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anti-tiedowns. To turn it on, you had to have a finger on each trigger, and
lifting any one of them turned the beam off. Then, you had to release all the
buttons before it could be turned back on. This was so that Hasenpfeffer
wouldn't try to tape down three of the buttons, and hurt himself, or me either.
The blade length was adjustable from an eighth of an inch out to twelve feet, by
means of a sliding potentiometer built into the side, easily reachable with your
right thumb. For power, it had solar cells charging Ni-Cad batteries, and
everything that had to penetrate the housing switches and so forth were
guaranteed to be dust tight and water tight, down to thirty meters.
Ian machined up three stainless steel housings for them, complete with belt
clips, and these were hermetically sealed at well.
We christened them "Temporal Swords."
Switched on, it made a crackly hissing sound that was caused by air molecules
leaving rapidly for elsewhen. The sword was a glorious thing, the ultimate
cutting tool and the deadliest possible short-range weapon.
As a cutting tool, it could cut absolutely anything as quickly and as smoothly
as you could feed the stock to the tool. There were no vibrations, and with the
right beam width, no chips to clear away. Over the coming months, Ian adapted
all of his cutting tools from conventional cutting bits to temporal swords. The
lathes didn't look much different, but the Bridgeports looked like they were
decapitated with their motors and gearboxes gone. And the saws were reduced down
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to being little more than holding fixtures! Eventually, Ian replaced all five of
his saws with simple clamps to hold the swords accurately, and had Hasenpfeffer
sell the surplus machine tools.
At the other end of the spectrum, as a weapon, it was something to make a combat
veteran perk up, drool, and pant with lust. With a flick of your wrist, you
could cut throughanything with this puppy! I mean that if a Sherman tank
offended you, you could turn it into a pile of small metal chunks in seconds.
And the only sounds anybody would hear would be a quiet hiss and the much louder
sound of bits of dead tank hitting the ground.
But you couldn't fence with one because you couldn't parry. Two beams
interpenetrated without difficulty. I figured that it was just as well, since I
think that Hasenpfeffer has a Zorro streak in him, and a temporal sword wasn't a
play toy.
I put a light bulb in the butt, letting it serve as a flashlight as well as a
cutting tool. This use was not encouraged because it quickly ran down the
batteries.
Ian and I talked about high-output, long-range pulsed models rifles and
pistols but, probably because none of us hunted, it was a long while before we
got around to making any.
Anyway, when the first "production" model was done, I took it outside to run a
real world test, or, in the popular vernacular, to play with it.
It was a beautiful day and Hasenpfeffer was trimming the hedge with a pair of
huge, two handed scissors. He was still doing most of the drudge work around the
place because he wasn't of much use elsewhere.
I went to the shaggy end of the hedge, adjusted the blade to about three feet,
and held the beam horizontally at shoulder level, where the hedge should be
topped. Then I walked steadily towards Hasenpfeffer, neatly trimming the shrubs
to height. He saw me, stared at me, and registered pleasant shock.
"Give me that thing!"
"Hey, sure Jim." I laughed. "Only it's as dangerous as sin and not quite as much
fun. Look, you hold all four of these triggers down to make it work. Then this
slide controls blade length and . . ."
"Got it!" He took it out of my hand, ignorant of the fact that it isvery bad
form to take a tool out of any workingman's hands. It's a fighting offense in
the Society of the Competent.
He slashed at the hedge, gouging a hole that would take years to grow back in.
He laughed and ran to some Blue Spruce lawn trees that were in need of clipping.
He began vigorously trimming them, slicing thin cuts into the lawn that made
hash out of the automatic sprinkler system.
I once read the report of an early Spanish explorer who had given a jungle
native a sharp steel machete. This Indian had spent much of his life pushing
thick greenery aside so that he could walk upright, forcing his way around it
when he had to, and bowing under it when nothing else would suffice.
The Indian tried a few swings with the machete and suddenly realized that he now
had the power to slash his lifelong tormentor asunder! He ran off laughing,
screaming and yelling war cries while butchering the vines and shrubs of the
Amazon. A little technology sometimes goes a long way. . . .
Eventually, hours later, the Indian came back to camp with his new blade hanging
from his exhausted right arm. He was slick with sweat, and the explorer
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