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Title: Off the Beam

Author: George O. Smith

Illustrator: Paul Orban

Release date: May 10, 2022 [eBook #68047]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Street & Smith Publications, Inc

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OFF THE BEAM ***

                             Off the Beam

                          By GEORGE O. SMITH

                         Illustrated by Orban

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Astounding Science-Fiction, February 1944.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Thirty hours out of Mars for Terra, the _Solar Queen_ sped along her
silent, invisible course. No longer was she completely severed from
all connection with the planets of the inner system; the trick cams
that controlled the beams at Venus Equilateral kept the ship centered
by sheer mathematics. It was a poor communications system, however,
since it was but a one-way job. Any message-answering would have to be
done thirty hours later when the ship made planetfall, and the regular
terminal office of Interplanetary Communications could be employed.

In spite of her thirty hours at 2-G, which brought her velocity to
eleven hundred miles per second, the beam-director cams did their
job well enough. It was only in extreme cases of course-changing to
dodge meteors that the beams lost the ship; since the cams were not
clairvoyant, there was no way to know when the autopilot juggled the
controls to miss a bit of cosmic dust. The cams continued to spear the
space through which the ship was supposed to pass according to the
course constants.

What made this trip ironic was the fact that Don Channing was aboard.
The beams had been bombarding the _Solar Queen_ continually ever since
she left Mars with messages for the Director of Communications. In
one sense, it seemed funny that Channing was for once on the end of a
communications line where people could talk to him but upon which he
could not talk back. On the other hand it was a blessing in disguise,
for the Director of Communications was beginning to paper-talk himself
into some means of contacting the Relay Station from a spaceship.

A steward found Channing in the salon and handed him a 'gram. Channing
smiled, and the steward returned the smile and added: "You'll fix these
ships to talk back one day. Wait until you read that one--you'll burn
from here to Terra!"

"Reading my mail?" asked Channing cheerfully. The average spacegram was
about as secret as a postcard, so Channing didn't mind. He turned the
page over and read:

    HOPE YOU'RE WELL FILLED WITH GRAVANOL AND ADHESIVE TAPE FOR YOUR
    JUMP FROM TERRA TO STATION. SHALL TAKE GREAT DELIGHT IN RIPPING
    ADHESIVE TAPE OFF YOUR MEASLY BODY. LOVE.

    ARDEN

"She will, too," grinned Don. "Well, I'd like to toss her one back, but
she's got me there. I'll just fortify myself at the bar and think up a
few choice ones for when we hit Mojave."

"Some day you'll be able to answer those," promised the steward. "Mind
telling me why it's so tough?"

"Not at all," smiled Channing. "The problem is about the same as
encountered by the old-time cowboy. It's a lot easier to hit a man on
a moving horse from a nice, solid rock than it is to hit a man on a
nice, solid rock from a moving horse. Venus Equilateral is quite solid
as things go. But a spaceship's course is fierce. We're wobbling a few
milliseconds here and a few there, and by the time you use that arc to
swing a line of a hundred million miles, you're squirting quite a bit
of sky. We're tinkering with it right now, but so far we have come up
with nothing. Ah, well, since the human race got along without electric
lights for a few million years, we can afford to tinker with an idea
for a few months. Nobody is losing lives or sleep because we can't talk
to the boys back home."

"We've been hopping from planet to planet for quite a number of years
too," said the steward. "Quite a lot of them went by before it was even
possible to contact a ship in space."

"And that was done because of an emergency. Probably this other
thing will go on until we hit an emergency; then we shall prove that
old statement about a loaf of bread being the maternal parent of a
locomotive." Channing lit a cigarette, and puffed deeply. "Where do we
stand?"

"Thirty hours out," answered the steward. "About ready for turnover. I
imagine that the poor engineer's gang is changing cathodes about now."

"It's a long drag," said Channing. He addressed himself to his glass
and began to think of a suitable answer for his wife's latest thrust.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bill Hadley, of the power engineer's gang, spoke to the pilot's
greenhouse below the ship. "Hadley to pilot room: Cathodes 1 and 3
ready."

"Pilot Greenland to Engineer Hadley: Power fade-over from even to odd
now under way. Tubes 2 and 4 now dead; load on 1 and 3. You may enter 2
and 4."

"Check!"

Hadley cracked an air valve beside a circular air door. The hiss of
entering air crescendoed and died, and then Hadley cracked the door
that opened in upon the huge driver tube. With casual disregard for
the annular electrodes that filled the tube and the sudden death that
would come if the pilot sent the driving voltages surging into the
electrodes, Hadley climbed to the top of the tube and used a spanner to
remove four huge bolts. A handy differential pulley permitted him to
lower the near-exhausted cathode from the girders to the air door where
it was hauled to the deck. A fresh cathode was slung to the pulley and
hoisted to place. Hadley bolted it tight and clambered back into the
ship. He closed the air door and the valve, and then opened the valve
that led from the tube to outer space. The tube evacuated and Hadley
spoke once more to the pilot room.

"Hadley to Greenland: Tube 4 ready."

"Check."

The operation was repeated on Tube 2, and then Pilot Greenland said:
"Fade-back beginning. Power diminishing on 1 and 3, increasing on 2 and
4. Power equalized, acceleration 2-G as before. Deviation from norm:
two-tenths-G."

Hadley grinned at the crew. "You'd think that Greenland did all that
himself, the way he talks. If it weren't for autopilots, we'd have been
all over the sky."

Tom Bennington laughed. He was an old-timer, and he said in a
reminiscent tone: "I remember when we used to do that on manual. There
were as many cases of _mal de void_ during cathode change as during
turnover. Autopilots are the nuts--look! We're about to swing right
now, and I'll bet a fiver that the folks below won't know a thing about
it."

A coincidence of mammoth proportions occurred at precisely that
instant. It was a probability that made the chance of drawing a royal
flush look like the chances of tomorrow coming on time. It was, in
fact, one of those things that they said couldn't possibly happen,
which went to prove only how wrong they were. It hadn't happened yet
and probably wouldn't happen again for a million million years, but it
did happen once.

Turnover was about to start. A relay circuit that coupled the
meteor-spotter to the autopilot froze for a bare instant, and the
coincidence happened between the freezing of the relay contacts
and the closing of another relay whose purpose it was to shunt the
coupler circuits through another line in case of relay failure. In
the inconceivable short time between the failure and the device that
corrected failure, the _Solar Queen_ hit a meteor head on.

It is of such coincidences that great tragedies and great victories are
born.

       *       *       *       *       *

The meteor, a small one as cosmic objects go, passed in through the
broad observation dome at the top of the ship. Unhampered, it zipped
through the central well of the _Solar Queen_ and passed out through
the pilot's greenhouse at the bottom of the ship. Its speed was nothing
worth noting; a scant twenty miles per second almost sunward. But the
eleven hundred miles per second of the _Solar Queen_ made the passage
of the meteor through the six hundred feet of the ship's length of less
duration than the fastest camera shutter.

In those microseconds, the meteor did much damage.

It passed through the main pilotroom cable and scrambled those circuits
which it did not break entirely. It tore the elevator system from
its moorings. It entered as a small hole in the observation dome and
left taking the entire pilot's greenhouse and all of the complex
paraphernalia with it.

The lines to the driver tubes were scrambled, and the ship shuddered
and drove forward at 10-G. An inertia switch tried to function, but the
resetting solenoid had become shorted across the main battery and the
weight could not drop.

Air doors clanged shut, closing the central well from the rest of the
ship and effectively sealing the well from the crew.

The lights in the ship flickered and died. The cable's shorted lines
grew hot and fire crept along its length and threatened the continuity.
The heat opened fire-quenching vents and a cloud of CO_{2}, emerged
together with some of the liquid gas itself. The gas quenched the
fire and the cold liquid cooled the cable. Fuses blew in the shorted
circuits--

And the _Solar Queen_ continued to plunge on and on at 10-G; the
maximum possible out of her driving system.

The only man who remained aware of himself aboard the _Solar Queen_ was
the man who was filled with gravanol and adhesive tape. No other person
expected to be hammered down by high acceleration. Only Channing, who
was planning to leave Terra in his own little scooter, was prepared to
withstand high G. He, with his characteristic hate of doing anything
slowly, was ready to make the Terra to Venus Equilateral passage at 5-
or 6-G.

It might as well have caught him, too. With all of the rest
unconscious, hurt, or dead, he was alone and firmly fastened to the
floor of the salon under eighteen hundred pounds of his own, helpless
weight.

And as the hours passed, the _Solar Queen_ was driving farther and
farther from the imaginary spot that was the focus of the communicator
beams from Venus Equilateral.

The newly-replaced cathodes in the driving tubes were capable of
driving the ship for about two hundred G-hours at 1-G, before
exhaustion to the point of necessary replacement for safety purposes.
The proportion is not linear, nor is it a square-law, but roughly it
lies in the region just above linear, so that the _Solar Queen_ drove
on and on through space for ten hours at 10-G before the cathodes died
for want of emitting surface. They died, not at once, but in irregular
succession so that when the last erg of power was gone from the ship
it was zooming on a straight line tangent from its point of collision
but rolling in a wild gyration through the void.

And twenty-five hundred miles per second added to her initial velocity
of eleven hundred miles per second added up to thirty-six hundred miles
per second. She should have had about seventy-five million miles to go
at 2-G, to reach Terra in thirty hours from the halfway point where she
turned ends to go into deceleration. Instead, the _Solar Queen_ after
ten hours of misdirected 10-G acceleration was thirty million miles on
her way, or about halfway to Terra. Three hours later, driving free,
the _Solar Queen_ was passing Terra, having missed the planet by a few
million miles.

Back in space, at an imaginary junction between the beams from Venus
Equilateral and the course registered for the _Solar Queen_, Arden
Channing's latest message was indicating all sorts of mild punishment
for her husband when she got him home.

By the time that the _Solar Queen_ should have been dropping out of
the sky at Mojave Spaceport, the ship would be one hundred and ninety
million miles beyond Terra and flirting with the imaginary line that
marked the orbit of Mars.

That would be in seventeen hours.

       *       *       *       *       *

Weightless, Channing pursued a crazy course in the salon of the
spinning ship. He ached all over from the pressure, but the gravanol
had kept his head clear and the adhesive tape had kept his body intact.
He squirmed around in the dimness and could see the inert figures
of the rest of the people who had occupied the salon at the time of
the mishap. He became sick. Violence was not a part of Channing's
nature--at least he confined his violence to those against whom he
required defense. But he knew that many of those people who pursued
aimless orbits in the midair of the salon with him would never set foot
on solidness again.

He wondered how many broken bones there were among those who had lived
through the ordeal. He wondered if the medical staff of one doctor and
two nurses could cope with it.

Then he wondered what difference it made if they were to go on and on,
and from that thought came the one he should have thought of first: How
were they to stop going on and on? Channing had a rough idea of what
had happened. He knew something about the conditions under which they
had been traveling, how long, and in which direction. It staggered him,
the figures he calculated in his mind. It behooved him to do something.

He bumped an inert figure, and grabbed. One hand took the back of the
head and came away wet and sticky. Channing retched, and then threw
the inert man from him. He coasted back against a wall, and caught a
handrail. Hand-over-hand he went to the door and into the hall. Down
the hall he went to the passengers' elevator shaft and with no thought
of what his action would have been on any planet, Channing opened the
door and drove down the shaft for several decks. He emerged and headed
for the sick ward.

He found the doctor clinging to his operating table with his knees and
applying a bandage to one of his nurses' heads.

"Hello, Doc," said Channing. "Help?"

"Grab Jen's feet and hold her down," snapped the doctor.

"Bad?" asked Don as he caught the flailing feet.

"Seven stitches, no fracture," said the doctor.

"How's the other one?"

"Unconscious, but unharmed. Both asleep in bed, thank God. So was I.
Where were--? You're Channing and were all doped up with gravanol and
adhesive. Thank yourself a god for that, too. I'm going to need both of
my nurses and we'll all need you."

"Hope I can do some good," said Don.

"You'd better. Or any good I can do will be wasted. Better start right
now. Here," the doctor produced a set of keys, "these will unlock
anything in the ship but the purser's safe. You'll need 'em. Now get
along and do something and leave the body-mending to me. Scram!"

"Can you make out all right?"

"As best I can. But you're needed to get us help. If you can't, no man
in the Solar System can. You're in the position of a man who can not
afford to help in succoring the wounded and dying. It'll be tough, but
there it is. Get cutting. And for Heaven's sake, get us two things:
Light and a floor. I couldn't do more than slap on tape whilst floating
in air. See you later, Channing, and good luck."

The nurse squirmed, groaned, and opened her eyes. "What happened?" she
asked, blinking into the doctor's flashlight.

"Tell you later, Jen. Get Fern out of her coma in the ward and then
we'll map out a plan. Channing, get out of here!"

Channing got after borrowing a spare flashlight from the doctor.

       *       *       *       *       *

He found Hadley up in the instrument room with a half dozen of his men.
They were a mass of minor and major cuts and injuries, and were working
under a single incandescent lamp that had been wired to the battery
direct by means of spare cable. The wire went snaking through the air
in a foolish, crooked line, suspended on nothing. Hadley's gang were
applying first aid to one another and cursing the lack of gravity.

"Help?" said Channing.

"Need it or offer it?" asked Hadley with a smile.

"Offer it. You'll need it."

"You can say that again--and then pitch in. You're Channing, of
Communications, aren't you? We're going to have a mad scramble on
the main circuits of this tub before we can unwind it. I don't think
there's an instrument working in the whole ship."

"You can't unravel the whole works, can you?"

"Won't try. About all we can do is replace the lighting system and hang
the dead cathodes in again. They'll be all right to take us out of this
cockeyed skew-curve and probably will last long enough to keep a half-G
floor under us for tinkering, for maybe forty or fifty hours. Assistant
Pilot Darlange will have to learn how to run a ship by the seat of his
pants--as far as I can guess there isn't even a splinter of glass left
in the pilot room--so he'll have to correct this flight by feel and by
using a haywire panel."

"Darlange is a school-pilot," grinned one of Hadley's men.

"I know, Jimmy, but I've seen him work on a bum autopilot, and he
can handle haywire all right. It'll be tough without Greenland, but
Greenland--" Hadley let the sentence fall; there was no need to mention
the fact that Greenland was probably back there with the rest of the
wreckage torn from the _Solar Queen_.

Jimmy nodded, and the action shook him from his position. He grabbed at
a roll of tape that was floating near him and let it go with a laugh as
he realized it was too light to do him any good.

"Too bad that this gyration is not enough to make a decent gravity
at the ends, at least," snorted Hadley. He hooked Jimmy by an arm and
hauled the man back to a place beside him. "Now look," he said, "I
can't possibly guess how many people are still in working condition
after this. Aside from our taped and doped friend here, the only ones
I have are we who were snoozing in our beds when the crush came. I'll
bet a cooky that the rest of the crowd are all nursing busted ribs,
and worse. Lucky that full-G died slowly as the cathodes went out;
otherwise we'd all have been tossed against the ceilings with bad
effects.

"Jimmy, you're a committee of one to roam the crate and make a list of
everyone who is still in the running and those who can be given minor
repairs to make them fit for limited work. Doc has a pretty good supply
of Stader splints; inform him that these are only to be used on men who
can be useful with them. The rest will have to take to plaster casts
and the old-fashioned kind of fracture-support.

"Pete, you get to the executive deck and tell Captain Johannson that
we're on the job and about to make with repairs. As power engineer,
I've control of the maintenance gang too, and we'll collect the whole,
hale, and hearty of Michaels' crew on our merry way.

"Tom, take three of your men and begin to unravel the mess with an eye
toward getting us lights.

"Tony, you can do this alone since we have no weight. You get the stale
cathodes from the supply hold and hang 'em back in the tubes.

"Channing, until we get a stable place, you couldn't do a thing about
trying to get help, so I suggest that you pitch in with Bennington,
there, and help unscramble the wiring. You're a circuit man, and though
power-line stuff is not your forte, you'll find that running a lighting
circuit is a lot easier than neutralizing a microwave transmitter. Once
we get light, you can help us haywire a control panel. Right?"

"Right. And as far as contacting the folks back home goes, we couldn't
do a darned thing until the time comes when we should be dropping in
on Mojave. They won't be looking for anything from us until we're
reported missing; then I imagine that Walt Franks will have everything
from a spinthariscope to a gold-foil electroscope set up. Right now I'm
stumped, but we have seventeen hours before we can start hoping to be
detected. Tom, where do we begin?"

Bennington smiled inwardly. To have Don Channing asking him for orders
was like having Captain Johannson request the batteryman's permission
to change course. "If you can find and remove the place where the
shorted line is, and then splice the lighting circuits again, we'll
have a big hunk of our work done. The rest of us will begin to take
lines off of the pilot's circuits right here in the instrument room so
that our jury-controls can be hooked in. You'll need a suit, I think,
because I'll bet a hat that the shorted line is in the well."

       *       *       *       *       *

For the next five hours, the instrument room became a beehive of
activity. Men began coming in driblets, and were put to work as
they came. The weightlessness gave quite a bit of trouble; had the
instrument panels been electrically hot, it would have been downright
dangerous since it was impossible to do any kind of work without
periodically coming against bare connections. Tools floated around
the room in profusion, and finally Hadley appointed one man to do
nothing but roam the place to retrieve "dropped" tools. The soldering
operations were particularly vicious, since the instinctive act of
flinging excess solder from the tip of an iron made droplets of hot
solder go zipping around the room to splash against something, after
which the splashes would continue to float.

Men who came in seeking to give aid were handed tools and told to do
this or that, and the problem of explaining how to free a frozen relay
to unskilled help was terrific.

Then at the end of five hours, Channing came floating in to the
instrument room. He flipped off the helmet and said to Hadley: "Make
with the main switch. I think I've got it."

Throughout the ship the lights blinked on.

With the coming of light, there came hope also. Men took a figurative
hitch in their belts and went to work with renewed vigor. It seemed
as though everything came to a head at about this time, too. Hadley
informed Darlange that his jury-control was rigged and ready for
action, and about the same time, the galley crew came in with
slender-necked bottles of coffee and rolls.

"It was a job, making coffee," grinned the steward. "The darned stuff
wanted to get out of the can and go roaming all over the place. There
isn't a one of us that hasn't got a hot coffee scar on us somewhere.
Now if he"--nodding at Darlange--"can get this thing straightened out,
we'll have a real dinner."

"Hear that, Al? All that stands between us and dinner is you. Make with
the ship-straightening. Then we'll all sit around and wait for Channing
to think."

"Is the ship's communicator in working order?" asked Darlange.

"Sure. That went on with the lights."

Darlange called for everyone in the ship to hold himself down, and
then he tied his belt to the frame in front of the haywired panel. He
opened the power on drivers 1 and 2, and the ship's floor surged ever
so little.

"How're you going to know?" asked Hadley.

"I've got one eye on the gyro-compass," said Darlange. "When it stops
turning, we're going straight. Then all we have to do is to set our
bottom end along the line of flight and pack on the decel. Might as
well do it that way since every MPS we can lose is to our advantage."

He snapped switches that added power to Driver 3. Gradually the
gyro-compass changed from a complex rotation-progression to a simpler
pattern, and eventually the simple pattern died, leaving but one
freedom of rotation. "I'm sort of stumped," grinned Darlange. "We're
now hopping along, but rotating on our long axis. How we stop axial
rotation with drivers set parallel to that axis I'll never guess."

"Is there a lifeship in working order?" asked Hadley.

"Sure."

"Tom, turn it against the rotation and apply the drivers on that until
we tell you to stop."

An hour later the ship had ceased to turn. Then Darlange jockeyed the
big ship around so that the bottom was along the line of flight. Then
he set the power for a half-G, and everyone relaxed.

Ten minutes later Captain Johannson came in.

"You've done a fine job," he told Hadley. "And now I declare an hour
off for dinner. Dr. MacLain has got a working medical center with
the aid of a few people who understand how such things work, and the
percentage of broken bones, though terrific in number, is being taken
care of. The passengers were pretty restive at first, but the coming of
light seemed to work wonders. This first glimmer of power is another.
About nine or ten who were able to do so were having severe cases
of skysickness." He smiled ruefully. "I'm not too sure that I like
no-weight myself."

"Have you been in the observation dome?" asked Don.

"Yes. It's pierced, you know."

"Did the meteor hit the telescope?"

"No, why?"

"Because I'm going to have to get a sight on Venus Equilateral before
we can do anything. We'll have to beam them something, but I don't know
what right now."

"Can we discuss that over a dinner?" asked the captain. "I'm starved,
and I think that the rest of this gang is also."

"You're a man after my own heart," laughed Channing. "The bunch out
at the Station wouldn't believe me if I claimed to have done anything
without drawing it up on a tablecloth."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Now," said Channing over his coffee. "What have we in the way of
electronic equipment?"

"One X-ray machine, a standard set of communicating equipment, one beam
receiver with 'type machine for collecting stuff from your Station, and
so on."

"You wouldn't have a betatron in the place somewhere?" asked Don
hopefully.

"Nope. Could we make one?"

"Sure. Have you got about ten pounds of No. 18 wire?"

"No."

"Then we can't."

"Couldn't you use a driver? Isn't that some kind of beam?"

"Some kind," admitted Channing. "But it emits something that we've
never been able to detect except in an atmosphere where it ionizes the
air into a dull red glow."

"You should have been wrecked on the _Sorcerer's Apprentice_," laughed
Hadley. "They're the guys who have all that kind of stuff."

"Have they?" asked Johannson.

"The last time I heard, they were using a large hunk of their upper
hull for a VanDerGraf generator."

"That would do it," said Channing thoughtfully. "But I don't think I'd
know how to modulate a VanDerGraf. A betatron would be the thing.
You can modulate that, sort of, by keying the input. She'd give out
with hundred-and-fifty-cycle stuff, but so what? We made the _Empress
of Kolain_ sit up and say uncle on hundred-cycle stuff. How much of a
trick is it to clear the observation dome from the top?"

"What do you intend to do?"

"Well, we've got a long, hollow tube in this ship. Knock out the
faceted dome above, and we can rig us up a huge electron gun. We'll
turn the ship to point at the Station and beam 'em a bouquet of
electrons."

"How're you going to do that?"

"Not too tough, I don't think. Down here," and Channing began to trace
on the tablecloth, "we'll put us a hot cathode. About this level we'll
hang the first anode, and at this level we'll put the second anode.
Here'll be an acceleration electrode, and up near the top we'll put
a series of focusing anodes. We'll tap in to the driver-tube supply
and take off voltages to suit us. Might use a tube at that, but the
conversion to make an honest electron gun out of it would disrupt our
power, and then it would be impossible to make a driver out of it again
without recourse to a machine shop."

"How are you going to make electrodes?"

"We'll use the annular gratings that run around the central well at
each level," said Channing. "We'll have a crew of men cut 'em free and
insulate the resulting rings with something. Got anything?"

"There is a shipment of methyl-methacrylate rods for the Venus Power
Co. in Hold 17," said the cargo master.

"Fine," said Channing. "What size?"

"Three inches by six feet."

"It'll be tricky work, and you'll have to wait until your cut edge has
cooled before you hook on the rods," mused Don. "But that's the ticket."

"Which floors do you want?"

"Have you got a scale drawing of the _Solar Queen_?"

"Sure."

"Then this is where my tablecloth artistry falls flat. The focusing of
an electron beam depends upon the electrode spacing and the voltage.
Since our voltage is fixed if we take it from the driver electrodes,
we'll have to do some mighty fine figuring. I'll need that scale
drawing."

       *       *       *       *       *

Channing's tablecloth engineering was not completely wasted. By the
time the scale drawing was placed before him, Channing had half of the
table filled with equations. He studied the drawing, and selected the
levels which were to serve as electrodes. He handed the drawing to
Hadley, and the power engineer began to issue instructions to his gang.

Then the central well began to swarm with spacesuited men who bore
cutting torches. Hot sparks danced from the cut girders that held the
floorings, and at the same time, a crew of men were running cables from
the various levels to the instrument room. More hours passed while the
circular sections were insulated with the plastic rods.

The big dome above was cut in sections and removed, and then the sky
could be seen all the way from the bottom of the ship where the pilot's
greenhouse should have been.

Channing looked it over and then remarked: "All we need now is an
electron collector."

"I thought you wanted to shoot 'em off," objected Hadley.

"I do. But we've got to have a source of supply. You can't toss
baseballs off of the Transplanet Building in Northern Landing all
afternoon, you know, without having a few brought to you now and then.
Where do you think they come from?"

"Hadn't thought of it in that way. What'd happen?"

"We'd get along for the first umpty-gillion electrons, and then all
the soup we could pack on would be equalized by the positive charge on
the ship and we couldn't shoot out any more until we got bombarded by
the sun--and that bombardment is nothing to write home about as goes
quantity. What we need is a selective solar intake plate of goodly
proportions."

"We could use a mental telepathy expert, too. Or one of those new beams
that Baler and Carroll dug up out of the Martian desert. I've heard
that those things will actually suck power out of any source, and bend
beams so as to enter the intake vent, or end."

"We haven't one of those, either. Fact of the matter is," grinned
Channing ruefully, "we haven't much of anything but our wits."

"Unarmed, practically," laughed Hadley.

"Half armed, at least. Ah, for something to soak up electrons. I'm now
wondering if this electron gun is such a good idea."

"Might squirt some protons out the other direction," offered Hadley.

"That would leave us without either," said Don. "We'd be like the man
who tossed baseballs off of one side and himself off the other--Hey!
Of course we have some to spare. We can cram electrons out of the
business end, thus stripping the planetary rings from the atoms in our
cathode. From the far side we'll shoot the canal rays, which in effect
will be squirting protons, or the nuclei. Since the planetaries have
left for the front, it shouldn't be hard to take the protons away,
leaving nothing. At our present voltages, we might be able to do it."
Channing began to figure again, and he came up with another set of
anodes to be placed beyond the cathode. "We'll ventilate the cathode
and hang these negative electrodes on the far side. They will attract
the protons, impelled also by the positive charge on the front end.
We'll maintain a balance that way, effectively throwing away the whole
atomic structure of the cathode. The latter will fade, just as the
cathodes do in the driving tubes, only we'll be using electronic power
instead of sub-electronic. Y'know, Hadley, some day someone is going to
find a way to detect the--we'll call it radiation for want of anything
better--of the driver. And then there will open an entirely new field
of energy. I don't think that anybody has done more about the so-called
sub-electronic field than to make a nice, efficient driving device out
of it.

"Well, let's get our canal-ray electrodes in place. We've got about two
hours before they realize that we aren't going to come in at Mojave.
Then another two hours worth of wild messages between the Relay Station
and Mojave. Then we can expect someone to be on the lookout. I hope to
be there when they begin to look for us. At our present velocity, we'll
be flirting with the Asteroid Belt in less than nothing flat. That
isn't too bad--normally--but we're running without any meteor detector
and autopilot coupler. We couldn't duck anything from a robin's egg on
up."

"We'll get your anodes set," said Hadley.

       *       *       *       *       *

Walt Franks grinned at Arden Channing. "That'll burn him," he assured
her.

"It's been on the way for about twenty minutes," laughed Arden. "I
timed it to arrive at Terra at the same time the _Solar Queen_ does.
They'll send out a special messenger with it, just as Don is getting
aboard his little scooter. It'll be the last word, for we're not
following him from Terra to here."

"You know what you've started?" asked Franks.

"Nothing more than a little feud between husband and self."

"That's just the start. Before he gets done, Don will have every ship
capable of answering back. I've found that you can catch him off
base just once. He's a genius--one of those men who never make the
same mistake twice. He'll never again be in a position to be on the
listening end only."

"Don's answer should be on the way back by now," said Arden. "Could be
you're right. Something should be done."

"Sure I'm right. Look at all the time that's wasted in waiting for
a landing to answer 'grams. In this day and age, time is money,
squared. The latter is to differentiate between this time and the first
glimmering of speedy living."

"Was there a first glimmering?" asked Arden sagely. "I've often thought
that the speed-up was a stable acceleration from the dawn of time to
the present."

"All right, go technical on me," laughed Walt. "Things do move. That
is, all except that message from your loving husband."

"You don't suppose he's squelched?"

"I doubt it. Squelching Donald Channing is a job for a superbeing. And
I'm not too sure that a superbeing could squelch Don and make him stay
squelched. Better check on Mojave."

"Gosh, if Don missed the _Solar Queen_ and I've been shooting him all
kinds of screwy 'types every hour on the hour; Walt, that'll keep him
quiet for a long, long time."

"He'd have let you know."

"That wouldn't have been so bad. But if the big bum missed and was
ashamed of it--that'll be the pay-off. Whoa, there goes the 'type!"

Arden drew the tape from the machine:

    MESSAGE BEING HELD FOR ARRIVAL OF _SOLAR QUEEN_.

Walt looked at his watch and checked the course constants of the _Solar
Queen_. He called the beam-control dome and asked for the man on the
_Solar Queen_ beam.

"Benny," he said, "has the _Solar Queen_ arrived yet?"

"Sure," answered Benny. "According to the mechanical mind here, they've
been on Mojave for twenty minutes."

"Thanks." To Arden he said: "Something's strictly fishy."

Arden sat at the machine and pounded the keys:

    _SOLAR QUEEN_ DUE TO ARRIVE AT 19:06:41. IT IS NOW 19:27:00. BEAM
    CONTROL SAYS TRANSMISSIONS ENDED BECAUSE OF COINCIDENCE BETWEEN
    TERRA BEAM AND STATION-TO-SHIP BEAM. PLEASE CHECK.

Arden fretted and Walt stamped up and down the room during the long
minutes necessary for the message to reach Terra and the answer to
return. It came right on the tick of the clock:

    HAVE CHECKED COURSE CONSTANTS. _SOLAR QUEEN_ OVER-DUE NOW FIFTY
    MINUTES. OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING WRONG. CAN YOU HELP?

Walt smiled in a grim fashion. "Help!" he said. "We go on and on for
years and years with no trouble--and now we've lost the third ship in a
row."

"They claim that those things always run in threes," said Arden. "What
are we going to do?"

"I don't know. We'll have to do something. Funny, but the one reason we
must do something is the same reason why something can be done."

"I don't get that."

"With Channing on the _Solar Queen_, something can be done. I don't
know what, but I'll bet you a new hat that Don will make it possible
for us to detect the ship. There is not a doubt in my mind that if the
ship is still spaceworthy, we can narrow the possibilities down to a
thin cone of space."

"How?"

"Well," said Franks, taking the fountain pen out of the holder on the
desk and beginning to sketch on the blotter, "the course of the _Solar
Queen_ is not a very crooked one, as courses go. It's a very shallow
skew curve. Admitting the worst, collision, we can assume only one
thing. If the meteor were small enough to leave the ship in a floating
but undirigible condition, it would also be small enough to do nothing
to the general direction of the ship. Anything else would make it
useless to hunt, follow?"

"Yes, go on."

"Therefore we may assume that the present position of the _Solar Queen_
is within the volume of a cone made by the tangents of the outermost
elements of the space curve that is the _Solar Queen's_ course. We can
take an eight-thousand-mile cylinder out of one place--for the origin
of their trouble is between Mars and Terra and the 'shadow' of Terra in
the cone will not contain the _Solar Queen_."

"Might have passed close enough to Terra to throw her right into the
'shadow' of Terra by attraction," objected Arden.

"Yeah, you're right. O.K., so we can't take out that cylinder of space.
And we add a sort of side-wise cone on to our original cone, a volume
through which the _Queen_ might have flown after passing close enough
to Terra to be deflected. I'll have the slipstick experts give a guess
as to the probability of the _Queen's_ course, and at the same time
we'll suspend all incoming operations. I'm going to set up every kind
of detector I can think of, and I don't want anything upsetting them."

"What kind of stuff do you expect?" asked Arden.

"I dunno. They might have a betatron aboard. In that case we'll
eventually get a blast of electrons that'll knock our front teeth out.
Don may succeed in tinkering up some sort of electrostatic field. We
can check the solar electrostatic field to about seven decimal places
right here, and any deviation in the field to the tune of a couple
of million electron volts at a distance of a hundred million miles
will cause a distortion in the field that we can measure. We'll ply
oscillating beams through the area of expectation and hope for an
answering reflection, though I do not hope for that. We'll have men on
the lookout for everything from smoke signals to helio. Don't worry too
much, Arden, your husband is capable of doing something big enough to
be heard. He's just the guy to do it."

"I know," said Arden soberly. "But I can't help worrying."

"Me, too. Well, I'm off to set up detectors. We'll collect something."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Have we got anything like a piece of gold leaf?" asked Channing.

"I think so, why?"

"I want to make an electroscope. That's about the only way I'll know
whether we are getting out with this cockeyed electron gun."

"How so?" asked Hadley.

"We can tell from the meter that reads the beam current whether
anything is going up the pipe," explained Channing. "But if
we just build us up a nice heavy duty charge--as shown by the
electroscope--we'll be sure that the electrons are not going far. This
is one case where no sign is good news."

"I'll have one of the boys set up an electroscope in the instrument
room."

"Good. And now have the bird on the telescope forget trying to find
Venus Equilateral by dead reckoning and sight. Have him set the scope
angles to the figures here, and then have him contact Darlange and have
the ship slued around so that Venus is on the cross hairs. That'll put
us on a line for the Station by a few thousand miles. We can afford to
miss. A bundle of electrons of our magnitude zipping past the detectors
that Walt can set up will make a reading."

Hadley called the observation dome. "Tim," he said, giving a string of
figures, "set your 'scope for these and then get Darlange to slue the
crate around so that your cross hairs are on Venus."

"O.K.," answered Tim. "That's going to be a job. This business of
looking through a 'scope while dressed in a spacesuit is no fun. Here
goes."

He called Darlange, and the communicator system permitted the men in
the instrument room to hear his voice. "Dar," he said, "loop us around
about forty-one degrees from Driver 3."

Darlange said: "Right!" and busied himself at his buttons.

"Three degrees on Driver 4."

"Right."

"Too far, back her up a degree on 4."

Darlange laughed. "What do you think these things are, blocks and
tackles? You mean: 'Compensate a degree on 2.'"

"You're the pilot. That's the ticket--and I don't care if you lift it
on one hand. Can you nudge her just a red hair on 3?"

"Best I can do is a hair and a half," said Darlange. He gave Driver 3
just a tiny, instantaneous surge.

"Then take it up two and back one and a half," laughed Tim. "Whoa,
Nellie, you're on the beam."

"Fine."

"O.K., Dar, but you'll have to play monkey on a stick. I'll prime you
for any moving so that you can correct immediately."

"Right. Don, we're on the constants you gave us. What now?"

"At this point I think a short prayer would be of assistance," said
Channing soberly. "We're shooting our whole wad right now."

"I hope we make our point."

"Well, it's all or nothing," agreed Don as he grasped the switch.

He closed the switch, and the power demand meters jumped up across
their scales. The gold-leaf electroscope jumped once; the ultra-thin
leaves jerked apart by an inch, and then oscillated stiffly until they
came to a balance. Channing, who had been looking at them, breathed
deeply and smiled.

"We're getting out," he said.

"Can you key this?" asked Hadley.

"No need," said Channing. "They know we're in the grease. We know that
if they can collect us, they'll be on their way. I'm going to send out
for a half-hour, and then resort to a five-minute transmission every
fifteen minutes. They'll get a ship after us with just about everything
we're likely to need, and they can use the five-minute transmissions
for direction finding. The initial shot will serve to give them an idea
as to our direction. All we can do now is to wait."

"And hope," added Captain Johannson.

       *       *       *       *       *

Electrically, Venus Equilateral was more silent than it had ever been.
Not an electrical appliance was running on the whole station. People
were cautioned about walking on deep-pile rugs, or combing their hair
with plastic combs, or doing anything that would set up any kind of
electronic charge. Only the highly filtered generators in the power
rooms were running and these had been shielded and filtered long
years ago; nothing would emerge from them to interrupt the ether. All
incoming signals were stopped.

And the men who listened with straining ears claimed that the sky was
absolutely clear save for a faint crackle of cosmic static which they
knew came from the corona of the sun.

One group of men sat about a static-field indicator and cursed the
minute wiggling of the meter, caused by the ever-moving celestial
bodies and their electronic charges. A sunspot emission passed through
the Station once, and though it was but a brief passage, it sent the
electrostatic field crazy and made the men jump.

The men who were straining their ears to hear became nervous, and were
jumping at every loud crackle.

And though the man at the telescope knew that his probability of
picking up a sight of the _Solar Queen_ was as slender as a spider's
web, he continued to search the starry heavens. He swept the narrow
cone of the heavens wherein the _Solar Queen_ was lost according to the
mathematical experts, and he looked at every bit of brightness in the
field of his telescope as though it might be the missing ship.

The beam-scanners watched their return-plates closely. It was difficult
because the receiver gains were set to maximum, and every tick of
static caused brief flashes of light upon their plates. They would jump
at such a flash and watch for it to reappear on the next wipe, for
a continuous spot of light indicated the ship they sought. Then, as
the spot did not reappear, they would go on with their beams to cover
another infinitesimal portion of the sky. Moving forward across the
cone of expectancy bit by bit, they crossed and recrossed until they
were growing restive.

Surely the ship must be there!

At the South End landing stage, a group of men were busy stocking a
ship. Supplies and necessities were carried aboard, while another
group of men tinkered with the electrical equipment. They cleared a
big space in the observation dome, and began to install a replica of
the equipment used on the Station for detection. No matter what kind
of output Channing sent back, they would be able to follow it to the
bitter end.

They made their installations in duplicate, with one piece of each
equipment on opposite sides of the blunt dome. Balancing the inputs of
each kind by turning the entire ship would give them a good indication
of direction.

Franks did not hope that the entire installation could be completed
before the signal came, but he was trying to outguess himself by
putting some of everything aboard. When and if it came, he would be
either completely ready with everything or he at least would have a
good start on any one of the number of detectors. If need be, the
equipment from the Station itself could be removed and used to complete
the mobile installation.

Everything was in a complete state of nervous expectancy. Watchers
watched, meter readers squinted for the barest wiggle, audio observers
listened, trying to filter any kind of man-made note out of the
irregular crackle that came in.

And the Station announcing equipment was dead quiet, to be used only
in case of emergency or to announce the first glimmer of radiation,
whether it be material, electrical, kinetic, potential, or wave front.

Long they listened--and then it came.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Station announcing equipment broke forth in a multitude of voices.

"Sound input on radio."

"Visual indication on scanner plates!"

"Distortion on electrostatic field indicator."

"Super-electroscopes indicate negative charge!"

"Nothing on the telescope!"

There were mingled cheers and laughter as the speaker system broke away
from its babel, and each group spoke its piece with no interference.
Walt Franks left the ship at the South End and raced to the Beam
Control dome, just as fast as the runway car would take him. He ran
into the dome in spacesuit and flipped the helmet back over his
shoulders. "What kind of indication?" he yelled.

Men crowded around him, offering him papers and shouting figures.

"Gosh," he said, "Don can't have everything going up there."

"He's hit just about everything but the guy squinting through the
'scope."

"What's he doing?" asked Franks of no one in particular.

One of the radiation engineers who had been busy with the electrostatic
field indicator said: "I think maybe he's using some sort of electron
gun--like the one you tried first off on the meteor-destroyer-job,
remember?"

"Yeah, but that one wouldn't work--unless Don has succeeded in doing
something that we couldn't do. Look, Charley, we haven't had time to
set up a complete field indicator on the ship. Grab yours and give the
boys a lift installing it, hey?"

"Sure thing."

"And look, fellows, any indication of direction, velocity, or distance?"

"Look for yourself," said the man on the beam scanner. "The whole plate
is shining. We can't get a fix on them this way--they're radiating
themselves and that means that our scanner-system finder is worthless."

"We can, but it's rough," offered one of the radio men. "It came from
an area out beyond Terra--and as for our readings it might have covered
a quarter of the sky."

"The field indicator is a short-base finder," explained Charley. "And
no less rough than the radio boys. I'd say it was out beyond Terra by
fifty million miles at least."

"Close enough. We'll have to track 'em down like a
radio-equipped bloodhound. Charley, come along and run that
mechanico-electro-monstrosity of yours. Gene, you can come along and
run the radio finder. Oh yes, you, Jimmy, may continue to squint
through that eyepiece of yours--but on the _Relay Girl_. We need a
good, first-class squinter, and you should have an opportunity to
help."

Jimmy laughed shortly. "The only guy on the Station that didn't get an
indication was me. Not even a glimmer."

"Channing didn't know we'd be _looking_ for him, or he'd probably
light a flare, too. Cheer up, Jimmy, after all this crude, electrical
rigamarole is finished, and we gotta get right down to the last
millimeter, it's the guy with the eye that polishes up the job. You'll
have your turn."

Twenty minutes after the first glimmer of intelligent signal, the
_Relay Girl_ lifted from the South End and darted off at an angle,
setting her nose roughly in the direction of the signal.

Her holds were filled with spare batteries and a whole dozen
replacement cathodes as well as her own replacements. Her crew was
filled to the eyebrows with gravanol, and there must have been a mile
of adhesive tape and cotton on their abdomens. At 6-G she left, and at
6-G she ran, her crew immobilized but awake because of the gravanol.
And though the acceleration was terrific, the tape kept the body from
folding of its own weight. When they returned, they would all be in the
hospital for a week, but their friends would be with them.

Ten minutes after take-off, the signals ceased.

Walt said: "Keep her running. Don's saving electricity. Tell me when we
pick him up again."

Franklen, the pilot, nodded. "We haven't got a good start yet. It'll
be touch and go. According to the slipstick boys, they must be clapping
it up at between twenty-five hundred and five thousand miles per second
to get that far--and coasting free or nearly so. Otherwise they'd have
come in. Any suggestions as to course?"

"Sure. Whoop it up at six until we hit about six thousand. Then
decelerate to four thousand by using 1-G. We'll vacillate in velocity
between four and five until we get close."

Forty-one hours later, the _Relay Queen_ made turnover and began to
decelerate.

       *       *       *       *       *

Channing said to Captain Johannson: "Better cut the decel to about a
quarter-G. That'll be enough to keep us from bumping our heads on the
ceiling and it will last longer. This is going to be a long chase, and
cutting down a few MPS at a half-G isn't going to make much never-mind.
I'll hazard a guess that the boys are on their way right now."

"If you say so," said Johannson. "You're the boss from now on. You
know that wild bunch on the Station better than I do. For myself, I've
always felt that an answer was desirable before we do anything."

"I know Franks and my wife pretty well--about as well as they know me.
I've put myself in Walt's place--and I know that Walt would do. So--if
Walt didn't think of it, Arden would--I can assume that they are aware
of us, have received our signals, and are, therefore, coming along
as fast as they can. They'll come zipping out here at from five- to
seven-G to what they think is halfway and then decelerate again to a
sane velocity. We won't catch sight of them for sixty or seventy hours,
and when we do, they'll be going so fast that it will take another
twenty hours worth of manipulation to match their speed with ours.
Meanwhile, I've got the gun timed to shoot our signal. When the going
gets critical, I'll cut the power and make it continuous."

"You're pretty sure of your timing?"

"Well, the best they can do as for direction and velocity and distance
is a crude guess. They'll place us out here beyond Terra somewhere.
They'll calculate the course requirements to get us this far in the
time allotted, and come to a crude figure. I'd like to try keying
this thing, but I know that keying it won't work worth a hoot at this
distance. Each bundle of keyed electrons would act as a separate
negative charge that would spread out and close up at this distance.
It's tough enough to hope that the electron beam will hold together
that far, let alone trying to key intelligence with it. We'll leave
well enough alone--and especially if they're trying to get a fix on us;
there's nothing worse than trying to fix an intermittent station. Where
are we now?"

"We're on the inner fringe of the Asteroid Belt, about thirty million
miles North, and heading on a secant course at thirty-four hundred MPS."

"Too bad Jupiter isn't in the neighborhood," said Channing. "We'll be
flirting with his orbit by the time they catch us."

"Easily," said Johannson. "In sixty hours, we'll have covered about six
hundred and fifty million miles. We'll be nearer the orbit of Saturn,
in spite of the secant course."

"Your secant approaches a radius as you get farther out," said Don,
absently. "As far as distances go. Ah, well, Titan, here we come!"

Johannson spoke to the doctor. "How're we doing?"

"Pretty well," said Doc. "There's as pretty an assortment of fractured
ribs, broken limbs, cracked clavicles, and scars, mars, and abrasions
as you ever saw. There are a number dead, worse luck, but we can't do
a thing about them. We can hold on for a week as far as food and water
goes. Everyone is now interested in the manner of our rescue rather
than worrying about it." He turned to Channing. "The words Channing and
Venus Equilateral have wonderful healing powers," he said. "They all
think your gang are part magician and part sorcerer."

"Why, for goodness' sake?"

"I didn't ask. Once I told 'em you had a scheme to contact the Relay
Station, they were all satisfied that things would happen for the
better."

"Anything we can do to help you out?"

"I think not," answered Doc. "What I said before still goes. Your job
is to bring aid--and that's the sum total of your job. Every effort
must be expended on that and that alone. You've got too many whole
people depending on you to spend one second on the hurt. That's my job."

"O.K.," said Channing, "But it's going to be a long wait."

"We can afford it."

"I hope we're not complicating the job of finding us by this quartering
deceleration," said Johannson.

"We're not. We're making a sort of vector from our course, but the
deviation is very small. As long as the fellows follow our radiation,
we'll be found," Channing said with a smile. "The thing that is tough
is the fact that all the floors seem to lean over."

"Not much, though."

"They wouldn't lean at all if we were running with the whole set of
equipment," said Darlange. "We run a complete turnover without spilling
a drop from the swimming pool."

"Or even making the passengers aware of it unless they're looking at
the sky."

"Stop worrying about it," said Doc. "I'm the only guy who has to worry
about it and as long as the floor is still a floor, I can stand sliding
into the corner once in a while."

"We might tinker with the turnover drivers," offered Don. "We can
bring 'em down to a place where the velocity-deceleration vectors
are perpendicular to the floor upon which we stand while our ship is
sluing. We've got a lot of time on our hands, and I, for one, feel a
lot happier when I'm doing something."

"It's a thought," said Hadley. "Wanna try it?"

"Let's go."

       *       *       *       *       *

Thirty hours after the _Relay Girl_ left the Station, Walt and Franklen
held a council of war, in which Charley Bren was the prime factor.

"We've come about two hundred million miles, and our present velocity
is something like four thousand miles per second," said Walt. "We're
going out towards Mars on a slightly-off radial course, to the North
of the ecliptic. That means we're a little over a quarter of a billion
miles from Sol, or about to hit the Asteroid Belt. Thinking it over a
little, I think we should continue our acceleration for another thirty
hours. What say?"

"The field has shown no change in intensity that I can detect," said
Bren. "If they haven't dropped their radiated intensity, that means
that we are no closer to them than we were before. Of course, we'd
probably have to cut the distance by at least a half before any
measurable decrement made itself evident."

"They must be on the upper limit of that four thousand MPS," observed
Walt. "There's one thing certain, we'll never catch them by matching
their speed."

"Where will another thirty hours at 6-G put us and how fast?" asked
Franklen.

Silence ensued while they scribbled long figures on scratch paper.

"About eight hundred million miles from Sol," announced Walt.

"And about eight thousand MPS," added Charley.

"That's a little extreme, don't you think?" asked Franklen.

"By about thirty percent," said Walt, scratching his chin. "If we hold
to our original idea of hitting it for six thousand, where will we be?"

"That would make it about forty-five hours from take-off, and we'd be
about four hundred and sixty million miles from Sol." Charley grinned
widely and said: "By Jove!"

"What?"

"By Jove!"

"'By Jove!' What?"

"That's where we'd be--By Jove!"

"_Phew._"

"I agree with you," said Franklen to Walt. "Better ignore him."

"Sure will after that. So then we'll be 'By Jove' at six thousand.
That would be a swell place to make turnover, I think. At 1-G decel,
to about four thousand MPS, that'll put us about ... um, that'd take
us ninety hours! We'll make that 3-G, at twenty hours, which will put
us about three hundred and fifty million miles along, which plus the
original four hundred and sixty million adds up to eight hundred and
ten million miles--"

"When an astronaut begins to talk like that," interrupted Arden, "we of
the skyways say that he is talking in Congressional figures. The shoe
is on the other foot. What on earth are you fellows figuring?"

"Where we'll be and how fast we'll be going at a given instant of no
particular importance," offered Walt. "When did you wake up?"

"About the third hundred million. All of those ciphers going by made a
hollow sound, like a bullet whistling in the wind."

"Well, we're trying to make the theories of probability match with
figures. We'll know in about forty-five hours whether we were right or
not."

"It's a good thing we have all space to go around in. Are you sure that
we have all eternity?"

"Don't get anxious. They're still coming in like a ton of bricks
four times per hour, which means that they're riding easy. I don't
want to overrun them at about three thousand MPS and have to spend a
week decelerating, returning, more decelerating, and then matching
velocities."

"I see. You know best. And where is this Asteroid Belt that I've heard
so much about?"

"To the South of us by a few million miles. Those bright specks that
you can't tell from stars are asteroids. The common conception of the
Asteroid Belt being filled to overflowing with a collection of cosmic
rubble like the rings of Saturn is a lot of hooey. We'll be past in
a little while and we haven't even come close to one. Space is large
enough for all of us, I think."

"But not when all of us want the same space."

"I don't care for their area," said Walt with a smile. "Let 'em have
it, I don't care. I'll stay up here and let them run as they will."

"You mean the ones that are moving downward?" asked Arden, indicating
the sky.

"Those are asteroids, yes. We're to the North, as you may check by
going around the ship to the opposite side. You'll see Polaris almost
directly opposite, there. Sol is almost directly below us, and that
bright one that you can see if you squint almost straight up out of the
port is Saturn."

"I won't bother crossing the ship to see Polaris. I prefer the Southern
Cross anyway. The thing I'm most interested in is: Are we accomplishing
anything?"

"I think that we've spent the last thirty hours just catching up,"
explained Walt. "Up to right now we were going backwards, so to speak:
we're on even terms now, and will be doing better from here on in."

"It's the waiting that gets me down," said Arden. "Oh, for something to
do!"

"Let's eat," suggested Walt. "I'm hungry, and now that I think of it, I
have not eaten since we left the Station. Arden, you are hereby elected
to the post of galley chief. Get Jimmy from the dome if you need help."

"Help? What for?"

"He can help you lift it out of the oven. Don must have a cast-iron
stomach."

"That's hearsay. I'll show you! As soon as I find the can opener,
breakfast will be served."

"Make mine dinner," said Charley. "We've been awake all the time."

"O.K., we will have a combined meal, from grapefruit to ice cream.
Those who want any or all parts may choose at will. And fellows, please
let me know as soon as you get something tangible."

"That's a promise," said Walt. "Take it easy, and don't worry. We'll
be catching up with them one of these days."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Hadley, how much coating have we got on those cathodes?"

"Not too much. We had about twenty G-hours to begin with. We went to a
half-G for about twenty hours, and now we're running on a quarter-G,
which would leave us go for forty hours more. That's a grand total of
about sixty hours."

"And the batteries?"

"In pretty good shape."

"Well, look. If it should come to a choice between floor and signal
gun, we'll choose the gun. We've about twelve hours left in the
cathodes, and since everybody is now used to quarter-G we might even
slide it down to an eighth-G, which would give us about twenty-four
hours."

"Your gun is still putting out?"

"So far as I can tell. Ten hours from now, we should know, I think,
predicating my guess on whatever meager information they must have."

"We could save some juice by killing most of the lights in the ship."

"That's a thought. Johannson, have one of your men run around and
remove all lights that aren't absolutely necessary. He can kill about
three quarters of them, I'm certain. That'll save us a few kilowatt
hours," said Channing. "And another thing. I'm about to drop the power
of our electron gun and run it continuously. If the boys are anywhere
in the neighborhood, they'll be needing the continuous disturbance for
direction finding. I'd say in another five hours that we should start
continuous radiation."

"You know, Channing, if this thing works out all right, it will be a
definite vote for pure, deductive reasoning."

"I know. But the pure deduction is not too pure. It isn't guesswork.
There are two factors of known quantity. One is that I know Walt
Franks, and the other is that he knows me. The rest is a simple matter
of the boys on the Station knowing space to the last inch, and applying
the theory of probabilities to it. We'll hear from them soon, or I'll
miss my guess. You wait."

"Yeah," drawled Captain Johannson, "we'll wait!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Charley Bren made another computation and said: "Well, Walt, we've been
narrowing them down for quite a time now. We're getting closer and
closer to them, according to the field intensity. I've just got a good
idea of direction on that last five-minute shot. Have Franklen swivel
us around on this course; pretty soon we'll be right in the middle of
their shots."

"We're approaching them asymptotically," observed Walt. "I wish I knew
what our velocity was with respect to theirs. Something tells me that
it would be much simpler if I knew."

"Walt," asked Arden, "how close can you see a spaceship?"

"You mean how far? Well, I don't know that it's ever been tried and
recorded. But we can figure it out easy enough, by analogy. A period
is about thirty thousandths of an inch in diameter, and visible from
a distance of thirty inches. I mean visible with no doubt about
it's being there. That's a thousand to one. Now, the _Solar Queen_
is about six hundred feet tall and about four hundred feet in its
major diameter, so we can assume a little more than the four hundred
feet--say five hundred feet average of circular area, say--follow me?"

"Go on, you're vague, but normal."

"Then at a thousand to one, that becomes five hundred thousand
feet, and dividing by five thousand--round figures because it isn't
important enough to use that two hundred and eighty feet over the five
thousand--gives us one thousand miles. We should be able to see the
_Solar Queen_ from a distance of a thousand miles."

"Then at four thousand miles per second we'll be in and out of visual
range in a half second?"

"Oh no. They're rambling on a quite similar course at an unknown
but high velocity. Our velocity with respect to theirs is what will
determine how long they're within visual range."

"Hey, Walt," came the voice of Charley Bren. "The intensity of Don's
beam has been cut to about one quarter and is now continuous. Does that
mean anything?"

"Might mean trouble for them. Either they're running out of soup and
mean for us to hurry up, or they assume we're close enough to obviate
the need for high power. We'd better assume they want haste and act
accordingly. How're the boys on the radio detectors coming along?"

"Fine. They've taken over the direction finding and claim that we are
right on their tail."

"Anything in the sights, Jimmy?"

"Not yet. But the electroscope boys claim that quarter power or not,
the input is terrific."

"Take a rest, Jimmy. We won't be there for a while yet. No use burning
your eyes out trying to see 'em. There'll be time enough for you to do
your share after we get 'em close enough to see with the naked eye.
What do the beam-scanners say?"

"Shucks," answered the man on the scanners, "they're still radiating.
How are we going to fix 'em on a reflected wave when they're more
powerful on their own hook? The whole plate is glaring white. And,
incidentally, so is the celestial globe in the meteor-spotter. I've had
the threshold cut to the devil on that or we'd never be able to hold
this course. Anything like a meteor that comes in our way now will not
register until we're right on top of it and--"

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Relay Girl_ lurched sickeningly. All over the ship, things rattled
and fell to the floors. Men grabbed at the closest solid object, and
then the _Relay Girl_ straightened out once more.

"_Woosh_," said Franks. "That was a big one."

"Big one?" called Charley Bren. "That, my friend, was none other than
the _Solar Queen_!"

"Can you prove that?"

"Sure. Our electroscopes now indicate a positive charge; they crossed
over just as we lurched."

"Jimmy, get your scope a-top and get looking. Franklen, hang on about
7-G and follow Jimmy's orders. Charley, see if you can get anything
cogent out of your gadget. Holy Green Fire, with all of a cubic million
million million megaparsecs in which to run, we have to be so good that
we run right into our quarry. Who says that radio direction finding is
not a precise science? Who says that we couldn't catch--"

"Walt, they're in sight, but losing fast."

"O.K., Jimmy, can you give me any idea as to their velocity with
respect to ours?"

"How long is she?"

"Six hundred feet."

Jimmy was silent for some seconds. "They're out of sight again, but I
make it about four to seven hundred miles per second."

"At 7-G we should match that seven hundred in about four hours."

"And then go on decelerating so that they'll catch up?"

"No," said Walt. "I used the max figure and we can assume that they
aren't going that fast, quite. At the end of four hours, we'll
turnover and wait until they heave in sight again and then we'll do
some more oscillating. We can match their velocity inside of ten hours,
or Franklen will get fired."

"If I don't," promised Franklen, "I'll quit. You can't fire me!"

"We should be able to contact them by radio," said Walt.

"Their beam is off," said Bren.

"And they are using the landing set," called the radio man, "It's
Channing. He says: 'Fancy meeting you here.' Any answer?"

"Just say, 'Dr. Channing, I presume?'"

Channing's voice came out of the ship's announcer system as the radio
man made the necessary connections. It said: "Right--but what kept you
so long?"

"Our boss was away," said Walt. "And we can't do a thing without him."

"Some boss. Some crew of wild men. Can't go off on a fishing trip
without having my bunch chasing all over the Solar System."

"What's wrong with a little sightseeing tour? We didn't mean any harm.
And speaking of harm, how are you and the rest of that bunch getting
along?"

"We're O.K. What do you plan after we finally get close enough together
to throw stones across?"

"We've got a whole hold full of spare batteries and a double set of
replacement cathodes. There is a shipload of gravanol aboard, too.
You'll need that and so will we. By the time we finish this jaunt,
we'll have been about as far out as anybody ever gets."

"Yeah--got any precise figures? We've been running on a guess and a
hope. I make it out about seven hundred million."

"Make it eight and a half. At 6-G, you'll cover another hundred and
fifty million miles before you stop. Take it twenty-two hours at
6-G--and then another twenty-two at 6. That should put you right back
here but going the other way at the same velocity. But wait, you've
been coasting. Mark off that last twenty-two hours and make it like
this: You'll be one thousand million miles from Sol when you come to a
stop at the end of the first twenty-two hours at 6-G. That hangs you
out beyond the orbit of Saturn by a couple of hundred million. Make it
back forty-four hours at 6-G, turnover and continue. By that time we'll
all be in so close that we can make any planet at will--preferably you
to Terra and we'll head for Venus Equilateral. You'll come aboard us?
No need for you to go with the rest."

"I can have the scooter sent out," said Channing. "How's Arden?"

"I'm fine, you big runabout. Wait until I get you!"

"Why Arden, I thought you might be glad to see me."

"Glad to see you?"

"But Arden--"

"Don't you 'But Arden' me, you big gadabout. Glad to see you? Boy, any
man that makes me chase him all over the Solar System! You just wait.
As soon as I get ahold of you, Don Channing, I'm going to--bust out and
bawl like a kid! Hurry up, willya?"

"I'll be right over," said Don soberly.

And, strangely enough, Don did not deviate this time.


                                THE END



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