With No Strings Attached Read online

glimpse of mocking humor in the pale blue eyes.He was lean and rather tall, with white hair that still showed tracesof blond, and he looked as Scandinavian as his name sounded. Hisaccent was pure Minnesota American.

  As he climbed out of the jeep, Sorensen brought with him the BlackSuitcase.

  Ever since he had first seen it, Thorn had thought of it as "the BlackSuitcase," and after he had seen some of the preliminary tests, he hadsubconsciously put capitals to the words. But Richard Thorn was nofool. Too many men had been suckered before, and he, Richard Thorn,did not intend to be another sucker, no matter how impressed he mightbe by the performance of an invention.

  If this was a con game, it was going to have to be a good one to getby Richard Thorn, Ph.D.

  He walked across the few feet of hard, salt-white ground thatseparated him from Sorensen standing beside the second jeep with theBlack Suitcase in his hand. It was obvious to anyone who watched theway Sorensen handled the thing that it was heavy--seventy-five poundsor better.

  "Need any help?" Thorn asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  "Nope," Sorensen said. "I can handle it."

  The suitcase wasn't really black. It was a dark cordovan brown, madeeven darker by long usage, which had added oily stains to thewell-used leather. But Thorn thought of it as the Black Suitcasesimply because it was the perfect example of the proverbial LittleBlack Box--the box that Did Things. As a test question in anexamination, the Little Black Box performs a useful function. Theexaminer draws a symbolic electronic circuit. Somewhere in thecircuit, instead of drawing the component that is supposed to bethere, he draws a Little Black Box. Then he defines the wave-form,voltage, and amperage entering the circuit and defines whatever iscoming out. Question: What is in the Little Black Box?

  Except in the simplest of cases, there is never an absolute answer.The question is counted as correct if the student puts into the LittleBlack Box a component or subcircuit which will produce the effectdesired. The value of the answer depends on the simplicity andrelative controllability of the component drawn in the place of theLittle Black Box.

  Sorensen's Black Suitcase was still a problem to Thorn. He couldn'tquite figure out what was in it.

  "Hotter'n Billy Blue Blazes!" Sorensen said as he put the BlackSuitcase down on the gleaming white ground. He grinned a little, whichdispelled for a moment his Angry Old Man expression, and said: "Youready to go, Mr. Thorn?"

  "I'm ready any time you are," Thorn said grumpily.

  Sorensen looked at the NAC&M scientist sideways. "You don't sound anyhappier'n I am, Mr. Thorn."

  Thorn looked at him and thought he could see that flash of odd humorin his light blue eyes. Thorn exhaled a heavy breath. "I'm no happierthan you are to be out in this heat. Let's get on with it."

  Sorensen's chuckle sounded so out of place that Thorn was almoststartled. "You know the difference between you and me, Mr. Thorn?"Sorensen asked. He didn't wait for an answer. "You think this test isprobably a waste of time. Me, on the other hand, I _know_ it is."

  "Let's get on with it," Thorn repeated.

  * * * * *

  It took two hours to set up the equipment, in spite of the fact that alot of the circuits had been prefabricated before the caravan had comeout from Salt Lake City. But Richard Thorn wanted to make certain thatall his data was both correct and recorded. Sorensen had nothing to dobut watch. He had no hand in setting up the equipment. He had broughtthe Black Suitcase, and that was all he was going to be allowed to do.

  From the top of the Black Suitcase projected two one-inch copperelectrodes, fourteen inches apart. The North American Carbide & Metalstechnicians set up the circuits that were connected to the electrodeswithout any help from Sorensen.

  But just before they started to work, Sorensen said: "There's just onething I think you ought to warn those men about, Mr. Thorn."

  "What's that?" Thorn asked.

  "If any of 'em tries to open that suitcase, they're likely to getblown sky high. And I don't want 'em getting funny with me, either."

  He had his hand in his trouser pocket, and Thorn was suddenly quitecertain that the man was holding a revolver. He could see the outlinesagainst the cloth.

  Thorn sighed. "Don't worry, Mr. Sorensen. We don't have any ulteriordesigns on your invention." He did not add that the investigators ofNAC&M had already assumed that anyone who was asking one milliondollars for an invention which was, in effect, a pig in a poke, wouldbe expected to take drastic methods to protect his gadget. But therewould be no point in telling Sorensen that his protective efforts hadalready been anticipated and that the technicians had already beenwarned against touching the Black Suitcase any more than necessary toconnect the leads. Giving Sorensen that information might make himeven more touchy.

  Thorn only hoped that the bomb, or whatever it was that Sorensen hadput in the suitcase, was well built, properly fused, and provided withadequate safeties.

  When everything was set up, Sorensen walked over to his device andturned it on by shoving the blade of a heavy-duty switch into place."O.K.," he said.

  One of the technicians began flipping other switches, and a bank ofordinary incandescent light bulbs came on, four at a time. Finallythere were one hundred of them burning, each one a hundred-watt bulbthat glowed brightly but did not appear to be contributing much to thegeneral brightness of the Utah sun. The technicians checked theirrecording voltmeters and ammeters and reported that, sure enough, someten kilowatts of power at a little less than one hundred fifteen voltsD.C. was coming from the Black Suitcase.

  Sorensen and Thorn sat in the tent which had been erected to ward offthe sun's rays. They watched the lights shine.

  * * * * * * * * * *

  One of the technicians came in, wiping his forehead with a big bluebandana. "Well, there she goes. Mr. Sorensen, if that thing isdangerous, hadn't we better back off a little way from it?"

  "It isn't dangerous," Sorensen said. "Nothing's going to happen."

  The technician looked unhappy. "Then I don't see why we couldn't'vetested the thing back in the shop. Would've been a lot easier there.To say nothing of more comfortable."

  Thorn lit a cigarette in silence.

  Sorensen nodded and said, "Yes, Mr. Siegel, it would've been."

  Siegel sat down on one of the camp stools and lit a cigarette."Mr. Sorensen," he asked in all innocence, "have you got a patent onthat battery?"

  The humorous glint returned to Sorensen's eyes as he said, "Nope.I didn't patent the battery in that suitcase. That's why I don't wantanybody fooling around with it."

  "How come you don't patent it?" Siegel asked. "Nobody could steal itif you patented it."

  "Couldn't they?" Sorensen asked with a touch of acid in his voice. "Doyou know anything about batteries, Mr. Siegel?"

  "A little. I'm not an expert on 'em, or anything like that. I'm anelectrician. But I know a little bit about 'em."

  Sorensen nodded. "Then you should know, Mr. Siegel, thatbattery-making is an art, not a science. You don't just stick a coupleof electrodes into a solution of electrolyte and consider that yourwork is done. With the same two metals and the same electrolyte, youcould make batteries that would run the gamut from terrible toexcellent. Some of 'em, maybe, wouldn't hold a charge more than anhour, while others would have a shelf-life, fully charged, of as muchas a year. Batteries don't work according to theory. If they did,potassium chlorate would be a better depolarizer than manganesedioxide, instead of the other way around. What you get out of avoltaic cell depends on the composition and strength of theelectrolyte, the kind of depolarizer used, the shape of theelectrodes, the kind of surface they have, their arrangement andspacing, and a hundred other little things."

  "I've heard that," Siegel said.

  * * * * * * * * * *

 

  Thorn smoked in silence. He had heard Sorensen's arguments before.Sorensen didn'
t mind discussing his battery in the abstract, but hewas awfully close-mouthed when it came to talking about it in concreteterms. He would talk about batteries-in-general, but not aboutthis-battery-in-particular.

  Not that Thorn blamed him in the least. Sorensen was absolutelycorrect in his statements about the state of the art of making voltaiccells. If Sorensen had something new--and Thorn was almost totallyconvinced that he did--then he was playing it smart by not trying topatent it.

  "Now then," Sorensen went on, "let's suppose that my battery is madeup of lead and lead dioxide plates in a sulfuric acid solution, exceptthat I've added a couple of