Chapter III

Down in the radio beam station, Wagner, Ward and a very unsteady Portiz surveyed each other in stunned dismay for about ten seconds.

Fred Ward was struggling to put into speech that which he felt within. Here was crisis. Here was an intermingling of human and mechanical failings which had built up almost to the point of nervous dissolution in the men concerned. Probably of secondary importance now was the fact that two terrestrial cruisers were nearing perihelion at the sun; they depended absolutely on the keyed radio wave which would leap across their trajectory and crackle in their attentive receivers. But that keying device was out of commission and in all that great bank of two hundred keyers there was not another silent. There was not another which they could safely adjust to the cruisers' course without imperiling the safety of some other craft.

Over in Pali-Vanyi proper were some of the greatest political minds of Earth and Venus, closeted within a great hall whose entrance was barred, whose televisorphonic connections were cut off. It would take at least fifteen minutes to gain access to that hall, once reached, and probably another ten minutes to evacuate the great hall and get them to a place of comparative safety.

Up above a great Martian destroyer was diving down into Venus' mists, doubtless riding the radio range beam straight down toward the port. Its objective was obvious: the convention hall.

The radio range beam transmitter could not be cut off since there were a dozen ships due to hit atmosphere within the next few minutes. Six of them had bucked a Perseid meteor shower coming out of Earth and were low on fuel; it was imperative that they follow the beam down to Pali-Vanyi for a one-try landing. The excessive consumption of fuel in an atmosphere was prohibitive of their cruising around until the destroyer could be apprehended by Patrol ships and driven away. The beam had to be maintained!

As for the human element, Portiz was scarcely able to stand; Wagner had a fine case of the jitters and could do little more than botch things up royally if he tried to tackle a complicated task; Ward had gone to bed after a sixteen hour shift, and after two hours of sleep plus a dosage of unadulterated Venusian atmospherics had been awakened and called back to the station.

The nervous tension was terrific. The three inarticulate men stood there while the seconds sped, Wagner staring around with desperation on his fat face, Silvy Ward clenching and unclenching his hands, Portiz leaning his drink-pliant body against the bank of keyers.

Suddenly Ward broke the silence.

"Wagner, get that trajectory keyer going. First check the interlock beam relay; the circuits seem to be okay, so it must be the relay. Portiz, get the portable glide beam transmitter unit and drive it out to the very base of the Hump on the eastern end of the field, and keep your receiver open on thirty-four megacycles; I'll give you directions from here. Come on, get going!"

Wherewith Ward spun around to the Pali-Vanyi radio range transmitter. There was a peculiar smile on his face as he released the controls on the goniometer unit which governs the direction of the signals by reducing or increasing the radio frequency in the four range radiators. They'll be on the beam, he thought; these Martian boys won't take any chances of missing on the first stab for it would take them so long to maneuver around for a second attempt that the element of surprise would be lacking and their prey would have gotten away. They'll ride the beam in from the west. When they get directly over the range station they'll get the vertical radio signal from the station location marker and know that the field lies ten miles to the east and Pali-Vanyi ten miles south of the field. Switching their course ninety degrees they'll drop in right over the city and let go with everything they've got.

They're probably on the beam now and four hundred miles to the west. They're due to hit the strato-winds which any astronaut knows will buck them around. The thunderheads will make their compass blotto so the only direction they can be sure of is due east on the beam. If we shift the beam slowly by rotating the goniometer counter-clockwise, the quadrants of the beam will be reversed. They'll swerve their course to follow, and gradually instead of getting the A signal to the south they'll be getting it from the east, and instead of an N from the north they'll have an N from the west. They'll come into Pali from the South--

* * * * *

The radio range at Pali-Vanyi resembled to a great extent the radio ranges used for centuries before by the Federal airways of the United States of America, Earth. The increasing use of ultra-high frequency waves had made obsolete the four towers of the intermediate frequency range. Small, compact, the new range system had through the long decades of scientific advancement after the war years of the 20th century reached a stage of efficiency a hundredfold greater than its predecessor.

A small antenna array atop the broadcast station consisting of four vertical radiators mounted at the terminals of a horizontal X replaced the towers of yesteryear. The four bars of the X pointed northeast, northwest, southwest and southeast.

The NW and SE radiators sent out a steady N (dash-dot) in Morse code, the SW and NE a steady A (dot-dash). At thirty second intervals the identification letters of Pali-Vanyi [dot-dash-dash-dot dot-dot-dot-dash] were transmitted from all radiators. A ship coming in from the west, directly on course, heard both N and A simultaneously and with equal strength so that they interlocked and formed a steady dash. A swerve to the north of the course meant that the N signal would be predominant in the ship's receiver; to the south, that the A would be predominant. Rotating the goniometer counter-clockwise would so change the radio frequency in the four signal radiators as to cause all on-course signals to swing similarly, and ships on the beam would follow it blindly around, especially when their compasses were put awry by natural causes. A 90 degrees swing would completely reverse the so-called N and A quadrants; hence the beam would completely lie. WHAT would the destroyer's speed be? Probably twelve or fourteen hundred m.p.h. Twenty minutes or less to swing the beam. With one hand Silvy Ward began to rotate the goniometer, casting an eye at a nearby chronometer. Ninety degrees, say, in eighteen minutes. Five degrees per minute. Easy now! With a free hand Ward reached out and snapped on the shortwave transceiver which was used in communications when testing experimental equipment. He picked up the microphone and called:

"Portiz, are you in position?"

"Yes, sir!" the answer came promptly.

"Directions, pal. Cut in the glide path transmitter now and stick with it until further instructions so that nothing goes wrong."

"Yes, sir. But what's the idea, Silvy?"

"No time to explain now, Portiz! I've work to do!"

Ward snapped off, and immediately reached out for the televisorphone. He dialed Public Service and asked for his good friend Duka Dwane, Venusian utility magnate.

"Duka," he barked after credentialling his way past a Mr. Dwane's-in-conference operator, "this is Silvy Ward of the Authority. There's a Martian destroyer coming in with obvious intentions of bombing Pali. I want you to black out the city immediately."

"But, Silvy, think of the convention," Dwane protested. "I had to give them special fluorescent lighting; they'll be angry if I cut them off!"

"If you don't cut them off this time they'll never be cut off again. Kick that master switch over pronto. The Authority will take all responsibility!"

"Okay," lisped Dwane. "Okay, _sharnar_!"

Ward cut off wondering if that "_sharnar_" had meant "friend" or "bigshot"; it meant one thing in Pali and another in Vanyi, the city across the "tracks".

Four minutes gone. Twenty degrees. The destroyer should be almost west-south-west now.

"Wagner," Ward barked. "How are you coming?"

"It's the relay, right enough. I should have it clicking in a few mins."

"You've about twenty, so do it right! Buzz Control and tell them that we're going to cut off the landing beams on the south of the field and for them to light up all the eastern boundary lights."

"Yes, sir."

Six minutes gone. Thirty degrees.