blast a vortex. . . . Oh, that’s it! Treat it as though it were a
problem in n-dimensional differential equations, but don’t let your
subconscious do it alone—get right down there and work with it—do that
and you’ll have it all!” She seized his hands, squeezed them hard, and
spoke aloud, the better to drive home the intensity of her convictions.
“Buckle down, Storm, and dig . . . you can do it, I know you can do it.
I _know_ you can . . . dig in, big fellow . . . you don’t have to pay
_too_ much attention to detail; get a chain started, like a zipper, and
it’ll finish itself . . . dig, Storm, DIG!”
Storm dug. His jaw-muscles tightened into lumps. Sweat beaded his face
and trickled down his chest under his shirt. And suddenly something
happened. Not very much of anything, but something. Something more than
mere contact, but not a penetration—more like a fusion—a fusion which,
however instead of spreading rapidly to completion, as Joan had said it
would, existed for the merest perceptible instant of time in an almost
infinitesimal area and then vanished as instantaneously as it had come.
But there was no doubt whatever that he had read, for an instant, a tiny
portion of Joan’s mind; there was no chance whatever that she had sent
him _that_ thought—in fact, she had been thinking at herself, not at
him. And as he perceived the tenor of that thought he let go all his
mental holds; tried frantically to bury the stolen thought so deeply
that Joan would never, _never_ find out what it had been. . . .
No, not bury it, either. Flesh, rock, metal—any material substance was
perfectly transparent to thought. What wasn’t? A thought-screen. He
didn’t have one, of course, but he knew the formula, and if he thought
about that formula hard enough it might create interference enough. The
catch would be whether he could talk at the same time . . . he probably
could, if the subject matter didn’t require concentration.
Joan, of course, knew instantly when Cloud pulled his mind away from
hers; and, not waiting to ask why in words, drove in a probe to find
out. Much to her surprise, however, her beam of mental force was stopped
cold; she could not touch Cloud’s mind at all!
“A block!” she exclaimed unbelievingly. “A real dilly, too—as hard and
tight as a D7M29Z screen! What did you do, anyway, Storm, and how? I
didn’t feel you get in!”
He did not reply immediately. He was too busy; for, besides holding the
screen-thought, he was also analyzing and studying the thought he had
stolen from Joan: separating it out and arranging it into meaningful
English words. It was amazing, how many words could be contained in one
flashing, fleeting burst of thought.
“Joanie, my not-so-bright old friend,” she had been thinking, “you’ve
simply got to cut out this silly damn foolishness and act your age. You
_must not_ fall in love with him; there’d be nothing in it for either of
you. You are thirty-four years old and he has had his Jo.”
“Storm!” she snapped. “Answer me! Or did. . . .” Her tone changed
remarkably: “. . . did something . . . happen to you?”
“No, Joanie.” He shook his head and wrenched his attention back to
reality. “But first, is whatever I’m doing really a mind-block, and is
it really holding?”
“Yes—to both—curse it! And ‘Joanie’, eh? You _did_ get in. How did it
go?”
“Not so good. Barely a touch. It didn’t spread after we got it started.
Just one flash and it went out.”
“Hm . . . m . . . m. That’s funny. . . . Not the way it worked with me
at all. However, I don’t see that it makes any difference whether you
get it by drips and driblets or all at once, just so you get the full
ability eventually. What was it you picked up the first time, Storm?”
“That’s one thing you’ll never know, if I have to hold this block
forever.”
“Oh.” Joan blushed, vividly. “I know what it was, then, I think. But
don’t you see. . . ?”
“No, I don’t see,” Cloud interrupted. “All I see is that it’s worse than
being a Peeping Tom in a girls’ dormitory. I don’t like it. I don’t like
any part of it.”
“You wouldn’t, of course—at first. Nevertheless, Storm, you and I have
_got_ to work together, whether either of us likes what happens or not.
So let’s get at it. Bring it out and look at it—let’s see if it’s so
bad, really. It was just that I was afraid maybe I was going to fall in
love with you and get burned to a crisp around the edges, wasn’t it?”
“That was part of it. You were wrong in two things, though. No matter
how much I loved Jo—and I really did love her, you know. . . .”
“I know, Storm.” Her voice was very gentle. “Everybody knows you did.
Not only did—you still do.”
“Yes. So much so that I thought I’d never be able to talk about her
without going off the deep end. But I can, now. I’m beginning to think
that perhaps Phil Strong was right. Perhaps a man can love twice in his
life, in exactly the same way.”
The woman caught her breath and started to say something, then changed
her mind. The man went on:
“The second point in error is that a woman at age thirty-four is not
necessarily a doddering wreck with one foot in the grave and the other
on a banana peel.”
“Oh . . . I’m _so_ glad, Storm!” she breathed; then changed mood with an
almost audible snap. “There! It’s done and your guard is down. It wasn’t
too bad, was it?”
“Not a bit.” Cloud was surprised at how easily the thing had been ironed
out. “You’re a prime number, Joanie—a slick, smooth operator. As smooth
as five feet and two inches of tan velvet.”
“Uh-uh. Not me, so much; it’s just that we’re a very nicely-matched
pair. But I think we’d better lay off a while before trying it again,
don’t you?”
“Check. Let our minds—mine, anyway—get over the jitters and
collywobbles.”
“Mine, too, brother; and I’ve got a sort of feeling that what that mind
of yours is going to develop into, little by little, is something
slightly different from ordinary telepathy. But in the meantime, you’d
better get back to work.”
“I don’t know whether I can work up much enthusiasm for work right now
or not.”
“Sure you can, if you try. What were you doing to that chart when I came
in? What have you got there, anyway?”
“Come on over and I’ll show you.” They bent over the work-table, heads
almost touching. “The pink area is the explored part of the First
Galaxy. The marks represent all the loose vortices I know of. I’ve been
applying all the criteria I can think of to give me some kind of a
toe-hold, but up to the present moment I’m completely baffled.”
“Have you tried chronology yet? Peeling ’em off in layers—by centuries,
say?”
“Not exactly, although I did run a correlation against time. Mostly been
studying ’em either singly or en masse up to now. Might be worth a
fling, though. Why? Got a hunch?”
“No. And no particular reason; just groping for more detailed data.
Before you can solve any problem, you know, you must know exactly what
the problem is—must be able to state it clearly. You can’t do that yet,
can you?”
“You know I can’t. I’ve got some colored pins here somewhere . . . here
they are. Read me the dates and I’ll stick colors accordingly.”
They soon ran out of colors; then continued with numbered-head
thumb-tacks.
The job finished, they stood back and examined the results.
“See anything, Joan?”
“I see _something_, but before I mention it, give me a quick briefing on
what you know already.”
Cloud thought for a minute. “Well, the distribution in space is not
random, but there is no significant correlation with location, age,
size, power, load-factor, or actual number of power plants. Nor with
nature, condition, or age of the civilization of any planet. Nor with
anything else I’ve been able to dream up.
“They aren’t random in time, either; but there again there’s no
correlation with the age of the power-plant affected, the age-status of
atomic power of any particular planet, or any other thing except
one—there is an extremely high correlation—practically unity—with
time itself.”
“I thought so,” Joan nodded. “That was what I noticed. The older, the
fewer.”
“Exactly. But with your new classification, Joan, I think I see
something else.” Cloud’s mathematical-prodigy’s mind pounced. “And
_how_! Until very recently, Joan, the data will plot exactly on the
ideal-growth-of-population curve.”
“Oh, they breed, some way or other. Nice—that gives us a. . . .”
“You said that, woman, I didn’t. I stated a fact; if you wish to
extrapolate it, that’s your privilege—but it’s also your
responsibility.”
“Huh! Don’t go pedantic on me. Haven’t you got any guesses?”
“Except for this recent jump, which we can probably ascribe to Fairchild
and explosives, nary a guess. I can’t see any possible point of
application.”
“Neither can I. But if that’s the only positive correlation you can
find, and it’s just about unity, it must mean _something_.”
“Check. It’s _got_ to mean something. All we have to do is find out what
. . . I think maybe I see something else.” Bending over, he sighted
across the chart from various angles. “Too many pins. Let’s clear a belt
through here.” They did so. “Will you read ’em to me in order, beginning
with the oldest?”
“At your service, sir. Sol.”
Cloud stuck a pin in Sol.
“Galien—Salvador—DuPont—Eastman—Mercator—Centralia—
Tressilia—Chickladoria—Crevenia—DeSilva—Wynor—Aldebaran. . . .”
“Hold it! Don’t want Aldebaran—can’t use it. Take a look at this!” For
this first time Cloud’s voice showed excitement.
She looked, and saw a gently curving line of pins running three-quarters
of the way across the chart. “Why—that’s a smooth curve—looks as
though it could be the arc of a circle—clear across all explored
space!” she exclaimed.
Cloud’s mind pounced again. “It is a circle—pretty close, that is,
according to these rough figures. Will you read me the exact
coordinates—spatial—from the book?”
She did so, and through Cloud’s mind there raced the appropriate
equations of solid analytic geometry.
“Even closer. Now let’s apply a final refinement. From their proper
motions we can put each star back to where it was at the vortex date.
It’ll take a little time, but it may be worth it.”
It was. Cloud’s mien was solemn as he announced his final figures.
“Those twelve suns all lay on the surface of a sphere. Radius, 53,327
parsecs, with a probable error of one point three zero parsecs—which,
since the average density of the stars along that line is about point
zero four five per cubic parsec, makes it as perfect a spherical surface
as it is physically possible for it to be. The center of that sphere is
almost exactly on the ecliptic; its coordinates are: Theta,
225°—12′—31.2647″; distance, 107.2259.”
“Good heavens! It’s _that_ exact? And _that_ far outside the Rim? That
spoils my original idea of radiation from a center. But all of the
twelve oldest vortices are on that surface, and _none_ of them are
anywhere else!”
“So they are. Which gets us where, lady?”
“Nowhere that I can see, with a stupendous velocity.”
“You and me both. Another thing, why that particular time-space
relationship in the first twelve? I can accept Tellus being first,
because we had atomics first, but that logic doesn’t follow through.
Instead, the time order goes from Sol through Galien and so on to
Eastman—to the very edge of unexplored territory along that arc—then,
jumping back to the other side of Sol, goes straight on to the edge of
Civilization in the opposite direction. Can you play _that_ on any one
of your brains, from Alice to Margie?”
“I don’t see how.”
“I don’t, either. That relationship certainly means something, too, but
I’m damned if I can make any sense out of it. And what sense is there in
a spherical surface that big? And why so ungodly accurate? Alphacent,
there, is less than one parsec outside the surface, but it didn’t have a
blow-up for over seven hundred years. How come? Anybody or anything
capable of traveling that far could certainly travel half a parsec
farther if he wanted to. And look at the time involved—over a thousand
years! Assuming some purpose, what could it be? Human operations, or any
other kind I know anything about, simply are not geared up to that kind
of scope, either in space or in time. None of it makes any kind of
sense.”
“So you consider it purely fortuitous that this surface is as truly
spherical as the texture of the medium will permit?” she asked, loftily.
“No, I don’t, and you know I don’t—and don’t misquote me, woman! It’s
too fantastically accurate to be accidental. And that ties right in with
the previous paradox—that vortices can’t possibly be either accidental
or deliberate.”
“From a semantic viewpoint, your phraseology is deplorable. The term
‘paradox’ is inadmissible—meaningless. We simply haven’t enough data. I
simply _can’t_ believe, Storm, that those horrible things were set off
on purpose.”
“Deplorable phraseology or not, I’ve got enough data to put the
probability out beyond the nine-sigma point—the same probability as
that an automatic screw-machine running six-thirty-two brass hex nuts
would accidentally turn out a thirty-six-inch jet-ring made of pure
titanite, diamond-ground, finished, and fitted. We’re getting nowhere
faster and faster—with an acceleration of about 12 G’s instead of any
simple velocity.”
He fell silent; remained silent so long that the woman spoke. “Well
. . . what do you think we’d better do next?”
“All I can think of is to find out what’s out there at the center of
that sphere . . . and then to see if we can find any other leads in this
mess on the chart. I’ll call Phil.”
_Chapter 12_
▂▂▂▂▂▂VESTA PRACTICES SPACEAL
THE CONNECTION was made and he brought Lensman Strong up to date,
concluding: “So will you please get hold of Planetography with a crash
priority on anything they know about that point?”
“I’ll do that, Storm. I’ll call you back.”
Since Lensmen are potent beings, the call came soon.
“There’s one sun there,” Strong reported, “but it doesn’t amount to
much. A red dwarf—it may or may not be a single. Unexplored.
Astronomical data only.”
“How close did I come to it?”
“Allowing for proper motion, you speared it. Less than two hundredths of
a parsec off. And there’s nothing else within twelve parsecs—stars are
mighty thin out beyond the Rim, you know.”
“I know. That nails it, Phil. They don’t know, of course, whether it has
any planets or not?”
“No . . . I see what you mean . . . shall I get a special on it for
you?”
“I wish you would. It’d be worth while, I think.”
“So do I. I’ll call Haynes and ask him to rush a ship out there to get
us a fine-tooth on it.”
“Thanks, Phil.”
“And there was something else. . . . Oh yes, your friend Fairchild.
Narcotics wants him, badly.”
“I’m not surprised. Alive? That might take some doing.”
“Or dead. No difference, as long as they have his head for positive
identification,” and at Cloud’s surprised expression Strong went on:
“They don’t want him planting any more Trenconian broadleaf, is all,
which he’ll keep on doing as long as he’s alive and loose.”
“I see. Wish I’d known sooner; we probably could have caught him on
Tominga.”
“I doubt it. They’ve been checking back on him, and he’s a very, _very_
sharp operator. He makes long flits, fast . . . in peculiar directions.
But if you stumble across him again, grab him or blast. . . .”
“Just a minute, chief. You mean to say the _Patrol_ can’t _find_ him?”
“Just that. He’s in with a big, strong mob; probably heads it. They’ve
been looking for him ever since you found out that he wasn’t killed on
Deka.”
“I’m . . . I’m speechless. But Graves . . . but Graves was dead, of
course . . . didn’t _anybody_ know Fairchild’s personal pattern?”
“That’s exactly it; nobody that they could get hold of knows his _real_
pattern at all. All we’ve got that we can depend on are his retinals.
That shows the kind of operator he is. So if you get a chance, blast
him, but leave at least one eye whole and bring it in, in deep-freeze.
Nothing else at the moment, is there?”
“Not that I know of. Clear ether, Phil!”
“Clear ether, Storm!”
The plate went black and Cloud turned soberly to Joan.
“Well, that clears Fairchild up, but doesn’t help with the real mystery.
So, unless we can dig some more dope out of this stuff on the chart, we
can’t do much until we get that finetooth.”
Joan left the room, and Cloud, after racking his brain for an hour, got
up, shook himself, and went down the corridor to his “private”
office—which had long since ceased to be private, as far as his friends
were concerned—where he found Vesta and Thlaskin talking busily in
spaceal. Or, rather, the Vegian was talking; the pilot was listening
attentively.
“. . . think _I’m_ built, you ought to’ve seen _this_ tomato,” Vesta was
narrating blithely. “What I mean, she’s a _dish_!” She went into a
wrigglesome rhythm which, starting at the neck, flowed smoothly down her
splendidly-modeled body to the ankles. “_Stacked?_ She’s stacked like
Gilroy’s Tower, Buster—an honest-to-god DISH, believe me, and raring to
go. We were on one of those long-week-end jaunts around the system—you
know, one of those deals where things are pretty apt to get just a hair
off the green at times. . . .”
“But hey!” Thlaskin protested. “You said yourself a while back you
wasn’t old enough for that kind of monkey-business!”
“Oh, I wasn’t,” Vesta agreed, candidly enough. “I still ain’t. I just
went along for the ride.”
“And your folks _let_ you?” Thlaskin was shocked.
“Natch.” Vesta was surprised. “Why not? If a tomato don’t learn the
facts of life while she’s young how’s she going to decide what’s good
for her when she grows up?”
“With or without a license, I got to butt into this,” Cloud announced,
also in spaceal; seating himself on a couch and crossing his legs. He,
too, was shocked; but he was also intensely curious. “Did you decide,
Vesta?”
Before the girl could answer, however, Joan Janowick came strolling in.
“Is this a private brawl, or can anybody get in on it?” she asked,
gaily.
“I invited myself in, so I’ll invite you, too. Come in and sit down.” He
made room for her beside him and went on in English, speaking for her
ear alone: “Just as well you don’t know spaceal. This story Vesta is
telling would curl your hair.”
“Wake up, Junior.” Joan did not speak, but poured the thought directly
into his mind. “D’you think that cat-girl—that _kitten_—can block _me_
out of her mind?”
“Oick! What a whiff! ’Scuse, please; my brain was out to lunch. But
you’ll get an earful, sister Janowick.”
“It’ll be interesting in a way you haven’t thought of, too,” Joan went
on. “Vegians are essentially feline, you know, and cats as a race are
both fastidious and promiscuous. Thus, conflict. Is that what this is
about?”
“Could be—I haven’t tried to read her.” Then, aloud:
“Go ahead, Vesta. Did the experience help you decide?”
“Oh, yes. I’m too finicky to be a very good mixer. There’s just too damn
many people I simply can’t stand the smell of.”
“There’s that _smell_ thing again,” Thlaskin said. “You’ve harped on it
before. You mean to say you people’s noses are _that_ sensitive?”
“Absolutely. No two people smell alike, you know. Some smell nice and
some just plain stink. F’rinstance, the boss here smells just
wonderful—I could hug him all day and love it. Doctor Janowick, too,
she smells almost like the skipper. You’re nice, too, Thlaskin, and so
is Maluleme, and Nadine. And Tommie ain’t bad; but a lot of the others
are just too srizonified much for my stomach.”
“I see,” Cloud said. “You _do_ give some people a lot of room around
here.”
“Yeah, and that’s what got this chick I was telling Thlaskin here about
in such a jam. She’s been bending her elbow pretty free, and taking a
jab or so of this and that between drinks. But she ain’t sozzled,
y’understand, not by many a far piece; just lit up like Nyok spaceport.
She’s maybe been a bit on the friendly side with a few of her friends,
so this big bruiser—not a Vegian; no tail, even; an Aldebaranian or
some-such-like and a Class A-Triple-Prime stinker—gets interested in a
big way. Well, he smells just like a Tellurian skunk, so she brushes him
off, kind of private-like, a few times, but it don’t take, so she
finally has to give him the old heave-ho right out in front of
everybody.
“‘You slimy stinker, I’ve told you a dozen times it’s no dice—you
stink!’ she says, loud, clear, and plain. ‘This ship ain’t big enough to
let me get far enough away from you to hold my breakfast down,’ she
says, and this burns the ape plenty.
“‘Lookit here, babe,’ he says, coming to a boil, ‘Bend an ear while I
tell _you_ something. No klevous Vegian chippie is going to play high
and mighty with me, see? I’m fed up to the gozzle. So come down off your
high horse right now, or I’ll. . . .’
“‘You’ll what?’ she snarls, and puts a hand behind her back. She’s
seeing red now, and fit to be tied. ‘Make just one pass at me, you
kedonolating slime-lizard,’ she says, ‘and I’ll bust your pfztikated
skull wide open!’
“He goes for her then, but, being a Vegian, her footwork’s a lot better
than his. She ducks, sidesteps, pulls her sap, and lets him have it, but
good, right behind the ear. It takes the ship’s croaker an hour to bring
him to, and the skipper’s so scared he blasts right back to Vegia and
the croaker calls the hospital and tells ’em to have a meat-wagon
standing by when we sit down.”
“A very interesting and touching tale, Vesta,” Cloud said then, in
English, “but pretty rough language for a perfect lady, don’t you
think?”
“How the hell else. . . .” Vesta started to reply in spaceal, then
switched effortlessly to English: “How else can a lady, however ladylike
she may be, talk in a language which, except for its highly technical
aspects, is basically and completely profane, obscene, vulgar, lewd,
coarse, and foul? Not that that bothers me, of course. . . .”
Nor did it, as Cloud well knew. When a Master of Languages studied a
language he took it as a whole, no matter what that whole might be.
Every nuance, every idiom, every possibility was mastered; and he used
the language _as it was ordinarily used_, without prejudice or favor or
motional bias.
“. . . but it’s so pitifully _inadequate_—there’s so much that’s
completely missing! Thlaskin objected before, remember, that there
wasn’t any word in spaceal he could use—_would_ use, I mean—to
describe Maluleme as his wife. And my brother—Zambkptkn—I’ve mentioned
him?”
“Once or twice,” Cloud said, dryly. This was the understatement of the
trip.
“He’s a police officer. Not exactly like one of your Commissioners of
Police, or Detective Inspector, but something like both. And in spaceal
I can call him only one of four things, the English equivalents of which
are ‘cop,’ ‘lawman,’ ‘flatfoot,’ and ‘bull.’ _What_ a language! But I
started to tell his story in spaceal and I’m going to finish it in
spaceal. It’ll be fun, in a way, to see how close I can come to saying
what I want to say.”
Then, switching back to the lingua franca of deep space;
“So that’s how come my brother got into the act. The hospital called the
cops, of course, so he was there with the meat-wagon and climbed aboard.
He was all set to pinch the jane and throw her in the can, but when he
got the whole story, and especially when she says she’s changed her mind
about circulating around so much—it ain’t worth it, she says, she’d
rather be an out-and-out hermit than have to have even one more fight
with anybody who smelled like that—of course he let her go.”
“Let her _go_!” Cloud exclaimed. “How _could_ he?”
“Why, sure, boss.” Vesta, wide-eyed, gazed innocently at her captain.
“The ape didn’t _die_, you know, and she wasn’t going to do it again,
and he wasn’t a Vegian, so didn’t have any relatives or friends to go to
the mat for him, and besides, anybody with one-tenth of one percent of a
brain would know better than to keep on making passes at a frail after
she warned him how bad he stunk. What _else_ could he do, chief?”
“What else, indeed?” Cloud said, in English. “I live;
and—occasionally—I learn. Come on, Joan, let’s go and devote the
imponderable force of our massed intellects to the multifarious problems
of loose atomic vortices.”
On the way, Joan asked: “Our little Vesta surprised you, Storm?”
“Didn’t she you? She had me gasping like a fish.”