s enormous
powers of resistance, as you may guess, and is as delicately fitted
as a watch, being regulated by electric power. This cube is the
solution of the high-pressure, high-temperature problem, which was
only one of the many seemingly insuperable obstacles to be overcome.
When the bolts are withdrawn one half slides back; when the bolts are
in position it is as solid as if it were in one piece, and perfectly
able to withstand a force greater than the ingenuity of man has ever
before been able to contrive. This force is a combination of a heat
one-half that of the sun on its surface, and a head-on impact of two
one-hundred-pound projectiles fired less than forty feet apart with
an enormous charge of cordite, and possessing an initial velocity
greater than was ever recorded in gunnery.

"This vast force centers in a sort of furnace in the middle of the
cube. The furnace is round, about three feet long and three feet in
diameter, built of half a dozen fire-resisting substances in layers,
perforated for electric wires, with an opening through it lengthwise
of the exact size of the borings in the guns and in the cube. It fits
snugly into a receptacle cut out for it in the center of the cube, and
is intended to protect the steel of the cube proper from the intense
heat. This heat reaches the furnace by electric wires which enter the
cube from the sides, as you see, being brought here by a conduit along
the river-bed from a large power-plant five miles away. Twenty-eight
large wires are necessary to bring it; I own the power-plant,
ostensibly for the operation of a small sugar refinery. I may add
that the furnace is a variation of the principle employed by Professor
Moissan, in Paris." He turned to Mr. Czenki. "You may remember
having heard me mention him?"

"I remember," the expert acquiesced grimly.

"Now, pure carbon is vaporized, as you perhaps know, at a fraction
less than five thousand degrees Fahrenheit," Mr. Wynne continued. "A
carbon not merely chemically pure but _absolutely_ pure, in highly
compressed disks, is packed in the furnace, the furnace placed within
the cube, the ends of the two-inch opening in the furnace being
blocked to prevent expansion, the cube closed, the bolts fastened, and
heat applied, for several minutes--a heat, gentlemen, of five thousand
two hundred and eighty degrees Fahrenheit. The heat of the sun is
only about ten thousand degrees. And then the pressure of about
seven