"Nothing. We're in! We had a bit of trouble getting the warp going at
this end. The image-size of Sirius when projected by a lens as close as
the fore element is larger in diameter than Sirius is according to the
distances involved, you know, and getting the warp started across the
face of the Telfan Lens was some going. But we're about to thicken the
center and shorten the focal length of the aft element right now."
"O.K. No trouble, hey?"
"Excepting it is hot in the hind-end stations. The interstices that
give the spill-overs from Lens One do a swell job of heating up the
stations when it hits."
"Sirius is hot stuff."
"Look, Mac, how much energy will it take to ruin Soaky?"
"Well," grinned McBride, "Lothar's 'Handbook of Useless Facts' says
that a globe of ice the size of Terra, if dropped into Sol, would melt
and boil so quick it wouldn't go '_Psssst_.' Is Carlson handy?"
"Here, Mac. On the hind surface in the flitter and it is hotter than
the hinges of Hell."
"The one on Pluto?"
"No, the one in the real Nether Regions."
"O.K., Carl. You're the balance wheel in this outfit. If you must
aberrate, lean outward a bit, will you? I'd hate to singe the pants off
of a couple of billion Telfans whilst trying to save their lives."
"I'll keep an eye on it," promised Carlson.
"_Eye?_" grunted Peters. "He means _ear_. Or has Carlson got his
semicircular canals in his eyes?"
Hammond interrupted with a gloating shout. "Mac! We're in! Ninety-one
percent. Pure, crystalline Silicon-acetyldiethyl-sulfanomid. And the
charge is almost equal to the galactic mean; meaning that the stuff is
stable."
McBride nodded and said into the communicator: "Our half is did, boys.
All that stands between we-all and Telfu is a stinking, one-hundred
mile satellite. Frankly, I'm agin it!"
Peters did not answer McBride. He shouted, his voice strained with
excitement: "Here comes Soaky now, around the edge of Telfu. This is
it, gang. Bore him deep and give him Hell!"
Sandra Drake sat down on the edge of a hard bench and took a deep
breath. With her free hand, she rubbed her eyes and pushed the stray
hair out of them. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffed with lack of
sleep. She stretched and took a longing look at the surface of the hard
bench; one of those looks that was calculating not the hardness of
the bench but wondering if she could catch forty winks without having
trouble call her away again. She decided not. She knew herself, and she
knew that as long as she kept going she could stay awake, but if she
slowed down for a moment, she'd drop off and nothing would awaken her.
And forty winks would actually make her feel worse than no sleep at all.
Outside of the window, dawn was just breaking. It was a strange dawn,
an alien sunrise, but one that was nothing new to Sandra Drake. Sirius
II was just above the horizon, but almost lost in the mists because of
its low radiation. Sirius I was not above the horizon yet, but his
strong radiation was coloring the sky blue-gray.
Sandra looked out of the window at the graying sky above. Carefully
and hopefully she scanned it but she was not surprised that nothing
was there for her to see. The idea of doing away with a hundred-mile
satellite was too much, even for McBride, Hammond, and the rest
of their gang. A hundred miles of celestial body was not large as
celestial bodies go, but against man's futile efforts it was simply
vast.
In all of the man-made works on Terra, Pluto, Venus, Mars, and Luna,
considerably less than the volume of a hundred-mile sphere had been
moved. Affected, perhaps, but not man-moved; the pile-up of rivers
behind a dam could not be counted.
So man pitting himself against a celestial object seemed almost like
sacrilege, though Sandra Drake knew that these men would take a job of
analyzing the course-constants of the Star of Bethlehem if they thought
they knew where it was now.
And as small as Soaky was against the giants of the galaxy, it was none
the less a celestial object.
So she searched the sky hopefully and was not surprised that nothing
was there. Her search was more "Will it happen" instead of "When will
it happen?"
And then a Telfan stuck his head in the room and called: "Sandrake! Can
you come?"
Sandra shook her head, rubbed her eyes again, and went.
"Now what?" she asked wearily. "We don't have to evacuate another
district?"
"No," smiled Theodi, "not that bad this time. But we are going out to
Loana--a small town not too far from here--and try out some of this
latest stuff."
"Have any hope for it?"
"I must have hope," said Theodi.
"That's selling yourself a bill of goods," said Sandra.
"I know. But unless I play self-deception to the limit, I'll quit from
sheer futility. No, Sandrake, I must hope with all my soul and I must
force myself to believe that this may work."
"I won't even mention my friends," she said.
"You are beginning to give up?"
"I hate to think of it," said Sandra honestly. "It'll be the first
time that they failed to do what they said they could do. I know they
planned it, perhaps it takes longer than they think. Or perhaps they
came unprepared; their equipment not complete. After all," and Sandra
managed a reminiscent smile in spite of her feelings, "I've seen them
running some of the haywirest equipment in the world and making it
perform. Maybe this time the law of averages caught up with them."
"You think perhaps they are finding that our satellite is too much for
them?"
"I hate to think of it. I'd hate to admit that they could fail."
"You have changed, Sandrake."
"Have I? I wonder if it is my hope that they will take me home. No,
Theodi, in spite of what I may say about them, they know their
potatoes. They're the typical genius-type. Whether they rate as
genius I wouldn't know, but they're that kind of people. Give them a
situation, and from somewhere in their memory they can bring forth the
darnedest things which fit in like jigsaw pieces to complete the whole
picture."
"I hope they continue," said Theodi. "Feel up to coming along?"
"Sure."
"Good. We need you."
"Who, me?" asked Sandra.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you are alien. You are impartially alien. Though you have
friends on Telfu, they are few, and in your secret mind you class
us all as 'Telfan' and forget about sub-classifications. This
experimentation is just that, to you, and we are the subjects.
Therefore when you select one hundred victims out of a district, we get
a perfect, impartial selection; a true cross-section of the district."
"Any of you could do that."
"No. We'd be biased by our knowledge of who is important, who is the
sicker, who is young and who is old. And, though it may seem strange to
you, you have absolutely no idea of beauty. Therefore you are impartial
among the ugly and the beautiful."
"So what?"
"In experimentation on humans, we are inclined to pick those of less
value to the community. We pick the lame and the halt and the ugly. We
are inclined to pick those who are likely not to live anyway, and this
biases our selection. Come, let's get going."
"O.K. Lead on."
* * * * *
Three hours later, and still without sleep, Sandra strode up the line
of Telfans and pointed out one after the other. Those selected followed
silently to the auditorium in the center of the village and seated
themselves. They looked neither happy nor regretful, but rather a
resignation was upon them.