George O. Smith

“ Y' see, Don, we're using the same frequency, by a half dozen megacycles, as their meteor spotter. I'm going to retune the inner beam to their frequency and key it. Realize what'll happen?"
"Sure," agreed Don, "but you're still missing the boat. You can't transmit keyed intelligence with an intermittent contact."
"In words, what do you mean, Don?"
"International Code is a series of dots and dashes, you may know. Our wabbling beam is whipping through the area in which the Empress of Kolain is passing. Therefore the contact is intermittent. And how could you tell a dot from a dash?" ”

“ In the first place, we can see a planet, and they can see us, so they can hold their beams. A spaceship might be able to see us, but they couldn't hold a beam on us because of the side sway. We couldn't see them until they are right upon us and so we could not hope to hold a beam on them. Spaceships might broadcast, but you have no idea what the square law of radiated power will do to a broadcast signal when millions upon millions of miles are counted in. A half million watts on any planet will not quite cover the planet as a service area on broadcast frequencies. ”

“ The half-hour finally ticked away, and Freddy called in: "No dice. She's as silent as the grave."
Minutes added together into an hour. The concentric wave left the reflector and just dropped out of sight.
"Too bad you can't widen her out," suggested Don.
"I'd like to tighten it down," objected Walt. "I think we're losing power and we can't increase the power—but we could tighten the beam."
"Too bad you can't wave it back and forth like a fireman squirting water on a lawn," said Arden.
"Firemen don't water lawns—" began Walt Franks, but he was interrupted by a wild yell from Channing. ”

“ We're all three, Venus, Sol, and Venus Equilateral, at the corners of an equilateral triangle, and will forever remain, barring outside influences. So that means we're running around a common point, the common center of gravity—which can be construed to mean that we are circling Sol at Venus' speed, or twenty-one point seven five miles per second. Now our beam is curved because of the angular velocity, just like a swung hose. However, it hits the Empress of Kolain at an angle as though we were a couple of thousand feet away. ”

“ Then the minutes were spent in anticipation of the instant that the power stage of the transmitter was tested and the megawatts of ultra-high-frequency energy poured into the single rod that acted as a radiator.
It was a singularly disappointing sight. The rod glowed not, and the reflector was the same as it was before the rod drew power. But the meters read and the generators moaned, and the pyrometers in the insulators mounted as the losses converted the small quantity of energy into heat. ”

“ But the ship was heading in at an angle, and the six million miles did not subtend the above arc. From Venus Equilateral, the position of the Empress of Kolain was more like two diameters of the Sun from Mars, slightly to the north and on the side away from Sol.
It may sound like a problem for the distant future, this pointing a radio beam at a planet, but it is no different than Galileo's attempts to see Jupiter through his Optik Glass. Of course, it has had refinements that have enabled men to make several hundred hours of exposure of a star on a photographic plate. ”

“ The sweep of her meteor-spotting equipment would pass a spot in micro-seconds at a hundred miles; at the distance from the Relay Station, the sweep of the beam would be curved like the stream of water from a swung hose and therefore useless for direction finding, even though the Station's excellent equipment could pick up the signal. And so fleeting would be the touch of the spotting beam that the best equipment ever known or made would have no time to react, thus marking the signal.
Theorists claim a thing nonexistent if it cannot be detected. The Empress of Kolain was invisible. ”

“ In all the known universe it moved against the forces of celestial mechanics because some intelligent mote that infested the surface of a planet once had a longing to visit the stars. In all the Solar System, most of the cosmic stuff was larger than it—but it alone defied the natural laws of space. ”

“ There is no icy street nor heat-waved plain. There is no mud. There is no summer, no winter, no spring, no fall. People ice skate and swim in adjacent rooms. There is no moon to enchant for the moon is millions of miles away. ”

“ Like all long-range cruises, the Empress of Kolain will heist herself slightly above the plane of the ecliptic to avoid the swarm of meteors that follow about the Sun in the same plane as the planets, lifting the highest at the point of greatest velocity."
"I get it," said Franks. "We get the best beam controller we have to keep the planet on the cross hairs. We apply a spiral cam to advance the beam along the orbit. Right?"
"Right." Don sketched a conical section on the tablecloth and added dimensions. ”

“ They're like light—only they ain't. We're going to use a glorified meteor detector. We'll control the spread and dispersion so that we cover a healthy hundred miles or so, which will give us sufficient power, I believe. If not, we'll have to tighten the beam. At any rate, spreading from a point source to an object of a given dimension, the waves rebound as though the object were a plane mirror. That will give us a dispersion of twice the dimension of the Empress of Kolain's planar projection through this axis. ”

“ All you need is a place to stand; a firm, immobile platform. The three-mile-long, one-mile-diameter mass of Venus Equilateral offered such a platform. It rotated smoothly, and upon its 'business' end a hardened and highly polished set of rails maintained projectors that were pointed at the planets. These were parabolic reflectors that focused ultra-high-frequency waves into tight beams which were hurled at Mars, Terra, and Venus for communication. ”

“ People were aware that their lives had been built upon going from one fixed place to another place, equally immobile. But in Interplanet travel one left a moving planet for another planet, moving at a different velocity. You found that the shortest distance was not a straight line but a space curve involving higher mathematics. ”

“ The time went by even slower then, because the cam must be lapped and polished to absolute perfection, not only of its own surface but to absolute concentricity to the shaft on which it turned.
But eventually the job was finished, and the men stood back, their eyes expectantly upon Don Channing and Walt Franks.
Don spoke to the man chosen to control the beam. "You can start any time now. Keep her knifed clean, if you can."
The man grinned at Channing. "If the devils that roam the void are with us we'll have no trouble. ”

“ The rest of the works will be ready, checked, and waiting for the ding-busted cam."
"Yeah," agreed Franks. "Then we'll have to get up there with our works and put the electricals on the mechanicals. My guess, Don, is a good, healthy twelve hours before we can begin to squirt our signal."
Twelve hours is not much in the life of a man; it is less in the life of a planet. The Terran standard of gravity is so small that it is expressed in feet per second. ”

“ Walt Franks smiled and stretched lazily. He made no move to the transmitter. "Don't go away," he cautioned them. "Better call up Joe and order beer and sandwiches for the boys in the back room. On you!"
"Make with the signals first," said Channing. "And lay off the potables until we finish this silly job." ”

“ Then Freddy winked at Jones. "He has a lousy fist!"
Freddy Thomas began to write.
"—course and head for Terra direct"—the beam faded for seconds—"Venusian fever and you will be quarantined.
"Calling CQ, calling CQ, calling CQ. Calling Empress of Kolain ... empowered us to contact you and convey ... message—You are requested to correct your course and head ... a plague of Venusian fever and you—Williams of Interplanet has empowered us ... the following message: 'You are requested to correct your ... head for Terra direct.' Calling CQ...." ”