Mac's face was tied into an amazed scowl, too, as he studied the
feeble little patterns on his wave analyzer. "You said it," he
breathed. "We've got ourselves a sweet little earth-type planet, if
we can believe the spectro, and unless I'm stark space-happy, there's
something or somebody down there beaming a broadcast smack in our
direction, following us around like the string on a yo-yo."
"How do you figure that?" Larson wanted to know.
Mac replied, "At this distance the field strength is too strong for
anything but a beamed transmission. Mister, _they have us bracketed_."
Mac swung to the panel on his left and cut in the communication
circuit. "It's strong enough to listen to, now. Let's see what kind of
gibberish we can wring out of that carrier wave."
He threw a couple of switches and hunted for the exact frequency. A
whisper and a rustle of the carrier brushed the speaker. Mac centered
in and turned up the volume.
Then even I sucked air. A voice issued from the sound-cone. A man's
voice: "--lcome to New Columbia. Welcome, _Albert E._ Come in, please.
Welcome to New Columbia. Welcome, _Albert E._ Come in please."
* * * * *
It repeated over and over. Larson let his breath go first with a
nervous snort. Mac and Larson both looked at me as if maybe I had
something to do with it. Hands trembling, Mac picked up the microphone
and reached for the transmitter switch. Larson grabbed the mike from
his hand. "Not so fast, dammit!"
"But they know we're up here," Mac protested. "They even know the name
of our ship!"
"And our language," I added. I wasn't bored any more.
Larson nodded slowly. "What kind of devilish intelligence have we run
into? I need time--to think."
The way he said it sent a cold draught down my spine, and then my
imagination started catching up to his. At our rate of approach to
the star system, how could any living being have had time to sense
our presence, pick our brains to learn our ship's name, our language,
master our method of communication, contrive a transmitter and get on
the air?
The magnitude of the accomplishment sent the importance of our little
triumph of space travel tumbling into a cocked limbo of insignificance.
For a moment I considered the old curvature of space concept. Could we
have somehow doubled back--completing a mystic circle? Was that old
Sol up there burning through our green shield? What a laugh that would
be! The mental giants of our times backtracking and circling like a
tenderfoot lost in the woods on Lake Minnetonka.
Mac cut off the transmitter reluctantly, but he said, "Yeah, I guess
I see what you mean, skipper." Larson got to his feet and paced the
crowded wedge of space, punching a fist into his other hand with meaty
slaps.
He stopped and listened to the soft muttering of the speaker and shook
his head. "It makes no sense. It's impossible. Utterly impossible!"
The man's voice from the planet implacably continued repeating the
message--no trace of an accent, nothing to suggest an alien origin in
its tone, pitch or enunciation.
Perhaps that's what threw Larson so hard. If there had been the
faintest taint of other worldliness about it, I think he'd have hauled
stakes and gotten us out of there. But the song of the siren was too
powerful--the irresistible mental image of a fellow human out here
in the bottom of space was salt in the bleeding wounds of Larson's
loneliness.
He stared out where the planet must be, some million miles before us.
Suddenly the tenseness relaxed from his face and he got the damndest
expression of mixed incredulity, hopefulness and sorrow. Tears began
welling from his eyes and streaming down the rugged contours of his
cheeks.
It didn't add. Nor could I reason a motive for his laconic command:
"Intersection orbit, Mr. Hulbert. We'll take her down," he said
quietly. That was all. He hunched over the control board and moved
things according to Mac's computations.
* * * * *
Soon I could make out the planet. We came in from an obtuse angle with
its sun, so it showed first as a crescent of pale, green silver. Then
it filled the viewing dome, and Mac began working the homing equipment.
"May I acknowledge their message now, skipper?"
Larson shook his head with compressed lips.
"But if we are going in anyway--" Mac argued.
"No!" Larson exploded. Then his voice softened. "I think I know the
mystery of the voice," he said. "It must be, it must be! But if it
isn't--if I'm wrong--God alone knows. We must chance it. I don't want
to know differently--until it's too late."
This was just real great. Larson had some fantastic notion, and he
wanted it to be true so damned badly that he was taking us into blind
jeopardy when we had the means to probe it first. Real scientific, that.
Humans! Men, and their so-called sense of reason! Larson was a crowning
example of the sloppy-hearted thing I was fleeing when I embarked on
this joy-ride, and now it would probably be my undoing.
We were homing in on the transmission from "New Columbia", easing down
into the atmosphere, and now clouds and land and water formations took
shape. The beam led us to the sunlit rim of dawn, and suddenly we
were hovering over a great forest, slit at intervals with streaks of
glittering blue that looked like deep, wide rivers.
Now Mac touched a switch, and the CW whistle gave us a tight audio beam
to follow to the source of the signal. Larson switched to the micro
landing controls to ride in like a jet liner on the Frisco-Shanghai
run. We slanted gently down until the forest became trees, and the
little blue-green splotches were lush, grassy meadows.
And there was the tower, and the low buildings--and the spaceship!
Something happened to me inside when I saw that. It was a kind of
tremolo feeling, like a note in a new symphony, a note that springs
free and alone, wavering uncertainly, and you don't know which way it
will turn.
In seconds that seemed like hours, we were on the ground, the ramp was
jammed out and Larson was blundering down it crying like a baby.
* * * * *
I stood in the port breathing the warm air redolent with exotic new
scents and yawped like an idiot, trying to make sense of the huge
banner strung a hundred yards across one whole side of the little
village. The banner read:
WELCOME, HANS! WELCOME
ALBERT E.
WE KNEW YOU WERE COMING,
SO--
And near the center of the banner was the largest chocolate cake, or
facsimile thereof, in all creation. It must have been ten feet high and
twenty feet in diameter.
But Hans Larson wasn't amused by the cosmic gag. He galloped off that
gang-plank like a love-sick gorilla. And I'm a comet's uncle if Tina
wasn't there, racing out to meet him, Larson had guessed the truth, and
no wonder he hadn't had the guts to test it beforehand!
By the time I got down, out and over to where they were all wrapped up
mingling tears, I had it pretty well doped out myself.
I don't know why we had figured that all progress and improvement in
interstellar flight would cease just because we had left earth. The
eternal, colossal conceit of men, I guess.
When our last signal back to earth had given the okay sign, sure, they
started building bigger ships and recruiting another crew. But by the
time that the _Albert E. II_, was ready to take off for a more extended
expedition, the _Larson Drive_ was now the _Larson-McKendrick Drive_,
with a velocity of a full half the speed of light, some five times our
velocity.
Somehow, Tina had managed to get herself in the party, as Hans had
sensed she would. And the time-differential, as it worked out, wasn't
serious at all. Tina had been only 32 when we left her on earth.
Including the year and a half she had already been with the colony on
New Columbia, she was still quite a bit younger than Hans, and just
twice as pretty as the day of their separation.
The tremolo note was rising now, the soft, mystic pitch of excitement
inherent in the new world.
I turned to Mac, who was grinning like to split his face. I said,
"Looks like you were wrong, old boy--about the impossibility of
colonizing."
He nodded his head readily, but he wouldn't tear his eyes away from
that monsterous, preposterous chocolate cake. The attraction, I
discovered, was a little bevy of on-lookers who stood at its base.
They were a dozen or more most attractive colonists in the younger
age-bracket and unmistakably of the opposite sex.
Mac said, "Yeah, I was wrong about colonizing prospects. Dead wrong.
Aren't you glad?"
And now the tremolo feeling split into a crescendo of sub-harmonics and
overtones, a magnificent chord of attunement with life and humanity
everywhere in the universe. And all at once I knew _I was glad_, happy
as hell to see these people from the old hometown of earth.