The chart in the terminal building at Canalopsis Spaceport, Mars,
was a huge thing that was the focus of all eyes. It occupied a
thirty-by-thirty space in the center of one wall, and it had a
far-flung iron railing about it to keep the people from crowding it
too close, thus shutting off the view. It was a popular display, for
it helped to drive home the fact that space travel was different from
anything else. People were aware that their lives had been built upon
going from one fixed place to another place, equally immobile. But on
interplanet travel, one left a moving planet for another planet, moving
at a different velocity. You found that the shortest distance was not a
straight line but a space curve involving higher mathematics.
The courses being traveled at the time were marked, and those that
would be traversed in the very near future were drawn upon the chart,
too; all appropriately labeled. At a glance, one could see that in
fifty minutes and seventeen seconds the _Empress of Kolain_ would take
off from Mars, which was the red disk on the right, and she would
travel along the curve so marked to Venus, which was almost one hundred
and sixty degrees clockwise around the Sun. People were glad of the
chance to go on this trip because the Venus Equilateral Relay Station
would come within a telescope's sight on the way.
_The Empress of Kolain_ would slide into Venus on the day side; and a
few hours later she would lift again to head for Terra, a few degrees
ahead of Venus and about thirty million miles away.
Precisely on the zero-zero, the _Empress of Kolain_ lifted upward on
four tenuous pillars of dull-red glow and drove a hole in the sky.
The glow was almost lost in the bright sunshine, and soon it died.
The _Empress of Kolain_ became a little world in itself, and would so
remain until it dropped onto the ground at Venus, almost two hundred
million miles away.
Driving upward, the _Empress of Kolain_ could not have been out of the
thin Martian atmosphere when a warning bell rang in the telephone and
telespace office at the terminal. The bell caught official ears, and
all work was stopped as the personnel of the communications office
ran to the machine to see what was so important that the "immediate
attention" signal was rung.
Impatiently the operator waited for the tape to come clicking from the
machine. It came, letter by letter, click by click, at fifty words per
minute. The operator tore the strip from the machine and read aloud:
"Hold _Empress of Kolain_. Reroute to Terra direct. Will be quarantined
at Venus. Whole planet in epidemic of Venusian Fever."
"Snap answer," growled the clerk. "Tell 'em: 'Too little and too late.
_Empress of Kolain_ left thirty seconds before warning bell. What do we
do now?'"
The operator's fingers clicked madly over the keyboard. Across space
went the signal, across the void to the Relay Station. It ran through
the Station's mechanism and went darting to Terra. It clicked out as
sent in the offices of Interplanet Transport. A vice president read the
message and swore roundly. He swore in three Terran languages, in the
language of the Venusians, and even managed to visualize a few choice
remarks from the Martian Pictographs that were engraved on the Temples
of Canalopsis.
"Miss Deane," he yelled at the top of his voice. "Take a message! Shoot
a line to Channing on Venus Equilateral. Tell him: '_Empress of Kolain_
on way to Venus. Must be contacted and rerouted to Terra direct.
Million dollars' worth of Martian Line Moss aboard; will perish under
quarantine. Spare no expense.' Sign that 'Keg Johnson, Interplanet.'"
"Yes, Mr. Johnson," said the secretary. "Right away."
More minutes of light-fast communication. Out of Terra to Luna, across
space to Venus Equilateral. The machines clicked and tape cleared away
from the slot. It was pasted neatly on a sheet of official paper,
stamped _rush_, and put in a pneumatic tube.
* * * * *
As Don Channing began to read the message, Williams on Mars was chewing
worriedly on his fourth fingernail, and Vice President Keg Johnson was
working on his second. But Williams had a head start and therefore
would finish first. Both men knew that nothing more could be done. If
Channing couldn't do it, nobody could.
Channing finished the 'gram and swore. It was a good-natured
swear-word, far from downright vilification, though it did consign
certain items to the nether regions. He punched a button with some
relish, and a rather good-looking woman entered. She smiled at him with
more intimacy than a secretary should, and sat down.
"Arden, call Walt, will you?"
Arden Westland smiled. "You might have done that yourself," she told
him. She reached for the call button with her left hand, and the
diamond on her finger glinted like a pilot light.
"I know it," he answered, "but that wouldn't give me the chance to see
you."
"Baloney," said Arden. "You just wait until next October. I'll be in
your hair all the time then."
"By then I may be tired of you," said Channing with a smile. "But until
then, take it or leave it." His face grew serious, and he tossed the
message across the table to her. "What do you think of that?"
Arden read, and then remarked: "That's a huge order, Don. Think you can
do it?"
"It'll cost plenty. I don't know whether we can contact a ship in
space. It hasn't been done to date, you know, except for short
distances."
The door opened without a knock and Walt Franks walked in. "Billing and
cooing?" he asked. "Why do you two need an audience?"
"We don't," answered Don. "This was business."
"For want of evidence, I'll believe that. What's the dope?"
"Walt, what are the chances of hooking up with the _Empress of Kolain_,
which is en route from Mars to Venus?"
"About equal to a snowball--you know where," said Franks looking slyly
at Arden.
"Take off your coat, Walt. We've got a job."
"You mean--Hey! Remind me to quit Saturday."
"This is dead in earnest, Walt." Don told the engineer all he knew.
"Boy, this is a job I wouldn't want my life to depend on. In the first
place, we can't beam a transmitter at them if we can't see 'em. And in
the second place, if we did, they couldn't receive us."
"We can get a good idea of where they are and how they're going," said
Channing. "That is common knowledge."
"Astronomy is an exact science," chanted Franks. "But by the time we
figure out just where the _Empress of Kolain_ is with respect to us at
any given instant we'll all be old men with gray beards. She's crossing
toward us on a skew curve--and we'll have to beam it past Sol. It won't
be easy, Don. And then if we do find them, what do we do about it?"
"Let's find them first and then work out a means of contacting them
afterwards."
"Don," interrupted Arden, "what's so difficult?"
Franks fell backward into a chair. Don turned to the girl and asked:
"Are you kidding?"
"No. I'm just ignorant. What is so hard about it? We shoot beams across
a couple of hundred million miles of space like nothing and maintain
communications at any cost. What should be so hard about contacting a
ship?"
"In the first place, we can see a planet, and they can see us, so they
can hold their beams. A spaceship might be able to see us, but they
couldn't hold a beam on us because of the side sway. We couldn't see
them until they are right upon us and so we could not hope to hold a
beam on them. Spaceships _might_ broadcast, but you have no idea what
the square law of radiated power will do to a broadcast signal when
millions upon millions of miles are counted in. A half million watts
on any planet will not quite cover the planet as a service area on
broadcast frequencies. But there's a lot of difference between covering
a few stinking miles of planet and a volume the size of the Inner Solar
System. So they don't try it. A spaceship may as well be on Rigel as
far as contacting her in space goes.
"We might beam a wide-dispersion affair at them," continued Channing.
"But it would be pretty thin by the time it got there. And, having no
equipment, they couldn't hear us."
"May we amend that?" asked Franks. "They are equipped with radio. But
the things are used only in landing operations where the distance is
measured in miles, not Astronomical Units."
"O.K.," smiled Channing. "It's turned off during flight and we may
consider the equipment as being non-existent."
"And, according to the chart, we've got to contact them before the
turnabout," offered Arden. "They must have time to deflect their course
to Terra."
"You think of the nicest complications," said Channing. "I was just
about to hope that we could flash them, or grab at 'em with a skeeter.
But we can't wait until they pass us."
"That will be the last hope," admitted Franks. "But say! Did any
bright soul think of shooting a fast ship after them from Canalopsis?"
"Sure. The answer is the same as Simple Simon's answer to the Pieman:
'Alas, they haven't any!'"
"No use asking why," growled Franks. "O.K., Don, we'll after 'em. I'll
have the crew set up a couple of mass detectors at either end of the
station. We'll triangulate, and calculate, and hope to hit the right
correction factor. We'll find them and keep them in line. You figure
out a means of contacting them, huh?"
"I'll set up the detectors and _you_ find the means," suggested Don.
"No go. You're the director of communications."
Don sighed a false sigh. "Arden, hand me my electronics text," he said.
"And shall I wipe your fevered brow?" cooed Arden.
"Leave him alone," directed Franks. "You distract him."
"It seems to me that you two are taking this rather lightly," said
Arden.
"What do you want us to do? Get down on the floor and chew the rug?
You know us better than that. If we can find the answer to contacting
a spaceship in flight, we'll add another flower to our flag. But we
can't do it by clawing through the first edition of Henney's 'Handbook
of Radio Engineering.' It will be done by the seat of our pants, if at
all; a pair of side-cutters, and a spool of wire, a hunk of string and
a lump of solder, a--"
"A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair?" asked Franks.
"Leave Kipling out of this. He didn't have to cover the entire Solar
System. Let's get cooking."
Don and Walt left the office just a trifle on the fast side. Arden
looked after them, out through the open door, shaking her head until
she remembered something that she could do. She smiled and went to
her typewriter, and pounded out a message back to Keg Johnson at
Interplanet. It read:
"CHANNING AND FRANKS AT WORK ON CONTACTING THE EMPRESS OF KOLAIN.
WILL DO OUR BEST.