George O. Smith

“ Sandra looked Theodi in the eye and said in a cold voice:
"Then go on out and die with the rest of your kind. What good will your machinery do you if you're all dead?"
"This is a democracy, Sandrake. We cannot just take the machinery and the equipment of others—even to save ourselves."
"How's your red tape factory?" she asked with a smile.
"Meaning?"
"Either you get those power plants or die. I don't care if you steal them, buy them, or borrow them. But get them—and quick."
"But there is a chance to save Telfu," suggested Orfall.
"Sensible fellow," smiled Sandra. ”

“ Think, Thuni, the light that started from our star is only one ninth of the distance on the way, and Thani has been there and back."
"I know, but this power—"
"What's power?" laughed Hammond. "We've plenty of power."
"But we have not. Realize that the entire city of Indilee is in darkness because of my desire to speak."
"So what?" asked Hammond. "You have the chance, have you not?"
"But I am not Sandrake, who would think nothing of expending the entire power-availability of a whole city just to talk."
"Sandra is pretty much a human being in spite of her faults," said Hammond. ”

“ Sandra looked out of the window at the graying sky above. Carefully and hopefully she scanned it but she was not surprised that nothing was there for her to see. The idea of doing away with a hundred-mile satellite was too much, even for McBride, Hammond, and the rest of their gang. A hundred miles of celestial body was not large as celestial bodies go, but against man's futile efforts it was simply vast.
In all of the man-made works on Terra, Pluto, Venus, Mars, and Luna, considerably less than the volume of a hundred-mile sphere had been moved. ”

“ They're the typical genius-type. Whether they rate as genius I wouldn't know, but they're that kind of people. Give them a situation, and from somewhere in their memory they can bring forth the darnedest things which fit in like jigsaw pieces to complete the whole picture."
"I hope they continue," said Theodi. "Feel up to coming along?"
"Sure."
"Good. We need you."
"Who, me?" asked Sandra.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you are alien. You are impartially alien. Though you have friends on Telfu, they are few, and in your secret mind you class us all as 'Telfan' and forget about sub-classifications. ”

“ Yet there are things in chemistry that can not be solved without an advanced knowledge in the gravitic spectrum that Terra has exploited. Perhaps it was the lack of a channel in the gravitic that drove us into higher chemical development; but we are planet-locked until your people return to remove the block."
"Go on," said Sandra impatiently. "I gather that you are in trouble of some sort?"
"We are, indeed. A plague of ... ah, there is no word for it in Terran"—he switched to Telfan, "Andryorelitis," and back again to Terran—"which is an air-borne disease of the virus type. ”

“ The city is made of slinking men, ashamed women, and scared children. The newspaper headlines scream of the plague, but none will buy, for they fear inoculation on the part of the newsboy. They fight and fear one another, and the plague has its way, spreading across the city like the falling of night and missing none. ”

“ The resources of a planet are unmeasurable."
"Perhaps so," said Theodi. "But remember that our power, like Terra's power, is spread out all over the face. The transmission of power such as you will require would be impossible because the line losses will be greater than the power input. It might be possible to connect the networks together and draw the entire power output of Telfu into one district, but line losses would prohibit its operation." ”

“ Men go on in their way, meeting other men and inoculating them, passing the germ of death to whomever the black visitor may have missed on his visit. Men take it to their families and spread it from hand to hand, from lip to lip, from mother to babe to grandparent and beyond. The unborn is as cursed as the almost-dead, for it is within their bodies. ”

“ Give me your useless power plants and I'll see that you get gravitic machinery to replace them."
"Um-m-m."
"Look, Theodi, you're used to thinking in Telfan terms—which means no gravitics. Think in Terran terms. You are no longer alone in the universe. You are in contact with a race that has gravitic power."
"Well—"
Sandra smiled. "Take it or leave it—and die," she told him. "Think of it. Andryorelitis comes like a thief in the night, giving no warning. Like the black wings of a gigantic, clutching bat, silent and ominous and unseen it comes and spreads its horde of hell on the city. ”

“ That in itself is valuable."
"Another item of interest," said Theodi, "is the fact that the books left us by the Haywire Queen are ponderous and often obscure; they assume that we have a basic knowledge which we have not. You have been able to direct us to the proper place in them to find the proper answer to many of our questions."
"I see," said Sandra. All too seldom had anyone told her she was valuable and interesting. It had been more likely a statement of her headstrong nature, her utter uselessness, and her nuisance value.
"As you know, we of Telfu are slightly ahead of you in chemistry. ”

“ We are not going to make a planet livable—we are going to destroy it! Honestly, it is but a satellite, but the problem is only made more difficult since it is harder to hit with a stellar beam. But enough of that, we've got the calculations necessary.
"We intend to burn Soaky. Our trick, then, is to set up the maximum possible heat-energy field around or on Soaky. Therefore a lens-system such as the Plutonian Lens is out of the question. Far better is a duplex system. We shall, therefore, send twelve of our ships to a point in space less than thirty million miles from Sirius. ”

“ Vulcan, the frustrated volcano, felt the downward-moving footsteps of the seven who were studying the embryonic crater that was beginning to show signs of life under the heat of Pluto's synthetic sun; the men left eagerly to be on their way to Sirius, but they all prayed that the cold of Pluto's interior would remain cold until they returned.
The Hall of the Mountain King rang to their laughter as they returned to their hotel accommodations near Hellsport, and then again was silent as they went to Hellsport and made the last finishing touches on their equipment. ”

“ No inoculation has been discovered, and no immunity zone can be established. Telfu is in danger of halving the population."
"Bad, huh?"
"It is terrible. It strikes unknown. Its incubation period is several days, and then the victim gets the first symptoms. Nine days later, the victim is dead. Unfortunately, the victim is a carrier of andryorelitis during the incubation period, and therefore isolation is impossible."
"Sounds like real trouble to me," said Sandra. "Will examination reveal it?"
"Of course," answered Orfall. "But what planet can examine the population daily?" ”

“ Why should planets disappear?
Planets were about as permanent as—but they must still remain, it was their light that was gone! Sandra shouted. McBride! The lens. In her mind she saw the scaled layout; Sirius, Telfu, the other planets, and Soaky, the satellite that was oh, so close to Telfu. Place two biconvex lenses, one near Sirius and one near Telfu—and any light from Sirius that could normally reach Telfu—and the planets in line from Sirius—would be cut off by the lens, refracted into the energy beam that would ultimately be focused on Soaky. ”

“ Momentum will carry me through."
"And if one machine goes, under that load, the entire district will go completely dead."
"Oh no," said Sandra. "The closer and most powerful one will not be used. That one will be used to talk to the boys when they arrive. They'll only have a distress signal, and the details must be held until they come investigating. They can't land, and so we'll have to tell 'em the story while they're in space. We'll need that power."
"Small consolation. Then Indilee will be an oasis of power in a radius of powerless country." ”

“ Might be more there, hey?"
"Yeah, but the life of Telfu depends upon our getting rid of Soaky."
Thani, who heard the latter part of the discussion, came over and looked at the uncut stone in wonder. "You will want to inspect our satellite?" she asked Hammond.
"I'd like to," he said. "But we have no time. While we've never synthesized anything larger than fractional-karat diamonds, and this four to five karats worth of crystallized carbon will be worth a small fortune to Timkins, here, the idea of forestalling help to Telfu whilst we chase a will-of-the-wisp is strictly a phony. ”

“ At this point McBride returned and finished by saying: "We shall set up our lens, and exceeding Archimedes, 'Having a place to stand, we shall burn up a satellite.' So now go on and make the thing cook, fellows. You all have your orders. The Haywire Queen will be a roving factor, feel free to call us for any trouble. We've got our own job cut out for us."
The twenty-four great ships of space, already spread out across the space between Sirius I and Telfu, began to jockey for their selected positions in space. ”

“ One percent is one gram; four ten-thousandths of one gram is four hundred micrograms. The balance will swing over on less than ten micrograms. This isn't even that much. No good, Mac."
"Call Theodi and ask about that catalyst-conversion stunt."
"Huh?"
"He intimated that if they could combine the silicon with the catalyst, they'd be able to cause metathesis at better than sixty-one percent efficient. Trick is getting silicon to combine with an already-filled compound."
"They are better at chemistry than we," admitted Hammond. "I'll call." ”

“ It is approximately one quarter million miles from the planet, and is invisible from Telfu, being less than a hundred miles in diameter. The Telfans, by means of crude gravitic detectors, have discovered Soaky plotted his orbit pretty well, and so we really have little to do."
Steve Hammond went to the microphone and laughed. "McBride is a master at the art of understatement," he said. "But my contribution to the art of eliminating planets is an anachronism. We have, on the Haywire Queen, one of the most useless things in the universe. ”

“ I'll bet a cooky that they had the entire output of some city diverted into her communications set. After all, what with Soaky's absorption plus the normal power-gravitic communication, they'd do a lot of running on a waterfall plant, or a coal burning plant to make up for what we accomplish with a single machine in Sol. Our power took a beating, as far as we are from it, and we know what kind of power it takes to do anything with the gravitics on Telfu. ”

“ People who could laugh at the hardy jokes of her race, and appreciate the casual acceptance of doing absolutely nothing for periods of time. The verbal sparring and blocking would be there, too; the nice trick of forcing someone into a trap of his own making and springing it with—not double talk—but triple talk. The sound of people who could discuss both downright earthy things and high theory with the same words but with slightly different inflections in their voices, and be understood by others who knew both lines of talk. ”

“ They returned. "McBride," she said. "He can do it!"
"How?" asked Theodi skeptically.
"You've read their books," said Sandra Drake. "You know the principle of the Plutonian Lens—and also that the alternating stations require terrible electronic charges to maintain the lens that focuses Sol on Pluto. They check that with the formation of xenon-bromide for negative, and decomposition of tetrachloro dibromo-methane for the positive charge. They can do it."
"Can't they do it on a planet?" asked Orfall sadly.
"Not unless they can raise the whole planet to a high negative charge," snapped Sandra. ”

“ The image that repeated silently was not too far a cry from the Sandra Drake that had called the Haywire Queen in for a landing on Telfu some months ago. But they hadn't waited, and she now knew why. Well, she was forced to admit that her try at either trapping them here or getting off with them had failed, and therefore she had been outguessed.
That made her burn. Being outguessed by a man was something that Sandra didn't care to have happen. She could live through it ”

“ It is. Luckily, most of the newspapers follow the pointers-with-pride and the general feeling is that way. Most of the malcontents fear that Telfu will have a finger in the division of the universe and they are not going to get as much because of it. They think we should step in and run Telfu, or Telfu may step in and run us."
"We're far enough apart to save 'em the trouble," said Sandra. "But look, fellows, you're running back to Terra—or Sol, anyway. ”

“ Men were supposed to be motes—bacterium on the skin of an apple—not mighty motes capable of almost literally eating the apple that—not eating but destroying ruthlessly—the apple that was spoiling their barrel. ”

“ We'd be biased by our knowledge of who is important, who is the sicker, who is young and who is old. And, though it may seem strange to you, you have absolutely no idea of beauty. Therefore you are impartial among the ugly and the beautiful. ”