h
walls. And Busch has no idea how the thing works, other than the general
explanation that Duvall gave him. And Busch was poles apart from Duvall.
They were friends from college, but not because of professional
interests. It seems they were both doublecrossed by the same girl.

"Duvall was a brilliant but obscure nuclear and radiation physicist. 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 societies' magazines. It was
only because he had inherited a considerable amount of money that he
could do any research whatsoever."

"Hm-m-m. I seem to remember a paper about wave propagation in one of the
quarterlies. Quite unorthodox, as I recall," said Max.

"Could be. But anyway, about Busch.

"Busch majored in psychology at college, but took special courses after
he graduated and took a Master's in English. He has written two novels
and three collections of poems under various pen names. At the time of
Duvall's death, he was working on the libretto of an opera. He has had
no technical training, unless you want to count a year of high school
general science. So he wasn't too much help in explaining how Duvall's
instrument works.

"And, just to make matters more juicy, Duvall 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, how is it supposed to work?"

Garvers got up and began to pace. "According to Busch, Duvall devised
the instrument after stumbling into an entirely new branch of physics.

"This device of Duvall's 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, Duvall said that 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 somewhat 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 is but a small part. Each energy-segment is represented
by a different facet of each particle, and the arrangement of the
individual particles to each other determines what super-particle they
will form, such as an electron. Duvall called these sub-particles
'lems'.

"Busch says he wa