* * * * *
Garr Symm leaned forward over his desk, making a tent of his scaly green
fingers and peering over it. He said three words. He said: "The
Earthgirl Dennison."
"The Spacer Graveyard," Ramar Chind said promptly. That was an easy one.
His agents had been following the Dennison girl, at Garr Symm's orders.
Ramar Chind did not know why.
"And?" Garr Symm asked.
"The Earthman Ramsey, the Vegan Vardin, both are with her. We can close
in and arrest the lot, sir, any time you wish."
"Fool," Garr Symm said softly, without malice. "That is the last thing I
want. Don't you understand that? No, I guess you don't."
"Yes, sir."
"Their ship?"
"Every morning after they leave we go over it. Still two or three nights
away from completion, sir. Also--" Ramar Chind smiled.
"Yes, what is it?"
"Two or three nights away from completion, except for one thing. They'll
need a fuel supply. Two U-235 capsules rigged for slow implosion, sir.
The hopper of their ship is empty."
"Is there such a fuel supply in the Graveyard?"
"No, sir."
"But could there be?"
"Usually, no. Naturally, the junkers drain out spaceship hoppers before
scrapping them. U-235 in any form brings--"
"I know the value of U-235. Proceed."
"Well, there could be. If they were lucky enough to find such a fuel
supply in one of the wrecks in the Graveyard, they wouldn't be
suspicious. Naturally, we won't put one there."
"But you're wrong, my dear Ramar Chind. You'll load the hopper of one of
those wrecks with enough U-235 for their purposes, and you'll do it
today."
"But sir--"
"We're going to follow them, Chind. You and I. We want them to escape.
If they don't escape, how can we follow them?"
Ramar Chind shrugged resignedly and lisped: "How much fuel will they
need for their purposes, sir, whatever their purposes are?" Naturally,
his lisping sounded perfectly normal to Garr Symm, who also spoke in
the sibilantless Irwadi manner.
"You'd really like to know, wouldn't you?" Garr Symm said.
"Yes, sir. To put me in a position in which I could better do my--"
"To satisfy your curiosity, you mean!"
"But sir--"
"I am a scientist, Chind."
"Yes, sir."
* * * * *
"Didn't it strike you as odd that a scientist should be elevated to the
top post in your department?"
"Of course, sir. I didn't question it, though."
"As you know, Chind, when it was decided to planetarize Irwadi as a
first step toward driving away the outworlders, the quarters of every
outworlder on Irwadi were thoroughly searched."
"I participated in the--uh, program, sir."
"Good. Then I needn't tell you. Something was found in Margot Dennison's
apartment. Something of immense importance. Something so important that,
if used properly, it can assure Irwadi the dominant place in the galaxy
for all time to come."
"But I thought Irwadi craved isolation--"
"Isolation, Chind? To be sure, if intercourse with the other galactic
powers saw us at the bottom of the heap. But at the top--who would crave
isolation at the top?"
"I see, sir. And the something that was found needed a scientist?"
"Very perceptive of you, Chind. Precisely. It was a letter. We copied
it. Of course, Margot Dennison knows more than what is in the letter;
the letter alludes to previous information. We need Dennison and Ramsey.
We have to let them go ahead with their plans. Then we follow them,
Chind. You understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"You're a good policeman, Chind. The best we have, I understand. You'll
be going with me--on the most important assignment you or any Irwadian
ever had."
"I am grateful, sir, that you consider me--"
"Now, see about that U-235 slow-implosion capsule."
"At once, sir."
Saluting smartly, Ramar Chind left Garr Symm's office. Symm smiled and
sat perfectly still for some minutes. For Irwadi, yes, he was thinking.
Certainly for Irwadi. For Irwadi absolutely. To make Irwadi the most
important planet in the galaxy. But important planets--in the way that
Irwadi would be important--couldn't maintain the status quo. For
example, Irwadi's form of government might have to be changed. At
present, an autocratic bureaucracy with no one man at the top.
Ultimately, after the rediscovery of proto-man's secret--rule by one
man.
Garr Symm, absolute dictator of the galaxy, if he played his hand right.
Garr Symm sat there for a long time, dreaming of power as no man before
him on any world had ever dreamed of power....
* * * * *
Vardin rushed into the airlock of the Canopusian freighter in a state of
excitement. At last they had given her something to do, and she had been
successful at the outset. Specifically, Ramsey and the beautiful woman
had given her a scintillation-counter and told her to prowl among the
wrecks with it while they worked on the control board of the freighter,
which the beautiful woman had named _Enterprise_.
"I found it!" Vardin cried. "I found it!"
She led a sceptical Margot Dennison outside while Ramsey continued
working on the _Enterprise_. The two girls walked swiftly through the
darkness between the wrecks. By this time they knew every foot of the
Graveyard.
"There," Vardin said. "You see?"
The scintillation counter was clicking and blinking. Margot smiled and
went to work with a portable mechanical arm and a leaded bottle. In ten
minutes, she had the slow-implosion capsule out of the hopper of a
battered old Aldebaranese cargo ship.
"I never saw one of those mechanical arms working before," Vardin said.
Margot smiled. She was delighted with the timid Vegan girl, with the
cold night, with the way the wind blew across the Graveyard, with
everything. They had their fuel. Tomorrow night the _Enterprise_ would
be ready for its dash into hyper-space. In thirty-six hours she might
have her hands on the most valuable find in the history of mankind....
When they returned to the _Enterprise_, she let Ramsey kiss her and
tried to slip the telepathic tentacles of her mind behind his guard--
Lewd libidinous fantasies, X stands for nothing for nothing for nothing,
XXX--she got nowhere.
What was X? What was Ramsey's secret? Margot did not know, and wondered
if she would ever find out.
She smiled, reading Vardin's mind. For Vardin was thinking: it must be
so wonderful to have beauty such as she has, to melt the wills of strong
handsome men such as Ramsey. It must be truly wonderful.
For the first twenty-eight years of her life, Margot Dennison would have
agreed, would have delighted in her own beauty. She still did, to a
point. But beyond that point, she could dream only of proto-man and his
secret.
Beauty or power?
She had beauty.
She wanted power.
* * * * *
In the early hours of the following morning, behind the cover of what
appeared to be a dense early morning fog but what actually was an
artificially produced fog, a team of Irwadi technicians swarmed all over
a battered Procyonian cruiser of three thousand tons. By mid-morning,
working swiftly and with all the tools and spare parts they would need,
they made the ship, called _Dog Star_, space-worthy.
Later that day, but still two hours before nightfall, Ramar Chind
arrived with a small crew of three Security Police. He had selected his
men carefully: they knew how to handle a spaceship, they knew how to
fight, they were quite ruthless. He thought Garr Symm would be pleased.
Symm did not arrive until just before nightfall. He was very agitated
when he came. Ramar Chind, too, was eager. What would happen within the
next several hours, he realized, might be beyond his ken, but he still
recognized its importance. And, being an opportunist, he would pounce on
whatever he found of value to himself....
Several hours after the setting of the Irwadi primary had ushered in the
cold night, Margot Dennison, Ramsey and Vardin arrived at the Graveyard
and made their way at once to the _Enterprise_. They went inside swiftly
and in a very few minutes prepared the thousand-tonner for blastoff.
Ramsey's mouth was dry. He could barely keep the thoughts of proto-man
from his mind. If Margot read them....
"Centauri here we come," he said, just to talk.
"Centauri," said Margot.
But of course, she had another destination in mind.
Several hundred yards across the Graveyard, watching, waiting, the
occupants of _Dog Star_ were armed to the teeth.
Ramsey sat at the controls. Vardin stood behind him nervously. The space
trip from Vega to Irwadi was probably the only one she had ever taken.
Margot sat, quite relaxed, in the co-pilot's chair.
"I still can't believe we're not going to feel anything," Vardin said in
her soft, shy voice.
"Haven't you ever been through hyper-space before?" Margot asked the
Vegan girl.
"Just once."
"In normal space," Ramsey explained, "we feel acceleration and
deceleration because the increase or decrease in velocity is experienced
at different micro-instants by all the cells of our body. In hyper-space
the velocity is felt simultaneously in all parts of the ship, including
all parts of us. We become weightless, of course, but the change is
instant and we feel no pressure, no pain."
Ramsey was waiting until 0134:57 on the ship chronometer. At that
precise instant in time, and at that instant only, blastoff would place
them on the proper hyper-space orbit. And, before they could feel the
mounting pressure of blastoff, the timelessness of hyper-space would
intervene.
"0130:15," Margot read the chronometer for Ramsey. "It won't be long
now. 30:20--"
"All right," Ramsey said suddenly. "All right. I can read the
chronometer."
"Why, Ramsey! I do believe you're nervous."
"Anxious, Margot. A hyper-pilot is always anxious just before crossover.
You've got to be, because the slightest miscalculation can send you
fifty thousand light years off course."
"So? All you'd have to do is re-enter hyper-space and go back."
Ramsey shook his head. "Hyper-space can only be entered from certain
points in space. We've never been able to figure out why."
"What certain points?"
* * * * *
Ramsey looked at her steadily. "Points which vary with the orbits of the
three thousand humanoid worlds, Margot," he said slowly. He watched her
for a reaction, knowing that strange fact about hyper-space--perfectly
true and never understood--dovetailed with her father's letter about
proto-man, an unknown pre-human ancestor of all the humanoid races in
the galaxy, who had discovered hyper-space, bred variations to colonize
all the inhabitable worlds, found or created the three thousand
crossover points in space, and used them.
Margot showed no response, but then, Ramsey told himself, she was a
tri-di actress. She could feign an emotion--or hide one. She merely
asked: "Is it true that there's no such thing as time in hyper-space?"
"That's right. That's why you can travel scores or hundreds or thousands
of light years through hyper-space in hours. Hyper-space is a continuum
of only three dimensions. There is no fourth dimension, no dimension of
duration."
"Then why aren't trips through hyper-space instantaneous? They take
several hours, don't they?"
"Sure, but the way scientists have it figured, that's subjective time.
No objective time passes at all. It can't. There isn't any--in
hyper-space."
"Then you mean--"