Part 6

There was a large and interesting handwheel labelled "Drive Angle Trim" which Dusty gathered to be the gizmo used to equalize the drivers so the ship wouldn't yaw in flight, but he was not quite sure. There was another called the "Pre-flight Check Sequence" which probably checked the multitudinous functions of the instruments as it was turned from position to position, but what it did or what it told the pilot made no never-mind to Dusty Britton of The Space Patrol.

* * * * *

There was one that he recognized instantly. It said, reading from left to right "Off, Warm-up, Stand-by, Operate." It was a big four-position hand-lever and it was a good idea, excepting what did Dusty do next?

"Can Scyth help?" pleaded Dusty.

"He's out cold like a Northern Light. Lost blood and--"

"But how'm I to run this godawful thing?"

"I don't know," said Barbara doubtfully. "Try something."

"What?" he asked.

She pointed to a small button high on the front panel beside the glazed plate. It said, "SC/WBN-3 Phanoband 22".

Dusty looked at the nameplate and the menslator helped him translate the nameplate into "Space, Commercial/Non-adjustable, High-power, Emergency--Model Three. Phanoband Twenty-Two."

Dusty looked at Barbara and shrugged. This was an emergency, so Dusty put out a forefinger and pressed the button.

A pilot lamp winked from blue to red and a meter on the forepanel rose. There was a momentary whirring from far below in the big star ship and then along the bottom of the ground-glass looking window in front of him, a small circle began to grow luminous. A man's face appeared.

He was obviously in some sort of uniform; it had that air. The collar was high and the effect was uncomfortable. A pair of gold diagrams glistened on one shoulder. The man looked human enough to be the local desk-sergeant in costume dress. As soon as the little circle was completely clear he said tersely:

"Distress Call received. Identify yourself, state your position, define your danger, and estimate the time remaining in which you have a factor of safety."

Dusty blinked and then looked at Barbara. She shrugged. Dusty shrugged back and said, "Are you Marandis?"

"This is Marandis Emergency. Identify yourself, state your pos--"

"Stop talking like a robot--or are you a robot?"

"I am not! What is the meaning of this? Using a distress-call band for--"

"This is a distress call," snapped Dusty. "And part of the distress is that I can't identify myself because I don't know the language."

"You'll have--"

"The other part of the distress is that the man who knows all about this is likely to die of a bad accident if he is not given medical attention. So now you know, tell me what to do next."

"Who are you?"

"I am Dusty Britton, if that means anything."

"I don't know you."

"Of course not. I've never been to Marandis. I'm not a Marandanian, just a character of the race your play-mates term 'Backward,' and/or 'Primitive.' But you better do something fast."

"What is the name of the injured party?"

"Scyth Radnor."

"Then your identity is Exploration License K-221-Y. I know Radnor. I must get you off the distress band. Please switch to Space Communications, Band Forty-Five. I--"

"Wait," said Dusty quickly. "As a member of another solar culture you must be aware of the fact that I am not familiar with your equipment. Which knob do I twist and how far?"

The Marandanian gave Dusty instructions and waited for a second small circle to appear beside the first, with a different face in it. This face was older and not in uniform. The man said, "Please explain the nature of your difficulty. I am Gant Nerley."

As well as he could, under the circumstances, Dusty explained his predicament.

"I see," said Gant Nerley thoughtfully. "This is a rather complex problem to solve. Can you state your location?"

"Hardly."

"I suppose not. If we don't know where you are from here, the chance that a non-galactic culture would know where we are from there is indeed remote."

"Haven't you a filed plan of operations?" demanded Dusty, using a tone of voice that indicated that he thought that any culture above the level of the ape wouldn't let people go galloping all over the galaxy, tearing up stars and ruining scenery without first having filed a program and had such program approved by twenty-seven signatures.

"There is a filed plan," said Nerley defensively. "But naturally it is sealed as a matter of protection for the company."

"And no provision for emergency?"

"Only by the consent of the licensed company."

"Then you'd better call a conference at once. Scyth isn't going to last long enough for you to comb the galaxy for us."

"That's why it might be better to let the barytrine field run to completion."

* * * * *

Dusty's voice grew hard. "I wish you birds would stop tossing off a thousand years of our life with the flick of a finger," he said.

"What difference does it make? You'd not notice it, and--"

"Who says so?" snapped Dusty, his irritation mounting.

"Time is of importance only when its passage can be measured in reference to outside events. You have no contact with outside events. Therefore it makes no difference whether you come in contact with us now or a thousand years from now, so long as the same people of your culture are involved."

"Now see here--"

"Permit me to present an example. If the barytrine field went on at this instant, one thousand years from now my successor would pick up the thread of the conversation from the recording we are making, and take on from here. As far as you are concerned the only difference would be a sudden flick of the viewscreen and a rather abrupt change in the facial characteristics of your conferee." Gant Nerley waited a moment to let the point sink in. "Now, since you and I have very little in common, it should make little difference to you whether you spoke to me or to someone else. And as far as I am concerned, I feel the same. I have long since ceased feeling regretful that I cannot retain friendship with the hundreds of thousands of people with whom I must converse. I have almost stopped being regretful of the fact that there are so many worlds that no single lifetime would permit a visit to more than a fraction. I suggest that you try to take a more lasting attitude. You sound as though the troubles of a world you never saw were of prime importance to you."

"Look," said Dusty testily, "A lot of what you claim may be true. But we have a couple of thousand years of observational data on the planets and the nearby stars. You may take a thousand years out of our lives in the twinkle of a second, but then we spend another five hundred on top of that finding out where we are."

"You have time."

"We have not!" roared Dusty. "Move us to a new system and I'll tell you what'll happen. Before we can make a move into space we have to chart the new system completely, because we admit that our reaction motors are not efficient enough to take off without a well precharted course. We must know the orbits of the planets to a fine degree before we dare. Then, before we can make a try for the stars, we've got to spend years and years in observation before we can chart the nearest stars and observe whether or not they might have planets, our astronomy will be put back. Now--"

"Pardon me, but the information I have regarding your system is before me. Your space travel is primitive and any form of real commerce is as yet impossible. This I get from the license application for barytrine operations. Now, how can you justify your statements about interstellar travel?"

Dusty Britton, no matter what else, was a good actor any time he could sit in with a large Virginia Ham to carve. Dusty would never play Hamlet or Julius Caesar; a custard pie in the face was closer to Dusty's art than John Barrymore. This fact provided for Dusty a rather interesting background for the present argument. A student of science could not have faced Gant Nerley without paying deference to the Marandanian's obviously superior knowledge, position and experience. The learned man makes no flat-footed statements; this leads to the odd belief that most learned men are not entirely sure of themselves. It is the bird who is ignorant of all the myriad things that he does not know that can afford to stand up on his hind feet and reel off chapter and verse as though there could be no rebuttal.

* * * * *

So Dusty Britton, who could portray a reasonably convincing role of a wounded hero while mentally contemplating how long it would be before the first preprandial martini, plus being the flamboyant type who never lets a few facts stop his flow of words, was not abashed to let on that he knew a lot more than the Marandanian suspected. Furthermore, Dusty felt that he had Gant Nerley on the defensive, and if he could put the Marandanian off balance long enough to accomplish something, Dusty did not care if Nerley accused him of being a four-flusher at some later date.

Keeping this in mind, Dusty braced himself with little effort and tried to reduce to bafflegab what he recalled of Scyth Radnor's previous statements.

"Interstellar travel is, of course, based upon obvious errors in the theoretical mathematics of general relativity," said Dusty, as though he were reciting some of the science-double-talk usually included in Dusty Britton And The Space Patrol. "Of the many schools of thought which have their own theories on how to explain these obvious errors, the group-velocity field seems to be the most successful. But all of them are seeking some evidence to support their theories, and a couple of them, namely the gravitic and the magnetic-field proponents claim that such evidence has already supported their claim. Now, if such is the case, you know it will not be long before some practical experiment will disprove the illogic of providing a finite limit to an infinite system. Once this has been established it seems obvious that star-travel is the next step."

"Hmmm--I see. This is a situation that must be considered more carefully. May I ask, Dusty Britton, what is your position in your society?"

"I am Dusty Britton of The Space Patrol," said Dusty with the proper tone of respect. "Commander in Chief of the Junior Division."

"Indeed! A real Space Patrol!"

Dusty nodded at the viewscreen. "It may be a bit ambitious," he remarked with even more deference, carefully studied. "But we feel that there is small point in using a conservative name and then having to change it every couple of years."

"Quite a sensible attitude."

Dusty nodded again. "Fact is," he said deprecatingly, "we would probably be quite a bit more advanced in our space operations if our sister planets were not so inimical to human life. As it is, our extra-planetary operations are limited and will be limited until we can provide the necessary conversions to terrestrial conditions."

Gant Nerley nodded back. "Man is not an adaptable animal," he observed. "He does not change himself to suit his environment; he changes his environment to suit himself."

"That's what I mean."

"Then why do you object so much to this barytrine field?" asked Gant Nerley. "We can always pick you a stellar group less inimical to human life and thus advance you faster."

Dusty grunted under his breath. He had talked too much. "Buster," he said angrily, "logic like that will only get you a fat lip."

Gant Nerley blinked. "Tell me, Dusty, was Scyth Radnor hurt in some altercation over this beacon?"

* * * * *

By this time Dusty figured that he might as well let Gant Nerley have it cold and hard. It would show Gant that the mighty Marandanian was no more distant from the lusty chimpanzee than the terrestrian.

"No," he said flatly, "Scyth was plugged for monkeying around another man's woman."

Gant said, "Deplorable," in a tone of voice that indicated an amused disgust, but not easily identified as to whether over the act itself or the business of being caught at it. "What happened?"

"The other guy shot first," said Dusty, feeling that this was no time to point out that it was he that pulled the trigger.

"I'm not surprised. Most primitives are inclined to be both hot-headed and impulsive."

"Tell me," asked Dusty in a cooing voice, "did Scyth confine his amours to primitives, or is it the custom among Marandanians to consider your mate unattractive unless she can prove it by bedding down with an impressive list of lovers?"

"I don't understand," replied Gant Nerley stiffly.

"Against primitives I can understand Scyth carrying a weapon to his assignation, for protection against the irate cuckold. Tell me, Gant Nerley, has your emotional balance become so stable that you can take a more scholarly view of promiscuity? Or," added Dusty sharply, "do you have big black headlines about triangle slayings and love-nest scandals just like the rest of humanity?"

"Well, now, we--"

"Then don't blame us primitive souls for slugging a guy that's caught off base!" snapped Dusty. "Now, what are we going to do about Scyth?"

"Regardless of his depredations against propriety, he must be given medical attention."

"This I will go along with. How shall we start? I can always take him to one of our hospitals."

"No. No! You must not."

"Why not? We're quite competent on gunshot wounds. We're probably more used to them than you are, as primitives with impulse and hot blood."

"Please. Let's not be facetious over any man's misfortune."

"In blunt words, the life of a character caught in an awkward situation is more important than someone else losing their familiar stellar scenery and a couple of thousand years of climb up from the swamp of ignorance?"

"That is another question which I'm sure we can solve. Now--"

"Look," said Dusty firmly, "you agree to take measures for our safety and we'll agree to take measures for Scyth's. Do you understand exactly what I mean or shall I explain in very blunt words?"

"That is blackmail."

"It's worse than that. But we're primitive, and therefore lacking in refinement. As far as I am concerned, Transgalactic can keep their secret of our position locked in their sealed file. Scyth can die, and Bren and Chat can spend the rest of their lives marooned on Mercury."

"No. That wouldn't be right. You must bring Scyth back home."

"That's a fine idea! May I suggest that your ship is not as familiar as mine?" Dusty did not mention that the only control room he was familiar with was the one on the Gramer Production Lot, which was an aggregation of fantastic levers and flashing lights and futuristic three-phase busbars which had a most profound effect upon the imagination of the youth of the land but no effect upon space whatsoever.

"This can be taken care of. As a spaceman, you can understand the principles. They are simple. You can follow directions for flight."

"Yes? And which way do I go from here?"

"Not so fast. First, Dusty Britton, tell me the present condition of Scyth Radnor."

"Wait."

* * * * *

Dusty went below. Scyth was in a state of shock. His temperature "taken with the flat of Dusty's hand" was chill--and there was a film of perspiration wetting Scyth's body. The breathing was shallow and the face was pale. Scyth's pulse was weak and the heartbeat thin.

Dusty turned a light blanket over the Marandanian and then went back to report.

Gant Nerley said, "In the salon you will find a medicine cabinet. The instructions are simple, any intelligent being with a menslator should be able to follow them concisely. How is the bleeding?"

"Stopped. Clotted by now."

"Take care of Scyth, Dusty Britton. We'll figure out something for you."

"How about this barytrine field that's running away with itself?"

"We'll stop it. Behind you on the auxiliary panel you will see a knob and a pilot lamp, probably orange colored. Turn the knob to the left."

Dusty did, and the lamp went out.

"That's it. I see that Scyth has the usual sloppy habits of his kind. No label. According to space regulations the operator is supposed to slip a label into the frame above the auxiliary control whenever he has anything extra set up. I'll mark that oversight down on Scyth Radnor's record. Now--"

"What about Chat and Bren and that variable-star maker?"

Gant Nerley grunted. "If they're not keeping a close eye on the barytrine field detector, so they can shut off their own equipment when it fails, I'll revoke their licenses! They must be looking at the temporal field, or at least keeping watch."

"We hope."

Gant nodded thoughtfully. "Now," he said, "this being an emergency, I'll open their course-plan so that I can direct you through space. Don't turn off the viewpanel, Dusty. I'll be back in a few minutes."

IX

As soon as Gant Nerley's face disappeared from the viewpanel, Dusty turned to face Barbara. She was standing far to one side, out of range of the viewpanel, and stifling a giggle. She let it bubble through her fingers as soon as Dusty caught her eye.

"Funny as hell," he said. "Me--I'm hysterical."

Barbara sobered immediately. "Honest, Dusty. I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing with you."

"Why?" he demanded sharply.

"Because you really fooled that bird. Dusty Britton of The Space Patrol. Yes, I can navigate a ship."

"I'm going to. Want out?"

"I wouldn't miss this for the world. Glad we've got the whole galaxy for you to make mistakes in."

"Stop making fun," he snapped. "Let's try and think of something sensible, Barb. Too bad we haven't time to take a run back to the city."

"What good would that do?"

"Well, you could show 'em that bauble you're wearing and I could try the menslator out on 'em, and maybe between us we could convince 'em that there's something more in this tale of mine than wind."

"That's an idea, but it's out."

"I know. But--"

"Dusty, you'll have to carry it to Gant Nerley yourself."

"Carry what?"

Barbara shook her head impatiently. "Think!" she cried. "Dusty, this license might be rescinded if we can show that Sol has evolved above the minimum level of acceptability."

"Yes?"

"Then go in there with your head up and let 'em know how we're built."

Dusty waved at the field of instruments on the control position. "Open my yap and let 'em know how ignorant we are? We should have a couple of scientists along."

Barbara shook her head. "No," she said slowly. "One of the marks of a real scientist is that he usually considers that he knows a lot less than he does. You're better off. You don't know enough to confuse yourself. Besides, Dusty, you're an actor."

"Um--er--Jeeks! Hang on a mo' will you? I've an idea."

Dusty loped down the stairs to his car and opened the compartment behind the front seat. It was his emergency kit; it held his Dusty Britton uniform, the complete regalia of The Space Patrol complete with Dusty Britton 'Blaster' concealed against the days when Dusty found himself trapped in public and could not appear out of character.

He changed in the car and went back to the control room.

Barbara took one look at him and nodded slowly. "You're a gaudy sight," she said. "But maybe that's what it takes."

Dusty slapped the 'Blaster' at his hip. "I look authentic enough except for this hunk of hardware," he said. "Hell, it isn't even as useful as a dress sword."

"Your revolver? Oh--still on my living room floor."

Dusty unbelted the holster. "I shouldn't have to go armed everywhere, should I?"

"I suppose not."

"All right, then. How do I look?"

* * * * *

Barbara smiled thinly, "Dusty, no one on earth would ever accuse you of being anything but a Hollywood actor in that get-up. But a man from halfway across the Galaxy itself might not know about these things. You might be an Admiral of the Swiss Navy. You're impressive-looking. Just don't get pompous."

"Just you remember that I'm Dusty Britton of The Space Patrol and don't giggle when I start dishing it out."

"I won't. After all, I call myself an actress, you know." She looked nervously at the viewpanel.

"Are you all right?" he demanded.

"Yes. I'm nervous but I'll be all right."

Dusty went over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Take a deep breath," he commanded. She did. "Now let it out slowly." She did that, too. "Now," he said softly, slipping an arm around her and leading her to the stairway, "You come down below and relax. Pull yourself together, Barb. We'll make it--somehow."

"Got any ideas?"

"Not yet. But--"

Above, the voice of Gant Nerley came back. Dusty raced aloft and apologized for having been absent. Gant was nodding with admiration at something below the level of the view panel, probably something on the desk.

Gant looked up after a moment and said, "Dusty Britton, this is really a remarkable route. Truly fantastic. So well hidden, and yet right within our grasp all of these centuries! Well, you shall see, Dusty. And doubtless you will agree."

"Okay," said Dusty, "let's get going."

"Not so fast, young man. I'm waiting for the direction-finding stations to report so that I can determine where along this prospected route you lie."

"We're about two-thirds of the way out from the center, I believe," offered Dusty.

"That's a rather inaccurate generality. You know where you are and we know where we are, but we must know where we are with respect to one another before we can make contact. Now--" Gant's voice stopped suddenly as something caught his eye above the lens of the viewpanel, and he looked over Dusty's head, apparently, so intently that Dusty himself turned to see what Gant was staring at. He saw only instruments, and realized that Gant was looking at another panel-section above the one that communicated with Dusty's panel.

"Um," said Gant. "You would appear to lie in what we call 'Sector G-18, Co-ordinate 307, Galactic Angle 215.86-plus degrees, South altitude-angle 1.017-minus degrees, Co-frame 9654.' Now, Dusty, in your terms, where lies the Galactic Center?"

Dusty laughed. The tone of his laugh was half bitter and half a note of self-disparagement. "Sorry, Gant. We frame our reference from Terra, naturally."

Dusty breathed a sigh of relief at having boned up on enough science to play his part convincingly.

"I do not quite understand what you mean," returned Gant.

"We compute stellar positions in latitude from the angle above or below the equator of Terra, which we call 'Declination' and in longitude by their rise as the planet rotates, which we call 'Right Ascension'. Therefore the so-called 'Celestial equator' is a projection of the Earth's equator upon the sky, and the colures pass from celestial pole to celestial pole, which are projections of Terra's axis. Now, since the Earth's equator is tilted with respect to the Earth's orbit, and the Earth's orbit is tilted with respect to the Galactic Equator, I'll be darned if I know how to explain in mutual terms. Oh, we assume that the galactic center is in a region of the sky we call 'Sagittarius' but that is meaningless."

"I agree. Wait a moment."

* * * * *

Gant turned from the window in Dusty's viewpanel and walked away from it by several yards. He worked over a complicated keyboard for some minutes and then returned.

"Dusty," he said, "I think we can handle this as follows. To your left hand near the top of the control board you will find a key-lever marked Phanobeacon. Pull it towards you."