George O. Smith

“ And Steve knew, too, that blowups were 'headline stuff' and no indictment of space travel. For every alarm that came whispering its troubles across the galaxy, a hundred-thousand people traversed the spacelanes from star to star without mishap. He often wondered how long he would be in this business before he began to shake his head at the chances mankind took. Or whether this sort of bias would take place in him. Certainly, a man living where the dangers are pointed out while the safeties are not noticed should begin to place too much importance on the obvious. ”

“ Lois looked at Steve with a quizzical glance. "But are you here because you want to work as a Guardian, or because you want to strike back at Wrightwood?"
"That's a question that I have asked myself and cannot answer honestly," he said.
Lois nodded quietly, thinking for a moment. "For too many years people have been denying the right of a son to cash in on his father's position," she said. "I see no reason why the reverse should not be true; we should not castigate a son who wants to do the opposite, insisting that he follow his father's position." ”

“ Steve swapped his ship around in space and headed for the spacial co-ordinates given in the alarm. In his mind's eye he could see the men tumbling out of their quarters and into the waiting Guardian ships and hurtling into the black.
Steve found the stricken ship as the squadron came into detector range and deployed. It was a superliner, one of Interstellar's finest. And as Steve came up to the Lunalight the life-craft broke the spacelocks and streaked out and away. ”

“ And until hatred came out, you were it. Hatred is a nasty thing, Steve; it is not a good thing to found a love or a life upon. So until you rise above your hatred, it's no go. Lose it or burn it or beat it—and then come back."
Hagen turned and left the office. He felt beaten. Where was he to start?
Hours later in his quarters, Steve was still pondering the same question. There were so many angles to follow. Steve did not like to think that maybe Morehouse was right, that, subconsciously, he had overlooked the faulty generator hoping that Wrightwood would lose by the accident. ”

“ The warp generator itself, in the bowels of the ship, broke into prime space first.
Matter, at a thousand times the velocity of light, dropping into a space where matter cannot exceed the velocity of light! ”

“ Once mankind got the upper hand over his foe, aided and augmented by beings from far across the galaxy devoted to the same program, the horror-fires were due to die swiftly. The flaming skies opened, spread, became isolated bits of intolerable light, and then winked out as sheer mass of numbers hit them from all sides with swamping volumes and rayed cones. Planers swept bits together into a larger flame and called for swampers to come and chill it. ”

“ For space itself is warped naturally in the core of a sun, and the energy glows through a subspace populated only by the phantom cores of prime space stars—and the few puny bits of sentient brain that warped space artificially.
Technicians breached the ship with their kits of tools to make repair as the Guardians broke up their pattern and began the trip back to their bases.
Steve felt gratified; it was the first generator saved by the Guardian tactics. And it was worth anything, any cost, any sacrifice to realize that mankind had some control even over mankind's failures. ”

“ But no man should try to do the impossible. Wrightwood tried to make a natural son out of an adopted son. It could not work; he cramped the natural personality of the son, forced the child to follow the footsteps of what Wrightwood thought a son of his would follow. So instead of following, the son revolted as soon as he could and went his own way in direct opposition. Two lives crudded up by the overwhelming drive of one man."
"You know a lot of him."
"I should," he said simply. "I'm the son."
Lois stopped short again. "You're—William Wrightwood, Junior?"
"I'm Steve Hagen," he snapped. ”

“ Halligan smiled. "Sure thing. And kid, don't let a lot of pompous pin-stripe-and-spats scare you. Treat 'em as you'd treat one of the Guardians; so long."
"What's up?" asked Steve.
"About once a year there's a stink over a blowup," said Edwards. "This is it."
"What kind of stink?"
"Charges of laxity, charges of wastefulness, and so forth."
"Laxity?" exclaimed Hagen.
"Interstellar often holds the quaint notion that a more alert outfit would be able to arrive at the scene of the blowup in time to stop it; after all, a spacecraft is worth a lot of moola, and they hate to lose it." ”

“ And like any man of intellect, Steve was used to thinking of any desirable woman in the light of a possible mate and judging her values and virtues accordingly. But until he knew more about her, Steve could formulate nothing more than the fact that she was desirable ”

“ The squadron retreated, forming its shape as it went, until firm pressor rays behind the out-flung planes felt for and caught the core of Sanaron's outermost planet. With planetary mass behind, the squadron held a parabolic shield in space, ploughing a hole in the racing field of exploding energy.
Fire and flame enveloped the planet, passed around it, held from it by the warp-planes of the Guardians. A ship crumpled and died; its place was refilled by a spare. Another ship ran out of power abruptly and it was replaced until it could drop into the planet and recharge. ”

“ Yet Steve was not totally unprepared when, inspecting one of the larger planetary installations of Interstellar, he was asked into the main office. It was not of Hagen's choosing, but it was better than to have Wrightwood land at Base One, where the wily magnate could by word, gesture, and incomplete statement indicate more than the truth before Steve's fellow Guardians. Such a program requires too vigorous a rebuttal; no reply or denial is adequate to remove the doubt that always lingers. ”

“ Nothing very grandiose, Steve. We've partly been forced and partly been convinced to revise our inspection procedure. Formerly, routine inspections have been carried out by men convalescing from injuries, or men released from active duty for one reason or another. It has been pointed out that such men—usually men of long experience, can hardly look upon such a routine job as anything but punishment, or a sop tossed to an invalid, or some other odious proposition, and they can hardly be expected to execute such a job without some bias. ”

“ Had he been less certain of himself, Steve would have been ruffled or possibly hurt by this sort of treatment. But Hagen was the kind of man who knew that he was not completely capable in such things—although he was quite capable in other things, which lent the whole proposition some compensation. It is the man who has no particular accomplishment of his own who cannot stand to be pushed around by people who have—or he with the overpowering inferiority complex who thinks he has no particular excellence. ”

“ But against that desire was too many years of viewing William Wrightwood with the awe and fear that a youth holds for an adult who has authority and power over him. As a youth, Steve had neither the physical ability nor the mental agility to cope with his foster father. Now that the tables had been turned by the years and Steve could handle William Wrightwood physically, Hagen understood that physical supremacy would hurt Wrightwood, but would bring only contempt from the man instead of surrender. ”

“ Where the tiniest speck of matter will have infinite mass when the speck reaches the velocity of light.
Where the time-field of the mass becomes zero as the velocity of light is reached.
It was like a stellar nova.
A searing intensity of energy trailed out behind the ship and left a streak a million miles long in a matter of microseconds. The ship itself collapsed over the trail of energy, and the whole exploded finally in a hundred-billion mile long course leaving the trailer of raw, unbound energy spread out for the span of a solar system. ”

“ Hagen felt a bit miffed, but he knew that he should not be hurt. This was his first alarm, his first job in the Guardians. Halligan had every reason to prefer a more seasoned man to a raw recruit when his life depended upon it.
Then, automatically, Hagen felt better. He was, at least, appointed to help the clean-up squad. They would patrol this space at random, watching for a trace of flaming vortex. If none appeared for two hours, they would watch for a total of six to be certain before going home. ”

“ Since the 'Life-Service' of the tube contains a couple of hundred percent of safety factor, why shouldn't some of that safety factor be employed to get the ship back home—maybe ten hours at the most—thus saving a lot of money?"
Steve began to see the beginnings of an attack on the Theory of Limits, against which there is only a dogmatic defence, ending in the reduction to an absurdity, and culminating in the posing of an unanswerable decision. It is sort of like the age-old argument as to where space begins and where being a planet ends.
Being a-space does not begin when one leaves the planet ”

“ In the silence the computer behind the alarm screen clicked code; none of them had to turn to look at the galactic sector. They knew it was a distant base responding to a distant alarm, two or three hundred light years across the galaxy.
Morehouse eyed Steve, then. "Hagen, we can't take chances on you."
"I'm being tossed out on a premise?"
"Why don't you resign?"
"Why split hairs?" asked Steve.
"A matter of prestige. You have always had an excellent record. Had you shown any blots, you'd have been cashiered during training school. ”

“ Steve snorted angrily. "Something in his psyche insists that the inability to father a son means that the man is less than a man."
"That's ridiculous!"
"Sure it's ridiculous. But it is that sort of ridiculous thing that has caused more war and suffering than perhaps any other single thing. William Wrightwood lacks a son. He has—like Napoleon—married and divorced three women because they could not give him a son. He married the fourth because she already had a son. ”

“ Occasionally the spacecraft would try to drop speed before the warp blew out, and almost make it; in which case the resulting eruption took all of the simple technique of a smouldering fire in a wastebasket. There were far more calls for danger than calls for blowup. Ships' engineers, mindful of the fact that the life of every man aboard depended upon the efficient working of the warp generator, knowing that the ship would blow and be lost if it failed, were inclined to call for aid and help at the slightest indication of instability; it kept the Guardians busy. ”

“ But no man can be honestly fair when his emotions are involved; he gave up, filled in the report statements in a mechanical manner, transcribing them from his notes as though he had no opinion other than the notes, and when he finished that, he felt at least that he had not been inclined to color the data.
Finishing the paper work, Steve headed for the mess hall and met Lois on the way. "Coffee?" he asked.
She nodded, looking at him carefully. "What's wrong, Steve?"
"Inspection is not a pleasant job." ”

“ Morehouse showed Steve the sheet of paper giving the Astarte a clean bill of health from the Guardian Patrol.
"Hagen, what kind of a game are you playing?"
"Game?"
"Hagen—or Wrightwood?"
Steve looked at Lois. Morehouse said: "She hasn't told us anything that we did not know, Wrightwood."
"Look," said Steve angrily, "my name's Hagen."
"How long have you had it?" asked Morehouse.
"All my life. I answer to it."
"We know that. Lois called at you half way across the campus and you turned; a man taking an assumed name doesn't always react to an unexpected use of it." ”

“ All we can do is to stand up for our own ideals. Just tell 'em what you saw, and what you did; and if you don't let a few facts interfere with a good story, remember that they're ready to discount half of what you say anyway. So—here's the inevitable."
Hagen entered the office quietly, nodded at Commissioner Morehouse, smiled at Lois, and eyed Howard Forrest with mild hostility. Forrest, the representative of Interstellar, returned his hostility with a stony-cold glance. ”

“ The only common sense you lack, Steve, is the sense that should tell you that running Interstellar is more self-satisfying than being commissioner of the Guardians. But look. Let's for the moment admit that a ship—called X—comes into Tandrel and as it arrives the time-meters on the thyratrons say that their safe life is up. ”

“ Hagen had no intention of supporting any form of governmental control of everything. He believed in the desirability of self-sufficiency and free enterprise, but he also felt that his stepfather had taken this freedom as far in one direction as downright dictatorship would lead it in the other direction.
Forrest had waved away the latter and had fastened upon Steve's support of free enterprise, pointing out that a group of trained vortex-fighters with a personal interest in their job would be more inclined to do the job more thoroughly. ”

“ But I'll take you on for a round or two if you like."
"I'd like," nodded Steve. "And thanks."
"No thanks necessary," said Halligan. "Just repayment; that was a fast job of wiping out that streamer that caught me."
"I didn't think—"
Halligan laughed. "Of course," he said cheerfully, "what I'm really after is for you to get experience enough to prevent it. Now, you see, after a year or so of vortex-fighting, you'll develop some sort of second-sight or other, and the next guy that runs in the way of a streamer, you'll know what to do about it before the poor bird gets clipped. ”

“ I'll bet a hat I can get farther along than either you or he can about finding the truth about the Astarte." Wrightwood smiled. "Then you can take him off that job."
"Maybe," smiled Morehouse. "But remember that I'm giving the orders. I can also rescind them—providing they need rescinding."
"Well?"
"Do they need rescinding?" asked Morehouse. "Does Steve still hate you?"
"No man can really hate another man that he's just succeeded over," said Wrightwood. "Watch!" Wrightwood turned and called: "Hey! Steve!"
Steve Hagen turned away from Lois Morehouse. "Yes, dad?" he replied. ”

“ This implied that Forrest, Wrightwood, and Interstellar had some plan in mind. Theirs was more than getting Steve Hagen back into the fold; that might have been accomplished by several means. Certainly Wrightwood and Interstellar had enough of power and money to place a very deep curse on any man who befriended Steve. He would be forced back from sheer want, from sheer inability to fight an organization so strong that it would not permit any other outfit to hire him. ”

“ Just last week in one of your ships.
"Sure," sneered Steve, "you can get another couple of hundred operating hours out of a tube by running the filament hotter than normal when it starts to get weak. But you're running a spaceline, not a spot-welder; when one of them blows, it's a job for the mop-up squad. Someone's cutting corners, saving a hundred bucks worth of tubes for a couple of weeks doesn't pay for lost lives and—"
"I'm aware of the safety factors," said Wrightwood angrily. ”