or more at right angles to the beam's path. The Chinese carried a control box with wires reach­ing back to the gene­rator. They stopped and he pointed to a heap of scrap iron a quarter of a mile away over the barren ground.

“Watch,” he said.

He tipped over a switch and advanced a rheostat slightly. In the distance, the pile of scrap stirred slightly, and a faint squeak of rusty pieces rubbing together floated across the open ground.

“A little more power,” said Pang Li, turning the knob.

The heap seemed to flatten out. The lighter pieces, old cans and rusty mud­guards began to roll towards the wall. Li gave still more power, and now all the pieces were in motion, scurrying and tumbling over the ground for all the world as if they were blown by a gale. Suddenly, half­way to the gene­rator, they were stopped.

“Now,” said Li. “Full power.”

He turned the control as he spoke. Instant­aneously the scrap iron leapt for­ward. It flew as though it had been fired from a gun. It hit the wall with a shattering crash and remained glued to the concrete face.

The two walked back.

“Try to pull it away,” Li suggested.

George laid hold of an old cooking pot and put his full weight behind the tug he gave. It wrenched his arm, but the pot did not move.

“Stand back,” Li directed.

He did so, and as the Chinese flicked back the switch all the suspended pieces fell into a loose heap at the foot of the wall.

George contemplated the heap for a few minutes in silence, then he asked.

“What is the power of a generator this size?”

“It depends on the spread,” Li told him. “At an angle of 20° full strength it will exert a pull of between thirty an forty tons at a range of a mile. At 10° the pull is increased to nearly sixty tons at the same range. It is quite a small machine for experi­mental purposes. A 1,000-ton, 20°, one-mile machine can be housed in a four-foot cube, a ten-thousand-ton machine in about six foot.'

“I see,” said George, thought­fully. As they walked back to Pan Li's office, he added. “What's the point of showing me all this, Li? What is up that wide and elegant sleeve of yours?”

The Chinese smiled.

“Did you not come here to learn about it?”

“That's what the Japs sent me for, but I scarcely expected to be shown the thing straight off.”

Pang Li smiled again.

“I don't think you are much wiser for having seen it at work,” he remarked.

Back in the office, George sat down and lit a cigarette while Pang Li went to a large wall safe. He returned to his desk with a shallow round case, smaller than a tooth-powder tin and enamelled black.

“This, George, will make you one of the most estim­able spies in the Japa­nese service,” he said.

“How nice for me,” said George. “What is it?”

“The thing which at least seven spies have lost their lives trying to get. Plans of the magnetic gene­rator.”

“In that?” said George suspiciously.

“Yes. Several types, in fact, inclu­ding the pattern for aerial defence. They are all beauti­fully photo­graphed on a piece of 8-millimetre film.”

“How nice,” said George again. He looked curiously at the little box and then back to Li's face. “And when they've built them, and find they won't work, what do you suppose happens to me?” he inquired.

“But they will work. These are perfectly genuine-working drawings.”

There was a pause.

“All right. I'll buy it. What's the game?”

“Game, George?”

“Game. Do you mean to say you're giving them your weapon?”

“You yourself said it was of limited use.”

“Yes, but — hang it, you just told me you had shot seven spies who were after it.”

“It makes for veri­simili­tude. They might have thought it surprising and a little suspi­cious if the very first spy had been successful.”

“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” murmured George. “But I don't see how—?”

“That is a language I do not know,” said Li.

“Troy, the Wooden Horse and all that,” George explained.

“Yes, the Wooden Horse.” Li spoke reflectively.

“All the same, I don't see—” George began again.

“It is not necessary for you to see. All you have to do is to deliver the plans and say how diffi­cult they were to obtain. A really heavy expense account should prove most convinc­ing.'

“All right. But I have your word, Li, that these are the genuine thing?”

“You have.” He handed across the little box of film and watched George put it away care­fully in an inside pocket.

“This,” said the latter, as he rose to go, “is one of the most remarkable things which has ever happened to me. I wish I could see what's behind it.”

Pang Li smiled.

“While you were on this job, George, you have also heard a rumour which should be of some interest to the barba­rian Japa­nese. It is that the Chinese are building some very long-range bombers. They hope to have at least a hundred ready by the end of the summer or the beginning of the autumn.'

“Indeed. Capable of carrying out raids on Osaka or even Tokyo, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” said Li.

George extended his hand and wished his friend good­bye.

“I don't know what your scheme is, but I wish you luck. It is time the dead­lock was broken.”

“We shall break it,” Pang Li said with conviction. “The stars in their courses fight for China.”