"Okay, Ted. You're running this exercise. You're the boss. We combine. We'll meet you where you are and reform before we make the return pass. Right?"
"Right, Hugh. I don't want to argue, but our master computer feels we've a better chance at the laws of probability if we all comb along the same line than if each takes a different course and we try to correlate our positions by sheer stellar astrogation."
Poised in space, Wilson and his squadron waited. While they waited, the astro-techs made star sightings and the computer mulled over their readings and delivered opinions of several probable enclosures of position. These volumes were horribly vast compared with the mote of a spacecraft. They were spherical, indicating the margin of error in precision-pinpointing their position in deep space. And as the astro-techs delivered more and more angle sightings on the known stars, the computer delivered smaller and smaller enclosures as their true position.
The problem was a matter of parallax, a matter of angular measurement against the more distant, or "fixed" stars. Now, it may seem an easy job to measure the angle of a star with respect to another star. But it must be remembered that the parallax of the nearer stars, as measured across the orbit of the earth, is a matter of seconds of arc.
Parallax is not measured directly with a protractor. It is measured by comparing the position of the star on a plate against a similar photograph taken six months ago, using the fixed stars as the frame of reference.
In deep space, position is pinpointed by solid triangulation. This can be represented by a pyramid suspended in space, the corners of which end at the fixed stars. Take a pyramid of certain solid angles, depended by points in space, and the apex can be satisfied for only one spacial position. Repeat these solid-angle measurements and there are several pyramids pointing their apexes toward the true position.
But if the orbit of the Earth produces only a second or so of parallax-arc, any error in angular measurement of such magnitude produces an error of a thousand light seconds. And the greater the error in measurement, the larger is the volume of uncertain position.
This, then, was their problem. To cover, like a blanket, a volume of space so vast as completely to defy description. All that can be said of it is in comparison with a number of cubic light years. And who can grasp the fathomless distance of a light year? It is just a meaningless statement.
Eventually the second squadron came up and the ships milled around until a larger space pattern was formed. Then the two squadrons began to return along the search grid, on a line overlapping that area covered in the first pass along the computed line of flight....
Alice Hemingway woke up from a fitful doze at the noise of the infrawave receiver. Charles Andrews was listening to the rapid chatter back and forth from one squadron to the next. He looked around, and when he caught her eyes, he said cheerfully, "They're really out looking for us."
"I heard," she murmured.
"Three squadrons, now. And a fourth is just heading out from Procyon. We'll be picked up—"
Jock Norton came awake with a cry. "Shut that damned thing off!" he roared.
"Why?" demanded Andrews belligerently.
"It's a waste of power."
"This thing?" sneered Andrews.
"That thing. It draws one point three kilowatts. That's plenty important for a lifeship."
"Look," suggested Andrews, "why don't we call back and have 'em pick us up?"
"Because nobody has ever found any directional quality about the infrawaves. That's why we can't use 'em for detecting, ranging, and locating. If they echoed, we might be able to use 'em somehow. But they're not even directional, let alone echoing. Not only that, but they are instantaneous in transmission, so even if they did echo they couldn't be used for ranging. So we'll not waste power howling for more help. We spend a bit every hour, because we want to let 'em know we're still alive. But let's not waste any more than we have to."
Andrews shut off the infrawave receiver. "It was interesting," he said. "But I suppose we can always assume that they are on the search." He shivered. "Is it getting cold in here, or am I getting exhausted?"
Norton smiled thinly. "Probably both. This space can isn't collecting any heat. We're too far from any sun. And there aren't enough people in it to keep it hot."
"Huh?"
"The average human puts out an average of about a thousand B.T.U. per hour over a twenty-four hour day. It rises in activity and falls with relaxing. But this can needs about five people to keep up the heat against the black body radiation from the hull."
"What do we do? Freeze?"
"One thing we can do. We can use the pedal generator."
"For what?"
"Two things. One is to charge up the energy cells. The other is that a human body in vigorous work can deliver as high as two thousand B.T.U. per hour. Although I doubt if any human body can keep up that kind of vigor for a full hour. If you're cold, you can easily warm up, Andrews."
"Why doesn't this tin can have a small pile?"
"Why doesn't a steamship lifeboat have a turbine?"
"I've seen some very small piles and generating gear."
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."
Andrews snorted. "How are they going to pick up radio pulses when they're going thirty or forty parsecs an hour?"
"They use gravitic mass detectors. As soon as someone gets a register, they send one of the scouts out to drop below light and listen for radio pulses. If he hears any, then the whole search squadron stops and starts really to comb the neighborhood with radar."
Andrews shivered again. "I'll try that generator," he said. "Could we pedal enough juice to run the drivers?"
Norton laughed. "Sure. Like you could row a battleship with a rusty broom handle. Have you got the remotest idea of how far we are from anything?"
"No."
"Neither have I."
"All right. Where's your damned exercising machine?"
"Below. I'll show you. I want to cut the paragrav generator by half, anyway."
"Paragrav?"
"Pseudo-gravity," said Norton crisply. "You've noticed there's still an up and down? That's it. But the damned thing radiates heat like mad, along with producing its gravitic field. I want to conserve all the heat we can. With a full complement of survivors, this space can stay more than comfortably warm. But with only three, it radiates more than is comfortable. Come on, Andrews. I'll show you this crate, too."
Alice felt the gravitic pull diminish, and then Norton was back in the main room of the lifeship. He came over and sat down beside her.
"Cold, kid?"
Alice shivered. "Just a little. Is this going to get worse?"
"Probably, but not too much. If we all exercise heavily, keep the pedal generator going, and eat heartily, we'll not fight too losing a battle against radiation."
She shivered again. Jock put a large but gentle hand on her shoulder. "Let me warm you a bit," he said softly.
Alice looked at him cynically. "I'm not that cold," she told him. She did not move, but the tone of her voice made him remove his hand from her shoulder.
He smiled at her. "You're likely to be eventually."
"Maybe. But there are blankets, and I'm not above taking a turn on that pedal generator myself, you know."
"It's no job for a woman, Alice."
She sniffed contemptuously. "This is no place for woman or man," she said. "But I can pull my own weight, Mr. Norton."
"You're a solid character," he said.
"I've always thought so."
"This is going to get rougher, Alice. Can't we be a little more friendly?"
"Meaning what?" she snapped icily.
"Meaning only that you deserve better than that Napoleon type down there."
Alice laughed in a brittle tone. "And you're it?"
"I'll be a lot more fun."
"No doubt. And nothing but fun. What do you expect to do when the fun becomes hollow?"
"It hasn't yet."
"It will some day. You can't go on being a slightly irresponsible loafer all your life."
"Who is?"
"You are."
"Look," said Jock Norton angrily, "I'm still running this lifeship the way it's supposed to be run."
"At a hundred an hour."
"Maybe so. But let me ask you, which one of us would you rather have around right now? The trained spaceman or the captain of industry?"
"That's a fool question," said Alice. "Loaded to the gills. You know the answer to that. But once we get back home, then?"
"You're not hoping to marry that dried-up little—"
Alice laughed, almost hysterically.
"This will kill you, but until you assumed that I was sleeping with him as well as taking his dictation, I hadn't really looked upon Charles Andrews as anything but an employer. Sure, he's male. So is my Uncle Ned, my brother, and my nephew. Not to mention my father and grandfather. But Mr. Andrews is not my idea of a lover."
Jock Norton nodded soberly. He took a deep breath of satisfaction. Alice underwent a swift revision in his mental classification of her. She changed from a luxury-bought mistress to be seduced by the offer of real fun and passion into a woman with no emotional connections, to be seduced for the fun of it. Both, in Norton's mind, were fair game.
"What's wrong with me?" he asked.
"Nothing much, Jock Norton, except that you're essentially lazy."
"Lazy?"
"Lazy," she repeated. "Want it both barrels, or will you take it with sugar?"
"Hard. What's wrong with me?"
"You're educated. You know a lot. You've explained things that neither Mr. 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. Instead, you argue and backstep."
Harshly he said, "What would you have me do—take a swing at Napoleon when he sits on those short hind legs of his and objects or demands?"
"I don't know. I'm not a spaceman, responsible for the lives of three people—at a hundred clams an hour."
"Some day I'm going to shove those hundred fish down your throat."
"Do. And I'll spit 'em back at you!"
Norton roughly took her shoulders in his hands. He twisted her to face him, clamped down on her soft shoulders until she turned her face up to complain with welling eyes. He put his lips on hers and tried to force some warmth into them. She submitted calmly, and when he found no response and opened his eyes, she was staring at him vacantly.
Abruptly he let her go. She relaxed in the seat.
"I'm not afraid to work," he said in a hollow voice.
"Prove it," she replied flatly.
He got up, left her there, and went below.
V
Wilson sat in the Information Center and eyed the search grid glumly. It stretched stereoscopically out in the room, a lot of its vacant network of gleaming white lines frosted over with white shading, to mark where the search had covered.
There were a lot of untouched spaces—a horde, a myriad. On the side wall was a chart, showing that nine squadrons of twenty-five spacecraft each were patrolling back and forth through the uncharted wastes, seeking the space-wrecked lifeships.
The maddening part was the hourly report from both lifeships. It was like someone hiding in the dark and calling for aid, invisible and alone. And not really calling for aid, but only making whimpering noises. For the signaling equipment on the lifeships was not equipped with the complicated infrawave phone, but only with the simple signal-emitter, coded to transmit the identification call of the unit.
On the hour they came in, calling three times, "Lifeship Seventy-nine, Seventy-nine, Number Three." Number Two had not been heard from. Presumably it was not in use, or hadn't made the grade.
Wilson chewed his fingernails and fretted. Was Alice on Number One or Number Three, or was she on Number Two and it had foundered?
If she were still alive, what kind of fellow survivors were with her?
He hoped she was with a group. If she had blown out in a lifeship with only one other—well, Ted Wilson did not like the idea. Of course, it was more customary than not for a young woman to love lightly before she mated permanently. There was a lot less chance of wading into matrimony wide-eyed and ignorant of what it was all about.
But Wilson, if willing to face such transient loving at all, would have preferred that Alice have her chance to pick and choose, rather than have the matter thrust upon her in the middle of a threatening situation. 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. He could only pray that he would be heard, that his voice would give Alice some firm foundation for hope.
He could not be sure the passengers from the wrecked spaceship even had their receivers turned on, because infrawave receivers drink up a lot of power and lifeships are not equipped with any vast reserve. There just was not the room in a lifeship for anything more than the bare necessities of living.
The search grid was a truncated cone, and the whitened areas of finished search had finally filled the smaller end of the cone. There was the flared skirt of the cone yet to be combed, and this provided more volume than the cylinder taken out of the middle. It also provided a shorter search path as the searching spacecraft built out the volume, ring after ring around the first pass along the line of flight.
Far, far to one side a detector registered, and brought every man in the fleet to the alert. Then they relaxed unhappily again as the scooter returned with another report of a small gas cloud. Wilson thought glumly that they had discovered enough space meteors, gas clouds, and unawakened comets to make up a small sun.
Then his attention was taken from his own personal troubles by the arrival of another squadron from Centauri. He found himself busy readjusting the search pattern to accommodate this new contingent.
He eyed the pattern in the stereo and hoped it was good enough.
There was the basic aggregate of nine full squadrons spread out flat in a space lattice that ran back and forth from narrow end to wide end of the cone of probability. There was one full squadron of roving ships that went aimlessly back and forth across the pattern, just to cope with the happenstance factor.
One squadron was parked at either end of the search grid as space markers, with a computer ship at either end to maintain a constant check on their space coordinates. The big search pattern shuttled from one end to the other, and if they came back to miss the marker ships, they retraced their path so that no space went uncombed.
The infrawave chattered and Space Admiral Stone was calling for Commodore Theodore Wilson.
"How're you coming?"
Wilson replied, "We're still at it, Admiral. So far we haven't seen her."
"Don't forget, Wilson, there's more lost out there than the woman you want."
Ted wanted to snap back angrily, but all he said was, "You don't mind if I take this search personally, do you, Admiral Stone? I'm not overlooking any bets, but I do admit that Miss Hemingway is a bit more important to me than any of the rest."
"No, I suppose no one could blame you for that. Just keep it up, Wilson."
"Sure," Ted said wearily. "After all, this is a black and white job I'm on. Either we'll be successful—or we won't."
"Luck."
"Spaceman's luck, Admiral."
Wilson went back to his brooding....
Charles Andrews came back into the salon with a brisk air. He flexed his arms, took a deep breath, and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. He sat down beside Alice and smiled at her warmly.
"That thing is a wonder worker," he said, breathing deeply. "Nothing like exercise to make a man feel fine and fit."
Alice looked up at him with some amusement. "Mr. Andrews, tell me. Are you the kind of man who opens the window on a winter morning about six o'clock, and takes deep lungsful of icy air?"
"Not quite that bad, my dear. Not quite. But brisk living does keep a man sharp and hard. I daresay I acquitted myself well on that pedal generator despite my fifty years."
"No doubt."
Andrews chuckled. "I'll do better than our young pilot friend. The man is big, and should be muscular, but he is soft from lack of exercise. Yet he'll attempt to stay there longer than I did, I guess."
"No doubt."
He eyed her sharply, not missing her repetitious dry reply.
"Which, incidentally," he said, "gives me my first chance to speak with you alone since we took off from Earth."
"That's so. But—"
"Miss Hemingway, you are an exceedingly brisk young woman, attractive and intelligent. May I ask if you have ever taken a lover?"
"Why, no."
"Never considered it?"
She smiled thinly. "Naturally. All women think about it. Most do. I—er—"
Alice let her voice trail away uncertainly. The direct, frontal attack had put her off-balance, but she realized that this was Andrews' direct way.
He had smiled at her uncertainty, and said swiftly, "Then may I be the first—" when he noted the fading amusement in her face and glibly ad libbed—"to congratulate you on your choice of young men? The space commodore to whom you bade farewell in Chicago was an up and coming man, I'd assume."
"I rather imagine he's out here somewhere in the search group," she said.
"He may even be directing it," Andrews said carefully.
One thing he knew well—never run down a rival. It always brought on a defensive attitude. Build the rival up, and the return might be sympathetic. A clever course could be traveled between build-up and tear-down.
Looking at Alice thoughtfully, Andrews got up and began to rummage through a few lockers. Eventually he found a blanket and brought it to her.
"I'm not too familiar with these life cans," he told her, with a disarming smile. "I hope I remain in ignorance of them. But I found what I was after. Now, Miss Hemingway, if you'll stretch out, I'll tuck you in, and you can get some shut-eye."
"That I can use," she said honestly.
The blanket felt good. So did his hands, smoothing out the blanket, but being carefully tender and proper. Andrews was a smooth operator of many years' experience.
Eventually she slept.
Andrews found another cigar, and smoked it languidly, his eyes roaming around the metal walls of the cabin. He was thinking that he disliked Jack Norton immensely, although he knew that chances of survival were better with Norton's boorish, interfering presence than without. He was bored, he was angry, he was above all resentful of the time wasted in this spacewreck business....
An orderly tapped Commodore Wilson on the shoulder. "Message from Terra," he said.
Wilson groaned and reached for the telephone beside his bunk. "Wilson here," he said. "Go ahead!"
"Admiral Stone. Wilson, a new ship is on the way. I want you to get into this thing fully, so I'm briefing you now."
"New type of ship?"
"Well, not a new ship, but some new equipment. The Infrawave Section of the Space Department Radiation Laboratory has some experimental gear they want to try in actual service."
"Experimental gear?"
"Sheer experiment, Wilson. It's supposed to be an infrawave detecting and ranging device. It's shown low grade response so far, and it may be entirely useless to you. But Radiation feels that even something incomplete and erratic may be better than going it blind."
Wilson sat up, interested. "How does it work?"
"Darned if I know. It took a whole cruiser class to carry the junk that makes it tick. It's piled in with twine and baling wire, and when the crate took off the advanced techs were still connecting cables and adjusting the guts. Er—how're you feeling?"
"Tired and frustrated."
"Mind a bad joke?"
"Well—"
"Go on and have a laugh, Wilson. This gizmo reminded me of the new machine that made shoes so fast that it put twelve shoemakers out of work—and it took only eighteen men to run it."
A silence ensued. Then Stone said:
"Well, Wilson, I thought you'd like to know we're pouring the best we've got into space for you. Ship should be along in another hour or two."
"Yeah—thanks, Admiral Stone. And the joke was funny, at least the first time I heard it, it was. I'll get on the cubes and wait for the ship."
Wearily Commodore Ted Wilson climbed out of his bunk and began to dress....
Viggon Sarri said, "Now we know more about this race. They definitely are of the class where the individual is of extreme importance to the whole. This belies both the communal, or insect type and the anarchistic, or individualistic type. The quantity of men and machinery they are pouring into this search is amazing."
"They aren't much closer to success," offered Regin Naylo. "And we're wasting time."
"You think so?"
"We both think so," Faren Twill said firmly.
"Oh?" Viggon Sarri looked at them in surprise. "Then maybe I have the wrong idea. Let me hear your suggestions."
Twill and Naylo looked at one another, fencing with their eyes. Finally Twill nodded and said, "You say it, Regin."
"It's already been said." Regin Naylo looked pointedly at Linus Brein. "A day or so ago you claimed that you'd picked up some primitive infrawave emission that looked as though someone might be trying to develop a detecting and ranging device."
"Yes."
"Then it is my contention that any moves we make against this race should be made before anybody down there gets such a detector and ranger working."
"Why?" demanded Viggon Sarri.
Regin Naylo looked at his commander. "We're losing a technical advantage. Whether we go in with a benign and peaceful-looking air and show them how big and fast we are, or whether we plunge in and hit 'em with every battery we've got and reduce 'em to submission, we've got to do it before anybody succeeds in making an infrawave space detector. Understand?"
Viggon Sarri looked from one to the other, grimly. "You believe I'm wasting time? Is that it?"
The two aides answered together, "Yes!" and "Absolutely!"
Viggon Sarri said, "I am still in command of this force. We'll continue to observe until I am satisfied. You two officers have one common idea—that of moving in fast. You have differing ideas of how we are to move in. Until you can settle your difference and provide me with a good logical basis for your decision—whichever way—then we'll follow my plan. And my plan is to move in just as soon as we have enough data on the character and strength of this race to provide us with the correct way to take them."
"Then you are going to continue stalling?" demanded Naylo.
"Yes, if you wish to call it stalling. Maybe another man might call it planning."
"We'll be just wasting time, as I've already said. We have enough stuff to take 'em right now."
Viggon Sarri shrugged. "Yes. We could swoop in and take them like mowing down a wheat field. Tell me, young men, what happens when you mow down a wheat field."
They looked at him blankly.
Viggon smiled in a superior manner. "One of two things, depending upon how you operate. If you mow it down and let it lay, you drop seeds and next year it comes up thicker. 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. I want my reward now, or next week. Having my name on a monument does not have much appeal."
He was half standing with his hands closed into fists, his knuckles on the table supporting him as he leaned forward to drive his facts home.
"Or," he added scathingly, "are you two firebrands so youthful that you don't know that a man has only one single lone chance at this business of living? And that your finest reward at eventide is knowing you have lived a full and eventful life without screwing it up somewhere along the line by making a lot of idiotic moves?"
Viggon Sarri turned on a heel and walked out.
Naylo and Twill turned to Linus Brein.
"What do you think?" Twill asked.
Linus Brein shrugged. "He is undoubtedly right. Besides, we don't know all there is to know about the strange race out there yet."
"Oh, faugh! What else—"
Linus Brein smiled. He said slowly. "We don't even know whether or not they are oxygen-breathing."
"We can assume from the stellar type of their primaries that they are."
Linus nodded. "Probably, but not positively."
Regin Naylo said, "And what's second, Linus?"
"They may be contraterrene."
"Seetee?"
Linus Brein nodded. "In which case from both sides we must watch our steps. Get involved with a seetee race the wrong way and you have two cultures with absolutely nothing in common but a life-factor, busy tossing chunks of their own kind of matter at one another in a fight to exterminate. So before either of you start making half-baked plans, you'd better get your heads together and plan something that sounds reasonable to the Big Boss. Right?"
VI
Commodore Wilson eyed the spacecraft full of hastily assembled instruments with a grimace. The ship was swarming with techs who were peering into oscilloscopes, watching meters, and tinkering with signal generators. A huge concave hemispherical dome above was a splatter of little flickering green pinpoints and dark patches.
"This idea is hopelessly haywire," Wilson said unhappily.
"It sure is," said Space-Tech Maury Allison. "But everything is, at first."
"You hope to make something out of it?"
"We hope," replied Allison. "We can't be sure."
"But surely this pile of junk has been tested before?"
Allison nodded.
"Any results?"
"Some. We've had as much as five minutes of constant operation out of it."
As he spoke, the hemisphere over their heads flashed a full bright green, then went black. A bell tinkled somewhere and a couple of techs dropped their tools and headed for the back room on the double. A couple of others stood up from their work and lit cigarettes because their instruments had gone dead. Some of the rest continued to nurse their particular circuits because that section was still running.
The dome became a riot of flaming green.
The dome became a riot of flaming green.
The dome became a riot of flaming green.
After scanning the operation to see which section had gone blooey, Allison went on. "We've never tested this outfit under anything but ideal conditions. We've had spacecraft sent out to specified distances, fired up the gizmo and found fragments of response right where there should be a response."
"That's hardly fair, is it?" commented Wilson.
"It's a start. You have to start somewhere. Radio—know its start? The first message was sent across the ocean a few hundred years ago from one man to the other after they had made a complete plan as to time, date, location and frequency, and also the transmitted message. Sure enough, they got through. That, too, was under the ideal test conditions. So when we finally assembled the half-a-hundred separate circuits and devices that made it look as though we might have a space detector, we put up targets, aimed our equipment, and looked for a response where there should be one."
"We don't know where our target is," objected Wilson.
"And we haven't yet fired up this equipment to seek a target of unknown position and range," admitted Allison. "But this gear is better than nothing."
Again the green spots flickered in the dome over their heads.
"What do all those spots mean?" asked Wilson.
"Those are false targets, probably caused by background noise. Although the infrawave is noiseless, we still seem to be getting it. Dr. Friedrich disagrees. He claims this is not noise, but interferences. However, the good doctor is not at all certain that the so-called interferences come from localized conditions within the equipment or from external sources."
Wilson shrugged. "I don't see how it's done with a radiation type that has neither a directional quality nor a velocity of propagation."
"Do you understand Accum?"
"I stopped shortly before Matrix. Accumulative Math is so much pothooks on a sheet of paper to me."
"Um. Then I'd find it hard to explain. The theory seems to be demonstrable, and the accumulative mathematics upholds the experimental evidence. But there hasn't yet been an acceptable verbal description of what happens."
"I've often wondered, leaving the nondirectional quality out of it, why we couldn't cut our emitting power and somehow compute range by observing the incoming power from a distant infrawave transmitter."
Allison shook his head. "Oddly enough, the matrix mathematics that deal with radiation shows that for any hypothetical radiation with an infinite velocity of propagation, there can be no attenuation with distance."
"Meaning that we should be able to transmit all the way from here to hell and back."
"Not exactly. Infrawave radiation comes in quanta, you know. A kilowatt covers two point one, seven nine three six plus parsecs. Two kilowatts covers twice that distance minus the ninth root of two point, seven nine three six plus. Three kilowatts covers three times two point et cetera, minus two times the ninth root." Allison shrugged and spread his hands.
"And so on it goes," he said, "indicating that at some devilish distance—I've forgotten the figure but we had the master computer chew it out on the big machine at Radiation once—an additional kilowatt just shoves the signal coverage distance out by a micron. But if you don't put in your honest kilowatt, you don't excite the infraspace that carries infrawaves. And if you put in a kilowatt and a half, you have to dissipate the half."
Wilson grunted. "Nice to have things come out even. Who'd have thunk that the Creator wanted the Terran kilowatt to equal one quanta of infrawave distance?"
Allison laughed. "Poor argument, Commodore Wilson. Actually, the figure is point nine, eight three four plus. Close, but no cigar. We've just come to accept the figure as a kilowatt, just as for everyday calculation we accept the less refined figure of two point, one eight parsecs, or even two point, two. At any rate—"
There was a puff of something, and a sound like the puncture of a tire. The green speckles on the dome merged with one another and became a riot of flaming green. There were shouts and cries and a lot of haphazard orders and several techs scrambled to snap toggle switches.
Down the room one of the techs went head-first into a rack with a pair of pliers and a soldering iron. He backed out carrying a smoking little shapeless thing that had lost any character it once possessed. The tech picked up a nice, shiny new doodad from a small box and went into the rack again. When he came out this time he gave a hoarse cheer. Toggles were snapped back and the spreckles reappeared.
One of the techs came up to Allison and said, "See that spot up there, sir? The one just this side of the eighty-one degree longitude circle, and a little below the forty-five latitude ring?"
"Yes."
It was a small round disc no more than an inch in diameter.
"We think that may be a response."
Wilson said, "You mean a target? Possibly one of the lifeships?"
"Yes."
"I'll have a scooter go out and see. What's its spacial position?"
The tech took another look. "I'd say eighty-one plus longitude and forty-three latitude."
"From what?" demanded Wilson.
"From ship's axis, sir."
"Distance?"
"Oh, about half a parsec."
Wilson groaned. "Haven't you determined any spacial attitude?"
"Attitude, sir?"
"The angle of the ship's axis with respect to the stellar positions. So you've a blotch out there at half a parsec. It's an inch or so in diameter. Have one of your juniors run off some trig on the calculator and then tell me how much probable space volume that so-called response represents."
The tech thought a minute. "We've never run this gear anywhere but at Radiation, right at Mojave labs, on Earth. Our spacial coordinates—well, I'm afraid we—" His voice trailed away unhappily.
Wilson picked up the interphone and barked a call.
"Weston? Look, Hugh, can you get over here quick with a couple of your top astrogators? We've got a bunch of longhairs with a fancy infrawave detector and ranger, but the damned coordinates are set axially with the ship."
He listened to Hugh Weston's reply.
"Yeah," he said then. "We know where the target is with respect to the ship, but we don't know the spacial attitude of the ship with respect to the galactic check points. Right over? Good."
As Wilson hung up the dome flickered, then went into a regularflash-flash-flashuntil something else came unglued and the dome went blank. There was shouting and rather heart-felt cussing, and some running around again before the dome light came back.
A tech—not the one that had come up before—moved into place alongside the commodore.
"Mr. Wilson, sir," he said, "I wonder if—er—That is, sir—er—"
"Take it easy," said Wilson, half-smiling.
"Well, sir, we've been getting a lot of interference."
Wilson looked up at the flickering dome. He merely nodded.
"Well, sir—er—I was wondering if you could issue some—er—order to have the other ships move away? I'm sure we could find those lifeships if the rest of space were clear. But you've got three hundred—"
Wilson stared the youngster down coldly. "Somewhere out there," he said sourly, "are two lifeships in which men, and a woman, are waiting for us to come and collect 'em. I'm combing space almost inch by inch. I can hardly give up my squadron for a half-finished flash in the dome like this, can I?"
"No sir—ah—I suppose not."
"Then you live with the responses tossed back by my squadron. It'll be good training for you. Er—get the hell out of my way!"
The junior tech melted out of sight and went back to his control panel.
Weston came over within the hour. Ted Wilson explained the situation and told Hugh to set up and measure the coordinates with respect to the stellar centers. Then he told him to send a space scooter out to investigate that spot.
Wilson went back to his own flagship wondering whether that fancy infrawave detector would turn out to be anything. An untried doodad. But now and then—
Wearily again, Commodore Wilson called Commander Hatch, who skippered one of the scout carriers. He told Hatch to make himself available either to Hugh Weston or Maury Allison, to investigate infrawave response targets as they saw fit.
Then Wilson hit the sack to finish his off-duty.
He dozed fitfully, but he did not sleep worth a damn. He would have been better off if he could have taken the controls of one of the spacers and gone out himself. Then, at least, he would have something to fill his mind and idle hands....
Alice Hemingway awoke from a rather pleasant dream that had something to do with either ice skating or skiing, or it might have been tobogganing—the dream had faded so fast she could not be sure—to face the fact that she was feeling on the chill side.
Her blanket had slipped. She caught it around her, and in minutes felt fairly warm again. It was not so much, she thought, the actual temperature in the lifeship, but the whole damned attitude of people, and everything else that was so chilling.
The lights were running all right, and from deep below she could hear the ragged throb of the pedal generator. She wondered which of the two men was pumping it this time.
When Jock Norton came in, she knew. He was mopping his face with a towel. He looked clean and bright, freshly shaved.
She looked at him and wished she could have a hot shower herself, and a change of clothing. She wanted a ten-hour sleep in a nice soft bed with clean sheets, too, and wearing a silk-soft nightgown.
"Awake, Alice?" Norton asked brightly.
"Awake again," she said unhappily. "For.... What is it? The ninth day?"
"Eighth," he said. "Can't go on much longer."
"I hope not."
"You look all in," he said softly. He sat down on the edge of the divan, beside her, and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Take it easy, m'lady. They're really scouring space for us. We'll be all right. You'll see."
Unexpectedly he bent and kissed her chastely on the forehead. Alice tensed at first, but relaxed almost immediately because the warmth of that honest affection made her feel less alone and cold, in the depths of uncharted space. Some of the worry and concern was erased, at least. She stretched warmly as he rubbed her forehead with his cheek.
Then he sat up and looked down at her. He put his hand on her cheek gently and said, "We'll be all right, kid."
"Eight days," she said in a hoarse whisper.
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?"
She shook her head unhappily.
Doggedly he tried to explain. "They know that we must lie within a certain truncated conical volume of space. They comb this space bit by bit and chart it. Since the volume is known, and since it takes so many hours of work to comb a given volume, that means that at the end of a given time all the predicted volume of space has been covered. Since we must lie within that, we are bound to be picked up before they cover the last cubic mile."
"But how long?" she breathed.
"I wouldn't know," he told her honestly. "I have no possible way of computing it. They've got the best of computers and plotters, and they've got the law of probabilities on their side. But it's dead certain we'll be found."
"I hope."
"I know," he said.
"You've changed, Jock Norton."
"Changed?"
"You looked on this as a lark, before."
"Not exactly," he objected.
"But you did."
Slowly he shook his head. "Not exactly," he repeated. "I don't think I've changed at all. I still think that when you're faced with something inevitable you might as well look at it from the more cheerful side. After all, there was the chance that we might not have made it this far, you know. Now, tell me honestly, does it make sense getting all worried-up by thinking of how horrible it would have been if we'd been caught back there when Seventy-nine blew up?"
"I suppose not."
"Well, then," he said in a semi-cheerful tone, "since we did make it out safely, and are still waiting after eight days, we might as well expect to be collected soon."
Charles Andrews said, from behind him, "At a hundred dollars an hour, Norton?"
Norton turned around angrily. "So it's the hundred clams per," he snapped back. "That's damned poor payment for having to live with the likes of you in a space can this cramped."
Andrews eyed the pilot with distaste. "Tell me," he said smoothly, "did my last effort on the pedal generator go for power storage, or for a couple of gallons of hot water for that shave and shower you've enjoyed?"
Norton stretched and stood up. "I figured that having a clean face might help morale," he said pointedly.
"You're a cheap, chiseling—"
"Easy, Andrews! Easy. There's a lady present. Besides, I might forget my easy-going nature and take a swing at you."
Andrews said scornfully, "Without a doubt, a man of your age and build could wipe up the lifeship with me."
Norton chuckled. "Don't count on your age being good protection, Andrews. You may push me far enough to make me forget that you're a decrepit old man who has to buy what your physique can't get you."
"Now see here!" roared Andrews.
He was stopped short by Norton who took one long step forward to grasp him by the coat lapels. Andrews' face went white, because he was looking into the face of dark anger. Norton's other hand was clenched in a large, tight fist. He eyed the older man sourly for a minute, then shoved him backward to collapse in a chair.
"What are you trying to do?" sneered Norton. "Make me mad enough to clip you so you can yell 'Foul!'? I know as well as you do that the law doesn't even recognize taunts and tongue-lashings as contributory to assault."
Alice got up from her couch and stood between them. "Stop it, both of you!" she cried. "Stop it!"
Norton's anger subsided. "All right," he said to Andrews. "Now that we've all had our lungs exercised, I'll go below and pedal that generator. Alice, you can have the bathroom first. Andrews, you take it with what she leaves. Is that okay?"
"Aren't you the hard-working little Boy Scout?"
"Sure." Norton grinned. "I am that." He disappeared down the ladder towards the generator room.
Andrews turned to Alice. "You're not going to go for that fancy routine, are you?" he demanded crossly.
"What routine?"
"First he uses power for hot water, power that I was storing up. Now he's going to pedal that thing to waste more power."
Alice shrugged. "He's the spaceman," she said simply. "If he thinks we can spare the power for a bath, I could certainly use one."
"How can you trust the likes of him?"
"We've got to," she said. "We've got to."
"I wouldn't," said Andrews. "I can't."
She looked at her employer seriously. "We've both got to trust him," she said quietly. "Because, right or wrong, he is the only one who knows anything about space and what's likely to happen next."
"At a hundred an hour," Andrews said for the ninetieth time or so, scathingly.
Alice nodded soberly. "But you mustn't forget that isn't going to do him any good unless he gets us all home so that he can use it."
Reluctantly, Andrews nodded. "I suppose you're right."
Then Alice added, "And even if it weren't for the hundred per, he isn't the kind to kill himself."
Andrews grunted, "No, he isn't. But Alice, I'm not at all sure that Norton knows whether he's doing the right thing or not."
She shook her head. There was no answer to that argument. Furthermore, it was the kind of unresolvable argument that could go on and on until the answer was supplied from the outside. There could be no end to it until they were either picked up safely or died in lonely space.
She decided to drop the discussion as pointless, so headed for the bathroom. A hot shower and a quick tubbing of her underclothing were on her mind. Her garments, of course, would dry instantly. She had to smile a little. To think that a hundred years ago women thought something they called nylon was wonderful because it was fairly quick-drying! Not instantaneous, of course, as was the material of which her lingerie was made.
Anyhow, getting it clean now, and having a bath herself would make her feel better. And she would be better equipped to face the nerve-gruelling business of just sitting there watching the clock go around and around, with nothing to do but wait.
VII
Regin Naylo faced his superior with a scowl. "That rips it wide open," he said.
Viggon Sarri smiled confidently. He glanced at Linus Brein and asked, "Just how competent do you think this new thing is?"
Linus shrugged. "We've analyzed the infrawave pattern they've developed. It is obvious that this is their first prototype of an infrawave space detector. The pattern is of the primitive absorptive type, which is both inefficient as a detector and is also inclined to produce spurious responses. From our observations, their equipment must be extremely complex too. It must be loaded to the scuppers with fragile circuits and components, because the search pattern keeps breaking down, or becoming irregular. An efficient detector cannot be made of the infrawave bands until the third order of reflective response is discovered. I doubt that any research team, no matter how big, can start with the primitive absorption phase of the infrawaves and leap to the higher orders of infrawave radiation in less than a lifetime of study."
"So, gentlemen?" asked Viggon of his two aides. "Can you predict whether or not their new detector will deliver the goods?"
All looked expectantly at Linus Brein.
"We've been recalculating our probabilities at the introduction of each new phase of their behaviour," Linus Brein said seriously. "From their actions, I would say that they do not know, grasp, or perhaps even guess that space has flaws and warps in the continuum. They have been going at their search in a pattern of solid geometrical precision, but have been paying no attention to those rifts, small as they are, that actually make a straight course bend aside for a distance. So due to the fact that their search pattern has already passed over one of these rifts in which the one lifeship lies, and passed beyond in their line of search, we have produced a nine-nines probability that they will not locate this lifeship."
"And the other?" prompted Viggon Sarri, with interest.
"I'm not done with the first yet," Linus Brein said quietly. "There remains the random search group. Therein lies the eight-oughts-one positive probability."
Viggon snorted. "I call ten to the minus ten chances rather hopeless. But go on, Linus."
"The other has a sixty-forty chance," he said. "If the infrawave detector locates the space rift that lies along our coordinate three seventy-six, when the ship is near seven sixty-seven, then the scout craft will pass within magnetic detection range of the lifeship. That's a lot of 'ifs', I know, but they add up to a sixty-forty chance. I say this because space rifts tend to produce strong responses in any of the primitive detecting gear. They've certainly been busy running down space warps, which indicates that they've been getting a lot of spurious responses." He smiled. "If space were entirely clear of foreign matter and space rifts, they'd find their new detector vaguely inefficient. I—"
Viggon waved a hand to indicate he had heard enough.
"Gentlemen," he said quietly. "I've been criticized for waiting, but what one man calls study the other man calls timidity. We'll continue to wait for the final factor. Then we'll know...."
The stereo pattern in the Information Center of Commodore Ted Wilson's flagship was slowly being filled with the hazy white that indicated that these volumes had been combed carefully. As he watched, he could see how the search was progressing, and it was painfully obvious that the search was not going good at all.
The flights of spacecraft in set patterns back and forth through the stereo had covered nearly all of the truncated space cone. The random search ships were slowly cutting secondary lines through the regions already covered. There was a green sphere combing the stereo pattern now, indicating the new infrawave detector ship and its expected volume of detector coverage.
Space was filled to overflowing with the fast patter of the communications officers, using infrawave for talks between flights, and ordinary radio for talks between ships of the same flight.
Wilson had appointed Chief Communications Officer Haggerty to police the bands. Haggerty had done a fine job, removing the howling confusion and interference caused from too many calls on the same channel. But the result was still a high degree of constant call and reply and cross talk. Most of the chatter came from the infrawave detector ship, sending the scout craft flitting hither and thither on the trail of spurious responses.
It was almost impossible to grasp the extent of the operation. Only in the stereo pattern could anybody begin to follow the complex operation, and those who watched the stereo knew that their pattern was only an idealized space map of what they hoped was going on.
It was worse than combing the area of an ocean from maps that contained a neat grid of cross rules. Much worse. For the uncharted ocean is gridded with radio location finders so accurate that the position of two ships a hundred yards apart shows a hundred yards of difference in absolute position in the loran.
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. Once the spacecraft begins to approach a destination, the space positioning can be made.
Again, few spacecraft pause in mid-flight between stars long enough to care about their interstellar position. After all, space flight does provide a mode of travel where the destination lies within eyesight. Or rather, it has lain within eyesight ever since it became commonly accepted that these ultimate destinations were places, instead of holes poked in an inverted ceramic bowl.
Then, in the middle of the communications confusion, came a call from one of Commander Hatch's scout flights.
"Pilot Logan, Flight Eighteen, to Commander Hatch. Report."
"Hatch to Logan. Go ahead. Find something, Will?"
Will Logan said, "Solid target detected on radar, Commander. Approached and found. I am now within five thousand yards of what appears to be Lifeship One."
The entire fleet went silent, except for the detector ship, the scout craft, and Wilson's flagship.
Allison asked, "Was that our target, Logan?"
Logan replied laconically, "Nope. I was on my way back from a gas cloud—I think—when the radar got a blip."
In the background, they could hear Allison saying, "There's a real target out there where Logan went. Haven't you got an infrawave response out there somewhere—" The mike clicked off. Allison probably had remembered that he had his thumb on the "Talk" button and removed it.
Captain Warren said to Wilson, "That's a hell of a fine space detector, isn't it?"
Wilson nodded absently, picked up his own handset and called, "Logan from Wilson. How close are you now?"
"Thousand yards, Commodore. And no doubt about it. Lifeship Number One."
"You stay on, Logan, and give us a rundown."
"Yes, sir. Not much to tell, you know. But I'm closing in."
The scout craft pilot went on and on, mostly filling in with inconsequential details of how he was closing in, jockeying to parallel the lifeship's course and speed, and finally making a space approach.
At last he said, "They're on radio, Commodore Wilson. I'll relay as I get it. Too bad these crates aren't fixed to patch-cord the short range radio to the infrawave. I—" Pilot Logan went on to rattle off the names of the men aboard the lifeship, stopping once to reconfirm a pronunciation.
"Where's the pilot, and the other two? Miss Hemingway and Mr. Andrews?"
"They must be in Lifeship Three," said Logan. "That's a guess. Er—Commodore Wilson, I'm within a couple of hundred yards of them now and they're waving out through the astrodome at me. I'm about to toss out a light bomb. Or has anybody got a radar fix on me?"
"Better toss out the light bomb. Also radiate radio on the finding frequency. Hatch!"
"Hatch here."
"Hatch, send out a cruiser class thataway and pick 'em up."
Hatch laughed in a brittle tone. "It's been on its way for six minutes, Commodore. Half of our job is done!"
Wilson said, "Good!" and closed his mike. Half of the job was done, but it was, as far as Ted Wilson was concerned, the lesser half. He wanted the lifeship that sheltered Alice Hemingway.
Three hundred ships combing the spaceways with magnetic detectors and radar and eyesight. One ship combing God-knows-what with a half-cooked infrawave gizmo in which nobody had any confidence. One-half of the job done on what was as much a fluke of luck as good management.
And out there in the awful dark Alice was trapped in a space can with a happy-go-lucky hulk of a pilot who lacked the drive and ambition to buck for his own command, no matter how deeply mortgaged, and a small, wiry ruler of industry who bought what he could not command, and knew no more about spacing than Aunt Agatha's pet Siamese tomcat.
Wilson laughed bitterly. A-spacing she had wanted. Now she had it.
Pictures went through Wilson's mind. A picture of Charles Andrews comforting Alice by the force of his personal drive, confident that money could buy anything, including rescue from space. Andrews calming her fears and—it must be chill in the lifeship by now—bringing her the animal comfort of warmth, and offering to take care of her. His wispy arms about her, his bony hands caressing her as he held her head on his shoulder, his—
This picture was replaced by the vision of big indolent collar-ad Pilot Jock Norton. He would be taking over because he alone in that lifeship knew what spacing was all about. Mentally, Wilson could see Andrews a little hysterical because the financier was out of his element, and Norton taking over completely. Maybe Andrews had succumbed to some nervous affliction because of the strain.
Norton would be calming Alice's fears and confidently predicting rescue, and proposing that they combine the interrelated factors of the conservation of heat and the passage of time by indulging in exploratory dalliance. Wilson could even envision Alice, not entirely convinced that they would ever be rescued, agreeing because she would be unwilling to die without having reached the pinnacle of emotion.
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.
And on.
Only one thing made this series of pictures bearable at all. Thank God Alice was aboard that lifeship with two men instead of one. Especially two men who could not help but find one another deficient in something or other.
Then the third or fourth vision came. Norton and Andrews might possibly, due to their precarious position, settle their differences in basic nature and come to an agreement.
They might be taking turns!
Ted Wilson gritted his teeth and tried to get deeply interested in the search grid.
It was nine days old....
Alice looked up with a startled expression as Jock Norton came through the ladder hatch into the central cabin of the lifeship.
"But isn't—ah—aren't you—" She let her voice trail away because she didn't quite know how to finish.
He laughed. "I put enough reserve in the tank to take care of the elderly Napoleon. Look, Alice, I want to talk to you without his guff on the side."
"About what?" she asked. "Or shouldn't I ask?" The recent shower and tubbing of her underclothing had given the girl a feeling of confidence.
"About me. You. You and I. Us, you know."
"What can I say?"
He blurted, "What the hell's wrong with me?"
"Why, I—"
"Nuts," he snapped. "I'm not asking you for an explanation."
"Then why put it that way?"
"That's the point," he said. "I don't know. Something's all wrong inside."
"How?"
"Napoleon. Andrews. Frankly, I hate his damn guts. I've always hated the guts of that kind of moneybags. He walks all over everybody, buying what he can't control. Darned near theft, if you ask me."
"So?"
"Aw, hell! The little character has got something. I want to know what."
"Now it's him?"
Norton nodded. "Something about Andrews. I don't know. I don't know how or what or why, but there's something about him."
Alice eyed the pilot strangely. "Good or bad?" she asked cautiously.
"Both."
"Jock Norton," she asked quietly, "you've never had to work hard to get what you wanted, have you?"
He stared down at his fingernails. "Maybe that's because I never wanted anything of real value."
"Maybe," she agreed. "But what have you wanted?"
"Damned little out of life," he answered her truthfully. "Fun and games, mostly."
"And I suppose they came easy?"
He nodded. "Being a space pilot has—well, a certain egoboo. You find yourself invited here and there by people who have never been any farther out of New York than Hackensack, or maybe no farther out of Chicago than Evanston." He looked down at his fingernails again. "There's always women happy to claim they've slept with a man who has been to Castor, or Pollux, or Polaris, or even Centauri. A man gets his bed and breakfast and his fun. But—" Abashed, he let it trail off.
"So what about Mr. Andrews?" she prompted.
"He's been there, too. But his—well, somehow I think—"
Alice smiled quietly. "In other words, Mr. Andrews' spacing is only a means to his own advantage instead of being the end itself?"
"I guess that's what I mean. Andrews doesn't use spacing as his business. He uses it to get to his business."
"That's right."
"So where do I go from here?"
"That's your decision."
"I know. And I wish I knew how to make it."
She smiled at him sympathetically. "I wish I could help."
"Maybe you could."
She looked at him cryptically. "Not Alice Hemingway. I've got me a man out there who is combing space for all three of us. You'll have to make your own life and find your own girl."
"Suppose he doesn't find us?" he asked bluntly.
"Then," said Alice soberly, "we have no future to concern us, no decision to make, and no failure to measure up to or to account for to anybody."
"And we'll have died without having really lived?"
"Most everybody does. Few are content to lie down and get it over with. One lifetime is not long enough to content one's self. No alert, willing, intelligent human being can be content withThanatopsis."
"I don't know it."
"I don't know it too well, either. Something about, 'When thy summons comes to join the innumerable caravan that moves, et cetera, like one who wraps the draperies of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams.' Or something like that."
Bluntly he said, "It's nine days."
From the top of the ladder, Charles Andrews repeated his familiar refrain, "Nine days at a hundred per hour."
Norton turned swiftly. "Yeah," he drawled. "But we'll have that argument later, Andrews. Right now it's time to blast out with a distress signal again. They've got to know we're still alive, no matter what else."
"Okay—okay."
"So you fire up the infrawave transmitter and I'll pedal the generator, as before."
Norton disappeared below. Andrews went to the small panel and sat there watching the one meter, his hand resting on the one switch.
"Hell of a note," he grumbled.
Alice asked, "Why?"
"Can't send a damned message on this. Only make an identification call."
"Considering the size of this lifeship, and the fact that an identification call is all that is really necessary, I can't complain too much," she told him seriously. "What could you tell them that they don't know already? Could you urge them to greater haste by the power of your voice?"
Andrews actually had been thinking exactly that. Between the checkbook in his wallet and the pen in his pocket, Andrews had always been able to wield a lot of power. Men had jumped when he spoke, corporations had stopped their own programs at his signature.
His personal account would have covered the purchase of a spacecraft of the type in which they had cracked up. That he did not own his own interstellar runabout was a matter of a different economy. It was cheaper to buy passage as he needed it than it was to own his private spacer and keep it parked at some space port for his convenience.
But as Alice taunted him, Andrews could not say, aloud, that he believed his personal demand would bring help faster than the mere knowledge that human beings were adrift in space. It would sound as though he thought himself more important to the Universe than Alice or Jock Norton. He did think so, of course. But this was no time to insult his lifeship companions by saying so.
He eyed the switch distastefully. The meter was climbing up to the red line that meant that the infrawave transmitter was about ready to be turned on. Then it would hurl out its coded message.
In the back of his mind was a hazy recollection of radio code. He remembered that 'a' was a dot-dash, and that 'n' was a dash-dot. He did not recall whether 'd' was a dash-dot-dot or a dash-dash-dot, 'r' was dot-dash-dot and everybody knew that 'e' was a single dot. The letter 'w' baffled him completely but he was sure that 's' was dot-dot-dot. So the worst he could do would be to flub two of the letters in his name, making it come out A-N-D?-R-E-something-S.