The Project Gutenberg eBook ofTroubled starThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Troubled starAuthor: George O. SmithIllustrator: Virgil FinlayRelease date: October 20, 2022 [eBook #69190]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Better Publications, Inc, 1952Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TROUBLED STAR ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Troubled starAuthor: George O. SmithIllustrator: Virgil FinlayRelease date: October 20, 2022 [eBook #69190]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Better Publications, Inc, 1952Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Troubled star
Author: George O. SmithIllustrator: Virgil Finlay
Author: George O. Smith
Illustrator: Virgil Finlay
Release date: October 20, 2022 [eBook #69190]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Better Publications, Inc, 1952
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TROUBLED STAR ***
Troubled StarA Novel by GEORGE O. SMITH[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromStartling Stories, February 1953.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromStartling Stories, February 1953.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
FOREWARD—EN SAGA
At least once in every generation there turns up a person who is embarrassing to the Custodians of History. With neither talent nor ambition, nor studious application nor admirable character, this person succeeds where the bright and the studious and the intellectually honest would have failed miserably. Stubborn, egocentric, vain—often stupid—our person blunders in where the wise and the sincere would not dare. His hide is thicker than that of the rhinoceros. He is not abashed to tell the surgeon where to ply his scalpel, or to instruct the statesman on a course of diplomacy. His little knowledge is a dangerous thing—for other people.
His success is due to the law of averages.
History holds many accounts where the brave and the brilliant have stepped in at the right time to avoid disaster. Yet there are more bums than geniuses, more cowards than heroes and more laziness than ambition in our human race, so it is not surprising that there should be occasions when a bum or a self-centered braggart should find that history has a special niche waiting for him.
I
They were parked on the dark side of Mercury, snug and comfortable in their hemisphere of force that kept out the cold and kept in the air. At one side where force met ground, a tall silvery spacecraft rose like a chimney.
They were three:
Chat Honger was tall, red-headed, and thin faced. He looked as though he were incapable of quieting down, but he was really the type of person who has an incredible amount of patience for things which cannot be performed in a hurry.
Bren Fallow was shorter than Chat Honger, darker, stouter, more round of face and more amiable. Definitely, Bren was the methodical type.
The third man was Scyth Radnor. Scyth was the kind of man who is quick to grasp a new idea and as quick to reduce it to practise. His failing was that he seldom looked deep or planned far ahead. Being quick of mind he preferred to play everything by ear because planning required study, and Scyth felt that study for the sake of study consumed too much time—time that could better be spent in the pursuit of fun and games.
Teach them the language and drop them in Greater New York and they would be lost among Manhattan's millions. Better change their clothing, though. Striped shorts, Greek sandals, a Sam Browne belt across a bare chest, and a Roman toga of iridescent changing hues is not the kind of costume seen on Fifth Avenue.
Aside from their costume they were human to the last detail. Even their speech, when translated, sounded like the human tongue. They used slang, elision, swearwords and poor grammar. They made bum jokes and puns. They sounded more like displaced earthmen than technicians from a culture that had been establishing galactic centers of population for thirty thousand years.
"You're certain?" asked Bren.
Scyth nodded. "Dead certain now. It was that last computation that sold me."
"Then I'd better shut down."
Chat Honger shook his head. "We've got a job to do. We're behind schedule now, fellows, because of this question. We've got a beacon to start here, I say let's get along with it and bedamned to the—"
"You can't," said Bren. "The first time you put down in the log that this is a middle sequence flare-star, right smack-dab in the middle of Yalt Gangrow's Diagram, the Bureau of Colonization is going to ask you if you took a look for habitable planets. Then—then what, Scyth?"
Scyth Radnor shrugged. "The answer is 'yes' we took a look and we found one, just at the right distance, the right size, and the right conditioning. To say nothing of upper atmosphere and other data made by observation. So Planet Three is about as habitable as Marandis itself."
Chat grunted. "Looked for any signs of life?"
Scyth nodded. "The phanobands are as dead as you-know-what. The machinus fields are all as dead as one might expect this far from any established route. There are a few bits and dabs of stuff on the radiomagnetic spectrum which show a recurrent pattern too fast to be anything of natural phenomena, however. I say we ought to take a look."
Chat shook his head slowly. "I didn't expect to find it inhabited. But even knowing it is habitable is—"
Bren said, "If mere habitability is all you're after we can go ahead and establish our beacon and leave Planet Three to be handled later. A beacon wouldn't ruin the planet itself, you know."
Scyth said, "We'd better take a look-see anyhow. That last computation on the radiomagnetic stuff looked too much like man-made radiation to me."
Bren Hallow smiled. "Look," he said slowly, "If this planet is inhabited, how come the Bureau of Colonization doesn't know about it. Not one case in the history of Marandis shows the discovery of an inhabited planet that—"
Chat interrupted, sourly, "that didn't stem from Marandanian origin. But how about the several cases of spacewreck? Look what we're doing. We're setting up beacons along a rift through the galaxy from Marandis to the Spiral Cluster. We found this rift after years of hard work and galactic surveying and exploring, and both of you know just how fabulous it is. Well, suppose someone found it twenty thousand years ago and got marooned?"
"So what do we do? Take a run to Planet Three and radiate machinus fields all over space? Not until we know. So, Scyth, can you ducky us up a high-sensitivity job out of one of the standard menslators?"
"I think so. D'you think it will work?"
"If there is a primitive culture of the most low-grade organization there, there will also be one or more leading characters. A man of fame or power—or infame and power—whose person will be in the active minds of a large number of hypothetical inhabitants. We should be able to get some sort of response even if the whole thing is primitive as all get-out. But let's take a look before we do anything that's likely to get us into trouble. We're late now, another few hours isn't going to hurt much more."
The discussion in the dome on Mercury's dark side abated as the trio went to work. Scyth began to tinker with his menslators; Chat began to prowl the confines like a caged animal, thinking deeply, and Bren Hallow went back to his massive equipment that was designed to create a galactic beacon.
On this Third Planet of Sol there were still captains and kings and presidents and commissars and a couple of dictators and a new invention or two, all of which professed to be gentle guardians of the public rights. Only the names had changed, some in violence and some in peace. The names of places were about the same; a few had disappeared in the heat of ideology, but by and large things and people persisted despite atoms, politics and the cussedness of human nature. Youth was still going to hell—and old age was still fuddy-duddy.
One apparent change might have been noticed by a man of the middle of the century, and even he would have expected it.
The history of this change reads like this:
A few years after Global War I, the manufacturer of a breakfast food product known as "Oatflakes" realized a rather monumental increase in the sale of his product. Conscientious investigation showed that this increase was not due to the public becoming addicted to oatmeal as a morning, noon and night diet (with a midnight snack tossed in) but entirely due to a new plaything called the "Wireless." Wireless, it was found, required as a major component about a quarter of a mile of wire wound around the cylindrical box in which the oatflakes were packed.
Some years later, when the first home-manufacture of radio sets slowed because of professional manufacture of commercial radio, the sale of Oatflakes dropped to normal. At this point the manufacturer of the food product realized that the pathway to high sales was not along the contents, but along the package. Let the public buy the stuff for the box, or the box-top. If he wants to eat the stuff on the inside, that's his business!
So in the early-middle years of the century there arose a character called Hopalong Cassidy, who portrayed an Old West chivalry and heroic strength great enough to sell boxtops by the gross ton. He tied-in sales with toy and clothing makers until business reached the Law of Diminishing Returns. After selling spurs for roller skates the brains ran out of ideas and turned to new fields.
Space travel was the coming thing, so the youth of the land turned to Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.
Tom Corbett's only trouble was the same as the difficulty encountered by one Frank Merriwell fifty years earlier. After twenty years, Tom Corbett became the oldest undergraduate in Space Academy, just as Merriwell became the oldest undergraduate at Yale. The youth of the race wanted a real spaceman, full fledged and heroic, and so they got it.
Meet Dusty Britton of The Space Patrol....
The sleek spacecraft landed and the clouds of hot dust rose almost to the spacelock, driven up by the fierce reaction blast. A hundred yards from the Patrol cruiser lay the broken spacecraft of Roger Fulton, arch-fiend, cornered at last.
The spacelock opened and Dusty Britton looked out through a wisp of the deadly radioactive dust. He was clad in the uniform of The Space Patrol: black breeches and dark blue whipcord shirt piped in gold. Calf-length black polished boots. His head was bare, and the collar of his dress shirt was open wide enough to show the fine muscles of his upper chest and shoulders. He was blondish with a wide open face of the type that is associated with laughing-at-danger. His physique was almost marvelous, slender-waisted, broad-shouldered, long-legged, and agile-armed. His arms and hands and face were tanned from the radiations of Outer Space and there were the million little wrinkles about his eyes that were natural, not because of age, but because of the price one pays for being a Spaceman. At his hip swung the secret sidearm of The Space Patrol, a raygun far more deadly than the Colt .45 in the hands of him who knew its use.
Dusty Britton took a step forward to the edge of the spacelock, took a deep breath, and then jumped down into the floating cloud of radioactive dust kicked up by the landing blast. Within seconds he was out of the cloud again and racing across the ground to the ship of Roger Fulton which had landed askew.
His crew appeared in the spacelock and looked down, not daring to drop into that horror, knowing that they were not as fast as Dusty Britton and could not make it through in time to be safe.
Across to the wrecked spacer he went, boldly breaching the ruined spacelock. Along the corridor he went warily until he came to the control room. He kicked the door open and walked in, poised lightly on the balls of his feet, lithe and ready to spring like a stalking cat.
Then Dusty Britton faced his arch-enemy, Roger Fulton. Roger Fulton wore a three-day beard, his clothing was stained and torn and his hair unkempt. Fulton watched Britton with cold, angry eyes.
"Now," said Dusty Britton harshly, "Let's have it, Roger!"
Very slowly and very carefully, Roger Fulton's hands found the buckle of his blaster-belt and unfastened it. He let it drop, putting out a leg so that belt and blaster slid easily to the floor. As it reached his toe, Roger Fulton kicked it to one side. He shook his head and sneered at Dusty Britton.
"I should draw and fight the fastest man in The Space Patrol?" sneered Roger Fulton. "I surrender. You'll never blast an unarmed man, Britton!"
Dusty tossed his head. Keeping one eye on Roger Fulton, Dusty sidled across the control room to where Barbara Crandall was tied to a chair. Her eyes were soft for Dusty as he stripped the gag from her mouth and untied her bonds with his left hand. She sat up, rubbing her wrists and working her mouth, trying to tell Dusty something important that would not come through the cramped muscles.
Dusty turned to Roger Fulton. "I've waited for this moment," he said. Quickly he unbuckled his own blaster and tossed it aside. Then he stalked forward, poised to strike, his hands opening and closing at his sides. "Man to man, Fulton. That is, if there's enough man in you to fight!"
Roger Fulton crowed, "Sucker!" and went into whirlwind action. His hand darted inside his shirt and came out with a tiny miniblast.
There came the throbbing sound of raw energy and a flash that blinded. Yellowish smoke curled out and surrounded the scene. Barbara Crandall screamed and tried to get to her feet but the hours of being tied had numbed her muscles and she fell back into her chair helplessly. The yellowish cloud billowed higher in the control room and began to thin.
Then out of the cloud walked Dusty Britton. He held his right hand by the wrist, shaking it with his left. "Stunned a bit," he smiled bravely.
"But how—?"
Dusty opened the fingers of his right hand and let a miniblast fall to the floor, its charge gone, its usefulness ended. "He tried the old hidden-gun trick," said Dusty. "But two can play that game. Roger Fulton will never menace honest spacemen again!"
The music swelled as the scene faded out; a cheer from Dusty's crew finished off one more opus of Dusty Britton and The Space Patrol.
It was a special occasion, this showing. It was Noon in New Mexico, but the showing had gone out across a worldwide instantaneous network no matter what time it was at the receiving end. In some places it was late in the morning, in some places early, others had this showing late at night. But people were watching back and forth across the face of the Earth.
The film came to end, there was the white flash, then an intermittent flicker as cross-country synchronization took hold. (This flicker was done with an eye toward the dramatic; worldwide networks could latch in without a wink of the screen anywhere in the world.) An announcer came on with the statement that everybody had been waiting for:
"And now we take you to Dusty Britton in person, from White Sands Spaceport in New Mexico!"
A flash and a thundering boom shattered the air and a sonorous voice announced: "X Minus Thirty Minutes!"
White Sands Spaceport was a broad flatland, ringed by thousands of people. In the middle stood a three-stage rocket, waiting; its distance making it look like a small model. In the foreground was a small reviewing stand, and on the stand stood Dusty Britton, resplendent in his Space Patrol uniform. He was extending a hand towards a youngster about twelve, dressed in a miniature Space Patrol uniform, complete with a miniature edition of the famous "Dusty Britton" blaster at his hip.
The lad saluted Dusty; Dusty saluted back.
Then from his shirt pocket Dusty took a small box and an engraved piece of paper.
"Junior Spaceman Harold Dawson, it is my pleasure to award you this Medal of Spaceman's Honor.
"I am informed that upon July Seventeen, at Thirteen Hundred Hours local time, you, Harold Dawson, Spaceman (Jg) full aware of the dangers that threatened, did without thought of your personal safety, wade deep into the shifting sands of Mudlark Lake and from that deadly quicksand return your smaller sister to safety. For valor and for gallantry, I present you with the Order of The Golden Heart!"
With a flourish, Dusty pinned the decoration on the proud youngster's chest. The medal glittered there, a small heart of gold surrounded by rings like those of Saturn, carved in flat relief.
Then with another exchange of salutes, Dusty Britton went down the steps and into a waiting spaceport jeep and while the crowd cheered wildly, Dusty was driven across the sands to the spacecraft.
With tolerant parents permitting their young to watch this live, in-person show no matter what time it was across the earth, it is not hard to believe that during these many minutes there were more people thinking about Dusty Britton than there had ever been people thinking about any other person at any one time in the course of history.
And so Scyth Radnor, tinkering with his menslator on Mercury, trying to tune it to some response that would deliver definitive thought, caught much more than he anticipated. In fact, it nearly overloaded the device.
"Any doubt?" he asked with a twisted smile.
"Nope," from Bren.
"I pass," added Chat.
Scyth said, "So instead of being an uninhabited planet, we have a rather high culture, complete with space travel. This Dusty Britton must be quite a hero. But how in the name of the Great Space can they have space travel without machinus fields or some knowledge of phanoband radiation?"
"Maybe their space travel is—er—"
"Now look, you're not suggesting that people with a Space Patrol are riding ships with tailburners? Rockets? What a horrible thought."
Bren shook his head. "Our forefathers lived through it."
"Not many of them," grunted Scyth.
Chat objected. "Read that history you dislike so much. You'll find that our ancestors went through hundreds of years wallowing across space to the planets in reaction-type spacecraft. Chemico-atomic rockets, if you please."
"Let's stop the argument and get along with the main problem," said Bren. "What are we going to do about them?"
"Well, we can't set up a beacon with them here. So we'll just have to take the proper measures."
"That'll be quite a project. Whole colonies and—"
"That they haven't got yet. They're at the outpost stage; the scientific expedition stage. Their moon has less than a hundred people on it, their Mars has been visited only three times, and their Venus only once previously. This project that Dusty Britton is going on is the second Venus rocket, the first one being sent as an orbital, round-trip manned-job for observational purposes. So we can set up our barytrine field without causing a lot of distress, and then we can go on preparing our space beacon."
Bren nodded and Chat said, "You're the handiest man with menslators and the like, Scyth. You're also the guy that can think fast on his feet. We elect you to go to the Earth and contact this Dusty Britton and explain to him so that he can tell his people what is going on."
Bren nodded. "Take the ship and go, Scyth. But use the driver as little as possible. We'd still like to keep this rift secret, you know. We're working for Transgalactic, not the whole damned shipping business."
Not long after, on its secondary drivers which did not radiate enough to make direction-finding much better than haphazard, the spacecraft rose from Mercury and headed toward Earth.
II
Dusty Britton entered the lower cabin of the three-stage rocket and flopped into a chair. "Quite a show," he said with a trace of scorn.
Martin Gramer, the producer of the long series of Dusty Britton pictures puffed his cigar and nodded with self-satisfaction. "Not bad," he said. "Not bad at all."
"Gramer, how the hell long is this nonsense going to go on?"
"Until you're ready to retire."
"I'm ready now."
"For good?"
"I could do something else, you know. After all, I am an—"
Martin Gramer eyed the husky young man with derision. "You say 'actor' and I'll blow a gasket," said Gramer.
"Then what the hell am I doing here?" roared Dusty.
"You're here because you have an honest-looking face and a pair of broad shoulders to go with it. You're the living embodiment of John Darling Trueheart, and you can act the part, providing some bright guy lays out the floor plan and coaches you."
Dusty growled, "Why not hire the bright guy?"
"Because he's got a face that would scare children and the physique of an underfed fieldmouse. Pull you out of that hero role you're in and you'd fall so flat on your face that folks would be calling you Old Doormat. Now snap out of it, Dusty, and be glad you've got hold of a good thing. Stop looking for something you couldn't handle."
Angrily Dusty got up out of his chair. "I suppose you think it's fun to have to go roaming around the country wearing this jazzed-up surveyor's suit with a three-pound chunk of rusty iron clanking on my hip."
"To date they've sold three and a quarter million replicas of that Dusty Britton Blaster you're so contemptuous of, and you've received ten cents for every one that crossed the counter. What's so damned bad about that?"
"I feel silly."
Gramer roared with laughter, then cut it to one short bark as he cooled down to eye Britton angrily. "What's so damned silly about being a model of honor and respect for several million kids?" he demanded.
"Did you ever think how imbecilic it sounds to be Dusty Britton of The Space Patrol, with no space to patrol, wearing a blaster that doesn't blast? And wearing a pack of medals stamped out in the model shop? What does it all add up to?"
Martin Gramer tossed the stump of his cigar at the disposal chute and faced Dusty with a hard expression. "It adds up to a lot, Dusty. It adds up to a damned good living for you. It adds up to—maybe something you're too dumb to understand, but I'll spiel it off anyway—being an ideal. Damn it, man, there's millions of kids in this world that eat, think and dream about the Space Patrol and Dusty Britton. You're an idol as well as an ideal, Dusty. Kids follow a big name man. It's a darned sight better that they follow an ideal rooted in virtue, strength, honesty and chivalry than to have them trying to emulate characters like Shotgun Hal Machin or Joseph Oregon."
"Yeah," drawled Dusty, "But do you know what it means?"
"You tell me your version, Dusty. As if I hadn't heard your gripe before."
The disgruntled actor took a deep breath, opened his mouth, but then closed it again. He let out most of the blast he was preparing and said, quietly but disgustedly, "Why waste my breath? Dusty Britton doesn't smoke. Dusty Britton drinks soda pop and milk. The only women in Dusty Britton's life are his aged mother and his younger sister. Dusty Britton's biggest gamble is when he offers to bet a Saturnstone on this or that. Hell's Eternal Fire, Gramer, do you realize that I can't even date a dame for a dance because 'Kids don't care for the mush stuff!' and my private life is not my own? I can't even swear, god-dammit!"
Gramer eyed Dusty cynically. "You seem to get along."
"Sure. I get along. When I shuck this monkey suit and dress like a human being. But you know what happens? When I turn up at some joint, do I get introduced asTheDusty Britton? Like hell I do. I'm treated like any of the rest of the dopey tourists. Herded like cattle to the rear seats, while a tomato like Gloria Bayle lushes in with her fourth husband and gets the works on the house."
"You make my heart bleed, Dusty."
"Your heart never bled anything but vouchers," snapped Dusty. He fumbled in his hip pocket and pulled out a flask.
Gramer did not say a word.
"Well, aren't you going to give me an argument?" demanded Dusty.
"No. You can't be seen."
"But someone's likely to smell bourbon on my breath."
"No one that counts. And by the time we get back—"
Dusty stopped raising the flask in midair. "Get back—?" he roared. "Get back. Look, Gramer—"
"Sit down, Dusty. Take it easy."
"Gramer, what goes on here? You're not suggesting that we take off in this fire-breathing hot water boiler, are you?"
"You've read all the advertisements."
"Yeah, but nobody with sense would take ad-writer's copy for anything but guff."
Outside, a bomb burst with an ear-splitting racket. A stentorian voice thundered, "X Minus Five Minutes!"
"Ye Gods, you're really going through with this madman's publicity scheme?"
Gramer smiled. "Sure. It's just to Venus; but you can bet your life that every kid that sees this take-off on video or here on the field will be dreaming of the fabulous adventures you'll be having. Those kidsknowthis is for real, Dusty."
"Include me elsewhere," mumbled Dusty. He started for the spacelock.
"You can't let those kids down!" roared Gramer.
Dusty paused at the sill of the spacelock. "Gramer," he said cynically, "I'm not letting anybody down. I'm just keeping the hide of Dusty Britton in one unscarred piece."
"But the public—"
"That's what you've got press agents for, Gramer. So you can get your high-priced publicity men to run a few miles of paper explaining how I happen to have left this shooting star four minutes before take-off!"
"Dusty, you're a no-good louse."
"But a whole one. And let me tell you this, Gramer, you're less worried about the state of youthful morals than you are about losing the thread of a good, high-selling series. So I'm going to sail out of here as though I was scared to death of rockets—which I sure as hell am—and you're going to tell some bright explainist to get busy earning the dough you pay him. And when the smoke is all cleared away, I'll be safe and you'll be safe, and Dusty Britton will continue to go rolling along and the box office will continue to come rolling in. Spend a few short months in space? Not while the geegees are running at Hialeah!"
"But Dusty—"
"Space? Bah! Nothing, floating gently from vacuum to void and back again. Not for Dusty Britton!"
Dusty paused long enough to run splayed fingers through his hair and then he headed for the spacelock with a determined step.
"Wait!" roared Gramer.
Dusty paused.
"The least you could do is to go out of here not looking like Dusty Britton. Don't be an ass! I'll cover for you, but you've got to help!"
"All right but—" Outside another bomb racketed and the amplifier announced laconically, "X Minus Three Minutes!" and startled Dusty with the realization that he did not have much time. "—make it quick!"
"You—there!"
A technician coming up the ladder looked startled.
"Fifty bucks to swap clothing with Britton, here."
"Done," and the tech started to peel. He balked at Dusty's famous 'Blaster'? "That's worth another—"
"Another fifty—dammit!" agreed Gramer. "Now, wave out the door while Dusty leaves."
The roar that went up was for their beloved hero waving out of the spacelock, not the tech that came down the ramp with a rush, followed by the portly Martin Gramer. The spacelock swung closed as the spaceport jeep pulled away with Dusty and Gramer in the back.
They were a half mile away when the thunder came. No one even noticed them wending their way through the crowd, for every eye on the field was looking upwards, straining to see the spacecraft that was carrying Dusty Britton and The Space Patrol off to new adventures.
About a hundred miles off the coast of Baja California, Scyth Radnor sat in the control room of the big spacecraft. The dome was awash. Scyth sat high in the dome watching the pleasantly lazy progress of a forty foot schooner that was coming in his direction. It was a pretty sight and Scyth appreciated it even though he had been born on Marandis some thirty thousand years after the sail as a functional device had been outmoded. Sail, to Scyth, was strictly a vacation sort of thing, just as it was to Dusty Britton and a few billion other people whose lives are geared to a time-table except for vacation time.
If there was any puzzlement over this, it was because Scyth's menslator was not following the rocket, now laboring in free flight towards Venus. Dusty, according to what Scyth had been able to pick up, should have been there instead of here. But Scyth was not the burning inquisitive type. He knew that there was some explanation and that he could afford to wait until it was given instead of wasting a lot of energy trying to figure out the motives of a member of a race unknown to him.
He had better things to contemplate.
In the field of his telescope he could see a sight he approved of.
It was not Dusty Britton, lazing easily near the wheel of the schooner, keeping the helm steady with his left foot because his hands were occupied with a drink on one and a cigarette in the other. It was Barbara Crandall, lying on the cabin on a blanket. Her ankles were crossed and the arch of the upper foot was high and graceful. One thigh, slightly higher than the other, glinted from the sunshine, dark tan. Her breasts pointed at the sky, molded in dazzling white that contrasted sharply against the healthy, animal tan of her flat tummy. There were many more square feet of healthy hide showing than there were of the white shark-skin affair she wore, and Scyth approved of the view.
As he watched her, Dusty drained his drink, tossed his cigarette overboard, and called:
"Hey, Barb! Get us another quart, will you?"
Scyth did not hear it, for his menslator was by no means that competent a device. He just watched and wondered what they were saying.
Barbara called back, "Out of it already?"
"Yeah. I'd get it myself but someone's got to drive this rig."
"Don't mind." She stretched languorously and stood up, stretching high; pulling in her stomach and arching her back with her arms stretched high above her head. Scyth whistled inadvertently as her body went taut against the wisps of dazzling white that crossed her breasts and hips. She came along the cabin top, dropped into the cockpit, and disappeared into the cabin. She came out a moment later with a bottle which she opened and handed to Dusty. She took the wheel while he poured. They toasted one another. They sat side by side, their shoulders touching.
"Nice," she said quietly.
"You bet."
"Nice, quiet and peaceful."
Dusty addressed his glass and held it high. "Here's to the G. D. Space Patrol."
"What are you supposed to be doing?"
Dusty laughed. "I don't know. I'll find out when we get back. Gramer will have some flanged-up explanation right and ready for me."
"You'd better hope that the G. D. Space Patrol doesn't catch you all at sea with me."
"Phooey," he said. He pursed his lips and Barbara gave him a gentle peck that made Scyth's blood bubble slightly.
"Phooey nothing," she said. "You'd be—er—cashiered. Imagine a member of The Space Patrol consorting with a woman."
"What's good enough for pappy is good enough for me."
Barbara chuckled knowingly. "Where are we heading, if it's of any importance?"
"There's an island dead ahead. We might camp on the beach for the night. It's fine clean sand and—"
"You mean that hummock over there?"
"Hummock—humm—Good Lord!"
The hummock, dome of Scyth's spacecraft, began to rise out of the sea. Yard after yard it rose, coming upward glistening wet, the sea water running down in rivulets along its sleek flank. Ponderously and inexorably it rose with a steadiness of living rock. Yet it carried the air of feather-lightness, of an untold monster of sheer power held in easy leash. This was no rocket, straining against the formidable pull of gravity; this was a thing above material forces, its engines idling, its control in complete command. Without a second glimpse it was no spacecraft of Earth.
Up out of the sea it rose until its hundred yards towered above them. The spacelock was just above the waterline when the rising stopped and the alien spacecraft stopped, rock-steady. It was poised on its inexplicable driving forces with the same confident ease that an elevator shows when poised on its cables at the twentieth floor of a building. It stood rock-still and let the ocean waves break against its sleek, polished metal flank.
Whatever it was, Dusty did not like it.
He kicked the auxiliary engine into life, loosed the halyards and let the sails drop. He turned the helm hard as the engine roared into full throat. But the schooner defied its helm and aimed bowsprit-on to the spacelock of the spacecraft, starting through the sea like a dolphin toward the ship of space. The engine raced without bite because the ship was being hauled forward by some unknown force faster than the screw could drive it; the helm shuddered but had no effect, it tried to slue the stern sidewise but only succeeded in making the hull strain out of line. The wheel whipped out of Dusty's hand and spun to dead-ahead.
Dusty left the helm and dived into the cabin. He flipped on his radio and waited with rising panic while the tubes warmed and the meter rose to the red line that meant that it was ripe and ready for use. He grabbed the microphone, flipped the bandswitch to the Coast Guard Frequency, and yelled:
"This is Dusty Britton of the schooner Buccaneer. We are about a hundred miles off the coast of Baja California. Help! We are attacked by an alien spacecraft! Help! This is—"
He let his voice trail off because the output meter dropped abruptly to zero. Something had gone kaput.
III
Dumbly frightened at the face of the unknown, Dusty was far more frightened at being confined in the cabin of his schooner than he was of the nameless horror he would have to face above. He left the cabin in a hurry, and with mental desperation he turned deliberately to face the danger in the hope of getting it over with. He figured there would be less anguish if it came quickly.
The spacelock door was open wide and a man was standing there with a fluted-barrelled thing in his hand. On the deck were droplets of copper still hot enough to send up little wisps of smoke from the deck. The stub end of the antenna was melted down in a blob. As Dusty looked from Scyth Radnor to his ruined antenna and back again, Scyth leaned back in the spacelock and dropped his weapon. Then he made a relaxed show of sitting on the sill of the airlock with his feet dangling almost to the tips of the waves. He looked relaxed and calm and the trace of a smile was on his face; the kind of smile that would open into honest pleasure if he were greeted with the same.
"I am sorry," he said. "I am Scyth Radnor of Marandis. Despite the fact that I was forced to ruin your antenna, I do come on a peaceful mission, Dusty Britton."
"Yeah—" mumbled Dusty stupidly. Barbara was leaning flat against the mast, white-faced under her tan.
"Believe me, Dusty. I mean no harm. I did have to prevent you from broadcasting that which would bring a bad impression of me to your people."
Scyth reached up and pressed a button in the wall of the spacelock above his head. The sill of the spacelock came out abruptly in an extensible runway, carrying Scyth forward over the deck of the Buccaneer. Scyth dropped to the deck and stood facing Dusty with a hand extended.
"What do you want?" stammered Dusty. "And how come you talk our language?"
Scyth pointed to the tiny case slung around his neck. "This is a menslator," he explained. "When used in direct conversation with a man of another tongue, it acts to translate for both parties their meaning. It isn't perfect by any means, but it does help to make people of different tongues understand one another." Scyth smiled and then said, "For a quick and amusing explanation, observe this." Scyth clicked the switch off and began to speak. His speech was utterly comprehensible to Dusty and Barbara at first, but Scyth clicked the little switch after he had said a few words. They heard Scyth like this:
"Fa d snall id, an expression meaning to consign to the region of theological punishment, which when repeated through the menslator becomes 'Go to hell!' See?"
Dusty nodded dumbly. Barbara relaxed slightly.
"Now," said Scyth, "I am from Marandis. Marandis is a planet only a few thousand light-years from the Galactic Center, which makes it nearly thirty thousand light-years from here. Marandis is the seat of the Galactic Government. Look, Dusty, I came here to explain all this to you. There is a lot to say, and there is a lot you must take on faith until you know all of it. Let's relax. Will you come aboard my ship and have a drink? It's comfortable there and—"
"No!" snapped Dusty.
"Why not?"
"Nobody, but nobody, is going to get me in any space ship," said Dusty positively.
Scyth eyed Dusty queerly. His thoughts would have been obvious to anybody but Dusty and Barbara. Scyth was trying to justify in his own mind the attitude of a High Brass in The Space Patrol (anyspace patrol) who would not enter a spacecraft. Scyth finally decided that Dusty's reticence was due to Dusty's suspicious nature. Dusty was unarmed and he was not getting into a spacecraft capable of carrying him across the galaxy, perhaps operated by other members of the crew. There were no other members, but the ship was big enough to have many. Scyth nodded to himself and smiled at Dusty.
"As you prefer. I only repeat that I mean no harm and I add that the salon inside is pleasant. We can all have a—"
"We've got a drink," blurted Dusty. He turned on his heel and got the quart from the seat by the helm. He stopped to get a third glass. He poured.
Scyth tasted gingerly. "Very smooth," he said. "What is it?"
"Bourbon."
"Bourbon. Tastes like an excellent liquor. Thank you. Now—" Scyth sat down on the edge of the deck with his feet hanging into the cockpit and settled himself for a session. "Dusty, we are here because we are creating a beacon for our galactic spacelanes."
"Beacon?"
Scyth nodded. "You have the insular viewpoint," he remarked. "You can stand at night and point out your destination. But you cannot even see Marandis from here, even with the finest telescope ever built. Stars lie in the way, huge gas fields and nebular clouds block fast direct passage. To chart our course safely past such stellar menaces, we establish beacons at the ends of certain free passages. For instance, Sol lies at the end of a fifteen hundred light year straightaway from the last beacon we set up. Here at Sol a slight turn in the course is made and there is another straightaway for a thousand light-years toward the Spiral Cluster. We—my friends and I—are charting the course through a rather interesting rift from Marandis to the Spiral Cluster. This rift, along which you lie, has been hidden from us for thousands of years. When it is finished it will cut hours from our travel-time."
"And maybe so. But what is a beacon and how do you establish it?"
"Dusty, when a spacecraft is running at fifteen hundred light-years per hour, a three-day-variable star winks in the sky ahead like a blinker-light." Scyth chopped his left palm rapidly with the edge of his right hand. "Wink-wink-wink it goes. And the pilot puts his spacecraft point-of-drive on the beacon and holds it there until he passes it and aims to the next. You—"
"Variable star!" blurted Dusty.
"Yes. The three-day variables are used for course markers; the longer variables are used to denote gas fields, nebular dust, and the like, and the still-longer beacons are used to denote places where various well-travelled starlanes meet, cross or merge. It is—"
"Three day variable—" breathed Dusty.
"Yes. In three days Sol will rise ten times its present brightness and fall again to less than one tenth of the present brightness. This is accomplished by creating an atomic instab—"
"My God! How can any race live under such conditions?"
"They cannot. Not unless properly prepared, well taken care of, aware and ready for it."
"Look," snapped Dusty. "Why not go out and use some other star for your damned beacon?"
Scyth shook his head. "If we were gods," he said quietly, "we could park the Galaxy on our desk, pick up a broom-straw and by fitting and trying we could locate the best course through the star-fields. But—"
"If you were gods," grunted Dusty bitterly, "you could reach in and move a few stars aside and run your damned channel on a dead line from one end to the other. So why do you use Sol?"
"Because the two straightaway lanes that meet at Sol do not meet at some other star. In one or two cases along this rift the original surveyors provided alternates in case we ran into trouble. But not on this one. No, Dusty, we cannot change our plans."
"But see here—"
"Dusty, you wouldn't stand in the way of Galactic Civilization, would you?"
"You're damn well tootin' I would if it's going to mow me down if I don't."
Scyth said soothingly, "Doubtless you have cases on your Earth where a state highway is surveyed right through someone's home. Tell me, Dusty, what happens then?"
"We buy the property at a fair price so that the family can find another home of the same value."
"So you don't stand like a barrier in the way of advancement."
"No we don't. But where are we—" Dusty eyed Scyth with a frown. "You're not going to tell me that your gang will migrate the people of Earth to another solar system, lock, stock and barrel?"
"That would be impossible, of course."
Dusty grunted. "So we gotta alternately cook and freeze just so your outfit can run a goddamned traffic pattern through our living room?"
"Well, now, it's not that bad," said Scyth placatingly.
Dusty did not hear the Marandanian. He was thinking of Los Angeles suffering under the effects of a variable star. Or, rather, he was trying to visualize such a condition. His imagination provided alternating scenes of icy blast and deadly heat, but Dusty's overall technical knowledge was far too meager to offer him even a slight glimpse of the real truth. To merely consider Sol varying about one hundred to one in brightness and warmth every three days was as far as Dusty could go. What would happen to the weather, the general climate, agriculture, and all of the rest were far beyond Dusty.
Even so, the sketchy picture provided Dusty with enough data to say, "Why, we couldn't go on living on Earth at all!"
"Right. Which is why I'm here."
"But you said—"
Scyth smiled confidently. "I'm not here to preside over the death of your part of our human race," he said. "I—"
"Our part of your human race—?" exploded Dusty.
"Of course," said Scyth in a matter-of-fact tone. "So far as we know, human life was first spawned on Marandis. About thirty thousand years ago we became galactic in scope, spreading out, colonizing, expanding, exploring. Many expeditions left home and were lost. But I'll not belabor this any more, just accept my word for the following: nowhere in this galaxy have we found intelligent life that did not spring as an offshoot of misplaced Marandanian culture."
"How can you be so damned certain?"
"The easiest way is to check the cross fertility. It has always worked, to date at least," said Scyth, inadvertently letting his eyes slide up and down the very pleasant sight of Barbara Crandall's body. Barbara knew Scyth's contemplative look and she reacted as any uninhibited woman does when some man is measuring her. The deep high breath raised her breasts and flattened her stomach even though she had no great yen toward wanton promiscuity.
"I gather, then, that you and your gang are going to do something about us?" she asked.
"Of course. We have a program for cases like this. Since you cannot live on a planet rotating about a variable star, we'll move Earth to another star of the same classification."
"But—" objected Dusty.
Scyth went on as though he had not been interrupted. "We'll set up a barytrine field around Earth which serves to do two things. A barytrine field cuts the force of gravity that holds Earth to Sol. It also produces a complete stoppage of objective and subjective time within the field. Then with machinus force-fields we'll put Earth in motion towards another star of Sol's general size. In a thousand years you'll come out of the barytrine field and resume your daily lives under the light of a brand-new sun. It's as simple as that."
Dusty eyed Scyth sourly. "Maybe I've got this wrong," he said. "Maybe you think we live a hell of a lot longer than we do. Maybe you live a thousand years and more but we—"
Scyth held up a hand. It was the hand that held the glass, which was empty. Dusty, reacting as he always did to the sight of an empty glass, filled it despite the fact that he felt that Scyth Radnor was a long way from being a friend.
The visitor from space smiled indulgently. "You miss the point, Dusty," said Scyth, nodding his thanks for the drink. "I said that the barytrine field produces a complete stasis in time. It will snap on ... a thousand years will pass ... it will snap off. To us, we will live and die and never see you again. But for you and yours, if you drop a marble before the field goes on, time will cease for you until the field goes off, and your marble will hit the floor a thousand years from now. You will feel nothing. There will be a tiny flick of light. If you are watching the sun it will probably blink and return slightly off-center because we never can be that precise. If you are watching the stars at night, they will wink out and wink on, and be in a new pattern. You will feel nothing."
"Yes, but, look here, we—"
Scyth smiled again. "Oh, you'll be repaid. We'll raise you from your present primitive level—"
"Primitive?"
Scyth nodded. "Primitive," he said. "You're as primitive to us as your savages are to you."
"But—"
"Look, Dusty, thirty thousand years ago, Marandis was still ahead of your present state of development. I can say this because your people at the present time still have no inkling as to the inconsistencies in the theory of general relativity. Someday soon you will discover that general relativity does not fit all the cases. Then you will propose the machinus theory of space-time. The machinus theory works where relativity does not. Then," glowed Scyth, "you will discover the phanoband carriers which operate in a way as to completely deny relativity in every concept. From there you find the barytrine field forces. But you're still primitive, Dusty."
Dusty eyed the Marandanian sourly.
Scyth continued, "You'd find little in common with us," he said. "You'd find that you would have to re-educate yourself before you could even understand us. Why, there are people in our culture who would take advantage of your ignorance."
Dusty nodded. His hazy knowledge of history presented him with a costume drama of Sir Walter Raleigh handing over a ten, two fives, and four ones to Chief Sitting Bull and receiving in return an engraved bill of sale for the Island of Manhattan. This negotiation was sealed with a slug of liquor out of a bottle labeled 'Bourbon, Bottled in Kentucky.' (Pocahontas, standing to one side, received a string of beads.)
Scyth went on:
"The big problem, Dusty, so far as you are concerned is the preparation of your people. We cannot be precise about the position of the new sun. We could not possibly hope to keep any semblance of your stellar geography. When the barytrine field goes on, it will produce an effect similar to reaching the splice in a reel of film. With no warning, no pain, strain, nor furor the sun will snap slightly aside to its new position. On the night-side the stars will flick instantly to a new pattern. This sort of change would cause great hysteria and fear. Unless the people are prepared for the sudden change. So, Dusty, you as a high official in your Space Patrol must carry our message to your people."
Dusty said, "But—"
"You've mentioned the possibility of payment," said Scyth smoothly. "We expect and intend to pay. But not in money, Dusty. In service and commerce and in many other ways. For instance, we know that your group—I cannot call it your 'race' because your race is ours—must stem from an early expedition and so you are a lost offshoot. As soon as we can, we will come to you with teachers and learned men to help you regain your rightful place as a part of our Galactic Culture."
Dusty looked at Scyth. In his mind churned a hundred objections to the whole thing. He did not like it at all, but he was logical enough to realize that his objections would be waved aside and the Marandanians would go on and do as they planned anyway. On the other hand, maybe if Dusty Britton were to take a large hand in this affair and carry it off successfully, Dusty Britton could become a large figure indeed.
"It will be a bit difficult," he said slowly. "People are not going to take to the idea of losing their sky and sun and a thousand years out of the middle of their lives."
"The thousand years are peanuts. Nobody will notice it. The swap in suns is only a sentimental objection. One sun is like the next and we'll see to it that they are as close as can be had. The change in stellar appearance is deplorable, I admit. But it will give you one advantage, Dusty. Like most skies, they are divided off into primitive legendary shapes with neither rhyme nor reason. A cluttered mess. With a fresh start you can make some reason to the constellations. These are the sort of arguments you must use, Dusty. As a final reminder, you must remember that this is what is going to be done. Period. It is necessary and it cannot be stopped. Therefore you and your people should accept it and make the best of it. Therefore, in what will seem like three weeks, you will be by another star, under a strange sky, a thousand years from this moment. And my people will be there waiting to help you on your climb to the pinnacle of culture.
"But now I must go. Take my words back to your leaders, Dusty. You will go down in history; make the best of it!"
As abruptly as that—Scyth Radnor arose from the deck of the Buccaneer, climbed onto his runway, and was drawn back into the big spacecraft. The spacelock closed smoothly and the huge ship rose silently out of the sea and arrowed towards the high blue sky. The only noise was the whistle of its passage through the air above.
Scyth landed beside the bubble on Mercury's dark side not long after. Chat greeted him with a question about his success and Scyth smiled. "Naturally they didn't cotton to it," he said. "No one ever would."
Chat nodded agreement. "They wouldn't stand in the path of advancement, would they?"
Scyth chuckled. "I'm getting to be something of a diplomat," he said. "Not good, but I think adequate."
"Yes?"
"Sure. First I told them about the beacon and let them ask questions about it to whet their curiosity. Then I explained what the beacon was, which horrified them completely, as it should. Then after letting them cook in their own fright for some time I let them down easy by explaining how we would help to save them. So now there's nothing to do but to finish off the job."
"Right. How long will it take for you to get the barytrine generator set up and ticking?"
"Call it a couple of weeks. I'll have to go back to Marandis for the generator. It may take me a day or two to get it, you know. We'll have to get our license revised, and we'll have to put a bond against the safety of this planet Earth, as they call it. Of course, we'll have lots of time to look for another sun where we can put their planet; we can do that after the beacon is started and they're out of danger-distance."
Bren said, "So the first thing for you to do is to hike back to Marandis and get your barytrine generator."
Chat added, "When you take off from here, be sure you go due North until you're a long way out of line. No use in advertising our position."
"Right. I'll fog-off the course as best I can."
IV
Within a few minutes after his return to Mercury, Scyth Radnor was on his way back to Marandis to make the final arrangements. He took the long way out of this part of the galaxy and wound his way in an inextricable pattern to confuse any possible competition. Until the through-route was surveyed and the first passage made from end to end, there would be no exclusive franchise; another company might be able to latch onto one open lane on this route and give them competition.
Considered as unimportant was the fact that Scyth Radnor took along with him the beefed-up menslator that had put him on the mental trail of Dusty Britton. Not that this mattered, the chances were almost perfect that no one of them would have done anything with it anyway now that their problem was settled. At least, not Chat or Bren. Scyth might have played with it in an off moment. He alone had gotten an eyeful of Barbara Crandall, and while Barbara seemed to be Dusty Britton's woman, Scyth might have wondered whether there were any more at home like her.
But Scyth was on his way to the galactic center, out of range of menslators, even the big permanent installations.
Scyth, Chat, and Bren are not to be criticized for leaving a job undone. To them, a mere explanation covered the entire program. They did not expect the natives to understand the complex ramifications of the galactic culture any more than a certain native chief could understand the danger of fishing in Bikini Lagoon some fifty years earlier.
In fact, the three of them might have been highly amused at a primitive culture that had committed the egregious error of placing such a high value on something of no intrinsic value.
But back on Earth, the wires buzzed and the headlines screamed, and a brace of Gramer's press agents were hard put to untangle the mess the Marandanians had started.
From the teletypes of Worldwide Press Service: