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When it was finished, the Nuclear-Fission man tried it out himself. He climbed into the harness in the
Wind Tunnel Building of Aerodynamic Design's plant, said the Russian equivalent of "Here goes
nothing!" and flipped over one of the controls. In his shakiness, he pushed it too far. He left the ground,
went straight up like a rocket, and cracked his head against the three-story-high ceiling and was knocked
cold for two hours. They had to haul him down from the ceiling with an extension ladder, because the
gadget he'd made tried insistently to push a hole through the roof to the wide blue yonder.
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Give Me Liberty
When he recovered consciousness, practically all of Aerodynamic Design surrounded him, wearing
startled expressions. And they stayed around while he found out what the new device would do. Put
briefly, it would do practically anything but make fondant. It was a personal flying device, not an
airplane, which would lift up to two hundred twenty-five pounds. It would hover perfectly. It would, all
by itself, travel in any direction at any speed a man could stand without a windshield.
True, the Rojestvensky Effect which made it fly was limited. No matter how big you made the metal bar,
it wouldn't lift more than roughly a hundred kilos, nearly two-twenty-five pounds. But it worked by the
fact that the layer of metallic sodium on the brass pushed violently away from all other sodium more
than three meters away from it. Sodium within three meters wasn't affected. And there was sodium
everywhere. Sodium chloride common table salt is present everywhere on Earth and the waters
under the Earth, but it isn't present in the heavens above. So the thing would fly anywhere over land or
sea, but it wouldn't go but so high. The top limit for the gadget's flight was about four thousand feet,
with a hundred-and-fifty-pound man in the harness. A heavier man couldn't get up so high. And it was
infinitely safe. A man could fly night, day, or blind drunk and nothing could happen to him. He couldn't
run into a mountain because he'd bounce over it. The thing was marvelous!
* * *
Aerodynamic Design made a second triumphant report to the Politbureau. A new and appropriately
revolutionary device it was Russian had been produced in obedience to orders. Russian science had
come through! When better revolutionary discoveries were made, Russia would make them! And if the
device was inherently limited to one-man use ha-ha! It gave the Russian army flying infantry! It
provided the perfect modern technique for revolutionary war! It offered the perfect defense for peaceful,
democratic Russia against malevolent capitalistic imperialism! In short, it was hot stuff!
As a matter of fact, it was. Two months later there was a May Day celebration in Moscow at which the
proof of Russia's superlative science was unveiled to the world. Planes flew over Red Square in
magnificent massed formations. Tanks and guns rumbled through the streets leading to Lenin's tomb.
But the infantry where was the infantry? Where were the serried ranks of armed men, shaking the earth
with their steady tread? Behind the tanks and guns there was only emptiness.
For a while only. There was silence after the guns had gone clanking by. Then a far-distant, tumultuous
uproar of cheering. Something new, something strange and marvelous had roused the remotest quarter of
the city to enthusiasm. Far, far away, the flying infantry appeared!
Some of the more naïve of the populace believed at first that the U.S.S.R. had made a nonaggression
pact with God and that a detachment of angels was parading in compliment to the Soviet Union. It
wasn't too implausible, as a first impression. Shoulder to shoulder, rank after rank, holding fast to lines
like dog leashes that held them in formation, no less than twelve thousand Russian infantrymen floated
into the Red Square some fifteen feet off the ground. They were a bit ragged as to elevation, and they
tended to eddy a bit at street corners, but they swept out of the canyons which were streets at a
magnificent twenty-five miles an hour, in such a display of air-borne strength as the world had never
seen before.
The population cheered itself hoarse. The foreign attachés looked inscrutable. The members of the
Politbureau looked on and happily began to form in their minds the demands they would make for pacts [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]