Part 2

"Interstellar often holds the quaint notion that a more alert outfit would be able to arrive at the scene of the blowup in time to stop it; after all, a spacecraft is worth a lot of moola, and they hate to lose it."

Hagen grunted. "I can't see any outfit getting there before we did."

"Tell 'em that."

"Just how do they think they can create a better outfit?"

"By removing the Guardians from governmental control and making of them a private organization, a subsidiary of Interstellar."

"I don't see--"

"There's a lot of truth on both sides," said Edwards, "but that is not for us to settle. All we can do is to stand up for our own ideals. Just tell 'em what you saw, and what you did; and if you don't let a few facts interfere with a good story, remember that they're ready to discount half of what you say anyway. So--here's the inevitable."

3

Hagen entered the office quietly, nodded at Commissioner Morehouse, smiled at Lois, and eyed Howard Forrest with mild hostility. Forrest, the representative of Interstellar, returned his hostility with a stony-cold glance.

It had been years since Forrest and Hagen had met. The last time had been a hard scene; Forrest had come to Hagen to ascertain the depth of Steve's feelings regarding the renunciation of his name and heir-apparent-ship to the commercial empire of William Wrightwood. Forrest, a clever man with words, had done some of the finest orating of his life at that time, weaving a verbal web glowing with the glories of running the whole show. He had given Steve a very rough time.

Steve had yet to learn the first principle of politics, which is never to admit for one moment that your opponent could possibly be right, or have an idea that keyed with your own. Steve had attempted to answer Forrest, and all he got in reply was hard-shelled argument.

The slightest hint of Steve's that Government had any rights at all was greeted with fine rhetoric and impeccably presented logic to the effect that Hagen's viewpoint was none other than a leaning towards Statism, Socialism, and ultimately Communism. Steve resented this. Yet his lack of preparation for rebuttal left him unable to reply with good soundness. Hagen had no intention of supporting any form of governmental control of everything. He believed in the desirability of self-sufficiency and free enterprise, but he also felt that his stepfather had taken this freedom as far in one direction as downright dictatorship would lead it in the other direction.

Forrest had waved away the latter and had fastened upon Steve's support of free enterprise, pointing out that a group of trained vortex-fighters with a personal interest in their job would be more inclined to do the job more thoroughly.

Forrest had finally reduced everything to a matter of dollars and cents and initiative, leaving Steve only with the weak defense of retreating inside of a verbal shell and replying that he wasn't going to return because he did not want to return and that was that. Howard Forrest had left still making predictions about the future. Now, Forrest looked at Hagen with eyes that saw him not as a former heir to the throne of Interstellar, but as a complete stranger.

This was as Hagen wanted it.

He was Steve Hagen; not William Wrightwood Junior, and he did not want to own up to any relationship with either his stepfather or Forrest. Steve decided to be curt, cold, concise, and distant.

He had little chance to be any of these. He was asked to deliver his opinion of the recent eruption, and he did so, addressing alternately his superiors, Forrest, and three stony-faced gentlemen who had been introduced as members of a fact-finding board to whom Interstellar had complained.

Then Hagen expected some form of cross-questioning.

He got none. When he finished, Commissioner Morehouse explained that this was the opinion of a new man unbiased by experience, and drew the teeth of any argument by admitting calmly that any Guardian had every right to talk completely in favor of his chosen service.

Hagen was then excused; he left after tossing a sly smile at Lois.

But once outside, Steve paused. It was not like Forrest to use him so calmly; this would have been a fine chance to blow an argument full of holes.

Unless--

Unless Forrest realized that Hagen's position with the Guardians was of no great importance. At least at the present time.

Which meant that Hagen's position might be of great interest in the future. This implied that Forrest, Wrightwood, and Interstellar had some plan in mind. Theirs was more than getting Steve Hagen back into the fold; that might have been accomplished by several means. Certainly Wrightwood and Interstellar had enough of power and money to place a very deep curse on any man who befriended Steve. He would be forced back from sheer want, from sheer inability to fight an organization so strong that it would not permit any other outfit to hire him.

Nor was it a matter of waiting until Hagen came to his senses.

It implied some sort of deep-laid scheme, and some of it smacked of Hagen's call to Base One instead of being sent to the Galactic Equivalent of Brooklyn until he knew his way around. He smelled the fingers of politics once again, and decided to step upon them.

* * * * *

Steve turned from his walk down the hall and went to Captain Charlemagne's office.

The squadron leader looked up when Hagen was announced, and smiled genially. "How did you make out?"

Hagen shrugged. "I told my tale in a dry voice, and I don't know whether it went over or not; they didn't ask me any questions."

"They never do. They just compare the notes they make from one man to the other and weed out discrepancies. That's why all of us being questioned are called in one at a time. I doubt that you made any errors, Steve."

"Thanks, Captain Charlemagne." Hagen wanted to call his leader 'Cap'n' like the rest, but felt that it was not his place to be too bold at this moment. "But I came here to ask a question."

"Go right ahead."

"Why was I called to Base One?"

"You've been wondering?"

"Of course. I came off with a high grade in training school, but not that high. So far as I know, I'm the first rook to be called directly from training to Base One in many's the year."

"That's true," nodded Charlemagne.

"You weren't to be told yet, but since you ask, there's really no harm in your knowing; you're going to be assigned to a sort of special routine once we get you some experience in space."

"Special routine?"

"Nothing very grandiose, Steve. We've partly been forced and partly been convinced to revise our inspection procedure. Formerly, routine inspections have been carried out by men convalescing from injuries, or men released from active duty for one reason or another. It has been pointed out that such men--usually men of long experience, can hardly look upon such a routine job as anything but punishment, or a sop tossed to an invalid, or some other odious proposition, and they can hardly be expected to execute such a job without some bias. For instance, a man put upon such a job because of some minor infraction of the rules will smart under this punishment and take it out on spaceport managers, liner captains, and so forth--or will bugger the works by overlooking the possible danger spots. An invalid cannot be expected to do the job thoroughly. A pensioner is usually old enough to be less active."

"I see; now we're making this a part of initial training?"

"Right. And since Base One is staffed with experienced Guardians, we needed a newcomer to handle this job; you're it."

Hagen smiled. "When do I start?" he asked.

"Normally we'd start you after your second time out," said Charlemagne. "But since you've been told of your assignment, I see no reason why you should sit around day after day waiting for it to arrive. If you think you can make a long jaunt from star to star without getting the screaming meemies from space loneliness, you can start tomorrow."

"I think I can."

"Larrimer thinks you can lick it," smiled Charlemagne; "he said you ran the swamper as though you'd been with the mop-up squad for years."

"I hardly think so."

"You're a well-liked rookie," said the captain. "You'll make out. And," he added ruefully, "we'll be looking for another rookie in not too long a time. We wouldn't care to keep a potentially good man running errands too long. Just long enough," he said seriously, "so that he knows what the score is."

* * * * *

Steve found this was tedious work. Furnished with an itinerary, Steve spent the first day on Planet III of the star nearest to Base One, prowling in and out among the planetary installations of the Interstellar Company, finding nothing worth reporting. Pilots and engineroom mechanics knew that their lives depended upon the proper maintenance of their equipment, and they behaved accordingly.

Furthermore, most of them resented Steve's insistence upon inspection because they deemed it a reflection on their workmanship. The fact that he admittedly knew less than they about the finer points of warp generators made it impossible for him to pay more than a cursory compliment as a sop to the interference.

On the other hand Hagen occasionally located a weak spot and pointed it out to them; some of them were grateful, and some impertinent. Of the former, they nodded sagely and mumbled something about beginner's luck or the familiarity that breeds contempt. Of the latter, their acknowledgment of the weak spot came either as something admittedly less than perfect but not really dangerous--or that they knew it was there, but had not reached that spot in their repair routine. Steve could not argue any of these points, so he clamped down on the sharp answers he felt coming up and passed it by with only a scowl. Had he been less certain of himself, Steve would have been ruffled or possibly hurt by this sort of treatment. But Hagen was the kind of man who knew that he was not completely capable in such things--although he was quite capable in other things, which lent the whole proposition some compensation. It is the man who has no particular accomplishment of his own who cannot stand to be pushed around by people who have--or he with the overpowering inferiority complex who _thinks_ he has no particular excellence.

Steve had neither inferiority complex nor lack of certain successes; he would study and he would learn, and one day he would speak with authority.

And so it went as the days rolled on and on. His time was not entirely uneventful. The ship he drove on these inspections was a scout model, equipped with space alarm recorder; and although it did not have the automatic scale-model of the galactic sector such as in the main office of Commissioner Morehouse, it did have a manual model. When a muttering call came in on the alarm circuit, Steve would take the time to classify it, to fix it, then to calculate and enumerate which of the stations was going out on the call.

* * * * *

This sort of classifying gave Steve a sort of dull shock. For even though he had known the facts, it took seeing them and calculating them to drive it home. The Guardians were not constantly fighting the great menace; such blowups as Steve had been initiated into almost upon his arrival at Base One were actually few and far between.

Most of these were minor calls. A tramper with a vacillating warp generator would call the Guardians to have them come out to clamp down on the space warp before it blew, or long enough for the engineers to make repair or adjustment. Occasionally the spacecraft would try to drop speed before the warp blew out, and almost make it; in which case the resulting eruption took all of the simple technique of a smouldering fire in a wastebasket. There were far more calls for _danger_ than calls for _blowup_. Ships' engineers, mindful of the fact that the life of every man aboard depended upon the efficient working of the warp generator, knowing that the ship would blow and be lost if it failed, were inclined to call for aid and help at the slightest indication of instability; it kept the Guardians busy.

But that was what they were for. Hagen enjoyed that feeling, although he would have scoffed at any man who accused Steve of harboring a desire to serve mankind.

All Steve cared about was the fact that it was far better to hale a crew of Guardians out of bed and hurl them across space to protect their fellow men than to lose men and material unnoticed.

And Steve knew, too, that blowups were 'headline stuff' and no indictment of space travel. For every alarm that came whispering its troubles across the galaxy, a hundred-thousand people traversed the spacelanes from star to star without mishap. He often wondered how long he would be in this business before he began to shake his head at the chances mankind took. Or whether this sort of bias would take place in him. Certainly, a man living where the dangers are pointed out while the safeties are not noticed should begin to place too much importance on the obvious.

But so far Steve had none of this; he plodded on his job and did it as well as he could, knowing that as soon as he finished this phase of his activities as a Guardian, he would have more interesting work. This expectation dispelled the routine drabness of being an inspector; his off-duty hours were too happily filled for him to do more than consider the future.

For Steve could not contemplate the future without thinking of Lois Morehouse. She was interested in him, he knew. And like any man of intellect, Steve was used to thinking of any desirable woman in the light of a possible mate and judging her values and virtues accordingly. But until he knew more about her, Steve could formulate nothing more than the fact that she was desirable; the big thing was to discover whether it could last beyond the first stages. Steve had known too many girls with a Perfect Thirty-Six--with an I.Q. to match--to place much judgement upon outward appearances.

So, before Steve took on the job of meeting her every morning across the breakfast table, Steve wanted to know more about her. He guessed--rightly--that Lois wanted to find out more about him.

He gave her every chance, starting with the evening of the dance.

4

He had little time. The routine of his inspection tours took Steve farther away from Base One as time went on, and Hagen had small chance to do other than run in and out. His spare time was his, of course; Steve was not on twenty-four hour duty. He could have his way in one of two possibilities; he could either stay near the base of operations or he could spend the spare time in space-flight to and from Base One. He did the latter until the running time versus the visiting time ran smack into the Law of Diminishing Returns, at which point he loafed his spare time away on a planet near to his course across the galactic sector. At these times Hagen calmly awaited the future, when he could be back at the Base.

Steve had not seen nor heard from his foster father since that meeting in Wrightwood's office, and he knew that another meeting was inevitable. Hagen would have preferred to have the meeting on a ground of his own selection where he could choose his own weapons, but this was not to be.

Yet Steve was not totally unprepared when, inspecting one of the larger planetary installations of Interstellar, he was asked into the main office. It was not of Hagen's choosing, but it was better than to have Wrightwood land at Base One, where the wily magnate could by word, gesture, and incomplete statement indicate more than the truth before Steve's fellow Guardians. Such a program requires too vigorous a rebuttal; no reply or denial is adequate to remove the doubt that always lingers.

So Steve entered the main office with a wry smile and nodded at Wrightwood. He waited the older man out.

"How are you doing?" asked Wrightwood.

"All right."

"A bit dull, isn't it?"

"Life is often dull," remarked Hagen noncommittally.

"Look, Steve, why not take it a bit easier?"

"What do you mean?"

William Wrightwood eyed Steve coldly. "Now look," he said quietly, "we'll admit for once and for all, that you and I don't get along."

"Well, that's a concession."

"All right, take it as you will. But it's true; for some inexplicable reason you hate my guts--"

Steve grunted. "It's not so damned inexplicable."

Wrightwood sighed. "What's done is done," he said softly. "But take a look at the present and the future instead of the past; view this, honestly if you can, in the eye of an outsider."

"Can you?"

"I can and I have; I've also the opinion of outsiders."

"Do tell."

"I will. You are in what might be called an unpleasant situation. You are the legal heir to the Interstellar holdings whether or not you deny it. You were rechristened Wrightwood whether you try to deny it or not. In the eyes of the world you are my son, brought up by my money and educated by my background. You--"

"Thanks--"

Wrightwood held up a hand to still Steve's sour voice. "Hear me out. Instead of acting as heir to my fortune and crown prince to my business, you engage and embark upon a career which is in diametric opposition to my interest. In shorter words, you have left my company in anger and signed up with the opposition."

"Correct."

"So now, possibly to salve your own qualms, you are leaning so far over backwards that you are about to fall on the back of your head."

Steve snorted.

"Deny it," smiled Wrightwood in a superior manner. "Just to prove to yourself and to your superiors, you've been cracking down hard on me."

* * * * *

Steve eyed Wrightwood sharply. "Seems to me that your underlings might be more considerate of your holdings," he snapped.

"What do you mean?"

"It doesn't take a lot to keep things ship-shape. Faulty wiring, frayed connections, generators with rattles, loose bearings, electron tubes working past their safety-period. I found three hydrogen thyatrons running at one-and-one-half times their rating because they were so old that they were beginning to get sluggish. Just last week in one of your ships.

"Sure," sneered Steve, "you can get another couple of hundred operating hours out of a tube by running the filament hotter than normal when it starts to get weak. But you're running a spaceline, not a spot-welder; when one of them blows, it's a job for the mop-up squad. Someone's cutting corners, saving a hundred bucks worth of tubes for a couple of weeks doesn't pay for lost lives and--"

"I'm aware of the safety factors," said Wrightwood angrily. "The trouble with these safety factors is that they've been set up because someone in your outfit took the figures presented by the tube manufacturers and divided them by two. Instead of running on a hundred percent safety factor, you've forced us to run on five or six hundred percent. And do you know why?"

Steve did not reply.

"Because one of the guys who makes standards for the Guardians holds some stock in a tube company."

"That's a lie!" roared Steve, slamming his fist on the table.

"It's no lie; it's just a fine way to raise the sale of tubes. And tubes are only one part of the whole. Now--"

Steve roared again. "When the lives of a couple of hundred people depend upon a chunk of wire the size of a piece of string, heated to incandescence by electric current, any safety factor can damn well afford to be trebled and trebled again!"

Wrightwood shook his head solemnly. "This isn't all," he said; "this is only the beginning. The whole adds up to a staggering sum. But I didn't bring you in here to hurl accusations at you. I merely want to ask you to use a bit of tolerant common sense."

"Now I'm lacking in com--"

"Now, now, let's stop roaring like a ruffled lion. The only common sense you lack, Steve, is the sense that should tell you that running Interstellar is more self-satisfying than being commissioner of the Guardians. But look. Let's for the moment admit that a ship--called X--comes into Tandrel and as it arrives the time-meters on the thyratrons say that their safe life is up. What then?"

"Replace 'em."

Wrightwood nodded.

* * * * *

Steve looked at the man quizzically. If one of the first tenets of argument is never to admit for a moment that you are wrong, then why was William Wrightwood doing it?

Wrightwood shrugged. "Replace them," he agreed. "However, remember the following items:

"One: Thyratrons such as we use are manufactured on Earth; that's a long way from here.

"Two: If we replace the thyratrons on Tandrel, the replacements must be shipped out from Earth as unpaid cargo, and entry-duty, taxes, shipping charges, and the rest of the hidden costs cause an increase in their price.

"Three: Since the 'Life-Service' of the tube contains a couple of hundred percent of safety factor, why shouldn't some of that safety factor be employed to get the ship back home--maybe ten hours at the most--thus saving a lot of money?"

Steve began to see the beginnings of an attack on the Theory of Limits, against which there is only a dogmatic defence, ending in the reduction to an absurdity, and culminating in the posing of an unanswerable decision. It is sort of like the age-old argument as to where space begins and where being a planet ends.

Being a-space does not begin when one leaves the planet; men flew through the air for centuries before they crossed the void to the other planets. Yet somewhere in the trip across interplanetary space, the first travellers must have traversed first the limit of Earth, passed into Space, and then entered the boundary of Venus.

Where Earth ends and space begins is the Limit; and the easiest thing to attack is this Theory of Limits.

Earth claims legally that the boundary of Her Domain begins at a height of five hundred miles above the surface. This is a dogmatic decision, adhered to because it has been agreed upon by all. So, legally, an orbiting Station at 499 miles is not in space; while legally the sister Station operating at 501 miles _is_ in Deep Space. Factually, each of these stations lie within two-tenths of one percent of being in, or out, of space; and since the surface of the Earth is far from being as smooth as a sheet of plate glass, the Limit is based upon Earth's somewhat arbitrary Sea Level.

Similarly, if a tube's life is rated at ten thousand operating hours, and a safety factor is accepted at five hundred, can the tube be deemed inoperative at five hundred and ten hours? Especially when these 'over-age' tubes are returned to Earth or to whatever planet can use them and resold as 'Used' tubes to factories and installations where their failure will not cause a call-out of the Guardians. Many such 'Used' tubes, Steve knew, gave a total of twenty thousand hours of service.

But Steve had his answer ready and waiting. "A few hours more or less isn't of vital importance," he said; "but what about the really weak jobs?"

Wrightwood nodded. "That particular gentleman has been reprimanded. But since then you've grounded three of my ships with less than a total of twenty hours overtime."

Steve shrugged. "Just so they wouldn't end up with five or six thousand hours on them--waiting for a lazy day on Earth to change them at leisure. Especially when the ship has been Earthing every week or so."

"But why be more than normally hard? Why attack Interstellar harder than the rest?"

"I don't; I have my orders and I'll see that they're carried out."

"You can't think for yourself?" sneered Wrightwood.

"I can and I do--and I think we're right."

"You'll change--when you learn what they're doing to you," said Wrightwood.

"What do you mean?"

Wrightwood leaned back calmly. "I'm big enough of a man," he said slowly, "to let you go ahead and join the Guardians. But the Guardians are afraid of you."

"Bah!"