Ray kissed her. She kissed back and he yelled as his ribs began to give
way.
"Yowp! Some other time, honey. I want only to save your life, don't you
see?"
"Some other time," said Dyann firmly, "is not now. Come here, you."
"Stop tat noise!" yelled Urushkidan, and slammed the laboratory door.
"Ve will honeymoon on Varann," sighed Dyann happily. "You shall ride to
battle at my side."
Much later the aroma of coffee drew Urushkidan back into the forward
cabin. A disheveled and weary-looking Ray Ballantyne was puttering
around the hotplate while Dyann sat polishing her sword and humming to
herself.
"Now," said Ray, turning with what seemed like relief to the Martian,
"just how does this new drive of yours work?"
"It is not a dribe and it does not work--it is a structure of
pure matematics," said Urushkidan. "Anyway, te teory is beyond te
comprehension of anybody but myself. Gibe me some coffee."
"But you must have an idea how it would work in practice."
"Oh, no doubt if I wanted to take te time I could debise someting. But
I am engaged in debeloping a new teory of cosmic origins." Urushkidan
slurped coffee into himself.
"We've got to build it and escape."
"I told you you are of neiter beauty nor importance. Why should I take
time wit you?"
"But look, if the Jovians capture you they'll force you to build it
for them. They have ways. And then they'll overrun Mars along with all
the other planets. The only thing that's held them back so far is the
difficulty of interplanetary logistics. But when you have ships that
can cross the orbit of Pluto in a matter of hours or minutes that isn't
a problem any longer."
"Tat would be unfortunate, yes. But I am in te midst of a bery new and
important train of tought. It would be more unfortunate if tat were
lost tan if a few ephemeral Jobians conquered te System. Tey wouldn't
last a tousand years, but a genius like me is born once in a million."
Dyann hefted her sword. "Do as Ray says," she advised.
"You dare not hurt me," said Urushkidan with a smug expression, "or you
will neber get away."
He went over to the desk and began investigating the drawers again.
"Where do tey keep teir tobacco? I cannot work witout my pipe."
"Jovians," said Ray glumly, "don't smoke. They consider it a degenerate
habit."
"What?" The Martian's howl rattled the coffeepot on the hotplate. "No
tobacco?"
"Only your own supply, back in Ganymede City, and I daresay the Jovians
have confiscated and destroyed it by now. That puts the nearest cigar
store somewhere in the Asteroid Belt."
"Oh, no! Te new cosmology ruined by tobacco shortage." Urushkidan stood
thinking a moment, then came to a sudden decision. "Tere is no help for
it. If te nearest tobacco is millions of miles away we must build te
faster-tan-light engine at once."
* * * * *
Ray made no attempt to follow the Martian's long-winded equations
in detail. What he was interested in was making use of them, and he
proceeded with slashing approximations that brought screams of almost
physical agony from Urushkidan.
Essentially, though, he recognized that the scientist's achievement lay
in making what seemed to be a final correlation of relativity and wave
mechanics, something which even the Goldfarb-Olson formulas had not
fully reached.
Relativity deals with solid bodies moving at definite velocities which
cannot exceed that of light, but in wave mechanics the particle becomes
a weird and shadowy psi function and is only probably where it is. In
the latter theory, point-to-point transitions are not velocities but
shifts in the node of a complex wave. It turned out that the electronic
wave velocity--which, unlike the group velocity, is not limited by the
speed of light--could be imparted to matter under the right conditions,
so that the most probable position of the electron went from point
to point at a bewildering rate. The trick was to create the right
conditions.
"A field of nuclear space-strain is set up by the circuit, and the
ship, reacting against the entire mass of the universe, moves without
need of rockets--right?" asked the Earthman.
"Wrong," said Urushkidan.
"Well, we'll build it anyway," said Ray. "Here, Dyann, bring that
generator over this way, will you?"
"I vant to go monster-huntin," she sulked.
"Bring--it--over, you lummox!"
Dyann glared, but stooped over the massive machine and, between
Ganymedean gravity and Varannian muscles, staggered across the floor
with it. Ray was checking circuits on the oscilloscope. Urushkidan sat
grumbling about heat and humidity and fanning himself with his ears.
The lab was a mess of tubes, condensers, rheostats, and tangled wire.
"I'm stuck," wailed Ray. "I need a resistor having so and so many ohms
along with such-and-such a capacitance. Find me one, quick."
"If you would specify your units more precisely--" began Urushkidan
huffily.
Ray pawed through the litter on the floor, putting one object after
another into his testing circuit, glancing at the meters, and throwing
it across the room. "It's vital," he said.
"Vill this do, maybe?" asked Dyann innocently, holding out the ship's
one and only frying pan.
"Get out!" screamed Ray.
"I go monster-huntin," she pouted.
Absent-mindedly, Ray tested the frying pan. It was nearly right. By
Luna, if he sawed off the handle--
"Hey!" yelped Urushkidan.
"I don't like the thought of eating cold beans, cold canned meat, and
raw eggs any better than you," said Ray. "But damn it, we've got to
get out of here." He soldered the emasculated pan into his circuit.
"Starward the course of human empire," he muttered viciously.
"Martian empire," corrected Urushkidan.
"It'll be Jovian empire if we don't clear out of here. Okay, big brain,
what comes next?"
"How should I know? How can you expect me to tink in tis foul tick air,
and witout tobacco?" Urushkidan turned his back. Dyann clumped in,
spacesuited, sword in one hand and rifle in the other. "I saw monsters
out there," she said. "I'm goin out to kill them."
"Oh, yeah, sure," muttered Ray without looking up from his slide rule.
"Urushkidan, you've got to calculate the resonant psi function for me."
"Won't," said the Martian.
"By Heaven, you snake-legged bagpipe, I'm the captain here and you'll
do as I say."
"Up your rectifier." Urushkidan was emptying his ash tray in search of
tobacco shreds.
The airlock clanged behind Dyann. "I'll be damned," murmured Ray. "She
really is going out after them."
"It is a good idea," said Urushkidan, a trifle more amiably. "Tey habe
sensed te radiations of our ship and are probably coming to crack it
open."
"Oh, well, if that's all--_Huh?_" Ray sprang to the nearest port and
looked out.
"Gannydragons," he groaned. "I thought they'd been exterminated."
"Tose two don't seem to know it," said Urushkidan uneasily. "All right,
I'll calculate your function for you."
* * * * *
There were two of the monsters moving toward the boat. They looked
like thirty feet of long-legged alligator, but the claws and beaks had
ripped metal in earlier days of colonization. Dyann lifted her rifle
and fired.
A dragon screamed, thin and faint in the wispy atmosphere, and turned
his head and snapped. Dyann laughed and bounded closer. Another shot
and another....
Something hit her and the gun flew from her hand. The dragon's tail
smote again and Dyann soared skyward. As she hit the ground the two
monsters leaped for her.
"Ha, Ormun!" she yelled, shaking her ringing head till the ruddy hair
flew within the helmet. She crouched low and then sprang.
Up--over the fanged head--striking down with her sword as she went by.
The monster whirled after her, greenish blood streaming from the cut
and freezing.
Dyann backed against a looming rock, spread her feet and lifted the
sword. The first dragon struck at her, mouth agape. Dyann hewed out
again, the sword a leaping blaze of steel, the blow smashing home and
exploding its force back into her own muscles. The dragon's head sprang
from the neck. She rolled under the lashing claws and tail to get free.
The headless body struck the other dragon which promptly began to fight
it.
Dyann circled warily about the struggle, breathing hard. The live
dragon trampled its opponent underfoot, looked around, and charged her.
The ground shuddered under its galloping mass. Dyann turned and fled.
The dragon roared hollowly as she went up the long slope of the
nearest hill. She saw a high crag and scrambled to its top, the dragon
rampaging below her.
"Nyaaah!" She thumbed her faceplate. "Come and get me."
The monster's dim brain finally decided that the ship was bigger and
easier prey. Turning, it lumbered down the hillside. Dyann launched
herself into the air and landed astride its neck.
The dragon hooted and snapped after her. She climbed higher, grabbed
its horn with one gauntleted hand, and hung on for her life. The steed
began to run.
Hoo, bang, away over the hills with the moonscape blurring in speed.
Wind shrieked thinly about Dyann's helmet. She bounced off her seat
and came down again, a landslide rumbled behind her. The dragon zoomed
up the ridge, leaped from a bluff, and started across the cratered
plain beyond. Dyann dragged at the horn, turning its head, fighting
the monster into a circular stampede. "Ha, Ormun!" she yelled. "Ha,
Kathantuma!"
In an hour or so the dragon stopped and stood gasping. Dyann slid
stiffly to the ground, whirled her sword over her head, and
decapitated the monster. Then she skipped home, laughing.
"Dyann!" cried Ray as she came through the airlock. "Dyann, we thought
you were dead--"
"Oh, it vas fun," she grinned. "Fix me a sandvich." She sat down, got
up rather quickly, and opened her arms to Ray. He retreated nervously
toward the lab. Urushkidan snickered and slammed the door in his face.
V
The eighty-six hour day of Ganymede drew to a close. Jupiter was at the
half now, a banded amber giant in a sky of thronging wintry stars. Ray
wiped his grimy hands and sighed.
"Done," he said, looking fondly at the haywired mess filling half
the lab and reaching back toward the engines. "We've done it--we've
conquered the stars."
"My little Earthlin is so clever," simpered Dyann.
"I am horribly afraid," said Urushkidan, "tat tis minor achievement
of mine will eclipse my true accomplishments in te popular mind. Oh,
well." He shrugged. "I can always use te money."
"Umm, yeah, I never thought of that," said Ray. "I'm safe enough
from Vanbrugh now--you don't arrest the man who's given Earth the
Galaxy--but by gosh, there's a fortune in this little gadget too."
"For me, of course, when I have patented it," said Urushkidan.
"What?" yelped Ray. "You--"
"Certainly. I inbented it, didn't I? I shall patent it too. Tell me,
should I charge an exorbitant royalty or would tere be more money in
mass sales at small price?"
"Look here," snarled Ray, "I happen to know how this thing is put
together too."
"Do you?" grinned Urushkidan nastily.
"Uh--" Ray looked at the jungle of apparatus and gulped. He had only a
few fragmentary drawings. By Einstein, he had no idea how the damned
thing worked.
"But we helped you," he protested feebly.
"When you pay your mules and cows, I may consider gibing you a small
percentage," said Urushkidan loftily.
"You've already got more money than you know what to do with, you
bloated capitalist. I happen to know you invested your Nobel Prize in
mortgages and then foreclosed."
"And why not? When te royalties on tis engine start coming in, and I
get my second Nobel Prise, maybe ten I can afford an occasional cigar.
You Earthlings neber reward genius. All tese years I'be had to smoke
tat foul pipe--And tat reminds me, we habe to test tis machine. Where
is te nearest tobaco store?"
Ray sighed and gave up. Martians had replaced Scotchmen in the lexicon
of thrift, but Urushkidan set some kind of new record.
He sat down in the pilot chair and started the atomic generator on
high level conversion. "I hope it works," he muttered nervously. His
fingers moved over the improvised control panel for the star drive.
"Hang on, folks, here goes nothing."
"Nothin," said Dyann after a long silence, "is correct."
"Oh, lord! What's the matter now?" Ray went back to the new engine. Its
circuits were alive, tubes glowed and indicators blinked, but the boat
sat stolidly where it was.
"I told you not to use tose approximations," said Urushkidan.
Ray fiddled with the main-drive settings. "It's like any other gadget,"
he complained. "You sweat yourself dry designing it from theory, and
then you have to tinker till it works."
He began changing the positions of resistors and condensers, cutting
sections out of the circuit to work on them. Urushkidan shredded a
piece of paper, wetted it, and tried to smoke it.
"Ray!" Dyann's voice came sharp and urgent from the forward cabin. "I
saw a rocket flare."
"Oh, no!" He sprang back to her and peered into the night sky. A long
trail of flame arced across it. And another, and another--
"The Jovians," he groaned. "They've found us."
"They may not see us," said Dyann hopefully.
"They have metal detectors. We're done for."
"Vell, ve can only die vunce. Kiss me, sveetheart." Dyann folded Ray
in one arm while the other reached for her sword.
The patrol rockets went over the horizon, braking, and swam back.
Blast-flames spattered off the valley floor and frozen-gas vapors
boiled furiously up toward mighty Jupiter.
The boat telescreen blinked its indicator light. Numbly, Ray tuned it
in. The lean hard face of Colonel Roshevsky-Feldkamp sprang into its
frame.
"Ah, there you are," said the Jovian.
"If we surrender," said Ray, "will you give us safe conduct back to
Earth?"
"Certainly not. But you may be allowed to live."
Urushkidan spoke from the lab. "Ballantyne, I tink te trouble lies in
tis square-wave generator. If we doubled te boltage--"
* * * * *
The first patrol ship sizzled to a landing. Roshevsky-Feldkamp leaned
forward till his face seemed to project from the screen and Ray had a
wild desire to punch its nose. "So you've been working on our project."
He said, "Well, so much the more labor spared us."
Dyann cut loose with a short-range blaster she had located somewhere on
the lab ship.
"Urushkidan will die before he surrenders to you," said Ray
belligerently.
"I will do noting of te sort," said the Martian. Experimentally, he cut
the square-wave generator back into the circuit and turned a dial.
The boat lifted off the ground.
"Hey, there," roared the colonel. "You can't do that!"
The Jovian soldiers who had been pouring from the grounded ship looked
stupidly upward.
"Shell them!" snapped the colonel.
Ray slammed the main star drive switch clear over.
There was no feeling of acceleration. They were suddenly floating
weightless and Jupiter whizzed past the forward port.
"Stop!" howled the Jovian.
The engine throbbed and sang, energy pulsing in great waves through
its shuddering substance. The stars crawled eerily across the ports.
"Aberration," gasped Ray. "We're approaching the speed of light."
Space swam and blazed with a million million suns. They bunched near
the forward port, thinning out toward the rear, as the ship added its
fantastic velocity vector to their light-rays. A distorted pale-green
globe grew rapidly before the vessel.
"Vat planet is that up ahead?" pointed Dyann.
"I think--" muttered Ray. He looked out the rearward port. "I think it
was Neptune."
"Triumph!" chortled Urushkidan, rubbing his tentacles together. "My
teory is confirmed. Not tat it needs confirmation, but now even an
Eartman can see tat I am always right. And oh, how tey'll habe to pay!"
The colors of the stars shifted toward blue in front and red behind.
Doppler effect, thought Ray wildly. He was probably seeing by radio
waves and gamma rays now. How fast were they going, anyway? He should
have thought to install some kind of speed gauge. Several times the
velocity of light at least.
"Ha, this is fun," laughed Dyann.
"Hmmm--we better stop while we can still see the Solar System," said
Ray, and cut the main drive.
The ship kept on going.
"Hey!" screamed the Earthling. "Stop! Whoa!"
"We can't stop," said Urushkidan coolly. "We're in a certain
pseudobelocity-state now. Te engine merely accelerates us."
"Well, how in hell do you brake?" groaned Ray.
"I don't know. We'll habe to figure tat out. I tought you knew tis
would happen."
"Now I do." Ray floated free of his chair, beating his forehead with
his fists. "I hope to heaven we can do it before the food runs out."
Dyann looked at Urushkidan speculatively. "If vorst comes to vorst,"
she murmured, "roast Martian--"
"Let's get busy," gasped Urushkidan.
* * * * *
It took a week to improvise a braking system. By that time they were no
longer very sure where they were.
"This is all my fault," said Dyann contritely. "If I had brought Ormun
along she vould have looked after us."
"One thing that worries me," said Ray, "is the Jovians. They aren't
fools, and they won't be sitting on their hands waiting for us to come
back and give the star drive to Earth."
"First," said Urushkidan snappishly, "tere is te problem of finding our
sun."
Ray looked out the port. The ship was braked and, in the normal
space-time state of matter, was floating amidst a wilderness of
unfamiliar constellations. "It shouldn't be too hard," he said
thoughtfully. "Look, there are the Magellanic Clouds, I think, and we
should be able to locate Rigel or some other bright star. That way we
can get a fix and locate ourselves relative to Sol."
"Tere are no astronomical tables aboard ship," pointed out Urushkidan,
"and I certainly don't clutter my brain wit mere numerical data."
"Vich star is Rigel?" asked Dyann.
"Why--uh--well--that one--no, it might be that one over there--or
perhaps--how should I know?" growled Ray.
"We will simply habe to go back te way we came, as nearly as we can
judge it," said Urushkidan.
"Maybe ve can find somevun who knows," suggested Dyann.
Ray thought of landing on a planet and asking a winged, three-headed
monster, "Pardon me, do you know which way Sol is?" To which the
monster would doubtless reply, "Sorry, I'm a stranger here myself." He
chuckled wryly. They'd encountered a difficulty which all the brave
futuristic stories about exploring the Galaxy seemed to have overlooked.
They had headed out in the ecliptic plane, very nearly on a line
joining the momentary positions of Jupiter and Neptune. That didn't
help much, though, in a boat never meant for interplanetary flight and
thus carrying only the ephemerides of the Jovian System. Presumably
they had gone in a straight line, so that one of the zodiacal
constellations was at their back and should still be recognizable,
but the high-velocity distortions of the outside view had precluded
anyone's noticing which stars had been where.
Ray floated over to the port and looked out at the eerie magnificence
of unknown space. "If I'd been a Boy Scout," he lamented, "I might
know the constellations. The thing to do is to head back toward any
one which looks halfway familiar, since that must be the one which was
at our stern. But I only know Orion and the Big Dipper." He looked at
Urushkidan with accusing eyes. "You're the great astrophysicist. Can't
you tell one star from another?"
"Certainly not," said the Martian huffily. "No astrophysicist eber
looks at de stars if he can help it."
"Oh, you want a con--con--star-picture?" asked Dyann innocently.
Ray said, "I mean one we know, as we see the stars from Sol, or from
Centauri. You're nice to look at, honey, but right now I can't help
wishing you Varannians were a little more intellectual."
"Oh, I know the stars," said Dyann. "Every noble learns them.
Let me see--" She floated around the chamber, from port to port,
staring out and muttering to herself. "Oh, yes. There is Kunatha the
Hunter-threatened-by-woman-devourin-monster. Not changed much."
"Huh?" Ray and Urushkidan pushed themselves over beside her. "By gosh,"
said the Earthling, "it does look like Virgo, I think, or one of 'em.
Dyann, I love you to pieces."
"Let's get home qvick, then," she beamed. "I vant to be on a planet."
During the outward flight she had been somewhat discomforted by
discovering the erotic importance of gravity.
"_You_ steer us home?" screeched Urushkidan. "How in Nebukadashatbu do
you know te stars?"
"I had to learn them," she said. "Every noble on Varann has to
know--vat you call it?--astroloyee. How else could ve plan our battles
visely?"
"Astrology?" screamed the Martian. "You are an--an--_astrologer_?"
"Vy, of course. I thought you vere too, but it seems like you Solarians
are more backvard than I supposed. Shall I cast your horoscope?"
"Astrology," groaned Urushkidan. He looked ill.
"Well," said Ray helplessly, "I guess it's up to you to pilot us back,
Dyann."
"Vy, sure." She jumped into the pilot seat. "Anchors aveigh."
"Brought home by an astrologer," groaned Urushkidan. "Te ignominy of it
all."
* * * * *
Ray started the new engine. They could accelerate all the way back and
use the brake to stop almost instantly--it shouldn't take long. "All
set," he called, and the rising note of power thrummed behind his words.
"Giddap!" yelled Dyann. She swung the ship around and slammed the main
drive switch home.
Ray looked out at the weirdly distorted heavens. "There should be some
way to compensate for that aberration," he murmured. "A viewplate
using photocells, with the electron beam control-fields hooked into
the drive circuit--sure. Simple." He floated back to the lab and
began assembling scattered apparatus. In a few hours he emerged
with a gadget as uncouth as the engine itself but there was a set
of three telescreens which gave clear views in three directions.
Dyann smiled and pointed to one of them. "See, now Avalla--the
Victorious-warrior-returnin-from-battle-vith-captive-man-slung-across-her-saddle-bow--is
taking shape," she said.
"That," said Ray, "is Ursa Major. You Varannians have a fantastic
imagination."
A blue-white giant of a sun flamed ahead, prominences seething millions
of miles into space. Dyann's eyes sparkled and she applied a sideways
vector to the star drive. "Yippee!" she howled.
"Hey!" screamed the Earthman.
They whizzed past the star, playing tag with the reaching flames while
Dyann roared out a Centaurian battle chant. Ray's subconscious mind
spewed forth every prayer he had even known.
"Okay, ve are past it," said Dyann.
"Don't do such things!" he said weakly.
"Darlin," said the girl, "I think we should spend our honeymoon flyin'
through space like this."
The stars blurred past. The Galaxy's conquerors looked at the splendor
of open space and ate cold beans out of a can.
"I think," said Dyann thoughtfully, "ve should go first to Varann."
"Alpha Centauri?" asked Urushkidan. "Nonsense. We are going back at
once to Uttu and cibilised society."
"Ve may need help at Sol," said the girl. "Ve have been gone--how
long--about two veeks? Much could have happened in that time."
"But--but--it's not practical," objected Ray.