Part 3

Down the room where the cone was larger, another grid appeared similarly marked.

Manning went on, "We cannot tell, of course, at what point in the collapse the survivors made their escape. We know that the automatic circuits begin deceleration as soon as the warp-generator shows signs of failure, the hope being that the spacecraft will fall to a safe velocity before the field collapses completely. Therefore escape could be made at any velocity between forty parsecs per hour, if they escaped before the deceleration began, or at normal under-light velocity, which might take place if the spacecraft had succeeded in dropping to safety before the field collapsed. However, in that case, there would have been no explosion and our space wreck victims would have remained in the spacecraft, or returned to it as soon as they saw it was safe. Therefore, integrating the probabilities outlined here, the survivors must lie between the planes of maxima and minima, representing escape at maximum forward velocity and minimum forward velocity. Here, gentlemen, is your search grid."

The rest of the stereo-field went out, leaving the white lines of the grids. Lateral lines now appeared to connect intersections of the fore grid with the corresponding intersection of the aft grid.

"We are here."

Tiny discs of purple dotted space before the small end grid. The discs were flat-on to the grid and represented the maximum distance for space detection of matter.

Wilson felt something touch him on the arm. He turned. A tech-operator standing there had a bewildered look on his face.

"Yes?" said Wilson.

"I'm puzzled, Commodore. Suppose we don't find them in a long time. Won't that far grid have to be pushed back?"

"No," Wilson explained wearily. "The function of a lifeship is to get its occupants down below the velocity of light and then coast. Since that grid represents a total distance of about ten light years, they'd have to be floating for ten years at the velocity of light to make it. Any normal speed, over a period of weeks, would hardly appear long enough to cover the thickness of one of the grid lines."

"Ten light years!"

Wilson nodded and repeated. "This is no picnic." He turned from the tech-operator to the planning table. "Unless someone has a better suggestion, we'll set up a hexagonal flight pattern with a safe detector overlap and start by cutting a hole down through this grid volume along the prime axis. Anybody got any other suggestions?"

Space Captain Frank Edwards shook his head. "Not unless someone has improved on the _Manual of Flight Procedures_," he said.

"Okay then. Here we go."

* * * * *

Commodore Wilson leaned back and watched the grid as Edwards got on the ship-to-ship and gave the operational orders. The little discs rearranged themselves slowly into a hexagonal lattice with their edges overlapping, then the flight began to move forward into the grid, running down the line of axis.

Somewhere inside of the cage made by the white lines a lifeship was drifting, a sub-sub-microscopic mote alone in a volume of space so large that light would take ten years to traverse the volume from top to bottom.

Wilson shook his head and took off his polaroids to brush his eyes. The stereo-field collapsed flat against the glass screen and became a meaningless jumble of lines. Wilson put his glasses back on hastily.

Captain Edwards said softly, "Take it easy, Ted. We'll find her."

Wilson nodded. "I know. But I can't help thinking how rough it must be."

"Why?"

"To take her first space flight and get involved in a blowup."

"It will be an experience she'll never forget, but it shouldn't be too hard on her. It isn't as though she were completely alone, you know."

"No, I suppose not. She probably got out with anywhere from two to eight others. A lot of those were--well, not real spacemen, but at least they were regular space trippers. I--"

A detector alarm rang and everybody jumped to the alert. Edwards barked an order and one of the flight-techs darted off toward the launching deck. There was no point in stopping the whole flight, for any detection of matter would be investigated by one-man scooters. If a lifeship should be found, an infrawave call would bring the search flight hurrying back.

This was not it. The flight-tech reported a small clutter of pebbles and frozen gas. Probably a comet on its long, cold, dead swing near aphelion.

And the search went on....

Charles Andrews snorted angrily and growled, "It's damned inefficient, that's all I have to say."

Pilot Jock Norton shrugged. "We're alive."

"But why can't we pack on some power and get going somewhere?"

"Because this is a lifeship and not an interstellar spacecraft. I told you that before. D'ye expect a lifeship to be as big as the carrier?"

"Don't be an imbecile."

Norton towered over Andrews. "Don't be too bright, Andrews. Ships don't founder once in a green-striped moon. The function of a lifeship is to protect the customers until help can arrive. Our storage bank held enough quick-power to counteract the speed of the lifeship, with a safety factor. We've a small accumulator cell for temporary storage. It ain't pheasant under glass and brandy, but we'll neither starve nor die of asphyxiation. We're alive and healthy. So just wait it out. I told you that, too."

"I don't like it."

"Do I sound as though I did?"

"You seem to," Alice said reproachfully.

Norton gave her a bland smile. "I didn't intend to imply that I was in love with this clambake. Sure, it's a rough situation, but there's little point in looking at the black side."

"How long will this take?" she asked.

"Maybe a couple of days," he said easily. "Maybe as long as a week. Maybe even more. But we'll be all right."

"At a hundred dollars per hour," sneered Andrews.

"It ain't hay."

Andrews pulled a long pale cigar out and lit it with a flourish. "Norton, tell you what _I_ think of a hundred dollars per hour. I'll take that week you mentioned as an outside limit and if you can do something to get us home before that date, I'll pay you one thousand dollars for every hour under that week."

"Nuts!"

* * * * *

Andrews said firmly, "Miss Hemingway, witness this, please. Do something brilliant right this moment, Norton, and you'll collect seven times twenty-four times one thousand dollars. Now that's what I call not-hay."

Norton growled angrily, "If there was anything I could do, I'd take you up on that."

"There probably is, if you'd only try to think."

"I'm the space pilot," Norton pointed out. "And I'm telling you there is nothing we can do about it."

"All right. Forget it. Let's have something to eat."

"We don't eat for an hour, Andrews."

Charles Andrews puffed on his cigar. "Why not?" he asked softly.

"Because we've got to conserve. It's in the book of rules."

"Rules are made to be broken."

"Not space rules. And I'm still skipper, you know."

"No matter how--" Andrews was going to say "incompetent" but he stopped short as Norton got lazily up out of his chair and came forward. Andrews realized he could push Norton just so far, then the pilot would lose his laziness and begin getting violent. Andrews could not stand up to violence. He was not big enough. He was not young enough.

Alice said calmly, "Stop it, both of you! You'll just make trouble for all of us."

Norton sat down again. Doggedly he said, "We'll eat in an hour."

Andrews turned to Alice. "Miss Hemingway, are you, perhaps, a bit hungry?"

She shook her head quickly. "Frankly, I couldn't get it down and keep it."

"Then perhaps in an hour," said Andrews. "I was only thinking of your comfort."

Alice squirmed. Both of them were, in their own way, fighting to control the situation. Andrews had just oozed out of the indignity of having an order or request countermanded. Norton had just ignored an implied insult.

So long as they struggled, quietly, nothing would result but well-rubbed nerves. But if open conflict broke out it might get rough indeed.

IV

Faren Twill looked across the table at Regin Naylo. They were alone, and finally Twill voiced the thought uppermost in both of their minds:

"This waiting is ridiculous, Regin."

"I agree. In fact, the only point upon which we disagree is the method. I say hit them hard, and with finality. You want to make an equal-to-equal alliance with them."

Faren shook his head. "Not really," he said. "No real alliance can ever be possible between stellar races. The alliance I had in mind would be patterned on the relationship between mother state and protectorate. We supervise their laws, control their commerce, and apply a small but adequate taxation to pay us for our service to them. Tariffs and duties to be set up for a beneficial economy in our favor, and yet low enough so that they can continue operating, only mildly limited. That sound sensible to you?"

"I think it can be carried out more efficiently than that," Regin Naylo objected thoughtfully. "First we collect the lifeship nearest us, maybe both of them. We sweep down along the line of search and wait in battle pattern. Why, we can probably collect their entire fleet without firing more than a couple of batteries. Then we have the survivors broadcast on the blanketing infrawave that we are applying the rules of space salvage and that redemption of their fleet is to cost some nominal fee--er--say ten metric tons of uranium, nine-nines pure. After which we take their captured fleet to the seat of their government and take over. Then we are in a real position to make demands. None of this simple taxation and commerce control. None of this mother state and protectorate. This will be conqueror and vanquished."

"Suppose they fight back?"

"With what?" asked Naylo sarcastically. "Guided torpedoes and A-heads? Faugh!"

"They may have--"

"Bet you a hat. If they haven't been able to use the infrawave bands for space locating and detecting, they wouldn't get to first base discovering the magnus forces."

"You realize," said Twill, "that you're setting up a pattern of violence that may never be resolved?"

"No matter how you set up the meeting of cultures, you've started a pattern of violence that can never be resolved. I say make 'em realize right now that they are clobbered. And if they want fight, we'll give it to 'em."

Twill growled, "Not too long ago you were cautiously admitting that elephants can be beaten by a pack of determined rats."

"Until they put out more than that squadron of twenty-five spacecraft, they're no real pack, compared to our task force."

"You may be.... Hush!"

The door opened. Viggon Sarri looking refreshed and alert, greeted, "Good morning. You've heard the latest?"

"What latest?"

"We've probably located the destination-star. From one of the large stars along the flight path of the original spacecraft there has formed a second search squadron of twenty-five spacecraft. The infrawaves are filled with calls back and forth, coordinating the search pattern."

"How are they doing?"

"Depends," replied Viggon Sarri, with a grin. "Poorly, if you mean that their success looks imminent. But excellently, if you mean their technique. They're really covering space like a blanket, slice by slice. But they started on the wrong slice."

Viggon's armlet buzzed tinnily and he said, "Yes? Go ahead."

"This is Linus Brein. We have more of their language analogued."

"I'll be right over." To his second officers Viggon said, "Want to come along? This may be interesting."

Naylo shook his head. "We've a bit of a problem to haggle over. We'll be over to Brein's bailiwick later."

"You might be missing something, but it's your decision."

* * * * *

As soon as the door was closed behind Viggon, Naylo said, "I wonder if he is getting chicken."

"Don't let him hear you say that."

"I won't. But haven't you wondered?"

"Maybe," said Twill. "But it figures. Viggon Sarri has had a long and successful career. He has expanded our realm more than any other one man in history. He will go down in history as a valiant hero. He does not care to spoil a good record."

"Hah! You agree, then."

Twill nodded soberly. He sneered, "Valiant! Hero! Sarri, the Victorious! Eyewash. What's so glorious about conquering races that fight back with slings and spears? What's so heroic about mowing down a flight of airplanes or turning A-heads back on the senders? But now that we have come upon a race that really has space travel developed to a fine art--even though they have not exploited it much--Viggon wants to wait. He's been pushing over children. Now that he's come up against a half-baked adolescent, he's afraid."

"What do you suggest?"

Twill eyed Naylo soberly. "One of us is due to succeed the great Viggon Sarri," he said flatly. "It may be you and it may be me. It will, however, be the one who decides properly how to handle this race."

"All right, then," Naylo grunted. "But it may be neither of us." He scowled. "Unless you or I can talk the venerable gentleman into action at once."

"Right. Let's get started."

Naylo grinned. "I hope you won't mind working as my second officer, Faren."

"You should see the day, Regin. I'll have you reporting to me before we get home."

But beneath the banter was an undertone of dead seriousness....

Commodore Ted Wilson eyed the search grid unhappily. Out of the center one thin hexagonal hole had been taken. It left such a lot of space to be combed.

The infrawave receiver in the Information Center was alive, and chattering with data and information and orders. Finally came a call for Wilson, from Flight Commander Hugh Weston from Castor.

"Weston here, Ted. How's it coming?"

"We've completed our first crossing. Nothing but a comet and a rather insignificant gas cloud."

"We're approaching you. Any suggestions?"

"Let's make contact and carry this out together instead of running at cross-purposes."

"Meaning?"

"No independent searching."

"I think you're wrong," said Weston.

"But we can do a better job of coverage if we combine all forces into one big comb."

"We could," replied Weston. "But do you realize that you'll probably leave huge holes in your search grid?"

"That's the point. I know we will. After about the fourth pass, we'll not be too sure of where we are. God, how I wish we had some method of pinpointing this absolute nothing! I wish the infrawave could be used as detecting and ranging."

"Make that double. But since we haven't got it, I suggest that we form behind you. There'll be a third squadron from Pollux as soon as Wally Wainright can get into space with his gang. I expect there'll be more, too. We'll need 'em all. Out in this featureless void, we don't really know where we are to any degree of accuracy. At least not the kind of accuracy needed to find a thing as small as a spacecraft."

"Lifeship."

"Lifeship, spacecraft, both Godawful minute when lost in a few cubic light years of space."

"I still say we should combine."

"I still think you should clean out one channel and let us take the next."

"Can't see it, Weston."

"Okay, Ted. You're running this exercise. You're the boss. We combine. We'll meet you where you are and reform before we make the return pass. Right?"

"Right, Hugh. I don't want to argue, but our master computer feels we've a better chance at the laws of probability if we all comb along the same line than if each takes a different course and we try to correlate our positions by sheer stellar astrogation."

* * * * *

Poised in space, Wilson and his squadron waited. While they waited, the astro-techs made star sightings and the computer mulled over their readings and delivered opinions of several probable enclosures of position. These volumes were horribly vast compared with the mote of a spacecraft. They were spherical, indicating the margin of error in precision-pinpointing their position in deep space. And as the astro-techs delivered more and more angle sightings on the known stars, the computer delivered smaller and smaller enclosures as their true position.

The problem was a matter of parallax, a matter of angular measurement against the more distant, or "fixed" stars. Now, it may seem an easy job to measure the angle of a star with respect to another star. But it must be remembered that the parallax of the nearer stars, as measured across the orbit of the earth, is a matter of seconds of arc.

Parallax is not measured directly with a protractor. It is measured by comparing the position of the star on a plate against a similar photograph taken six months ago, using the fixed stars as the frame of reference.

In deep space, position is pinpointed by solid triangulation. This can be represented by a pyramid suspended in space, the corners of which end at the fixed stars. Take a pyramid of certain solid angles, depended by points in space, and the apex can be satisfied for only one spacial position. Repeat these solid-angle measurements and there are several pyramids pointing their apexes toward the true position.

But if the orbit of the Earth produces only a second or so of parallax-arc, any error in angular measurement of such magnitude produces an error of a thousand light seconds. And the greater the error in measurement, the larger is the volume of uncertain position.

This, then, was their problem. To cover, like a blanket, a volume of space so vast as completely to defy description. All that can be said of it is in comparison with a number of cubic light years. And who can grasp the fathomless distance of a light year? It is just a meaningless statement.

Eventually the second squadron came up and the ships milled around until a larger space pattern was formed. Then the two squadrons began to return along the search grid, on a line overlapping that area covered in the first pass along the computed line of flight....

Alice Hemingway woke up from a fitful doze at the noise of the infrawave receiver. Charles Andrews was listening to the rapid chatter back and forth from one squadron to the next. He looked around, and when he caught her eyes, he said cheerfully, "They're really out looking for us."

"I heard," she murmured.

"Three squadrons, now. And a fourth is just heading out from Procyon. We'll be picked up--"

Jock Norton came awake with a cry. "Shut that damned thing off!" he roared.

"Why?" demanded Andrews belligerently.

"It's a waste of power."

"This thing?" sneered Andrews.

"That thing. It draws one point three kilowatts. That's plenty important for a lifeship."

"Look," suggested Andrews, "why don't we call back and have 'em pick us up?"

"Because nobody has ever found any directional quality about the infrawaves. That's why we can't use 'em for detecting, ranging, and locating. If they echoed, we might be able to use 'em somehow. But they're not even directional, let alone echoing. Not only that, but they are instantaneous in transmission, so even if they did echo they couldn't be used for ranging. So we'll not waste power howling for more help. We spend a bit every hour, because we want to let 'em know we're still alive. But let's not waste any more than we have to."

Andrews shut off the infrawave receiver. "It was interesting," he said. "But I suppose we can always assume that they are on the search." He shivered. "Is it getting cold in here, or am I getting exhausted?"

* * * * *

Norton smiled thinly. "Probably both. This space can isn't collecting any heat. We're too far from any sun. And there aren't enough people in it to keep it hot."

"Huh?"

"The average human puts out an average of about a thousand B.T.U. per hour over a twenty-four hour day. It rises in activity and falls with relaxing. But this can needs about five people to keep up the heat against the black body radiation from the hull."

"What do we do? Freeze?"

"One thing we can do. We can use the pedal generator."

"For what?"

"Two things. One is to charge up the energy cells. The other is that a human body in vigorous work can deliver as high as two thousand B.T.U. per hour. Although I doubt if any human body can keep up that kind of vigor for a full hour. If you're cold, you can easily warm up, Andrews."

"Why doesn't this tin can have a small pile?"

"Why doesn't a steamship lifeboat have a turbine?"

"I've seen some very small piles and generating gear."

Norton shook his head. "A lifeship is aimed at providing the maximum protection for a maximum number of people, under a minimum of luxury. Stop whining. We're still alive, I keep telling you."

"At," sneered Andrews, "a hundred bucks an hour."

"Are you going to argue, or do you want to try some vigor for that bad temper of yours?"

"We've got some power left over from the bank," suggested Andrews. "Let's use that."

"Not on your life. That's reserve. Sooner or later we're going to use it for radio pulses."

"Radio pulses?"

"For fine control direction-finding and locating."

Andrews snorted. "How are they going to pick up radio pulses when they're going thirty or forty parsecs an hour?"

"They use gravitic mass detectors. As soon as someone gets a register, they send one of the scouts out to drop below light and listen for radio pulses. If he hears any, then the whole search squadron stops and starts really to comb the neighborhood with radar."

Andrews shivered again. "I'll try that generator," he said. "Could we pedal enough juice to run the drivers?"

Norton laughed. "Sure. Like you could row a battleship with a rusty broom handle. Have you got the remotest idea of how far we are from anything?"

"No."

"Neither have I."

"All right. Where's your damned exercising machine?"

"Below. I'll show you. I want to cut the paragrav generator by half, anyway."

"Paragrav?"

"Pseudo-gravity," said Norton crisply. "You've noticed there's still an up and down? That's it. But the damned thing radiates heat like mad, along with producing its gravitic field. I want to conserve all the heat we can. With a full complement of survivors, this space can stay more than comfortably warm. But with only three, it radiates more than is comfortable. Come on, Andrews. I'll show you this crate, too."

Alice felt the gravitic pull diminish, and then Norton was back in the main room of the lifeship. He came over and sat down beside her.

"Cold, kid?"

Alice shivered. "Just a little. Is this going to get worse?"

"Probably, but not too much. If we all exercise heavily, keep the pedal generator going, and eat heartily, we'll not fight too losing a battle against radiation."

She shivered again. Jock put a large but gentle hand on her shoulder. "Let me warm you a bit," he said softly.

* * * * *

Alice looked at him cynically. "I'm not that cold," she told him. She did not move, but the tone of her voice made him remove his hand from her shoulder.

He smiled at her. "You're likely to be eventually."

"Maybe. But there are blankets, and I'm not above taking a turn on that pedal generator myself, you know."

"It's no job for a woman, Alice."

She sniffed contemptuously. "This is no place for woman or man," she said. "But I can pull my own weight, Mr. Norton."

"You're a solid character," he said.

"I've always thought so."

"This is going to get rougher, Alice. Can't we be a little more friendly?"

"Meaning what?" she snapped icily.

"Meaning only that you deserve better than that Napoleon type down there."

Alice laughed in a brittle tone. "And you're it?"

"I'll be a lot more fun."

"No doubt. And nothing but fun. What do you expect to do when the fun becomes hollow?"

"It hasn't yet."

"It will some day. You can't go on being a slightly irresponsible loafer all your life."

"Who is?"

"You are."

"Look," said Jock Norton angrily, "I'm still running this lifeship the way it's supposed to be run."

"At a hundred an hour."