The Molecule Trapper

Bells obsession with his molecule trapper leads him to miss what is right in front of him.


Excerpt

Bell laid the brick upon the low glass slab, and his deft fingers attached an electrode to each end of it. Slipping an asbestos pad under it, he stepped back and threw a switch on a bakelite panel. A low, humming sound came from what I judged to be an electric motor, and a yellow light from a lamp over the glass slab focused a ray over the brick. Even as I watched the strange proceedings, I sensed the incongruity of that object in the midst of the glistening array of apparatus. My eyes, growing used to the bright light, could notice nothing at first; then I thought I observed a movement along one side of the brick. I drew my gaze there, and by comparing it with its background, assured myself that it had really moved. But as I looked, the same phenomenon! appeared on all sides of the brick, and I realized that the brick was shrinking.

As I looked, utterly startled, the light grew brighter as the brick grew smaller, and the hum of the motor grew higher in pitch. The smaller it got, the faster it shrank, and the two electrodes moved toward each other more and more rapidly, the brick between them. When the object was the size of a domino, the light from above seemed to fairly radiate heat, and I became unconscious of everything but that splotch of light.

Finally, the two electrodes were pressing together, and I knew that the brick was somewhere between them. Suddenly the hum stopped, and the light flashed back to its normal yellow color.

Bell muttered beneath his breath, and threw a switch back into place. Pulling the electrodes out of the way, along with the asbestos pad, he examined the surface of the slab with a reading-glass.

"No; I can't see it this time," he said, "but last time, I could see the hole."

"See what?"

"Just the place where it sank through the glass."

"That little thing sank through the glass?"

"Surely. You know of course, that it weighed the same when it was small as it did when it was large; and the slab couldn't support it."

I didn't know, but I nodded my head. He went on:

"Are there any questions you would like to have answered?"

"Only about seven dozen. First, what is the light for, and why won't an electric light of the usual type do?"

"Well, the usual type would do -- if I wanted it to light my work. But that one is cusses a ray of heat upon my subject, in this case a brick. You realize, of course, that as that brick shrunk, the molecules composing it shrunk together. This produced cold of such bitterness, that, to guard against disastrous results, I maintained a constant temperature."

"One of my early experiments showed the principle. I placed a small crumb of bread upon the slab, affixed the electrodes and increased the size. The crumb grew, and in a short time, was the general shape and size of a sponge."

"There was simply no substance to it--it was honeycombed unbelievably. When it reached the approximate size of my head, it burst into flame and was consumed immediately. It is interesting to realize that that large piece of substance contained exactly the same nourishment as the small crumb it came from. It would also weigh the same--in fact, if it had grown much larger. I believe it would have floated off from the slab into the air. You see, to accommodate that large bulk, the molecules composing it had to get farther apart, and this produced heat enough to burn it. Rather interesting eh?"

I hastily agreed with him but began to wonder just what practical use the machine had. When I spoke to him about it, a far-away look came into his eyes, and I realized I had touched his weak point, or more truly, his strong point. He said:

"Ever since I saw through the difficulties of construction, I have worked with one aim in view. I would like to enlarge a molecule to the size of an egg."

This caught me unawares, so to speak, and he saw the look of incredulity in my face.

"Oh, I have but one problem to contend with," he shrugged his shoulders, "aside from that it would be easy. If I could but catch a molecule upon some object that I had control of, my problem would be solved. I would merely have to enlarge the object to its regular size, and the molecule would have to grow with it. But I have not yet created an object light enough, so that when I shrink it into a microscopic size, it would not go sinking through its base. But I will, sometime."

And he did, too. A few weeks later he called me into his laboratory and silently placed a metal ball, the size of an orange, in my hands. From his hilarious manner, I had assumed that he had solved his problem, but I was not prepared for the metal soap-bubble that I received. It lay in my hands with the weight of--I can compare it with nothing, f