try to X ray the thing, and we don’t get a thing. We bombarded it with every radiation we could think of, from radio to gamma and it just reflected them. We can detect no radiation coming out of it. Magnetic fields don’t effect it, nor do heat and cold. Nuclear particles are ignored by it; it just sits there thumbing 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 and once the field is established, it takes no additional energy to maintain it. And the collapsing power remains indefinitely until it is time to turn 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 can handle it, and no way we can handle it until we can turn it off. And there’s no way we can turn it off until we have analyzed it. If it were alive, 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 you remember the legend of King Tantalus?”

“Slightly. What about it?”

“Well … if he were here,” said Max thoughtfully, “he’d … sympathize.”

THE END

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