Chapter VII

Regin Naylo faced his superior with a scowl. "That rips it wide open," he said.

Viggon Sarri smiled confidently. He glanced at Linus Brein and asked, "Just how competent do you think this new thing is?"

Linus shrugged. "We've analyzed the infrawave pattern they've developed. It is obvious that this is their first prototype of an infrawave space detector. The pattern is of the primitive absorptive type, which is both inefficient as a detector and is also inclined to produce spurious responses. From our observations, their equipment must be extremely complex too. It must be loaded to the scuppers with fragile circuits and components, because the search pattern keeps breaking down, or becoming irregular. An efficient detector cannot be made of the infrawave bands until the third order of reflective response is discovered. I doubt that any research team, no matter how big, can start with the primitive absorption phase of the infrawaves and leap to the higher orders of infrawave radiation in less than a lifetime of study."

"So, gentlemen?" asked Viggon of his two aides. "Can you predict whether or not their new detector will deliver the goods?"

All looked expectantly at Linus Brein.

"We've been recalculating our probabilities at the introduction of each new phase of their behaviour," Linus Brein said seriously. "From their actions, I would say that they do not know, grasp, or perhaps even guess that space has flaws and warps in the continuum. They have been going at their search in a pattern of solid geometrical precision, but have been paying no attention to those rifts, small as they are, that actually make a straight course bend aside for a distance. So due to the fact that their search pattern has already passed over one of these rifts in which the one lifeship lies, and passed beyond in their line of search, we have produced a nine-nines probability that they will not locate this lifeship."

"And the other?" prompted Viggon Sarri, with interest.

"I'm not done with the first yet," Linus Brein said quietly. "There remains the random search group. Therein lies the eight-oughts-one positive probability."

Viggon snorted. "I call ten to the minus ten chances rather hopeless. But go on, Linus."

"The other has a sixty-forty chance," he said. "If the infrawave detector locates the space rift that lies along our coordinate three seventy-six, when the ship is near seven sixty-seven, then the scout craft will pass within magnetic detection range of the lifeship. That's a lot of 'ifs', I know, but they add up to a sixty-forty chance. I say this because space rifts tend to produce strong responses in any of the primitive detecting gear. They've certainly been busy running down space warps, which indicates that they've been getting a lot of spurious responses." He smiled. "If space were entirely clear of foreign matter and space rifts, they'd find their new detector vaguely inefficient. I--"

Viggon waved a hand to indicate he had heard enough.

"Gentlemen," he said quietly. "I've been criticized for waiting, but what one man calls study the other man calls timidity. We'll continue to wait for the final factor. Then we'll know...."

* * * * *

The stereo pattern in the Information Center of Commodore Ted Wilson's flagship was slowly being filled with the hazy white that indicated that these volumes had been combed carefully. As he watched, he could see how the search was progressing, and it was painfully obvious that the search was not going good at all.

The flights of spacecraft in set patterns back and forth through the stereo had covered nearly all of the truncated space cone. The random search ships were slowly cutting secondary lines through the regions already covered. There was a green sphere combing the stereo pattern now, indicating the new infrawave detector ship and its expected volume of detector coverage.

Space was filled to overflowing with the fast patter of the communications officers, using infrawave for talks between flights, and ordinary radio for talks between ships of the same flight.

Wilson had appointed Chief Communications Officer Haggerty to police the bands. Haggerty had done a fine job, removing the howling confusion and interference caused from too many calls on the same channel. But the result was still a high degree of constant call and reply and cross talk. Most of the chatter came from the infrawave detector ship, sending the scout craft flitting hither and thither on the trail of spurious responses.

It was almost impossible to grasp the extent of the operation. Only in the stereo pattern could anybody begin to follow the complex operation, and those who watched the stereo knew that their pattern was only an idealized space map of what they hoped was going on.

It was worse than combing the area of an ocean from maps that contained a neat grid of cross rules. Much worse. For the uncharted ocean is gridded with radio location finders so accurate that the position of two ships a hundred yards apart shows a hundred yards of difference in absolute position in the loran.

Some day in the distant future space would be solid-gridded with infrawave navigation signals. Then the space coordinates of any spacecraft could be found to a fine degree of precision. But now all that Wilson and his nav-techs could do was to keep sighting the fixed stars, and from them compute their position.

This sort of space navigation was good enough to keep a ship on course, but far from precise enough to pinprick a true position. But, after all, a crude positioning in the middle of interstellar space is good enough. One literally has cubic light years to float around in. Once the spacecraft begins to approach a destination, the space positioning can be made.

Again, few spacecraft pause in mid-flight between stars long enough to care about their interstellar position. After all, space flight does provide a mode of travel where the destination lies within eyesight. Or rather, it has lain within eyesight ever since it became commonly accepted that these ultimate destinations were places, instead of holes poked in an inverted ceramic bowl.

Then, in the middle of the communications confusion, came a call from one of Commander Hatch's scout flights.

"Pilot Logan, Flight Eighteen, to Commander Hatch. Report."

"Hatch to Logan. Go ahead. Find something, Will?"

Will Logan said, "Solid target detected on radar, Commander. Approached and found. I am now within five thousand yards of what appears to be Lifeship One."

The entire fleet went silent, except for the detector ship, the scout craft, and Wilson's flagship.

Allison asked, "Was that our target, Logan?"

Logan replied laconically, "Nope. I was on my way back from a gas cloud--I think--when the radar got a blip."

In the background, they could hear Allison saying, "There's a real target out there where Logan went. Haven't you got an infrawave response out there somewhere--" The mike clicked off. Allison probably had remembered that he had his thumb on the "Talk" button and removed it.

* * * * *

Captain Warren said to Wilson, "That's a hell of a fine space detector, isn't it?"

Wilson nodded absently, picked up his own handset and called, "Logan from Wilson. How close are you now?"

"Thousand yards, Commodore. And no doubt about it. Lifeship Number One."

"You stay on, Logan, and give us a rundown."

"Yes, sir. Not much to tell, you know. But I'm closing in."

The scout craft pilot went on and on, mostly filling in with inconsequential details of how he was closing in, jockeying to parallel the lifeship's course and speed, and finally making a space approach.

At last he said, "They're on radio, Commodore Wilson. I'll relay as I get it. Too bad these crates aren't fixed to patch-cord the short range radio to the infrawave. I--" Pilot Logan went on to rattle off the names of the men aboard the lifeship, stopping once to reconfirm a pronunciation.

"Where's the pilot, and the other two? Miss Hemingway and Mr. Andrews?"

"They must be in Lifeship Three," said Logan. "That's a guess. Er--Commodore Wilson, I'm within a couple of hundred yards of them now and they're waving out through the astrodome at me. I'm about to toss out a light bomb. Or has anybody got a radar fix on me?"

"Better toss out the light bomb. Also radiate radio on the finding frequency. Hatch!"

"Hatch here."

"Hatch, send out a cruiser class thataway and pick 'em up."

Hatch laughed in a brittle tone. "It's been on its way for six minutes, Commodore. Half of our job is done!"

Wilson said, "Good!" and closed his mike. Half of the job was done, but it was, as far as Ted Wilson was concerned, the lesser half. He wanted the lifeship that sheltered Alice Hemingway.

Three hundred ships combing the spaceways with magnetic detectors and radar and eyesight. One ship combing God-knows-what with a half-cooked infrawave gizmo in which nobody had any confidence. One-half of the job done on what was as much a fluke of luck as good management.

And out there in the awful dark Alice was trapped in a space can with a happy-go-lucky hulk of a pilot who lacked the drive and ambition to buck for his own command, no matter how deeply mortgaged, and a small, wiry ruler of industry who bought what he could not command, and knew no more about spacing than Aunt Agatha's pet Siamese tomcat.

Wilson laughed bitterly. A-spacing she had wanted. Now she had it.

Pictures went through Wilson's mind. A picture of Charles Andrews comforting Alice by the force of his personal drive, confident that money could buy anything, including rescue from space. Andrews calming her fears and--it must be chill in the lifeship by now--bringing her the animal comfort of warmth, and offering to take care of her. His wispy arms about her, his bony hands caressing her as he held her head on his shoulder, his--

This picture was replaced by the vision of big indolent collar-ad Pilot Jock Norton. He would be taking over because he alone in that lifeship knew what spacing was all about. Mentally, Wilson could see Andrews a little hysterical because the financier was out of his element, and Norton taking over completely. Maybe Andrews had succumbed to some nervous affliction because of the strain.

Norton would be calming Alice's fears and confidently predicting rescue, and proposing that they combine the interrelated factors of the conservation of heat and the passage of time by indulging in exploratory dalliance. Wilson could even envision Alice, not entirely convinced that they would ever be rescued, agreeing because she would be unwilling to die without having reached the pinnacle of emotion.

That picture was even more distasteful, but it was replaced by another in which Charles Andrews was making the gesture. Where Norton had youth and masculine appeal, Andrews had the suave manner and the smooth experience of his years. Some fast talk and a few vague promises, to say nothing of some well-calculated suggestions, and Alice would--

* * * * *

Wilson tried to shut that notion out of his mind, but it went on and on and on.

And on.

Only one thing made this series of pictures bearable at all. Thank God Alice was aboard that lifeship with two men instead of one. Especially two men who could not help but find one another deficient in something or other.

Then the third or fourth vision came. Norton and Andrews might possibly, due to their precarious position, settle their differences in basic nature and come to an agreement.

They might be taking turns!

Ted Wilson gritted his teeth and tried to get deeply interested in the search grid.

It was nine days old....

Alice looked up with a startled expression as Jock Norton came through the ladder hatch into the central cabin of the lifeship.

"But isn't--ah--aren't you--" She let her voice trail away because she didn't quite know how to finish.

He laughed. "I put enough reserve in the tank to take care of the elderly Napoleon. Look, Alice, I want to talk to you without his guff on the side."

"About what?" she asked. "Or shouldn't I ask?" The recent shower and tubbing of her underclothing had given the girl a feeling of confidence.

"About me. You. You and I. Us, you know."

"What can I say?"

He blurted, "What the hell's wrong with me?"

"Why, I--"

"Nuts," he snapped. "I'm not asking you for an explanation."

"Then why put it that way?"

"That's the point," he said. "I don't know. Something's all wrong inside."

"How?"

"Napoleon. Andrews. Frankly, I hate his damn guts. I've always hated the guts of that kind of moneybags. He walks all over everybody, buying what he can't control. Darned near theft, if you ask me."

"So?"

"Aw, hell! The little character has got something. I want to know what."

"Now it's him?"

Norton nodded. "Something about Andrews. I don't know. I don't know how or what or why, but there's something about him."

Alice eyed the pilot strangely. "Good or bad?" she asked cautiously.

"Both."

"Jock Norton," she asked quietly, "you've never had to work hard to get what you wanted, have you?"

He stared down at his fingernails. "Maybe that's because I never wanted anything of real value."

"Maybe," she agreed. "But what have you wanted?"

"Damned little out of life," he answered her truthfully. "Fun and games, mostly."

"And I suppose they came easy?"

He nodded. "Being a space pilot has--well, a certain egoboo. You find yourself invited here and there by people who have never been any farther out of New York than Hackensack, or maybe no farther out of Chicago than Evanston." He looked down at his fingernails again. "There's always women happy to claim they've slept with a man who has been to Castor, or Pollux, or Polaris, or even Centauri. A man gets his bed and breakfast and his fun. But--" Abashed, he let it trail off.

"So what about Mr. Andrews?" she prompted.

"He's been there, too. But his--well, somehow I think--"

Alice smiled quietly. "In other words, Mr. Andrews' spacing is only a means to his own advantage instead of being the end itself?"

"I guess that's what I mean. Andrews doesn't use spacing as his business. He uses it to get to his business."

"That's right."

"So where do I go from here?"

"That's your decision."

"I know. And I wish I knew how to make it."

* * * * *

She smiled at him sympathetically. "I wish I could help."

"Maybe you could."

She looked at him cryptically. "Not Alice Hemingway. I've got me a man out there who is combing space for all three of us. You'll have to make your own life and find your own girl."

"Suppose he doesn't find us?" he asked bluntly.

"Then," said Alice soberly, "we have no future to concern us, no decision to make, and no failure to measure up to or to account for to anybody."

"And we'll have died without having really lived?"

"Most everybody does. Few are content to lie down and get it over with. One lifetime is not long enough to content one's self. No alert, willing, intelligent human being can be content with _Thanatopsis_."

"I don't know it."

"I don't know it too well, either. Something about, 'When thy summons comes to join the innumerable caravan that moves, et cetera, like one who wraps the draperies of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams.' Or something like that."

Bluntly he said, "It's nine days."

From the top of the ladder, Charles Andrews repeated his familiar refrain, "Nine days at a hundred per hour."

Norton turned swiftly. "Yeah," he drawled. "But we'll have that argument later, Andrews. Right now it's time to blast out with a distress signal again. They've got to know we're still alive, no matter what else."

"Okay--okay."

"So you fire up the infrawave transmitter and I'll pedal the generator, as before."

Norton disappeared below. Andrews went to the small panel and sat there watching the one meter, his hand resting on the one switch.

"Hell of a note," he grumbled.

Alice asked, "Why?"

"Can't send a damned message on this. Only make an identification call."

"Considering the size of this lifeship, and the fact that an identification call is all that is really necessary, I can't complain too much," she told him seriously. "What could you tell them that they don't know already? Could you urge them to greater haste by the power of your voice?"

Andrews actually had been thinking exactly that. Between the checkbook in his wallet and the pen in his pocket, Andrews had always been able to wield a lot of power. Men had jumped when he spoke, corporations had stopped their own programs at his signature.

His personal account would have covered the purchase of a spacecraft of the type in which they had cracked up. That he did not own his own interstellar runabout was a matter of a different economy. It was cheaper to buy passage as he needed it than it was to own his private spacer and keep it parked at some space port for his convenience.

But as Alice taunted him, Andrews could not say, aloud, that he believed his personal demand would bring help faster than the mere knowledge that human beings were adrift in space. It would sound as though he thought himself more important to the Universe than Alice or Jock Norton. He did think so, of course. But this was no time to insult his lifeship companions by saying so.

He eyed the switch distastefully. The meter was climbing up to the red line that meant that the infrawave transmitter was about ready to be turned on. Then it would hurl out its coded message.

In the back of his mind was a hazy recollection of radio code. He remembered that 'a' was a dot-dash, and that 'n' was a dash-dot. He did not recall whether 'd' was a dash-dot-dot or a dash-dash-dot, 'r' was dot-dash-dot and everybody knew that 'e' was a single dot. The letter 'w' baffled him completely but he was sure that 's' was dot-dot-dot. So the worst he could do would be to flub two of the letters in his name, making it come out A-N-D?-R-E-something-S.

* * * * *

That, he felt, would let the Universe know that he was still out there, drifting. The ragged codes might even cause them to hasten because they might believe him to be alone, or without the help of the pilot who probably knew code well.

The meter hit the red line.

Charles Andrews snapped the goggle switch up and down, then up-pause-down. He waited a second, then made it up-pause-down, then up-down. He started the 'D' but his faltering hand flipped the second dot in a jittery fashion.

Down in the guts of the infrawave transmitter was a code wheel, supposed to turn completely around for one revolution. Along the periphery of the wheel was a series of serrations, which in passing a fast-action switch keyed the output of the simple transmitter, sending the stylized code. The jittery flipping of the main switch coincided with one of the serrations on the code wheel so that Andrews turned off the whole gear just as the transmitter was keyed on. The power normally used for the energizing section, stored in local capacitor banks, discharged through the output section.

It was not spectacular. The meter just flopped back to zero, a fuse blew, and the cabin was filled with the pungent odor of burned insulation.

Below, in the pedal generator saddle, Jock Norton felt the load bucking, then it went off completely and reflex almost threw the pilot out of his seat. The pedals pumped with no resistance. He went aloft.

"What happened?" he asked.

He sniffed at the air as Andrews pointed to the meter.

"It shouldn't happen," said Norton. "What made the thing buck, Andrews?"

Andrews was not the kind of man who hides his errors, at least. He faced Norton and said, "I was keying the transmitter."

Norton growled, "Did it ever occur to you that if this gizmo could be keyed, it would have been made that way in the first place?"

"No. I assumed that the thing was made to be handled by people not familiar with code, and that if one knew code one could key it."

Norton growled again, "Ever think that I know code, and that if it could have been keyed, I'd have done it before this?"

"Now that you say it, I suppose you would have. But what do we do now?"

"We try to repair it," snapped Norton. "Do you want to try it all by yourself, or will you permit me to help?"

Alice got between them once more. "Get it fixed first," she said sensibly. "Then argue about it afterwards."

Norton nodded, but he was not happy about it.