 How does the Cosmic Express Ray work?
Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories December 1961 and was first published in Amazing Stories November 1930. Experimenter Publications Inc. The Cosmic Express By JACK WILLIAMSON Introduction by Sam Moskowitz When the vogue for science-fantasy altered to super science, he created the memorable super lock-picker Giles Habilula as the major attraction in a rousing trio of space operas , The Legion of Space, The Cometeers and One Against the Legion. When grim realism was the order of the day, he produced Crucible of Power and when they wanted extrapolated theory in present tense, he assumed the disguise of Will Stewart and popularized the concept of contra terrene matter in science fiction with Seetee Ship and Seetee Shock. Finally, when only psychological studies of the future would do, he produced "With Folded Hands ..." "... The Cosmic Express is of special interest because it was written during Williamson's A. Merritt "kick," when he was writing little else but, and it gave the earliest indication of a more general capability. The lightness of the handling is especially modern, barely avoiding the farcical by the validity of the notion that wireless transmission of matter is the next big transportation frontier to be conquered. It is especially important because it stylistically forecast a later trend to accept the background for granted, regardless of the quantity of wonders, and proceed with the story. With only a few thousand scanning-disk television sets in existence at the time of the writing, the surmise that this media would be a natural for westerns was particularly astute. The discovery of AMAZING STORIES was the escape he sought and his goal was to be a science fiction writer. But after a few half-hearted movements, he gave it up, and walked through an open door into a small bright room, its walls covered with bookcases and also with scientific appliances that would have been strange to the man of four or five centuries before, when the Age of Aviation was beginning. Beyond, the park stretched away in illimitable vistas, broken with the graceful columned buildings that held up the great glass roof.
 Matter is converted into power and sent out as a radiant beam. The beam is then focused to convert it back into atoms at the destination.
 Matter is converted into power and sent out as a radiant beam. The beam is then focused to convert it back into atoms at the destination.  A photographic lens picks up an object in one place and reproduces it in a different place using light rays.  A radiant beam converts matter into power in order to be sent and then converted back into atoms at a new destination.  Particles of electricity are united to form an atom.