Dusty told the Marandanian, and Gant smiled knowingly. "Don't worry
about it. It will happen again and again, and maybe worse. But so long
as you keep the course beacon centered properly, you will pass by--and
not through--those interfering stars. Now, as soon as your beacon star
shows a disc, steer up to keep the beacon centered on Line H-001. Once
you pass the beacon, look for another beacon on Line F-312 and bring
the point-of-drive to center on the new one. Follow?"
Dusty nodded at Gant's image on the screen along the bottom of the
viewpanel. Another star detached itself from the backdrop of stars
and hurled itself into Dusty's teeth. The actor flinched but held his
drive. The star passed in a bright flash and a quick wave of heat and
was gone. Dusty licked dry lips and forced the grip of his hands to
relax. Far to one side another star passed in a majestic sweep, too
distant to bring them either heat or more light than the ones called
'fixed' on the viewpanel.
Dusty eyed the star-beacon suspiciously. Was it showing a disc yet?
And how much time did he have to shift the drive once the disc became
certain? Dusty felt a cold wave wriggle down his spine and he knew that
cold beads of sweat were beginning to ooze out of his face; he was
remembering the staggering speed with which the first star had come
leaping at him.
* * * * *
Another star passed him in its characteristic wave of light and heat,
and Dusty realized that what looked dangerously close on the viewpanel
was in reality quite distant. It meant that so long as his ship was
pointed into a clear space, there would be no danger of running into a
star no matter how precarious it looked.
But the cold sweat came because the beacon star lay winking at him dead
in the intersection of the crosshairs that marked the drive.
Disc? Did it show a disc? Does Sirius show more of a disc than Polaris?
Dusty's hands pulled the 'Tee' bar slightly to move the winking eye
ever so subtly upward. That way he would not be aiming his spacecraft
dead into the searing hot maw of a variable star. He took a shaky
breath and relaxed.
Gant Nerley shook his head. "I see what you are doing, Dusty, and you
must not. You'll make a wide curve and get off the beam. Or worse,
you'll hit a star lying close to the course. You have no idea of how
wide you'll run. Center it up, Dusty, and keep a close watch, for it
will become a disc. You'll have time. Relax."
Reluctantly Dusty returned the 'Tee' bar to the central position, and
the star winked through the crosshairs at him, itself no larger in
diameter than the width of one line. It was not obscured by the lines
because of the construction of the panel, a design that Dusty could not
quite understand. Dark lines should have hidden the stars behind them,
but on this gadget they did not. He looked closer and found that the
stars themselves lay on top of the lines rather than under them, and
he wondered how they managed that stunt. It was, of course, a matter
of design. Dusty's experience had been with small telescopes, but this
device was not an optical device, so the simple laws of optics did
not obtain. As he watched, the winking star became a winking disc and
Dusty's nerves twitched.
When had the change started? Dusty realized that he had been
half-hypnotized by the wink ... wink ... wink that meant both safety
and ultimate danger. The disc was expanding rapidly, and as Dusty
tried to move the disc to Line H-001, the edge of the winking beacon
expanded faster than the point of aim moved. He wrenched the 'Tee' bar
hard and saw the crosshairs move sluggishly below the exploding circle.
Then the beacon flashed past in a wave of heat far greater than any of
the other stars, and he was blinded by the light for a second or more.
But as the blindness died, there on Line F-312 there was a distant
wink ... wink ... wink.
X
Dusty gripped the 'Tee' bar and started to turn the ship toward the
new beacon. His approach to dead center was ragged--he overshot and
over-corrected, but finally he made it. And then with a burst of good
sense, Dusty released the 'Tee' bar very gently and leaned back in his
pilot's chair. The crosshairs stayed on their winking beacon.
Gant Nerley nodded. "Turn the presentation to 'Polar' again, and keep a
sharp eye out for a slow beacon along Radius Q-103. You probably made a
wide curve around that other beacon and you may be a bit too close to a
gas field. You'd burn up in milliseconds if you hit it at your present
speed. By the way, what color is the presentation now?"
"It's getting lighter. Sort of yellowish-white, like."
"Good. But if and when it begins to blue-up a bit you'd better let
up on the 'Force' pedal by a notch or more. Competent pilots can run
with their screen in the violet, but you're far from being a competent
pilot." He saw the look on Dusty's face and added hastily, "I mean that
you've had no experience in galactic travel, Dusty Britton. You're
doing magnificently so far. We'd best take no dangerous chances,
though, until you have driven interstellar craft as many hours as
you've driven your own interplanetary ships."
Barbara made a choked sound and then covered it by saying, "I see the
slow beacon, Dusty. Out there on Circle D-212, along Radius Q-103."
It was pulsing slowly, rising to full brilliancy over a period of
more than a minute and falling again, never really winking out to
invisibility. It lay alone in the star-field; the gas cloud behind it
must be of the same nature as any of the so-called 'dark nebulae' or
dust clouds that obscure the stars behind it. But it was far to one
side (Circle D-212) and it seemed reasonable to view it calmly.
"How much time have I?" he asked Gant Nerley.
"About fifteen minutes."
"Good. I want a cigarette and a drink."
It was with increased confidence that Dusty swooped around the next
beacon and headed on towards the next--and the next--and then around a
long curveway limned by four of the winking beacons and once more along
a long field-free course towards a winker that lay dead ahead for quite
some distance.
There was one quick jog between two beacons set at an angle like the
flags of a slalom run on skis; a wide 'S' curve around the outside
of the first, up and over, between, then out and around the second
beacon in a long ogee to locate the freeway to the next beacon star.
There was a quick turn that took the plane-locating phanobeacon off
the screen for several minutes and then another one that put the
phanobeacon almost on the crosshairs, and then another slight turn
that put the phanobeacon on the lower corner of the viewpanel again.
It was, according to Gant Nerley, a "most remarkable rift!" At which
Dusty shrugged because he had never seen any other rift. It looked
plenty complicated to Dusty, and he shuddered to think of what a really
tortuous galactic passage would be like.
They passed by a vast luminous cloud that lay on the spacecraft's beam
for minutes. It looked like a matter of mere miles that separated
them from it. It was marked by two of the slow-winking beacons, as
if that were necessary. The luminous cloud reminded them of a lake,
seen from an automobile driving along a highway. They could not see the
inner star that provided the energy for the luminosity of the cloud,
and eventually they left the luminous cloud behind them. They zipped
between the elements of a star cluster that drove at them with multiple
waves of heat, and on and on they went with Dusty Britton driving his
Marandanian spacecraft like a child running a motorboat, following
instructions shouted by a careful, protecting parent.
* * * * *
This did not make of Dusty Britton a space pilot any more than turning
the valve on a radiator makes one a heating engineer, or replacing a
light socket makes one an electrician. But Dusty began to glory in it;
his confidence grew high as his skill increased.
His touch upon the 'Tee' bar became light and sure of itself. He
no longer waggled widely or jerked the bar when a deviation became
noticed, Dusty corrected his course with deft touches like the driver
of an automobile. He was learning, and filled with a self-confidence
he had no right to feel, but did not know enough to be scared about.
Dusty Britton, who had never been in a space rocket in his life, drove
a galactic spacecraft across the galaxy under what can be called "Dual
Flight Training."
Which was all right, so long as the trainee has enough space to make
mistakes in. Dusty literally had galactic reaches and these were
well marked against the pitfalls. And if Gant Nerley's face radiated
confidence and his voice sounded cheerful it was due to Gant Nerley's
knowledge that constant admonition, warning, and cries of horror would
only cause more trouble than Dusty Britton's meandering course.
But flight is easy, whereas landing is the most difficult maneuver in
the universe.
So by the time Dusty Britton was homing on the main phanobeacon of
Marandis itself, Gant Nerley had his plans. Dusty Britton was not going
to barrel that spacecraft down tailfins first like a screaming elevator
that might come to Velocity Zero at a plus or minus a half mile from
Ground Zero and maybe a plus or minus thirty seconds of Drive Turnoff;
to drop like a plummet or ram the spaceport with a planet-shaking crash
or burn a crater in the 'port with full drive still warping the space
below the ship's tailfin.
Dusty Britton came to a full zero-zero-zero landing a million miles
above Marandis. He came to a grinding halt high above the planet,
looked around dazedly, and asked Gant: "What makes?"
"Keep your drive at one gravity thrust," said Gant. "Stand by for
Pilot!"
The last order was delivered in a ringing voice as though it were a
standard procedure.
To Dusty, familiar with the tactics used by seagoing liners upon
entering port, standing by for a pilot was quite a sensible practise.
If the Captain of _The North America_ permitted a pilot to bend the
big liner along Ambrose Channel, through The Narrows and into New York
Harbor, Dusty Britton saw no objection to having a pilot come aboard to
bend the big spacecraft down past whatever dangers might be presented
by moons, meteors and cosmic junk.
And Gant Nerley, not knowing how Dusty felt about spacecraft piloting,
hoped that this procedure sounded like Standard Operating Practise.