"We've just contacted a ship in space!"
"So what? Haven't we been doing that for months?"
"They've just contacted us, too!"
"Huh?" asked Arden, her eyes widening.
"None other. Wait, I'll get an answer." Don contacted Ben, in the
decoupler room and said: "Ben, hang this line on the _Lady of Cathay_
beam, will you?"
"Is that her?"
"None other."
"Go ahead. She's coupled."
Don pecked out a message, "Please describe the inter-communication
system used by your ship in detail. We have heard you, and you are,
therefore, the first ship to contact Venus Equilateral from space
flight. Congratulations."
Eight minutes later, the voice of Captain Chaing returned.
"Dr. Channing, I am handing the microphone over to Ling Wey, our
electronics engineer, who knows the system in and out. He'll work with
you on this problem."
Ling Wey said: "Hello. This is great. But I'm not certain how it's
done. The output of the phono system is very small, and certainly not
capable of putting out the power necessary to reach Venus Equilateral
from here. However, we are using a wired-radio system at seventeen
hundred and ninety kilocycles in lieu of the usual cable system. The
crew all like music, and, therefore, we play the recordings of our
ancestral musicians almost incessantly."
He paused for breath, and Channing said: "Walt, tap out a message
concerning the lead-length of the cables that supply the driver anodes.
Have him check them for radio frequency pick-up."
"I get it." The 'type began to click.
* * * * *
The communication was carried on for hour after hour. Don's guess
was right; the lead that connected the first driver anode was tuned
in wave length to almost perfect resonance with the frequency of the
wired-radio communicator system. Channing thanked them profusely, and
they rang off. Soon afterward the wailing, moaning music returned to
the air.
"Wonder if we could get that without the radio?" said Don.
"Don't know. We can pack the juice on in the amplifier and see, now
that we have it tuned on the button," said Walt.
"It won't," said Wes. "I've been all across the dial of the alloy disk.
Nothing at all."
"O.K. Well, so what if it doesn't? We've still got us a ship-to-ship
communications system. Hey! What was that?"
_That_ was a pale, flat-sounding human voice saying: "Kingman! V.E.
Pfd. has been at six hundred and nine for two days, now. What's our
next move?"
"Kingman!" exploded Channing. "Why, the ... the--"
"Careful," warned Arden. "There's a lady present."
"Huh?"
"Her," said Arden pointing at Christine.
"Wait," said Walt. "Maybe he'll answer."
Don fiddled with the dials for a full fifteen minutes, keeping them
very close to the spot marked, hoping that Kingman's answer might not
be too far out of tune. He gave up as the answer was not to be found,
and returned to the original setting. Ten minutes later the voice said:
"Kingman, where in the devil is my answer? I want to know what our next
move is. There isn't a bit of V. E. stock available. Why don't you
answer?"
Then, dimly in the background, a voice spoke to the operator of the
instrument. "Kingman's probably asleep. That terrible moaning-stuff
he's been complaining about makes him turn the thing off as soon as
the day's market is off. He--and the rest of that crew--can't stand
it. You'll have to wait until tomorrow's market opens before he'll be
listening."
"O.K.," said the operator, and then went silent.
"Kingman!" said Don Channing. "So he's the bright guy behind this. I
get it now. Somehow he discovered a detector, and he's been playing the
market by getting the quotations by sub-etheric transmission at C² and
beating the Northern Landing market. And did you get the latest bit of
luck? Kingman still is unaware of the fact that we are onto him--and
have perfected this C² transmission. Here's where he gets caught in his
own trap!"
"How?"
"We're not in too bad shape for making good, honest two-ways out of
this sub-ether stuff. Kingman is still behind because he hasn't got a
return line back to Terra--he must be using our beams, which gives us a
return edge."
"Why not get him tossed into the clink?" asked Walt.
"That's practical. Besides, we're sitting in a great big pile of gravy
right now. We can prove Kingman has been violating the law to embezzle,
mulct, steal, commit grand larceny, and so on. We're going to take a
swing at Mr. Kingman and Terran Electric that they won't forget. We
can't lose, because I'm not a good sportsman when I find that I've been
tricked. We're going after Kingman in our own fashion--and if we lose,
we're going to go tinhorn and cry for the gendarmes. I'm not proud."
"What do you plan?"
"We'll put a horde of folks on the decoupler files with the code of
Terran Electric filed with the government offices. We can get the code,
and I'm of the opinion that Kingman wouldn't take time to figure out a
new code, so he'll be using the old one. As soon as we find a message
in that code that is either addressed Terran Electric or pertains to V.
E. Preferred stock, we'll start to intercept all such messages and use
them for our own good."
"That's illegal."
"Yup. But who's gonna holler? Kingman can't."
"But suppose we lose--?"
"Kingman will not know we've been tricking him. Besides, we can't lose
with two ways to get ahead of his one. Come on, fellows, we've got to
help get the extra receivers together."
"How are we going to cut through the Channing Layer?"
"Easy. That's where we'll use the relay stations at Luna, Deimos, and
the six portables that circle Venus."
"I get it. O.K., Don, let's get to work."
"Right. And we'd better leave a guy here to collect any more
interesting messages from Kingman's crowd. We can tune it right on to
Kingman's alloy, and that'll make that music take a back seat. We need
narrower selectivity."
"Chuck's gang will find that if it is to be found," smiled Walt. "We're
really on the track this time."
* * * * *
A dead-black spaceship drifted across the face of Luna slowly, and
its course, though apparently aimless, was the course of a ship or a
man hunting something. It darted swiftly, poised, and then zigzagged
forward, each straight-side of the jagged course shorter than the one
before. It passed over a small crater and stopped short.
Below, there was a spaceship parked beside a driver tube anchored in
the pumice.
The black ship hovered above the parked ship, and then dropped sharply,
ramming the observation dome on top with its harder, smaller bottom.
The two ships tilted and fell, crushing the ground near the poised
driver tube. Space-suited men assaulted the damaged ship, broke into
the bent and battered plates and emerged with three men who were still
struggling to get their suits adjusted properly.
Channing's men took over the poised driver tube, and in their own ship,
Walt spoke over a sub-ether radio of a different type.
"Don, we got him."
Don answered from Venus Equilateral, and his voice had no more delay
than if he had been within a hundred yards of the crater on Luna.
"Good. Stay where you are; you can contact the Lunar Relay Station from
there. Wes is all ready on Station 3 above Northern Landing with his
set, and Jim Baler is at the Deimos station."
"Hi, Walt," came Wes' voice.
"Hi," said Jim Baler.
"Hello, fellows," said Walt. "Well, what cooks?"
"Kingman," said Channing, with a tone of finality. "You've got your
orders, Walt. When Kingman expects the market to go down, tell him it's
still going up. We'll figure this out as we go along, but he won't like
it at all."
There was silence for a few minutes, and then Don said: "Walt,
Kingman's sent a message through to Northern Landing Station now. He
says: 'Dump a block to shake the suckers loose. This is pyramided so
high that they should all climb on the sell-wagon; running the market
down of their own weight. When it hits a new low, we'll buy, and this
time end up by having control.' When he starts to run the market down,
you buy at Terra."
Minutes later, the message hit the Terra market, and Kingman's agent
started to unload. The stock started off at six hundred and nine, and
it soon dropped to five-forty. It hovered there, and then took another
gradual slide to four-seventy. Then a message came through the regular
beam station which Walt intercepted, decoded with Terran Electric's own
code book, and read as follows:
"V. E. Preferred coming in fast. Shall we wait?"
Walt chuckled and spoke into the driver modulator. "Kingman," he
said, "some wiseacre is still buying. V. E. Preferred is running at
seven-ninety! What now?"