by Jerry
“That is right, isn’t it? Well, I’ll trade, then. I can use two lines of travel between the two points.”
“But only one line of shortest distance can exist between two points.”
“There you go again with that straight line stuff. I told you, I’m using a dimensionally warped line. You’re just dumb.” I didn’t admit that, either. “As I said, I’ll trade. I have lots of worthless rocks to choose from. I’ll warp one of ’em into this planet’s position as I warp this planet into Krolix. Same mass and everything.”
“But you can’t do that. Two objects cannot exist in the same space at the same time.”
“You just don’t understand zero. Both bodies will be in transit, if you want to call it that, at the same time. Neither will be wholly here nor there at the same time, although they will be in each other’s places at the same time—transit instantaneous. It’s all in your interpretation of zero—you’ve been conditioned and taught in a very limited conception of it, I see.”
“Bosh!”
“Oh. You don’t believe me. I’ll show you.” Before I could stop the little nut, he had pressed a bank of buttons. There wasn’t any noise. Just crazy lights. Then I had the feeling of being—pulled—in all directions at the same time.
Next, I was standing in front of an oncoming subway train. I was falling through space with the ground thousands of feet below. I was gasping for breath in the middle of a big red desert—I saw ruined cities in the distance. I was being sucked down in a bog and snapped at by monsters that had never inhabited Earth. I was playing tag with the Asteroids. I was in the middle of a Hollywood movie set.
Then I was back in the lab. I was a mess. That’s how I knew it had all been real and not hypnosis or something.
“Had to get you back. But there it is—point-to-point-to-point etcetera. Faster than light, of course, so you didn’t travel. You were projected.”
“How long was I gone?”
“Maybe ten seconds. I had to give you enough time at each place so that you could see that you were some place. Well, now you’re convinced?”
I was. You’d’ve been, too.
“You little crook!” Gosh, I felt peeved. I had been responsible for getting him in here. I could see myself getting bounced from the University so fast it would make me dizzy all over again.
“Please don’t say that. It hurts. You people will never know the difference. And I’m trading, anyway.”
“Awfully shrewd bargain.”
“Well, I don’t know.” A pout came over Fuj’s little face. He really looked as though I’d hit him. “First you told me I was crazy,” he sobbed. “Now I’m a crook!”
“There, there, old man, what am I doing? Look here!” I had an idea! Now if I could only work it!
“Fuj, old sock, don’t feel so bad.”
“Yes?” He was sobbing. I wiped his nose and eyes with a piece of filter-paper.
“I know where you can get something really nice.” He brightened immediately. “Here is a really good trade. You see, the people of Earth really like the good old Solar System. Leaving it would just break their hearts, Fuj. You wouldn’t want to be mean?”
“Well, no-o-ooo. But I’m so poor.”
“Suppose you got a nice piece of land—not nearly as big as Earth, but with little people on it that would make perfect puppets. You could move them about and do whatever you’d like with them. They’d love it. And you’d have fun.”
“You mean I could have land with a command? That kind is worth just fifty-seven point two times as much, not counting insurance.”
“Sure, sure. Now look. I want you to go to this place to do the job, because there’s lots of water around it. You’ll have to watch yourself and make preliminary investigations. I don’t want any tidal waves, so all the land you take must be substituted by an equal weight of water.” He was beaming.
“Water? Easy. But you understand, I’ll have actually to travel there—can’t warp. Can’t carry the machine all assembled with me. So, how do I get there, and how do I recognize the place?”
“Well, it’s a big island, about eleven-thousand miles due west of New York City, on the fortieth degree parallel. It’s long and narrow, and there are lots of little yellow people who have buck teeth living on it.”
So I sent him on his way yesterday. He may get lost. If you see him around, just give him a few directions, will you?
And now for Prof. Sanders!
SCHEDULE
Harry Walton
Schedules are funny things. If you have it figured right, you can break a man by taking over his schedule—but if you have it figured wrong, it can turn out that two plus two is zero instead of four!
In the Medusa’s shadowy forecabin, lumintubes flickered as the ship staggered under the first thrust of the hyperaccelerators. Then she was over the hump and the tubes burned brighter than they yet had, while energy surged from every atom of the ship, its cargo animate and inanimate, into the Carlson accumulators. Four men looked at one another, tensely expectant as of something certain to come, something familiar yet always to be awaited with trepidation. Deep in the metallic cavern that was the ship, machinery screamed suddenly on a new, rising note.
With the first sharp wail came the familiar sensation of falling—pure illusion yet no less convincing for that. The Medusa seemed to be sliding down a precipitous slope at gathering speed. The feeling would last for hours, but its coming eased that other, psychological tension that preceded it.
The subthird spat cheerfully and unzipped his fatigue suit. “That’s that until next time, save the Carlsons! I wonder why I stay on this run anyway.”
Since the other three couldn’t answer that question for themselves, none tried to answer it for the subthird. But it seemed to make the second oiler even more thoughtful than usual, for he took the pipe out of his mouth. Seeing that he was going to talk, even the subthird paused in the act of rolling into his bunk.
“Save the Carlsons!” muttered the oiler. “They’ll hold up this trip and a hundred more. You can spend a lifetime on these tubs and never run into anything tougher than a hard-boiled second. Dangerous? You should have been a wildcatter back in the old days. There was the run to Rhea—If you want to kill part of the off watch, I’ll tell the yarn.”
“Aye, tell it,” said the subthird for all of them. The second oiler hadn’t always been a forecabin hand, and sometimes his yarns were worth hearing.
Deliberately he knocked the ashes from his pipe into the refuse well. The soft rustle of air through the ventilator grille grew out of the stillness, only to fade again before the oiler’s voice.
“Nowadays you don’t hear much about Rhea. The main liners still run to Titan, but there’s not enough beyond Saturn to keep traffic lively out there, and the Carlsons make it easier to get to Antares in a subship than to reach Uranus in a jet ship. Even Titan’s just a tourist stop today, and Rhea’s pointed out to the rubbernecks as a moon to steer clear of. The guides tell ’em what would happen to ’em six hours after grounding there, and they enjoy a few shivers before going back to their bridge games.
“That’s all Rhea means now. Bismullah’s a cargo you never hear about, and Interplan Council sends the Rheans all the salt and sodium they want by a B-g automatic. Which is cheaper and lots safer than sending a crew ship.
“But in the old days it was different. Titan itself was a pretty tough place for a youngster green from navigation school, like Jimmy Rodgers. It was tough enough without the news he had to hear when he landed from the big Blue Star ship at Titan dock—”
“So that’s it, son,” Matthews was saying. “And I never hated to tell anything more than this. Your dad was a fine, honest man and a good navigator, God rest his soul.”
Jimmy Rodgers swallowed dryly. The bustling scene all around him, the hurrying foot traffic of a great space dock, the fussy activity of automatic unloadeer, all seemed suddenly as unreal and absurd as the news Matthews had brought him—alive, moving, noisy
, but not actual, like a stereograph sound film. It couldn’t be true that his father was dead. Things couldn’t happen that way, after all the years of planning toward this day.
But in a coldly sober compartment of his mind he knew that it was so. Men didn’t live forever, not even men like Ben Rodgers, the father he hadn’t seen in seven years. Funny how much the same he felt as on the day he’d left Titan, a kid of sixteen, alone and awkward and self-conscious in his new whipcords and plastoid cap. But most of all alone. Now he had master’s papers and a certificate of competency but felt just as alone. Bitterly he wished he’d never left Titan. To come back to this!
Matthews was studying him anxiously. Now he saluted—the same offhand yet respectful gesture he’d used toward the elder Rodgers. “Beggin’ your pardon, son, we can’t stay here. Would ye . . . would ye let me stand you to a drink?”
Rodgers nodded, followed the grizzled engine man through the ordered confusion of the landing stage, down a long plank walk, and into a dark little tavern. Afterward he couldn’t remember the way they had come.
A glass was set before him. He swallowed its stinging, tasteless contents while his mind remorselessly rehearsed the news. The funeral had been three days ago—he’d missed it by that much. He wished he were sixteen again, and just feeling the hard clasp of his father’s hand in that good-by seven years ago.
Matthews was blinking at him across the table. The old spaceman leaned forward. “Guess I know how ye feel, son. He was my friend. But now we’ve got to get on course—it’s what he’d ask of ye if he were here. And there’s not much time.”
The words penetrated a haze of self-pity. He’d been acting, Rodgers saw, exactly as that kid of sixteen would have. Time he took himself in hand.
“Sorry. Of course I’ll carry on. How long since your last voyage?”
“Too long, son. I’ve had the devil’s time with the Interplan Council. The beacon isn’t good for much longer. And I hadn’t authority to take cargo without ye, even if I’d had a navigator.”
“We’ll load at once. I’ll see the council right away, too. My papers are in order. Are the beacon batteries aboard?”
Matthews swallowed visibly, his gnarled fingers tracing an intricate scroll pattern on the dirty tablecloth. “No, son, they ain’t. Fact is, I’ve got to tell you some things I’d rather not. Ye got here just in time, but it’s not all clear landings. First off—”
“Blast me if it isn’t young Rodgers,” roared a bull-like voice as a bulky figure loomed over the table. “Remember me—Nappy Ames? Say, I’m sorry about your dad. Swell chap. One of the best.”
The man pulled a chair out, sat down so hard it creaked in protest. He was fat, but hard beneath the fat, his face-space tanned, the eyes full of a shrewdness that belied his blustering good humor. Rodgers remembered him vaguely as a wildcatter who hauled ore from Japetus, outermost moon but one of Saturn. His father had written once that Ames had offered to buy a share in the Stardust, although the man already had a ship of his own.
“You were a kid when I saw you last,” the man bellowed amiably. “Just a raw kid. Now you’re all set, hey? A real navigator. Going to show us old chaps a few things.” He winked broadly at Matthews, who made no response. “Well, I hope you do. We can stand it. Competition’s the life of this racket, I always say.”
Rodgers forced himself to look at the other squarely. He disliked what he saw, resented Ames’ manner, the offhand reference to his father’s death.
“I don’t suppose I’ll add to your competition,” he told Ames. “The Stardust is sticking to the Rhea run. So far as I’m concerned, the other moons are all yours.”
The big man’s eyebrows shot up in exaggerated surprise-He turned to Matthews. “Mean to tell me you haven’t explained things?”
“Haven’t had the chance, with you buttin’ in,” Matthews growled. “If you’ll get out, maybe I can make ’em clear.”
“Sure. Sure. No harm meant.” The big man heaved himself up off the chair. “Sorry, Rodgers, to have butted in too soon. Matthews will tell you my proposition. Better think it over.”
He walked off with the mincing gait of a spaceman accustomed to low gravity. Rodgers waited until he was out of earshot, then turned to Matthews, who spread his broad hands flat on the tablecloth in a gesture of finality.
“O.K., here it is. The council isn’t transferring the beacon run to you just like that. Ames has bid in for it. Would have had it by now if you weren’t your dad’s son. But you’ll have to race Ames for it.”
“Race?”
“That’s it. After all, son, you’re new in this game, even though your dad pioneered on Rhea. The council doesn’t know you. And that beacon’s got to be serviced regular. They know Ames can deliver. But they agreed to wait until you got here to take over the Stardust, and to let you and Ames start neck and neck. First one to reach Rhea and flash a code signal from the beacon gets the contract.”
“Who else is bidding?”
“Nobody. Them other wildcatters wouldn’t land on Rhea for all the bismullah the Rheans can dig up. Takes nerve to ground on a moon you can’t stay healthy on more than six hours. Too much can go wrong. Three of Ames’ men quit, but he’s, got a legal crew left—although I don’t think there’s another spaceman this side of Mars will sign up for the run. Of course, Ames has plenty of guts—he’d go to Hades and back if there was profit in it. Only reason he never tried to butt in before was that your dad had the beacon contract, which paid eighty percent of the expenses and would make it plenty tough for anybody to undersell him on the bismullah end. Which Ames figures will work two ways—if he can get that contract.”
“What’s that proposition he talked about?” asked Rodgers.
Matthews cracked his knuckles. “Didn’t figure you’d be interested in that, son. But maybe you will be, after you’ve applied for cargo. Your dad could get credit any trip for salt and sodium to trade the Rheans. Well, I asked for cargo, but they said no. Trouble is, son, they don’t know ye or what kind of navigator you are. You’ll have to put up the Stardust as security for cargo.”
“What’s Ames’ proposition?” asked Rodgers again.
“He’ll buy the Stardust,” Matthews told him, “for eighty thousand credits. And he has the gall to offer to let you captain her on the Japetus run—hauling fertilizer.”
Titan was dwindling behind. Ahead lay the glory of ringed Saturn, a fantasy of the heavens, pale-yellow in color, its surface just now leprous with white spots that betokened a storm in its atmosphere. Against the brilliant disk Rhea was a black dot.
A smell of hot condenser oil and jet fuel permeated the Stardust. The engines were working hard, but they were giving Ames a good run for his money. The ’scope still showed his Comet abreast of the Stardust about one hundred miles away. The ships were too closely matched for either to win much advantage on this long leg of the journey. Closer in to Rhea, when landing approaches had to be plotted, better spacemanship would count. Rodgers had worked out that part of the trip with special care.
The aft bulkhead door creaked open, letting the roar of the engines well out from the after part of the ship. Matthews entered the navigation cubby, his face troubled.
“We’re pushing her hard, son,” he complained. “The turbos are heatin’. They won’t take any overload on deceleratin’.”
“Won’t have to. We’ll cut in the gravity screens in reverse.” Rodgers jabbed a thumb port wise. “Ames is shoving his ship, too. And if we don’t win, there won’t be any Stardust left, so far as we’re concerned.”
“Bad as that, son?”
“It’s a one-shot proposition, as you expected. I got cargo by putting the ship up as security. If we don’t move it, I’ll have to take a market loss, and there’s nothing to pay it with. Dad spent all his ready cash putting me through school, and was blasting on pretty thin jets financially. But we’ve got the cargo and the beacon batteries and a coded identification tape. All we have to do now is beat Ames.”
<
br /> Matthews grunted and vanished into the smelly depths of the engine room. For the fifth time Rodgers checked course and speed.
The council, he pondered grimly, was getting a good race and a long one. Rhea and Titan had been three days’ journey apart when the two ships started. The smaller moon’s baleful disk was growing ever larger now against the huge one of Saturn. Rhea, second of the planet’s two alien moons, beautiful at this distance, treacherous, deadly. Rodgers was proud that his father had been first deliberately to risk a landing on the green moon, first to establish an understanding with its non-human inhabitants, even though he had had to leave a few hours later, in obedience to the grim warning of his radiation detectors.
For Rhea was a moon of death to mankind. The other moons—Titan, Japetus, Thetys, Dione, were normal. A ship caught in Saturn’s gravitational net might, with good fortune, land on any of them and await rescue. But Rhea in such a case offered safety with one hand and death with the other. Some theories had it that the green moon was a wanderer from Outside captured by Saturn, whereas the other satellites were born of the planet’s own vast bulk.
Rhea was dangerously radioactive. Far harder than X-rays, more penetrating even than cosmic rays, its emanations disintegrated brain tissue after a few hours’ exposure. No personal armor, no ship’s hull, offered safety from them. Before the beacon was set up, more than one ship had made its last landing on Rhea to become the sarcophagus of its crew. Biological experiments had since set the maximum safe exposure at six hours. Successive exposures had to be at least two hundred thirty hours apart to avoid a cumulative effect. Hence the beacon to warn ships away from this treacherous haven. Hence also the periodic inspection and servicing of the beacon, at a safe interval of two hundred forty hours.
