every one bore the trademark of North American Carbide & Metals! One of the other men in the lab said: “What kind of a joke is this?” “Do you mean, Mr. Sorensen,” Thorn asked with controlled precision, “that your million-dollar process is merely some kind of gimmickry with our own batteries?” “No,” said Sorensen. “It’s—” “Wait a minute,” said one of the others, “is it some kind of hydrogen fuel cell?” “In a way,” Sorensen said. “Yes, in a way. It isn’t as efficient as I’d like, but it gets its power by converting hydrogen to helium. I need those batteries to start the thing. After it gets going, these leads here from the reactor cell keep the batteries charged. The—” He was interrupted by five different voices all trying to speak at once. He could hardly— “... He could hardly get a word in edgewise at first,” said Thorn. He was enjoying the look of shocked amazement on Colonel Dower’s face. “When Sorensen finally did get it explained, we still didn’t know much. But we built another one, and it worked as well as the one he had. And the contract didn’t specifically call for a battery. He had us good, he did.” “Now wait—” Colonel Dower said. “You mean to say it wasn’t a battery after all?” “Of course not.” “Then why all the folderol?” “Colonel,” Thorn said, “Sorensen patented that device nine years ago. It only has eight years to run. But he couldn’t get anyone at all to believe that it would do what he said it would do. After years of beating his head against a stone wall, years of trying to convince people who wouldn’t even look twice at his gadget, he decided to get smart. “He began to realize that ‘everybody knew’ that hydrogen fusion wasn’t that simple. It was his theory that no one would listen to. As soon as he told anyone that he had a hydrogen fusion device that could be started with a handful of batteries and could be packed into a suitcase, he was instantly dismissed as a nut. 129 129 “I did a little investigating after he gave us
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