ds while Mike sipped at the
hot, black liquid. Then Mike said, "Dr. Fitzhugh, you said, at the
briefing back on Earth, that Snookums knows too much about nuclear
energy. Can you be more specific than that, or is it too hush-hush?"

Fitzhugh took out his briar and began filling it as he spoke. "We don't
want this to get out to the general public, of course," he said
thoughtfully, "but, as a ship's officer, you can be told. I believe
some of your fellow officers know already, although we'd rather it
wasn't discussed in general conversation, even among the officers."

Mike nodded wordlessly.

"Very well, then." Fitzhugh gave the tobacco a final shove with his
thumb. "As a power engineer, you should be acquainted with the 'pinch
effect,' eh?"

It was a rhetorical question. The "pinch effect" had been known for over
a century. A jet of highly ionized gas, moving through a magnetic field
of the proper structure, will tend to pinch down, to become narrower,
rather than to spread apart, as a jet of ordinary gas does. As the
science of magnetohydrodynamics had progressed, the effect had become
more and more controllable, enabling scientists to force the nuclei of
hydrogen, for instance, closer and closer together. At the end of the
last century, the Bending Converter had almost wrecked the economy of
the entire world, since it gave to the world a source of free energy.
Sam Bending's "little black box" converted ordinary water into helium
and oxygen and energy--plenty of energy. A Bending Converter could be
built relatively cheaply and for small-power uses--such as powering a
ship or automobile or manufacturing plant--could literally run on air,
since the moisture content of ordinary air was enough to power the
converter itself with plenty of power left over.

Overnight, all previous forms of power generation had become obsolete.
Who would buy electric power when he could generate his own for next to
nothing? Billions upon billions of dollars worth of generating equipment
were rendered valueless. The great hydroelectric dams, the hundreds of
steam turbines, the heavy-metal atomic reactors--all useless for power
purposes. The value of the stock in those companies dropped to zero and
stayed there. The value of copper metal fell like a bomb, with almost
equally devastating results--for there was no longer any need for the
millions of miles of copper cable that linked the power plants with the
consumer.

The Depression of 1929