"We sit it out," Norton said cheerfully.
"Doing what?"
"Decelerating to a velocity below light. We still have our ship's
intrinsic to get rid of, you know."
"Why don't we keep on?"
"Because this is a lifeship and not a spacecraft. We have only enough
space power to pull ourselves down safely, with some reserve, and then
we use the reserve to emit our distress call. Cheer up. We got off
safely. This will be a breeze."
"It will? And why are you so happy about it?"
Jock Norton smiled, then said the one thing that removed all and
any chance of Alice Hemingway ever looking upon him as a desirable
character, virile or not.
"Spaceman's insurance," he said. "For spacewreck, one thousand cold
clams. For debarking with every passenger within a reasonable distance
of my position at the time of distress, an award of one thousand more
frogskins each. This is not so much an insurance award as it is a
reward incentive for a spaceman to do the right and proper thing. Then,
for every lonely hour adrift in deep space, from the time of distress
until we are collected safely, one hundred fish. This should add up
to a neat sum by the time we are picked up. Tommy Walton and Joe Lake
drifted for eight hours and collected. Sure, we're sitting pretty and
we'll be rescued in due time. So let's settle down and take it easy."
Andrews said, "I suppose you've spent half of your time a-space hoping
for some disaster so you could collect a neat pile."
"Not quite that bad. This is likely to be sure rough before we're
collected. But it does pay off. So let's relax, huh?"
Alice was breathing a silent prayer to Commodore Wilson that he make it
a quick run. She was sick and tired of spacing already....
Admiral Stone said, "These are your orders, Wilson. You are to take
your squadron out to Cube X-Z-Fifty-nineteen, District Forty-seven.
You'll have to comb it inch by inch."
"I'll comb it millimeter by millimeter," asserted Wilson. "Miss
Hemingway was on that spacer."
"Don't do anything foolish," warned the space admiral. "Just remember
that you're a flight commodore and not a full squadron commander yet.
You have your orders."
"I have. And I'll bring them back. Both lifeship loads."
"Then get going. Remember that every hour decreases their chances of a
safe rescue. Luck, Wilson. Spaceman's luck!"
"Correct, Admiral Stone."
Less than a quarter-hour later, Ted Wilson's flight of twenty-five
swift light spacecraft went barreling up out of Chicago Spaceport and
into that region of the sky called Gemini....
Viggon Sarri sat in the main control cabin of the hunter spacecraft,
quietly waiting for Linus Brein to finish some involved equations in
logic symbols. When the long string of symbols had come to what looked
like a satisfactory conclusion, Brein looked up.
"Any success?"
"Oh, yes indeed." Brein nodded. "Of course our interpretations of their
speech is only symbolic at this point. But this much we know. This
series of sounds--" he snapped a switch on the side of his desk and
a wall speaker delivered a series of what sounded to them like sheer
gibberish--"connotates as follows: Voice A has called for contact
with any receiving station. Voice B has responded, informing A that
he is ready to receive. Voice A then delivers a running account of
the disaster, delivering his computed position, vector of travel, and
space coordinates. I've untangled some of their tongue." Brein replayed
the recording and stopped it after the first passage. He parroted the
gibberish, "'Spaceflight Seventy-nine calling Distress.' That, Viggon,
is interpreted in our tongue as 'Identification Number So-and-so
calling to announce disaster.'"
* * * * *
He let the recording run a bit then said, again parroting the
gibberish, "'Chicago Spaceport, Interstellar Service to Spaceflight
Seventy-nine. We read you five by five, go ahead. What is your
distress?' We interpret the reply as, 'Base of Operations has
received your distress call. Please elucidate.' What follows defies
identification, Admiral Sarri. Until we can meet one of these people
and learn more of their physiognomy, we cannot hope to unravel their
numerical system. Damn it, we don't even know how many fingers they
have."
"Or," suggested Sarri drily, "whether they might have stopped counting
on their hands."
"Indeed." Linus Brein nodded thoughtfully. "However, not long after the
reception of this distress signal, the entire infrawave band seemed to
fill up with all sorts of signals, all of them repeating the sounds
that we assume are the space coordinates of this foundered spacecraft."
"Indicating that this is not a completely anarchistic or communal,
insect-type culture. The individual is important."
"I would say so."
Regin Naylo smiled. It would have been an odd-looking facial grimace to
an Earthman, for it turned the corners of his pencil-thin lips down and
furrowed the skin of his head between the gleaming eyes and the low,
ragged hairline.