George O. Smith

“ In the inconceivable short time between the failure and the device that corrected failure, the Solar Queen hit a meteor head on.
It is of such coincidences that great tragedies and great victories are born.
The meteor, a small one as cosmic objects go, passed in through the broad observation dome at the top of the ship. Unhampered, it zipped through the central well of the Solar Queen and passed out through the pilot's greenhouse at the bottom of the ship. Its speed was nothing worth noting; a scant twenty miles per second almost sunward. ”

“ Make it back forty-four hours at 6-G, turnover and continue. By that time we'll all be in so close that we can make any planet at will—preferably you to Terra and we'll head for Venus Equilateral. You'll come aboard us? No need for you to go with the rest."
"I can have the scooter sent out," said Channing. "How's Arden?"
"I'm fine, you big runabout. Wait until I get you!"
"Why Arden, I thought you might be glad to see me."
"Glad to see you?"
"But Arden—"
"Don't you 'But Arden' me, you big gadabout. Glad to see you? Boy, any man that makes me chase him all over the Solar System! You just wait. ”

“ But a spaceship's course is fierce. We're wobbling a few milliseconds here and a few there, and by the time you use that arc to swing a line of a hundred million miles, you're squirting quite a bit of sky. We're tinkering with it right now, but so far we have come up with nothing. Ah, well, since the human race got along without electric lights for a few million years, we can afford to tinker with an idea for a few months. Nobody is losing lives or sleep because we can't talk to the boys back home."
"We've been hopping from planet to planet for quite a number of years too," said the steward. ”

“ ARDEN
"She will, too," grinned Don. "Well, I'd like to toss her one back, but she's got me there. I'll just fortify myself at the bar and think up a few choice ones for when we hit Mojave."
"Some day you'll be able to answer those," promised the steward. "Mind telling me why it's so tough?"
"Not at all," smiled Channing. "The problem is about the same as encountered by the old-time cowboy. It's a lot easier to hit a man on a moving horse from a nice, solid rock than it is to hit a man on a nice, solid rock from a moving horse. Venus Equilateral is quite solid as things go. ”

“ There are a number dead, worse luck, but we can't do a thing about them. We can hold on for a week as far as food and water goes. Everyone is now interested in the manner of our rescue rather than worrying about it." He turned to Channing. "The words Channing and Venus Equilateral have wonderful healing powers," he said. "They all think your gang are part magician and part sorcerer." ”

“ You're Channing and were all doped up with gravanol and adhesive. Thank yourself a god for that, too. I'm going to need both of my nurses and we'll all need you."
"Hope I can do some good," said Don.
"You'd better. Or any good I can do will be wasted. Better start right now. Here," the doctor produced a set of keys, "these will unlock anything in the ship but the purser's safe. You'll need 'em. Now get along and do something and leave the body-mending to me. Scram!"
"Can you make out all right?"
"As best I can. But you're needed to get us help. If you can't, no man in the Solar System can. ”

“ The only man who remained aware of himself aboard the Solar Queen was the man who was filled with gravanol and adhesive tape. No other person expected to be hammered down by high acceleration. Only Channing, who was planning to leave Terra in his own little scooter, was prepared to withstand high G. He, with his characteristic hate of doing anything slowly, was ready to make the Terra to Venus Equilateral passage at 5- or 6-G.
It might as well have caught him, too. ”

“ I've put myself in Walt's place—and I know that Walt would do. So—if Walt didn't think of it, Arden would—I can assume that they are aware of us, have received our signals, and are, therefore, coming along as fast as they can. They'll come zipping out here at from five- to seven-G to what they think is halfway and then decelerate again to a sane velocity. We won't catch sight of them for sixty or seventy hours, and when we do, they'll be going so fast that it will take another twenty hours worth of manipulation to match their speed with ours. ”

“ About all we can do is replace the lighting system and hang the dead cathodes in again. They'll be all right to take us out of this cockeyed skew-curve and probably will last long enough to keep a half-G floor under us for tinkering, for maybe forty or fifty hours. Assistant Pilot Darlange will have to learn how to run a ship by the seat of his pants—as far as I can guess there isn't even a splinter of glass left in the pilot room—so he'll have to correct this flight by feel and by using a haywire panel. ”

“ By the time that the Solar Queen should have been dropping out of the sky at Mojave Spaceport, the ship would be one hundred and ninety million miles beyond Terra and flirting with the imaginary line that marked the orbit of Mars.
That would be in seventeen hours.
Weightless, Channing pursued a crazy course in the salon of the spinning ship. He ached all over from the pressure, but the gravanol had kept his head clear and the adhesive tape had kept his body intact. ”

“ Thirty hours after the Relay Girl left the Station, Walt and Franklen held a council of war, in which Charley Bren was the prime factor.
"We've come about two hundred million miles, and our present velocity is something like four thousand miles per second," said Walt. "We're going out towards Mars on a slightly-off radial course, to the North of the ecliptic. That means we're a little over a quarter of a billion miles from Sol, or about to hit the Asteroid Belt. Thinking it over a little, I think we should continue our acceleration for another thirty hours. ”

“ We'll tap in to the driver-tube supply and take off voltages to suit us. Might use a tube at that, but the conversion to make an honest electron gun out of it would disrupt our power, and then it would be impossible to make a driver out of it again without recourse to a machine shop."
"How are you going to make electrodes?"
"We'll use the annular gratings that run around the central well at each level," said Channing. "We'll have a crew of men cut 'em free and insulate the resulting rings with something. Got anything?" ”

“ Johannson, have one of your men run around and remove all lights that aren't absolutely necessary. He can kill about three quarters of them, I'm certain. That'll save us a few kilowatt hours," said Channing. "And another thing. I'm about to drop the power of our electron gun and run it continuously. If the boys are anywhere in the neighborhood, they'll be needing the continuous disturbance for direction finding. I'd say in another five hours that we should start continuous radiation." ”

“ You're in the position of a man who can not afford to help in succoring the wounded and dying. It'll be tough, but there it is. Get cutting. And for Heaven's sake, get us two things: Light and a floor. I couldn't do more than slap on tape whilst floating in air. See you later, Channing, and good luck. ”

“ You get the stale cathodes from the supply hold and hang 'em back in the tubes.
"Channing, until we get a stable place, you couldn't do a thing about trying to get help, so I suggest that you pitch in with Bennington, there, and help unscramble the wiring. You're a circuit man, and though power-line stuff is not your forte, you'll find that running a lighting circuit is a lot easier than neutralizing a microwave transmitter. Once we get light, you can help us haywire a control panel. ”

“ That's my job."
"O.K.," said Channing, "But it's going to be a long wait."
"We can afford it."
"I hope we're not complicating the job of finding us by this quartering deceleration," said Johannson.
"We're not. We're making a sort of vector from our course, but the deviation is very small. As long as the fellows follow our radiation, we'll be found," Channing said with a smile. "The thing that is tough is the fact that all the floors seem to lean over."
"Not much, though."
"They wouldn't lean at all if we were running with the whole set of equipment," said Darlange. ”

“ We can bring 'em down to a place where the velocity-deceleration vectors are perpendicular to the floor upon which we stand while our ship is sluing. We've got a lot of time on our hands, and I, for one, feel a lot happier when I'm doing something. ”

“ He closed the air door and the valve, and then opened the valve that led from the tube to outer space. The tube evacuated and Hadley spoke once more to the pilot room.
"Hadley to Greenland: Tube 4 ready."
"Check."
The operation was repeated on Tube 2, and then Pilot Greenland said: "Fade-back beginning. Power diminishing on 1 and 3, increasing on 2 and 4. Power equalized, acceleration 2-G as before. Deviation from norm: two-tenths-G."
Hadley grinned at the crew. "You'd think that Greenland did all that himself, the way he talks. If it weren't for autopilots, we'd have been all over the sky." ”

“ How are we going to fix 'em on a reflected wave when they're more powerful on their own hook? The whole plate is glaring white. And, incidentally, so is the celestial globe in the meteor-spotter. I've had the threshold cut to the devil on that or we'd never be able to hold this course. Anything like a meteor that comes in our way now will not register until we're right on top of it and—"
The Relay Girl lurched sickeningly. ”

“ At 6-G, you'll cover another hundred and fifty million miles before you stop. Take it twenty-two hours at 6-G—and then another twenty-two at 6. That should put you right back here but going the other way at the same velocity. But wait, you've been coasting. Mark off that last twenty-two hours and make it like this: You'll be one thousand million miles from Sol when you come to a stop at the end of the first twenty-two hours at 6-G. That hangs you out beyond the orbit of Saturn by a couple of hundred million. ”

“ Some crew of wild men. Can't go off on a fishing trip without having my bunch chasing all over the Solar System."
"What's wrong with a little sightseeing tour? We didn't mean any harm. And speaking of harm, how are you and the rest of that bunch getting along?"
"We're O.K. What do you plan after we finally get close enough together to throw stones across?"
"We've got a whole hold full of spare batteries and a double set of replacement cathodes. There is a shipload of gravanol aboard, too. You'll need that and so will we. ”

“ Darlange called for everyone in the ship to hold himself down, and then he tied his belt to the frame in front of the haywired panel. He opened the power on drivers 1 and 2, and the ship's floor surged ever so little.
"How're you going to know?" asked Hadley.
"I've got one eye on the gyro-compass," said Darlange. "When it stops turning, we're going straight. Then all we have to do is to set our bottom end along the line of flight and pack on the decel. Might as well do it that way since every MPS we can lose is to our advantage."
He snapped switches that added power to Driver 3. ”

“ Channing lit a cigarette, and puffed deeply. "Where do we stand?"
"Thirty hours out," answered the steward. "About ready for turnover. I imagine that the poor engineer's gang is changing cathodes about now."
"It's a long drag," said Channing. He addressed himself to his glass and began to think of a suitable answer for his wife's latest thrust.
Bill Hadley, of the power engineer's gang, spoke to the pilot's greenhouse below the ship. "Hadley to pilot room: Cathodes 1 and 3 ready."
"Pilot Greenland to Engineer Hadley: Power fade-over from even to odd now under way. Tubes 2 and 4 now dead ”

“ I'd say it was out beyond Terra by fifty million miles at least."
"Close enough. We'll have to track 'em down like a radio-equipped bloodhound. Charley, come along and run that mechanico-electro-monstrosity of yours. Gene, you can come along and run the radio finder. Oh yes, you, Jimmy, may continue to squint through that eyepiece of yours—but on the Relay Girl. We need a good, first-class squinter, and you should have an opportunity to help."
Jimmy laughed shortly. "The only guy on the Station that didn't get an indication was me. ”

“ Channing didn't know we'd be looking for him, or he'd probably light a flare, too. Cheer up, Jimmy, after all this crude, electrical rigamarole is finished, and we gotta get right down to the last millimeter, it's the guy with the eye that polishes up the job. You'll have your turn. ”

“ We'd get along for the first umpty-gillion electrons, and then all the soup we could pack on would be equalized by the positive charge on the ship and we couldn't shoot out any more until we got bombarded by the sun—and that bombardment is nothing to write home about as goes quantity. ”

“ They know we're in the grease. We know that if they can collect us, they'll be on their way. I'm going to send out for a half-hour, and then resort to a five-minute transmission every fifteen minutes. ”