Chapter II

In old-fashioned black letters, the legend on the thick metalo glass door said OFFICE OF THE ADMIRALTY, SPACE ARM. Cragin swung past it as though it had said Control Room and an officer of the day clad in an Earth Headquarters uniform told him that an Admiral Kirkholland would see him immediately.

Kirkholland's name was on the next door, and under it in smaller letters the single word, "Intelligence." What the hell, Cragin mused, why argue.

"At ease lieutenant. Sit down, cigarette?" Big, thought Cragin. Tough old bird, red faced, cropped white hair, chief pilot's rockets pinned to the plain front of his tunic. Cragin wondered how long he'd been flying the eight-foot plastaloy desk.

He accepted the cigarette and sat.

"More time we save the better, Cragin. Here it is. You were recalled because your records show you know your way around in Deep Space better than anybody in the whole Arm. HQ figured it'd be a better bet for this job to rely on what Intelligence training a regular Patrol officer gets than to try teaching a specialized Intelligence officer how to handle himself out where only yourself and Lin Griffin have ever flown and gotten back to tell about it. Except that so far, you're the only one who's told anything."

"Not sure I follow that all, sir. I take it Miss Griffin--"

"She's getting along all right. Ready to leave the station hospital in a day or two. Only she won't talk. Just mumbled something about an Ecliptic X when she finally started coming around, cried a little, and then shut up tight. Doctor says it's extreme shock. I don't think so. You can't do reams of mathematics that nobody else can make head or tail of when you're suffering shock. She not only won't talk, but after she finishes each sheet of calculations, she tosses it in the bedside incinerator tube. So I'm making guesses."

Cragin let a little smoke dribble from his nostrils and tried reading Kirkholland's penetrating look.

"The market, sir? There wasn't a gram of water crystal in her ship when--"

"The report's been read phonic by phonic, Cragin. We've had the market pretty well under our thumbs up to now, and we can't go taking any chances. Setting up clay pigeons to lull us into a false sense of security is as old as the Martian ridges but it's worth thinking about if they've found a way to operate outside the Barrier."

"What about the flight plan she and her father had to file, sir?"

"In order, of course. Maybe just a clever part of the scheme. And who would suspect a man of Griffin's caliber and position?"

"I see. She's a definite suspect, then, and--"

"Can't say that. Officially. But because of the circumstances surrounding her return, she's certainly subject to observation."

"My job."

"You've been cleared by HQ, and put on carte blanche answerable to myself only and to the President. As soon as you go out that door, you're on the job. And remember we're not interested in her any further than to whom she leads us. This," Kirkholland handed him a small, smooth, slate-colored rectangle of enamelite with the insigne of Space Intelligence atomically engraved through its molecular structure, "will take care of anything you need at any time from any department of the government and of course from any private citizen."

Cragin recognized and accepted it. He knew that it had been activated to his own unique neurophysical vibration specie, taken of course from his personal record. Within moments it would turn glittering white, and only as long as it was white would it be valid. Taken from him or lost, it would revert to the gray color and belie its bearer as either a chance finder or an imposter.

"Good luck. And I repeat, if we're right, it's to whom she leads us that I want brought in. Now blast off, lieutenant."

"A-blast she sails, sir."

Something new, anyway. Not exactly new, but it could mean tight-roping beyond the Barrier again. Cragin's pulse picked up a beat. Routine as hell of course. Take a week, maybe ten days. But it was something he hadn't tried before. Until he had it all under wraps, it could be interesting.

* * * * *

He had almost lost her in the sudden sand flurry, but it wouldn't have mattered because he knew now where she was headed. He hoisted the aircar a thousand feet and slacked throttle.

"Security channel 12 open. Central Port please ack."

"CP go ahead 12."

"This is Cragin on CB-42-SMBB. Check please and know me by this."

"Clear CB we know you."

"Is that custom job registered under Griffin still in your park?"

"Registered all right and primed to the forejets for a big ride if you ask me. Orders?"

"Whack up her radar, but not with an axe. And warm me up an SP-15 if you've got one, with a ten comp bank. Soup the drive and gun circuits. Want a duplicate of her flight plan. That's all and beam me when she blasts."

"When she blasts."

Then it was just a matter of sweating her out. Once Lin Griffin took her trim craft into Space it would be routine, if her bosses, if she were actually heading for any, didn't risk a track beam on her. If they did and picked him up at the same time, they'd need faster guns than he had.

The SP-15 looked brand new, and Cragin had little more than buttoned her up when flight control beamed him. He kept the Griffin ship tracked for a full minute, let it cut the edge of the Mars ecliptic before he cut in his own drive. She was giving Pluto her starboard when he decided on a comfortable watch dog position, and she was headed for the nearest Barrier co-ordinate within an hour afterward. Just as though, Cragin thought, somebody had written the whole script out for both of them, and all they had to do was say their lines and pretty soon the whole thing would be over.

He checked the gun circuits, tried the detectors for a track, jacked in the comptometer bank. One began to hum a little and it took him off guard; he hadn't expected it this soon. She had picked up speed and was going like hell even for a Barrier-bust. But he was certain she hadn't spotted him, and he was flying in her blind spot to keep out of her electroscopes. Sooner or later she'd check in her radar proximity beams and when they didn't work--If she were as smart as she looked she'd be swinging her electroscope lenses all over the sky.

Her Starwasp took the Barrier-bust as though it were just so much Space between Earth and Moon, and Cragin straightened a little in his cushioned acceleration seat. He threw a track of his own on her, got an echo measure on it and entered it as a constant into the comp bank, knocking out the variable that had represented his own control-error margin. It was the only way he'd be sure to keep her. But if she made a mistake or her own comps broke down, they'd both fall off the tight rope.

Three cut in and began whining. Cragin tried a speed check; they'd passed light-speed, and there was no more danger of her catching him in her electroscopes. The velocity needle began wider oscillations, and the hum from Four verified it ... the critical speed changes were getting trickier. Twenty minutes ticked off, and Cragin knew they were further out than when he'd picked her up two weeks ago. Light-speed trebled.

Back to double. Now times twelve.

Six was screaming. Seven started humming, and Cragin felt his clothes beginning to stick to his back. By himself, he'd never had more than seven comps to fly on, and had never taken the risk of flying past breakdown. That was suicide. The SP-15 had been fitted with ten as he had ordered. According to the books, if you tried to use more than that, the circuits in One would burn up. Nobody, except Fowler Griffin and his daughter, had ever tried past seven except himself. The risk wasn't worth what you got out of it, and listening to a bunch of comps getting ready to blow themselves to hell didn't net you anything but a bad heart.

Eight came on. One began to glow. Cragin knew he either had to break communications silence or kick himself clear into eternity.

His thumb slipped on the mike switch.

His fingers felt like wet sticks, and the mike was cold and greasy to his touch.

"Calling you Starwasp calling you. This is Cragin, Space Intelligence on a CB. On your track at 900,000 your six o'clock level. Let me hear you, Miss Griffin."

There wasn't any answer and he tried again. Nine was humming. "I've orders to burn you up if you refuse to acknowledge. Ack please." He tried to keep his voice flat and machine-like so he wouldn't give himself away, but he sounded like an hysterical schoolgirl compared to the voice that answered him. It was that of a woman; a woman who might have died and shriveled in the deserts a hundred years ago.

* * * * *

"Follow me, Patrolman, if you have the courage. Turn back if you'd rather be safe to choke your life away on the sterile place you call home. There's a lot of room beyond the Barrier, but little for men who worship merely their own perfection and stay blind to problems which they cannot solve. Or go ahead and burn me up if you think it will be of some help to you."

"Starwasp!" He felt like a rank recruit. But Nine was beginning to shrill. She was goading him, challenging his courage, daring him to burn her when she knew that by so doing he'd defeat his own purpose. "You contraband? I'll give you ten seconds to answer." He was being ridiculous; had mishandled the whole thing. What the hell was the matter with him? She was stalling him, making a fool of him, until his comptometers couldn't take it any more.

"There is more that is contraband where I'm going than you dream of."

"Where you bound?"

"The X ecliptic. Before he died, Fowler Griffin found it. He found the single machine-planet that circles within it. I expect to join him there."

"Miss Griffin...."

"I've told you enough. Among the people of Earth there's too much apathy already; my story would only make it worse. Follow me if you want to, burn me up or turn back otherwise. But make up your mind."

"It's made up!" Cragin barked back. "I--" He wondered what she meant by the machine-planet and by the X ecliptic. That was what Kirkholland had said something about. And he wondered about the other things she said. Earth was a sterile place....

"Since I only have ten comptometers, I--"

"That's all I have," came back.

And, in the last analysis, he would be safe just to choke his life away....

"My ten is beginning to hum already--"

"So is mine."

And maybe the people of Earth were stuck on themselves just a little....

"OK, I'll follow."

"You'll have to now."

And they were apathetic, just sitting back, waiting, telling themselves that all had been done that was possible to do. Because they had done it.

"Velocity needle's going crazy--"

She didn't answer again, and Ten was screaming so he couldn't have heard her if she had. Maybe two minutes until it broke up in his face.

The needle went wild. It hit--_just where the original Griffin flight plan had ended--light-speed squared_! And then it fell off. And Ten cut out, and so did Nine, Eight, Seven ... Six--Five. Four hummed evenly. And Cragin knew that he'd never forget that impossible series of critical speeds for what remained of his life. Wherever they were, it was within seconds of the absolute ... a second Barrier, Cragin thought, which existed simply because men didn't know how to devise a way to go any further. But--

"You're in X ecliptic now," Lin Griffin's voice told him. But it was a different voice than it had been before. There was something new in it. Something Cragin couldn't find a word for. "Within it, you'll find flight conditions very similar to those of ordinary Deep Space. In a few minutes, you'll be able to pick up the machine-planet in your electroscopes. That's where we're going. Unless you want to turn back. You can, now that you know how the warp pattern works."

"Trying to shake me?" His hands weren't slippery any more. "I won't shake. You're taking me straight to the boss or I'm placing you under arrest. I remind you that the Patrol's jurisdiction extends to wherever in Space one of its ships may fly. Acknowledge please."

He felt a sudden, uncomfortable warmth in his cheeks when she laughed. It was a light, almost merry thing. She was doing it again!

"Wherever I am, I rule, is that it?"

"In effect, yes. And--"

"There is no head man, no leader of a giant smuggling ring where I'm going, Patrolman. Just--" Her voice tapered off; the laugh was gone. "I will be easy to follow," she said.

The planet toward which they flew--Cragin could see it easily now in the electroscopes, although he could see no other and the 'scope seemed to draw what stars there were no nearer--was hardly half the size of the moon of earth. It glowed, somehow, radiating a pale phosphorescence of its own, and its surface seemed entirely without configuration. Completely smooth, unmarked even by stray chunks of hurtling cosmic waste. It was in a definite orbit, yet around--nothing. It circled in an ecliptic described in three dimensions; they were no longer flying a tight-rope, and the comps were quiet. Yet it was an ecliptic that men had never found. Except for Fowler Griffin. As though reading his thoughts, his daughter spoke.

"You wonder where its center is. It has a center. What did you say your name was? Cragin. It has a center, Cragin. Around which it has revolved for untold millenia. Only by accident, while he was searching for an almost negligible mass error in one of his computations, did my father discover that this ecliptic must exist, and must contain at least one revolving body. He found it. He determined its orbit. He found that the solar system itself is the center of the machine-planet's orbit. It has neither aphelion nor perihelion, nor does its ecliptic ever shift. It is always perfect."

"I could almost believe you lady if you told me somebody had made it. But you'll never--"

"Somebody did."

"You mean your father--"

"My father discovered its presence, Cragin. I helped him with the latter stages of his calculations; accompanied him out here. He discovered its presence and he discovered its function. And they--"

"Function? You mean it's a mine of some sort? Water crystal?"

"No, Cragin. It wasn't built to serve men. It rules them. For want of a better term, call it a control point. Because the machine-planet has absolute control over the axial rotation and orbital revolution of every planet in the solar system; over the heat emitted from its sun; over the physical laws which are peculiar to each of its planets. Father was trying to learn how to use it. He thought if he could discover how it worked he could readjust Earth, replenish the sun, remake--"

"I don't believe you, Lin Griffin. It's a ruse--"

"I will show you the mark where he died. They killed him, and let me go, half-crazed as I was, to keep men forever in fear of passing through the Barrier. I think they underestimate us psychologically, and that is why--"

"They? Who?" Cragin cut in, disbelief still welling in his brain, edging the tone of his voice.

"The--Owners, I call them, Cragin. They told us they own the universe."