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The fort had turned its destructive ray on the cosmium ship with the result that, as before, the cosmium slowly disintegrated into puffs of cosmic rays. The vapor seemed to boil out, puff suddenly, then was gone. Arcot put up a wall of artificial matter to test the effect. The ray went right through the matter, without so much as affecting it.
Now in the framework below things were materializing as Arcot's flying thoughts arranged them great tubes of cosmium with relux element huge coils of relux conductors, insulated with microscopic but impenetrable layers of cosmium. Still, for all his swiftness of mind and accuracy of thought, he had to correct two mistakes in all his work. It was nearly an hour before the thing was finished.
"That," observed Morley, "is one thing cosmium won't stop. In some ways I wish it would because the mental power that could be wielded by any great number of those highly advanced Thessians, if they know its possibilities, is not a thing to neglect." "I can answer that, terrestrian," thought Zezdon Afthen.
At the suggestion of the cruiser commander who had seen the construction of a spaceship from the emptiness of space, Arcot rapidly constructed a small, very simple, molecular drive machine of pure cosmium, making it entirely from energy. It required but minutes, and the Venonians stared in wonder as Arcot's unbelievable tools created the machine before their eyes.
It was directed almost straight up, and but one ship was caught in its beam. It was made of relux, but the relux was powdered under the inconceivable blow that countless quintillions of cosmic ray photons struck it. That ray was in fact, a solid mass of cosmium moving with the velocity of light. And it was headed for that satellite of Thett, which it would reach in a few hours time.
He was not accustomed to this strain, and though his mind was one of the most powerful on Earth, it was very hard for him. "We have a substance of commercial and practical use now. Cosmium. Arcot will show one method of making it." Arcot resumed his work, seated now. A formation reached out, and grasped the lump of platinum still on the floor.
Arcot crumpled it, and pressed it once more between artificial matter tools. It was a plate, thick as heavy cardboard, and two feet on a side. He set it in a holder of artificial matter, a sort of frame, and caused the controls to lock. Taking off the headpiece he had worn, he explained, "As Morey said, Cosmium. Briefly, density, 5007.89.
With bewildering speed, with the speed of thought trained to construct, enormous masses of cosmium were appearing beside them in space as Arcot created them from pure energy. Cosmium, relux and some clear cosmium-like lux metal. Ordinary cosmium was reflective, and he wanted something with cosmium's strength, and the clearness of lux.
"Now," muttered Morey, "we shall see what cosmium will stand." A huge spot on the side of the ship had become incandescent. A vapor, a strange puff of smokiness exploded from it, and disappeared instantly. Another came and faster and faster they followed each other. The cosmium was disintegrating under the ray, but very slowly, breaking first into gaseous cosmic rays, then free, and spreading.
The fixture he formed into the letters, and welded forever on the gigantic prow of the ship, and on its huge sides. Thought, it stood in letters ten feet high, made of clear transparent cosmium, and the golden light photons, imprisoned in it, the slowly disintegrating lux metal, would cause those letters to shine for countless aeons with the steady golden light they now had.
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