 THE MEDIAIR GIRL by Jack Williamson This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Greg Marguerite THE MEDIAIR GIRL by Jack Williamson What's the good in Einstein anyhow? I shot the question at lean young Charlie King. In a moment he looked up at me. I thought there was pain in the back of his clear brown eyes. Lips closed in a thin white line across his wind-tanned face. Nervously he tapped his pipe on the metal cowling of the golden gulls cockpit. I know that space-time is curved and that there's really no space or time but only space-time. That electricity and gravitation and magnetism are all the same. But how is that going to pay my grocery bill or yours? That's what Virginia wants to know. Virginia Randall? I was astonished. Why, I thought, I know, we've been engaged a year, but she's called it off. Charlie looked into my eyes for a long minute, his lips still compressed. We were leaning on the freshly painted streamlined fuselage of the golden gull, as neat a little amphibian monoplane has ever made 300 miles an hour. She stood on the glittering white sands of our private landing field on the eastern Florida coast. Below us the green Atlantic was running in white foam on the rocks. In the year that Charlie King and I had been out of the Institute of Technology, we had built the nucleus of a commercial airplane business. We had designed and built here in our own shops several very successful sea planes and amphibians. Charlie's brilliant mathematical mind was of the greatest aid, except when he was too far lost in his abstruse speculations to descend to things commercial. Mathematics is painful enough to me when it is used in calculating the camber of an airplane wing. And pure mathematics, such as the theories of relativity and equivalence, I simply abhor. I was amazed. Virginia Randall was a girl, trim, and beautiful as our shining golden gull. I had thought them devotedly in love and had been looking forward to the wedding. But it isn't two weeks since Virginia was out here. You took her up in our western gull for— nervously Charlie lit his pipe, drew quickly on it. His face lean and drawn beneath the flying goggles pushed up on his forehead sought mine anxiously. I know. I drove her back to the station. That was when—when we quarreled. But why? About Einstein? That's silly. She wanted me to give it up here and go in with her father in his Wall Street brokerage business. The old gent is willing to take me and make a businessman of me. Why, I couldn't run the business without you, Charlie. We talked about that, Hammond. I don't really do much of the work. Just play around with the mathematics and leave the models and blueprints to you. Ah, Charlie, that's not quite—it's the truth, right enough," he said bitterly. You design aircraft and I play with Einstein. And, as you say, a fellow can't eat equations. I'd hate to see you go. And I'd hate to give you up and our business and the math. Really, no need of it. My tastes are simple enough. And old ironclad Randall has made all one family needs. Virginia's not exactly a pauper herself. Two or three millions, I think. And where did Virginia go? She took the Valhalla yesterday at San Francisco, going to join her father at Panama. He cruises about the world in his steam yacht, you know, and runs Wall Street by radio. I was to telegraph her if I changed my mind. I decided to stick to you, Hammond. I telegraphed a corsage of orchids and sent her the message, Einstein Forever. If I know Virginia, those were not very politic words. Well, a man—his words were cut short by a very unusual incident. A thin, high scream came suddenly from above our neat, stuccoed hangers at the edge of the white field. I looked up quickly to catch a glimpse of a bright object hurtling through the air above our heads. The bellowing scream ended abruptly in a thunderous crash. I felt a tremor of the ground underfoot. What? I ejaculated. Look! cried Charlie. He pointed. I looked over the gleaming metal wing of the golden gull to see a huge cloud of white sand rising like a fountain at the farther side of the level field. Deliberately the column of debris rose, spread, rained down, leaving a gaping crater in the earth. Something fell. It sounded like a shell from a big gun, except that it didn't explode. Let's get over and see. We ran to where the thing had struck, three hundred yards across the field. We found a great funnel-shaped pit torn in the naked earth. It was a dozen yards across, fifteen feet deep, and surrounded with a powdery ring of white sand and pulverized rock. Something like a shell-hole, I observed. I've got it, Charlie cried. It was a meteor. A meteor? So big? Yes. Luckily for us it was no bigger. If it had been like the one that fell in Siberia a few years ago, or the one that made the Winslow Crater in Arizona, we wouldn't have been talking about it. Probably we have a chunk of nickel-iron alloy here. I'll get some of the men out here with digging tools and we'll see what we can find. Our mechanics were already hurrying across the field. I shouted at them to bring picks and shovels. In a few minutes five of us were at work throwing sand and shattered rock out of the pit. Suddenly I noticed a curious thing. A pale bluish mist hung in the bottom of the pit. It was easily transparent, no denser than tobacco smoke. Passing my spade through it did not seem to disturb it in the least. I rubbed my eyes doubtfully, said to Charlie, Do you see a sort of blue haze in the pit? He peered. No. No. Yes, yes, I do. Funny thing. Kind of a blue fog and the tools cut right through it without moving it. Queer. Must have something to do with the meteor. He was very excited. He dug more eagerly. An hour later we had opened the hole to a depth of twenty feet. Our shovels were clanging on the grey iron of the rock from space. The mist had grown thicker as the excavation deepened. We looked at the stone through a screen of motionless blue fog. We had found the meteor. There were several queer things about it. The first man who touched it, a big, sweet mechanic named Olsen, was knocked cold as if by a nasty jolt of electricity. It took half an hour to bring him to consciousness. As fast as the rugged iron side of the meteorite was uncovered, a white crust of frost formed over it. It was as cold as outer space, nearly at the absolute zero, Charlie explained. And it was heated only superficially during its quick passage through the air. But how it comes to be charged with electricity, I can't say. He hurried up to his laboratory behind the hangars where he had equipment ranging from an astronomical telescope to a delicate seismograph. He brought back as much electrical equipment as he could carry. He had me touch an insulated wire to the frost-covered stone from space while he put the other end to one post of a galvanometer. I think he got a current that wrecked the instrument. At any rate, he grew very much excited. Something queer about that stone, he cried. This is the chance of a lifetime. He said a meteor has ever been scientifically examined so soon after falling. He hurried us all across to the laboratory. We came back with a truckload of coils and tubes and batteries and potentiometers and other assorted equipment. He had men with heavy rubber gloves lift the frost-covered stone to a packing box on a bench. The thing was irregular in shape, about a foot long. It must have weighed two hundred pounds. He sent a man racing on a motorcycle to the drugstore to get dry ice. He solidified carbon dioxide to keep the iron stone at its low temperature. In a few hours he had a complete laboratory set up around the meteorite. He worked feverishly in the hot sunshine, reading the various instruments he had set up and arranging more. He contrived to keep the stone cold by packing it in a box of dry ice. The mechanics stopped for dinner and I tried to get him to take time to eat. No, Hammond, he said. This is something big. We were talking about Einstein. This rock seems energized with a new kind of force. All meteors are probably the same way when they first plunge out of space. I think this will be to relativity what the falling apple is to gravity. This is a big thing. He looked up at me, brown eyes flashing. This is my chance to make a name, Hammond. If I do something big enough, Virginia might reconsider her option. Charlie worked steadily through the long hot afternoon. I spent most of the time helping him or gazing in fascination at the curious haze of luminous blue mist that hung like a sphere of azure fog about the meteoric stone. I did not completely understand what he did. The reader who wants the details may consult the monograph he is preparing for the scientific press. He had the men string up a line from our direct current generator in the shops to supply power for his electrical instruments. He mounted a powerful electromagnet just below the meteorite and set up an x-ray tube to bombard it with rays. Night came, and the fire of the white sun faded from the sky. In the darkness, the curious haze about the stone became luminescent, distinct, a dim, motionless sphere of blue light. I fancied that I saw grotesque shapes flashing through it. A ball of blue fire, shimmering, and ghost-like shrouded the instruments. Charlie's induction coil buzzed wickedly, with purple fire playing about the terminals. The x-ray tube flickered with a greenish glow. He manipulated the rheostat that controlled the current through the electromagnet and continued to read his instruments. Look at that! he cried. The bluish haze about the stone grew brighter. It became a ball of sapphire flame, five feet thick, bright, and motionless. A great sphere of shimmering azure fire. Wisps of pale, sparkling bluish mist ringed it. The stone in its box, the x-ray bulb, and other apparatus were hidden. The end of the table stuck oddly from the ball of light. I heard Charlie move a switch. The hum of the coils changed a note. The ball of blue fire vanished abruptly. It became a hole, a window in space. Through it we saw another world. The darkness of the night hung about us. Where the ball had been was a circle of misty blue flame five feet across. Through that circle I could see a vast expanse of blue ocean running in high white-capped rollers beneath a sky overcast with low gray clouds. It was no flat picture like a movie screen. The scene had vast depth. I knew that we were really looking over an infinite expanse of stormy ocean. It was all perfectly clear, distinct, real. I was astounded. I turned to find Charlie standing back and looking into the ring of blue fire with a curious mixture of surprise and delighted satisfaction. What? What? I gasped. It's amazing. Wonderful. More than I had dared hope for the complete vindication of my theory. If Virginia cares for scientific reputation, but what is it? It's hard to explain without mathematical language. I might say that we are looking through a hole in space. The new force in the meteorite amplified by the X-rays in the magnetic field is causing a distortion of space-time coordinates. You know that a gravitational field bends light. The light of a star is deflected in passing the sun. The field of this meteorite bends light through space-time, through the four-dimensional continuum. That scrap of ocean we can see may be on the other side of the earth. I walked around the circle of luminous smoke with the marvelous picture in the center. It seemed that the window swung with me. I surveyed the whole angry surface of that slate-gray, storm-beaten sea to the misty horizon. Nowhere was it broken by land or ship. Charlie fell to adjusting his rheostat and switches. It seemed that the gray ocean moved swiftly beyond that window. Vast stretches of it raced below our eyes. Faint black stains of steamer smoke appeared against the blue-gray horizon and swept past. Then land appeared, a long green-gray line. We had a flash of a long coast that unreal'd an endless panorama before us. It was such a view as one might get from a swift airplane, a plane flying thousands of miles per hour. The golden gate flashed before us, with the familiar skyline of San Francisco rising on the hills behind it. San Francisco! Charlie cried. This is the Pacific we've been seeing. Let's find the Valhalla. We might be able to see Virginia. The coastline vanished as he manipulated his instruments. Staring into the circle of shining blue mist, I saw the endless ocean racing below us again. We picked up a pleasure yacht, running under bare poles. I didn't know there was such a storm on Charlie murmured. Other vessels swam past below us, laboring against heavy seas. Then we looked upon an ocean whipped into mighty white-crowned waves. Rain beat down in sheets from low, dense clouds. Vivid violet lightnings flashed before us. It seemed very strange to see such lightning and hear not the faintest whisper of thunder. But no sound came from anything we saw through the blue-rimmed window in space. I hoped the Valhalla isn't in weather like this, cried Charlie. In a few minutes a dark form loomed through the wind-riven mist. Swiftly it swam nearer, became a black ship. Only a tramp, Charlie said, breathing a sigh of relief. It was a dingy tramp steamer. Her superstructure wrecked. Her fires seemed dead. She lay across the wind, rolling sluggishly, threatening to sink with every monstrous wave. We saw no living person aboard her. She seemed a sinking derelict. We made out the name Roma on her side. Charlie moved his dials again. In a few minutes the slender prowl of another great steamer came through the sheets of rain. It was evidently a passenger vessel. She seemed limping along, half-wrecked with mighty waves breaking over her rail. Charlie grew white with alarm. The Valhalla, he gasped, and she's headed straight for that wreck. In a moment as he brought the liner closer below our blue-rimmed window, I, too, made out the name. The wet, glistening decks were almost deserted. Here and there a man struggled futilely against the force of the storm. In a few minutes the drifting wreck of the Roma came into our view, dead ahead of the limping liner. Through the mist and falling rain the derelict could not have been in sight of the lookout of the passenger vessel until she was almost upon it. We saw the white burst of steam as the siren was blown. We watched the desperate effort of the liner to check her way, to come about, but it was too much for the already crippled ship. Charlie cried out as a mighty wave drove the Valhalla down upon the sluggishly drifting wreck. All the mad scene that ensued was strangely silent. We heard no crash when the collision occurred, heard no screams or shouts while the mob of desperate white-faced passengers were fighting their way to the deck. The vain struggle to launch the boats was like a silent movie. One boat was splintered while being lowered. Another already filled with passengers was lifted by a great wear and crushed against the side of the ship. Only shivered wood and red foam were left. The ship listed so rapidly that the boats on the lee side were useless. It was impossible to launch the others in that terrible lashing sea. Virginia can swim, Charlie said hopefully. You know, she tried the channel last year and nearly made it too. He stopped to watch that terrible scene in white-faced, anxious silence. The tramp went down before the steamer, drawing fragments of wrecked boats after it. The liner was evidently sinking rapidly. We saw dozens of hopeless panic-stricken passengers diving off the lee side, trying to swim off far enough to avoid the tremendous suction. Then with a curious deliberation the bow of the Valhalla dipped under the green water. Her stern rose in the air until the ship stood almost perpendicular. She slipped quickly down, out of sight. Only a few swimming humans and the wrecks of a few boats were left on the rough grey sea. Charlie fumbled nervously with the dials, trying to get the scene near enough so that he could see the identity of the struggling swimmers. A long boat which must have been swept below by the suction of the ship came plunging above the surface upside down. It drifted swiftly among the swimmers who struggled to reach it. I saw one person, evidently a girl, grasp it and drag herself upon it. It swept on past the few others still struggling. The wrecked boat with the girl upon it seemed coming swiftly toward our blue-rimmed window. In a few minutes I saw something familiar about her. It's Virginia! Charlie cried. God! We've got to save her somehow! The long rollers drove the overturned boat swiftly along. Virginia Randall clung desperately to it, deluged in foam, whipped with flying spray, the wild wind tearing at her. Upon us the clear still night was deepening. The air was warm and still, the hot stars shone steadily. Quiet, lighted houses were in sight above the beach. It was very strange to look through the fire-rimmed circle to see a girl struggling for life, clinging to a wrecked boat in a stormy sea. Charlie watched in an apathy of grief and horror, trembling and speechless, doing nothing except moving the controls to keep the floating girl in our sight. The hours went by as we watched. Then Charlie cried out in sudden hope. There's a chance. I might do it. I might be able to save her. Might do what? We are able to see what we do because the field of the meteor bends light through the four-dimensional continuum. The world line of a ray of light is a geodesic in the continuum. The field I have built distorts the continuum, so we see rays that originated at a distant point. Is that clear? Is that clear as mud? Well, anyhow, if the field were strong enough, we could bring physical objects through space-time instead of mere visual images. We could pick Virginia up and bring her right here to the crater, I'm sure of it. You mean you could move a girl through some four or five thousand miles of space? You don't understand. She wouldn't come through space at all, but through space-time, through the continuum, which is a very different thing. We're four thousand miles away in our three-dimensional space, but in space-time, as you see, she is only a few yards away. She's only a few yards from us in the fourth dimension. If I can increase the field a little, she'll be drawn right through. You're a wizard if you can do it. I've got to do it. She's a fine swimmer. That's the only reason she's still alive, but she'll never live to reach the shore, not in a sea like that. Charlie fell to work at once, mounting another electromagnet beside the one he had set up and rigging up two more X-ray bulbs beside the packing box which held the meteor. The motion of the boat in the fire-rimmed window kept drawing it swiftly away from us, and Charlie showed me how to move the dial of his rheostat to keep the girl in view. Before he had completed his arrangement, a patch of white foam came into view just ahead of the drifting boat. In a moment I made out a cruel black rock with the angry sea breaking into a fleecy spray upon it. The boat was almost upon it, driving straight for it. Charlie saw it and cried out in horror. The long black hull of the splintered boat, floating keel upward, was only a few yards away. A great white-capped breaker lifted it and hurled it forward with the girl clinging to it. She drew herself up and stared in terror at the black rock, while another long surging roller picked up the boat and swept it forward again. I stood paralyzed in horror while the shattered boat was driven full upon the great rock. I could imagine the crash of it, but it was all as still as a silent picture. The boat riding high on a crest of white foam smashed against the rock and was shivered to splinters. Virginia was hurled forward against the slick, wet stone. Desperately she scrambled to reach the top of the boulder. Her hands slipped on the polished rock. The wild sea dragged at her. At last she got out of reach of the angry gray wooder, though spume still deluged her. I breathed a sigh of relief, though her position was still far from enviable. Virginia, Virginia, why did I let you go? Charlie cried. Desperately he fell to work again, mounting the magnet and tubes. Another hour went by while I watched the shivering girl on the rock. Bobbed hair, wet and glistening was plastered close against her head, and her clothing was torn half off. She looked utterly exhausted. It seemed to take all of her ebbing energy to cling to the rock against the force of the wind and the waves that dashed against her. She looked cold, blue, and trembling. The water stood higher. The tide is rising, Charlie exclaimed. It will cover the rock pretty soon if I don't get her off in time. She's lost!" He finished twisting his wires together. I've got it all ready, he said. Now I've got to find out exactly where she is to know how to set it. Even then it's fearfully uncertain. I hate to try it, but it's the only chance. You can find out? Yes, from the spectral shifts and other factors I'll have to get some other apparatus. He ran up to the laboratory across the level field that lay black beneath the stars. He came back panting with spectrometer, terrestrial globe, and other articles. The tide is higher, he cried, as he looked through the blue rimmed circle at the girl on the rock. She'll be swept off before long. He mounted the spectrometer and fell to work with a will, taking observations through the telescope, adjusting prisms and diffraction gratings, reading electrometers and other apparatus, and stopping to make intricate calculations. I helped him when I could, or stared through the ring of shining blue mist where I could see the waves breaking higher about the exhausted girl who clung to the rock. Clouds of wind-whipped spray often hid her from sight. I knew that she would not have the strength to hold on much longer against the force of the rising sea. Although driven almost to distraction by the horror of her predicament, he worked with a cool, swift efficiency. Only the pale anxiety-drawn expression on his face showed how great was the stream. He finished the last spectrometer observation, snatched out a pad, and fell to figuring furiously. Something queer here, he said presently frowning, a shift of the spectrum that I can't explain by distortion through three-dimensional space alone. I don't understand it. We stared at the chilled and trembling girl on the rock. I'm almost afraid to try it. What if something went wrong? He turned to the terrestrial globe he had brought down and traced a line over it. He made a quick calculation on his pad, then made a fine dot on the globe with a pencil-point. Here she is, on a rock some miles off Point Eugenia on the coast of the Mexican state of Lower California. Most lonely spot in the world. No chance for a rescue. We must. My God! he screamed in sudden horror. Look! I looked through the blue-ringed window and saw the girl. The green water was surging about her waist. It seemed that each wave almost tore her off. Then I saw that she was struggling with something. A great coiling tentacle, black and leathery and glistening was thrust up out of the green water. It wavered deliberately through the air and grasped at the girl. She seemed to scream, though we could hear nothing. She beat at the monster, weakly, vainly. She's gone, cried Charlie. An octopus, I said, a giant cuttlefish. Virginia made a sudden, fierce effort. With a strength that I had not thought her chilled limbs possessed, she tore away from the dreadful creature and clamored higher on the rock. But still a hideous black tentacle clung about her ankle, tugging at her, drawing her back despite her desperate struggle to break free. I've got to try it, Charlie said, determination flashing in his eyes. It's a chance. He closed a switch. His new coils sung out above the old one. X-ray tubes flickered beside the blue fire that ringed the window. He adjusted his rheostats and closed the circuit through the new magnet. A curtain of blue flame was drawn quickly between us and the round fire-rimmed window. A huge ball of blue fire hung about the meteorite and the instruments. For minutes it hung there while Charlie, perspiring, worked desperately with the apparatus. Then it expanded, became huge, it exploded noiselessly and a great flash of sapphire flame then vanished completely. Meteor, bench, and apparatus were gone. In the light of the stars we could make out the huge crater the meteorite had torn with a few odds and ends of equipment scattered about it. But all the apparatus Charlie had set up, connected with the meteoric stone, had disappeared. He was dumbfounded, staggered with disappointment. Virginia? Virginia! he called out in a hopeless voice. No, she isn't here. It didn't draw her through. I've failed, and we can't even see her any more. Desperately I searched for a consolation for him. Maybe the octopus won't hurt her, I offered. They say that most of the stories of their ferocity are somewhat exaggerated. If the monster doesn't get her, the tide will, he said bitterly. I made a miserable failure of it, and I don't know why. I can't understand it. Apathetically he picked up his pad and held it in the light of his electric lantern. Something funny about this equation. The shift of the spectrum lines can't be accounted for by distortion through space alone. With wrinkled brow he stared for many minutes at the bit of paper he held in the white circle of light. Suddenly he seized a pencil and figured rapidly. I have it. The light was bent through time. I should have recognized these space-time coordinates. He calculated again. Yes, the scene we saw in that circle of light was distant from us not only in space, but in time. The Valhalla probably hasn't sunk yet at all. We were looking into the future. But how can that be, seeing things before they happen? I have the profoundest respect for Charlie King's mathematical genius, but when he said that I was frankly incredulous. Space and time are only relative terms. Our material universe is merely the intersection of tangled world lines of geodesics in a four-dimensional continuum. Space and time have no meaning independently of each other. Gene says a terrestrial astronomer may reckon that the outburst on Nova Persiai occurred a century before the Great Fire of London. But an astronomer on the Nova may reckon with equal accuracy that the Great Fire occurred a century before the outburst on the Nova. The field of this meteorite deflected light waves so that we saw them earlier, according to our conventional ideas of time, than they originated. We saw several hours into the future, and the amplified field of the magnet, though strong enough to move Virginia through space, was not sufficiently powerful to draw her back to us across time. Yet she must have felt the pull. Some dreadful thing may have happened. The problem is rather complicated. He lifted his pencil again. In the glow of the little electric lantern I saw his lean, young face tense with the fierce effort of his thought. His pencil raced across the little pad, setting down symbols that I could make nothing of. My own thoughts were racing. Seeing into the future was a rather revolutionary idea to me. My mind is conservative. I have always been skeptical of the more fantastic ideas suggested by science. But Charlie seemed to know what he was talking about. In view of the marvelous things he had done that night, it seemed hardly fair to doubt him now. I decided to accept his astounding statement at face value and to follow the adventure through. He lifted his pencil and consulted the luminous dial of his wristwatch. We saw that last scene some twelve hours and forty minutes before it happened—to put it in conventional language—the distortion of the time coordinates amounted to that. In the light of dawn, for we had been all night at the meteor pit and silver was coming in the east, he looked at me with fierce resolve in his eyes. Hammond, that gives us over twelve hours to get to Virginia. You mean to go? But just twelve hours? That's better than the transcontinental record to say nothing of the time it would take to find a little rock in the Pacific. We have the golden gull. She's as fast as any ship we've ever flown. But we can't take the gull. Those alterations haven't been made, and that new engine—a bearcat for power—but it may go dead any second. The gull can fly, but she isn't safe. Safety be damned. I've got to get to Virginia and get there in the next twelve hours. The gull will fly, but—alright, please help me get off. Help you off. It's a full thing to do, but if you go, I do. Thanks, Hammond, awfully, he gripped my hand. We've got to make it. With a last glance into the gaping pit from which we had dug the marvelous stone, we turned and ran across to the hangars. As we ran, the sun came above the sea in the east, its first rays struck us like a fiery lance. The mechanics had not yet appeared. Charlie pushed the doors back, and we ran out the trim little golden gull, beautiful in her slender wing and her graceful tapering lines. I seized the starting crank and Charlie sprang into the cockpit. I cranked until the mechanism was droning dismally and pulled the lever that engaged it with the engine. I had been in too much haste to get up the proper speed and the powerful new engine failed to fire. Charlie almost cried with vexation while I was cranking again. This time the motor coughed and fell into a steady, vibrant roar. With the wind from the propeller screaming about me, I disengaged the crank and stood waiting while the motor warmed. Charlie gave it scant time to do so before he motioned me to kick out the blocks. I tumbled into the enclosed cockpit beside him. He gave the ship the gun, and we roared across the field. In five minutes we were flying west at a speed just under 300 miles per hour. Charlie was crouched over the stick, scanning the instrument board and flying the gull almost at her top speed. Again and again his eyes went to the little clock on the panel. Twelve hours and forty minutes, he said, and an hour gone already. We've got to be there by five minutes after six. We were flying over Louisiana when the oil line clogged. The engine heated dangerously. Reluctantly, Charlie cut off the ignition and fell in a swift spiral to an open field. We've got to fix it, he said, another hour gone, and we need every minute. This new engine, it's powerful enough, but we should have had time to overhaul it and make those changes. Charlie landed with his usual skill, and we fell to work in desperate haste. A grizzled farmer, a wad of tobacco in his cheek and three ragged urchins at his heels stopped to watch us. He had just been to his mailbox and had a morning paper in his hand. Charlie questioned him about the storm. Storm-centered nears the American coast, he read in a nasal drawl. Greatest storm of year drives shipping upon west coast. Six vessels reported lost. SS Valhalla disabled. Sends SOS. A thousand lives are the estimated toll-to-night of the most terrific storm of the year, which is sweeping toward the Pacific coast, driving all shipping before it. Radiograms from the Valhalla at 5 p.m. report that she is disabled and in danger. It is doubtful that rescue vessels can reach her through the storm. We got the engine repaired and took off again. Charlie looked at the little clock. Five minutes to ten. Eight hours and ten minutes left, and we've got a darn long ways to go. We had to stop at San Antonio, Texas, to replenish gasoline and oil. Ten minutes lost, Charlie complained as we took off, and that monster waiting in the future to drag Virginia to a hideous death. Two hours later the plane developed trouble in the ignition system. The motor was new, with several radical changes that we had introduced to increased power and lessened weight. As I had objected to Charlie, we had not done enough experimental work on it to perfect it. We limped into the field at El Paso and spent another priceless half-hour at work. I got some sandwiches at a lunch encounter beside the field and listened a moment to a radio loudspeaker there. Many thousands are dead came the crisp metallic voice of the announcer. As a result of the storm now raging on the Pacific Coast, the worst in several years. The storm center is spending its force on the coastal regions today. Millions of dollars in damage are reported in cities from San Francisco to Manzanillo, Mexico. The greatest disaster of the storm is the loss of the passenger liner Valhalla of the Red Star Line. It is believed to have collided with the abandoned hulk of an Italian-owned tramp freighter, the Roma, which was left by its crew yesterday in a sinking condition. Radiograms from the liner ceased three hours ago when she was said to be sinking. The officers doubted that her boats could be launched in such a sea. I waited to hear no more. Charlie checked our route while we were stopped and we took off. We crossed the Rio Grande and flew across the rocky, brush-scattered hills of Mexico in a direct line for the rock in the sea. If anything happens so we have to land again— Well, it's just too bad, Charlie said grimly. But we've got to go this way. It's something over 600 miles in a straight line, 15 minutes to four now. We have to average nearly 300 miles an hour to get there. He was silent and intent over his maps and instruments as we flew on over the lofty Sierra Madre Range and over a long slope down to the Gulf of California. Headwinds beset us as we were over the stretch of blue water and we flew on into a storm. We had hardly time to make it without the wind against us, Charlie said. If it holds us back many miles, well, it just mustn't. Purple lightning flickered ominously in the mass of blue storm clouds that hung above the mountainous peninsula of Lower California. I had a qualm about flying into it in our untested machine, but Charlie leaned tensely forward and sent the golden gull on at the limit of her speed. Gray vapors swirled about us, rent with livid streaks of lightning. Thunder crashed and rumbled above the roar of our racing engine. Wild winds screeched in the struts, rain and hail beat against us. The plane rose and fell. She was swirled about like a falling leaf. The stick struggled in Charlie's hands like a living thing. With lips tightened to a thin line he fought silently, fiercely, desperately. Suddenly we were sucked down until I had an uneasy feeling at the pit of my stomach. I saw the grim outline of a bare mountain peak dangerously close below us, shrouded in wind-whipped mist. In sudden alarm I shouted, We'd better get out of this, Charlie. We can't live in it long. In the roar of the storm he did not hear me and I shouted again. He turned to face me after a glance at the clock. We've less than an hour, Hammond. We've got to go on. I sank back in my seat. The plane rolled and tossed until I thanked my lucky stars for the safety strap. In nervous anxiety I watched Charlie bring the ship up again and fight his way on through the storm. For an eternity it seemed we battled through a chaos of wind-driven mist, bright with purple lightning and shaken with crashing thunder. Charlie struggled with the controls until he was dripping with perspiration. He must have been utterly worn out after 36 hours of exhausting effort, a dozen times I'd despaired of life. The compass had gone to spinning crazily. We dived through the rain until we could pick up landmarks below. Three times a great bare peak loomed suddenly up ahead of us and Charlie averted collision only by zooming suddenly upward. Then slate-gray water was beneath us, running in white-crested mountains. We knew that we were at last out over the Pacific. We've passed Point Eugenia, Charlie said. It can't be far now. But we have only fifteen minutes left, fifteen minutes to get to her before the attraction of the meteor jerks her away, perhaps to a horrible fate. We flew low and fast over the racing waves. Charlie looked over his charts and made a swift calculation. He changed our course a bit and we flew on at top speed. We scanned the vast mad expanse of sea below the blue-gray clouds. Here and there were lines of white breakers, but nowhere did we see a rock with a girl upon it. Presently the green outline of an island appeared out of the wild water on our right. That's Del Tiberon, Charlie said. We missed the rock! He swung the plane about and we flew south over the hastening waves. I looked at the little clock. It showed two minutes to six. I turned to Charlie. Seven minutes, he whispered grimly. On and on we flew in a wide circle. The motor roared loud. An endless expanse of racing waves unrealed below us. The little hand crawled around the dial. One minute passed six. Only four minutes to go. We saw a speck of white foam on the mad gray water. It was miles away, almost on the horizon. We plunged toward it, motor bellowing loud. Five miles a minute we flew. The white fleck became a black rock, smothered in snowy foam. On we swept and over the rock with bullet-like speed. As we plunged by, I saw Virginia's slender form tattered, brine-soaked, straggling in the hideous tentacles of the monster octopus. It was the same terrible scene that we had viewed through the amazing phenomenon of distortion of light through space-time four thousand miles away and twelve hours before. In a few minutes the time would come when Charlie had ended our view of the scene by his attempt to draw the girl through the fourth dimension to our apparatus in Florida. What terrible thing might happen then. Charlie brought the ship about so quickly that we were flung against the sides. Down we came toward the mad waves in a swift glide. In sudden apprehension I dropped my hand on his shoulder. Man, you can't land in a sea like that. It's suicide! Without a word he shook off my hand and continued our steep glide toward the rock. I drew my breath in apprehension of a crash. I do not blame Charlie for what happened. He is as skillful a pilot as I know. It was a mad freak of the sea that did the thing. The gray waste of mountainous white-crest waves rose swiftly up to meet us with the rock with the girl clinging to it just to our right. The golden gull struck the crest of a wave, buried herself in the foam, and plunged down the long slope to the trough. We rose safely to the crest of the oncoming roller, and I saw the black outline of the rock not a dozen yards away. Charlie had landed with all his skill. It was not his fault that the blustering wind caught the ship as she reached the crest of the wave and flung her sideways toward the rock. It was no fault of his that the white-capped mountain of racing green water completed what the wind had begun and hurled the frail plane crashing on the rock. I have a confused memory of the wild plunge at the mercy of the wave of my despair as I realized that we were being wrecked. I must have been knocked unconscious when we struck. The next thing I remember, I was opening my eyes to find myself on the rock—Charlie's strong arm on my shoulder. I was soaked with icy brine, and my head was aching from a heavy blow. Virginia shivering and blue was perched beside us. I could see no sign of the plane. The mighty sea had swept away what was left of it, clinging to the lee side of the rock I saw the black tentacles of the giant octopus waiting for a wave to dash us to its mercy. All right, Hammond? Charlie inquired anxiously. I'm afraid you got a pretty nasty bump on the head, about all I could do to fish you out before the gull was swept away. He helped me to a better position to withstand the force of the great roller that came plunging down upon us like a moving mountain. Virginia was in his arms, too exhausted to do more than cling to him. What can we do, I sputtered, shaking water from my head. Not a thing. We're in a pretty bad fix, I imagine. In a few seconds we will feel the attraction of the meteor's field, the force with which I tried to draw Virginia to the crater through the fourth dimension. I don't know what will happen. We may be jerked out of space altogether. And if that doesn't get us, the tide and the octopus will. His voice was drowned in the roar of the coming wave. A mountain of water deluged us. Half drowned I clung to the rock against the mad water. Then blinding blue light flashed about me. A sharp crash rang in my ears like splintering glass. I reeled and felt myself falling headlong. I brought up on soft sand. I sat up dumbfounded and opened my eyes. I was sitting in the steep sandy tide of a conical pit. Charlie and Virginia were sprawled beside me looking as astonished as I felt. Charlie got to his knees and lifted the limp form of the girl in his arms. Something snapped in my brain. The sand-walled pit was suddenly familiar. I got to my feet and clambered out of it. I saw that we were on our own landing field. Astonishingly we were back in the meteor crater. Charlie's vanished apparatus was scattered about us. I saw the gray side of the rough iron meteorite itself half buried in the sand at the bottom of the pit. What—what happened? I demanded of Charlie. Don't you see? Simple enough. I should have thought of it before. The field of the meteorite brought Virginia and us through to this point in space, but it could not bring us back through time. Instead the apparatus itself was jerked forward through time. That is why it vanished. We got here just twelve hours and forty minutes after I closed the switch, since we had been looking that far into the future. The mathematical explanation. That's enough for me, I said hastily. We better see about a warm dry bed for Virginia and some hot soup or something. Now the rough gray meteorite in a neat glass case rests above the mantle in the library of a beautiful home where I am a frequent guest. I was there one evening a few days ago when Charlie King fell silent in one of his fits of mathematical speculation. Einstein again? I chafingly inquired. He raised his brown eyes and looked at me. Hammond, since relativity enabled us to find the meteor girl, you ought to be convinced. Virginia, whom her husband calls the meteor girl, came laughingly to the rescue. Yes, Mr. Hammond, what do you think of Einstein now? End of The Meteor Girl by Jack Williamson Push Button War by Joseph P. Martino This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org, recording by FNH. Push Button War by Joseph P. Martino In one place a descendant of the Vikings rode a ship such as Leif never dreamed of. From another one of the descendants of Caesars and here an Apache rode a steed such as never roamed the plains, but they were warriors all. The hatch swung open admitting a blast of arctic air and a man clad in a heavy fur-lined parka. He quickly closed the hatch and turned to the man in the pilot's couch. OK, Harry, I'll take over now. Anything to report? The heading gyro in the autopilot is still drifting. Did you write it up for maintenance? Yeah. They said that to replace it they'd have to put the whole ship in the hangar and it's full now with ships going through periodic inspection. I guess we'll have to wait. They can't just give us another ship either with the hangar so full we must be pretty close to the absolute minimum for ships on the line and ready to fly. OK, let me check out with the tower and should be all yours. He thumbed the intercom button and spoke into the mic. RI 276 to tower, major light foot going off-watch. When the tower acknowledged he began to disconnect himself from the ship. With smooth, experienced motions he disconnected the mic cable, the oxygen hose, air pressure hose, cooling air hose, electrical heating cable and dehumidifier hose which connected his flying suit to the ship. He donned the parka and gloves his relief had worn and stepped through the hatch into the gantry crane elevator. Even through the heavy parka the cold air had a bite to it. As the elevator descended he glanced to the south knowing as he did so that there would be nothing to see. The sun had set on November the 17th and was not due up for three more weeks. At noon there would be a faint glow on the horizon as the sun gave a reminder of its existence but now at four in the morning there was nothing. As he stepped off the elevator the ground crew prepared to roll the gantry crane away from the ship. He opened the door of the waiting personnel carrier and swung aboard. The inevitable cry of close that door greeted him as he entered. He brushed the parka hood back from his head and sank into the first empty seat. The heater struggled valiantly with the arctic cold to keep the interior of the personnel carrier at a tolerable temperature but it never seemed to be able to do much with the floor. He propped his feet on the footrest of the seat ahead of him, spoke to the other occupant of the seat. Hi, Mike. Hi, Harry. Say, what's your watch schedule now? I've got four hours off, back on for four, then sixteen off. Why? Well, a few of us are getting up a friendly little game before we go back on watch. I thought you might want to join us. Well, I—come on now. What's your excuse this time for not playing cards? To start with, I'm scheduled for a half hour in the simulator and another half hour in the procedural trainer. Then, if I finish the exam in my correspondence course, I can get it on this week's mail plane. If I don't get it in the mail now, I'll have to wait until next week. All right. I'll let you off this time. How's the course coming? This is the final exam. If I pass, I'll have forty-two more credits to go before I have my degree in animal husbandry. On earth, you want a degree like that? I keep telling you, when I retire, I'm going back to Oklahoma and raise horses. If I got into all the card games you try to organize, I'll retire with neither the knowledge to run a horse ranch nor the money to start one. But why raise horses? Cabbage I can see, tomatoes, yes, but why horses? Partly that's because there's always a market for them, so I'll have a fair amount of business to keep me eating regularly. But mostly because I like horses. I practically grew up in the saddle. By the time I was old enough to do much riding, Dad had his own ranch and I helped earn my keep by working for him. Under those circumstances, I just naturally learned to like horses. Guess I never thought of it like that. I was a city boy myself. The only horses I ever saw were the ones the cops rode. I didn't get much chance to become familiar with the beasts. Well, you don't know what you've missed. It's just impossible to describe what it's like to use a high-spirited and well-trained horse in your daily work. The horse almost gets to sense what you want him to do next. You don't have to direct his every move, just a word or two and a touch with your heel or a pressure of a knee against his side and he's got the idea. A well-trained horse is perfectly capable of cutting a particular cow out of a herd without any instruction beyond showing him which one you want. Too bad the army did away with the cavalry. Sounds like you belong there, not in the Air Force. No, because if there's anything I like better than riding a good horse, it's flying a fast and responsive airplane. I've been flying fighters for almost 17 years now and I'll be quite happy to keep flying them as long as they'll let me. When I can't fly fighters anymore, then I'll go back to horses and as much as I like horses, I hope that's going to be a long time yet. You must hate this assignment, then. How come I never hear you complain about it? The only reason I don't complain about this assignment is that I volunteered for it and I've been kicking myself ever since. When I heard about the rocket interceptors, I was really excited. Imagine a plane fast enough to catch up with an invading ballistic missile and shoot it down. I decided this was for me and jumped at the assignment. They sounded like the hot fighter planes to end all hot fighter planes. And what do I find? They're so expensive to fly that we don't get any training missions. I've been up in one just once and that was my familiarization flight when I got into this assignment last year and then it was only a ride in the second seat of that two-seater version they used for checking out new pilots. I just lay there through the whole flight. As far as I could see, the pilot didn't do much more. He just watched things while the autopilot did all the work. Well, don't take it too hard. You might get some flights. That's true. They do mistake a meteor for a missile now and then. But that only happens to a three times a year. That's not enough. I want some regular flying. I haven't got any flying time in me for more than a year. The nearest I come to flying is my time in the procedural trainer to teach me what buttons to push and in the simulator to give me the feel of what happens when I push the buttons. That's okay. They still give you flying pay. I know, but that's not what I'm after. I fly because I love flying. I use the flying pay just to keep up the extra premiums the insurance companies keep on sifting so long as I indulge my passion for fighter planes. I guess about the only way you could get any regular flying on this job would be for a war to come along. That's about it. We'd fly just as often as they could recover our ships and send us back up here for another launch. And that would go on until the economy on both sides broke down so far they couldn't afford to send any more missiles for us to chase or boosters to send us up after them. No thanks. I don't want to fly that badly. I like civilization. In the meantime then you ought to enjoy it here. Where else can you spend most of your working hours lying flat on your back on the most comfortable couch science can devise? That's the trouble. I'm lying there where you can't read, write, talk or listen. Might be okay for a hermit, but I'd rather fly fighter planes. Here's the trainer building. I've got to get out. Seven o'clock. Harry Lightfoot licked the flap of the envelope, sealed it shut, stuck some stamps on the front, and scrawled air mail under the stamps. He dropped the letter into the stateside slot. The exam hadn't been so bad. What did they think he was anyway? A city slicker who had never seen a live cow in his life? He ambled into the off-duty pilots' lounge. He had an hour to kill before going on watch, and this was a good place as any to kill it. The lounge was almost empty. Most of the pilots must have been asleep. They couldn't all be in Mike's game. He leaned over a low table in the centre of the room and started sorting through the stack of magazines. Looking for anything in particular, Harry? He turned to face the speaker. No, just going through these fugitives from a dentist's office to see if there's anything I haven't read yet. I can't figure out where all the new magazines go. The ones in here always seem to be exactly two months old. Here's this month's western stories. I just finished it. It had some pretty good stories in it. No, thanks. The wrong side always wins in that one. The wrong... Oh, I forgot. I guess they don't write stories where your side wins. It's not really a question of my side. My tribe gave up the practice of tribal life and tribal customs over fifty years ago. I had the same education in a public school as any other American child. I read the same newspapers, watched the same TV shows as anyone else. My Apache ancestry means as little to me as the nationality of his immigrant ancestors means to the average American. I certainly don't consider myself to be part of a nation still at war with the pale faces. Then what's wrong with the western stories where the United States cavalry wins? That's a different thing entirely. Some of the earliest memories I have are of listening to my grandfather tell me about how he and his friends fought against the horse soldiers when he was a young man. I imagine he put more romance than historical accuracy into his stories. After all, he was telling an eager kid about the adventures he'd had over fifty years before. At any rate, he'd definitely fixed my emotions on the side of the Indians and against the United States cavalry and the fact that culturally I'm descended from the cavalry rather than from the Apache Indians doesn't change my emotions any. I imagine that would have a strong effect on you. These stories are really cheering at the death of some of your grandfather's friends. Oh, it's worse than that. In a lot of hack-ridden stories the Indians are just convenient targets for the hero to shoot at while the author gets on with the story. These stories are bad enough, but the worst are the ones where the Indians are depicted as brutal savages with no redeeming virtues. My grandfather had an elaborate code of honour which governed his conduct in battle. It was different from the code of people he fought, but it was at least as rigid and deviations from it were punished severely. He never read Klauswitz. To him war wasn't an instrument of national policy. It was a chance for the individual warrior to demonstrate his skill and bravery. His code put a high premium on individual courage in combat, and the weakling or coward was crushed contemptuously. I don't even attempt to justify the Indian treatment of captured civilians and non-combatants, but nevertheless I absorbed quite a few of my grandfather's ideals and views about war, and it's downright disgusting to see him so falsely represented by authors of the run-of-the-mill western story or movie. Well, those writers have to eat too, and maybe they can't hold an honest job. Besides, you don't still look at war the way your grandfather did, do you? Civilisation requires plenty of other virtues besides courage and combat. We have plenty of better ways to display those virtues, and the real goal of the fighting man is to be alive after the war so we can go home to enjoy the things he was fighting for. No, I hadn't been in Korea long before I lost any notions I might have had of war as a glorious adventure my grandfather described it to be. It's nothing but a bloody business and should be resorted to only if everything else fails, but I still think the individual fighter could do a lot worse than follow the code that my grandfather believed in. That's so, especially since the coward usually gets shot anyway, if not by the enemy then by his own side. Hey, it's getting late. I've got some things to do before going on watch. Be seeing you. Okay, I'll try to find something else here I haven't read yet. Eight o'clock. Still no sign of the sun. The stars didn't have the sky to themselves however. Two or three times a minute a meteor would be visible most of them appearing to come from a point about halfway between the pole star and the eastern horizon. Harry Lightfoot stopped the elevator, opened the hatch and stepped in. She's all yours Harry. I've checked out with the tower. Okay, that gyro any worse? No, it seems to have said it a bit. Nothing else gone wrong either. Looks like we're in luck for a change. Let me have the parka and I'll clear out. I'll think of you up here while I'm relaxing. Just imagine, a whole twenty four hours off and not even a training scheduled. Someone slipped up I'll bet. By the way, be sure to look at the fireworks when you go out. They're better now than I've seen them at any time since they started. A meteor shower you mean? Thanks, I'll take a look. I'll bet they're really cluttering up the radar screens. Launch control officer must be going quietly nuts. The launch control officer wasn't going nuts. Anyone who went nuts under stress simply didn't pass the psychological tests required of the prospective launch control officers. However, he was decidedly unhappy. He sat in a dimly-litted room, facing three oscilloscope screens. On each of them, a pie wedge section was illuminated by a white line which swept back and forth like a windshield wiper. Unlike a windshield wiper, however, it put little white blobs on the screen instead of removing them. Each blob represented something which had returned a radar echo. The centre screen was his own radar. The outer two were televised images of the radar screens at the stations a hundred miles on either side of him, part of a chain of stations extending from Alaska to Greenland. In the room behind him and facing sets of screens similar to his sat his assistants. They located the incoming objects on the screen and set automatic computers to determine the velocity, trajectory and probable impact point. This information appeared as coded symbols beside the tracks on the centre screen of the launch control officer, as well as all duplicate screens. The launch control officer, and he alone, had the responsibility to determine whether the parameters for a given track were compatible with an invading intercontinental ballistic missile or whether the track represented something harmless. If he failed to launch an interceptor at a track that turned out to be hostile, it meant the death of an American city. However, if he made a habit of launching interceptors at false targets, he would soon run out of interceptors and only under the pressure of actual war could the incredible cost of shipping in more interceptors during the winter be paid without a second thought. Normally no more could be shipped until spring. That would mean a gap in the chain that could not be covered adequately by interceptors from the adjacent stations. His screens were never completely clear and to complicate things, all the circuits which start every new year's day and last four days were giving him additional trouble. Each track had to be analysed and the presence of the meteor shower greatly increased the number of tracks he had to worry about. However, the worst was passed. One more day and they would be over. The clutter on his screens were dropped back to normal. Even under the best of circumstances his problem was bad. He was hemmed in on one side by physics and on the other by arithmetic. The most probable direction for an attack was from over the pole. His radar beam bent only slightly to follow the curve of the earth. At great range the lower edge of the beam was too far above the earth's surface to detect anything of military significance. On a minimum altitude trajectory an ICBM aimed at North America would not be visible until it reached 83 degrees north latitude on the other side of the pole. One of his interceptors took 385 seconds to match trajectories with such a missile and the match occurred only two degrees of latitude south of the station. The invading missile travelled one degree of latitude in 14 seconds. Thus he had to launch the interceptor when the missile was 27 degrees from intercept. This turned out to be 85 degrees north latitude on the other side of the pole. This left him at most 30 seconds to decide whether or not to intercept a track crossing the pole. And if several tracks were present he had to split that time among them. If too many tracks appeared he would have to turn over portions of the sky to his assistants and let them make decisions about launching. This would happen only if he felt an attack was in progress however. Low altitude satellites presented him with a serious problem since there is not a whole lot of difference between the orbit of such a satellite and the trajectory of an ICBM. Fortunately most satellite orbits were catalogue and available for comparison with incoming tracks. However once in a while an unannounced satellite was launched and these could cause trouble. Only the previous week at a station down the line an interceptor had been launched at an unannounced satellite. Had the pilot not realised what he was chasing and held his fire the international complications could have been serious. It was hard to imagine World War 3 being started by an erroneous interceptor launching. But the State Department would be hard put to soothe the feelings of some intensely nationalistic country whose expensive new satellite had been shot down. Such mistakes were bound to occur but the launch control officer preferred that they were made when someone else, not he was on watch. For this reason he attempted to anticipate all known satellites so they would be recognised as soon as they appeared. According to the notes he had made before coming on watch one of the UN's weather satellites was due over shortly. A blip appeared on the screen just beyond the 83 degree latitude line across the pole. At the time with the satellite ephemeris. If this were the satellite it was 90 seconds early. That was too much error in the predicted orbit of a well-known satellite. Symbols sprang into existence beside the track. It was not quite high enough for the satellite and the velocity was too low and the white lines went back across the screen again more symbols appeared beside the track. Probable impact point was about 40 degrees latitude. It certainly wasn't the satellite. Two more blips appeared on the screen at velocities and altitudes similar to the first. Each swipe of the white line left more new tracks on the screen and the screens of the adjacent stations were showing similar behaviour. These couldn't be meatier. The launch control officer slapped his hand down on a red push button set into the arm of his chair and spoke into his mic. Red alert, attack is in progress. Then switching to another channel he spoke to his assistants. This track identified as hostile. He hadn't enough interceptors to double up on an attack of this size and a quick glance at the screens for the adjacent stations showed he could expect no help from them. They would have their hands full. In theory one interceptor could handle a missile all by itself but the theory had never been tried in combat. That lack was about to be supplied. Harry Lightfoot heard the alarm over the intercom. He vaguely understood what would happen before his launch came. As each track was identified as hostile a computer would be assigned to it. He would compute the correct time of launch, select an interceptor and order it off the ground at the correct time. During the climb to intercept the computer would radio steering signals to the interceptor to assure that the intercept took place in the most efficient fashion. He knew RI 276 had been selected when a green light on the instrument panel flashed on and a clock dial started indicating the seconds until launch. Just as the clock reached zero, a relay closed behind the instrument panel the solid fuel booster ignited with a roar he was squashed back into his couch under 4G's acceleration. Gyroscopes and acceleration measuring instruments determined the actual trajectory of the ship. The navigation computer compared the actual trajectory with the trajectory set in before takeoff. When a deviation from the preset trajectory occurred the autopilot steered the ship back to the proper trajectory. As the computer on the ground obtained better velocity and position information about the missile from the ground radar it sent course corrections to the ship which were accepted in the computer as changes to the preset trajectory. The navigation computer hummed and buzzed. Lights flickered on and off on the instrument panel. Relays clicked behind the panel. The ship steered itself towards the correct intercept point. All this automatic operation was required because no merely human pilot had reflexes fast enough to carry out the intercept at 26,000 feet per second and even had his reflexes been fast enough he could not have done the precise piloting required while being pummeled by this acceleration. As it was Major Harry Lightfoot fighter pilot lay motionless in his acceleration couch. His face was distorted by the acceleration. His breathing was laboured. Compressed air bladders in the legs of his G-suit alternately expanded and contracted squeezing him like the obscene embrace of some giant snake as the G-suit tried to keep his blood from pooling in his legs. Without the G-suit he would have blacked out and eventually his brain would have been permanently damaged from the lack of blood to carry oxygen to it. A red light on the instrument panel blinked baffly at him as it measured out the oxygen he required. Other instruments on the panel informed him about the amount of cooling air flowing through his suit to keep his temperature within tolerable range and the amount of moisture the dehumidifier had to carry away from him so that his suit didn't become a steam bath. He was surrounded by hundreds of pounds of equipment which added nothing to the performance of the ship which couldn't be counted as payload which cut down on the speed and altitude the ship might have reached without them. Their sole purpose was to keep this magnificent high-performance self-steering machine from killing its load of fragile human flesh. At 128 seconds after launch the acceleration suddenly dropped to zero. He breathed deeply again and swallowed repeatedly to get the salty taste out of his throat. His stomach was uneasy but he wasn't space sick. Had he been prone to space sickness he would never have been accepted as a rocket interceptor pilot. Rocket interceptor pilots had to be capable of taking all the punishment their ships could dish out. He knew there would be 50 seconds of freefall before the rockets fired again. One solid fuel stage had imparted to the ship a velocity which would carry it to the altitude of the missile it was to intercept. A second solid fuel stage would match trajectories with the missile. Final corrections would be made with the liquid fuel rockets in the third stage. The third stage would then become a glider which eventually would carry him back to Earth. Before the second stage was fired however the ship had to be orientated properly. The autopilot consulted its gyros, took some star sites and asked the navigation computer some questions. The answers came back in seconds an interval which was several hours shorter than a human pilot would have required. Using the answers the autopilot started to swing the ship about using small compressed gas jets for the purpose. Finally satisfied with the ship's orientation the autopilot rested. It patiently awaited the moment precisely calculated by the computer on the ground when it would fire the second stage. Major Harry Lightfoot fighter pilot waited idly for the next move of his ship. He could only fume inwardly. This was no way for an Apache warrior to ride into battle. What would his grandfather think of a steed which directed itself into battle and which could kill its rider, not by accident but by his normal operation? He should be actively hunting for that missile instead of lying here strapped into his couch so he wouldn't hurt himself while the ship did all the work. As for the missile it was far to the north and slightly above the ship. Without purpose of its own and obedient to the laws of Mr. Newton and the wishes of its makers it came on inexorably. It was a sleek aluminium cylinder glinting in the sunlight it had just recently entered. On one end was a rocket motor now silent but still warm with the memory of flaming gas that a poured forth from it only minutes ago. On the other end was a sleek aerodynamic shape, the product of thousands of hours of design work. It was designed to enter the atmosphere at meteoric speed but without burning up. It was intended to survive the passage through the air and convey its contents intact to the ground. The contents might have been virulent bacteria or toxic gas according to the intention of its makers. Among its brothers elsewhere in the sky this morning there were such noxious loads. This one however was carrying the complex mechanism of the hydrogen bomb. Its destination was an American city its object to replace that city with an expanding cloud of star hot gas. Suddenly the sleek cylinder disappeared in a puff of smoke which quickly dissipated in the surrounding vacuum. What had been a precisely built rocket had been reduced by carefully placed charges of explosive to a collection of chunks of metal. Some were plates from the skin and fuel tanks. Others were large lumps from the computer banks, gyro platform fuel pumps and other more massive components. This was not wanton destruction however. It was more careful planning by the same brains which had devised the missile itself. To a radar set on the ground near the target each fragment was indistinguishable from the nose curtain carrying the warhead. In fact since the fragments were separating only very slowly they would never appear as distinct objects. By the time the cloud of decoys entered the atmosphere it's more than two dozen members would appear to the finest radar available on the ground as a single echo 25 miles across. It would be a giant haystack in the sky concealing the most deadly needle of all time. No ground controlled intercept scheme had any hope of selecting the warhead from among that deceptive cloud and destroying it. The cloud of fragments possessed the same trajectory as the missile originally had. At the rate it was overtaking RI 276 it would soon pass the ship by. The autopilot of RI 276 had no intention of letting this happen of course. At the correct instant stage two thundered into life and Harry Lightfoot was again smashed back into his acceleration couch. Almost absentmindedly the ship continued to minister to his needs. Its attention was focused on its mission. After a while the ground computer sent some instructions to the ship. The navigation computer converted these into a direction and pointed a radar antenna in that direction. The antenna sent forth a stream of questing pulses which quickly returned confirming the location and distance to the oncoming cloud of missile fragments. A little while later fuel pumps began to wind somewhere in the tail of the ship. Then the acceleration dropped to zero as the second stage thrust was terminated. There was a series of thumps as explosive bolts released the second stage. The wine of the pumps dropped in pitch as fuel gushed through them and acceleration returned in a rush. The acceleration lasted for a few seconds, tapered off quickly and ended. A light winked on in the instrument panel as the ship announced its mission was accomplished. Major Harry Lightfoot fighter pilot felt a glow of satisfaction as he saw the light come on. He might not have the reflexes fast enough to pilot the ship up here. He might not be able to survive the climb to intercept without the help of a lot of fancy equipment. But he was still necessary. He was still one step ahead of this complex robot which had carried him up here. It was his human judgment and his ability to react correctly in an unpredictable situation which was needed to locate the warhead from among the cluster of decoys and destroy it. This was a job no merely logical machine could do. When all was said and done, the only purpose for the existence of this magnificent machine was to put him where he was now in the same trajectory as the missile and slightly behind it. Harry Lightfoot reached for a red-handled toggle switch at the top of the instrument panel, clicked it from auto to manual and changed his status from passenger to pilot. He had little enough time to work. He could not follow the missile down into the atmosphere. His ship would burn up. He must begin his pull out at no less than 200 miles altitude. That left him 183 seconds in which to locate and destroy the warhead. The screen in the center of his instrument panel could show a composite image of the space in front of his ship based on data from a number of sensing elements and detectors. He switched on the infrared scanner. A collection of spots appeared on the screen, each spot indicating by its color the temperature of the object it represented. The infrared detector gave him no range information of course, but if the autopilot had done its job well, the nearest fragment would be about 10 miles away. Thus even if he set off the enemy warhead, he would be safe. At that range the ship would not suffer any structural damage from the heat, and he could be down on the ground in a hospital where the radiation effects could become serious. He reflected quickly on the possible temperature range of the missile components. The missile had been launched from Central Asia at night in January. There was no reason to suppose that the warhead had been temperature controlled during the pre-launch countdown. Thus it probably was at ambient temperature of the launch site. If it had been fired in the open, that might be as low as minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Had it been fired from a shelter, that might be as high as 70 degrees Fahrenheit. To leave a safety margin he decided to reject only those objects outside the range of plus or minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. There were two fragments at 500 degrees. He rejected these as probable fragments of the engine. Six more exhibited a temperature of nearly minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit. These probably came from the liquid oxygen tanks. They could be rejected. That eliminated eight of the objects on the screen. He had 19 to go. It would be a lot slower than the rest, too. He switched on a radar transmitter. The screen blanked out almost completely. The missile had included a microwave transmitter to act as a jammer. It must have been triggered on by his approach. It obviously hadn't been operating while the ship was manoeuvring into position. Had it been transmitting then, the autopilot would simply have honed on it. He switched the radar to a different frequency. That didn't work. The screen was still blank, indicating a different frequency. He next tried to synchronize the radar pulses with the jammer in order to be looking when it was quiet. The enemy, anticipating him, had given the jammer a variable pulse repetition rate. He switched off the transmitter and scanned the radar antenna manually. He slowly swung it back and forth, attempting to fix the direction of the jammer by finding the direction of maximum signal strength. He found that the enemy had anticipated him again, and the jammer's signal suddenly stopped the antenna, satisfied that he had pointed it at the jammer. The infrared detector confirmed that there was something in the direction the antenna was pointed, but it appeared to be too small to be the warhead. He then activated the manual piloting controls. He started the fuel pumps winding up and swung the ship to point normal to the line of sight to the jammer. A quick blast from the rocket sent the image of the jammer moving sideways across the screen. But of greater importance, two other objects moved faster than the jammer, indicating they were nearer to the ship than was the jammer. He picked the one which appeared the nearest to him, and with a series of maneuvers and blasts from the rocket placed the object between himself and the jammer. He switched the radar on again. Some of the jammer's signal was still leaking through, but the object, whatever it was, made an effective shield. The radar images were quite sharp and clear. He glanced at the clock. Nullifying the jammer had cost him seventy-five seconds, it had to hurry in order to make up for that time. The infrared detector showed two targets which the radar insisted weren't there. He shifted radar frequency. They still weren't there. He decided they were small fragments which didn't reflect much radar energy and rejected them. He set the radar to a linear polarised mode. Eight of the target showed a definite amplitude modulation on the echo. That meant they were rotating slowly. He switched to circular polarisation to see if they presented a constant area to the radar beam. He compared the echoes for both modes of polarisation. Five of the targets were skin fragments spinning about an axis skewed with respect to the radar beam. These he rejected. Two more were structural spars. They couldn't conceal a warhead. He rejected them. After careful examination of the fine structure of the echo from the last object he was able to classify it as a large irregular mass, probably a section of computer waving some cables about. Its irregularity weighed against its containing the warhead. Even if it didn't burn up in the atmosphere, his trajectory would be too unpredictable. He turned to the rest of the targets. Time was getting short. He extracted every conceivable bit of information out of what his detectors told him. He checked each fragment for resonant frequencies, getting an idea of the size and shape of each. He checked the radiated infrared spectrum. He checked the decrement of the reflected star pulse. Each scrap of information was an indication about the identity of the fragments. With frequent glances at the clock constantly reminding him of how rapidly his time was running out, he checked and cross-checked the data coming into him. Fighting to keep his mind calm and his thoughts clear, he deduced, inferred and decided. One fragment after another he sorted, discarded, rejected, eliminated, excluded until the screen was empty. Now what? Had the enemy camouflaged the warhead so that it looked like a section of the missile's skin? Not likely. Had he made a mistake in his identification of the fragments? Possibly, but there wasn't time to re-check every fragment. He decided that the most likely event was that the warhead was hidden by one of the other fragments. He swung the ship, headed it straight for the object shielding him from the jammer, which had turned out to be a section from the fuel tank. A short blast from the rockets sent him drifting towards the object. One image on the screen broadened, split in two. A hidden fragment emerged from behind one of the ones he had examined. He rejected it immediately, its temperature was too low. He was almost upon the fragment shielding him from the jammer. If he turned to avoid it the jammer would blank out his radar again. He thought back to his first look at the cloud of fragments. There had been nothing between his shield and the jammer. The only remaining possibility then was that the warhead was being hidden from him by the jammer itself. He would have to look on the other side of the jammer, using the ship itself as a shield. He swung out from behind the shielding fragment and saw his radar images blotted out. He switched off the radar and named the ship slightly to one side of the infrared image of the jammer. Another blast from the rocket sent him towards the jammer. Without range information from the radar he would have to guess its distance by noting the rate at which it swept across the screen. The image of the jammer started to expand as he approached it. Then it became dumbbell shaped and split in two. As he passed by the jammer he switched the radar back on. That second image was something which had been hidden by the jammer. He looked around. No other new objects appeared on the screen. This had to be the warhead. Checked it anyway. Temperature was minus 40 degrees fahrenheit. A smile flickered on his lips as he caught the significance of the temperature. He hoped the launching crew had gotten off while they were going through the countdown. The object showed no anomalous radar behavior. Beyond doubt it was the warhead. Then he noted the range. A mere 1,300 yards. His own missile carried a small atomic warhead. At that range it would present no danger to him. But what if it triggered the enemy warhead? He and the ship would be converted into vapor within milliseconds. Even a partial low-efficiency explosion might leave the ship so weakened that it could not stand the return through the atmosphere. Firing on the enemy warhead at this range was not much different from playing Russian roulette with a fully-loaded revolver. Could he move out of range of the explosion and then fire? No. There were only 12 seconds left before he had to start the pull-out. It would take him longer than that to get to a safe range, get into position, and then fire. He'd be dead anyway, as the ship plunged into the atmosphere and burned up. And to pull out without firing would be leaving his own life at the cost of the lives he was under oath to defend. That would be sheer cowardice. He hesitated briefly, shrugged his shoulders as well as he could inside his flying suit, and snapped a switch on the instrument panel. A set of crosshairs sprang into existence on the screen. He gripped a small lever which projected up from his right armrest, curled his thumb over the firing button on top of it. Moving the lever he caused the crosshairs to centre on the warhead. He flicked the firing button to tell the fire control system that this was the target. A red light blinked on, informing him that the missile guidance system was tracking the indicated target. He hesitated again. His body tornt against the straps holding it in the acceleration couch. His right arm became rigid, his fingers petrified. Then, with a convulsive twitch of his thumb, he closed the firing circuit. He stared at the screen, unable to tear his eyes from the streak of light that leapt away from his ship and towards the target. The missile reached the target and there was a small flare of light. His radiation counter burped briefly. The target vanished from the radar. But the infrared detector insisted there was a nebulous fog of hot gas shot through with the reign of molten droplets where the target had been. That was all. He had destroyed the enemy warhead without setting it off. He stabbed the mission accomplished button and flicked the red-handled toggle switch resigning his status as pilot. Then he collapsed nervously into the couch. The autopilot returned to control. It signalled the air defence network that this hostile track was no longer dangerous. It received instructions about a safe corridor to return to the ground where it would not be shot at. As soon as the air was thick enough for the control surfaces to bite, the autopilot steered into the safe corridor. It began the slow, tedious process of landing safely. The ground was still a long way down. The kinetic and potential energy of the ship, if instantly transformed into heat, was enough to flash the entire ship into vapor. This tremendous store of energy had to be dissipated without harm to the ship and its occupant. Major Harry Lightfoot, fighter pilot, lay collapsed in his couch, exhibiting somewhat less ambition than a sack of meal. He relaxed to the gentle massage of his G-suit. The oxygen control winked reassuringly at him as it maintained a steady flow. The cabin temperature soared, but he was aware of it only from a glance at the thermometer. The air conditioning in his suit automatically stepped up its pace to keep him comfortable. He reflected that this might not be so bad after all. Certainly none of his ancestors had ever had this comfortable a ride home from battle. After a while the ship had reduced its speed and altitude to reasonable values. The autopilot requested and received clearance to land at its pre-assigned base. It lined itself up with a runway, closely followed the correct glide path and flared out just over the end of the runway. The smoothness of the touchdown was broken only by the jerk of the drag parachute popping open. The ship came to a halt near the other end of the runway. Harry Lightfoot disconnected himself from the ship and opened the hatch, carefully avoiding contact with the still hot metal of the skin of the ship. He jumped the short distance to the ground. The loafer of a motor behind him announced the arrival of a tractor to tow the ship off the runway. I have to ride the tractor with me, sir. We're a bit short of transportation now. OK, Sergeant. Be careful hooking up. She's still hot. How was the flight, sir? No sweat. She flies herself most of the time. The end of Pushbutton War by Joseph P. Martino. Satellite System This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Bologna Times. Satellite System by Horace Brown Fife Fife's quite right. There's nothing like a satellite system for a cold storage arrangement. Keeps things handy, but out of the way. Having released the netting of his bunk, George Trimont floated himself out. He ran his tongue around his mouth and grimaced. Wonder how long I slept? Feels like too long, he muttered. Well, they would have called me. The cabin was a ninety-degree wedge of a cylinder, hardly eight feet high. From one end of its outer arc across to the other was just over ten feet, so that it had been necessary to bevel two corners of the hinged three-by-seven hunk to clear the sides of the wedge. Lockers flattened the arc behind the bunk. Trimont maneuvered himself into a vertical position in the eighteen inches between the bunk and a flat surface that cut off the point of the wedge. He stretched out an arm to remove towel and razor from one of the lockers, then carefully folded the bunk upward and hooked it securely in place. With room to turn now, he swung around and slit open a double door in the flat surface, revealing a shaft three feet square, whose center was also the theoretical intersection of his cabin walls. Trimont pulled himself into the shaft. From up forward, light leaked through a partly open hatch, and he could hear a murmur of voices as he jackknifed in the opposite direction. At least two of them are up there, he grunted. He wondered which of the other three cabins was occupied, meanwhile pulling himself along by the ladder rungs welded to one corner of the shaft. He reached a slightly wider section aft, which boasted entrances to two airlocks, a spacesuit locker, a galley, and a head. He entered the last, noting the murmur of air conditioning machinery on the other side of the bulkhead. Trimont hooked a foot under a tall hold to maintain his position facing a mirror. He plugged in his razor, turned on the exhaustor in the slot of the mirror to keep the clippings out of his eyes, and began to shave. As the beard disappeared, he considered the deals he had come to Centauri to put through. A funny business, he told his homage. Dealing in ideas, can you really sell a man's thoughts? Beginning to work around his chin, he decided that it actually was practical. Ideas, in fact, were almost the only kind of import worth bringing from Saul to Alpha Centauri. Large-scale shipments of necessities were handled by the Federated Governments. To carry even precious or power metals to earth, or to return with any type of manufactured luxury, was simply too expensive in money, fuel, effort, and time. On the other hand, travelling back every five years to buy up plans and licenses for the latest inventions or processes, that was profitable enough to provide a good living for many a man like Tramont's business. All he needed were a number of reliable contacts and a good knowledge of the needs of the three planets and four satellites colonized in the Centaurian system. Only three days earlier, Tramont had returned from his most recent trip to the old star, landing from the great interstellar ship on the outer moon of Centauri-7. There he leased the small rocket, the Annabelle, and registered more officially as the AC-7-4-525 for his local travelling. It would be another five days before he reached the inhabited moons of Centauri-6. He stopped next in the galley for a quick breakfast out of tubes, regretting the greater convenience of the starship, then returned the towel and razor to his cabin. He decided that his slightly rumpled shirt and slacks of utilitarian grey would do for another day. About thirty-eight, an inch or two less than six feet, and musclarly slim, Tramont had an air of habitual neatness. His dark hair, thinning at the temples, was clipped short and brushed straight back. There were smile wrinkles at the corners of his blue eyes and grooving his lean cheeks. He closed the cabin doors and pulled himself forward to enter the control room through the partly open hatch. The forward bulkhead offered no more headroom than did his own cabin, but there seemed to be more breathing space because the chamber was not quartered. Deck space, however, was at such a premium because of the controls, acceleration couches, and estrogating equipment that the hatch was the largest clear area. Two men and a girl startled eyes upon Tramont as he rose into their view. One of the men, about forty-five, but sporting a youngish manner to match his blonde crew-cut and tan features, glanced quickly at his wrist-watch. Am I too early? demanded Tramont with sudden coldness. What are you doing with my case there? The girl, in her early twenties and carefully pretty with her long black hair neatly netted for space, snatched back a small hen from the still-strong box that was shaped to fit into an attaché case. The second man, under thirty, but thick-waisted in a grey t-shirt, said in the next breath, Take him! Too late, Tramont saw that the speaker had already braced a foot against the far bulkhead. Then the broad face with its crooked blob of a nose above a ridiculous little mustache shot across the chamber at him. Desperately, Tramont groped for a hold that would help him either to avoid the charge or to pull himself back into the shaft, but he was caught half in and half out. He met the rush with a fist, but the tangle of bodies immediately became confusing beyond belief as the other pair joined in. Something cracked across the back of his head, much too hard to have been accidental. When Tramont began to function again, it took him only a few seconds to realize that life had been going on without him for some little time. For one thing the heavy man's nuzzbleed had stopped, and he was tenderly combing blood from his mustache with a fingertip. For another they had managed to stuff Tramont into a spacesuit and haul him down the shaft to the airlock. Someone had noose the thumbs of the gauntlets together and tied the cord to the harness supporting the air-tanks. Tramont twisted his head around to die the three of them without speaking. He was trying to decide where he had made his mistake. Bilbra, the elderly youth with the crew-cut, Ralph Peters, the pilot who had come with a ship, Dorothy Stauber, the trim brunette who had made the trip from earth on the same starship as Tramont, he could not make up his mind without more to go on. Then he remembered with a sinking sensation that all of them had been clustered about his case of papers and microfilms when he had interrupted them. I trust you on thinking of making us in a trouble, Tramont, drawed Brot. Give up the idea. You've been no trouble at all. Where do you think this is getting you? demanded Tramont. Brot trekkled. Wherever it would have gotten you, he said, only at less expense. Asking for the combination, Ralph Peters, Brot scrutinized Tramont's expression. It would probably take us a while, Ralph, he decided regretfully. It's simply to put him outside now and be free to use tools on the box. Tramont opened his mouth to protest, but Brot clapped the helmet over his head and screwed it fast. You'll never read the code, yelled Tramont, struggling to break free. Those papers are no good to you without me. Someone slammed him against the bulkhead and held him there with his face to it. He could do nothing with his hands, joined as they were, and very little with his feet. It dawned upon him that they could not hear a word, and he fell silent. Twisting his head to peer out the side curve of his vision band, he caught a glimpse of Peters suiting up. A few minutes later, they opened the inner hatch of the airlock and shoved Tramont inside. Peters followed, gripping him firmly about the knees from behind. Here we go, rounded Peters, and Tramont realized that he could communicate again over their suit radios. You won't get far trying to read the code I have those papers written in, he warned. You better talk this over before you make a mistake. Ain't no mistake about it, said Peters, pressing toward the outer hatch. So you chartered the rocket. You felt you ought to go out to see about a heavy dust particle hitting the hull. We fell off, and we never found you. How will you explain not going yourself? Oh, not finding me by instruments. Peters clubbed Tramont's foot from the tank rack he had hooked with a toe. How could I go? Lead the ship without a pilot, and the screens are for picking up meteorites far enough out to mean something at the speeds they travel. So you were too close to register, least ways till it was way too late. You must have suffocated when your air ran out. Tramont troubled about with his feet for some kind of hold. The outer hatch began to open. He could see stars out there. Wait! shouted Tramont. It was too late. He felt himself shoot forward as if Peters had thrust a foot into the small of his back and shoved. Tramont tried to grab at the edge of the airlock, but it was gone. A puff of air frosted about him. It's human bullet. The stars spun slowly before his eyes. After a moment the gleaming hull of the Annabelle swam into his field of view. It was already thirty feet away, and the airlock was closing. He caught a glimpse of a space-suited figure with the light behind it. Then he was looking at the stars again. The small, distant brilliance of Alpha Centauri made him squint in the split second before the suit's photoelectric cells caused filters to flip down before his eyes. It was stars again, and the filters retracted. They can't do this, said Tramont. Peters, do you hear me? You can't get away with this." There was no answer. The rocket came into view again, farther away. He had to get back somehow. Forgetting the bound position of his hands he attempted to check his belt equipment. Holding his arms as far as possible from his body was not enough to let him get a look at the harness from within his helmet. He tugged violently at the cord, holding the thumbs of his gauntlets, and thought it gave slightly. Maybe it just tightened, he thought. To free his hands he drew his arms in through the wide armpits of the suit's sleeves, built that way to enable the wearer to feed himself, wipe his brow, or adjust clothing, or heating units within the suit. He felt more comfortable, but that got him nowhere, except for the chance to consult his wristwatch. Set at the lunar time of Centauri VII-IV it told him that when he had gone out of the airlock five minutes before the time had been 1736. It did not strike Tramont as being a very promising bet of data, warning him merely that when he began to fill the want of air it would be about 2130. He longed for a penknife. There's one thing I'm going to ask about on my next trip to Seoul, if I make one, he muttered. Has anyone developed a reliable small suit airlock so you could pass things out from your pockets? He thrust his hands once more into the arms of the suit and felt as far along his belt as he could. He did manage to reach the usual position of the standard rocket pistol. The hook was empty. Well, that's that, he groaned. They didn't forget I have nothing to maneuver with. He pondered warily, perhaps the air, if he dared to waste any. It would make a small jut, slow, but he had all the rest of his life. He settled down to picking at the cord about his thumbs with the tips of the other fingers in his gauntlets. It seemed possible that he might in time chew it up to the point where it could be snapped. The stars streamed slowly past his line of vision as he spun through the emptiness. Two or three little bits of the cord chipped off and drifted away. Trimont realized that it was frozen and brittle. He redoubled his efforts. After a few minutes of clumsy clicking of fingertips against thumbs, he strained to pull his hands apart. The cord parted and his arms jerked out to their full spread with such suddenness that he felt his backbone creak. For a moment he hung motionless inside his suit, wondering if he had hurt himself. Recovering, he grubbed about, checking for his equipment. He discovered that nothing had been left. No knife, no rocket pistol, no line with magnet for securing oneself to a hull. Well, at least I can reach the valves of the air tanks, he reassured himself. He watched for the ship, so as to judge his direction. Several minutes passed before he allowed himself to recognize the truth of his situation. He could no longer see the gleam of Alpha Centauri on the hull. He was already too far out to dare to waste air. He might give away his last four hours of life just to send himself in the wrong direction. How did I get myself into this? he groaned. He set himself to thinking back to his meetings with the others. Dorothy Stauber had landed from the same starship after passage from Sol, but he had not become acquainted with her during the trip except to pass the time of day. He seemed to remember that she had turned up in the customs dome to ask his advice on travel. Yeah! he grubbed to himself. After I've phoned at least the rocket, she must have known. But how? Someone in the shipping office? Well, why not Peters, the pilot, and then Bra had come along, pretending to have been on his way back to Centauri-6, and hoping to buy a fast passage on a small vessel for business reasons. He had been free and ready with his money, leading Tramont to consider cutting his own expenses on the charter. It seemed, on the face of it, that the three of them had never met until the Annabelle lifted. But they had, all right, Tramont told himself. That was no chance. Anywhere along the line I've been very neatly hijacked. The girl must have trailed him to make sure they picked up the right man. Bra had never explained exactly what he was doing on the satellite. He could have arranged for the assignment of the rocket, or perhaps of the pilot, when Tramont called. Then they had gathered around hitch rides, and had been in control ever since. Tramont looked at the slowly progressing constellations and cursed himself. He began to have the feeling that there would be no way out of this. They would regret pitching him into space in such an offhand manner. He reminded himself, when they opened his case, it would be too late as far as he was concerned. Come to think of it, he considered, that Bra looks pretty smart under that idiot kid pose. He might just break my code, given time, and the parts made up of model photos or drawings he can sell almost as is. When he came to think of it, Tramont was surprised that no one had tried the same racket before. He had laid out a fortune for what the three thieves were stealing from him. He drew in his left arm again and raised the wrist to the neck of his helmet. But looking down his nose he discovered to his surprise that he had been out nearly an hour. He had wasted more time than he had thought in reviewing his earlier encounters with Dorothy aboard the Starship and the others at the spaceport. He raised the water tube to his mouth and sucked in a mouthful. The taste was stale. I could do with a beer if this is the way I'm going out," he thought. They can joke all they want about dying in bed after traveling to the Stars, but you could order a beer even if it killed you. It gradually dawned upon him that the hazy light he had accepted as being a nebula must be something closer. He watched for it and discovered, after a few moments, that it was growing brighter. It continued to do so for half an hour. It might be another ship," he breathed. Then he began to shout, Mayday! Mayday! over his radio. He kept it up for nearly a quarter of an hour, even after the outline was definitely recognizable as a rocket. He found himself drifting across its course near the bow. It was hard to estimate the distance, but he guessed it to be something like a hundred yards. Drift in? he asked himself. It should be going past me like a shooting star, unless they took exactly the same curve from Centauri-7. Then he could read the numbers he feared to see. AC-7-4-525, his own ship. He had gone out of the airlock, mainly on a puff of air, with some fumbling help from Peters. That had been enough to send him out of sight of the ship, in space, not necessarily very far. And now he was back, after two hours. A long, flat orbit in relation to the ship, he told himself, remembering in time to avoid speaking aloud that Bra might be at the ship's radio, but actually weaving back and forth across the rocket's course, just nipping it at the send. He edged a hand inside the suit again, and turned off his radio. If he found an answer, it would be fatal to be overheard mumbling about it. The ship now seemed to be rushing at him, and Trimont deduced that his orbital speed had increased as he approached the focus represented by the Annabelle. He would doubtless pass near the airlock at about his expulsion speed. He has a chance, he exalted, a little air let out to slow down. Oh, even just to be on close enough to lay hands on something. You launched me, Peters, but you didn't lose me. Getting through the airlock should be easy enough. He might be well up the shaft before the others emerge from the control room. In fact, unless Peters were on watch, the airlock operating signal might flash unnoticed on the board. And I'll be cracking skulls before they know what's up, he growled. It struck him with a flash of ironic amusement that he had not felt half so much hate when believing himself doomed. After two hours of sweating out his helplessness, he had discovered a lively resentment of the vicious callousness with which he had been jettisoned. He was only about twenty-five yards away now, seemingly circling the ship. Peering closer, he saw that actually he was sweeping in toward it. Now, be ready with the air-tank valve, just in case, he warned himself. The great fence loomed to his right. The hole blotted most of the sky from his view. It looked as if he would curve down to a spot beside the same airlock from which he had been expelled. It seemed to be still open. Then he saw the shape of a helmet rise around the curve of the ship. Someone was out on the hole. Tramont switched on his radio and listened. The space-suited figure climbed completely into view. There appeared to be a line running from the belt into the airlock and the figure carried a long pole of some sort. Oh, there you are, Tramont," came Bra's voice over the receiver. I've been waiting for you. The chuckle that followed made Tramont curse, which in turn provoked a hearty laugh from the other. You didn't think I'd forgot you, said Bra. We figured out what happened as soon as we heard you were putting out those distress calls. After that it was just a matter of timing. Have you had an amusing trip? Have you found out you can't make anything of those papers yet, counter Tramont? Oh, the coding? It might take a little time, but we have plenty. Now, now, Tramont, that kind of abusive language will get you nowhere. Tramont had drifted to a point above the other's head, almost within reach. He was kicking out in little motions that betrayed his eagerness to come to grips with Bra or something solid. Why, Tramont, I do believe that you thought I came out to bargain with you, chuckle the blond man. Not at all. I told you that you'd be no trouble. I just came out to finish the job Peter's bungled. Tramont saw the pole jabbing upward at his stomach. Instinctively he grabbed at the end. Bra was not disturbed. Take it with you then, he laughed, letting go his end with a powerful push. Let me know if you're alive the next time you come around so I can come out again. Tramont began to swear at him, then got a grip on himself long enough to snap his radio off. He had begun pulling himself down the pole when Bra had shoved. That sapped some of the force, but it was still enough to send him spinning out into the void once more. The ship receded slowly. He saw Bra return to the airlock and enter. A moment later that light was cut off, and Tramont began to back off into space as he had the first time. They know all about it, he realized. They could leave me any time just by burning a little fuel. Peter's wouldn't care about wasting it. I paid for it. Maybe he's just too lazy to calculate the course correction. If so, he decided the pilot was right. Tramont might drift back, but two more hours from now when he would be at his closest it would be too late. He would be too near the end of his air to use it to make sure of the last few feet. He looked at the pole in his grip. It was an eight-foot section of aluminum from the cargo racks. Maybe, he muttered. Whirling the pole around by the end, he managed after considerable trial and error to slow his wildspin enough to keep the ship in view. The only question then was whether he dared to take the chance, and he really had but one choice. The full orbit would be too long a period. He estimated as well as he could the direction of his progress, allowed a few degrees which he fondly hoped would curve him into a closer approach at the meeting point and hurled the pole into space with all his strength. After that there was nothing to do but wait and hope that he had cut his speed enough to bring him to the ship ahead of schedule by a shorter orbit. Tramont finally gave up looking at his watch when he found himself peeping every three minutes on the average. The immensity of space was by now instilling him a psychological chill, and he drew both arms in from their sleeves to hug an illusion of warmth to him. The air pressure in the sleeves gradually overpowered the springs of the joints and extended them to make a cross. As far as he could tell from the gauges aligned in a miniature row along the neckpiece of the suit his heating system was functioning as designed. The batteries had an excellent chance of lasting longer than he would. He began to dwell upon thoughts of squeezing Peters in the still grip of his gauntlets until the pilot's fat face turned purple and his eyes popped. Another promising activity would be to bang Bross head against a bulkhead with one hand and Dorothy's with the other. Wonder if they found the gun in Malacca, he mused. Finally, only a lifetime or two after he hoped to see it he sighted the ship again. His watch claimed the trip had lasted less than ninety minutes. He encountered unexpected trouble approaching the hull. Realizing that he was lucky to come close at all by such a gust he tried to steer himself with brief jets from his air-tag and wound up on the verge of bashing directly into a fen. He avoided that but had to use more air to spin back for a more gentle contact. The metal felt like solid earth to him as he seized the edge of a fen and planted the magnets of his boots firmly on the hull. It was perhaps twenty minutes later when Trimont was beginning to worry again about his air supply that the hatch of the airlock began to open. Crystals of frost puffed out as the water vapor left the air. Bra's helmet appeared, then the whole space-suited figure floated up before the spot where Trimont was watching. The hijacker dropped the magnet of his lifeline against the hull and started to turn around. Trimont grabbed the edge of the hatch with one hand, yanked the magnet loose with the other and kicked Bra in the right area. The space-suited figure shot off, tumbling end over end into the void. A startled squawk sounded over Trimont's receiver. See how you like it, he snarled. He ignored the begging of the suddenly frightened voice and dived into the airlock. In seconds he had the outer hatch shut and was nervously watching the air-pressure building up on the gauge. If they notice it all they'll think it's Bra coming back, he exalted. He made it into the central shaft without meeting anyone. Pulling himself forward in the bulky suit was an awkward task, but well worth it for the expression on Peter's face when Trimont burst through the control room hatch. After dealing with the pilot in about two minutes most of it spent in catching him. Trimont went back along the shaft and found Dorothy in her bunk. Before she could release the netting he folded the bunk upon her and secured it to the hook. Only then did he allow himself the time to remove his helmet and make free of the ship's air. What are you going to do? Demanded the girl rather shrilly. Trimont realized that she must have seen the unconscious Peter's floating outside in the shaft. You won't lack it, he promised. Trimont, I didn't know they'd do anything to you. Can't you and I make some kind of deal? Trimont stared at her lovely. But I'd have to really sleep some time, he pointed out gently. How can I trust you? He was hardly a million miles out from the satellite system of Centauri-6 when the space patrol ship he had called managed to put a pilot aboard to land the Annabelle for him on the largest moon. Trimont returned wearily from helping the man in the airlock which he did with a practice efficiency that surprised the pilot to resume his talk with the patrol ship captain waiting on the screen. We could have done it sooner, you know," said the latter, curiously. Well, now that I see him beside you perhaps you'll explain your request to Delay and also what those pips trailing you are. It's all the same story," said Trimont, and explained his difficulties. The patrol captain frowned and expressed a wish to lay hands on the hijackers. Well, the do-back-in, Trimont consulted his watch, about two hours, wanted them near the ends of their orbits as you approached. You mean there are three bodies out there? Love ones in spacesuits, said Trimont. Experience is a great teacher. As soon as I sighted Brak coming back a set of a regular system. He explained how he had removed all tools from the three spacesuits, added extra tanks, and stuffed the trio into them, either unconscious or at gunpoint. Then, having fastened the ankles together and wired the wrists to the thighs so they couldn't move at all, I launched them one at a time with enough pressure in the airlock to give four-hour orbits. That gave me sleep in time. And what about them? asked the captain. Oh, at the end of that period they'd come drifting in at one-hour intervals, counting all the necessary operations. Each of them got thirty minutes, actually, out of the suit, to eat, and so on. Then out he'd go while I had fished in the next one. They didn't lack it, but they weren't so tough one at a time. Let's see, mused the captain. Every four hours you'd have to spend, why, only two hours processing them. As a result, you kept complete control and came shooting in here with your own satellite system, revolving about you and your friends. How have they been passing the time? Well, I had to figure out how to take me next time, guest Tramont, or wishing they were moving in more honest circles. End of Satellite System by Horace Brown-Fife