Part 17

"Got power out of Sirius. And unless I've forgotten how to use a micro-clock, it figured out from here to Sirius and back with the bacon in just about ninety-three percent of the speed of light squared. Seven percent is well within the experimental error, I think, since we think of Sirius as being eight and one-half light years away. That's probably not too accurate as a matter of fact, but it's the figure I used. But here we are. Power from Sirius at C². Thirty-five billion miles per second! This stuff doesn't care how many laws it breaks!"

"Hm-m-m. C², hey? Oh, lovely. Look, Walt, let's run up and take a whirl at Wes Farrell's detector. I'm beginning to envision person-to-person, ship-to-ship service, and possibly the first Interplanet Network. Imagine hearing a play-by-play account of the Solar Series!"

"Wool gathering," snorted Walt. "We've gotta catch our detector first!"

"Wes has something. First glimmer we've had. I think this is the time to rush into it with all eight feet and start pushing!"

"O.K. Who do we want?"

"Same gang as usual. Chuck and Freddie Thomas, Warren, Wes Farrell, of course, and you can get Jim Baler into it, too. No, Walt, Christine Baler is not the kind of people you haul into a screwdriver meeting."

"I was merely thinking."

"I know. But you're needed, and if she were around, you'd be a total loss as far as cerebration."

"I like her."

"So does Barney Carroll."

"Um! But he isn't here. O.K., no Christine in our conference. I'll have Jeanne call the screwballs on the communicator."

They dribbled into Farrell's laboratory one by one, and then Don said:

"We have a detector. It is about as efficient as a slab of marble; only more so. We can get a tinkle of about ten micromicroamps at twenty feet distance from a driver tube using eight KVA input, which if we rate this in the usual spaceship efficiency, comes to about one-half G. That's about standard, for driver tubes, since they run four to a ship at two G total.

"Now, that is peanuts. We should be able to wind a megammeter around the peg at twenty feet. Why, the red ionization comes out of the tube and hits our so-called detector, and the amount of ozone it creates is terrific. Yet we can't get a good reading out of it."

Walt asked: "Wes, what worked, finally?"

"A four-turn coil on a ceramic form, in series with a twenty micromicrofarad tuning condenser. I've been using a circular plate as a collector."

"Does it tune?"

"Nope. Funny thing, though, it won't work without a condenser in the circuit. I can use anything at all there without tuning it. But, darn it, the coil is the only one that works."

"That's slightly ridiculous. Have you reconstructed all factors?"

"Inductance, distributed capacity, and factor 'Q' are all right on the button with two more I made. Nothing dioding."

"Hm-m-m. This takes the cake. Nothing works, you say?"

"Nothing in my mind. I've tried about three hundred similar coils, and not a wiggle since. That's the only one."

Chuck Thomas said: "Wes, have you tried your tube-amplifier system ahead of it?"

"Yes, and nothing at all happens then. I don't understand that one, because we know that any kind of input power will be re-beamed as similar power. I should think that the thing will amplify the same kind of stuff. I've used a solar beam miniature with a driver-alloy dynode in it, but that doesn't work either."

"Shucks," said Thomas.

Don stood up and picked up the coil. "Fellows, I'm going to make a grand, old college try."

"Yes?" asked Walt.

"I've got a grand idea, here. One, I'm still remembering that business of making the receptor dynode of the same alloy as the transmitter cathode. I've a hunch that this thing is not so much an inductor, but something sour in the way of alloy-selectivity. If I'm right, I may cut this in half, and make two detectors, each of similar characteristics. Shall I?"

"Go ahead. We've established the fact that it is not the physico-electrical characteristics of that coil," said Wes. "I, too, took my chances and rewound that same wire on a couple of other forms. So it doesn't count as far as inductance goes. So we can't ruin anything but the total make-up of the wire. I think we may be able to re-establish the wire by self-welding if your idea doesn't work. Now, unless we want to search the three planets for another hunk of wire to work like this one did, without knowing what to look for and therefore trying every foot of wire on three planets--"

"I'll cut it," said Channing with a smile. His cutters snipped, and then fastened one end of the wire to the coil, stripping the other portion off and handing it to Chuck Thomas, who rewound it on another form.

"Now," said Don, "crank up your outfit and we'll try this hunk."

The beam tubes were fired up, and the smell of ozone began to make itself prominent. Channing cranked up the air-vent capacity to remove the ozone more swiftly. The men applied themselves to the detector circuits, and Wes, who recognized the results, said: "This hunk works. About as good as the whole coil."

Channing replaced the first coil with the second. Wes inspected the results and said: "Not quite as good, but it does work."

Walt nodded, and said: "Maybe it should be incandescent."

"That's a thought. Our solar beam uses an incandescent dynode." Channing removed the second coil and handed it to Freddie. "Take this thing down to the metallurgical lab and tell 'em to analyze it right down to the trace of sodium that seems to be in everything. I want quantitative figures on every element in it. Also, cut off a hunk and see if the crystallographic expert can detect anything peculiar, that would make this hunk of copper wire different from any other hunk. Follow?"

"Yup," said Freddie. "We'll also start making similar alloys with a few percent variation on the composition metals. Right?"

"That's the ticket. Wes, can we evacuate a tube with this wire in it and make it incandescent?"

"Let's evacuate the room, I like that stunt."

"You're the engineer on this trick. Do it your way."

"Thanks. I get the program, all right. Why not have Chuck build us a modulator for the driver tube? Then when we get this thing perfected, we'll have some way to test it."

"Can do, Chuck?"

"I think so. It's easy. We'll just modulate the cathode current of the electron guns that bombard the big cathode. That is the way we adjust for drive; it should work as a means of amplitude-modulation."

"O.K.," said Channing. "We're on the rails for this one. We'll get together as soon as our various laboratories have their answers and have something further to work with."

* * * * *

Above Venus, Mark Kingman was listening to the wailing roar of alien symphony and cursing because he could hardly hear the voice of his Lunar accomplice saying: "V. E. Preferred just hit one hundred and two!"

Fifteen minutes before the peak hit Northern Landing, share after share was being dumped, and in addition, a message was on its way back to Terra. It went on the regular beam transmission through Venus Equilateral, carefully coded. It said:

"HAVE SUFFICIENT STOCK AND ADDITIONAL COLLATERAL TO APPLY THE FIRST PRESSURE. APPLY PHASE TWO OF PLAN.

KINGMAN."

In the ten hours that followed, Venus Equilateral stock went down and down, passed through a deep valley, and started up again. Kingman's crowd was offering twice the market for the preferred stock, and there was little to have. It took a short-time dip at three hundred, and the few minutes of decline smoked a lot of stock out of the hands of people who looked upon this chance as the right time to make their money and get out.

Then the stock began to climb again, and those people who thought that the price had been at its peak and passed were angrily trying to buy in again. That accelerated the climb, but Kingman's crowd, operating on Venus and on Mars and on Terra, were buying only, and selling not one share of Venus Equilateral.

Terran Electric stock took a gradual slide, for Kingman's crowd needed additional money. But the slide was slow, and controlled, and manipulated only for the purpose of selling short. Terran Electric stock eventually remained in the hands of Kingman's crowd, though its value was lessened.

Venus Equilateral Preferred hit four hundred and sixty-eight, and hovered. It vacillated around that point for another hour, and the market closed at four hundred and sixty-nine and three-eighths.

Kingman looked at his watch and smiled. He reached forth and cut the dinning sound of the cacophony with a vicious twist of the gain knob. Silence reigned in the spaceship; grand, peaceful silence. Kingman, his nerves frayed by the mental activity and the brain-addling music-from-nowhere, took a hot shower and went to bed.

He locked the panel of the control room first, however. He wanted no engineer tinkering with his pet relay.

* * * * *

Cartwright came into Channing's living room with a long face. "It's bad," he said. "Bad."

"What's bad?"

"Oh, I, like the rest of the fools, got caught in his trap."

"Whose trap?"

"The wild man who is trying to rock Venus Equilateral on its axis."

"Well, how?"

"They started to buy like mad, and I held out. Then the thing dropped a few points, and I tried to make a bit of profit, so that we could go on bolstering the market. They grabbed off my stock, and then, just like _that!_ the market was on the way up again and I couldn't find more than a few odd shares to buy back."

"Don't worry," said Channing, "I don't think anyone is big enough to really damage us. Someone is playing fast and loose, making a killing. When this is over, we'll still be in business."

"I know, Don, but whose business will it be? Ours, or theirs?"

"Is it that bad?"

"I'm afraid so. One more flurry like today, and they'll be able to tow Venus Equilateral out and make Mars Equilateral out of it, and we won't be able to say a word."

"H-m-m-m. You aren't beaten?"

"Not until the last drop. I'm not bragging when I say that I'm as good an operator as the next. My trouble today was not being a mind reader. I'd been doing all right, so far. I've been letting them ride it up and down with little opposition, and taking off a few here and there as I rode along. Guessing their purpose, I could count on their next move. But this banging the market sky-high has me stumped, or had me stumped for just long enough for me to throw our shirt into the ring. They took that quick--our shirt, I mean."

"That's too bad. What are you leading up to?"

"There are a lot of unstable stocks that a guy could really play hob with; therefore their only reason to pick on us is to gain control!"

"Pirates?"

"Something like that."

"Well," said Channing in a resigned voice, "about all we can do is do our best and hope we are smart enough to outguess 'em. That's your job, Cartwright. A long time ago Venus Equilateral made their decision concerning the executive branch of this company, and they elected to run the joint with technical men. The business aspects and all are under the control of men who know what they are fighting. We hire business men, just like business men hire engineers, and for the opposite purpose. You're the best we could get, you know that. If those guys get Venus Equilateral, they'll get you, too. But if you do your best and fail, we can't shoot you in the back for it. We'll all go down together. So keep pitching, and remember that we're behind you all the way!"

"Can we float a bit of a loan?"

"Sure, if it's needed. I'd prefer Interplanetary Transport. Keg Johnson will do business with us. We've been in the way of helping them out a couple of million dollar losses; they might be anxious to reciprocate."

"O.K. I have your power of attorney, anyway. If I get in a real crack, I'll scream for I. T. to help. Right?"

"Right!"

Cartwright left, and as he closed the door, Channing's face took on a deep, long look. He was worried. He put his head between his hands and thought himself into a tight circle from which he could not escape. He did not hear Walt Franks enter behind Arden and Christine.

"Hey!" said Walt. "Why the gloom? I bear glad tidings!"

Channing looked up. "Spill," he said with a glum smile. "I could use some glad tidings right now."

"The lab just reported that that hunk of copper wire was impure. Got a couple of traces of other metals in it. They've been concocting other samples with more and less of the impurities, and Wes has been trying them as they were ready. We've got the detector working to the point where Freddie has taken the _Relay Girl_ out for a run around the station at about five hundred miles and Wes is still getting responses!"

"Is he? How can he know?"

"Chuck rigged the _Relay Girl's_ drivers with a voice modulator, and Freddie is jerking his head off because the acceleration is directly proportional to the amplitude of his voice, saying: 'One, two, three, four, test.' Don, have you ever figured out why an engineer can't count above four?"

"Walt, does it take a lot of soup to modulate a driver?" asked Arden.

"Peanuts," grinned Franks. "This stuff is not like the good old radio; the power for driving the spaceship is derived mostly, from the total disintegration of the cathode and the voltage applied to the various electrodes is merely for the purpose of setting up the proper field conditions. They draw quite a bit of current, but nothing like that which would be required to lift a spaceship at two G for a hundred hours flat."

He turned back to Channing. "What's the gloom?"

Don smiled in a thoughtful fashion. "It doesn't look so good right now. Some gang of stock market cutthroats have been playing football with Venus Equilateral, and Cartwright says he is sure they want control. It's bad; he's been clipped a couple of hard licks, but we're still pitching. The thing I'm wondering right now is this: Shall we toss this possibility of person-to-person and ship-to-ship communication just at the right turn of the market to bollix up their machinations, or shall we keep it to ourselves and start up another company with this as our basis?"

"Can we screw 'em up by announcing it?"

"Sure. If we drop this idea just at the time they're trying to run the stock down, it'll cross over and take a run up, which will set 'em on their ear."

"I don't know. Better keep it to ourselves for a bit. Something may turn up. But come on down to Wes' lab and give a look at our new set-up."

Channing stood up and stretched. "I'm on the way," he said.

Farrell was working furiously on the detector device, and as they entered, he indicated the meter that was jumping up and down. Out of a speaker there was coming the full, rich tones of Freddie Thomas' voice, announcing solemnly: "One, two, three, four, test."

Wes said, "I'm getting better, Chuck has been bettering his modulator now, and the detector is three notches closer to whatever this level of energy uses for resonance. Evacuation and the subsequent incandescence was the answer. Another thing I've found is this--" Farrell held up a flat disk about six inches in diameter with one sawcut from edge to center. "As you see, the color of this disk changes from this end of the cut, varying all the way around the disk to the other side of the cut. The darned disk is a varying alloy--I've discovered how to tune the driver-radiation through a limited range. We hit resonance of the _Relay Girl's_ driver system just off the end of this disk. But watch while I turn the one in the set."

Farrell took a large knob and turned it, Freddie's voice faded, and became toneless. Farrell returned the knob to its original position and the reception cleared again. "Inside of that tube there," said Farrell, "I have a selsyn turning the disk, and a small induction loop that heats the whole disk to incandescence. A brush makes contact with the edge of the disk and the axle makes the center connection. Apparently this stuff passes on a direct line right through the metal, for it works."

"Have you tried any kind of tube amplification?" asked Don.

"Not yet. Shall we?"

"Why not? I can still think that the relay tube will amplify if we hook up the input and output loads correctly."

"I've got a tube already hooked up," said Walt. "It's mounted in a panel with the proper voltage supplies and so on. If your resistance calculation is correct, we should get about three thousand times amplification out of it."

He left, and returned in a few minutes with the tube. They busied themselves with the connections, and then Don applied the power.

Nothing happened.

"Run a line from the output back through a voltage-dividing circuit to the in-phase anode," suggested Walt.

"How much?"

"Put a potentiometer in it so we can vary the amount of voltage. After all, Barney Carroll said that the application of voltage in phase with the transmitted power is necessary to the operation of the relay tube. In transmission of D. C., it is necessary to jack up the in-phase anode with a bit of D. C. That's in-phase with a vengeance!"

"What you're thinking is that whatever this sub-level energy is, some of it should be applied to the in-phase anode?"

"Nothing but."

The cabinet provided a standard potentiometer, and as Don advanced the amount of fed-back voltage, Freddie's voice came booming in louder and louder. It overloaded the audio amplifier, and they turned the gain down as Channing increased the in-phase voltage more and more. It passed through a peak, and then Don left the potentiometer set for maximum.

"Wes," he said, "call Freddie and tell him to take off for Terra, at about four G. Have the gang upstairs hang a ship beam on him so we can follow him with suggestions. Too bad we can't get there immediately."

"What I'm worrying about is the available gain," said Wes. "That thing may have given us a gain of a couple of thousand, but that isn't going to be enough. Not for planet-to-planet service."

"Later on we may be able to hang a couple of those things in cascade," suggested Walt.

"Or if not, I know a trick that will work--one that will enable us to get a gain of several million."

"Yeah? Mirrors, or adding machines? You can't make an audio amplifier of a three million gain."

"I know it--at least not a practical one. But, we can probably use our audio modulator to modulate a radio frequency, and then modulate the driver with the RF. Then we hang a receiver onto the detector gadget here, and collect RF, modulated, just like a standard radio transmission, and amplify it at RF, convert it to IF, and detect it to AF. Catch?"

"Sure. And that gives me another thought. It might just be possible, if your idea is possible, that we can insert several frequencies of RF into the tube and hang a number of receivers on the detector, here."

Arden laughed. "From crystal detection to multiplex transmission in ten easy lessons!"

"Call Chuck and have him begin to concoct an RF stage for tube-modulation," said Don. "It'll have to be fairly low--not higher than a couple of megacycles so that he can handle it with the stuff he has available, but as long as we can hear his dulcet voice chirping that 'one, two, three, four, test,' of his, we can also have ship-to-station two-way. We squirt out on the ship beam, and he talks back on the driver transmitter."

"That'll be a help," observed Wes. "I'd been thinking by habit that we had no way to get word back from the _Relay Girl_."

"So had I," confessed Walt. "But we'll get over that."

"Meanwhile, I'm going to get this alloy-selectivity investigated right down to the last nub," said Don. "Chuck's gang can take it from all angles and record their findings. We'll ultimately be able to devise a system of mathematics for it from their analysis. You won't mind being bothered every fifteen minutes for the first week, will you, Wes? They'll be running to you in your sleep with questions until they catch up with your present level of ability in this job. Eventually they'll pass you up, and then you'll have to study their results in order to keep up."

"Suits me. That sounds like my job, anyway."

"It is. O.K., Arden, I'm coming now."

"It's about time," smiled Arden. "I wouldn't haul you away from your first love excepting that I know you haven't eaten in eight or nine hours. I've got roast knolla."

"S'long, fellows," grinned Channing. "I'm one of the few guys in the inner system who can forget that the knolla is the North Venus brother to a pussy cat."

"I could feed you pussy cat and you'd eat it if I called it knolla," said Arden. "But you wouldn't eat knolla if I called it pussy cat."

"You can't tell the difference," said Walt.

"Tell me," asked Wes, "what does pussy cat taste like?"

"I mean by visual inspection. Unfortunately, there can be no comparison drawn. The Venusians will eat pussy cat, but they look upon the knolla as a household pet, not fit for Venusian consumption. So unless we revive one of the ancient Martians, who may have the intestinal fortitude--better known as guts--to eat both and describe the difference, we may never know," offered Walt.

"Stop it," said Arden, "or you'll have my dinner spoiled for me."

"All the more for me," said Don. "Now, when I was in college, we cooked the dean's cat and offered it to some pledges under the name of knolla. They said--"

"We'll have macaroni for dinner," said Arden firmly. "I'll never be able to look a fried knolla in the pan again without wondering whether it caterwauled on some back fence in Chicago, or a Palanortis Whitewood on Venus."

She left, and Channing went with her, arguing with her to the effect that she should develop a disregard for things like their discussion. As a matter of interest, Channing had his roast knolla that evening, so he must have convinced Arden.

Walt said: "And then there were three. Christine, has our little pre-dinner talk disturbed your appetite?"

"Not in the least," said the girl stoutly. "I wouldn't care whether it was knolla or pussy cat. I've been on Mars so long that either one of the little felines is alien to me. What have you to offer?"

"We'll hit Joe's for dinner, which is the best bar in sixty million miles today. Later we may take in the latest celluloid epic, then there will be a bit of mixed wrestling in the ballroom."

"Mixed wres--Oh, you mean dancing. Sounds interesting. Now?"

"Now, Wes, what are you heading for?"

"Oh, I've got on a cockeyed schedule," said Wes. "I've been catching my sleep at more and more out-of-phase hours until this is not too long after breakfast for me. You birds all speak of 'Tomorrow,' 'Today,' and 'Yesterday' out here, but this business of having no sun to come up in the morning, and the electric lights running all the time has me all bollixed up."

"That daily nomenclature is purely from habit," said Walt. "As you know, we run three equal shifts of eight hours each, and therefore what may be 'Morning' to Bill is 'Noon' to James and 'Night' to Harry. It is meaningless, but habitual to speak of 'Morning' when you mean 'Just after I get up'! Follow me?"

"Yup. This, then, is morning to me. Run along and have fun."

"We'll try," said Walt.

"We will," said Christine.

Farrell grinned as they left. He looked at Walt and said: "You will!"

Walt wondered whether he should have questioned Wes about that remark, but he did not. Several hours later, he wondered how Wes could have been so right.

* * * * *

Venus Equilateral, Preferred, started in its long climb as soon as the markets opened on the following day. Cartwright, following his orders and his experience, held onto whatever stock he had, and bought whatever stock was tossed his way. Several times he was on the verge of asking Interplanetary Transport for monetary assistance, but the real need never materialized.