George O. Smith

“ He felt the heat leap high and knew that the tender had slowed with the same sort of deceleration as a bullet hitting a patch of thin wool. He did not lurch in the ship for he, himself, had the same Einstein Mass effect. He felt a hot-sweat fever fill him as the excess mass reconverted into energy.
He shook it off, but knew that eventually he would pay for that sudden fever, with its biological effects. Then the long-range search radar produced a distant response and Ted Wilson put everything out of his mind except the problem of matching velocities with the free-flying lifeship. ”

“ If a volume of space is removed from the structure of space—this is more gibberish, Andrews, believe me—then there must be an instantaneous flow of space back to fill the gap. Now, for God's sake don't ask me why empty space has got to flow into a place where some empty space has been removed. I've always been taught that nothing from nothing leaves nothing. Maybe nothing from nothing leaves less nothing than before, but that sounds as silly as the rest of the whole fool argument. At any rate, every time a warp-generator collapses, the same twist occurs in the structure of space. ”

“ Wilson shrugged. "It seems to me you're still calling the cards."
"We've called our last card, Commodore Wilson. From here on, as I said, what happens in the future is up to you, and yours. Resent us, and progress will stop. Join us as equals, and we can work together as we spread from star to star—and I daresay there are enough stellar systems to keep us from stepping on one another's toes." Viggon Sarri smiled at his two lieutenants. "We have much to learn from one another, Wilson. We can teach you patience and logic, and from you we can learn tenacity and determination." ”

“ It has been my lifework to expand the Bradian culture, one way and another, across the galaxy. When we finish with this problem here, another world—in this case another series of colonized worlds—will enter one of the forms of economic relationships with Brade. Whether we blast in and smash them, or ooze in and coerce them quietly; take them over, or hail them as an ally."
"Ally?" roared Regin Naylo scornfully. "This bunch of primitives who haven't even got an infrawave detector?"
"Ally?" snarled Faren Twill disgustedly. "This people who cannot protect their spacecraft from warp failure?" ”

“ She was holding fast to a blind hope, the same hope to which many a shipwrecked and space-wrecked victim has clung when the searching party passes at a distance and goes on, and the mind keeps crying that surely someone will turn and see. And screams become hoarse because all reason and logic have fled, and there is no way for the mind to realize that no voice could be heard across the thunder of waves or across the gulf of space. ”

“ He said, "The original Einstein equation of mass and energy shows that as the speed of light is reached, the mass reaches infinite mass. This is an obvious impossibility, since even the total mass of the Universe is not an infinite mass. So when a body traveling at faster-than-light is hurled into the real Universe by the collapse of the warp-generator, for the barest instant it is actually traveling beyond light. This causes it to assume some unknown factor of mass that no physicist has been able to theorize yet, but must be the impossible infinity-plus. ”

“ On the infrawave they heard the call of "Three minutes!" then "Two!" and finally the announcement, "You are now all debarked and are in places of safety. The distress call has been sent constantly from the moment of danger. Sit tight and make no foolish moves until help comes. Do not look to the rear, as the explosion of a collapsed field generator is brilliant enough to sear the eyes—"
The voice stopped abruptly as there came a wave of sheer heat. The ports on the side of the lifeship flared blue-white, and the spacecraft bucked as though it were being driven into a heavy gas cloud. ”

“ Manning nodded, then added to Wilson, "The answer to that, Commodore, is that the position of the rescued lifeship has no bearing on the lost one. Just as the turn of heads in a toss has any effect upon the turn of the next toss." ”

“ Deep space or hard planet, work must go on. I did not get where I am by goofing off, Pilot Norton."
Jock Norton grinned. "All work and no play, you know."
"All play and no work is worse."
"It's more fun," said Jock, with a feeling that he was coming off second-best in this fool argument. "Look," he said, "everybody relaxes in deep space. It's customary. It's holiday."
"It's damn foolish." Andrews turned to Alice. "Miss Hemingway, what do you think?"
"I'm half-inclined to agree with you, Mr. Andrews. But you must know I'm thrilled to be a-space. I've never been off Earth before." ”

“ Pilot Jock Norton shrugged. "We're alive."
"But why can't we pack on some power and get going somewhere?"
"Because this is a lifeship and not an interstellar spacecraft. I told you that before. D'ye expect a lifeship to be as big as the carrier?"
"Don't be an imbecile."
Norton towered over Andrews. "Don't be too bright, Andrews. Ships don't founder once in a green-striped moon. The function of a lifeship is to protect the customers until help can arrive. Our storage bank held enough quick-power to counteract the speed of the lifeship, with a safety factor. ”

“ Alice had been filled with anticipation, wanting to share her excitement with him, but unable to share what was a brand-new experience to her of going to space with a man who had been a-spacing for years. A man who knew all too well how space could be boring, lonely, and incredibly monotonous. ”

“ As Commodore Theodore Wilson eyed the infrawave detector presentation on the dome of the detector ship, he groaned. The presentation of targets was stronger now. At the apex of the dome was the lifeship, its response waxing and waning, but always strong enough to stay visible even at its lowest ebb. ”

“ That picture was even more distasteful, but it was replaced by another in which Charles Andrews was making the gesture. Where Norton had youth and masculine appeal, Andrews had the suave manner and the smooth experience of his years. Some fast talk and a few vague promises, to say nothing of some well-calculated suggestions, and Alice would—
Wilson tried to shut that notion out of his mind, but it went on and on and on. ”

“ But you, Manning, are supposed to be a computer, capable of plowing with the Law of Probabilities which, my math prof once told me, should include the probability that human beings will make errors and be generally sloppy. You set up the search grid and proposed the search pattern with what you called a factor of overlap-safety."
Wilson turned on Hugh Weston. "And you are supposed to have a bunch of the finest astrogators in the Universe! You and your collection of schoolboys, confidently walking behind the stereo and drawing pinpoints and hairlines to show where we've been! ”

“ Wilson felt something touch him on the arm. He turned. A tech-operator standing there had a bewildered look on his face.
"Yes?" said Wilson.
"I'm puzzled, Commodore. Suppose we don't find them in a long time. Won't that far grid have to be pushed back?"
"No," Wilson explained wearily. "The function of a lifeship is to get its occupants down below the velocity of light and then coast. Since that grid represents a total distance of about ten light years, they'd have to be floating for ten years at the velocity of light to make it. ”

“ But you've got to remember, Wilson, that we are running the Space Service for the public weal, not for the benefit of the spacemen. A parent does not bring up a child knowing only the pleasant things of life. A balanced program of work and play is essential. I know that the Centaurian run is no picnic, but it is a fine training for spacemen. Now, that'll be all. I'm not criticizing you Wilson. I recall doing similar things myself years ago. It does draw a crew closer to their commander when he gives them consideration. ”

“ You are to take your squadron out to Cube X-Z-Fifty-nineteen, District Forty-seven. You'll have to comb it inch by inch."
"I'll comb it millimeter by millimeter," asserted Wilson. "Miss Hemingway was on that spacer."
"Don't do anything foolish," warned the space admiral. "Just remember that you're a flight commodore and not a full squadron commander yet. You have your orders."
"I have. And I'll bring them back. Both lifeship loads."
"Then get going. Remember that every hour decreases their chances of a safe rescue. Luck, Wilson. Spaceman's luck!" ”

“ Some day in the distant future space would be solid-gridded with infrawave navigation signals. Then the space coordinates of any spacecraft could be found to a fine degree of precision. But now all that Wilson and his nav-techs could do was to keep sighting the fixed stars, and from them compute their position.
This sort of space navigation was good enough to keep a ship on course, but far from precise enough to pinprick a true position. But, after all, a crude positioning in the middle of interstellar space is good enough. One literally has cubic light years to float around in. ”

“ The passion that comes with the shadow of death is only the instinct of racial preservation, and it mates men and women unsuited to one another during subsequent peace and quiet.
Above all, he did not want Alice to emerge from this moment of personal danger morally bound to some unsuitable mate because of a child conceived under the shadow of the sword!
Hourly, after the coded signals came in, Ted Wilson took the microphone himself and called out into space in the infrawave. He called messages of hope, and explained how many spacecraft were scouring the deep black void. ”

“ Norton shook his head. "A lifeship is aimed at providing the maximum protection for a maximum number of people, under a minimum of luxury. Stop whining. We're still alive, I keep telling you."
"At," sneered Andrews, "a hundred bucks an hour."
"Are you going to argue, or do you want to try some vigor for that bad temper of yours?"
"We've got some power left over from the bank," suggested Andrews. "Let's use that."
"Not on your life. That's reserve. Sooner or later we're going to use it for radio pulses."
"Radio pulses?"
"For fine control direction-finding and locating." ”

“ Suggestions were always cropping up that the signal be entirely automatic, clock-timed. These ideas were claimed to be impractical since a timed, automatic signal only meant that the lifeship itself was still lost in space, and not that any aboard it were alive.
A full, two-way infrawave system would have been the answer; if a full two-way system could have been installed in a lifeship, still leaving room in the little space can for things essential to the sustenance of human life. ”

“ Wilson, you're out there with a crew of our top-flight infrawave engineers, physicists, and theorists, along with about eight billion dollars' worth of experimental gear. You're flying that responsibility into the teeth of an enemy. ”

“ Everywhere Hatch saw the ugly snouts of projectors lifting and turning in their turrets.
He broke out in a cold sweat. Hatch was as frightened a man as ever existed.
He was a commander in the Space Force, a body trained for combat. But the Space Force, for obvious reasons, was not trained in combat. Aside from having to contend with an attempt at space piracy, some more frequent attempts at barratry, theft, and other forms of skullduggery, and very frequent smuggling, the Space Force was not armed against opposition.
They had their arms, and their ships were efficient. ”

“ The tremolo of an organ filled the spacecraft—vibrant, thrilling, brilliant music rising over the throb, throb, throb of heavy bass, beating time just fast enough to keep feet moving briskly, but nowhere fast enough to cause panic or fumbled steps. ”

“ For no two waves are ever the same exactly, and there is always the chance of a whitecap or a surfacing fish. The motion of the waves is incessant, at some times as soothing to the nerves as a lullaby. ”

“ If you mow it down, remove the seeds, sow it with salt and kill the field, you have a useless plot of land, a worthless territory. Then some day up comes weed and briar—which then must be removed root and branch before the land is plantable again. Just remember, we are after a profitable exchange of economy, not another stellar system to list as a conquest for the sake of history our children will read. ”

“ He nodded solemnly. "Every hour means they must be coming closer and closer. Every lonely hour means that it can't be many more, because they've covered all the places where we weren't. Follow me, Alice?" ”

“ Slowly, as the squadron flew, its component spacecraft diverged in a narrow cone so that the volume of space to be covered would fall within the scope of the detection equipment aboard each ship. Computers flicked complex functions in variables of the laws of probability, and came up with a long series of "and-or-if" results.
Toby Manning, Master Computer for the squadron, sympathized when Wilson showed the latest sheaf.
Wilson grunted, "This is no damn good at all. It sort of says that the lifeships will be wherever we find them." ”

“ Have you any idea of how many square light years we have to comb?"
"Cubic light years, Commodore Wilson."
"Cubic. So I'm sloppy in my speech, too? Look, Manning, all we really want from you is the overall conic volume in which the lifeships must lie. You know the course of Flight Seventy-nine. You know the standard take-off velocity of a lifeship. The forward motion plus the sidewise, escape velocity, produces a vector angle which falls in the volume of a cone because we don't know which escape angle they may have used. We can pinpoint the place of escape fairly close." ”

“ Alice also had blind faith in her lover. He could not fail; he would not permit himself to fail. She would not face the possibility that though Ted Wilson would do his best, that his fine crew, and the equally fine crews of the other commanders would do their best, that best was not enough.
So far, no one had mentioned the fact that Charles Andrews had wrecked their code transmitter. One does not kick a dog for ignorance, nor lay blame for technical incompetence upon a financier. ”

“ Andrews nor I had ever dreamed of, let alone understood. You know your way around spacecraft, know a lot of the basic sciences. Not that you'd ever be a scientist, but you're bright enough to grasp the idea and make it work. But what do you do about it? You jockey a spacer, instead of digging in and making it pay off. You look for the easy way out instead of working for it." Alice looked up at him sharply to see how he was taking it, and then she added, "You have the only brain present that has the mental right to stand up and direct operations. ”