Once in space and safely away—Paul gloated that the former captors were without spacecraft now—he stopped the flight of the ship and spent a couple of hours making some course-calculations. The return to Latham's Triplets was jerky because he was uncertain of the distance and so they made it in five approximations, ending up finally with only a few hours to go for landing.
Paul's first interest was his laboratory set-up. There had been plenty of time for the three-way hookup to be established, and for all he knew the boys he had set to checking it might have completed the connection, proved in the Z-wave, and gone home to Neoterra with the glad news in their hands.
He entered the laboratory on Latham Beta III, and his face fell. Dust covered the equipment, the pilot lamps were out, and obviously nothing had been done for weeks, if not months. It was untenanted and untended.
Paul went to the supervisor of the botanical set up.
"I don't know," he said with a certain disinterest. "Your boys fooled around for a couple of weeks after you left and then decided that you'd gone for good. They might have sent word back to Neoterra, but it seemed a better idea to pick up and go home. So they did."
Paul went back to the laboratory. Nora said, "Paul, let's go to Neoterra."
"Why?"
"I want Huston to know I'm all right."
Paul looked at her blankly. "They might have left the radio beacons on," he mumbled.
"What?"
He told her again.
"But we'd best get to Neoterra."
Paul shook his head. "Nora, Latham's Triplets is one of the best places to test this Z-wave in the system. I've got to stay and check it."
Nora shook her head. "Paul—"
Paul looked at her. "Nora," he said soberly, "we're at cross-purposes again. Two things are important in my life. One of them is Nora and one of them is my work. My girl and my work do not agree—or let's say that my girl does not agree with my work. Until I get a chance to prove my work, there will always be this conflict. Since it takes such a short time to prove my work, why not wait?"
Nora looked up at him. "I'll wait," she said simply.
"Will you marry me—now?"
Nora smiled. "Yes. If you don't mind a wife with literally nothing to wear. Everything I own is on me right now. But won't we have to go to Neoterra?"
"Here we go again," growled Paul.
Nora laughed and kissed him. "Do you want to wait three months for the radio beams to cross Latham's Triplets?" she asked him.
"I—wait a minute!"
"What, Paul?"
"It is barely possible that—" his voice trailed away as he eyed a dusty calendar on one of the desks. He went to it and began flipping pages. "It's barely possible that my gang did not turn off the radio beacons for a couple of weeks after I got caught by Westlake," muttered Paul. "Just barely possible—"
He went to the beacon receiver and turned it on. Impatiently he waited for it to warm up.
It came to life and Paul tuned carefully through the band where he expected the beacons to come through. There was silence. He ran the dial far to one side, and then to the other. At one point he picked up some 'side splash' from the big interstellar beacon on Latham Alpha IV, leakage from the tight beam.
He sat up stiffly.
"Nora, will you wait a week?"
"Week?"
"I've caught some of the radiation leakage from the big transmitter. We can use that."
"And if you fail?"
"I won't fail."
"Then if you succeed?"
"Nora, if I succeed, I'll ask you to wait another three months. Because if I succeed, I'll want to wait until the Galactic Survey link between Latham Alpha IV and Old Baldy comes in. Then—"
"How are you going to check between here and Alpha IV?"
"Stacey and Morrow and you and I—" he said. His voice trailed away for a moment, and then he forgot what he was going to say because he was busy with the instrument panel.
Albert Donatti had been editor of the NeoterraNewsthrough three changes of policy. TheNews, claiming to be politically neutral, was definitely neutral on the coalition side, presenting the autonomy party in less than favorable light, while tending to gloss over any missteps taken by the coalitionists.
Like the other newspapers, the NeoterraNewssubscribed to the Neosol Wire Service, and so Al Donatti got the same news that the other subscribers did.
Al had been sitting at his desk all morning trying to think up something bright and brilliant to say about Huston and his plans, or something bright and derogatory to say about Hoagland's gang. Even Donatti had become tired of making the same veiled remarks regarding the possibility of furnishing Terran and Solarian news before it was ten months old, but he knew that the one way to hold the home tie was to keep on offering hope.
The virtual disappearance (for Hoagland was not inclined to give out his plans) of Paul Grayson had put a crimp in the schedule, for they never knew when they said one thing whether the other side would be able to come up with incontrovertible truth to the contrary. With a few less facets to play upon, the editorializing of Huston and the Z-wave was almost reduced to the constant harping on a single subject—which is tiring even to the most ardent enthusiast. Even a faithful believer wants some shred of proof.
So the coalition party was in the same state as a prize fighter who has trained too fine; who has reached the pinnacle of physical perfection some time before the fray. The additional newscopy that would have been furnished by Paul Grayson's presence among the coalition group had been diminished. That additional space would have kept the campaign rising upward.
It had been a long dry stretch, even for an imaginative editor with a bill of goods to sell. Manufacturing news is one of the hardest things in the world after the process has gone on for month after month. Donatti was reaching the end of the string, and there were still months to go.
Donatti groaned, and then looked up to see a copy boy approaching, waving a reel of recording tape in one hand.
"Yes—?"
"Z-wave! Z-wave!" said the copy boy breathlessly.
"So what—?" grunted Donatti, taking the reel and slipping it into his playback.
It started: "Neosol Wire Service. Neovenus, Four August. Archeologists today discovered the traces of a crude civilization dating at least seven thous—"
Donatti groaned. That would make page eighteen, sandwiched between an ad and the local theatre column.
"—and years old. No trace of this civilization remains today. Crude pottery and some stone arrowheads—"
"Crude pottery and stone arrowheads," snapped Donatti. "So what? What's this Z-wave business?"
"—were found among buried sub-humanoid bones. It has been an elementary principle among archeologists that proper burial of the dead is an indication of intell—
"Hell!" exploded Donatti. "Z-wave! So this thing came Z-wave from Neovenus. They all do!"
"—igence. The arrowheads bear a remarkable resemblance to prehistoric arrowheads found on Terra. However no connection between the stellar planets can be assumed, since arrowheads are a natural bit of design among primitive peoples and—"
Here there came another voice! Superimposed upon the dry voice of the commentator for Neosol Wire, the whole was almost impossible to decode and separate:
"—like the lever as the basic simple machine which would be
"Stacey, Morrow! Can you hear me? I'm on the air." "Yes, discovered as soon as the first man discovered how to use aby all that's holy, we hear you! Or at least I do! Morrow?Thisstick of wood as a means of prying a large boulder aside fromis Stacey on Latham Alpha IV, can you hear us on Lathamthe opening of a likely cave, the similar use of a lever someGamma VI?" "This is Toby Morrow, fellers. Both of your sta-where else in the galaxy would not mean that some culturaltions are coming in like a ton of bricks."Nora, now will youconnection had ever existed between the distant cultures. How-believe me?" "Paul, I do want to believe you, but isn't this aever it is of basic interest to know that there was a civilizedrather short distance as interstellar distances go? Three lightculture in the galaxy other than Solarium Humankind. Doubt-months is not anywhere near as far as several light years." less as the galaxy is explored, other cultures and civilizations "But this is just the beginning! Can I bring you the rest?" will be discovered. It is more than likely that other civiliza- "Do that, my dear and you will have forever proven yourtions will be found which are still thriving. In fact it is notplace." "With you?" "With me? No, Paul, I mean with theunlikely that our technical perfection may be overshadowedworlds of science and men. You should know your place withby some greater culture whose history of development mayme." "Should I?" "You should, Paul." "Where?" "You wouldn'textend back earlier than the history of Mankind.want me to say this over the air?" "Not hardly."
Donatti listened to the unmistakable sounds of ardent osculation with a saccharine expression on his face. Then the fatuous look died to be replaced by sudden excitement. With one hand he stopped the playback and with the other he grabbed the telephone.
"Get me Huston!" he roared.
"What do you need a telephone for?" asked the operator.
The connection was made in a hurry.
"Huston! The Z-wave is in!"
"In?"
"It's in, goddammit and I've got proof!"
"Proof?"
"Don't stand there gabbing. Get over here!"
"You're sure?"
Donatti laughed. "I've just heard Nora kissing Grayson via Z-wave!"
"You've—what—?"
"You heard me—"
The phone clicked.
Donatti reached for the intercom. "Stop everything!" he roared. "Break down the first page and set up for bright red ink! Seven-slug banner: Z-WAVE! across the top in red. Get that started and we'll write the story on the lino. Morgan! Get over here and do something about it! You can run a lino; don't bother to script it first, go down and set it up! Timmy! Bust out a picture of Grayson and Nora Phillips if you can. Jones? Start a Page Three blast against Haedaecker and his goddammed 'Haedaecker's Theory.' Jason? Make a repro of this tape. Lewiston! Bust into the soap opera just before the grand climax with a 'special announcement.' Brief and not too informative, details later, you know. Forhan, see if you can get a statement—as if we need one, but it'll do no harm—from Senator Beaumont. Morganser, do the same with Representative Horace. We'll print 'em side by side. Carol, go out to Dirty Joe's and bring me back a gallon of black coffee."
TheNewsoffice was ticking like a time bomb about to go off when Huston came in. His first words were: "Did anybody have the brains to try calling 'em back?"
"Ah—I doubt it."
"Dammit, do it! You try calling 'em back!"
"And you?"
Huston scowled. "They're out there on Latham's Triplets, all alone and unprotected. Y'know what happens next?"
"I can imagine."
"Well, this is what amounts to war. I'm collecting what I can to go out there and see that they're protected!"
"Good luck," said Donatti. "Y'wanna hear the record before you take off?"
"I can wait that long. Yes!"
The superimposed recording was just ending when one of the office boys brought back two papers. One of them was Donatti's, with "Z-WAVE!" in a bright red headline across the top.
The other was as red, as large, and as vigorous. It said, merely: "LIES"
"This is still a dirty fight," said Huston sourly. He scanned the opposition paper with a sneer: "Prepared recording, false evidence, untruth, political maneuvering, smear technique, untruth, false hope, clever machine politics, O hell, Donatti. Y'know the only way to shut these bastards up?"
"I can guess."
"Well, that's what I'm going to do!"
Huston left Donatti's office on the dead run.
Hoagland faced his underlings across the desk, his eyes glittering. "So I played a hunch and was wrong. It's not gone yet. All we have to do is play it close."
"But what can we do?"
"Outguess 'em!"
"How?"
"You're not very bright, are you?" sneered Hoagland. "Good thing Jeffers is running the paper. You know, don't you, Jeffers?"
"Sure. All I have to do is to reproduce a recording of Grayson's first false attempt on Proxima I."
"Right. And then?"
"Then the only thing that will convince the great public is to have the President of Terra himself make a talk over the Z-wave between Terra and here. And don't think that Huston won't try."
"Of course he'll try. Even if he were far ahead, he'd try, because he is no idiot. But if he doesn't?"
"Then the failure itself can be used."
"Correct," said Hoagland. "So you stay tight at your desk and get ready to blast 'em out of their pants when President Bennington doesn't come through." Hoagland turned to a tall, slender, elderly man with a bit of a squint that came, extraordinarily, out of sharp eyes. "Astronomers!" he snorted.
Doctor Hargreave shrugged. "That's why the Galactic Survey was started," he said quietly. "Because we did not know the precisely accurate distances between the stars. Don't blame me. Your election date was set by law a long time ago. Don't blame me if the Galactic Network is completed before Election Day. We had only physical observation to go on. It's not my fault."
Hoagland nodded unhappily. "I know," he admitted unhappily. "But if the Galactic Network is completed before Election Day it will be my failure!"
For four solid months, Al Donatti tried to reply by Z-wave and failed. This was because Grayson was busy following the radio beacon between Latham Alpha and the next Galactic Survey station along the network. Because of daily contact and a certain amount of quavering faith, no one dared to retune the Z-wave dials.
Paul and Nora followed the beacon in almost to the station. Then, because Paul did not know that he had already established contact across a myriad of relay connections all the way back to Neoterra, he waited in space until he could pick up the beacon beyond the next link.
Two light weeks out beyond the radio link, Paul was still conversing with Stacey and Morrow.
"Now?"
Nora nodded. "You've done it," she said.
"We're in."
Here was no grand celebration over a quick success. Here was the culmination of gradual acceptance, a sort of growing-in of knowledge, gradual and complete. It was hard to define the line between promise and fulfillment. Only by personally setting a date and using it as the time-mark could the time of proof be set. But this was it.
"Paul."
"Yes?"
"I'm glad—for you."
"And you?"
Nora nodded happily. "Pretty soon, Paul?"
"Any day in the week."
Nora pouted. "Paul, I want some clothing. I feel seedy."
"You look good to me."
Nora laughed. "I'll look better in some new clothes."
Paul eyed her carefully, boldly. There had been clothing on Latham Beta III for Nora, lend-lease from a few of the botanical-worker's wives that were reasonably similar in size. The dress that Nora had worn during the escape from Westlake's little college had been the best fitted among the clothing, and Nora wore it now. She knew that even though it was a bit overworked, she looked better in it than in any of the clothing she had borrowed.
Nora returned Paul's appraisal of her with a flaunt of her hip. "So?"
"So!" he said.
Paul turned toward the control panel and made some computations and some settings on the dials.
Nora pouted.
"Why the cloud-up-and-rain?" he asked.
Nora chuckled. "Trigonometry," she said.
"First things first," Paul replied. The floor surged upward, causing Nora to lose her balance. Paul caught her neatly.
"We're on our way," he said.
Nora looked up in his eyes. Silently. There was no point in saying anything. The Z-wave, proved-in months ago on Neoterra, newly-proved to Paul and Nora, was a sort of landmark that did not require any further amplification. That was finished and done.
There had been restraint. Now it seemed childish like a youngster who saves the fanciest chocolate for the last and best. This was the last and best and both of them knew it.
Her lips were softer, warmer. More eager. In all of their previous lovemaking there had been a strident vigor and an avid clutching for one another, a sort of regret that fulfillment was yet to come, but not yet here. Now this frantic reaching seemed gone. Paul knew the free relaxation of Nora's softness against him, he felt the sweet lassitude soften her. His hands caressed her and Nora moved to relish the caress.
"Paul—I love you."
"I know—you don't mind if I know?"
"I want you to know—"
Eleven days later they landed on Latham Alpha IV.
Stacey greeted them with, "So now what, children?"
"Neosol."
Stacey eyed them with envy. "Somewhere along in this mad pattern I recall vaguely that I have a wife named Gloria and a daughter, both of whom think I am deceased. Looking at you two makes me want to howl at the moon—if I could find a moon to howl at on this misbegotten planet. You can head for Neoterra, but does anybody mind if I head for home and fireside? I want to walk in and be a great shock to my wife."
"You—"
"Shut up," snapped Stacey. "Or I'll tell Nora about you."
"Please do anyway."
"Stacey, you stay out of this."
"Bribe me, chum. I'm not incorruptible."
Nora smiled. "Maybe I can offer something—"
"Possibly."
"Like a sum of money or a—"
"Nah!"
"Personal gift—"
"What kind?"
"Such as a good book?"
"Nah."
"He's hard to please," complained Nora.
"I'm not hard to please. Just keep making offers. You'll hit on something."
"I'll tell Gloria," suggested Paul.
Stacey cleared his throat. "Gloria is a very smart woman," he said. "She would believe you only if she had seventeen confirming witnesses—or the odd look on my face. So—Migawd! What was that?"
The ground trembled and the air racketed to the blast of explosion. A flash of white flame filled the sky.
Had the blast been atomic the shock-wave would have flattened the Latham Alpha IV station. It was that close. But it was just common high explosive of the chemical type that shattered at them, and cracked a couple of windows in the Relay Station not far away.
"Bombs!" shouted Stacey.
Paul raced to the control panel and set the drive; he wanted to get a long way from there and he did not care which way. Just away....
Hoagland's crew had gotten off first. This followed a certain kind of reasoning that shows less troublesome planning to destroy than to protect. His crews had driven their ships as fast and as hard as ships and men could stand the gaff. The flight had dropped down out of supervelocity one by one, a quarter of a light year from Latham Alpha, coming into real space in a volume spherically as large as the outer limits of the Solar System.
Here the earlier arrivals had waited for the followers, since no two ships could drive at precisely the same speed across a galactic distance. They had closed down into formation as they came out of superspeed, each arrival taking its place in the space pattern.
Finally Hoagland counted noses and found them all in place. Then—
"Latham Alpha IV. The Galactic Relay Station!"
The ships went into superdrive briefly to return a few hundred thousand miles above the ice cap where the relay station stood, waiting the last few hours of its term of years for the arrival of the last link in the Galactic Network. Hoagland's flight lined down on a long curve, one ship after the other, each pilot aiming for the station.
It had been the first bomb, a clean miss, that had alerted Paul Grayson's little group.
"Get that ship!" roared Hoagland.
The leading ship, having bombed and missed, curled upward after its bombing dive, circled around and got on the tail of Grayson's spacecraft. The second ship made a closer miss, circled the course and laid its nose behind the first.
A burst of orange flame licked across the nose of Hoagland's Number One craft and the shell glanced from Grayson's flank, sending a ringing crash through Paul's ship. All three of them looked behind to see ship after ship line up to race after them.
Paul reached for the high drive. It was almost warm enough to use—
Huston's flight had taken off a few hours later. There had been a lot of preparation: Data regarding dates, flight velocities, and some calculations as to the completion of the Network. Then a courier ship had been prepared—prepared like no ship had ever been prepared before.
Unmanned, but timed to perfection, courier ships crossed space between Sol and Neosol in half the time of passenger flights. They carried tons of official mail; ordinary commercial mail was not permitted here.
In Huston's special courier the tons of official mail had been whittled down to one piece, four pages of micro-typewritten tissue paper and the remaining load had been filled up with additional power-pack. The timing had been calculated to perfection and the timing circuits had been carefully checked by the Standards Technicians. Then the drive had been set and the ship had taken off for Terra in a flight calculated to make space-crossing history.
Only then did Huston's flight form and leap into space from Neoterra. Driving as hard and as fast as men and machinery would permit, Huston's crew came down out of supervelocity four months later, a couple of light months South Galactic from Latham Beta. Like Hoagland, Huston waited in space until the stragglers came through.
Unlike Hoagland, Huston had to wait because he was going to defend, not make a destructive attack. Once the flight had formed, they circled Latham Beta and headed for Alpha in superdrive. They came in to one side of Alpha IV, and circled the planet less than a hundred miles up, coming around the planet in time to watch the first line of Hoagland's ship start the bombing run.
"You know the score!" snapped Huston. "That relay stationmustremain intact until the Network Beam gets here! Protect it!"
Huston's flight spread out a bit and streaked across the ice cap, hitting Hoagland's bombing curve in the middle, ship after ship. Orange flames licked the noses of Huston's craft and the shells screamed across the ice cap to flash in and around Hoagland's flight. The careening ships and the flight of screaming shells destroyed the flight perfection of the bombing pilots.
The ice cap blazed with dots of flame and pillars of smoke as the bombs landed in a shotgun pattern around, but never quite on, the relay station. Huston's men spotted the hare-and-hounds game forming at the upward swing of the bombing run and the ships roared for counter-attack.
Like twin corkscrews, both flights spiralled up after Grayson's fleeing ship.
"Grayson!" roared Huston. "Grayson!"
"Yeah—?"
It was Z-wave now, because all of the ships were close-locked in combat. Not the galactic separation that made original contact necessary.
"Grayson, this is Huston. How long before the beacon beam arrives?"
"Hours."
Huston groaned. "We've got to defend that station for hours or defeat Hoagland completely!"
Huston's flight split into two, one of them spiralled down to race in a large circle high around the relay station, the rest of them remaining in the locked spiral of the flight.
Grayson snapped the high drive and his ship flashed into superdrive and away.
Hoagland's flight gave up the chase and looped up and over and down towards the station again. Huston's half-flight cut the corner of the curve and passed through Hoagland's ships, the space-rifles barking. It was a maneuver similar to "Crossing the Tee" in naval warfare.
One shell drilled in through the fore port of Hoagland's ninth ship and the velocity of the ship carried the racketing bit of metal back through the guts of the ship where it glanced viciously from wall to wall. Lights went dark and then the ship lost drive as the round hit some of the vital wiring. Inert, the ship continued on its course freely, curving down towards Alpha IV to land with a blossom of flame as the driving-chambers blew their atomic load.
Space flashed bright as one of Huston's craft rammed its enemy. A flare of molten metal splashed wide and bits of solid, jagged hull sprinkled space with deadly missiles that caused the following ships to veer wide. A third ship exploded violently as one of Huston's shells drilled the drive chamber.
One of Huston's ships ran into one of the jags of hull and went inert. The pilot fought it while the crew struggled with the ruined wiring. Arcs and flares filled the ship as the air dropped in pressure within the ship, then the electrical arcs went out as vacuum came.
Struggling against no-gravity, the crew floated in the ship, hurling tools to direct themselves, tossing cables across the hull-spaces. A dim light came on as the ship dropped toward the ice cap, then the drive returned part way. The pilot fought the ship down to a racketing, sliding crash that hurled up a fountain of chipped ice and strewed the furrow with fragments of ship.
Those of the crew who survived the crash leaped from the ship through jagged holes in the hull and raced for the relay station. All of them remembered one main tenet of warfare: Eventually, no matter how outrageous or how efficient grow the mechanized weapons of warfare, it is the man with the bared knife that subdues his enemy on the contested ground!
Revolvers shattered the locked door of the station and the men took shelter inside. They might be sitting ducks for a bombing run. If their pilots could stop Hoagland's bombing runs, Hoagland's men would eventually have to land and make for the station on foot. Then they would be ready!
The downward circle of Hoagland's flight circled the entire planet, crossed below the antipodal ice-cap and came roaring across the planet just above the stratosphere. Huston was waiting for them and the two flights plowed into one another head on. Now both flights were facing each other and the space-rifles vomited their rain of solid shells.
Had this been a battle between trained and well-armed space forces, it would have been sheer carnage. But the space rifles were not radar-trained nor electronically fired. These were ships of commerce locked in combat as deadly as man against man, but lacking the finer techniques of modern mass-killing. Ship after ship trained on one another and raced towards one another on dead course.
The space rifle spitted as fast as the perspiring gun-layers could serve the breech. It was Blam! Blam! Blam! with the pilot holding the course dead true, nose toward nose across the ice cap, each pilot trying to make the other pilot swing aside first, daring and trying to keep his own nerves from screaming while he looked death right in the eye and spat. Untrained by experience and lack of enemy-courtesy, there was no commonly-accepted rule regarding the final tilt from the collision course. Some went left, some went right, some went up. Some dodged down and hit the planet with a racketing crash and a shower of ice—amid the vomit of flame as the drive chamber let go. Some veered into one another's course and the stratosphere flashed high and wide with flame and terror.
Others missed cleanly, circling left and right; others coursed up and over, with one pilot tightening the curve to the plate-buckling strain-point to circle the course and end up with his nose and the space rifle looking down the drive chamber of the enemy.
One of Hoagland's pilots circled up, loosing a bomb as it rose. Huston's pilot ran into the bomb and the sky roared white and hot.
Then both flights were through one another and circling high above the ice cap for another run. They met ten thousand miles in space, wide spread and raced at one another in a mad dog-fight.
On the ground below, survivors leaped from cracked ships and raced to safety. Pitifully few survived. Aligned man against man and group against group—for they were spread out across a twenty-mile area—they fought with revolvers and stalked one another across the hummocks of ice and laid in wait in defiles and passes, converging on the station.
Holes poked in the ultra-hard glass dome near the edge of the station wall sprouted revolver barrels. The relay station became a block house protected by Huston's survivors. The first crash had been a blessing instead of a defeat, for Huston's men defended the station against Hoagland's surviving crews. Huston's survivors made their way to the station, leaving their dead and the dead of their enemy on the ice behind them, and bit by bit the numbers embattled in the relay station grew.
For any one of Hoagland's men, once within the station, could stop this battle merely by firing a single revolver shot through one of the vitals of the radio beacon receiver. Or hitting it with any hard instrument. Or just by flipping the "ON-OFF" toggle switch that controlled the entire station.
Both flights, diminished now, hit one another in a mad pass high above the planet. Space filled with bits of jagged metal and the silent shells that would someday end up as satellites to some distant sun—to possibly confuse some space miner that found a piece of nickel-steel completely machined and fitted with copper expansion-bands in an orbit around an unpopulated stellar system.
Numbers being equal, Huston's men had one small advantage. They wanted to hit Hoagland's crew. Hoagland's gang had two objectives. They wanted to destroy the station, and so part of their efforts was directed towards the station itself while only the rest was directed at Huston's flight.
The flights passed through one another leaving space strewn with ruin; and circled down on opposite sides of a great circle to cross the ice cap face to face again only a few miles above the relay station perched precisely on the polar axis. The wind whistled and the odd-smelling atmosphere took on another odor as the battle raged briefly above the relay station. The ice was dotted again with divots of flaming hell thrown high by missed bombs and water ran from the hot craters in starred rivulets to freeze later in a curiously beautiful pattern.
Again diminished, the flights whirled, stalking and sparring like swordsmen, cautious, angry, hating.
And while the embattled fleets of spacecraft circled one another, Paul Grayson was far in space, coming out of superdrive, confident that he had outrun or at least disappeared from instant contact with the enemy. Alpha IV was far, far behind. Latham's Triplets were only stars in a neat equilateral triangle below. Very bright stars, but none the less true stars showing no disc to the naked eye.
"Now what?" asked Stacey. "That was damned close, Little Friend."
"Do we go back?" asked Nora.
"I'd rather not," said Stacey. "I prefer to die in bed at the age of one hundred and seventeen after a long, pleasant, active, and interesting life."
"Huston is down there, too, you know," said Paul thoughtfully.
"So what?"
"He apparently came with quite a gang."
Stacey grunted. "Let's wait until we're sure that the unpleasantness has subsided. Someone will be yelling 'Veni Vidi Vici' and I want to be sure that the guy yelling 'Vici' is on my side."
Grayson shook his head thoughtfully. "Huston got here," he said.
"So?"
"Hoagland and his gang must have—" Grayson's voice trailed away as Paul went into another reverie of thought.
"Paul, this is what is commonly referred to as patently obvious."
Paul snapped out of it again.
"Y'know," he said slowly, "Neither Hoagland nor Huston would be a-roaring down here with fire in their eyes if they did not know we'd succeeded."
Nora blinked. "They must have overheard us," she said.
Paul spread his hands. "Why not? The link was solid between Latham's Triplets and Neoterra. We might have interfered with their Z-wave."
"That's fine reasoning. But now take the next step and where are we?"
"Huston wanted to know how long before the beam came in," said Paul. "Then he groaned and said that they'd have to defend the station for hours."
"After which," said Stacey, "we left somewhat precipitously, if not graciously. I don't blame us, but of course, we are sort of biased by our own feelings."
"But why?" asked Nora.
"I've been away from the Galactic Survey for a long time," said Paul thoughtfully. "It's more than possible that Latham's Triplets is the station that completes the link. There is always some question as to where the final beam would cross because we were not sure what the precise stellar separation was. In fact," he said with a smile, "this determination of stellar distances was the reason for originating the Galactic Survey. Now, if Latham Alpha turned out to be the final link, coming a bit early,andHaedaecker's Theory was wrong, the link between Sol and Neosol could be complete by Z-wave once the radio contact checked in. Huston might have some plan—" again Paul trailed off as he began to think about the subject deeply.
"And," prompted Nora.
"The final link should be heading towards Alpha IV quite close by now," said Paul. "We'll tap it before it lands."
The courier spacecraft dropped down out of supervelocity and emitted an overwhelming blast of radio signal. One half of the output tube operating life went into Eternity in one half minute of intense power.
Minutes later space stations picked up the radio blast and had radiogoniometers pointing the angle; which when correlated with other space stations bracketed the courier spacecraft nicely. A telemeter beam fingered out and caught the radio-controlled circuits of the courier and the courier turned obediently and started to blast towards Terra.
It landed in a screaming arc and came to rest, smoking both outside and inside, for the driving circuits had been running at overload for nearly four months. Technicians at Great Lakes Spaceport trundled the courier along a runway and dunked the whole thing into Lake Michigan where they watched the clouds of steam boil up and then subside as the hull cooled. They waited, and then they breached the message hull, which was a separable nose.
Accustomed to finding tons of mail, they were shocked to find only one officially sealed envelope addressed to the President of Terra.
They put it on a mail speedster that arched high into the stratosphere and into black space itself in a vast segment of ellipse to drop into the hands of the Capitol's techs within a matter of minutes. Here the official envelope by-passed any number of official channels....
President Bennington heard the diffident rap on his bedroom door and grunted unhappily. Then he came awake and realized that nothing less than an official Affair of State would cause his Aide to rap on his door.
Bennington snapped the light on near his bed and went to the door in his pajamas. "What's up, Phil?" he asked as he opened the door.
Phillip Vanderveer smiled apologetically. "I don't know," he said honestly. "But when a courier spacecraft comes from Neoterra with only one piece of mail labeled 'Private, Important,' and addressed to you, it must be both private and important. So—"
Bennington smiled. "Cigarette?" he asked.
"Here, sir."
"Come in," said Bennington, accepting the smoke.
"But—er—"
"M'Lady is sawing wood. This may be important enough for fast action, Phil. Come on in and for—"
Bennington opened the envelope with a thumb and spread out the pages. He looked and then found a magnifying glass and went to work on the micro-typewritten pages.
"Phil," he said slowly, "forget about this until three days from now. Then see to it that Chadwick Haedaecker is summoned here for a—" Bennington went on to peruse a calendar and then a clock, "—an official session!"
The following day Phillip Vanderveer reported that Haedaecker was out on some tour of the Galactic Network and was not expected back for some time. That was too bad, but not a bar to the future actions of President Bennington.
He spent the next two days closeted with his aides writing a flowery speech of fancy phrases that would do the trick. He decided finally to make his speech from America's White House, and went with the First Lady to Terra to that shrine where Free Men were first welded into a Strong State, because there in America the seeming incompatibility between Freedom and Empire had been favorably resolved.
Bennington prowled the mansion, looked at the shrined artifacts, and was he, himself, impressed once again. Somewhere in the middle of the road there was the right path between the extremes of anarchy and tyranny. To be really Free, every man must be released from any governing, which would make him a unit weak enough to be assailed by any grouped force. Torulemen meant they had too little to say about their own lives.
Bennington slept in a bed once slept in by Andrew Jackson.
It was midnight of the third day. The shrined White House was a blaze of lights. Newsmen and radio technicians trod the revered halls and strung their wires.
The connection to Z-wave Central had been made, first. The other lines to the rest of the world were ready. The lines to Z-wave Central were ready to bring the message to the planets of Sol—and all that remained was the final connection that would bring President Bennington's address to the worlds of Neosol.
Bennington sat at his desk with a fountain pen altering the long speech. He was not entirely satisfied with it. It contained flowing passages calculated to jog the emotions, words carefully selected because of their syllables to cause a ringing cadence which would cause an emotional reaction. It was flowery and forceful. It was long; starting on a slow measure and rising to a proper climax, completely a mathematico-musico-psychologico compilation intended to sway emotions and minds in the right direction. He stood up from time to time and delivered portions of it. Playbacks returned both his voice and his appearance to him, and Bennington worked on slight faults of either until his delivery was perfect.
Outside of his room, bustling technicians checked their circuits and Washington itself was alive with the tenseness of waiting.
Tired—and with hours to wait yet—Bennington laid down on a couch to relax. His slumber was fitful, dozing interrupted by vivid dreams, by slight noises, by quick flashes of intense thought by his mind, which was not convinced of the necessity for relaxation. Finally he drifted off deep, completely relaxed for the first time in three days.
They counted—afterwards—that President Bennington had only a total of nine hours sleep in seventy-two.
Then a bell rang. A siren wailed. A blast of salute-cannon shook the city, and the radio across Terra blasted into life. People across the worlds of Sol awoke; they had been sleeping lightly, awaiting The Moment and now it was here!
Radio sets left running burst into life, waking people everywhere among the planets of Sol at the same instant.
The Galactic Z-wave had come to life!
Light years across the galaxy towards Neosol, Paul Grayson talked into a microphone. And on the planets that were Sol's Children, a thousand million loudspeakers thundered forth his voice!
"President Bennington! President Bennington!"
Bennington awoke from his fitful nap with a start. The door to his room opened. Phillip Vanderveer stood there looking in, he approached.
Marian Bennington smiled quietly. "This is it!"
Bennington looked at her queerly. His wife. Somehow strangely unimpressed by the solemnity of it all; peculiarly self-serene among all of the importance of the moment. His wife, greeting him with a slightly amused expression. Greatness, of moment or of person seemed a bit remote. Bennington gulped at her and smiled.
"Take it easy Hal," she said. She kissed him gently as he leaned towards the microphone.
"President Bennington speaking."
"This is Paul Grayson riding the Latham Alpha IV beam towards the station. Thank God you're ready!"
"What—?"
"We're fifteen light minutes out from Contact. Huston is fighting to keep the Station alive; Hoagland is trying to kill it!"
"Fighting?"
"Space battle!"
"Dammit man—Oh God, it's four or six months flight time there, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Paul. "Just stick around. We'll win!"
"Grayson, you've got to win!"
The ice cap was dotted with craters. Tiny spots of black among the sea of glittering white were men struggling in the icy cold to reach the fight for the final link between Mother Earth and her distant Daughter. In the sky above, Isolationist and Coalitionist fought with nerve and iron to separate versus maintain the original solidarity of the galaxy.
Paul, riding the front of the incoming radio beacon beam, had no idea of how the fight was going.
But of Huston's hundred ships and one hundred and seventeen of Hoagland's only nine were left with Huston and seven left with Hoagland. The collected survivors in the relay station numbered thirty souls—determined souls of the same determination of the men who stood at Concord Bridge.
The plain around the station was a mess of bomb craters; desperation measures but all misses. The glass dome itself was holed with a half-gross of shells fired into the station, and three of the big parabolic antenna-reflectors were drilled with four-inch holes but still electrically functional. Master fighters now because they were survivors, Nine and Seven faced one another cautiously. They raced in, faced one another harshly, like frigates sailing in to receive a heavy broadside, clashed, and came on through as Five and Three.
Huston's crew circled in a mad melee, five of them in overwhelming odds now. They herded the Three high, caught them in an englobement, and made a flaming kill a hundred miles above the planet, then raced forward as Hoagland started to flee for his life, his campaign defeated.
With the ice cap dotted with death and wreckage, Huston's command ship left the other four to guard the Upper Sky while he scouted the surface, using his power ruthlessly to cow Hoagland's separated survivors into abject surrender.
Then, in complete victory, Huston raced his command ship in a vast circle around the damaged but still running Relay Station. It would go deadly-hard with anyone who tried to interfere at this instant.
Huston's engineer snapped in the Z-wave.
"Grayson! Grayson! Are you—are you?"
The Z-wave receiver in Paul's ship brought this call.
He snapped the toggle and said: "Huston? I'm riding the radio beam down to Alpha IV."
"Bennington?"
"I've got him on the Z-wave!"
"Let me—connect me—"
Paul reached for a cable with a double-ended plug and shoved both ends home in his patch-panel.
"Mister President, here is Mr. Huston!"
"Bennington! Bennington! You're ready?"
On Terra, President Bennington nodded and said: "Any time."
Huston said "Good. Thank God. Grayson, can we—?"
Paul considered. "Can you get in touch with the Latham Alpha IV Station direct?"
"Take some doing, but—"
"President Bennington, the Galactic Link is almost complete. It's Z-wave via radio contact from Terra to me. It's Z-wave from me to Huston; and from Alpha IV to Neoterra it is again Z-wave via radio contact. As soon as Huston taps the radio beam from Alpha IV, we can get you through to—"
A flash of fire—white-hot and vicious—blinded Huston and his crew. It killed all the men on Alpha IV friend and foe alike. The sound—
The sound was a flat and completely-gone silence. The contact had been destroyed before the link could convey any sound.
Down from the black sky a single ship had driven at velocities too high for the radar to catch. It had come at near-light velocity from somewhere, had passed Alpha IV at a tangential altitude of a thousand miles—and had loosened something.
The "Something" had been unbelievable tons of lithium hydride, neatly tamped and packed around a fissionable detonator.
The super bomb drilled into the planetary crust a full quadrant South—at the Equator of Alpha IV—and exploded. Slowly and majestically, Alpha IV expanded. The crust separated along the fault-lines to expose the planetary magma. Ice met molten lava in a riot of exploding steam; mountain range fell into the sea, livid streamers of tortured matter flared forth, and the surface heaved, bubbled, and collapsed and the smoke and dust and soil of Alpha rose into the atmosphere to mingle with the clouds of vaporized metal and superheated steam that roiled and blasted away from the planet into space.
Latham Alpha IV contracted into a boiling mass of energy, distributed and re-distributed and re-re-distributed throughout the planetary mass.
Gone was the ice cap. Forever lost were the men who battled face to face and gun to gun to keep the Relay Station running. Then Latham Alpha began to expand. Slowly and majestically it grew, as the volatile material became gaseous with the energy hurled into it. The flaming-white glow died into a furious orange-red as the localized areas of energy spread out and the whole of the planet began to radiate dully.
Across space, heading into a boiling planetary surface that had no receiver to collect it, came the Galactic Radio Beam. It entered the roiling planet and died, and what missed the planet either splashed aside from the space-stressed energy or went on and on and on through space unchecked and unheeded.
Huston's spacecraft, hurled upwards by the force of flaming gases, bounced around viciously until Huston's pilot snapped the high drive briefly, first on and then off.
"Grayson?"
"Huston! What has happened?"
"Super-atomic."
"God!"
"But the Relay—The Network?"
Paul thought a moment.
"I've still got Bennington," he said. "And—" here Grayson's voice paused for a moment.
Grayson's ship had been at One Light velocity, following the Beam towards Alpha IV. Now as he sat at the console of his ship's drive, he reached for a switch that swerved the ship aside in its course by just a few milliseconds of arc.
Seconds later he passed the boiling ruin of Alpha IV by a half-million miles, still following the head of the Galactic Survey Beam.
As Paul passed the planetary ruin, he snapped another switch, picked up the microphone and cried:
"Al Donatti! Al Donatti!"
And down from Neoterra came the reply. "Grayson? You've got Bennington?"
"On the other end!"
Back in the White House, President Bennington sat before the broad desk, looking at the microphone with an odd expression on his face. Somehow flowery speeches and fancy, well-calculated words seemed a bit pale and unconvincing in the face of men who lived and died for a Grand Principle.
He looked up at the wall.
He saw a bronze plaque.
"President Bennington! Speak up!"
Bennington started. It was Madison—Was it Madison or Jackson?—who said that an American could tell the President to Go To Hell, and all the President could do was to argue with him—or go fishing?
Bennington tore his carefully prepared speech down the middle. He stood up and looked at the bronze plaque, and began to read it:
"Fourscore and seven years ago—"
Across space to Latham's Triplets went the Z-wave, connected at long last by the original Radio Linkage. Across from Grayson's spacecraft it went to the completed Z-wave link to Neoterra, to come bursting forth from a thousand million loudspeakers across the worlds of NeoSol:
NeoTerra heard it, and NeoVenus listened. The isolated colonists on NeoGanymede cheered and the folks on far NeoPluto nodded their heads knowingly.
"—engaged in a great civil war to determine whether That Nation or any other nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure—"
"Grayson!" came the whispering of the radio—a mundane instrument of no great interest to anyone—"Grayson—we've caught him."
"Who?"
"Your pal Haedaecker. He bombed Alpha IV!"
"But—?"
"We'll twist his arm, Grayson. Maybe he'll explain the guy who tried to shoot you to bits on Proxima I. Maybe a lot of other things. Anyway, he's the joker in this deck."
Stacey eyed Paul with a glitter, "D'ye mind if I start going home to my wife?"
Paul snapped off the communications panel entirely. "They've made it," he said. "It'll be complete from now on. And we'll criss-cross this galaxy with radio beacons from star to star and bit by bit until the Z-wave contact is complete between Mother Sol and any of her Colonies."
"Let's take Stacey home," suggested Nora.
Paul turned to the panel and set some switches, adjusted some dials, and threw in the main switch. The floor surged below them and Paul put his eye to the spotting telescope as his ship began to move.
Paul yawned as the minutes passed and the ship gained speed towards Sol, aimed by his watchful eye. Time passed, and Paul, finally released from all of the trouble and worry, began to hum. Eventually he began to sing, in that off-key voice: