He began to rattle the key. In the power room the generators screamed
and the lights throughout the station flickered just a bit at the
sudden surges.
Don Channing said to Arden: "If someone of the _Empress of Kolain_ can
understand code--"
* * * * *
The _Empress of Kolain_ was zipping along in its silent passage
through the void. It was an unseen, undetected, unaware bit of human
manufacture marking man's will among the stars. In all the known
universe it moved against the forces of celestial mechanics because
some intelligent mote that infested the surface of a planet once had
the longing to visit the stars. In all the Solar System, most of the
cosmic stuff was larger than it--but it alone defied the natural laws
of space.
Because it alone possessed the required _outside_ force spoken of in
Newton's "Universal Laws."
And it was doing fine.
Dinner was being served in the dining room. A group of shapely girls
added grace to the swimming pool on the promenade deck. The bar was
filled with a merry crowd which in turn were partly filled with liquor.
A man in uniform, the Second Officer, was throwing darts with a few
passengers in the playroom, and there were four oldish ladies on
sabbatical leave who were stricken with _mal-de-void_.
The passage up to now had been uneventful. A meteor or two had come to
make the ship swing a bit--but the swerve was less than the pitch of an
ocean vessel in a moderate sea and it did not continue as did an ocean
ship. Most of the time the _Empress of Kolain_ seemed as steady as
solid rock.
Only the First Officer, on the bridge, and the Chief Pilot, far below
in the Control Room, knew just how erratic their course truly was. But
they were not worried. They were not a shell, fired from a gun; they
were a spaceship, capable of steering themselves into any port on Venus
when they arrived and the minute wobbulations in their course could be
corrected when the time came. For nothing had ever prevented a ship of
space from seeing where it was going.
Yes, it was uneventful.
Then the meteor screen flashed into life. A circle of light appeared
in the celestial globe and the ship's automatic pilot swerved ever so
little. The dot of light was gone.
Throughout the ship, people laughed nervously. A waiter replaced a
glass of water that had been set too close to the edge of the table
and a manly-looking fellow dived into the swimming pool to haul a
good-looking blonde to the edge again. She'd been in the middle of a
swan dive when the swerve came and the ship had swerved without her.
The resounding smack of feminine stomach against the water was of
greater importance than the meteor, now so many hundred miles behind.
The flash of light returned and the ship swerved again. Upon the
third swerve, the First Officer was watching the celestial globe with
suspicion. He went white. It was conceivable that the _Empress of
Kolain_ was about to encounter a meteor shower.
And that was bad.
He marked the place and set his observation telescope in synchronism
with the celestial globe. He searched the sky. There was nothing but
the ultimate starry curtain in the background. He snapped a switch and
the voice of the pilot came out of a speaker in the wall.
"You called, Mr. Hendall?"
"Tony, take the levers, will you please? Something is rotten in the
State of Denmark."
"O.K., sir. I'm riding personal."
"Kick out the meteor-spotter coupling circuits and forget the alarm."
"Right, Mr. Hendall, but will you confirm that in writing?"
Hendall scribbled on the telautograph and then abandoned the small
'scope. The flashing in the celestial globe continued, but the ship no
longer danced in its path. Hendall went up into the big dome.
The big twenty-inch Cassegrain showed nothing at all, and Hendall
returned to the bridge scratching his head. Nothing on the spotting
'scope and nothing on the big instrument.
That intermittent spot was large enough to mean a huge meteor. But
wait. At the speed of the _Empress_, it should have retrogressed in the
celestial globe unless it was so huge and so far away--but Sol didn't
appear on the globe and it was big and far away, bigger by far. Nothing
short of a planet at less-than-planetary distances would do this.
Not even a visible change in the position of the spot.
"Therefore," thought Hendall, "this is no astral body that makes this
spot!"
Hendall went to a cabinet and withdrew a cable with a plug on either
end. He plugged one end into the test plug on the meteor spotter and
the opposite end into the speaker. A low humming emanated from the
speaker in synchronism with the flashing of the celestial globe.
It hit a responsive chord.
Hendall went to the main communication microphone and spoke. His voice
went all over the _Empress of Kolain_ from pilot room and cargo spaces
to swimming pool and infirmary.
"Attention!" he said in a formal voice. "Attention to official orders!"
Dancers stopped in midstep. Swimmers paused and then made their way
to the edges of the pool and sat with their feet dangling in the warm
water. Diners sat with their forks poised foolishly.
"Official orders!" meant an emergency.
Hendall continued: "I believe that something never before tried is
being attempted. I am forced against my better knowledge to believe
that some agency is trying to make contact with us; a spaceship
in flight! This is unknown in the annals of space flying and is,
therefore, indicative of something important. It would not have been
tried without preparations unless an emergency exists.
"However, the requirements of an officer of space do not include a
knowledge of code because of the lack of communication with the planets
while in space. Therefore, I request that any person with a working
knowledge of International Morse will please present himself to the
nearest officer."
Minutes passed. Minutes during which the flashing lights continued.
Then the door of the bridge opened and Third Officer Jones entered with
a thirteen-year-old youngster at his heels. The boy's eyes went wide
at the sight of the instruments on the bridge, and he looked around in
amazed interest.
"This is Timmy Harris," said Jones. "He knows code!"
"Go to it, Mr. Harris," said Hendall.
The boy swelled visibly. You could almost hear him thinking: "He called
me 'mister'!"
Then he went to the table by the speaker and reached for pencil and
paper. "It's code all right," he said. Then Timmy winked at Jones, "He
has a lousy fist!"
Timmy Harris began to write.
"--course and head for Terra direct"--the beam faded for
seconds--"Venusian fever and you will be quarantined.
"Calling CQ, calling CQ, calling CQ. Calling _Empress of Kolain_ ...
empowered us to contact you and convey ... message--you are requested
to correct your course and head ... a plague of Venusian fever and
you--Johnson of Interplanet has empowered us ... the following message:
'You are requested to correct your ... head for Terra direct.' Calling
CQ...."
"Does that hash make sense to you?" asked Jones of Hendall.
"Sure," smiled Hendall, "it is fairly plain. It tells us that Keg
Johnson of Interplanet wants us to head for Terra direct because of a
plague of Venusian fever that would cause us to stay in quarantine.
That would ruin the Line Moss. Prepare to change course, Mr. Jones!"
"Who could it be?" asked Jones foolishly.
"There is only one outfit in the Solar System that could possibly think
of a stunt like this. And that is Channing and Franks. This signal came
from Venus Equilateral!"
"Wait a minute," said Timmy Harris. "Here's some more."
"'As soon as this signal--intelligible--at right angles to your course
for ten minutes. That will take--out of--beam and reflected--will
indicate to us--left the area and know of our attempt.'"
"They're using a beam of some sort that indicates to them that we are
on the other end but we can't answer. Mr. Jones, and Pilot Canton,
ninety degrees north for ten minutes! Call the navigation officer to
correct our course. I'll make the announcement to the passengers. Mr.
Harris, you are given the freedom of the bridge for the remainder of
the trip."
Mr. Harris was overwhelmed. He'd learn plenty--and that would help him
when he applied for training as a space officer; unless he decided to
take a position with Venus Equilateral when he grew up.
The signal faded from the little cruiser and silence prevailed. Don
spoke into the microphone and said: "Run her up a millisecond," to the
beam controller. The beam wiped the space above the previous course for
several minutes and Franks was sending furiously:
"You have answered our message. We'll be seeing you!"
Channing told the man in the cruiser to return. He kicked the main
switch and the generators whined down the scale and coasted to a stop.
Tube filaments darkened and meters returned to zero.
"O.K., Warren. Let the spinach lay. Get the next crew to clean up the
mess and polish the set-up into something presentable. I'll bet a cooky
that we'll be chasing spaceships all the way to Pluto after this. We'll
work it into a fine thing and perfect our technique. Right now I owe
the gang a dinner."
_Interlude:_
_When necessity dictates a course of action and the course of action
proves valuable, it is but a short step to the inclusion of the answer
into the many facets of modern technical civilization. Thus it was
that not many months after Venus Equilateral successfully established
planet-to-ship communications with the "Empress of Kolain" that all
course constants were delivered to the relay station and thereafter
messages were transmitted as a part of the regular business of
Interplanetary Communications._
_This, of course, offered another problem. Ships in space were in the
position of being able to catch messages but were not able to answer
back. It would take, perhaps, another emergency to set up conditions
which demanded the reverse of the problem of contacting a ship in
space._
_But there was a more immediate problem. Spacecraft were protected from
meteors by means of radar that was coupled to the steering panels of
the ships; when a meteor threatened, the ship merely turned aside by
that fraction of a degree that gave it safety._
_It took, however, but a few meteors, and the resulting few fractions
of a degree to shunt the swiftly moving ship out of the coverage-area
of the ship-seeking beams from Venus Equilateral. Then the power and
ingenuity of Venus Equilateral was wasted on vacant space and the
messages intended for the ships went undelivered._
_Since the ship must avoid meteors, and the meteors could not be
diverted from their courses, there was but one answer: Swerve the ship
and let the messages go hang, for a message is of no use to a riddled
spacecraft!_
_But, thought several people, if the meteor cannot be steered, perhaps
it might be removed...._