Krakatit/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
Mr. carson sat down and lit a very fat cigar, after which he reflected for a time. “Tchah!” he said at last. “So it exploded with you also. When was that? The date?”
“I can’t say now.”
“The day of the week?”
“I don’t know. I think . . . two days after Sunday.”
“Tuesday then. And at what time?”
“About . . . some time after ten in the evening.”
“Correct.” Mr. Carson thoughtfully blew out some smoke.
“With us it exploded . . . as you were pleased to express it, ‘by itself’ . . . on Tuesday at ten thirty-five. Did you notice anything at the time?”
“No. I was asleep.”
“Aha! It also explodes on Fridays, about half-past ten. On Tuesdays and Fridays. We tested it,” he explained in answer to Prokop’s fascinated look. “We left a milligram of Krakatit lying exposed and watched it day and night. It exploded on Tuesday and Friday at half-past ten. Seven times. Once also on a Monday at ten twenty-nine. So.”
Prokop was inwardly horrified.
“A sort of blue spark appears on it,” added Mr. Carson, absorbed, “and then it explodes.”
It was so quiet that Prokop could hear the ticking of Carson’s watch.
“Tchah!” sighed Mr. Carson and rummaged desperately with his hand in his brush of red hair.
“What does it mean?” Prokop burst out.
Mr. Carson only shrugged his shoulders. “And what did you,” he said, “what did you think yourself when it exploded . . . ‘by itself,’ eh?”
“Nothing,” replied Prokop evasively. “I didn’t speculate . . . so far.”
Mr. Carson mumbled something uncomplimentary.
“That is,” Prokop corrected himself, “I thought that perhaps . . . it was done by electro-magnetic waves.”
“Aha! Electro-magnetic waves. We thought so too. A splendid idea, only idiotic. Unfortunately completely idiotic. So.”
Prokop was completely at a loss.
“To begin with,” continued Mr. Carson, “wireless waves don’t pass over the world only on Tuesdays and Fridays at half-past ten! And secondly, my friend, you must imagine that we at once experimented accordingly. With short, long, all possible waves. And your Krakatit didn’t alter that much,” and he indicated a minute spot on his own nail. “But on Tuesdays and Fridays at half-past ten it conceived the idea of exploding ‘by itself.’ And do you know what besides?”
Prokop of course did not. “This. For some time . . . about six months or something of the sort . . . the European wireless stations have been horribly annoyed. Something is interfering with their conversations, you know. Really. And as it happens . . . always on Tuesdays and Fridays at half-past ten in the evening. What did you say?”
Prokop had said nothing, but only rubbed his forehead.
“Well, on Tuesdays and Fridays. They call it disturbed conversations. Something begins to crackle in the telegraphists’ ears, and there we are; it’s enough to send the fellows off their heads. Sad, eh?” Mr. Carson removed his spectacles and began to clean them with extreme care. “To begin with . . . to begin with they thought it was magnetic storms or something of the sort. But when they found that its office hours were always Tuesday and Friday . . . to cut the story short, Marconi S.F. Transradio, and various Ministries of Posts and Marine, Commerce, the Interior and I don’t know what, have agreed to pay twenty thousand pounds sterling to the smart fellow who can find out the cause of it.” Mr. Carson replaced his spectacles and smiled broadly. “They think that there is some illegal station in existence which amuses itself by interfering with conversations on Tuesdays and Fridays. Rubbish! A secret station which uses up twenty kilowatts for a joke! Fi!” And Mr. Carson spat contemptuously.
“On Tuesdays and Fridays,” said Prokop, “that is, regularly . . .”
“Extraordinary, eh?” leered Mr. Carson. “I’ve got it written down: on Tuesday on such and such a date at ten thirty-five and so many seconds a disturbance at all stations from Reval onwards, and so on. And a certain amount of your Krakatit explodes at the same instant ‘by itself,’ as you are good enough to express it. Eh? What? The same the next Friday at ten twenty-nine and a few seconds; a disturbance and an explosion. The next Tuesday at ten thirty-five explosion and disturbance. And so on. As an exception, not in accordance with the programme as it were, a disturbance on Monday at ten twenty-nine minutes, thirty seconds. Ditto explosion. Comes on the second. Eight times in eight cases. A joke, eh? What do you think about it?”
“I d—don’t know,” mumbled Prokop.
“There’s one thing,” said Mr. Carson after reflecting for a long time. “Mr. Thomas was working with us. He has no knowledge, but he has got hold of something. Mr. Thomas had a high frequency generator installed in his laboratory and shut the door in front of our noses. A rotter. It’s the first time I’ve heard of high frequency machines being used in ordinary chemistry, eh? What’s your idea?”
“Well . . . naturally,” said Prokop doubtfully, with an uneasy glance at his own brand-new generator in the corner.
Mr. Carson did not fail to notice this. ‘‘H’m,” he said. ‘You’ve the same sort of toy, eh? A pretty little transformer. What did it cost you?”
Prokop grew sullen, but Mr. Carson began to glow. “I think,” he said with growing expansiveness, “that it would be a magnificent thing if one could produce in some substance . . . let’s say with the help of high power currents . . . certain vibrations, set it in violent motion, loosen its interior structure so that one only had just to tap it, from a distance . . . with some waves or other . . . by an explosion, oscillations, or the devil knows what, and it would fly to pieces,—what? Bang! From a distance! What do you say to that?”
Prokop said nothing, and Mr. Carson, pulling at his cigar in delight, feasted his eyes on him.
“I’m not an electrician, you know,” he began after a moment; “it was explained to me by an expert, but I’ll be damned if I understood it. The fellow was all over me with electrons, ions, elementary quanta and I don’t know what; and, to finish up with, this professorial luminary stated that, to make a long story short, the thing was impossible. My friend, you’ve made a howler! You’ve done something which according to the greatest authorities is impossible . . .
“I tried to explain it myself,” he continued, “but not like that. Let us suppose that some one takes it into his head to . . . to make an unstable compound . . . from a certain lead salt. The salt in question does not behave as it should; it refuses to combine, eh? Then this chemist of ours tests everything possible . . . like a madman; and then remembers, let us say, that in the January number of the Chemist there was something about the said phlegmatic salt being a first-class coherer . . . a detector of electric waves. He gets an inspiration. An idiotic and sublime inspiration—that perhaps by the use of electric waves he can bring that cursed salt into a better frame of mind, eh? A man gets his finest inspirations through being stupid. So he gets hold of some comic transformer and sets to work; what he did is at present his secret, but in the end . . . he will achieve the synthesis he wants. He’ll achieve it. Or at least, the oscillation will do it. Man, I shall have to go down on all fours and start learning physics in my old age; I’m talking rubbish, eh?”
Prokop muttered something completely unintelligible.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Mr. Carson calmly. “As long as it holds together. I’m dull and I imagine that it has some sort of electro-magnetic structure. If this structure is disturbed, then . . . it disintegrates, eh? Luckily about ten thousand regular wireless stations and several hundred illegal ones preserve in our atmosphere the sort of electro-magnetic climate, the sort of—eh—eh—oscillatory bath which suits this structure. And so it holds together . . .”
Mr. Carson reflected for a moment. “And now,” he began again, “imagine that some devil has a means by which he can thoroughly disturb electric waves. Obliterate them or something of the sort. Imagine that—God knows why—he does this regularly on Tuesdays and Fridays at half-past ten o’clock at night. At that minute and second all wireless communication is interrupted all over the world; but at that minute and second something also happens in this unstable compound, in so far as it is not isolated. . . . In a porcelain box, for example; something in it is disturbed . . . cracks, and it . . . it . . .”
“. . . explodes,” cried Prokop.
“Yes, explodes, disintegrates. Interesting,—what? One learned gentleman explained to me that—hell, what did he say? That—that”
Prokop sprang up and seized hold of Mr. Carson’s coat. “Listen,” he burst out, violently excited, “if one were to . . . sprinkle . . . some Krakatit about . . . here, let us say . . . or simply about the place . . .”
“. . . then the next Tuesday or Friday at half-past ten it would explode. Tja. Don’t strangle me, man.”
Prokop released Mr. Carson and paced up and down the room gnawing his fingers in consternation.
“That’s quite clear,” he muttered, “that’s quite clear! Nobody must prepare Krakatit”
“Besides Mr. Thomas,” suggested Carson sceptically.
“Leave me alone,” said Prokop. “He won’t be able to prepare it!”
“Well,” said Mr. Carson doubtfully, “I don’t know how much you told him.”
Prokop stopped as if rooted to the ground. “Imagine,” he said feverishly, “imagine, for instance . . . a war! Anyone who possessed Krakatit could . . . could . . . whenever he liked . . .”
“At present only on Tuesdays and Fridays.”
“. . . blowup . . . whole towns . . . whole armies . . . everything! All that is necessary is to sprinkle—can you imagine?”
“I can. Magnificent!”
“And therefore . . . for the sake of the world . . . I shall never, never give it up.”
“In the interest of the world,” repeated Carson, “do you know, in the interest of the world the first thing is to get on the track of that”
“What?”
“That cursed anarchist wireless station.”