"Security": Conclusion

"Security." 

I have read this story to its surprise ending and will let blog readers do the same. When subversives infiltrate Security, any plot twist becomes possible.

The secret project produces capacitite and call it ffuts. We did wonder whether the same name would be used. It is not.

Poul Anderson plausibly describes a scientific theory and a discovery that have not happened yet. My attempted summary might reveal a lack of scientific knowledge. 

Superior dielectrics might lead both to a perfect electrical insulator and to fantastic energy storage. A small accumulator with minimal leakage would make possible generators handling average instead of peak load. Portable electric motors carrying their own energy supply would enable "...electric automobiles and possibly aircraft..." Power sources could be remote, like distant waterfalls, or diffuse, like sunlight, and could augment or even replace declining reserves.

A mineral combining barium, titanium and rare earths and displaying fantastic electrical properties was found on Venus. Its dielectric constant increases with applied voltage, contradicting theory. Such variability implies a flexible crystal structure even though the substance is brittle. Understanding of this process, produced by a geological freak, involves quantum mechanics, oscillation theory and the periodic functions of a complex variable.

The team, which has formulated a tentative theory of the mechanism and begun to search for a way to duplicate this super-dielectricity in more useful materials, comprises:

a gadgets being (the Martian);

a designer;

two physical chemists;

a crystallographer who is also a mathematician;

an expert on quantum theory and inter-atomic forces;

an imaginative experimenter;

a synthesizer, the team leader.

The previous team leader, unfamiliar with the Belloni matrix, had used a simplified quantum mechanics that did not correct for relativistic effects, thus overlooking some space-time effects of the psi function. Belloni's work remains classified because it is useful in the design of new alloys. The corrected equations provide "...an adequate theory of super-dielectricity..." and a precise idea of the necessary semi-crystalline, semi-plastic substance "...with a grid of carbon-linked atoms." Experiments eventually produce this substance which is physically and chemically stable over hundreds of degrees, has a breakdown voltage in the millions, has an insulation resistance better than any other and a dialectric constant, ranging from a hundred thousand to about three billion, that can be varied "...by a simple electric field normal to the applied voltage gradient..." which can be generated by a couple of dry cells, is the ultimate dielectric and can be made by anyone at home.

There are scientific, industrial and military applications.

Military

lightning throwers

fuelless vehicles

"deadly hand guns"

pistols equal to cannons

weapons for citizens or rebels

Next: "Sentiment, Inc."