"Right," snapped the Guardsman.
Morgan grabbed for his guns and the cabin of the small craft was filled
with the _crack-crack_ of swift gun fire. Morgan fired once; Jeffries
twice. Black Morgan missed, but Jeffries' first shot shattered the
pirate's right wrist. The other gun dropped out of his hand from shock,
and Jeffries strode up and covered the beaten pirate.
Jeffries did not return to his ship, but he took over the pirate's
small craft and drove it to Terra. He handed the pirate over to Captain
Edwards with a smile.
"This is he," he grunted. "And now what?"
"You've won," smiled Edwards. His pleasure was honest. "If he's Black
Morgan, you've won, and we can easily hush up any trouble. But can you
prove it?"
"Sure," grinned Jeffries. "Cell him, and then come up to training
school on the roof. This takes demonstration."
"O.K.," smiled Edwards. "It's your show."
* * * * *
Jeffries faced the group of experts, scientists, and police officials.
At one side of him was the mock-up of the celestial globe used in
training rookie spacemen. On the table beside him was a pile of
equipment.
"This," he said, holding up the equipment, "is familiar. It is a small
detector-pulse receiver. It is coupled with an attenuator and a
variable delay line, and a minute re-transmitter. The celestial globe
will show a target approaching the ship at a velocity exceeding the
speed of light, and will match the ship's acceleration, velocity, and
course in microseconds."
He started his equipment, and across the celestial globe in three
distant flashes came a flitting target, to stop short of the ship's
spotter in the center of the globe. From the other detecting equipment
came indications and presentations as to type of drive, size of ship,
and wave bands of the other ship's radiation.
Jeffries laughed, turning off his equipment. "When equipment is very
sensitive, in order to collect information from great distances, a
rather minute transmitter can produce a heavy target," he said. "Now,
above the dome of the building--watch!"
He turned a square box at the sky and set it going. Black Morgan's
ship came swooping down, to stand above the observation dome of the
building, its rifles trained on the men inside. Jeffries turned dials
and the turret turned slowly. He manipulated another dial and the big
ship turned to face away. Then it receded and was gone in a twinkling
of an eye.
"Three-dimensional projector," he growled. "Just what they were using
for moving pictures for a hundred years. And there's your answer!"
Captain Edwards stood up and nodded. "But look," he said. "How did the
contact come?"
"Contact?" gritted Jeffries angrily. "The louse! He took off in a suit
as the ship lifted from the port, and clung to it with his magnetics
like a flea on a dog until he had a chance to do his job at high
velocity. Then he would drop off and radio-control his own ship which
was running free a few million miles behind, and destined to come
within a few million miles of his position. It was set to about match
his speed, and then at that velocity, to circle and spiral until it was
within his range. There was no one aboard it, and so he could cram on
gravities until it creaked. I swear it had on sixty gravities."
"But you--?"
"Remember, my hobby is photography. Photography itself is a matter
of fantastic illusion. Your eyes, fallible as any sense, view a
collection of light rays in a certain pattern and your brain says it is
Uncle Julius. Iconography, when enlarged to life-size, can produce a
solid image that from a distance can be mistaken. Iconocinematography
does not produce a solid image but establishes a radiating point for
heterodyned light, producing an apparent image that the real thing can
go up and shake hands with--providing his timing is good, for the image
is unreal.
"So there's Black Morgan. Since he could not exist in fact, he did
exist in the interpretation of incomplete data. Any man can fudge a
detector by supplying false echoes from a delayed transponder. Anybody
can project a super image of a spacecraft by iconocinematography. And
a spacesuit is capable of considerable motion of its own, plus the
ability to cling like a leech to the hull of a ship under acceleration.
"At first I was a bit concerned about the effect of attacking an armed
ship with an icono image--but I discovered that Black Morgan's real
ship was as unarmed as any commerce vessel. He was the real fantasy!"
Captain Edwards smiled. "A good man, Jeffries," he said to his
superiors. "And a good big man can still take a good little man's
tricks and turn them against him!"
And Lieutenant Jeffries took a deep breath. "Now, sir," he said. "About
that vacation--?"