"Uh-huh," said Murdoch idly. "I want to check my finders."
"But they can't miss."
"No? Look, lawyer, you're not running a job that may be given a stay
or reprieve. The finders run on light velocities. The solar beam runs
on the speed of light squared. We'll pass that thing at five thousand
miles' distance and at two thousand miles per second velocity. A
microsecond of misalignment, and we're missing, see? I think we're
going to be forced to put correction circuits in so that the vector
sums and velocities and distances will all come out with a true hit. It
will not be like sighting down a searchlight beam at high velocity."
"I see. You'll need compensation?"
"Plenty, at this velocity and distance. This is the first time I've had
a chance to try it out."
The latter fact saved the _Relay Girl_. By a mere matter of feet and
inches; by the difference between the speed of light and the speed
of light squared at a distance of five thousand miles, plus a slight
miscompensation. The intolerably hot umbra of Murdoch's beam followed
below the pilot's greenhouse of the _Relay Girl_ all the way past, a
matter of several seconds. The spill-over was tangible enough to warm
the _Relay Girl_ to uncomfortable temperatures.
Then with no real damage done, the contact with ships in space was
over, but not without a certain minimum of recognition.
"Hell!" said Kingman. "That was a space craft!"
"Who?"
"I don't know. You missed."
"I'd rather have hit," said Murdoch coldly. "I hope I missed by plenty."
"Why?"
"If we scorched their tails any, there'll be embarrassing questions
asked."
"So--?"
"So nothing until we're asked. Even then you know nothing."
* * * * *
In the _Relay Girl_, Channing mopped his forehead. "That was hell
itself," he said.
Arden laughed uncertainly. "I thought that it would wait until we got
there; I didn't expect hell to come after us."
"What--exactly--happened?" asked Walt, coming into the scanning room.
"That--was a spaceship."
"One of this system's?"
"I wonder," said Don honestly. "It makes a guy wonder. It was gone too
fast to make certain. It probably was Solarian, but they tried to burn
us with something ..."
"That makes it sound like something alien," admitted Walt. "But that
doesn't make good sense."
"It makes good reading," laughed Channing. "Walt, you're the Boy
Edison. Have you been tinkering with anything of lethal leanings?"
"You think there may be something powerful afloat?"
"Could be. We don't know everything."
"I've toyed with the idea of coupling a solar intake beam with one of
those tubes that Baler and Carroll found. Recall, they smashed up quite
a bit of Lincoln Head before they uncovered the secret of how to handle
it. Now that we have unlimited power--or are limited only by the losses
in our own system--we could, or should be able to, make something
raw-ther tough."
"You've toyed with the idea, hey?"
"Uh-huh."
"Of course, you haven't really tried it?"
"Of course not."
"How did it work?"
"Fair," grinned Walt. "I did it with miniatures only, of course, since
I couldn't get my hooks on a full grown tube."
"Say," asked Arden, "how did you birds arrive at this idea so suddenly?
I got lost at the first premise."
"We passed a strange ship. We heated up to uncomfortable temperatures
in a matter of nine seconds flat. They didn't warm us with thought
waves or vector-invectives. Sheer dislike wouldn't do it alone. I
guess that someone is trying to do the trick started by our esteemed
Mr. Franks here a year or so ago. Only with something practical instead
of an electron beam. Honest-to-goodness energy, right from Sol himself,
funnelled through some tricky inventions. What about that experiment of
yours? Did you bring it along?"