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open it up. But the field could be kept tight by supplying energy and we have plenty of that . . . far more than we’d ever need. We supply the energy, but that’s only a small part of it. The body emitting the gravitational force supplies the fulcrum that moves us along.”
    “It would operate beyond the planets,” said Greg. “It would operate equally well anywhere in space, for all of space is filled with gravitational stress. We could use gravitational bodies many light years away as the driver of our ships.”
    A half-wild light glowed momentarily in his eyes.
    “Russ,” he said, “we’re going to put space fields to work at last.”
    He walked to the chair, picked it up and sat down in it.
    “We’ll start building a ship,” he stated, “just as soon as we know the mechanics of this gravity concentration and control. Russ, we’ll build the greatest ship, the fastest ship, the most powerful ship the Solar System has ever known!”
    * * * *
    “Damn ,” said Russ, “that thing’s slipped again.”
    He glared at the offending nut. “I’ll put a lock washer on it this time.”
    Wilson stepped toward the control board. From his perch on the apparatus, Russ motioned him away.
    “Never mind discharging the field,” he said. “I can get around it somehow.”
    Wilson squinted at him. “This tooth is near killing me.”
    “Still got a toothache?” asked Russ.
    “Never got a wink of sleep last night.”
    “You better run down to Frisco and have it yanked out,” suggested the scientist. “Can’t have you laid up.”
    “Yeah, that’s right,” agreed Wilson. “Maybe I will. We got a lot to do.”
    Russ reached out and clamped his wrench on the nut, quickly backed it off and slipped on the washer. Viciously he tightened it home. The wrench stuck.
    Gritting his teeth on the bit of his pipe, Russ cursed soundlessly. He yanked savagely at the wrench. It slipped from his hand, hung for a minute on the nut and then plunged downward, falling straight into the heart of the new force field they had developed.
    Russ froze and watched, his heart in his throat, mad thoughts in his brain. In a flash, as the wrench fell, he remembered that they knew nothing about this field. All they knew was that any matter introduced in it suddenly acquired an acceleration in the dimension known as time, with its normal constant of duration reduced to zero.
    When that wrench struck the field, it would cease to exist! But something else might happen, too, something entirely unguessable.
    The wrench fell only a few feet, but it seemed to take long seconds as Russ watched, frozen in fascination.
    He saw it strike the hazy glow that defined the limits of the field, saw it floating down, as if its speed had been slowed by some dense medium.
    In the instant that hazy glow intensified a thousand times — became a blinding sun-burst! Russ ducked his head, shielded his eyes from the terrible blast of light. A rending, shuddering thud seemed to echo . . . in space rather than in air . . . and both field and wrench were gone!
    A moment passed, then another, and there was the heavy, solid clanging thud of something striking metal. This time the thud was not in space, but a commonplace noise, as if someone had dropped a tool on the floor above.
    Russ turned around and stared at Wilson. Wilson stared back, his mouth hanging open, the smoldering, cigarette dangling from his mouth.
    “Greg!” Russ shouted, his cry shattering the silence in the laboratory.
    A door burst open and Manning stepped into the main laboratory room, a calculation pad in one hand, a pencil in the other.
    “What’s the matter?” he demanded.
    “We have to find my wrench!”
    “Your wrench?” Greg was puzzled. “Can’t you get another?”
    “I dropped it into the field. Its time-dimension was reduced to zero. It became an ‘instantaneous wrench’.”
    “Nothing new in that,” said Greg, unruffled.
    “But there is,” persisted Russ. “The field