Walt looked at his watch and checked the course constants of the
_Ariadne_. He called the beam-control dome and asked for the man on the
ship's beam.
"Benny," he said, "has the _Ariadne_ arrived yet?"
"Sure," answered Benny. "According to the mechanical mind here, they've
been on Mojave for twenty minutes."
"Thanks." To Arden he said: "Something's strictly fishy."
Arden sat at the machine and pounded the keys:
ARIADNE DUE TO ARRIVE AT 19:06:41. IT IS NOW 19:27:00. BEAM CONTROL
SAYS TRANSMISSIONS ENDED BECAUSE OF COINCIDENCE BETWEEN TERRA BEAM
AND STATION-TO-SHIP BEAM. PLEASE CHECK.
Arden fretted and Walt stamped up and down the room during the long
minutes necessary for the message to reach Terra and the answer to
return. It came right on the tick of the clock:
HAVE CHECKED COURSE CONSTANTS. SHIP OVERDUE NOW FIFTY MINUTES.
OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING WRONG. CAN YOU HELP?
Walt smiled in a grim fashion. "Help!" he said. "We go on and on for
years and years with no trouble--and now we've lost the third ship in a
row."
"They claim that those things always run in threes," said Arden. "What
are we going to do?"
"I don't know. We'll have to do something. Funny, but the one reason we
must do something is the same reason why something can be done."
"I don't get that."
"With Channing on the _Ariadne_, something can be done. I don't know
what, but I'll bet you a new hat that Don will make it possible for us
to detect the ship. There is not a doubt in my mind that if the ship is
still space-worthy, we can narrow the possibilities down to a thin cone
of space."
"How?"
"Well," said Franks taking the fountain pen out of the holder on
the desk and beginning to sketch on the blotter, "the course of the
_Ariadne_ is not a very crooked one, as courses go. It's a very shallow
skew curve. Admitting the worst, collision, we can assume only one
thing. If the meteor were small enough to leave the ship in a floating
but undirigible condition, it would also be small enough to do nothing
to the general direction of the ship. Anything else would make it
useless to hunt, follow?"
"Yes, go on."
"Therefore we may assume that the present position of the ship is
within the volume of a cone made by the tangents of the outermost
elements of the space curve that is the ship's course. We can take an
eight-thousand-mile cylinder out of one place--for the origin of their
trouble is between Mars and Terra and the 'shadow' of Terra in the cone
will not contain the _Ariadne_."
"Might have passed close enough to Terra to throw her right into the
'shadow' of Terra by attraction," objected Arden.
"Yeah, you're right. O.K., so we can't take out that cylinder of
space. And we add a sort of sidewise cone on to our original cone,
a volume through which the ship might have passed after flying close
enough to Terra to be deflected. I'll have the slipstick experts give a
guess as to the probability of the _Ariadne's_ course, and at the same
time we'll suspend all incoming operations. I'm going to set up every
kind of detector I can think of, and I don't want anything upsetting
them."
"What kind of stuff do you expect?" asked Arden.
"I dunno. They might have a betatron aboard. In that case we'll
eventually get a blast of electrons that'll knock our front teeth out.
Don may succeed in tinkering up some sort of electrostatic field. We
can check the solar electrostatic field to about seven decimal places
right here, and any deviation in the field to the tune of a couple
of million electron volts at a distance of a hundred million miles
will cause a distortion in the field that we can measure. We'll ply
oscillating beams through the area of expectation and hope for an
answering reflection, though I do not bank on that. We'll have men on
the lookout for everything from smoke signals to helio. Don't worry too
much, Arden, your husband is capable of doing something big enough to
be heard. He's just the guy to do it."
"I know," said Arden soberly. "But I can't help worrying."
"Me, too. Well, I'm off to set up detectors. We'll collect something."
* * * * *
"Have we got anything like a piece of gold leaf?" asked Channing.
"I think so, why?"
"I want to make an electroscope. That's about the only way I'll know
whether we are getting out with this cockeyed electron gun."
"How so?" asked Hadley.
"We can tell from the meter that reads the beam current whether
anything is going up the pipe," explained Channing. "But if we just
build us a nice heavy duty charge--as shown by the electroscope--we'll
be sure that the electrons are not going far. This is one case where no
sign is good news."
"I'll have one of the boys set up an electroscope in the instrument
room."
"Good. And now have the bird on the telescope find Venus Equilateral.
Have him set the 'scope angles to the figures here and then have
him contact Darlange to have the ship slued around so that Venus
Equilateral is on the cross hairs. That'll put us on a line with the
station. A bundle of electrons of this magnitude will make a reading on
any detectors that Walt can set up."
Hadley called the observation dome. "Tim," he said, giving a string of
figures, "set your 'scope for these and then get Darlange to slue the
crate around so that your cross hairs are on Venus Equilateral."
"O.K.," answered Tim. "That's going to be a job. This business of
looking through a 'scope while dressed in a spacesuit is no fun. Here
goes."
He called Darlange, and the communicator system permitted the men in
the instrument room to hear his voice. "Dar," he said, "loop us around
about forty-one degrees from driver 3."
Darlange said: "Right!" and busied himself at his buttons.
"Three degrees on driver 4."
"Right!"
"Too far, back her up a degree on 4."
Darlange laughed. "What do you think these things are, blocks and
tackles? You mean: 'Compensate a degree on 2.'"
"You're the pilot. That's the ticket--and I don't care if you lift it
on one hand. Can you nudge her just a red hair on 3?"
"Best I can do is a hair and a half," said Darlange. He gave driver 3
just a tiny, instantaneous surge.
"Then take it up two and back one and a half," laughed Tim. "Whoa,
Nellie, you're on the beam."
"Fine."
"Okay, Dar, but you'll have to play monkey on a stick. I'll prime you
for any moving so that you can correct immediately."
"Right. Don, we're on the constants you gave us. What now?"
"At this point I think a short prayer would be of assistance," said
Channing soberly. "We're shooting our whole wad right now."
"I hope we make our point."
"Well, it's all or nothing," agreed Don as he grasped the switch.
He closed the switch, and the power demand meters jumped up across
their scales. The gold leaf electroscope jumped once; the ultra-thin
leaves jerked apart by an inch, and then oscillated stiffly until they
came to a balance. Channing, who had been looking at them, breathed
deeply and smiled.
"We're getting out," he said.
"Can you key this?" asked Hadley.
"No need," said Channing. "They know we're in the grease. We know that
if they can collect us, they'll be on their way. I'm going to send out
for a half-hour, and then resort to a five-minute transmission every
fifteen minutes. They'll get a ship after us with just about everything
we're liable to need, and they can use the five-minute transmissions
for direction finding. The initial shot will serve to give them an idea
as to our direction. All we can do now is to wait."
"And hope," added Captain Johannson.
Electrically, Venus Equilateral was more silent than it had ever been.
Not an electrical appliance was running on the whole station. People
were cautioned about walking on deep-pile rugs, or combing their hair
with plastic combs, or doing anything that would set up any kind of
electronic charge. Only the highly filtered generators in the power
rooms were running and these had been shielded and filtered long years
before; nothing would emerge from them to interrupt the ether. All
incoming signals were stopped.
And the men who listened with straining ears claimed that the sky was
absolutely clear save for a faint crackle of cosmic static which they
knew came from the corona of the Sun.
One group of men sat about a static-field indicator and cursed the
minute wiggling of the meter, caused by the ever moving celestial
bodies and their electronic discharges. A sunspot emission passed
through the station once, and though it was but a brief passage, it
sent the electrostatic field crazy and made the men jump.
The men who were straining their ears to hear became nervous and were
jumping at every loud crackle.
And though the man at the telescope knew that his probability of
picking up a sight of the _Ariadne_ was as slender as a spider's
web, he continued to search the starry heavens. He swept the narrow
cone of the heavens wherein the _Ariadne_ was lost according to the
mathematical experts, and he looked at every bit of brightness in the
field of his telescope as though it might be the missing ship.
The beam-scanners watched their return-plates closely. It was difficult
because the receiver gains were set to maximum and every tick of static
caused brief flashes of light upon their plates. They would jump at
such a flash and hope for it to reappear on the next swipe, for a
continuous spot of light would indicate the ship they sought. Then, as
the spot did not reappear, they would go on with their beams to cover
another infinitesimal portion of the sky. Moving forward across the
cone of expectancy bit by bit, they crossed and recrossed until they
were growing restive.
Surely the ship must be there!
At the south end landing stage, a group of men were busy stocking a
ship. Supplies and necessities were carried aboard, while another
group of men tinkered with the electrical equipment. They cleared a
big space in the observation dome, and began to install a replica of
the equipment used on the station for detection. No matter what kind
of output Channing sent back, they would be able to follow it to the
bitter end.
They made their installations in duplicate, with one piece of each
equipment on opposite sides of the blunt dome. Balancing the inputs of
each kind by turning the entire ship would give them an indication of
direction.
Franks did not hope that the entire installation could be completed
before the signal came, but he was trying to outguess himself by
putting some of everything aboard. When and if it came, he would be
either completely ready with everything or he at least would have a
good start on any one of the number of detectors. If need be, the
detecting equipment in the station itself could be removed and used to
complete the mobile installation.
Everything was in a complete state of nervous expectancy. Watchers
watched, meter readers squinted for the barest wiggle, audio observers
listened, trying to filter any kind of man-made note out of the
irregular crackle that came in.
And the station announcing equipment was dead quiet, to be used only
in case of emergency or to announce the first glimmer of radiation,
whether it be material, electrical, kinetic, potential, or wave front.
Long they listened--and then it came.
The station announcing equipment broke forth in a multitude of voices.
"Sound input on radio!"
"Visual indication on scanner plates!"
"Distortion on electrostatic field indicator!"
"Super-electroscopes indicate negative charge!"
"Nothing on the telescope!"
There were mingled cheers and laughter as the speaker system broke away
from babel, and each group spoke its piece with no interference. Walt
Franks left the ship at the south end and raced to the beam control
dome, just as fast as the runway car would take him. He ran into the
dome in spacesuit and flipped the helmet back over his shoulder, "What
kind of indication?" he yelled.
Men crowded around him, offering him papers and showing figures.
"Gosh," he said, "Don can't have everything going up there."
"He's hit just about everything but the guy squinting through the
'scope."
"What's he doing?" asked Franks of nobody in particular.
Charles Thomas, who had been busy with the electrostatic field
indicator said: "I think maybe he's using some sort of electron
gun--like the one you tried first off on the meteor destroyer job,
remember?"
"Yeah, but that one wouldn't work--unless Don has succeeded in doing
something we couldn't do. Look, Chuck, we haven't had time to set up a
complete field indicator on the ship--grab yours and give the boys a
lift installing it, hey?"
"Sure thing," said Thomas.
"And look, fellows, any indication of direction, velocity, or distance?"
"Look for yourself," said the man on the beam scanner. "The whole plate
is shining. We can't get a fix on them this way--they're radiating
themselves and that means our scanner-system finder is worthless."
"We can, but it's rough," offered one of the radio men. "It came from
an area out beyond Terra--and as for our readings it might have covered
a quarter of the sky."
"The field indicator is a short-base finder," explained Thomas. "And
no less rough than the radio boys. I'd say it was out beyond Terra by
fifty million miles at least."
"Close enough. We'll have to track 'em down like a radio
equipped bloodhound. Chuck, come along and run that
mechanico-electro-monstrosity of yours. Gene, you can come along and
run the radio finder. Oh, yes, you, Jimmy, may continue to squint
through that eyepiece of yours--but on the _Relay Girl_. We need a
good, first-class squinter, and you should have an opportunity to help."
Jimmy laughed shortly. "The only guy on the station that didn't get an
indication was me. Not even a glimmer."
"Channing didn't know we'd be _looking_ for him, or he'd probably
light a flare, too. Cheer up, Jimmy, after all this crude, electrical
rigmarole is finished, and we gotta get right down to the last
millimeter, it's the guy with the eye that polishes up the job. You'll
have your turn."
Twenty minutes after the first glimmer of intelligent signal, the
_Relay Girl_ lifted from the south end and darted off at an angle,
setting her nose roughly in the direction of the signal.
Her holds were filled with spare batteries and a whole dozen
replacement cathodes, as well as her own replacements. Her crew was
filled to the eyebrows with gravanol, and there must have been a mile
of adhesive tape and cotton on their abdomens. At six G she left,
and at six G she ran, her crew immobilized but awake because of the
gravanol. And though the acceleration was terrific, the tape kept the
body from folding of its own weight. When they returned, they would all
be in the hospital for a week, but their friends would be with them.
Ten minutes after take-off, the signals ceased.
Walt said: "Keep her running. Don's saving electricity. Tell me when we
pick him up again."
Franklen, the pilot, nodded. "We haven't got a good start yet. It'll be
touch and go. According to the slipstick boys, they must be clapping it
up at between twenty-five hundred and five thousand miles per second to
get that far--and coasting free or nearly so. Otherwise they'd have
come in. Any suggestions as to course?"
"Sure. Whoop it up at six until we hit about six thousand. Then
decelerate to four thousand by using one G. We'll vacillate in velocity
between four and five until we get close."
Forty-one hours later, the _Relay Girl_ made turnover and began to
decelerate.
* * * * *
Channing said to Captain Johannson: "Better cut the decel to about
a quarter G. That'll be enough to keep our heads from bumping the
ceiling, and it will last longer. This is going to be a long chase, and
cutting down a few MPS at a half G isn't going to make much never-mind.
I'll hazard a guess that the boys are on their way right now."
"If you say so," said Johannson. "You're the boss from now on. You
know that wild bunch on the station better than I do. For myself, I've
always felt that an answer was desirable before we do anything."
"I know Franks and my wife pretty well--about as well as they know me.
I've put myself in Walt's place--and I know what Walt would do. So--if
Walt didn't think of it, Arden would--I can assume that they are aware
of us, have received our signals, and are, therefore, coming along as
fast as they can. They'll come zipping out here at from five to seven
G to what they think is halfway and then decelerate again to a sane
velocity. We won't catch sight of them for sixty or seventy hours, and
when we do, they'll be going so fast that it will take another twenty
hours' worth of manipulation to match their speed with ours. Meanwhile,
I've got the gun timed to shoot our signal. When the going gets
critical, I'll cut the power and make it continuous."
"You're pretty sure of your timing?"
"Well, the best they can do as for direction and velocity and distance
is a crude guess. They'll place us out here beyond Terra somewhere.
They'll calculate the course requirements to get us this far in the
time allotted, and come to a crude figure. I'd like to try keying
this thing, but I know that keying it won't work worth a hoot at this
distance. Each bundle of keyed electrons would act as a separate
negative charge that would spread out and close up at this distance.
It's tough enough to hope that the electron beam will hold together
that far, let alone trying to key intelligence with it. We'll leave
well enough alone--and especially if they're trying to get a fix on us;
there's nothing worse than trying to fix an intermittent station. Where
are we now?"
"We're on the inner fringe of the Asteroid Belt, about thirty million
miles north, and heading on a secant course at thirty-four hundred MPS."
"Too bad Jupiter isn't in the neighborhood," said Channing. "We'll be
flirting with his orbit by the time they catch us."
"Easily," said Johannson. "In sixty hours, we'll have covered about six
hundred and fifty million miles. We'll be nearer the orbit of Saturn,
in spite of the secant course."
"Your secant approaches a radius as you get farther out," said Don,
absently. "As far as distances go, Titan, here we come!"