"Campbell, John W Jr - The Battery Of Hate - uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

"Yes, what of it?" Gardner was beginning to be wearied.

"If you can, sell out, and do it quickly," snapped the little man. Gardner suddenly looked very much more alive.

"Eh, what? What in hell is this invention?"

"You wouldn't know if I told you. It's called a fuel battery, in-

vented by a young man by the name of Brace Rollings Kennedy. It's a device that can produce power directly from graphite, and it gives it as electricity, the most adaptable of all powers."

"Well, why not buy it?" snapped Gardner.

"Because, my dear man, you haven't money enough to pay adequately for it," smiled the little lawyer.

Gardner looked startled. That was the first time, in some twenty years, anyone had told him he hadn't money enough to buy what he wanted. "What? How- Why I'm worth at least a billion."

"Could you get that billion in cash? No, you could not. Neither could you buy that invention. Even if you could, what would you use it for?"

"Why not in power plants, which is the natural answer? Tear out the boilers tind generators?"

"Because it generates direct current, which can't be shipped along a line readily; because there won't be any power plants when any man can make his own, as he now owns his own cellar furnace; and lastly because that is only one of the very minor possibilities. Do you know what's going to happen to the oil companies? There won't be one where there are hundreds now. There aren't going to be any gasoline-burning, oil-wasting, smelly, greasy, troublesome gasoline automobiles any more. They'll be electric, and a gasoline motor uses two quarts of oil for every drop an electric motor needs on its two bearings. Gasoline is going to be so cheap they'll pay to have it carted away, and save the insurance."

Gardner laughed. "I hope the rest of your predictions are as empty. I've seen electric automobiles and their batteries. Now and then you can see one having a furious race with some spavined truck horse."

Jamison's tight-lipped smile returned. "Did you ever see a hundred-and-fifty-horsepower electric car? I did; I went to Florida to see it. I was one of the few who saw it and knew what it was. Kennedy built one. He went one hundred and seventy-five miles an hour. He said later he got scared and had to stop."

"One hundred and fifty won't do that," said Gardner keenly.

"One hundred and fifty gasoline won't," Jamison acquiesced, "but one hundred and fifty electric is something different. You've seen electric trucks, haven't you? Some make a good twenty-five miles an hourЧwith two horsepower.

"A gasoline engine is in a constant state of explosion, which means

it wastes ninety-nine percent of its power on noise, heat, friction, and waste motion. An electric motor has two bearings, no explosions, no . noise, no waste motion, and almost no heat."

"You mean the automobile is doomed?"

"I said nothing of the sort. It's going to have a new lease on life, but the gasoline car is going out the way wooden battleships did when the Monitor and the Merrimac called it a draw. Battleships didn't go out, but wooden ones did."

"Gasoline is out, oil isn't needed, power stations won't be wanted; how about iron and steel?"

"Still safeЧexcept that new types of refining will be introduced. Gas for cooking won't be wanted, which will finish the oil fields."

Gardner had been looking at his desk, thinking deeply, his head in his hands. He looked up slowly. "My God, man, he'll ruin the world! It's going to ruin me. I won't have a cent left after this panic gets over." His face was going white. "OilЧdead! PowerЧdead! Automobile corporationsЧsave oneЧdead!" His voice took on a cold, steely menace.

"I've got to buy that patent! Get out." The lawyer left the great man brooding, staring out at New York sweltering in a late September heat. But he didn't see New York; he was seeing the things that would happen if this invention were sold. His comforts would be stripped from him, his yacht, his home, his apartmentЧand another apartmentЧeverything. He could not get out, for the instant he started selling heavily enough to make a practical retreat, the word would be out, and he would be swamped, the market would drop to zero-everywhereЧhe'd be cleaned out as his pyramided loans collapsedЧ

God, but he hated the man who invented that battery!

CHAPTER III