Complete Venus Equilateral (1976) SSC

by George O. Smith

  “You’ve got it. Is there a common, garden-variety, transmitting key in the place?”

  “Probably. We’ll have to ask. Why?”

  “Ask me.”

  Don removed his arm from Arden’s waist. He picked up a spanner and advanced on Franks.

  “Na!” Arden objected. “Poison him—I can’t stand the sight of blood. Or better, bamboo splinters under the fingernails. He knows something simple, the big bum!”

  “Beer and sandwiches?” asked Walt.

  “Beer and sandwiches,” Don agreed. “Now, Tom Swift, what gives?”

  “I want to key the beam. Y’see, Don, we’re using the same frequency, by a half-dozen megacycles, as their meteor spotter. I’m going to retune the beam to their frequency and key it. Realize what’ll happen?”

  “Sure,” agreed Don, “but you’re still missing the boat. You can’t transmit keyed intelligence with an intermittent contact.”

  “In words, what do you mean, Don?” asked Arden.

  “International Code is a series of dots and dashes, you may know. Our wobbling beam is whipping-through the area in which the Empress of Kolain is passing. Therefore, the contact is intermittent. And how could you tell a dot from a dash?”

  “Easy,” bragged Walt Franks. “We’re not limited to the speed of deviation, are we?”

  “Yes—limited by the speed of the selsyn motors that transfer the phase-shifting circuits to the director radiators. Yeah, I get it, Edison, and we can wind them up to a happy six or eight thousand r.p.m. Six would get us a hundred cycles per second—a nice, low growl.”

  “And how will they receive that kind of signal on the meteor spotter?” asked Arden.

  “The officer of the day will be treated to the first meteor on record that has intermittent duration—it is there only when it spells in International Code!”

  Prying the toy transmitting key from young James Burke was a job only surpassed in difficulty by the task of opening the vault of the Interplanetary Bank after working hours. But Burke, Junior, was plied with soda pop, ice cream, and candy. He was threatened, cajoled, and finally bribed. And what Venus Equilateral paid for the key finally would have made the toy manufacturer go out and look for another job. But Walt Franks carried the key to the scene of operations and set it on the bench to look at it critically.

  “A puny gadget, at that,” he said, clicking the key. “Might key a couple of hundred watts with it—but not too long. She’d go up like a skyrocket under our load!”

  Walt opened up a cabinet and began to pull out parts. He piled several parts on a bread board, and in an hour had a very husky thyraton hooked into a circuit that was simplicity itself. He hooked the thyraton into the main power circuit and tapped the key gingerly. The transmitter followed the keyed thyraton and Don took a deep breath.

  “Do you know code?” he asked.

  “Used to. Forgot it when I came to Venus Equilateral. Used to hold a ham ticket on Terra. But there’s no use hamming on the station here, where you can wake somebody by yelling at the top of your voice. The thing to ask is, ‘Does anyone know code on board the Empress of Kolain?”

  They forgot their keying circuit and began to adjust the transmitter to the frequency used by the meteor spotter. It was a job. But it was done, all the way from the master oscillator stage through the several frequency-doubler stages and to the big power-driver stage. The output stage came next, and then a full three hours of tinkering with files and hacksaws were required to adjust the length of the main radiator and the director elements so that their length became right for the changed frequency.

  Finally Walt took the key and said: “Here goes!”

  He began to rattle the key. In the power room the generators screamed and the lights throughout the station flickered just a bit at the sudden surges.

  Don Channing said to Arden: “If someone of the Empress of Kolain can understand code—”

  -

  The Empress of Kolain was zipping along in its silent passage through the void. It was an unseen, undetected, unaware bit of human manufacture marking man’s will among the stars. In all the known universe it moved against the forces of celestial mechanics because some intelligent mote that infested the surface of a planet once had the longing to visit the stars. In all the Solar System, most of the cosmic stuff was larger than it—but it alone defied the natural laws of space.

  Because it alone possessed the required outside force spoken of in Newton’s Universal Laws.

  And it was doing fine.

  Dinner was being served in the dining room. A group of shapely girls added grace to the swimming pool on the promenade deck. The bar was filled with a merry crowd, which in turn were partly filled with liquor. A man in uniform, the Second Officer, was throwing darts with a few passengers in the playroom, and there were four oldish ladies on sabbatical leave who were stricken with mal-de-void.

  The passage up to now had been uneventful. A meteor or two had come to make the ship swing a bit—but the swerve was less than the pitch of an ocean vessel in a moderate sea and it did not continue as did an ocean ship. Most of the time the Empress of Kolain seemed as steady as solid rock.

  Only the First Officer, on the bridge, and the Chief Pilot, far below in the Control Room, knew just how erratic their course truly was. But they were not worried. They were not a shell, fired from a gun; they were a spaceship, capable of steering themselves into any port on Venus when they arrived, and the minute wobbulations in their course could be corrected when the time came. For nothing had ever prevented a ship of space from seeing where it was going.

  Yes, it was uneventful.

  Then the meteor screen flashed into life. A circle of light appeared in the celestial globe and the ship’s automatic pilot swerved ever so little. The dot of light was gone.

  Throughout the ship, people laughed nervously. A waiter replaced a glass of water that had been set too close to the edge of the table and a manly-looking fellow dived into the swimming pool to haul a good-looking blonde to the edge again. She’d been in the middle of a swan dive when the swerve came and the ship had swerved without her. The resounding smack of feminine stomach against the water was of greater importance than the meteor, now so many hundred miles behind.

  The flash of light returned and the ship swerved again. Upon the third swerve, the First Officer was watching the celestial globe with suspicion. He went white. It was conceivable that the Empress of Kolain was about to encounter a meteor shower.

  And that was bad.

  He marked the place and set his observation telescope in synchronism with the celestial globe. He searched the sky. There was nothing but the ultimate starry curtain in the background. He snapped a switch and the voice of the pilot came out of a speaker in the wall.

  “You called, Mr. Hendall?”

  “Tony, take the levers, will you please? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

  “O.K., sir. “I’m riding personal.”

  “Kick out the meteor-spotting coupling circuits and forget the alarm.”

  “Right, Mr. Hendall, but will you confirm that in writing?”

  Hendall scribbled on the telautograph and then abandoned the small ‘scope. The flashing in the celestial globe continued, but the ship no longer danced in its path. Hendall went up into the big dome.

  The big twenty-inch Cassegrain showed nothing at all, and Hendall returned to the bridge scratching his head. Nothing on the spotting ‘scope and nothing on the big instrument.

  That intermittent spot was large enough to mean a huge meteor. But wait. At the speed of the Empress, it should have retrogressed in the celestial globe unless it was so huge and so far away—but Sol didn’t appear on the globe and it was big and far away, bigger by far. Nothing short of a planet at less-than-planetary distances would do this.

  Not even a visible change in the position of the spot.

  “Therefore,” thought Hendall, “this is no astral body that makes this spot!”

  Hen
dall went to a cabinet and withdrew a cable with a plug on either end. He plugged one end into the test plug on the meteor spotter and the opposite end into the speaker. A low humming emanated from the speaker in synchronism with the flashing of the celestial globe.

  It hit a responsive chord.

  Hendall went to the main communication microphone and spoke. His voice went all over the Empress of Kolain from pilot room and cargo spaces to swimming pool and infirmary.

  “Attention!” he said in a formal voice. “Attention to official orders!”

  Dancers stopped in midstep. Swimmers paused and then made their way to the edges of the pool and sat with their feet dangling in the warm water. Diners sat with their forks poised foolishly. “Official orders!” meant an emergency.

  Hendall continued: “I believe that something never before tried is being attempted. I am forced against my better knowledge to believe that some agency is trying to make contact with us, a spaceship in flight! This is unknown in the annals of space flying and is, therefore, indicative of something important. It would not have been tried without preparations unless an emergency exists.

  “However, the requirements of an officer of space do not include a knowledge of code, because of the lack of communication with the planets while in space. Therefore, I request that any person with a working knowledge of International Morse will please present himself to the nearest officer.”

  Minutes passed. Minutes during which the flashing lights continued.

  Then the door of the bridge opened and Third Officer Jones entered with a thirteen-year-old youngster at his heels. The boy’s eyes went wide at the sight of the instruments on the bridge, and he looked around in amazed interest.

  “This is Timmy Harris,” said Jones. “He knows code!”

  “Go to it, Mr. Harris,” said Hendall.

  The boy swelled visibly. You could almost hear him thinking, “He called me ‘mister’!”

  Then he went to the table by the speaker and reached for pencil and paper. “It’s code all right,” he said. Then he winked at Jones. “He has a lousy fist!”

  Timmy Harris began to write.

  “… course and head for Terra direct“—the beam faded for seconds—”Venusian fever and you will be quarantined. Calling CQ, calling CQ, calling CQ. Calling Empress of Kolain … empowered us to contact you and convey … message: You are requested to correct your course and head … a plague of Venusian fever, and you … Johnson of Interplanet has empowered us … the following message: You are requested to correct your … head for Terra direct. Calling CQ …. .”

  “Does that hash make sense to you?” Jones asked of Hendall.

  “Sure,” smiled Hendall, “it is fairly plain. It tells us that Keg Johnson of Interplanet wants us to head for Terra direct because of a plague of Venusian fever that would cause us to stay in quarantine. That would ruin the line moss. Prepare to change course, Mr. Jones!”

  “Who could it be?” Jones asked foolishly.

  “There is only one outfit in the Solar System that could possibly think of a stunt like this. And that is Channing and Franks. This signal came from Venus Equilateral!”

  “Wait a minute,” said Timmy Harris. “Here’s some more.”

  “As soon as this signal … intelligible … at right angles to your course for ten minutes. That will take … out of … beam and reflected … will indicate to us … left the area and know of our attempt.”

  “They’re using a beam of some sort that indicates to them that we are on the other end but can’t answer,” Hendall said. “Mr. Jones, and Pilot Canton, ninety degrees north for ten minutes! Call the navigation officer to correct our course. I’ll make the announcement to the passengers. Mr. Harris, you are given the freedom of the bridge for the remainder of the trip.”

  Mr. Harris was overwhelmed. He’d learn plenty—and that would help him when he applied for training as a space officer; unless he decided to take a position with Venus Equilateral when he grew up.

  -

  The signal faded from the little cruiser and silence prevailed.

  Don spoke into the microphone and said, “Run her up a millisecond,” to the beam controller. The beam wiped the space above the previous course for several minutes and Franks was sending furiously: “You have answered our message. We’ll be seeing you!”

  Channing told the man in the cruiser to return. He kicked the main switch and the generators whined down the scale and coasted to a stop. Tube filaments darkened and meters returned to zero.

  “O.K., Warren. Let the spinach lay. Get the next crew to clean up the mess and polish the setup into something presentable. I’ll bet a cooky that we’ll be chasing spaceships all the way to Pluto after this. We’ll work it into a fine thing and perfect our technique. Right now I owe the gang a dinner.”

  -

  Interlude

  When necessity dictates a course of action and the course of action proves valuable, it is but a short step to the inclusion of the answer into the many facets of modern technical civilization. Thus it was that not many months after Venus Equilateral successfully established planet-to-planet communications with the Empress of Kolain that all course constants were delivered to the relay station and thereafter messages were transmitted as a part of the regular business of Interplanetary Communications.

  This, of course, offered another problem. Ships in space were in the position of being able to catch messages but were not able to answer back. It would take, perhaps, another emergency to set up conditions which demanded the reverse of the problem of contacting a ship in space.

  But there was a more immediate problem. Spacecraft were protected from meteors by means of radar that was coupled to the steering panels of the ships; when a meteor threatened, the ship merely turned aside by that fraction of a degree that gave it safety.

  It took, however, but a few meteors, and the resulting few fractions of a degree to shut the swiftly moving ship out of the coverage area of the ship-seeking beams from Venus Equilateral. Then the power and ingenuity of Venus Equilateral was wasted on vacant space and the messages intended for the ship went undelivered.

  Since the ship must avoid meteors, and the meteors could not be diverted from their courses, there was but one answer: swerve the ship and let the messages go hang, for a message is of no use to a riddled spacecraft! But, thought several people. If the meteor cannot be steered, perhaps it might be removed …

  -

  Recoil

  Walter Franks sat in the Director’s office, his feet on the Director’s desk. He was smoking one of the Director’s cigarettes. He was drinking the Director’s liquor, filched shamelessly from the Director’s private filing cabinet, where it reposed in the drawer marked “S.” Drawer “B” would have given beer, but Walt preferred Scotch.

  He leaned forward and dropped the Director’s cigarette into the Director’s wastebasket and then he pressed the button on the desk and looked up.

  But it was not the Director’s secretary who entered. It was his own, but that did not disturb Franks. He knew that the Director’s ex-secretary was off on Mars enjoying a honeymoon with the Director.

  Jeanne entered and smiled. “Must you call me in here to witness you wasting the company’s time?” she asked in mock anger.

  “Now look, Jeanne, this is what Channing does.”

  “No dice. You can’t behave as Don Channing behaves. The reason is my husband.”

  “I didn’t call to have you sit on my lap. I want to know if the mail is in.”

  “I thought so,” she said. “And I brought it in with me. Anything more?”

  “Not until you get a divorce,” laughed Franks.

  “You should live so long,” she said with a smile. She stuck her tongue out at him.

  Walt thumbed his way through the mail, making notations on some and setting others aside for closer reading. He came to one and tossed it across the desk to Jeanne.

  She took the message and read:

  -

/>   DEAR ACTING DIRECTOR:

  HAVING A WONDERFUL HONEYMOON; GLAD YOU AREN’T HERE.

  DON AND ARDEN.

  -

  “Wonderful stuff, love.” Franks smiled.

  “It is,” agreed Jeanne. A dreamy look came into her eyes.

  “Scram, Jeanne. There are times when you can’t work worth a damn. Mostly when you’re thinking of that husband of yours. What’s he got that I haven’t?”

  “Me,” said Jeanne slyly. She arose and started for the door. “Oh,” she said, “I almost forgot Warren phoned and said that the turret is ready for a tryout.”

  “Fine,” said Walt. “Swell.” He unfolded himself from the chair with alacrity and almost beat the girl to the door.

  “My,” she laughed, “you can move, after all.”

  “Sure,” he grinned, “Now that I have something for which to live.”

  “I hope it’s worth it. You’ve sunk a lot of change into that bughouse.”

  “I know, but we can stand it. After all, since Don took over this affair, Venus Equilateral is an up-and-running business. We’re out of the government subsidy class now, and are making money. If this works, we’ll make more. It’s worth a gamble.”

  “What are you trying to build?” asked Jeanne.

  “Why, since this business of contacting ships-at-space has become so universally liked, we have a tough time keeping ships on the mobile beam. That’s because they are always ducking out of the way of loose meteorites and stuff, and that screws up their course. We can’t see ‘em, and must take their position on the basis of their expected course. We never know whether we hit ‘em until they land.

  “Now, I’ve been trying to devise a space gun that will blast meteors directly instead of avoiding them by coupling the meteor detector to the autopilot.”

  “Gonna shoot ‘em out of existence?”

  “Not exactly. Popping at them with any kind of a rifle would be like trying to hit a flying bird with a spit-ball. Look, Jeanne, speed on the run from Mars to Terra at Major Opposition is up among the thousands of miles per second at the turnover. A meteor itself may be blatting along at fifty miles per second. Now a rifle, shooting a projectile at a few thousand feet per second, would be useless. You have the meteor in your lap and out of the other side while the projectile is making up its mind to move forward and relieve the pressure that is building up behind it due to the exploding powder.