By ALFRED COPPEL, JR.
A bunch of kids in bright new uniforms,
transiting the constellations in a disreputable
old bucket of a space-ship--why should the
leathery-tentacled, chlorine-breathing
Eridans take them seriously?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1949.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
HQ TELWING CSN 30 JAN 27 TO CMDR DAVID FARRAGUT STRYKALSKI VII CO
TRS CLEOPATRA FLEET BASE CANALOPOLIS MARS STOP SUBJECT ORDERS STOP
ROUTE LUNA PHOBOS SYRTIS MAJOR TRANSSENDERS PRIORITY AAA STOP
MESSAGE FOLLOWS STOP TRS CLEOPATRA AND ALL ATTACHED AND OR ASSIGNED
PERSONNEL HEREBY RELIEVED ASSIGNMENT AND DUTY INNER PLANET PATROL
GROUP STOP ASSIGNED TEMP DUTY BUREAU RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STOP
SUBJECT VESSEL WILL PROCEED WITHOUT DELAY FLEET EXPERIMENTAL
SUBSTATION PROVING GROUNDS TETHYS SATURNIAN GROUP STOP CO WILL
REPORT UPON ARRIVAL TO CAPT IVY HENDRICKS ENGINEERING OFFICER
PROJECT WARP STOP SIGNED H. GORMAN SPACE ADMIRAL COMMANDING STOP
END MESSAGE END MESSAGE END MESSAGE.
"Amen! Amen! Amen! Stop." Commander Strykalski smoothed out the
wrinkled flimsy by spreading it carefully on the wet bar.
Coburn Whitley, the T.R.S. _Cleopatra's_ Executive, set down his
Martini and leaned over very slowly to give the paper a microscopic
examination in the mellow light.
"Maybe," he began hopefully, "It could be a forgery?"
Strike shook his head.
Lieutenant Whitley looked crestfallen. "Then perhaps old Brass-bottom
Gorman means some other guy named Strykalski?" To Cob, eight Martinis
made anything possible.
"Could there be two Strykalskis?" demanded the owner of the name under
discussion.
"No." Whitley sighed unhappily. "And there's only one Tellurian Rocket
Ship _Cleopatra_ in the Combined Solarian Navies, bless her little iron
rump! Gorman means us. And I think we've been had, that's what I think!"
"Tethys isn't so bad," protested Strike.
Cob raised a hand to his eyes as though to blot out the sight of that
distant moonlet. "Not so bad, he says! All you care about is seeing Ivy
Hendricks again, I know you! Tethys!"
Strike made a passing effort to look stern and failed. "You mean
_Captain_ Hendricks, don't you, Mister Whitley? Captain Hendricks of
Project Warp?"
Cob made a sour face. "Project Warp, yet! Sounds like a dog barking!"
He growled deep in his throat and barked once or twice experimentally.
The officer's club was silent, and a silver-braided Commodore sitting
nearby scowled at Whitley. The Lieutenant subsided with a final small,
"Warp!"
An imported Venusian quartet began to play softly. Strike ordered
another round of drinks from the red-skinned Martian tending bar and
turned on his stool to survey the small dance floor. The music and the
subdued lights made him think of Ivy Hendricks. He really wanted to see
her again. It had been a long time since that memorable flight when
they had worked together to pull Admiral Gorman's flagship _Atropos_
out of a tight spot on a perihelion run. Ivy was good to work with ...
good to be around.
But there was apparently more to this transfer than just Ivy pulling
wires to see him again. Things were tense in the System since Probe
Fleet skeeterboats had discovered a race of group-minded, non-human
intelligences on the planets of 40 Eridani C. They lived in frozen
worlds that were untenable for humans. And they were apparently all
parts of a single entity that never left the home globe ... a thing no
human had seen. The group-mind. They were rabidly isolationist and they
had refused any commerce with the Solar Combine.
Only CSN Intelligence knew that the Eridans were warlike ... and that
they were strongly suspected of having interstellar flight....
So, reflected Strike, the transfer of the _Cleopatra_ to Tethys for
work under the Bureau of Research and Development meant innovations
and tests. And Commander Strykalski was concerned. The beloved Old
Aphrodisiac didn't take kindly to innovations. At least she never had
before, and Strike could see no reason to suppose the cantankerous
monitor would have changed her disposition.
"There's Celia!" Cob Whitley was waving toward the dance floor.
Celia Graham, trim in her Ensign's greys, was making her way through
the crowd of dancers. Celia was the _Cleopatra's_ Radar Officer, and
like all the rest, bound with chains of affection to the cranky old
warship. The _Cleopatra's_ crew was a unit ... a team in the true sense
of the word. They served in her because they wanted to ... would serve
in no other. That's the way Strike ran his crew, and that's the way the
crew ran Lover-Girl. Old Aphrodisiac's family was a select community.
There was a handsome Martian Naval Lieutenant with Celia, but when she
saw the thoughtful expression on her Captain's face, she dismissed him
peremptorily. Here was something, apparently, of a family matter.
"Well, I can't see anything to worry about, Skipper," she said when he
had explained. "I should think you'd be glad of a chance to see Ivy
again."
Cob Whitley leaned precariously forward on his bar-stool to wag a
finger under Celia's pretty nose. "But he doesn't know what Captain
Hendricks has cooked up for Lover-Girl, and you know the old carp likes
to be treated with respect." He affected a very knowing expression.
"Besides, we shouldn't be gallivanting around testing Ivy's electronic
eyelash-curlers when the Eridans are likely to be swooshing around old
Sol any day!"
"Cob, you're drunk!" snapped Celia.
"I am at that," mused Whitley with a foolish grin. "And I'd better
enjoy it. There'll be no Martinis on Tethys, that's for sure! This
cruise is going to interfere with my research on ancient twentieth
century potables..."
Strike heaved his lanky frame upright. "Well, I suppose we'd better
call the crew in." He turned to Cob. "Who is Officer of the Deck
tonight?"
"Bayne."
"Celia, you'd better go relieve him. He'll have to work all night to
get us an orbit plotted."
"Will do, Skipper," Celia Graham left.
"Cob, you'd better turn in. Get some sleep. But have the NPs round up
the crew. If any of them are in the brig, let me know. I'll be on the
bridge."
"What time do you want to lift ship?"
"0900 hours."
"Right." Cob took a last loving look around the comfortable officer's
club and heaved a heavy sigh. "Tethys, here comes Lover-Girl. It's
going to be a long, long cruise, Captain."
How long, he couldn't have known ... then.
* * * * *
The flight out was uneventful. Uneventful, that is for the T.R.S.
_Cleopatra_. Only one tube-liner burned through, and only six hours
wasted in nauseous free-fall.
Lover-Girl wormed her way through the asteroid belt, passed within a
million miles of Jupiter and settled comfortably down on the airless
field next to the glass-steel dome of the Experimental Substation on
Tethys. But her satisfied repose was interrupted almost before it was
begun. Swarms of techmen seemed to burst from the dome and take her
over. Welders and physicists, naval architects and shipfitters, all
armed with voluminous blueprints and atomic torches set to work on
her even before her tubes had cooled. Power lines were crossed and
re-crossed, shunted and spliced. Weird screen-like appendages were
welded to her bow and stern. Workmen and engineers stomped through her
companionways, bawling incomprehensible orders. And her crew watched in
mute dismay. They had nothing to say about it...
* * * * *
Ivy Hendricks rose from her desk as Strike came into her Engineering
Office. There was a smile on her face as she extended her hand.
"It's good to see you again, Strike."
Strykalski studied her. Yes, she hadn't changed. She was still the Ivy
Hendricks he remembered. She was still calm, still lovely, and still
very, very competent.
"I've missed you, Ivy." Strike wasn't just being polite, either. Then
he grinned. "Lover-Girl's missed you, too. There never has been an
Engineering Officer that could get the performance out of her cranky
hulk the way you used to!"
"It's a good thing," returned Ivy, still smiling, "that I'll be back at
my old job for a while, then."
Strykalski raised his eyebrows inquisitively. Before Ivy could explain,
Cob and Celia Graham burst noisily into the room and the greetings
began again. Ivy, as a former member of the _Cleopatra's_ crew, was one
of the family.
"Now, what I would like to know," Cob demanded when the small talk had
been disposed of, "is what's with this 'Project Warp'? What are you
planning for Lover-Girl? Your techmen are tearing into her like she was
a twenty-day leave!"
"And why was the _Cleopatra_ chosen?" added Celia curiously.
"Well, I'll make it short," Ivy said. "We're going to make a hyper-ship
out of her."
"Hyper-ship?" Cob was perplexed.
Ivy Hendricks nodded. "We've stumbled on a laboratory effect that
warps space. We plan to reproduce it in portable form on the
_Cleopatra_ ... king size. She'll be able to take us through the
hyper-spatial barrier."
"Golly!" Celia Graham was wide-eyed. "I always thought of hyperspace as
a ... well, sort of an abstraction."
"That's been the view up to now. We all shared it here, too, until
we set up this screen system and things began to disappear when they
got into the warped field. Then we rigged a remote control and set up
telecameras in the warp...." Ivy's face sobered. "We got plates of
star-fields ... star-fields that were utterly different and ... and
_alien_. It seems that there's at least one other space interlocked and
co-existent with ours. When we realized that we decided to send a ship
through. I sent a UV teletype to Admiral Gorman at Luna Base ... and
here you are."
"Why us?" Cob asked thoughtfully.
"I'll answer that," offered Strike, "Lover-Girl's a surge circuit
monitor, and it's a safe bet this operation takes plenty of power." He
looked over to Ivy. "Am I right?"
"Right on the nose, Strike," she returned. Then she broke into a wide
smile. "Besides, I wouldn't want to enter an alien cosmos with anyone
but Lover-Girl's family. It wouldn't be right."
"Golly!" said Celia Graham again. "Alien cosmos ... it sounds so creepy
when you say it that way."
"You could call it other things, if you should happen to prefer them,"
Ivy Hendricks said, "Subspace ... another plane of existence. I...."
She never finished her sentence. The door burst open and a
Communications yeoman came breathlessly into the office. From the
ante-room came the sound of an Ultra Wave teletype clattering
imperiously ... almost frantically.
"Captain Hendricks!" cried the man excitedly, "A message is coming
through from the Proxima transsender ... they're under attack!"