Part 1

LIE ON THE BEAM

by John Victor Peterson

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Comet March 41. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Sweeping from perihelion, the black destroyer curved toward the gibbous white ball of Venus, its jets stabbing mocking fingers at the majesty of the sun whose clutching gravity it had cheated. Within the heavily shielded control cabin, the hard skull-face of the commander split into a fleshless smile. From his fanged jaws a single word was spat into the spaceship's intercommunication system:

"_Adrakolarn!_"

Back on dead sea bottoms the word had been but the weak utterance of a dream of yesteryear's greatness. First a muted whisper in the thin air of a dying world; then a keening through the faint, dust-driving wind; at last a clamorous cry banding together the spiritually reborn remnants of a vanishing race.... _Adrakolarn_--moment of destiny--moment of _reckoning_!

Throughout the urgently racing ship other skull-faced, chitinous-hided men thronged to bomb tubes and waited, heavy eyelids nature had fashioned as protection against the dust storms of the parent world drooping over eager, glittering eyes.

ADRAKOLARN--

* * * * *

Thousands of miles away, on the surface of Sol's second planet, a heavy, milky fog crept like a sentient thing up the side of a towering apartment dwelling. In and out of window recesses it stole, climbing higher and higher as if seeking entrance.

Soundlessly, mysteriously a window slid open. The fog gained momentum before a sudden wind and swept into the dimly lighted chamber. The silvery-haired young man on the bed did not awaken. His slender form turned and twisted beneath thin coverings and the jargon of astronautics came thickly from his lips.

A nightmare possessed him within which he was plunging down into Venus' clouds in a small spaceship. Suddenly his ports were shattered in a head-on collision with a high-flying native pterodactyl. In the dream as in actuality the great dampness of Venus poured chokingly into his lungs.

Almost instantly the urgent buzzing of a televisor signal brought him struggling upright, coughing thick, humid air from congested bronchial tubes.

Half drunken from the high oxygen content of the surface atmosphere, Frederic Ward slipped from his bed and reeled over to shut the port-like window. Damn these Venusians anyhow, he thought, meanwhile wheezing, coughing and spitting. Probably thought one of their clique was sleeping here instead of a decently-evolved native of Pittsburgh, Earth. That froglike brute down in Air Control probably had the atmospherics switchboard all awry. Well, I'll buzz him when I get this telecall answered. I'll tell him off proper. He has my temperature and humidity chart. Of all the nerve!

Still grumbling, Ward turned to the television transceiver, clicking on the audios and videos.

"Engineer Ward, Astronautics Authority, speaking."

The sight of Ward's room caused a grin to light up momentarily the fat, tired face on the receiving grid.

"What's up, Silvy? Getting acclimated to our lovely Venus?"

"What's on your mind, Wagner?" Ward snapped back, in no mood for joking even if the buzzing of the televisorphone had probably saved him from an oxy-hangover or, perhaps, even drowning in the early morning tidal mists.

"Plenty. Get out here soon's you can. One of the trajectory beams is out and there are a couple of earth cruisers nearing perihelion from Mars. If they don't get a signal at zero-one-three-zero they're liable to coast on into Sol. Surface weather here's damned near zero-zero, too. I need you badly."

"Where in the name of the twenty-seven local fish-gods is Portiz? He's emergency man, isn't he?"

Wagner's moonface dropped down six lines on the 441 line kinescope grid.

"Portiz," he explained lamely, "is incapacitated."

"You mean drunk!" Ward retorted sharply. "Isn't he on constant call just like the rest of us? Just because he's a cousin of somebody back in Washington is no sign that he can establish a semi-permanent site in Gasuki's Grill. And just because he's your immediate superior is no sign you have to whitewash his doings. I've seniority here. What _I_ say matters! Give him the emergency call. We'll sober the lug up if we have to dunk him in the Draka Malarga. If a couple of those plesiosaurs got on his tail he'd swear off for good. If he doesn't show up, I'll report it to H. Q. and--"

"Okay, Silvy, okay," Wagner said tiredly. "Now get out here, please, sir. Oops! There goes the patrol signal!"

"Leave the circuit on!" Silvy Ward snapped and stood watching the video grid as Wagner jacked up the power in the distant radio receiver.

"... are two ships trajecting in which are not listed on the incoming flights. One on an A-orbit coming in at terrific velocity from base-direction Mars; one on a C-orbit out of Earth. Approximate distances, six and five thousand miles respectively. Should hit atmosphere simultaneously, thus endangering themselves and other incoming ships. Advise."

More trouble. Ward began to grumble again as he snapped off the televisor and began dressing. Always somebody who says to hell with the Authority and plots his own Hohman orbit. Unusually an eccentric millionaire with a luxurious spaceyacht filled with a swan-necked crew of "Oh, r'ally? You don't say?" debutantes and matrons, boyfriends, gigolos, etc. If they arrive in one piece without benefit of the AA's trajectory beams, range and landing beams, okay; if they get into trouble and the Authority doesn't get them to surface in one place, well then the Authority takes it in the neck and the paperwork is terrific over in General Inspection.

Ward was disgruntled. Leave it to Portiz to get plastered. Leave it to Wagner to let a keying device, a teletype, a station location marker, a transmitter, the instrument landing beams or something go blooey in zero-zero weather. Sure! Silvy Ward, old faithful Silvy's here to handle it and get a few more gray hairs thirty years ahead of Mother Nature's usual schedule. Back in HQ on Earth a radio engineer is considered something like a Martian maharajah; he just doesn't have to get down on his knees and fool around with leads and circuits, keeping one eye cocked on an oscillograph and the other on a multi-wave meter. But leave it to HQ to send me to this bronchitis-stimulating hole called Pali-Vanyi, Venus, with a drunkard and an inexperienced college graduate for my only assistants when the Old Man damn' well knows I should have at least four old timers.

Good man, Portiz, but he lets his reputation and connections carry him. Let Venus get him worn down to a frazzle and then started to drink like a native squid. Wagner's a good man, too. Fooled around with coeds and rocket polo too much in Astrotech, that's all. Boned for exams and passed them, but his knowledge is mostly theoretical. Usually blows up in a pinch, like now.

The air conditioning apparatus had practically straightened out the previously cockeyed atmospherics, and Silvy was waking up. But he was still a bit rankled as he zipped on rubberoid coveralls, donned a filtration mask, went out to the garage and drove his caterpillar-treaded fog flivver out into the nearly-liquid ground atmosphere of dear, damp Venus.

The fog certainly was settling in on Pali-Vanyi port! Usually the Hump, the five thousand foot mountain range which runs along the east of the field, breaks the storm winds which blow in intermittently from Draka Malarga, the mighty eastern sea. Sure, sometimes there's a real typhoon ripping beyond the mountain, chopping Malarga into thousand foot waves, at the same time there'll be a four thousand foot ceiling at the spaceport and probably ten miles visibility to north, south and west. But take tonight: the weather broadcasts said that Draka Malarga was practically calm and the plesiosaurs and their girl friends were probably sporting on the waves; Pali-Vanyi was completely fogged in! Ah, Venus, weatherman's headache and Authority's dire pain!

Visibility _was_ nil. Even Frederic Ward's infrared headlights and special goggles could not cut the fog. He spent a good half hour on the fifteen mile trip northwestward and glimpsed the station barely in time to jam down the hydraulics and squish to stop in the sloshy mire deposited by a recent typhoon.

* * * * *

Wagner was looking blankly at the great bank of keying devices on the trajectory transmitters when Silvy walked in through the airlock. He turned around forlornly, laying a fat hand suggestively on a complicated blueprint.

"You look tired, Wag," the engineer stated; then his alert eyes caught the reason why. The flight chart explained that: a series of entries on the incoming flights column. In this weather that meant work for the operator at the station. Traffic Control normally brought the ships in by voice contact after said ships had consecutively swung off the trajectory beams and radio range beams; but with zero-zero weather, the Authority men had to concentrate upon the instrument landing beams as well. Wherefore Ward didn't reprimand Wagner. After all, if a keyer breaks down, it isn't necessarily because a human being has failed.

"I'm half dead," Wagner acknowledged with a forced grin. "Twenty ships came in in the last hour. Twenty of 'em off twenty different trajectory beams. Twenty of 'em on the landing beams. I just got the bulk of 'em in properly when a keyer goes out with Earth's two cruisers swinging into perihelion near the sun!"

"What're all those ships here for?" Ward asked as he stripped off dripping coveralls and proceeded to the multitrajectory beam transmitter.

"Usual thing. Owing to the present tense situation which has developed between Venus and dear old Red, the representatives of Earth and Venus have decided to have a conclave to effect measures against our dear Martian cousins. Everybody's afraid things will go smash when Mars and Venus are in opposition two Earth years hence."

"Oh," grunted Silvy Ward. Political wrangling wasn't his forte.

Removing the transparent cover from the silent keyer, Ward made a cursory examination. The keying device proper seemed to be okay. He promptly got out the circuit tester and started checking the continuity of the circuits.

Wherewith things started to happen with a vengeance. Traffic Control called, stating that a freighter was dropping in over the field and asking for the north-south landing beams. Wagner hurried over to cut in the juice on the remote controls.

Immediately the open receiver which was tuned to the Patrol frequency snarled out:

"Patrol V-11 calling Pali-Vanyi base."

The base station over in Traffic Control cut in on the same wavelength.

"Okay, V-11. Report."

"The ship on A-orbit from direction Mars is a destroyer. Not near enough to read markings. Refuses to answer our signals or to cut velocity. Advise."

"Contact ship," was the smug advice.

"Doing our best!" Patrol V-11 snapped back.

Wagner had his head half turned from the landing indicators to hear the patrol communications. From the corner of his full-lipped mouth he shot:

"What in the devil's going on up there, Silvy?"

"Dunno," Ward answered. An inexplicable chill was running along his spine. A conclave here in the twin city of Pali-Vanyi to effect measures against Mars--A destroyer coming in, refusing to answer the Patrol queries--

The inner door opened behind him. Ward spun around. Anger darkened his face as he glared at the tall, dark skinned man who had unsteadily come to rest against the door jamb.

The dark one looked owlishly at Wagner and Ward, twisted a loose mouth open and mumbled:

"Portiz reporting for duty."

"In _that_ condition?" Silvy Ward snapped.

"I'm sober as a king," Portiz answered.

"King Henry the Eighth," Wagner said softly.

II

The fulfillment of his own particular mission was close at hand now, and the destroyer's commander was tensed at the jet keys. How great, he thought, the destiny of the new Leader of the race and through the Leader how great the race's destiny! No more worshipping of the ancient god, Zabir, Father of the Deserts. That had been frustrate, meaningless worship. Dawn after sudden dawn had passed and the race, without ambition, without a goal for its dreams, aye, even without its dreams, had waned into a purely subjective way of life, a fatalistic waiting for the end which every day came closer; now each dawn brought new hopes and life had become objective, meaningful. Zabir, you failed us; the Leader will not.

The moment is drawing nearer--

* * * * *

A sleek, luxurious spaceyacht blasted from its plotted C-orbit out of Earth and slanted down toward Venus' cloudbank. Within a plushy cabin on its topside an incredibly fat man in white tie and tails squatted at the controls, a self satisfied grin on his bejowled face.

"Jimmie," he said to the ruddy faced navigator, "we'll show the Authority that we don't have to have instruments keying our course. We'll show them that we don't have to get a buzz every thirty minutes to tell us we're grooving our trajectory. No, sir, Jimmie, my lad. Now we'll show them Charleston infrareds clear down to Pali-Vanyi port. We'll show them that we don't need any antiquated radio range beam to get us into that foggy port. That weather broadcast my daughter made us listen to a while back said that Pali is completely fogged in, but that isn't going to stop us. The Charleston infrareds will get us down.

"Sure, Jimmie, we proved that we can get from Earth to Venus without the aid of a trajectory beam; now we'll prove that we can get all the way down to surface without benefit of the Authority. We'll prove that this Astronautics Authority stuff is just a waste of the taxpayers' money, that the Charleston infrareds will make landing on Venus so simple that even a freshman at Astrotech could get in safely. When Congress convenes again, we'll show them, eh, Jimmie?"

"Yes, sir," the navigator yessed. "What's this Authority business anyway? Just a political organization which takes the taxpayer's money for something that isn't necessary at all. Sir, when you get back to Washington, you'll show 'em!"

"Good boy, Jimmie," the resplendently clad individualist said with a smile, patting the young fellow's shoulder with a diamond-studded paw.

Wherewith Dewitt Charleston peered through the forward port at the onrushing, cloud-veiled sphere which was Venus and grinned very happily. And then, from the corner of a flesh-surmounted eye he glimpsed the red flaring of rocket exhausts on the port side, and not more than ten miles away.

"Somebody crowding in on us," Charleston said. "Release the broadcast antenna while I get the transmitter going. Let's see, what's Patrol frequency? Sixty Megacycles."

Below the spaceyacht a long length of antenna dropped, trailing some ten feet below the length of the four hundred foot hull.

Jimmie nodded an okay to his employer.

The fat one absorbed the microphone in a fleshy hand.

"Calling unknown ship on port side. Sy 2700 calling."

There was no answer.

"Rats," said Dewitt Charleston. "What do they mean, coming in on our trajectory?"

"But, sir," Jimmie protested, "our trajectory isn't listed with the Authority; they probably have this other ship scheduled to come in now."

"They shouldn't do things like that," Charleston protested peevishly with a sublime disregard for the necessarily intricate workings of the Authority. "No right at all. Might think we were ordinary spacebats or something."

Which is when the receiver, attuned to the Patrol frequency, caught Traffic Control's command to contact the unidentified destroyer. Forthwith a third ship made itself present in the extra-Venusian heavens; a red-lighted ship bearing the AAP of the Authority Patrol. It came blasting from Venus' east and over its transmitter came:

"Patrol V-11 calling destroyer. What is your mission?"

Silence. It is a ruling in the interplanetary code that all ships use the same wavelength when contacting ships of the Authority or ships under the guidance of the AA's facilities; since silence reigned, it was quite obvious that the unknown destroyer had not answered.

The patrol ship shot a warning flare across the destroyer's bow. It burned bluely in the darkness of the outer atmosphere, lighting up that entire quadrant of space, revealing the baleful circle-in-a-square insignia of Mars on the destroyer's hull!

The receiver burst again into life.

"Patrol V-11 calling base. Destroyer is of Martian origin. Advise."

But before an answer was forthcoming, a luridly flaring object leaped from the dark ship, speeding across the obscurity of interplanetary space like a leaping bolt of lightning.

"Patrol V-11 to base. Destroyer launched torpedo. Trying to escape. Blast jet bank seven. Blast nine. Nine! Nine!"

The voice went dead. A lurid red sundered the black abyss of space. It was a void of baleful crimson in which two ships sped: Charleston's spaceyacht and the destroyer out of Mars. Where V-11 had been was only a glowing scattering of wreckage which faded into nothingness in the eternal night of the void.

"Pali-Vanyi base calling V-11. Calling--"

But V-11 did not answer. V-11 could not answer. V-11 was but debris dropping down into the everlasting clouds.

Charleston's fat face was covered with perspiration.

"Jimmie," he said, almost inarticulately, "something is very screwy around here. Maybe I'd better contact Pali-Vanyi and find out what's going on."

Cutting in the transmitter, Charleston began to bark excitedly:

"Sy 2700 calling Pali-Vanyi Base--"

Simultaneously a torpedo lanced from the destroyer's tubes, darting straight at the spaceyacht. Charleston keyed in the underjets to avoid it, praying fervently the while. A shudder ran through the yacht; then it was running as smoothly as before.

"What happened?" Charleston cried, his eyes darting feverishly from meter to meter.

"The torpedo ripped away our broadcast antenna," Jimmie said slowly. "We can't contact Pali-Vanyi now!"

"Damn them, damn them!" Charleston murmured. "We'll follow them; we'll find out what it's all about!"

"Yes, sir," Jimmie said, but his whole body was quivering and he was wishing he was far, far away.

III

Down in the radio beam station, Wagner, Ward and a very unsteady Portiz surveyed each other in stunned dismay for about ten seconds.

Fred Ward was struggling to put into speech that which he felt within. Here was crisis. Here was an intermingling of human and mechanical failings which had built up almost to the point of nervous dissolution in the men concerned. Probably of secondary importance now was the fact that two terrestrial cruisers were nearing perihelion at the sun; they depended absolutely on the keyed radio wave which would leap across their trajectory and crackle in their attentive receivers. But that keying device was out of commission and in all that great bank of two hundred keyers there was not another silent. There was not another which they could safely adjust to the cruisers' course without imperiling the safety of some other craft.

Over in Pali-Vanyi proper were some of the greatest political minds of Earth and Venus, closeted within a great hall whose entrance was barred, whose televisorphonic connections were cut off. It would take at least fifteen minutes to gain access to that hall, once reached, and probably another ten minutes to evacuate the great hall and get them to a place of comparative safety.

Up above a great Martian destroyer was diving down into Venus' mists, doubtless riding the radio range beam straight down toward the port. Its objective was obvious: the convention hall.

The radio range beam transmitter could not be cut off since there were a dozen ships due to hit atmosphere within the next few minutes. Six of them had bucked a Perseid meteor shower coming out of Earth and were low on fuel; it was imperative that they follow the beam down to Pali-Vanyi for a one-try landing. The excessive consumption of fuel in an atmosphere was prohibitive of their cruising around until the destroyer could be apprehended by Patrol ships and driven away. The beam had to be maintained!

As for the human element, Portiz was scarcely able to stand; Wagner had a fine case of the jitters and could do little more than botch things up royally if he tried to tackle a complicated task; Ward had gone to bed after a sixteen hour shift, and after two hours of sleep plus a dosage of unadulterated Venusian atmospherics had been awakened and called back to the station.

The nervous tension was terrific. The three inarticulate men stood there while the seconds sped, Wagner staring around with desperation on his fat face, Silvy Ward clenching and unclenching his hands, Portiz leaning his drink-pliant body against the bank of keyers.

Suddenly Ward broke the silence.

"Wagner, get that trajectory keyer going. First check the interlock beam relay; the circuits seem to be okay, so it must be the relay. Portiz, get the portable glide beam transmitter unit and drive it out to the very base of the Hump on the eastern end of the field, and keep your receiver open on thirty-four megacycles; I'll give you directions from here. Come on, get going!"

Wherewith Ward spun around to the Pali-Vanyi radio range transmitter. There was a peculiar smile on his face as he released the controls on the goniometer unit which governs the direction of the signals by reducing or increasing the radio frequency in the four range radiators. They'll be on the beam, he thought; these Martian boys won't take any chances of missing on the first stab for it would take them so long to maneuver around for a second attempt that the element of surprise would be lacking and their prey would have gotten away. They'll ride the beam in from the west. When they get directly over the range station they'll get the vertical radio signal from the station location marker and know that the field lies ten miles to the east and Pali-Vanyi ten miles south of the field. Switching their course ninety degrees they'll drop in right over the city and let go with everything they've got.

They're probably on the beam now and four hundred miles to the west. They're due to hit the strato-winds which any astronaut knows will buck them around. The thunderheads will make their compass blotto so the only direction they can be sure of is due east on the beam. If we shift the beam slowly by rotating the goniometer counter-clockwise, the quadrants of the beam will be reversed. They'll swerve their course to follow, and gradually instead of getting the A signal to the south they'll be getting it from the east, and instead of an N from the north they'll have an N from the west. They'll come into Pali from the South--

* * * * *

The radio range at Pali-Vanyi resembled to a great extent the radio ranges used for centuries before by the Federal airways of the United States of America, Earth. The increasing use of ultra-high frequency waves had made obsolete the four towers of the intermediate frequency range. Small, compact, the new range system had through the long decades of scientific advancement after the war years of the 20th century reached a stage of efficiency a hundredfold greater than its predecessor.

A small antenna array atop the broadcast station consisting of four vertical radiators mounted at the terminals of a horizontal X replaced the towers of yesteryear. The four bars of the X pointed northeast, northwest, southwest and southeast.