Norton swore below his breath.
Alice walked between them as Norton explained the workings of the
spacecraft. She found Norton a good talker, and his lazy manner of
speech somehow managed to convey a lot of information that a more
intense man would have flubbed, because of a greater preoccupation with
facts.
Even Mr. Andrews seemed interested, although he had been a-space many
times before, as a matter of business.
Norton explained the workings of the power pile in a much
oversimplified way, showed them the various rooms of machinery for
maintaining air and water and electrical circuits throughout the ship.
As he had suggested, they started at the bottom, looking out through
the below-hatch at the hull of the ship, where the misty blue corona
flared down and back from the eight tubular drivers that thrust their
blunt cylindrical noses down in a large circle, surrounding the after
viewport.
Then Norton worked them aloft slowly, up through the room filled with
water for the reaction mass, and hurled out from the throat of the
driver tubes as a molecular-atomic gas so highly energized that it was
not water, but nascent hydrogen and oxygen, completely ionized. The
coronal flare below, he explained, was the recombination of the nuclei
with their electrons in shells, and the partial recompositions of the
gases into water.
He showed them the warp-generator that created the extra space field
around the ship, nullifying every physical attribute of matter. Neither
mass nor inertia remained, so that the thrust of the flare had no
resistance against which to exert its force, resulting in a drive that
violated the Einstein equations. Forward velocity reached terminal when
the interstellar matter provided a tenuous medium against which the
velocity of the ship found resistance.
He showed them the magnetic-mass detector that protected them against
meteors, and explained that while the thing was primitive, it was the
best that Mankind had. The infrawave was hopeless because it had an
instantaneous velocity of propagation and was also nondirectional, and
therefore neither direction-finding nor ranging could be accomplished
with the infrawave.
But the magnetic-mass detector was not as hopeless as it looked.
He said casually, "There were a lot of tall stories back in the Early
Twentieth Century about spacecraft filled with course-computing gear
that measured the course of meteorites, then directed the spacecraft.
A more practical study of any such device shows that any extraneous
object that does not change its aspect angle is necessarily on a
collision course. Ergo, any target that does not move causes the alarm
to ring, and the auto-pilot to swerve aside." He grinned and added in a
low voice, "We're as safe as if we were all in bed."
As his arm touched Alice's she realized that Jock Norton had been
entertaining the idea of bed ever since this tourist's run had started.
She smiled because it amused her. Jock Norton had made a snap judgment,
probably because he had seen a lot of such shenanigans as man and woman
playing employer and secretary before. She almost laughed at Norton,
realizing that he was displaying all of his knowledge and his virility
in the hope of convincing her that he was probably more fun in bed than
the elderly Napoleon type with whom she was traveling.
She stole a look at Andrews, comparing the two men. She wondered
whether Andrews had cottoned onto Norton's play and if he had, whether
her boss found it funny or irritating.
* * * * *
As they walked along a curved corridor, she saw with some surprise that
twice Mr. Andrews had lagged back a bit, then had come forward behind
them to walk by her side instead of on the far side of Jock Norton.
And both times Norton had quietly lagged back to circle her and step
forward between them, explaining quietly that Mr. Andrews could hear
his explanation better if he, Norton, walked between.
Alice was still wondering whether Charles Andrews actually held any
off-trail notions about his traveling secretary when all hell broke
loose.
First came the wild clangor of an alarm, and the automatic cry of a
recorded order:
"Your undivided attention, please! This is urgent! You have eleven
minutes from the end of this announcement to follow these directions.
There has been a partial failure of the warp-generator. If this
failure becomes complete, and the space field collapses, the effect
will be that of precipitating intrinsic mass into the real Universe
while traveling at some high multiple of the velocity of light. The
spacecraft then will drop instantly below the speed of light but
in doing so will radiate all the energy-mass equivalent to those
multi-light speeds, according to the Einstein equation of mass and
energy. It is therefore expedient that you repair to the lifeship locks
and prepare to debark. The partial failure may or may not continue. If
not, there will be no more danger. But in case of continued breakdown--"
The recorded announcement stopped abruptly as a louder alarm bell rang
briefly. Then another voice from the squawk-box shouted:
"The warp-generator is failing! You have--"
A third voice came in automatically saying, "Eleven minutes," after
which the second voice continued neatly, "to make your way to a
lifeship and debark. Please do not panic. You have plenty of time."
"It's this way," Norton said anxiously.
"We'll find it," said Andrews. "I know this spacecraft type. Hadn't you
better take care of your other passengers?"
Norton wanted to swear. It would have been so neat if Andrews hadn't
insisted upon coming along on this tourist's run of the spacecraft. As
it was, Norton couldn't quite bring himself to suggest that Andrews
take care of the other customers while Norton himself took care of the
girl. On the other hand, Norton had no intention of rushing off to take
care of the others when they were probably being taken care of right
now by the engineer-technician. He said that, and repeated it to give
it force.
"This way," he said.