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"It's hard to tell stories about critters that are not human. John W. Campbell tried it, in "Twilight," and everybody says it's a wonderful story, and nobody ever reads it twice."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| Cyclotronic Ore-Hurler | ||
| Using the magnetic properties of an asteroid to send ore hurling across space! |
Early in the story, the natural magnetism of the metal in Asteroid 60 is referred to in a reversal of the idea of electromagnetic boots clinging to the side of a metal spaceship:
What if you cut a vast cylinder out of this planetoid?
...he commenced the
downward passage, his iron-shod boots
clinging to the vertical wall of metallic
rock, and as he advanced this magnetic
attraction became ever more intense.
| "...Echo is just a gob of metal — mostly magnetite, except for these granules of rhodium — forty miles in diameter, but far
from round. Then there’s that chasm, a
mammoth crack that’s gaped open, cutting
the planetoid almost in half. The whole
thing is magnetic — like a terrestrial lodestone — and there’s a mighty potent field
of force across that gap in the chasm. The
walls are really poles of a bigger magnet
than was ever built by Martians or human being. And of what does a big
magnet remind you?”
After a moment of thought, Bormon replied, “Cyclotronic action.”
 ('Exit From Asteroid 60" by DL James) There was a short silence, then Calbur resumed. “These Marts shoot the ore across space to the south magnetic pole of Mars. A ground crew gathers it up and transports it to their underground laboratories. As a prisoner explained it, it was simple; those old-time cyclotrons used to build up the velocity of particles, ions mostly, by whirling them in spiral orbits in a vacuum-enclosed magnetic field. Well, there’s a vacuum all around Echo, and clear to Mars. By giving these lumps of ore a static charge, they act just like ions. When the stream of ore comes out of the machine, it passes through a magnetic lens which focuses it like a beam of light on Mars’ south pole. And there you have it. Maybe you saw what looked like a streak of light shooting off through the chasm. That’s the ore stream. It comes out on the day side of Echo, and so on to Mars. They aim it by turning the whole planetoid.” |
| Technovelgy from Exit From Asteroid 60,
by D.L. James. Published by Planet Stories in 1940 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the mass-driver catapult from Robert Heinlein's 1966 novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and the hybrid mass-driver from Robert Heinlein's 1950 novel The Man Who Sold The Moon. Finally, take a look at a weaponized version of this idea, the stiletto beam from Arthur C. Clarke's 1955 novel Earthlight.
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