George O. Smith

“ So there's Black Morgan. Since he could not exist in fact, he did exist in the interpretation of incomplete data. Any man can fudge a detector by supplying false echoes from a delayed transponder. Anybody can project a super image of a spacecraft by iconocinematography. And a spacesuit is capable of considerable motion of its own, plus the ability to cling like a leech to the hull of a ship under acceleration. ”

“ Then Jeffries reread his statements. They added up to one thing: Black Morgan did not exist! Black Morgan was the Impossible Pirate.
So, he thought, if Morgan does not exist, then he is a fantasy, a myth. The only evidence that is not strictly negative is the fact that an armed man enters the spacecraft in a standard spacesuit and holds up the passengers.
Instruments do not lie, but it is possible to fudge up a detector. ”

“ Black Morgan owned a large spacecraft of marked design. No spacecraft construction company had made it, and the construction of spacecraft is not a small project. This eliminates the possibility of small-yard construction and definitely removes the possibility of self-construction. Men have made boats in their basements, and automobiles in their attics, but no man has ever built a battleship or a spacecraft without owning a huge construction company. ”

“ He had been set to catch a pirate, and the pirate had been uncatchable. Jeffries had even tried the trick of putting himself in the pirate's place, hoping to follow a ship as Black Morgan had, and thus gain some idea of how it could be done. That, too, had failed.
Everywhere was negative evidence. Rated "Inconclusive" by all men who studied evidence as a means of extracting fact. Ex-Lieutenant Jeffries was no scientist: he was a policeman. He worked with hard facts always, and every case had its hidden clues of concrete fact. ”

“ You can take five sitting down, and about eight lying on a pressure mattress, and I've heard of men taking fifteen while immersed in a pressure-pack that equals the specific gravity of the human body. But taking even 5-Gs for any length of time will kill. Even three is a strain for men who have been raised under one."
"Yes?" prompted Jeffries.
"It's the timing that would stop him," said Jones. "You can't possibly lie await in space until we come into detector range because detector range is about a million miles. ”

“ He is always supposed to. The detector's repetition-rate is about one every ten seconds, permitting ranges up to a million miles. The close-in detector runs one per second, and Black Morgan comes in from maximum range to close-in range between pulses. He hits once or twice on the close-in range—all of which gives definite evidence that he exceeds the speed of light. And he is instantly maneuverable! So he comes up behind you at a thousand times your velocity and slows down to match you in microseconds. ”

“ You were sent forth to do a job. Anything you wanted we'd furnish. But you went out with a brass band and a challenge, and you were taken up and beaten. Not only that, but we lost a small fortune in radiosodium."
"I'd hoped to—"
"Look, Jeffries, a mistake is a mistake. You laid a trap, and you also got some sort of evidence, I presume. That's fine. But you also laid yourself wide open to criticism. It's the people who are howling—the people and the officials of the space lines."
"But I—"
"You didn't catch Black Morgan," grunted Edwards sourly. "And what do you know about him?" ”