Jimmy jumped to his feet. "It'll work, Steve. We'll have to induce
the mechanogravitic force in a cupralum bar by secondary gravitic
radiation, but it is a known phenomenon. Drakey, that's top!"
"Except for one thing," said Larry. "We're fresh out of magnetogravitic
generators. Aside from that, we can run this heap all the way to
Sirius."
Pete said: "Yeah, and if we did have one, we'd still be short a few
thousand alphons. The alphatron won't carry another generator, nor will
the little one upstairs." He grinned at Sandra. "We're not tossing cold
water on your suggestion. It'll work--but not right now."
"Then it was good?" asked Drake with the first question of honest awe
she had used in years.
"Perfect," said McBride, cheerfully. "But not quite complete. We
won't censure you for that, however, since we know that you haven't
been hanging around space-warp engineers for the last ten years. You
couldn't have known that this mag-grav generator will do service on
both ends. All we have to do is to direct the output on a two-lobe
pattern instead of a single-lobe pattern, and set our induction bar
up above in the field of the mechanogravitic we've already got there.
Jimmy, change the output pattern of the mag-grav and we'll hike aloft
with the cupralum bar." He bowed at Sandra. "Thanks to that one, we'll
be moving right along!"
* * * * *
Pilot Drake sent the power lever home at thirty feet per, and watched
the accelerator climb to exactly thirty, where it stopped and hung.
Minutes passed, and the meter read constant.
Steve Hammond smiled wider and wider as the minutes added into a
quarter hour. "I think our cupralum hull is helping," he said.
"How?" asked Pete.
"Why, it is collecting enough leakage-warp to create a nice large warp
of its own--in which we now travel, and in which the accelerometer
reads only that factor 'R' of Mac's. That meter reads the rate of
change of acceleration. Drake, step it up to sixty."
Sandra advanced the drive, and the meter went up to sixty even.
"We're on the ball," said Hammond.
"We sure are," said McBride, passing a forefinger over his cheek. "It's
hot in here."
"I know. And you can call the Lens and tell the Doc we're on our way."
"I tried that. The lines were busy, so I shot 'em a 'gram. They know
now that we're coming."
"I wonder if your math is correct," said Steve.
"Why?"
"If it is," explained Steve, "we'll be halfway to the Lens in three
hours from start--no, wait a minute. We're running at sixty feet now.
That means a little better than two hours! But if they are correct,
we'll be hitting almost two times the speed of light. That is not
possible."
"I think we'll do it," said McBride. "After all, we're in a space warp,
and no one really knows whether the laws of the universe hold in a
space warp. Drake hit the Lens at about ten thousand miles per second,
was stopped in time to get to one of the fore lens stations, which must
have been terrific deceleration--unthinkably high--and it didn't even
muss her hair. We'll know in a bit when we are supposed to hit the
speed of light."
"Then for the love of Mike, what is our limiting velocity?"
"The same as any of the gravitic spectra. Gravitic phenomena propagates
at the speed of light raised to the power of 2.71828--That's our
limiting velocity."
"Want to make any bets?"
"I don't mind. My guess is as good as yours."
"Better," admitted Steve.
* * * * *
Below, in the pilot room, Sandra Drake was having a state of nerves.
She was alone in the driver's seat of a ship destined to exceed the
speed of light, and she was scared. For some reason, the men who
professed to shy at danger were arguing the possibilities of running
above the speed of light while she, who had lived the life of an
adventuresome girl, a daredevil, was worrying. She listened through the
communicator at their argument and cursed under her breath.
They were going at it in a pedantic manner, hurling equations and
theorems and postulates at one another like lawyers with a case for
the supreme court, not men who were heading for God-Knows-What at a
headlong pace under an ever-increasing acceleration.
There were all sorts of arguments as to the aspect of the sky as the
speed of light was approached. And how it would look at a velocity
of more than light. This went on for some time, with Steve Hammond
holding out for blackout and John McBride holding for a sky that
crawled forward due to the angle-vectors created by the ship's passage
across the light rays, until the entire sky appeared before them--all
the stars in the sky would be in the hemisphere in front of them, no
constellation recognizable.
"But your supposition does not recognize the doppler effect," objected
Hammond. "Visible light will be out of the visible spectrum."
"True enough. But solar radiation extends from down low in the
electromagnetic scale to very very high in the extra-hard UV. Visible
spectra will be dopplered into the UV, all right, but the radio waves
will have an apparent frequency of light, and we shall see the stars by
that, I think."
"With no change in color?" asked Hammond skeptically.
"There will be a change in color, naturally. We'll observe them in
accordance with whatever long waves they emit; they will in no way
resemble the familiar stars we know."
"How's a poor devil going to navigate at any rate?" asked Larry. "With
everything out of place--or invisible--what's he going to use for
signposts?"
"In normal usage, the super drive will be fine. We've been using
autopilots for years and years, setting up the whole course from
take-off to the last half hour of landing. We can still do it. We'll be
flying blind, but so what? We fly pretty blind as it is; no one gives a
rap about the sky outside. Instrument flying is our best bet."
"Well," said Hammond, "we'll see it soon enough. The color of the stars
behind us are changing right now."
"They should. We're running at three quarters of light--and, Stevey
Boy, they're still visible!"
Silently they watched the sky. Dead below them, a tiny black circle
appeared and the stars that once occupied this circle were flowing
away from it radially. It expanded, and the region of flow spread
circularly, and the bowl of the sky moved like a fluid thing towards
the top of the ship until the stars at their nose were crowding
together. Stars appeared there, new stars caused by the crossing of
electromagnetic waves from the rear, and the sky took on an alien sight.
For a long time the stars seemed to tighten in their positions above
the ship, and then the warning bell rang and the ship swapped ends
easily and the bowl of the sky was below them.
Then it began to return to the fore observation point of the _Haywire
Queen_ as the velocity of the ship dropped. The crawl started, and
the black circle diminished until it was gone. The stars continued
to regain their familiar color as the _Haywire Queen_ approached the
normal velocities used by mankind.
* * * * *
Five hours after their start, the _Haywire Queen_ slid clumsily to a
stop beside Station 1 and made a landing. She arced a bit, since the
charge-generating equipment did not have the refinements of the Lens
flitters for making the ship assume the charge of the destined station.
But the arc was not too bad, and within a minute after the _Haywire
Queen_ touched the landing deck, John McBride was knocking on the door
of Dr. Caldwell's office in the hospital.
Caldwell came out of the inner door to answer the summons, and he
looked up at McBride and went dead-white.
"Mac! It's you?"
"Naturally," smiled McBride. "How's Enid?"
"How did you get here?" demanded Doc.
"That's a long yarn, Doc, and it includes a whole engineering program,
exceeding the velocity of light, and using a space warp as a traveling
companion. How's Enid?"
"She was none too good, but we'll have her through now. Come on in!"
"First tell Tommy that the _Haywire Queen_ is on the landing deck and
that they're to have anything they need if we have to kill the lens to
give it to them!"
"I heard that, John," said Tommy, coming in the door. "It's done." He
turned on his heel and left immediately.
John approached the bedside. "Enid," he said softly.
Enid's eyes fluttered. A wave of pain passed across her face and she
tried to move. McBride looked at the doctor.
"Go ahead, John," said Doc.
"Enid. I'm here. It's John."
Enid opened her mouth, gasped once, and said in a very weak voice:
"John? Here?"
"Nowhere else."
"But you ... were on ... Pluto--?"
McBride thought that one over. How could he explain? He decided not
to, and said: "I've been coming back for a long time, Enid. I'm here
now--that's all that counts."
"Yes, John," said Enid.
"She'll be all right now," said Caldwell. "That's what she needed."
Another wave of pain crossed Enid's face, and a nurse came with a
filled hypo.
Caldwell drew McBride out. "Another half hour will see her through," he
told John. "You wait here and everything will be all right. I know that
now, thank God."
Caldwell left McBride to re-enter Enid's room.
Steve Hammond and Sandra Drake entered the office. "How is she?" asked
Hammond.
"Doc says she's going to be all right, now. I've seen her and Doc says
she's perking up already."
"Good!" said Steve. "Drake, that was a nice piece of navigating. You
hit Station 1 right on the nose."
Sandra felt a whole library of emotions, mixed together. She smiled a
sickly smile and said: "I should have. I've been here before, remember?"
Hammond ignored the statement because he thought it sounded too much
like bluster. "Drake," he said, "the _Haywire Queen_ is about ready to
hop for Terra. Do you feel up to running it in?"
"Steve," snapped Sandra Drake, "I'm not going to let any idiot male
handle the _Haywire Queen_, and don't you forget it! After all, I'm
the only pilot in the solar system that knows how to run her! I'll
personally strangle both you and whomever you think you're going to
get for that job, understand?"
Sandra turned and left.
"What in the name of the seven hells has got that dame?" asked McBride.
"There are a lot of ways to kill a cat besides choking it to death
with cream," said Hammond thoughtfully, "but the latter way is just as
effective and sometimes a lot easier. Our she-barracuda has just hit
the one thing that she can't fight."
"Huh?"
"Sure. We gave her credit for doing a good job. Willing, honest credit.
No matter how she may profess to despise our opinion, she can't yell
'Liar' at us because that would mean that she thought that the praise
meant nothing. She's got to agree with us, or deny that she did
anything worthy. And she's been living in a world of her own, trying to
prove that she is the stuff. So--get me?"
"Uh-huh, I suppose so. How're you set?"
"Pretty good. We've swiped all of your spare alphatrons and a couple
more gravitic generators, and we'll butter the job up a little so that
we won't worry about over-loading the alphatrons. That'll take us an
hour or so. How're you doing?"
"I dunno. Doc said wait here--and dammit, I'm running out of
fingernails, cigarettes, and patience."
"Well hang tight. I'll be back from time to time to see how you're
getting along--Hi, Doc? What's the good word?"
"It's good," sighed Dr. Caldwell.
"Honest?" yelled McBride. "Enid's O.K.?"
"Fine. From here on in it's a breeze. Oh, I forgot to tell you. She's
had her son."
"She's what?" yelled McBride.
"Son. John McBride Junior, I presume. He's an ugly, carrot-colored,
monkey-faced, repulsively wrinkled little monster, but Enid says he's
the image of the old man."
McBride looked at Caldwell, and then rushed out to Enid's room.
"Image of the old man, hey?" asked Hammond.
"He'll develop," said Dr. Caldwell. "Junior is a Latent Image!"