CHAPTER II
Miracle
It was genuine curiosity. But an ordinary man, looking at a Geiger counter, does not understand that a tiny particle at high velocity—so small that it passes through a glass tube and a metal lining without hindrance—makes a Geiger tube temporarily conductive. Murfree stared blankly at Bud Gregory.
"How the heck—" Then he said curiously, "It was invented to detect radiations that come from nobody knows where. And it's used in the plants that make atom bombs, to tell when there's too much radioactivity—too much for safety."
"I heard about atom bombs," Bud Gregory drawled. "Never knew how they worked."
Murfree, still curious, spoke in words as near to one syllable as he could. This man had said he could make an impossible repair and had the air of knowing what he was talking about.
He looked at a Geiger counter and he knew how it worked and had not the least idea what it was used for. Murfree gave him a necessarily elementary account of atomic fission. He was appalled at the inadequacy of his explanation even as he finished it. But Bud Gregory drawled:
"Oh, that—mmm—I get it. Them little things that knock that ura—ura—uranium stuff to flinders are the same kinda things that make this dinkus work. They kinda knock a little bit of air apart when they hit it. I bet they change one kinda stuff to another kind, too, if enough of 'em hit. Huh?"
Murfree jumped a foot. This lanky and ignorant backwoods repairman had absorbed highly abstruse theory, put into a form so simplified that it practically ceased to have any meaning at all, and had immediately deduced the fact of ionization of gases by neutron collision. And the transmutation of elements! He not only understood but could use his understanding.
"Right interestin'," said Bud Gregory and yawned. "I reckon your motor's cool enough to work on."
He put his hand on the cylinder-block. It was definitely hot, but not hot enough to scorch his fingers.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll fix the pumpshaft first."
He went languidly to a well beside the repair shed. He drew a bucket of water. He poured it into the radiator. There was a very minor hissing, which ceased immediately. He filled the radiator, reached down and worked at the pumpshaft with his fingers and with a speculative, distant look in his eyes, then straightened up.
He shambled into the shed and came out, trailing a long, flexible cable behind him. Up to the very edge of the Smokies and for a varying distance into them, there is no village so small or so remote that it does not have electric power. He put a round wooden cheesebox on the running-board of the car and drew out two shorter cables with clips on their ends. He adjusted them.
Murfree saw an untidy tangle of wires and crude hand-wound coils in the box. There were three cheap radio tubes. Bud Gregory turned on a switch and leaned against the mud-guard, waiting with infinite leisureliness.
"What's that?" asked Murfree, indicating the cheesebox.
"Ain't got any name," said Bud Gregory. "Somethin' I fixed up to weld stuff with. It's weldin' your shaft." He looked absently into the distance. "It saves a lotta work," he added without interest.
"But—but you can't weld a shaft without taking it out!" protested Murfree. "It'd short!"
Bud Gregory yawned.
"This don't. It's some kinda stuff them tubes make. It don't go through iron. It just kinda bounces around. Where there's a break, it heats up an' welds. When it's all welded it just bounces around."
Murfree swallowed. He walked around the car and looked at the apparatus in the cheesebox. He traced leads with his eyes. His mouth opened and closed.
"But that can't do anything!" he protested. "The current will just go around and around!"
"All right," said Bud Gregory. "Just as y'please."
He waited patiently. Presently there was a faint humming noise. Bud Gregory turned off the switch and reached down. He removed the connecting clamps and meditatively fumbled with the water pump.
"That's okay," he finally said. "Try it if y'like."
He poked in the cheesebox, changing connections apparently at random. Murfree reached down and fingered the water pump. He had made certain of the trouble with his car and he knew exactly how the broken shaft felt. Now it was perfect, exactly as if it had been taken out, welded, smoothed, trued and replaced.
"It feels all right!" said Murfree incredulously.
"Yeah," said Bud Gregory. "It is. Y'car's froze, now, though. Take the handle an' try it."
Murfree got out the starting-handle from the tool-box. He inserted it and strained. The motor was frozen solid. It could not be stirred. Murfree felt sick.
"Wait a minute," said Bud Gregory, "an' try again."
He put a single one of the clamps on the motor and tucked the other away in the cheesebox. He turned on the switch.
"Heave now," he suggested.
Murfree heaved—and almost fell over. There was no resistance to the movement of the motor except compression which was infinitely springy. There was no friction whatever. It moved with an incredible, fluid ease. It had never moved so effortlessly—though the compression remained as perfect as it had ever been. Murfree stared. Bud Gregory took off the clamp.
"Try again," he said, grinning.
With all his strength, Murfree could not move the motor. Overheated, it was frozen tight with all the oil burned from the inner surface of the cylinders. Yet an instant before—
"Yeah," said Bud Gregory, drily.
He threw on the ignition switch, got into the driver's seat, and stepped on the starter. The motor fairly bounced into life. It ran smoothly. He adjusted it to a comfortable idling speed and got out.
"We'll run 'er for ten-fifteen minutes," he said casually, "to get fresh oil spread around. Then you' all fixed."
Murfree simply goggled.
"How does that work?" he said blankly.
Bud Gregory shrugged.
"Steel is little hunks of stuff stickin' together. These tubes make a kinda stuff that makes the outside ones slide easy on each other. I fixed up this dinkus to help loosen nuts that was too tight an' for workin' on axles an' so on. That'll be five dollars. Okay?"
"Y-yes—my word!" said Murfree. He fumbled out his wallet and turned over a five-dollar bill. "Listen! You eliminated friction! Completely! There wasn't any friction! Where'd you get the idea for that thing?"
Bud Gregory yawned.
"It just come to me. I gotta knack for fixin' things."
"It should be patented!" said Murfree feverishly. "What'll you make one of these for me for?"
Bud Gregory grinned lazily.
"Too much trouble. Took me a day an' a half to put it together an' get it workin'. I don't like that kinda work."
"A hundred dollars? Five hundred? And royalties?"
Bud Gregory shrugged.
"Too much trouble," he said. "I get along. Don't aim to work myself to death. You can go along now. Your car's all right."
He shambled over to his chair. He seated himself with an air of infinite relaxation and leaned back against the corner of the shed. As Murfree drove away he raised one hand in utterly lazy farewell.
But Murfree drove down the red-clay road, marveling. There had been only a two-hour delay instead of the four to seven days that any other garage in the world would have needed. Murfree drove to what he believed would be either the only safe place within a thousand miles—that or the place where he and his family would definitely be killed. But for a while he did not think of that.
He was facing the slowly-realized fact that Bud Gregory was something that there isn't yet a word for. He could not yet realize the full significance of the discovery, but it was startling enough to knock out of his head—for the moment—even the deadly danger implied by leukemia in Cincinnati and dead grass in Pennsylvania and dead trout in Georgia and Geiger counters gone crazy in Washington.
Murfree still didn't connect Bud Gregory with the danger.