The Untouchable

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  +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's note: | | | | This story was published in Analog, December 1960. Extensive | | research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on | | this publication was renewed. | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------+

  THEUNTOUCHABLE

  BySTEPHEN A. KALLIS, JR.

  Illustrated by Douglas

  _"You can see it--you can watch it--but mustn't touch!" And what couldpossibly be more frustrating ... when you need, most violently, to getyour hands on it for just one second...._

  The man finally entered the office of General George Garvers. As thedoor closed behind him, he saw the general, who sprang from his chair togreet him.

  "Max! You finally came."

  "Got here as soon as I could. I wager half my time was taken up by thesecurity check points. You are certainly isolated in here."

  "All of that," agreed the general. "Have a seat, won't you?" he asked,indicating a chair.

  His friend sank into it gratefully. "Now, what's this vital problem youcalled me about? You weren't too specific."

  "No," said Garvers, "I wasn't. This is a security matter, after afashion. It's vitally important that we get technical help on thisthing, and since you and I are friends, I was asked to call you in."

  "Well?"

  "I'm afraid I'll have to make a story of it."

  "Quite all right by me, but don't mind if I interject a question now andthen. Mind if I smoke?"

  "Go right ahead," said Garvers, fumbling out a lighter. "Just don'tspill ashes on the rug.

  "This all began on the Third of May. I was working here on sometop-security stuff. I had suddenly got the feeling of being watched. Iknow it seems silly, what with all the check points that a potential spywould have to go through to get here, but that's just how I felt.

  "Several times I glanced around the office, but of course it was empty.Then I began to think that it was my nerves."

  "You always were a bit of a hypochondriac," observed his friend.

  "Be that as it may," continued Garvers, "it was the only explanation Ihad at the time. Either someone was watching me, which seemedimpossible, or I was beginning to crack under the strain.

  "Well, I put my papers away and tried to take a short break. I wasreaching into my drawer where I keep magazines when, so help me, a manstepped out of the wall into my office."

  "What? It seems as if you just said a guy stepped out of the wall."

  "That's just what I did say. It sounds crazy, but let me finish, willyou? I'm not kidding, and I'll show you proof later if necessary.

  "Anyway, this bird stepped straight out of the wall as if it had been awaterfall or something, but the wall itself was undamaged. The onlyproof I had that he had actually done it was the fact that he was in myoffice, but that was proof enough.

  "To put it mildly, I was thunderstruck. After jumping to my feet, Icould only stand there like an idiot. I was so shaken that I couldn'tspeak a word. But he spoke first.

  "'General Garvers?' he asked, just as if he had run into me at acocktail party or on the street.

  "I told him he was correct, and asked him who _he_ was and what hewanted. And how he got into my office.

  "He identified himself as a Henry Busch and explained that he was actingin behalf of a good friend of his, the late Dr. Hymann Duvall. Have youever heard of Duvall, Max?"

  His friend twisted his face in thought. "Can't say that I have,off-hand. But the name seems to ring a bell somewhere."

  "Well, anyway, he said that Duvall had perfected an invention of greatnational importance shortly before his death and asked Busch to deliverit to the government if anything should happen to him. Then Duvall diedsuddenly of a heart attack."

  "And what was this invention?"

  "Isn't it obvious? A machine that would enable a man to walk throughwalls. And Busch has no idea how the thing works, other than the generalexplanation that Duvall gave him. And Busch was poles apart from Duvall.They were friends from college, but not because of professionalinterests. It seems they were both doublecrossed by the same girl.

  "Duvall was a brilliant but obscure nuclear and radiation physicist. Hewas one of those once-in-a-lifetime fellows like Tesla. He was so shythat he didn't bring himself to anybody's attention, save for a fewpapers he published in the smaller physical societies' magazines. It wasonly because he had inherited a considerable amount of money that hecould do any research whatsoever."

  "Hm-m-m. I seem to remember a paper about wave propagation in one of thequarterlies. Quite unorthodox, as I recall," said Max.

  "Could be. But anyway, about Busch.

  "Busch majored in psychology at college, but took special courses afterhe graduated and took a Master's in English. He has written two novelsand three collections of poems under various pen names. At the time ofDuvall's death, he was working on the libretto of an opera. He has hadno technical training, unless you want to count a year of high schoolgeneral science. So he wasn't too much help in explaining how Duvall'sinstrument works.

  "And, just to make matters more juicy, Duvall kept no notes. He hadtotal recall and a childlike fear of putting anything into writing thathad not been experimentally verified."

  "And this machine, how is it supposed to work?"

  Garvers got up and began to pace. "According to Busch, Duvall devisedthe instrument after stumbling into an entirely new branch of physics.

  "This device of Duvall's is a special case of a new theory of matter andenergy. Matter is made up of subnuclear particles--electrons, protonsand the like. However, Duvall said that these particles are in turn madeup of much smaller particles grouped together in aggregate clouds. Thesize ratio of these particles to protons is somewhat like the ratio ofan individual proton to a large star. They seem to be composed of tinyclots of energy from a fantastically complex energy system, in whichelectromagnetism is but a small part. Each energy-segment is representedby a different facet of each particle, and the arrangement of theindividual particles to each other determines what super-particle theywill form, such as an electron. Duvall called these sub-particles'lems'.

  "Busch says he was told that a field of a special nature could begenerated so as to make the individual lems in the particles of matterrotate in a special way that would introduce a 'polarization field', asDuvall called it. This field seems to be connected somehow with gravity,but Busch wasn't told how.

  "The upshot is that matter in the _initial_ presence of the field isaffected so that it is able to pass through ordinary matter--"

  "Hold on," interrupted Max. "If a device can do that, then the userwould immediately fall towards the center of the Earth."

  "Just _you_ hold on. You didn't let me finish. A single plane of atoms,at the base of the treated object is the point of contact. It remainspartially unaffected because it is closest to the 'gravetostatic fieldcenter', which I guess is the Earth's center of attraction. This planeof 'semi-treated' atoms can be forced through an object, if it is movedhorizontally, but its 'untreated' aspect prevents the subject wearingthe device from falling through the floor.

  "Busch demonstrated this device to me, turning it on and strollingthrough various objects in this room. Think of it! No soldier could bekilled or held prisoner. And--"

  "Now hang on," objected Max. "Let's not run away with ourselves. He mayhave perfected a dev
ice that would enable a soldier to avoid capture,but there would certainly be other ways to kill him than by bullets.Let's see now: suppose that the enemy shot a flamethrower at him. Theburning materials might pass through him, but he would be cooked anyway.Or poison gas--"

  "Hm-m-m. As far as gas goes, I suppose a gas mask would be necessary.Busch doesn't know about the breathing mechanism, except that he had totake breaths. But as far as fire or radiation goes, the man's protected.If the radiation is either harmful by nature or by amount, the fieldmerely reflects it. It is something called the 'lemic stress' of thefield that causes the phenomenon.

  "That's why we need your help."

  Max scratched his head thoughtfully. "I don't understand."

  Garvers looked pained. "When Busch had finished his demonstration, hecarelessly tossed the device on my desk. The thing skidded and hit mypaperweight so that the switch was thrown on again. So now the deviceand my desk are both untouchable.

  "Go over to the desk and try to touch it," said Garvers dryly.

  His friend got up and ambled over to the desk. There he saw a smallblack box resting near a paperweight. Its toggle switch was at the "on"position, and it was lying on its side. He tried to pick the box up, buthis hand slid effortlessly through it as if it were so much air.

  "_Well_!" Max said. He passed his hand through the desk again. "Well,well. Are you sure Busch told you everything?"

  "Busch! He honestly wants to help and we have taken him through themill. Pentathol, scopolamine and the like; hypnotism and the polygraph.We've dug that man deeper than we have ever dug anybody before."

  "And have you conducted any experiments of your own?"

  "Certainly. That's what is so frustrating. We try to X ray the thing,and we don't get a thing. We bombarded it with every radiation we couldthink of, from radio to gamma and it just reflected them. We can detectno radiation coming out of it. Magnetic fields don't effect it, nor doheat and cold. Nuclear particles are ignored by it; it just _sits_ therethumbing its nose at us. And we can't even wait for it to run down.According to Busch, the power requirements of the thing are funny andonce the field is established, it takes no additional energy to maintainit. And the collapsing power remains indefinitely until it is time toturn the machine off, but it's unreachable by any means we have.

  "It's pure frustration. There's no way we can analyze it until we canhandle it, and no way we can handle it until we can turn it off. Andthere's no way we can turn it off until we have analyzed it. If it werealive, I'd think that it was laughing at us.

  "Do _you_ have any ideas?" asked Garvers hopefully.

  "Nothing that would help a solution at present," said Max. "But do youremember the legend of King Tantalus?"

  "Slightly. What about it?"

  "Well ... if _he_ were here," said Max thoughtfully, "he'd ...sympathize."

  THE END