Chapter II: Part 2

Then he depressed the generator-on control button, and the pilot lights winked. He read the meters through the telescope, and adjusted the variable controls until a faintly outlined sphere formed between the radiator gravitodes of the generator. This sphere was invisible in that it reflected no light and was transparent, but the light from the wall beyond was refracted slightly, and the sphere was constantly changing in index of refraction, so that the sphere shimmered like heat waves over a meadow.

"We set the spherical warp, so. Now on the boom we insert the combustion tube containing the mix. The insertion of the boom is easy due to the heavy gravitic field, which attracts proportional to the square of the distance. I think it increases the inertia-constant--"

"_Woah_, Mac. Inertia is a _property_ of matter, not a phenomenon."

"You can stir up a good argument later, here or at the annual meeting of the Gravitic Society. Right now I'm about to turn on the heat." McBride withdrew the boom, leaving the combustion tube in the warp, where it was fixed against the infinitesimal point of zero-attraction, with all sides of the boat in contracting-urge. He snapped the button and watched through the color-temperature meter. Then, as the color was reached, he threw over a series of controls, and the spherical field became a riot of color.

It fluoresced, as the bombardment of electrons hit it, coming from all sides. The sphere grew, and McBride tightened the warp by applying more power. Still it grew as the repulsion of the electrons tried to nullify the gravitic attraction, and McBride continued to step up the power of the electrogravitic generator to keep the sphere from expanding.

"Hannigan," he called. "Give me just a bit more?"

"We can stand about six more electrons," laughed Hannigan. "No more."

"Give 'em to me," returned McBride cheerfully.

And then the sphere refused to be confined. It grew, and McBride made comic motions with the hand that held the control, as if to turn the knob from its shaft in a supreme effort to increase the power by a single alphon.

The sphere grew to huge proportions, and McBride cranked the control to zero just as the surface of the sphere grew instable and threatened to expand without limit.

His other hand turned the heat control slowly down, and the color of the combustion tube died. A hiss of air entered, and they ran inside to see the result.

The combustion boat was ablaze with scintillating crystals. Beautiful blue-green crystals that were half-hidden in the gray-yellow powder of the catalyst. Their surfaces caught the lights, and sent little darting spots of blue fire dancing over the approaching people.

McBride lifted the combustion tube with a pair of tongs. "This is the pure stuff," he said quietly. "Looks like a good crop this year, too. What's it insoluble in, Steve?"

"Sulphur dioxide, according to Theodi."

"Good. We'll remove the catalyst with that and weigh the residue which will be the entire output of our hundred grams of stuff. The percentage will be higher than .004%, I'd say. Come on--"

The communicator barked: "McBride! McBride! This is Peters on Number One, Telfan element."

McBride answered: "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. We're in! We had a bit of trouble getting the warp going at this end. The image-size of Sirius when projected by a lens as close as the fore element is larger in diameter than Sirius is according to the distances involved, you know, and getting the warp started across the face of the Telfan Lens was some going. But we're about to thicken the center and shorten the focal length of the aft element right now."

"O.K. No trouble, hey?"

"Excepting it is hot in the hind-end stations. The interstices that give the spill-overs from Lens One do a swell job of heating up the stations when it hits."

"Sirius is hot stuff."

"Look, Mac, how much energy will it take to ruin Soaky?"

"Well," grinned McBride, "Lothar's 'Handbook of Useless Facts' says that a globe of ice the size of Terra, if dropped into Sol, would melt and boil so quick it wouldn't go '_Psssst_.' Is Carlson handy?"

"Here, Mac. On the hind surface in the flitter and it is hotter than the hinges of Hell."

"The one on Pluto?"

"No, the one in the real Nether Regions."

"O.K., Carl. You're the balance wheel in this outfit. If you must aberrate, lean outward a bit, will you? I'd hate to singe the pants off of a couple of billion Telfans whilst trying to save their lives."

"I'll keep an eye on it," promised Carlson.

"_Eye?_" grunted Peters. "He means _ear_. Or has Carlson got his semicircular canals in his eyes?"

Hammond interrupted with a gloating shout. "Mac! We're in! Ninety-one percent. Pure, crystalline Silicon-acetyldiethyl-sulfanomid. And the charge is almost equal to the galactic mean; meaning that the stuff is stable."

McBride nodded and said into the communicator: "Our half is did, boys. All that stands between we-all and Telfu is a stinking, one-hundred mile satellite. Frankly, I'm agin it!"

Peters did not answer McBride. He shouted, his voice strained with excitement: "Here comes Soaky now, around the edge of Telfu. This is it, gang. Bore him deep and give him Hell!"

Sandra Drake sat down on the edge of a hard bench and took a deep breath. With her free hand, she rubbed her eyes and pushed the stray hair out of them. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffed with lack of sleep. She stretched and took a longing look at the surface of the hard bench; one of those looks that was calculating not the hardness of the bench but wondering if she could catch forty winks without having trouble call her away again. She decided not. She knew herself, and she knew that as long as she kept going she could stay awake, but if she slowed down for a moment, she'd drop off and nothing would awaken her. And forty winks would actually make her feel worse than no sleep at all.

Outside of the window, dawn was just breaking. It was a strange dawn, an alien sunrise, but one that was nothing new to Sandra Drake. Sirius II was just above the horizon, but almost lost in the mists because of its low radiation. Sirius I was not above the horizon yet, but his strong radiation was coloring the sky blue-gray.

Sandra looked out of the window at the graying sky above. Carefully and hopefully she scanned it but she was not surprised that nothing was there for her to see. The idea of doing away with a hundred-mile satellite was too much, even for McBride, Hammond, and the rest of their gang. A hundred miles of celestial body was not large as celestial bodies go, but against man's futile efforts it was simply vast.

In all of the man-made works on Terra, Pluto, Venus, Mars, and Luna, considerably less than the volume of a hundred-mile sphere had been moved. Affected, perhaps, but not man-moved; the pile-up of rivers behind a dam could not be counted.

So man pitting himself against a celestial object seemed almost like sacrilege, though Sandra Drake knew that these men would take a job of analyzing the course-constants of the Star of Bethlehem if they thought they knew where it was now.

And as small as Soaky was against the giants of the galaxy, it was none the less a celestial object.

So she searched the sky hopefully and was not surprised that nothing was there. Her search was more "Will it happen" instead of "When will it happen?"

And then a Telfan stuck his head in the room and called: "Sandrake! Can you come?"

Sandra shook her head, rubbed her eyes again, and went.

"Now what?" she asked wearily. "We don't have to evacuate another district?"

"No," smiled Theodi, "not that bad this time. But we are going out to Loana--a small town not too far from here--and try out some of this latest stuff."

"Have any hope for it?"

"I must have hope," said Theodi.

"That's selling yourself a bill of goods," said Sandra.

"I know. But unless I play self-deception to the limit, I'll quit from sheer futility. No, Sandrake, I must hope with all my soul and I must force myself to believe that this may work."

"I won't even mention my friends," she said.

"You are beginning to give up?"

"I hate to think of it," said Sandra honestly. "It'll be the first time that they failed to do what they said they could do. I know they planned it, perhaps it takes longer than they think. Or perhaps they came unprepared; their equipment not complete. After all," and Sandra managed a reminiscent smile in spite of her feelings, "I've seen them running some of the haywirest equipment in the world and making it perform. Maybe this time the law of averages caught up with them."

"You think perhaps they are finding that our satellite is too much for them?"

"I hate to think of it. I'd hate to admit that they could fail."

"You have changed, Sandrake."

"Have I? I wonder if it is my hope that they will take me home. No, Theodi, in spite of what I may say about them, they know their potatoes. They're the typical genius-type. Whether they rate as genius I wouldn't know, but they're that kind of people. Give them a situation, and from somewhere in their memory they can bring forth the darnedest things which fit in like jigsaw pieces to complete the whole picture."

"I hope they continue," said Theodi. "Feel up to coming along?"

"Sure."

"Good. We need you."

"Who, me?" asked Sandra.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you are alien. You are impartially alien. Though you have friends on Telfu, they are few, and in your secret mind you class us all as 'Telfan' and forget about sub-classifications. This experimentation is just that, to you, and we are the subjects. Therefore when you select one hundred victims out of a district, we get a perfect, impartial selection; a true cross-section of the district."

"Any of you could do that."

"No. We'd be biased by our knowledge of who is important, who is the sicker, who is young and who is old. And, though it may seem strange to you, you have absolutely no idea of beauty. Therefore you are impartial among the ugly and the beautiful."

"So what?"

"In experimentation on humans, we are inclined to pick those of less value to the community. We pick the lame and the halt and the ugly. We are inclined to pick those who are likely not to live anyway, and this biases our selection. Come, let's get going."

"O.K. Lead on."

* * * * *

Three hours later, and still without sleep, Sandra strode up the line of Telfans and pointed out one after the other. Those selected followed silently to the auditorium in the center of the village and seated themselves. They looked neither happy nor regretful, but rather a resignation was upon them.

Sandra said: "Is this the best place you could pick?"

"Sorry," smiled Theodi. "I didn't know it made any difference."

"I suppose it is good from a functional standpoint," said Sandra. "Being on the stage permits them to pass before us from one side to the other. It is the only clear place in the auditorium in which to work, and as far as I could see, there isn't any other suitable place in town. But being on the stage sort of makes me ... oh, come on. I'm just tired, I guess. Where's the pills?"

"No pills on this deal," said Theodi, opening a case and removing a set of large hypodermics. "This goes into the vein. Right in the main line. You'll have to help."

"Me? Look, Theodi, I don't feel well enough to go shoving needles into people."

Theodi looked up sharply. Her brash-sounding statement was made in a hard voice in spite of its humanitarian and pleading sound. Sandrake, to Theodi's opinion, was really feeling ill.

"It must be done," he said simply. "You fill and hand them to me."

Sandra took the first hypo, inserted it into the disinfectant, and then filled it from an ampule. She handed it to Theodi and watched him with fascination as he took the first Telfan in line and thrust the needle into his arm. It went in and in, and Theodi felt around with the needle-point until he found the vein, and then he emptied the cylinder. "Next!" he called, and so on until the hundred had been inoculated.

"Now," said Theodi, "we'll proceed to Dorana and do likewise."

Sandra was silent all the way to the next village, and as she started down the line of people, picking them out one by one, her face began to whiten.

Halfway through, Sandra stopped.

"Go on," urged Theodi.

"_Go on?_" screamed Sandra. "Go on? No!"

"But--"

"Go on and on and on and on and on?" shrieked Sandra in a crescendo that ended in a toneless, inarticulate screech. She stopped the sentence only because her voice had no more range and she had no more breath. "Theodi, I feel like a murderess! I go on selecting people as I would select specimens to be speared with a mounting pin and stuck on a cardboard. I point them out. They follow dumbly with a look of resignation. They come and you try something new on them--every time it is something new, and you don't know whether it'll kill 'em or not! I can't stand it."

"But who can we have to do this?"

"Get one of your own to do your own dirty work! You need me! Bah! Suppose--?"

"Suppose we have the right combination?"

"Suppose you have? You haven't--and you know it."

"I wouldn't say that."

"I would. You're just experimenting." Sandra's lip curled over her perfect teeth in a perfect sneer. "Experimenting on your own kind. And I'm no better. You should hate me--and I'm beginning to hate you and every one of you."

"This must go on--"

"It'll go on without me."

"Come on, Sandrake. Buck up. Here, I'll give you a sedative and you sleep for an hour. You're over-tired. Then--"

"Then nothing. I can't go on murdering your people any more."

"It's not murder. It's--"

"It's worse than murder. You go on filling them with colored water and telling them that you think that this is the works--and you know it is just another blind try! Go away!" Sandra whirled and ran blindly. Across the field she ran, out and away from the village. On and on she ran, until she fell breathless beside a small brook.

Thankfully, she dabbled in the brook with her tired feet, and laved the cool water on her wrists and forehead. She drank sparingly, and then stretched on her back to relieve the strained muscles that seemed to make her back arch almost to the breaking point.

Unknowing, Sandra relaxed as the ground supported her back, and with the suddenness of falling night, Sandra slept.

Her dreams were less restful than the sleep. They were filled with a whirling panorama of lights, disembodied faces, grinning, leering faces who watched long, brutal needles find the vitals of mute sufferers whose only visible admission of unbearable pain was the tortured look on their mobile faces. And through the dream, McBride and Hammond fought against a huge metal barrier against which their mightiest efforts were futile.

* * * * *

The day wore on as Sandra slept, and night came, and in all that time Sandra had hardly moved. As the darkness fell, she aroused enough to drink from the brook and settle herself in a more comfortable position. Afterward she did not recall awakening at all but she did select a thick thatch of soft moss the second time and she wondered about it later. And it was about midnight when Sandra awoke.

She was slept out, rested. But the self-hatred was still vivid. The dream had kept it there, and though her body was rested, her mind was still tired from the furious mental action that went on even as she slept.

She stretched, rolled over on her back, and considered her actions of before with distaste. That had been a spectacle, and she hated spectacles except when they made her appear in a better light. She searched the sky wearily, picking out Garna, which was Telfu's sister planet, and Ordana, the behemoth of the Sirian system, both of which were shining close to the bright Geggenschein of Sirius. Above her, she spotted the place where all Telfans watched--the spot where Soaky should be according to their calculations. It was not a spot, but an area, and Sandra scanned it in a futile manner.

Nothing yet.

A minute change in the sky along the horizon made her turn quickly, hopefully. She scanned the sky carefully, and yet she knew that looking at the starry curtain was futile unless the scene became so evident that it could not be missed. She could see nothing, and besides, Soaky was supposed to be above, not on the horizon.

She looked above again, but there was nothing to see. Puzzled at that--that _something_ that had caught her attention along the horizon. She shrugged, and in trying to rationalize she admitted that it might have been a meteorite; and she knew that she was overanxious.

It was the same, she knew.

But was it? Was it?

_Was it?_

No, but what in the name of--?

Garna and Ordana and Geggenschein were gone from the Telfan sky. What was this? Why should planets disappear?

Planets were about as permanent as--but they must still remain, it was their light that was gone! Sandra shouted. McBride! The lens. In her mind she saw the scaled layout; Sirius, Telfu, the other planets, and Soaky, the satellite that was oh, so close to Telfu. Place two biconvex lenses, one near Sirius and one near Telfu--and any light from Sirius that could normally reach Telfu--and the planets in line from Sirius--would be cut off by the lens, refracted into the energy beam that would ultimately be focused on Soaky.

They'd started at last! Sandra looked upward into the area containing Soaky.

And as she looked, a mite of colored pinpoint appeared in the sky above. It did not rise into the incandescence, it leaped. It passed upward through the red, the orange, the yellow, and the blue with lightning-flash speed, and then settled down in color to an intolerable white. It seared the eyes, that microscopic speck, and its brightness made it appear huge.

Sandra shook her head and looked down. The darkness was fading, and sharp shadows of the low bushes and herself marked the ground. The stars beside Soaky began to fade to the eye, and as the brightness took on solar brilliance, it was like the sudden return of daylight.

A flicker of the light caused Sandra to look into that intolerable light again. No, Soaky was still going strong. But it was scintillating, now, and there were streamers of incandescent vapor leaving the coruscating nucleus that was Soaky.

Full against Soaky the Sirian beam drove, and the surface vaporized. The streamers were the high-temperature vapors of incandescent metal, being driven away from the tortured satellite by the radiation pressure of that intolerable brilliance. The vapors condensed in finely divided droplets of metal, but still floated away in lines and whorls.

The landscape around Sandra was in full light, now, and the shadows were no longer sharp. The boiling, blue-white vapors were rushing from the satellite at high velocity, and they spoiled the point-source of light. They danced and flickered in the sky, and as Sandra watched, a slight twinge of terror crossed her, and she caught her breath.

This was not right. This was--was defying God Himself. And Sandra, never awed by the men themselves, fell in fear before the visible evidence of their ability. It was not right, this utter destruction of a celestial body by man. Men were supposed to be motes--bacterium on the skin of an apple--not mighty motes capable of almost literally eating the apple that--not eating but destroying ruthlessly--the apple that was spoiling their barrel.

And Sandra, not even awed by the God of her people, prayed to Him in fear. Fear, because people of her race dared to tamper with the universe.

But then the light passed away, and no omnipotent lightning flashed across the universe to destroy it. The night fell again, and darkness, unspoiled, crowded the landscape leaving Sandra light-blind. She fumbled aimlessly in the darkness that was by contrast the utter blackness of no-light.

Sandra Drake was not alone in that. Half of the people on the planet of Telfu were blinking in the darkness; silently groping their way into their houses. Their tongues were stilled by the awesome sight.

Sandra brushed her tattered skirt and smiled. She was a long way from Indilee and she wanted to be there as soon as she could. She was beginning to feel the pinch of the months of loneliness; before, it was futility to lie awake at night and think of the touch of a human hand and the sound of a human voice. Yes, she even admitted to the desire for a bit of admiration, after all, it had been her meat and drink.

But now it was a dream about to come true. There would be people of her own kind. People who could laugh at the hardy jokes of her race, and appreciate the casual acceptance of doing absolutely nothing for periods of time. The verbal sparring and blocking would be there, too; the nice trick of forcing someone into a trap of his own making and springing it with--not double talk--but triple talk. The sound of people who could discuss both downright earthy things and high theory with the same words but with slightly different inflections in their voices, and be understood by others who knew both lines of talk.

She gave a short laugh. They would never know whether she did it from sheer altruism or because she was scared to death at the idea of being exposed to andryorelitis.

She blinked. The sky flared briefly ahead of her in a brilliant and colorful display of some auroral discharge. It illuminated one full quarter of the celestial hemisphere in flowing color. Sandra thought and remembered a man saying: "The charge on Station One is so great that at twenty thousand feet it would arc a million miles or more." The words and the distances were forgotten, and probably wrong due to her faulty memory for those details, but she did remember something of that nature.

Obviously, one of the Stations had landed with a load of Silicon-acetyldiethyl-sulfanomid. The not-quite-perfectly neutralized electronic charge must have ionized the upper air in a sprinkling corona.

From another corner of the sky, a similar flare of color flashed, and it was followed by flashes from near and far, each one creating a streaking display of celestial fireworks.

At the sight of that auroral display, Sandra's head went up, her shoulders went back, and there returned to her step a bit of that lilting walk. She smiled crookedly and then broke into that saucy grin. She set her foot on the road to Dorana, from where she could get a ride back to Indilee.

There were Terrans here, all right. Her Terrans that nothing ever stopped. They came--and brought the goods with them.

But--who brought them?

Sandra Drake.

Throughout the night, the flashing of the celestial fireworks told the whole planet that Terrans were bringing the needed drug to Telfu. And with each flash, as with each mile, a bit of the old Sandra Drake returned.

There were a lot of miles back to the _Haywire Queen_.

THE END.