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"Generally, the human race avoids doing anything radical until forced into it."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Sun-Tube | ||
| A slicing ray of death! |
| A gray, three-fingered hand held an angled tube significantly. A lens gleamed transparent in the sunlight from the open end...
The angled tube came up with the swiftness of light. Grim Morgan cried out sharply, lunged out of his seat. Hilary tore at his gun, knowing sickeningly that the draw would be slower than the action of the strange weapon in the guard's hand. There was a sneer on the monster as he pressed something on the tube... A blinding beam flashed out of the orifice, sheared through Peabody's middle as though he were cut cleanly in half with a gigantic knife. He toppled in two sections to the floor of the conveyor...
 (Sun-Tube from 'Slaves of Mercury' by Nat Schachner)
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| Technovelgy from Slaves of Mercury,
by Nat Schachner. Published by Astounding Stories in 1932 Additional resources -
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Here are a few excerpts:
There were about a dozen Mercutians in the long laboratory, and each had a sun-tube dangling from his belt, ready at hand...
The Mercutians were not cowards. At the moment of the diversion, every one of them had gone for his sun-tube. A flame streaked close to Hilary’s head, shivered the opposite wall into molten fragments...
“What are those round glass disks stretched along the hull in a double row?” he asked. “They look like burning glasses.”
“That’s just what they are,” said Grim sadly. “The top row are sun-lenses, that throw a terrible ray for a distance of two to three hundred feet. Melts everything in its path — men, trees, rocks even. You saw one in action in the sun-tube with which poor old Peabody was cut in half...
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'...the rocket’s landing-arms automatically unfolded.'
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
'...the combined Wind-Suncatcher, like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
'I went to the control room where the three other men were manipulating their mechanical men.'
'The low-slung monorail car, straddling its single track, bored through the shadows on a slowly rising course.'
'It was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor...'
'... he thrust in his charging arm to replenish his store of energy.'
'...the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort.'
