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"Poised between intransigent scepticism and uncritical credulity, it [science fiction] is par excellence the literature of the open mind."
- John Brunner
 |
| Zeroentropy Spray | ||
| A method of reducing the disorder of an object as much as possible, reducing the temperature close to absolute zero. |
| Deth surveyed him coolly. “But you see, your reverence, this is not the usual haunted house, set up for you to knock down. This, I fear, is a kind of war, your reverences. And perhaps war is something that only a contemptible and misbegotten deacon knows how to dirty his hands with. Unlimber the zeroentropy spray, Brother Sawl!” A long, light, slim projector was attached to the contamer which had originally been carried behind Deth. Brother Chulian felt the chill strike through his inviolability field, and he edged away, shivering. “A brief medium spray over the whole building,” Deth was directing. “Enough to stiffen the outer walls. Then full intensity straight ahead. We’ll make our own doorway. Ready? Very well. Brother Jafid, speak your piece!” Brother Jafid’s voice, mightily amplified, was unpleasantly sweet. “Let the Waters of Perfect Peace infold this place. Let them lull its unrest. Let them draw from it all motion and all evil.” With a faint screaming sound of almost inaudibly high pitch, suggestive of ice scraping ice, the zeroentropy projector opened up. Snowflakes and flakes of frozen air traced the widening path of its spray. The haunted house was engulfed in a swirling miniature snowstorm. Back from it rebounded a blast of arctic cold. The crowd, tight-packed as it was, seemed to draw back still farther, huddling. The path of the spray narrowed, concentrated around the doorway, crusted it frostily. Then the faint screaming ceased. A priest walked up to that gleaming, icily opalescent patch and rapped it smartly with his rod of wrath. The hyperfrozen materials shattered, leaving a large, jagged-edged hole. The priest ran his rod around the edge, knocking down splinters, which tinkled like icicles as they fell. |
| From Gather, Darkness!,
by Fritz Leiber. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1943 Additional resources -
|
As the Third Law of Thermodynamics states "The entropy of a perfect crystal is zero when the temperature of the crystal is equal to absolute zero (0 K)".
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'... the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
'THE SPACE VESSEL was traveling swiftly… For over five thousand years they had Voyaged on and on.’
'They circled the vast audiences, dancing, twittering, chirping...'
'The sun-quilt was a patchwork of colors and materials on the inward side, but silvered on the outward side...'
'Jim, I saw them reduce four of my doctors and nurses into those little cubes!'
'Fats Jordan was hanging in the center of the Big Glass Balloon, hugging his guitar to his massive black belly above his purple shorts..'
'When confronted by hills, or rough terrain, it did not stop, but simply slowed until the task demanded equaled its steady power output.'
'... the brain is no longer subjected to the accustomed pull, and it expands slightly in all directions.'
