A force which could disintegrate a battleship, or turn a battalion, if it were only for a time, into a collection of atoms, would dominate the world. I need not enlarge upon the revolutionary character of such an invention, nor of its extreme importance as a potential weapon of war. The claim seems to be an extravagant one, and yet there is solid evidence that there is some basis for it and that the man has stumbled upon some remarkable discovery. By reversing the process it can be reassembled. Matter dissolves and returns to its molecular or atomic condition. There is a Latvian gentleman named Theodore Nemor living at White Friars Mansions, Hampstead, who claims to have invented a machine of a most extraordinary character which is capable of disintegrating any object placed within its sphere of influence. Please call upon our esteemed friend, Professor Challenger, and ask for his co-operation in the following circumstances. He was huge in all that he did, and his benevolence was even more overpowering than his truculence. He sat down with his elbows upon the desk, his gorilla hands clasped together, his beard bristling forward, and his big grey eyes, half-covered by his drooping lids, fixed benignly upon me. 'What does he desire?' Challenger plumed himself like some unwieldy bird under the influence of flattery. He has turned to you again and again when he needed the highest qualities in some investigation. 'He has, at least, a very high admiration for you. 'I remember the man - not an unfavourable specimen of his class.' 'May I read you this, sir? It is from McArdle, my editor.' I had to tread warily, for I knew how easy it was to set the lion roaring once again. Come now! Sit here! What is the reason of your visit?' Self-assertion is foreign to my nature, but I have to hold my ground against opposition. 'My dear young friend, do not imagine that I am exacting, but surrounded as I am by pugnacious and unreasonable colleagues, one is forced to take one's own part. I should certainly have said: "Our greatest living scientist,"' I admitted. 'Why these invidious qualifications and limitations? Perhaps you can mention who these other predominant scientific men may be to whom you impute equality, or possibly superiority to myself?' Challenger, who is among our greatest living scientists-"' You began a paragraph with the words: "Professor G.E. 'It was in the course of your somewhat fatuous remarks concerning the recent Saurian remains discovered in the Solenhofen Slates. 'You have been good enough to allude to me in one of your recent lucubrations,' he said, shaking the paper at me. His great hairy hands fumbled about among the papers upon his desk and finally extracted a press cutting. I was hunting in my pocket for McArdle's letter when suddenly some new grievance came to his memory. Are you here, may I ask, on your own account, or has your rag commissioned you to obtain an interview? As a friend you are privileged - as a journalist you are outside the pale.' And now, young Malone, you arrive to complete a disastrous morning. 'I could hear them laughing while I was making my just complaint. 'Infernal, idle, overpaid rascals!' he boomed. His huge black beard was bristling, his great chest was heaving with indignation, and his arrogant grey eyes swept me up and down as the backwash of his anger fell upon me. I confronted him as he turned from the telephone - a lion in its wrath. It was at this point that I ventured to make my entrance. If crowing cocks, why not jangling bells? The case is clear. Crowing cocks have been adjudicated upon. I will carry you to the law courts if this occurs again. Well, why don't you manage? Yes, you certainly manage to distract me from work the importance of which your mind is incapable of understanding. Do you imagine that a man of science is to be distracted from essential work by the constant interference of some idiot at the end of a wire? I will not have it. As I stood at the door of his study, my hand upon the handle and my foot upon the mat, I heard a monologue which ran like this, the words booming and reverberating through the house: Professor Challenger was in the worst possible humour. Professor Challenger and The Disintegration Machine (2019).Knowing Challenger's immense strength I was convinced that the man would be killed. He seized the inventor by the throat, and had hurled him to the ground.
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