Part 4

"Maybe so. But let me ask you, which one of us would you rather have around right now? The trained spaceman or the captain of industry?"

"That's a fool question," said Alice. "Loaded to the gills. You know the answer to that. But once we get back home, then?"

"You're not hoping to marry that dried-up little--"

Alice laughed, almost hysterically.

"This will kill you, but until you assumed that I was sleeping with him as well as taking his dictation, I hadn't really looked upon Charles Andrews as anything but an employer. Sure, he's male. So is my Uncle Ned, my brother, and my nephew. Not to mention my father and grandfather. But Mr. Andrews is not my idea of a lover."

Jock Norton nodded soberly. He took a deep breath of satisfaction. Alice underwent a swift revision in his mental classification of her. She changed from a luxury-bought mistress to be seduced by the offer of real fun and passion into a woman with no emotional connections, to be seduced for the fun of it. Both, in Norton's mind, were fair game.

"What's wrong with me?" he asked.

"Nothing much, Jock Norton, except that you're essentially lazy."

"Lazy?"

"Lazy," she repeated. "Want it both barrels, or will you take it with sugar?"

"Hard. What's wrong with me?"

"You're educated. You know a lot. You've explained things that neither Mr. Andrews nor I had ever dreamed of, let alone understood. You know your way around spacecraft, know a lot of the basic sciences. Not that you'd ever be a scientist, but you're bright enough to grasp the idea and make it work. But what do you do about it? You jockey a spacer, instead of digging in and making it pay off. You look for the easy way out instead of working for it." Alice looked up at him sharply to see how he was taking it, and then she added, "You have the only brain present that has the mental right to stand up and direct operations. Instead, you argue and backstep."

Harshly he said, "What would you have me do--take a swing at Napoleon when he sits on those short hind legs of his and objects or demands?"

"I don't know. I'm not a spaceman, responsible for the lives of three people--at a hundred clams an hour."

"Some day I'm going to shove those hundred fish down your throat."

"Do. And I'll spit 'em back at you!"

Norton roughly took her shoulders in his hands. He twisted her to face him, clamped down on her soft shoulders until she turned her face up to complain with welling eyes. He put his lips on hers and tried to force some warmth into them. She submitted calmly, and when he found no response and opened his eyes, she was staring at him vacantly.

Abruptly he let her go. She relaxed in the seat.

"I'm not afraid to work," he said in a hollow voice.

"Prove it," she replied flatly.

He got up, left her there, and went below.

V

Wilson sat in the Information Center and eyed the search grid glumly. It stretched stereoscopically out in the room, a lot of its vacant network of gleaming white lines frosted over with white shading, to mark where the search had covered.

There were a lot of untouched spaces--a horde, a myriad. On the side wall was a chart, showing that nine squadrons of twenty-five spacecraft each were patrolling back and forth through the uncharted wastes, seeking the space-wrecked lifeships.

The maddening part was the hourly report from both lifeships. It was like someone hiding in the dark and calling for aid, invisible and alone. And not really calling for aid, but only making whimpering noises. For the signaling equipment on the lifeships was not equipped with the complicated infrawave phone, but only with the simple signal-emitter, coded to transmit the identification call of the unit.

On the hour they came in, calling three times, "Lifeship Seventy-nine, Seventy-nine, Number Three." Number Two had not been heard from. Presumably it was not in use, or hadn't made the grade.

Wilson chewed his fingernails and fretted. Was Alice on Number One or Number Three, or was she on Number Two and it had foundered?

If she were still alive, what kind of fellow survivors were with her?

He hoped she was with a group. If she had blown out in a lifeship with only one other--well, Ted Wilson did not like the idea. Of course, it was more customary than not for a young woman to love lightly before she mated permanently. There was a lot less chance of wading into matrimony wide-eyed and ignorant of what it was all about.

But Wilson, if willing to face such transient loving at all, would have preferred that Alice have her chance to pick and choose, rather than have the matter thrust upon her in the middle of a threatening situation. The passion that comes with the shadow of death is only the instinct of racial preservation, and it mates men and women unsuited to one another during subsequent peace and quiet.

Above all, he did not want Alice to emerge from this moment of personal danger morally bound to some unsuitable mate because of a child conceived under the shadow of the sword!

Hourly, after the coded signals came in, Ted Wilson took the microphone himself and called out into space in the infrawave. He called messages of hope, and explained how many spacecraft were scouring the deep black void. He could only pray that he would be heard, that his voice would give Alice some firm foundation for hope.

He could not be sure the passengers from the wrecked spaceship even had their receivers turned on, because infrawave receivers drink up a lot of power and lifeships are not equipped with any vast reserve. There just was not the room in a lifeship for anything more than the bare necessities of living.

The search grid was a truncated cone, and the whitened areas of finished search had finally filled the smaller end of the cone. There was the flared skirt of the cone yet to be combed, and this provided more volume than the cylinder taken out of the middle. It also provided a shorter search path as the searching spacecraft built out the volume, ring after ring around the first pass along the line of flight.

Far, far to one side a detector registered, and brought every man in the fleet to the alert. Then they relaxed unhappily again as the scooter returned with another report of a small gas cloud. Wilson thought glumly that they had discovered enough space meteors, gas clouds, and unawakened comets to make up a small sun.

Then his attention was taken from his own personal troubles by the arrival of another squadron from Centauri. He found himself busy readjusting the search pattern to accommodate this new contingent.

He eyed the pattern in the stereo and hoped it was good enough.

* * * * *

There was the basic aggregate of nine full squadrons spread out flat in a space lattice that ran back and forth from narrow end to wide end of the cone of probability. There was one full squadron of roving ships that went aimlessly back and forth across the pattern, just to cope with the happenstance factor.

One squadron was parked at either end of the search grid as space markers, with a computer ship at either end to maintain a constant check on their space coordinates. The big search pattern shuttled from one end to the other, and if they came back to miss the marker ships, they retraced their path so that no space went uncombed.

The infrawave chattered and Space Admiral Stone was calling for Commodore Theodore Wilson.

"How're you coming?"

Wilson replied, "We're still at it, Admiral. So far we haven't seen her."

"Don't forget, Wilson, there's more lost out there than the woman you want."

Ted wanted to snap back angrily, but all he said was, "You don't mind if I take this search personally, do you, Admiral Stone? I'm not overlooking any bets, but I do admit that Miss Hemingway is a bit more important to me than any of the rest."

"No, I suppose no one could blame you for that. Just keep it up, Wilson."

"Sure," Ted said wearily. "After all, this is a black and white job I'm on. Either we'll be successful--or we won't."

"Luck."

"Spaceman's luck, Admiral."

Wilson went back to his brooding....

Charles Andrews came back into the salon with a brisk air. He flexed his arms, took a deep breath, and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. He sat down beside Alice and smiled at her warmly.

"That thing is a wonder worker," he said, breathing deeply. "Nothing like exercise to make a man feel fine and fit."

Alice looked up at him with some amusement. "Mr. Andrews, tell me. Are you the kind of man who opens the window on a winter morning about six o'clock, and takes deep lungsful of icy air?"

"Not quite that bad, my dear. Not quite. But brisk living does keep a man sharp and hard. I daresay I acquitted myself well on that pedal generator despite my fifty years."

"No doubt."

Andrews chuckled. "I'll do better than our young pilot friend. The man is big, and should be muscular, but he is soft from lack of exercise. Yet he'll attempt to stay there longer than I did, I guess."

"No doubt."

He eyed her sharply, not missing her repetitious dry reply.

"Which, incidentally," he said, "gives me my first chance to speak with you alone since we took off from Earth."

"That's so. But--"

"Miss Hemingway, you are an exceedingly brisk young woman, attractive and intelligent. May I ask if you have ever taken a lover?"

"Why, no."

"Never considered it?"

She smiled thinly. "Naturally. All women think about it. Most do. I--er--"

Alice let her voice trail away uncertainly. The direct, frontal attack had put her off-balance, but she realized that this was Andrews' direct way.

He had smiled at her uncertainty, and said swiftly, "Then may I be the first--" when he noted the fading amusement in her face and glibly ad libbed--"to congratulate you on your choice of young men? The space commodore to whom you bade farewell in Chicago was an up and coming man, I'd assume."

"I rather imagine he's out here somewhere in the search group," she said.

"He may even be directing it," Andrews said carefully.

One thing he knew well--never run down a rival. It always brought on a defensive attitude. Build the rival up, and the return might be sympathetic. A clever course could be traveled between build-up and tear-down.

* * * * *

Looking at Alice thoughtfully, Andrews got up and began to rummage through a few lockers. Eventually he found a blanket and brought it to her.

"I'm not too familiar with these life cans," he told her, with a disarming smile. "I hope I remain in ignorance of them. But I found what I was after. Now, Miss Hemingway, if you'll stretch out, I'll tuck you in, and you can get some shut-eye."

"That I can use," she said honestly.

The blanket felt good. So did his hands, smoothing out the blanket, but being carefully tender and proper. Andrews was a smooth operator of many years' experience.

Eventually she slept.

Andrews found another cigar, and smoked it languidly, his eyes roaming around the metal walls of the cabin. He was thinking that he disliked Jack Norton immensely, although he knew that chances of survival were better with Norton's boorish, interfering presence than without. He was bored, he was angry, he was above all resentful of the time wasted in this spacewreck business....

An orderly tapped Commodore Wilson on the shoulder. "Message from Terra," he said.

Wilson groaned and reached for the telephone beside his bunk. "Wilson here," he said. "Go ahead!"

"Admiral Stone. Wilson, a new ship is on the way. I want you to get into this thing fully, so I'm briefing you now."

"New type of ship?"

"Well, not a new ship, but some new equipment. The Infrawave Section of the Space Department Radiation Laboratory has some experimental gear they want to try in actual service."

"Experimental gear?"

"Sheer experiment, Wilson. It's supposed to be an infrawave detecting and ranging device. It's shown low grade response so far, and it may be entirely useless to you. But Radiation feels that even something incomplete and erratic may be better than going it blind."

Wilson sat up, interested. "How does it work?"

"Darned if I know. It took a whole cruiser class to carry the junk that makes it tick. It's piled in with twine and baling wire, and when the crate took off the advanced techs were still connecting cables and adjusting the guts. Er--how're you feeling?"

"Tired and frustrated."

"Mind a bad joke?"

"Well--"

"Go on and have a laugh, Wilson. This gizmo reminded me of the new machine that made shoes so fast that it put twelve shoemakers out of work--and it took only eighteen men to run it."

A silence ensued. Then Stone said:

"Well, Wilson, I thought you'd like to know we're pouring the best we've got into space for you. Ship should be along in another hour or two."

"Yeah--thanks, Admiral Stone. And the joke was funny, at least the first time I heard it, it was. I'll get on the cubes and wait for the ship."

Wearily Commodore Ted Wilson climbed out of his bunk and began to dress....

* * * * *

Viggon Sarri said, "Now we know more about this race. They definitely are of the class where the individual is of extreme importance to the whole. This belies both the communal, or insect type and the anarchistic, or individualistic type. The quantity of men and machinery they are pouring into this search is amazing."

"They aren't much closer to success," offered Regin Naylo. "And we're wasting time."

"You think so?"

"We both think so," Faren Twill said firmly.

"Oh?" Viggon Sarri looked at them in surprise. "Then maybe I have the wrong idea. Let me hear your suggestions."

Twill and Naylo looked at one another, fencing with their eyes. Finally Twill nodded and said, "You say it, Regin."

"It's already been said." Regin Naylo looked pointedly at Linus Brein. "A day or so ago you claimed that you'd picked up some primitive infrawave emission that looked as though someone might be trying to develop a detecting and ranging device."

"Yes."

"Then it is my contention that any moves we make against this race should be made before anybody down there gets such a detector and ranger working."

"Why?" demanded Viggon Sarri.

Regin Naylo looked at his commander. "We're losing a technical advantage. Whether we go in with a benign and peaceful-looking air and show them how big and fast we are, or whether we plunge in and hit 'em with every battery we've got and reduce 'em to submission, we've got to do it before anybody succeeds in making an infrawave space detector. Understand?"

Viggon Sarri looked from one to the other, grimly. "You believe I'm wasting time? Is that it?"

The two aides answered together, "Yes!" and "Absolutely!"

Viggon Sarri said, "I am still in command of this force. We'll continue to observe until I am satisfied. You two officers have one common idea--that of moving in fast. You have differing ideas of how we are to move in. Until you can settle your difference and provide me with a good logical basis for your decision--whichever way--then we'll follow my plan. And my plan is to move in just as soon as we have enough data on the character and strength of this race to provide us with the correct way to take them."

"Then you are going to continue stalling?" demanded Naylo.

"Yes, if you wish to call it stalling. Maybe another man might call it planning."

"We'll be just wasting time, as I've already said. We have enough stuff to take 'em right now."

Viggon Sarri shrugged. "Yes. We could swoop in and take them like mowing down a wheat field. Tell me, young men, what happens when you mow down a wheat field."

They looked at him blankly.

Viggon smiled in a superior manner. "One of two things, depending upon how you operate. If you mow it down and let it lay, you drop seeds and next year it comes up thicker. If you mow it down, remove the seeds, sow it with salt and kill the field, you have a useless plot of land, a worthless territory. Then some day up comes weed and briar--which then must be removed root and branch before the land is plantable again. Just remember, we are after a profitable exchange of economy, not another stellar system to list as a conquest for the sake of history our children will read. I want my reward now, or next week. Having my name on a monument does not have much appeal."

He was half standing with his hands closed into fists, his knuckles on the table supporting him as he leaned forward to drive his facts home.

"Or," he added scathingly, "are you two firebrands so youthful that you don't know that a man has only one single lone chance at this business of living? And that your finest reward at eventide is knowing you have lived a full and eventful life without screwing it up somewhere along the line by making a lot of idiotic moves?"

Viggon Sarri turned on a heel and walked out.

* * * * *

Naylo and Twill turned to Linus Brein.

"What do you think?" Twill asked.

Linus Brein shrugged. "He is undoubtedly right. Besides, we don't know all there is to know about the strange race out there yet."

"Oh, faugh! What else--"

Linus Brein smiled. He said slowly. "We don't even know whether or not they are oxygen-breathing."

"We can assume from the stellar type of their primaries that they are."

Linus nodded. "Probably, but not positively."

Regin Naylo said, "And what's second, Linus?"

"They may be contraterrene."

"Seetee?"

Linus Brein nodded. "In which case from both sides we must watch our steps. Get involved with a seetee race the wrong way and you have two cultures with absolutely nothing in common but a life-factor, busy tossing chunks of their own kind of matter at one another in a fight to exterminate. So before either of you start making half-baked plans, you'd better get your heads together and plan something that sounds reasonable to the Big Boss. Right?"

VI

Commodore Wilson eyed the spacecraft full of hastily assembled instruments with a grimace. The ship was swarming with techs who were peering into oscilloscopes, watching meters, and tinkering with signal generators. A huge concave hemispherical dome above was a splatter of little flickering green pinpoints and dark patches.

"This idea is hopelessly haywire," Wilson said unhappily.

"It sure is," said Space-Tech Maury Allison. "But everything is, at first."

"You hope to make something out of it?"

"We hope," replied Allison. "We can't be sure."

"But surely this pile of junk has been tested before?"

Allison nodded.

"Any results?"

"Some. We've had as much as five minutes of constant operation out of it."

As he spoke, the hemisphere over their heads flashed a full bright green, then went black. A bell tinkled somewhere and a couple of techs dropped their tools and headed for the back room on the double. A couple of others stood up from their work and lit cigarettes because their instruments had gone dead. Some of the rest continued to nurse their particular circuits because that section was still running.

After scanning the operation to see which section had gone blooey, Allison went on. "We've never tested this outfit under anything but ideal conditions. We've had spacecraft sent out to specified distances, fired up the gizmo and found fragments of response right where there should be a response."

"That's hardly fair, is it?" commented Wilson.

"It's a start. You have to start somewhere. Radio--know its start? The first message was sent across the ocean a few hundred years ago from one man to the other after they had made a complete plan as to time, date, location and frequency, and also the transmitted message. Sure enough, they got through. That, too, was under the ideal test conditions. So when we finally assembled the half-a-hundred separate circuits and devices that made it look as though we might have a space detector, we put up targets, aimed our equipment, and looked for a response where there should be one."

"We don't know where our target is," objected Wilson.

"And we haven't yet fired up this equipment to seek a target of unknown position and range," admitted Allison. "But this gear is better than nothing."

Again the green spots flickered in the dome over their heads.

"What do all those spots mean?" asked Wilson.

"Those are false targets, probably caused by background noise. Although the infrawave is noiseless, we still seem to be getting it. Dr. Friedrich disagrees. He claims this is not noise, but interferences. However, the good doctor is not at all certain that the so-called interferences come from localized conditions within the equipment or from external sources."

Wilson shrugged. "I don't see how it's done with a radiation type that has neither a directional quality nor a velocity of propagation."

"Do you understand Accum?"

"I stopped shortly before Matrix. Accumulative Math is so much pothooks on a sheet of paper to me."

"Um. Then I'd find it hard to explain. The theory seems to be demonstrable, and the accumulative mathematics upholds the experimental evidence. But there hasn't yet been an acceptable verbal description of what happens."

"I've often wondered, leaving the nondirectional quality out of it, why we couldn't cut our emitting power and somehow compute range by observing the incoming power from a distant infrawave transmitter."

Allison shook his head. "Oddly enough, the matrix mathematics that deal with radiation shows that for any hypothetical radiation with an infinite velocity of propagation, there can be no attenuation with distance."

"Meaning that we should be able to transmit all the way from here to hell and back."

"Not exactly. Infrawave radiation comes in quanta, you know. A kilowatt covers two point one, seven nine three six plus parsecs. Two kilowatts covers twice that distance minus the ninth root of two point, seven nine three six plus. Three kilowatts covers three times two point et cetera, minus two times the ninth root." Allison shrugged and spread his hands.

* * * * *

"And so on it goes," he said, "indicating that at some devilish distance--I've forgotten the figure but we had the master computer chew it out on the big machine at Radiation once--an additional kilowatt just shoves the signal coverage distance out by a micron. But if you don't put in your honest kilowatt, you don't excite the infraspace that carries infrawaves. And if you put in a kilowatt and a half, you have to dissipate the half."

Wilson grunted. "Nice to have things come out even. Who'd have thunk that the Creator wanted the Terran kilowatt to equal one quanta of infrawave distance?"

Allison laughed. "Poor argument, Commodore Wilson. Actually, the figure is point nine, eight three four plus. Close, but no cigar. We've just come to accept the figure as a kilowatt, just as for everyday calculation we accept the less refined figure of two point, one eight parsecs, or even two point, two. At any rate--"

There was a puff of something, and a sound like the puncture of a tire. The green speckles on the dome merged with one another and became a riot of flaming green. There were shouts and cries and a lot of haphazard orders and several techs scrambled to snap toggle switches.

Down the room one of the techs went head-first into a rack with a pair of pliers and a soldering iron. He backed out carrying a smoking little shapeless thing that had lost any character it once possessed. The tech picked up a nice, shiny new doodad from a small box and went into the rack again. When he came out this time he gave a hoarse cheer. Toggles were snapped back and the spreckles reappeared.

One of the techs came up to Allison and said, "See that spot up there, sir? The one just this side of the eighty-one degree longitude circle, and a little below the forty-five latitude ring?"

"Yes."

It was a small round disc no more than an inch in diameter.

"We think that may be a response."

Wilson said, "You mean a target? Possibly one of the lifeships?"