II

The IP-M-122 picked them up. The M-122 got out there two days later, in

response to the calls the T-247 had sent out. As soon as she got within

ten million miles of the little tender, she began getting Cole's

signals, and within twelve hours had reached the tiny thing, located it,

and picked it up.

Captain Jim Warren was in command, one of the old school commanders of

the IP. He listened to Kendall's report, listened to Cole's tale--and

radioed back a report of his own. Space pirates in a large ship had

attacked the T-247, he said, and carried it away. He advised a close

watch. On Pluto, his investigations disclosed nothing more than the fact

that three mines had been raided, all platinum supplies taken, and the

records and machinery removed.

* * * * *

The M-122 was a fifty-man patrol cruiser, and Warren felt sure he could

handle the menace alone, and hung around for over two weeks looking for

it. He saw nothing, and no further reports came of attack. Again and

again, Kendall tried to convince him this ship he was hunting was no

mere space pirate, and again and again Warren grunted, and went on his

way. He would not send in any report Kendall made out, because to do so

would add his endorsement to that report. He would not take Kendall

back, though that was well within his authority.

In fact, it was a full month before Kendall again set foot on any of the

Minor Planets, and then it was Mars, the base of the M-122. Kendall and

Cole took passage immediately on an IP supply ship, and landed in New

York six days later. At once, Kendall headed for Commander McLaurin's

office. Buck Kendall, lieutenant of the IP, found he would have to make

regular application to see McLaurin through a dozen intermediate

officers.

By this time, Kendall was savagely determined to see McLaurin himself,

and see him in the least possible time. Cole, too, was beginning to

believe in Kendall's assertion of the stranger ship's extra-systemic

origin. As yet neither could understand the strange actions of the

machine, its attack on the Pluto mines, and the capture and theft of a

patrol ship.

"There is," said Kendall angrily, "just one way to see McLaurin and see

him quick. And, by God, I'm going to. Will you resign with me, Cole?

I'll see him within a week then, I'll bet."

For a minute, Cole hesitated. Then he shook hands with his friends.

"Today!" And that day it was. They resigned, together. Immediately, Buck

Kendall got the machinery in motion for an interview, working now from

the outside, pulling the strings with the weight of a hundred million

dollar fortune. Even the IP officers had to pay a bit of attention when

Bernard Kendall, multi-millionaire began talking and demanding things.

Within a week, Kendall _did_ see McLaurin.

At that time, McLaurin was fifty-three years old, his crisp hair still

black as space, with scarcely a touch of the gray that appears in his

more recent photographs. He stood six feet tall, a broad-shouldered,

powerful man, his face grave with lines of intelligence and character.

There was also a permanent narrowing of the eyes, from years under the

blazing sun of space. But most of all, while those years in space had

narrowed and set his eyes, they had not narrowed and set his mind. An

infinitely finer character than old Jim Warren, his experience in space

had taught him always to expect the unexpected, to understand the

incomprehensible as being part of the unknown and incalculable

properties of space and the worlds that swam in it. Besides the fine

technical education he had started with, he had acquired a liberal

education in mankind. When Buck Kendall, straight and powerful, came

into his office with Cole, he recognized in him a character that would

drive steadily and straight for its goal. Also, he recognized behind the

millionaire that had succeeded in pulling wires enough to see him, the

scientist who had had more than one paper published "in an amateur way."

"Dr. Bernard Kendall?" he asked, rising.

"Yes, sir. Late Buck Kendall, lieutenant of the IP. I quit and got Cole

here to quit with me, so we could see you."

"Unusual tactics. I've had several men join up to get an interview with

me." McLaurin smiled.

"Yes, I can imagine that, but we had to see you in a hurry. A hidebound

old rapscallion by the name of Jim Warren picked us up out by Pluto,

floating around in a six-man tender. We made some reports to him, but he

wouldn't believe, and he wouldn't send them through--so we had to send

ourselves through. Sir, this system is about to be attacked by some

extra-systemic race. The IP-T-247 was so attacked, her crew killed off,

and the ship itself carried away."

"I got the report Captain Jim Warren sent through, stating it was a gang

of space pirates. Now what makes you believe otherwise?"

"That ship that attacked us, attacked with a neutron gun, a gun that

shot neutrons through the hull of our ship as easily as protons pass

through open space. Those neutrons killed off four of the crew, and

spared us only because we happened to be behind the water tanks. Masses

of hydrogen will stop neutrons, so we lived, and escaped in the tender.

The little tender, lightless, escaped their observation, and we were

picked up. Now, when the 247 had been picked up, and locked into their

ship, that ship started accelerating. It accelerated so fast along my

line of sight that it just dwindled, and--vanished. It didn't vanish in

distance, it vanished _because it exceeded the speed of light_."

"Isn't that impossible?"

"Not at all. It can be done--if you can find some way of escaping from

this space to do it. Now if you could cut across through a higher

dimension, your _projection_ in this dimension might easily exceed the

speed of light. For instance, if I could cut directly through the Earth,

at a speed of one thousand miles an hour, my projection on the surface

would go twelve thousand miles while I was going eight. Similar, if you

could cut _through_ the four dimensional space instead of following its

surface, you'd attain a speed greater than light."

"Might it not still be a space pirate? That's a lot easier to believe,

even allowing your statement that he exceeded the speed of light."

"If you invented a neutron gun which could kill through tungsten walls

without injuring anything within, a system of accelerating a ship that

didn't affect the inhabitants of that ship, and a means of exceeding the

speed of light, all within a few months of each other, would you become

a pirate? I wouldn't, and I don't think any one else would. A pirate is

a man who seeks adventure and relief from work. Given a means of

exceeding the speed of light, I'd get all the adventure I wanted

investigating other planets. If I didn't have a cent before, I'd have

relief from work by selling it for a few hundred millions--and I'd sell

it mighty easily too, for an invention like that is worth an

incalculable sum. Tie to that the value of compensated acceleration, and

no man's going to turn pirate. He can make more millions selling his

inventions than he can make thousands turning pirate with them. So who'd

turn pirate?"

"Right." McLaurin nodded. "I see your point. Now before I'd accept your

statements _in re_ the 'speed of light' thing, I'd want opinions from

some IP physicists."

"Then let's have a conference, because something's got to be done soon.

I don't know why we haven't heard further from that fellow."

"Privately--we have," McLaurin said in a slightly worried tone. "He was

detected by the instruments of every IP observatory I suspect. We got

the reports but didn't know what to make of them. They indicated so many

funny things, they were sent in as accidental misreadings of the

instruments. But since _all_ the observatories reported them, similar

misreadings, at about the same times, that is with variations of only a

few hours, we thought something must have been up. The only thing was

the phenomena were reported progressively from Pluto to Neptune, clear

across the solar system, in a definite progression, but at a velocity of

crossing that didn't tie in with any conceivable force. They crossed

faster than the velocity of light. That ship must have spent about half

an hour off each planet before passing on to the next. And, accepting

your faster-than-light explanation, we can understand it."

"Then I think you have proof."

"If we have, what would you do about it?"

"Get to work on those 'misreadings' of the instruments for one thing,

and for a second, and more important, line every IP ship with paraffin

blocks six inches thick."

"Paraffin--why?"

"The easiest form of hydrogen to get. You can't use solid hydrogen,

because that melts too easily. Water can be turned into steam too

easily, and requires more work. Paraffin is a solid that's largely

hydrogen. That's what they've always used on neutrons since they

discovered them. Confine your paraffin between tungsten walls, and

you'll stop the secondary protons as well as the neutrons."

"Hmmm--I suppose so. How about seeing those physicists?"

"I'd like to see them today, sir. The sooner you get started on this

work, the better it will be for the IP."

"Having seen me, will you join up in the IP again?" asked McLaurin.

"No, sir, I don't think I will. I have another field you know, in which

I may be more useful. Cole here's a better technician than fighter--and

a darned good fighter, too--and I think that an inexperienced

space-captain is a lot less useful than a second-rate physicist at work

in a laboratory. If we hope to get anywhere, or for that matter, I

suspect, stay anywhere, we'll have to do a lot of research pretty

promptly."

"What's your explanation of that ship?"

"One of two things: an inventor of some other system trying out his

latest toy, or an expedition sent out by a planetary government for

exploration. I favor the latter for two reasons: that ship was _big_. No

inventor would build a thing that size, requiring a crew of several

hundred men to try out his invention. A government would build just

about that if they wanted to send out an expedition. If it were an

inventor, he'd be interested in meeting other people, to see what they

had in the way of science, and probably he'd want to do it in a

peaceable way. That fellow wasn't interested in peace, by any means. So

I think it's a government ship, and an unfriendly government. They sent

that ship out either for scientific research, for trade research and

exploration, or for acquisitive exploration. If they were out for

scientific research, they'd proceed as would the inventor, to establish

friendly communication. If they were out for trade, the same would

apply. If they were out for acquisitive exploration, they'd investigate

the planets, the sun, the people, only to the extent of learning how

best to overcome them. They'd want to get a sample of our people, and a

sample of our weapons. They'd want samples of our machinery, our

literature and our technology. That's exactly what that ship got.

"Somebody, somewhere out there in space, either doesn't like their home,

or wants more home. They've been out looking for one. I'll bet they sent

out hundreds of expeditions to thousands of nearby stars, gradually

going further and further, seeking a planetary system. This is probably

the one and only one they found. It's a good one too. It has planets at

all temperatures, of all sizes. It is a fairly compact one, it has a

stable sun that will last far longer than any race can hope to."

"Hmm--how can there be good and bad planetary systems?" asked McLaurin.

"I'd never thought of that."

Kendall laughed. "Mighty easy. How'd you like to live on a planet of a

Cepheid Variable? Pleasant situation, with the radiation flaring up and

down. How'd you like to live on a planet of Antares? That blasted sun

is so big, to have a comfortable planet you'd have to be at least ten

billion miles out. Then if you had an interplanetary commerce, you'd

have to struggle with orbits tens of billions of miles across instead of

mere millions. Further, you'd have a sun so blasted big, it would take

an impossible amount of energy to lift the ship up from one planet to

another. If your trip was, say, twenty billions of miles to the next

planet, you'd be fighting a gravity as bad as the solar gravity at Earth

here all the way--no decline with a little distance like that."

"H-m-m-m--quite true. Then I should say that Mira would take the prize.

It's a red giant, and it's an irregular variable. The sunlight there

would be as unstable as the weather in New England. It's almost as big

as Antares, and it won't hold still. Now that _would_ make a bad

planetary system."

"It would!" Kendall laughed. But as we know--he laughed too soon, and he

shouldn't have used the conditional. He should have said, "It does!"