* * * * *
Two days later, the X-69--the fast, experimental ship of Special
Weapons--dropped down to the Grand Port of Kandoris. A score of heavy
trucks, loaded with equipment, waited for the cargo ports to open; and
big, lumbering sections of construction framework were being moved in
toward it.
The man who floated down the drop chute from the equatorial air lock
was Kiffer Samm. A ground taxi was waiting for him, and it started to
move even before Kiffer closed the door.
Within minutes, he was in Roysland Dwyn's office. He pulled up a chair,
sat down, and said: "Well, I'm here."
"An astute observation," said Roysland. "Who knows to what depths of
scientific thought you may reach with such cosmos-shaking revelations
as that?"
"A mere nothing," said Kiffer; "I might add that the X-69 is here, too.
How long will it take to get the stuff mounted on her?"
"A couple of hours. I made sure that Allerdyce would have the
necessary equipment ready when you landed. We'll take off as soon as
she's loaded."
Kiffer frowned at Roysland, then looked down at his fingernails. "You
don't need to go along."
"Why not?"
Kiffer kept looking at his nails for a full five seconds. Then he
looked up and said: "Look, Roysland, suppose what you suspect _is_
true. Suppose that it isn't an enemy weapon, but a backfire from the
_aJ_ guns. If so, then we'll be mindjammed when we test out the fleet's
weapons. And we can't afford to have you in that condition."
"I know it," said Roysland, "but there's no other way I can get the
data. Besides, Bilford is having some success with using microwaves
on the patients; there's reason to believe that the condition is
temporary."
Kiffer shrugged and spread his hands. "O.K.; if that's your orders--"
He let his voice trail off. Then: "But I still don't like it. Look at
it from my viewpoint; if I'm knocked out, I can depend on you to figure
out a way to bring me out of it. But if you're out, too, what's to
become of me?"
Roysland laughed. "That's the best reason you could have given. Thanks.
But I'm still going."
* * * * *
It took just a little more than two hours for the Space-fleet ordnance
crews to replace the _aJ_ projectors on the X-69. Roysland's theory
was simple. Although the _aJ_ guns might be responsible for the
mindjamming effect, it was obvious that they didn't cause it every
time. It was possible that there were slight differences in the
backwash of radiation--slight differences caused by variations in the
projectors themselves. The weapons of the _Bedevin_ and the _Killiver_
went into the turrets of the X-69; if there were any basis for the
theory, at least two of those guns would be responsible for the
mindjamming effect.
The X-69 left Kandoris VI at 0500 hours, aimed herself for the vast
void of the Lesser Rift, and cut in her no-space generators. The drive
slammed her abruptly up past the velocity of light and into multiples
thereof.
Roysland had a cabin to himself near the upper deck at the nose of the
ship, just beneath the control bridge. With Kiffer's aid, he set up
recording instruments at various points throughout the ship, started
them, and promptly forgot them. He was aboard as a human observer; the
instruments had their own job to do.
Roysland pushed his muscular bulk up the stair to the control bridge.
Above him rose the hard, transparent dome of the ship's nose. He stood
for a moment, watching the stars move slowly by. Then he walked over
to where Kiffer and the ship's officers were standing, near the main
control area.
"Captain Dobrin," he said, "we've got our instruments set up; we'd like
to find some targets to test-fire at." He paused for a moment and
looked at the officer. "You know what we're up against, don't you?"
Captain Dobrin was a lean, graying, grim-faced man who looked as though
the last time he had smiled was in his mother's arms. "I know what our
chances are; slightly worse than those of a fighting ship engaging the
enemy, as I figure it. Besides, I figure that if you're willing to risk
your neck--or your mind--I'll take the same chances with the ship." He
stopped and looked at the screen, then looked straight up, pointing his
finger through the transparent dome of the nose. "We'll head toward
that star, there; it's a triple sun, and there's usually plenty of
debris floating around in the vicinity of a system like that."
Roysland watched as the ship approached the triple star system.
At first it was only a bright point of light. Then, gradually, it
separated into two lights, one several times as bright as the other.
Finally, the brighter of the two separated into two parts. The three
suns stood at the points of an elongated isosceles triangle.
As they neared the trio, the captain ordered the no-space generator
cut, and the ship dropped out of drive. Instead of having a velocity
measured in light-hours per second, the ship dropped suddenly to miles
per second.
"Electromagnetic detectors on," said the Fire Control Officer.
A ship traveling above the velocity of light cannot detect a material
body unless there is subetheric radiation coming from the detected
body. A star, naturally, can be detected. At those velocities, a star's
subetheric radiation can be seen as ordinary light. But there is no
way to detect a nonradiating body; in order to fire at a target, it's
necessary to cut out the drive and use ordinary detectors to find a
nonradiating body such as a meteorite.
"Target at forty million miles," said an observer.
"Track and fire," said the fire control officer.
The robot-controlled _aJ_ projectors swiveled in their mounts, found
the mass of nickel-iron that was their target, and hummed softly. Then
they clicked.
That was all. Roysland neither saw nor felt anything unusual.
Three and a half minutes later, tardy light brought the news that the
meteorite had flared in an actinic blaze of incandescent gas.
"Dead hit," said the observer.
Captain Dobrin looked at Roysland with a silent question.
Roysland nodded. "Go ahead. Let's pick out a few more; let's burn
asteroids for a while."
* * * * *
They blasted eighteen planetoids into flaming gas in the next three
hours. Roysland Dwyn and Kiffer Samm checked their instrument
recordings and ran them through the differential analyzer after each
firing.
"There's backwash, of course," said Kiffer. He pointed at a line
that wavered up and down near the bottom of the graph. "That's the
background--stellar noise from the subelectronic radiation of the
nearby stars. Now"--he moved his finger along the graph--"this is the
harmonic set up by the backwash at the instant of firing of the _aJ_
projectors.
"It looks pretty high on the graph, but that's because the subnuclear
reactions inside a star are so slight that they don't generate much
background noise. Actually, the backwash from the _aJ_'s couldn't
possibly be called dangerous."
Roysland frowned; his heavy, dark brows pulled down, wrinkling his
massive forehead. "Well, they obviously didn't do anything to us. At
least, if they did, I haven't noticed it."
Kiffer shrugged. "Nothing harmful, anyway. Now, here's some comparison
charts I have; the test runs on _aJ_ guns that have been installed in
other ships. The wave form is identical; these guns don't react any
differently than any other. As far as I can see, there's no reason for
these guns to have knocked out the crews of those ships."
Roysland rubbed a finger across his chin and stared at the ceiling.
That chin-rubbing gesture was significant to Kiffer; he knew Roysland
well enough to know that the big man was thinking. Kiffer kept his
mouth shut and waited.
Finally, Roysland snapped his fingers. "Look," he said sharply, "why
aren't these things tested the way they're used?"
Kiffer looked puzzled. "The way they're used?" He paused a moment.
"Oh, I see what you mean. Why aren't they test-fired while the ship is
in no-space drive? That's easy. They have to be connected up to the
trackers, and the trackers can't fire at indetectable objects. And you
can't detect a meteorite in no-space drive.
"Of course, I suppose we could send out some torpedoes and try to hit
them, but that would be sort of wasteful."
"Then the guns aren't tested in no-space, huh?" Roysland said grinning.
"Then somebody's been falsifying reports to my office."
Kiffer grinned back. "Sure," he said, "they're tested, but without the
robot trackers; I don't see what difference that would make, though."
"Let's not jump to any conclusions. Those things fire in sequence when
they're tracking--one right after another, in battery. And they're
timed so close together that they might as well be going off all at
once. Or, the time lag may have something to do with it, short as it
is. Suppose we fire them in no-space drive, just as if it were battle
conditions."
"At what?" Kiffer wanted to know. "The robot can't track unless it has
a target."
"We've got targets," Roysland said quietly. "Millions of 'em."
"The Torpedoes? But--wait a minute! Millions?" Kiffer slapped his palm
against his forehead. "Why didn't I think of it before? The stars, of
course!"
"Right," said Roysland. "They radiate in the subetherics. But no one
ever thought of firing at them before, because there's no way of
telling whether you hit it or not; a star could soak up all the energy
of the whole Galactic Fleet without noticing it. But we don't care
whether we _hit_ the target or not; all we want is a target to _fire_
at."
"I'll reset the recorders," Kiffer said. "Let's see what happens."
"I'm going up to the bridge," Roysland said. "Set those gimmicks going;
we want a record, even if this knocks us silly."
* * * * *
Up on the bridge, Roysland explained what he wanted done to Captain
Dobrin.
"It can't hurt anything," Dobrin said. "We'll take a pot shot at the
dwarf out there. They give a fairly small, bright target."
The ship plunged into the no-space of ultradrive as the generators were
cut in, and she began to move toward a point just to one side of the
dimmest of the three stars.
"Target at three fifty-two million," said the observer.
"Track and fire," said the FCO.
Roysland held his breath as the projectors moved, hummed, and clicked
again. And nothing happened.
Roysland let his breath out slowly.
"Was that O.K.?" the fire control officer asked. "We can't tell whether
we hit or not."
"I doubt if you could miss even a white dwarf star at this range,"
Roysland said. "But you're right, of course; there's no way of being
_absolutely_ positive." He turned back to the captain. "Let's play
around with this for a while. Make a few passes, back and forth at that
star and let's see what we get on the recorders."
What they got didn't look like much.
"Here's the background noise," Kiffer said, pointing at the graph.
"This time, it's almost a perfect sine wave; it's the backwash from
the drive generators. Here's the harmonic generated when the _aJ_'s go
off. And here"--he pulled a strip from the differential analyzer--"are
the components. This one is the container phase for the energy envelope
that holds the raw violence of the beam itself. And this is the carrier
wave phase."
Roysland looked at the graphs and shook his head slowly. "And it all
looks perfectly harmless."
"_Looks_, hell!" said Kiffer. "It _is_ harmless. Believe me, Roysland,
it is definitely not the backwash from the _aJ_ guns that's causing the
mindjammer effect. We'll have to look somewhere else."
"I guess you're right," Roysland agreed reluctantly. "If it isn't
here--" His voice trailed off. He was right back where he started,
and he didn't have anything to go on. Finally, he reached over to the
intercom and punched for the bridge. "O.K., captain," he said, "let's
turn the thing around and go home!"
Two weeks after the X-69 landed at Grand Base, Roysland still was
stewing around, trying to make sense out of all the data he had.
Report from Bilford Vell, Chief Psychometrist: "The patients seem to be
responding fairly well under the microwave treatment. It seems to act
very similarly to the electro-shock treatments reputedly used centuries
ago for certain types of insanity, although without the deleterious
effects. The feedback loop in the prefrontal lobes is partially
canceled out when the frequencies of the cerebral activities are the
same as, and ninety degrees out of phase with, the microwaves beamed at
the head.
"Naturally, this means that a series of treatments is necessary, since
the cerebral frequencies are unpredictable and variable, and since the
currents in the feedback loop are composed of a number of different
frequencies."
_Fine_, thought Roysland. _There's some hope, at least. We know what
can cure it, but what can cause it?_
Report from Allerdyce Blyt, CinC, Galactic Fleet: "I don't know what
you can make out of this, but maybe you can get together with Bilford
and figure out what it means. If you ask me, I think the Enlissa have
gone nuts. Is it possible there's a backwash from their mindjammer?
"Anyway, here's what's happened.
"During a minor skirmish near the Alavard Cluster, two Enlissa ships
came in on attack geodesics toward the GSS _Viwil_. The _Viwil_ is
not equipped with _aJ_ projectors, so they had to rely on conventional
torpedoes. Since the odds were two to one, they had little hope of
surviving, but they had hopes of inflicting some damage on the enemy.
So they waited until the Enlissa ships were well within range, and
fired.
"The Enlissa ships took no evasive action, and the torpedoes destroyed
both ships. There was no need for the _Viwil_ to use evasive action,
since the enemy ships _did not fire a single torpedo_!
"There have been other instances of similar action.
"In other small skirmishes, the _aJ_ guns have proven their
effectiveness; they've shot up Enlissa ships before they were in
torpedo range. Oddly enough, no human ship equipped with _aJ's_ has
ever been hit by a torpedo."
Roysland went back and reread one of the sentences. "Is it possible
there's a backwash from their mindjammer?"
_It's possible, sure. Until we know what the mindjammer_ is, _we'll
have to admit that anything's possible_.
Report from Kiffer Samm: "I've done the checking you suggested.
There is a definite effect on the brain, but it isn't permanent, nor
noticeable. The backwash of the _aJ_ guns causes a slight retardation
of nerve impulses. But it isn't enough to cause any reaction--either
mental or physiological. It doesn't last enough, in the first place;
and it isn't powerful enough, in the second. I don't know what would
happen if a person were subjected to such a field over a long period
of time, but the situation corrects itself so rapidly that there is no
danger of cumulative effects.
"Besides, some of the men affected have never been exposed to the
backwash from _aJ_ fire before, while others have been exposed a good
many times. If the thing were cumulative, we would have men being
knocked out here and there, at random, as the accumulation built
up--and it just ain't so.
"The only parallel I can make--as far as long-range effects are
concerned--are the effects of the backwash from the drive itself. And
that isn't bad at all. Statistically speaking, the crews of spaceships
are more alert, and have more interest in their surroundings, _after_
long periods of service than they have before exposure. Even so, that
is probably due to military work and periodic psychological checkups,
rather than to any effect of the field.
"Do you have any other ideas?"
Roysland looked sourly at the report. _Ideas? Sure; I've got all kinds
of ideas. I wish I had an answer._
* * * * *
Report from General Director Eckisster--delivered via solidiphone:
"Roysland, you're going to have to start moving, here!" The director
shifted his heavy bulk in his chair and glowered at Roysland Dwyn.
"As far as I can tell, you haven't done a blasted thing! Of all the
meaningless reports I ever read, these are the epitome of nonsense."
He waved a chubby hand at a pile of papers in his lap. "As I understand
it, you've been looking for some sort of effect emanating from our own
weapons instead of from the enemy's.
"Now, to me, that's as silly as a man with a sword trying to explain
away the stab wound in his belly by claiming that something happened
during the fight and the hilt stabbed him. Or a man with a bullet wound
trying to claim it was caused by the recoil of his blunderbuss!"
Roysland tapped his fingers softly on the top of his huge black desk
until Eckisster was through, then he said: "It's the only hypothesis
that fits the facts. I'll admit that we haven't been able to prove
anything yet, but I'm convinced that--"
He was interrupted by the chiming of the solidiphone. He cut in a
second circuit, and Fleet Commander Allerdyce coalesced in the air next
to Eckisster. He glanced at the general director.
"Good afternoon, Eckisster." Then he looked back at Roysland. "I've got
your weapon for you. Forty hours ago, Squadron 8477 met the enemy near
St. Jairus' Cluster. We won the battle by a small margin, but that's
neither here nor there. The important thing right now is what the
hospital and salvage ships found when they came in after the battle.
All the data isn't in yet, but as near as we can tell so far, a freak
accident occurred.
"One of our ships was surprised by an Enlissa ship that came in out of
a nearby sun; the enemy ship actually snapped by at less than a hundred
miles. A lucky shot hit the drive generators of the enemy ship, and it
stopped almost dead in space.
"They managed to get the crew of our own ship with their mindjammer,
but something happened aboard the enemy ship, too. Evidently the weapon
does have a backwash; the enemy crew was mindjammed, too!"
Roysland and Eckisster both started to say something, but the commander
raised his hand. "Wait a second! The point I'm getting at is this:
The Enlissa ship was recovered intact; the mindjammer projectors are
aboard! I've sent an emergency order to the squadron commander in that
sector; the Enlissa ship will be here tomorrow morning. We'll hold it
sealed until you and your crew can investigate. The inspectors will
have to go in with you, of course, but you'll be in charge of the
weapons themselves."
He stopped and speared Eckisster with a frosty look. "I trust that
meets with your approval, Eckisster?"
The general director was beaming seraphically. "It does, commander;
indeed it does. Thank you. Thank you, so much."
Allerdyce glowered. "I'll be available in a couple of hours. Right now,
I've got to get some work done." He cut the circuit.
Eckisster turned his beaming visage from the dissolving image of
Allerdyce to the blocky figure of Roysland.
"May I suggest that you try investigating what few facts the fleet may
have turned up? Who knows--you may find them profitable, eh? Or perhaps
you're too busy trying to figure out how the _aJ_ guns work to have any
time for the enemy's mindjammer?
"However that may be, I'll leave you to your work, bumblehead."
Roysland shot to his feet. "Good! Maybe I could get some work done,
myself, if you weren't around needling me!" He reached out to snap off
the solidiphone switch, but Eckisster, still smiling benevolently,
was already fading. Roysland got the impression that his smile,
Cheshirelike, still lingered after he had gone.
* * * * *
The crew of the Enlissa ship were the first live aliens ever seen by
human beings. Their corpses had been dissected by the thousands, but
the living organism had never been investigated before.
"This gives us a jump on them," one of the biologists said. "As far as
we know, no living human has ever been caught by the Enlissa."
Roysland, who was watching the aliens being herded out of the captured
ship, turned his head to look at the biologist. "They don't know we've
got this ship, either," he said.