The Untouchable - Stephen A Kallis, Jr

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Untouchable by Stephen A callis Junior. You can see it,
you can watch it, but mustn't touch. And what could
possibly be more frustrating when you need most violently to
get your hands on it for just one second? The
man finally entered the office of General George Garver's. As

(00:21):
the door closed behind him, he saw the General, who
sprang from his chair to greet him. Max, you finally
came got it as soon as I could, A wager.
Half my time was taken up by the security checkpoints.
You're certainly isolated in here, all O that, agreed the General.
I've a seed, won't you? He asked, indicating a chair.

(00:42):
His friend sank into it gratefully. Now what's his vital problem?
You called me about? You weren't too specific, no, said Garvers.
I wasn't. This is a security matter, after a fashion,
it's vitally important that we get technical help on this thing.
And so you and I are friends. I was asked
to call you in. Well, I'm afraid I'll have to

(01:05):
make a story of it. Quite all right by me,
But don't mind if I interject a question now and
then mound if I smoke, go right ahead, said Garvers,
fumbling out a lighter. Just don't spilashers on the rug.
This all began on the third of May. I was
working here on some top security stuff I had suddenly

(01:26):
got the feeling of being watched. I know it seems silly,
what with all the checkpoints that a potential spy would
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

(01:46):
it may, continued Garvers. It was the only explanation I
had at the time. Either someone was watching me, which
seemed impossible, or I was beginning to crack under the strain. Well,
I put my papers away and tried to take a
short break. I was reaching into my drawer where I
keep magazines when so helped me. A man stepped out
of the wall into my office. What it seems as

(02:10):
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, will you. I'm not kidding, and I'll
show you a proof later, if necessary. Anyway, this bird
stepped straight out of the wall, as if it had
been a waterfall or something, but the wall itself was undamaged.
The only proof I had that he had actually done

(02:30):
it was the fact that he was in my office.
But that was proof enough to put it mildly. I
was thunderstruck. After jumping to my feet, I could only
stand there like an idiot. I was so shaken that
I couldn't speak a word. But he spoke first General Garver's.
He asked, just as if he had run into me
at a cocktail party or on the street. I told

(02:51):
him he was correct, and asked him who he was,
and what he wanted and how he got into my office.
He identified himself as a Henry Bush, and explaining that
he was acting in behalf of a good friend of his,
the late doctor Hyman Duval. You ever heard of Duval?
Max his friend twisted his face and thought, cann't say
that I half off hand, But the name seems to

(03:12):
ring a bell somewhere well. Anyway, He said that Duval
had perfected an invention of great national importance shortly before
his death, and asked Bush to deliver it to the
government if anything should happen to him. Then Duval died
suddenly of a heart attack. And what was this invention?
Isn't it obvious? A machine that would enable a man

(03:33):
to walk through walls? And Bush has no idea how
the thing works other than the general explanation that Duval
gave him and Bush was Poles. Apart from Duval, they
were friends from college, but not because of professional interests.
It seems they were both double crossed by the same girl.
Deval was a brilliant but obscure nuclear and radiation physicist.

(03:53):
He was one of those once in a lifetime fellows.
Like Tesla. He was so shy that he didn't bring
himself to anybody's attention, save for a few papers he
published in the smaller Physical Society's magazines. It was only
because he had inherited a considerable amount of money that
he could do any research whatsoever. Hm I seem to
remember a paper about wave propagation in one of the quarterlies.

(04:15):
Quite unorthodox, as I recall said, Max could be. But
anyway about Bush. Bush majored in psychology at college, but
took special courses after he graduated, and took a master's
in English. He's written two novels and three collections of
poems under various pen names. At the time of Duval's death,
he was working on the libretto of an opera. He

(04:37):
has no technical training, unless you want to count a
year of high school general science, so it wasn't too
much help in explaining our Duval's instrument works. And just
to make matters more juicy, Deval kept no notes. He
had total recall and a childlike fear of putting anything
into writing that had not been experimentally verified. And this machine,

(04:57):
how's it supposed to work? Evers got up and began
to pace. According to Bush, Duvol devised the instrument after
stumbling into an entirely new branch of physics. This device
of Dvols is a special case of a new theory
of matter and energy. Matter is made up of subnuclear
particles electrons, protons, and the like. However, Devol said that

(05:19):
these particles are in turn made up of much smaller
particles grouped together in aggregate clouds. The size ratio of
these particles to protons is something like the ratio of
an individual proton to a large star. They seem to
be composed of tiny clots of energy from a fantastically
complex energy system in which electromagnetism was but a small
part Each energy segment is represented by a different facet

(05:42):
of each particle, and the arrangement of the individual particles
to each other determines what superparticle they'll form, such as
an electron. Duvol called these subparticles lems. Bush says that
he was told that a field of a special nature
could be generated so as to make the individual lems
of the particle of matter rotated in a special way
that would introduce a polarization field, as de Vaux called it.

(06:05):
This field seems to be connected somehow with gravity, but
Bush doesn't know how. The upshot is that matter in
the initial presence of the field is affected so that
it's able to pass through ordinary matter. Hold on interrupted max.
If a device can do that, then the user would
immediately fall toward the center of the Earth. Just you
hold on. You didn't let me finish. A single plane

(06:28):
of atoms at the base of the treated object is
the point of contact. It remains partially unaffected because it
is the closest to the gravitat static field center, which
I guess is the Earth's center of attraction. This plane
of semi treated atoms can be forced through an object
if it's moved horizontally, but its untreated aspect prevents the
subject wearing the device from falling through the floor. Bush

(06:50):
demonstrated this device to me, turning it on and strolling
through various objects in the room. Think of it. No
soldiers could be killed or held prisoner, and no hang
on object, Max, Let's not run away with ourselves. He
may have perfected a device that would enable a soldier
to avoid capture, but there would certainly be other ways
to kill him, them by bullets. Let's see now, suppose

(07:11):
that the enemy shot a flamethrower at him. The materials
might pass through him, but he would be cooked anyway
or poison gas. Hum. As far as gas goes, I
suppose a gas mask would be necessary. Bush doesn't know
about the breathing mechanism except that he had to dig breaths.
But as far as fire or radiation goes, the mans protected.
If the radiation is either harmful by nature or by amount,

(07:34):
the field merely reflects it. It's something called the limixed
stress of the field that causes the phenomenon that's why
we need your help. Max scratched his head thoughtfully. I
don't understand. Garvers looked pained. When Bush had finished his demonstration,
he carelessly tossed the device on my desk. The thing
skidded and hit my paper weight, so that the switch

(07:56):
was thrown on again. So now the device in my
desk are both untouchable. Go over to the desk and
try to touch it, said garvrus dryly. His friend got
up and ambled over to the desk. There he saw
a small black box resting near a paper weight. Its
toggle switch was at the on position, and it was
lying on its side. He tried to pick the box up,

(08:17):
but his hands slid effortlessly through it, as if it
were so much air. Well, Max said, He passed his
hand through the desk again. Well, will are you sure
Bush told you everything? Bush? He honestly wants to help,
And we have taken him through the mill pentethal, scopelamine
and the like hypnotism in the polygraph. We've dug the

(08:39):
dead man deeper than we've ever dug anybody before. And
have you conducted any experiments of your own? Certainly that's
what's so frustrating. We tried to X ray the thing
and we didn't get a thing. We've 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. A fields don't affect it, nor

(09:01):
to 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 Bush, 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's time to turn the machine off. But it's

(09:21):
unreachable by any means we have. It's pure frustration. There's
no way we can analyze it until we can handle it,
and there's no way we can handle it until we
can turn it off, and there's no way we can
turn it off until we've analyzed it. If it were alive,
I think that it was laughing at us. Do you
have any ideas, asked Garvers. Hopefully nothing that would help

(09:42):
a solution at present, said Max. But do you remember
the legend of King Tandalus slightly. What about it? Well,
if he were here, said Max, thoughtfully, he'd sympathize. End
of the Untouchable by Steven A. Callis Junior