"WALT:I'M SENDING THIS TO YOU AT JOE'S BECAUSE I KNOW THAT IS WHERE YOU ARE AND I THINK YOU SHOULD GET THIS REAL QUICK.JEANNE S."
"WALT:
I'M SENDING THIS TO YOU AT JOE'S BECAUSE I KNOW THAT IS WHERE YOU ARE AND I THINK YOU SHOULD GET THIS REAL QUICK.
JEANNE S."
Walt smiled wearily and said: "A good secretary is a thing of beauty. A thing of beauty is admired and is a joy forever. Jeanne is both. She is a jewel."
"Yeah, we know. What does the letter say?"
"It is another communiqué from our doting boss. He is removing from my control the odd three hundred men I've got working on Beam Control. He is to assume the responsibility for them himself. I'm practically out of a job."
"Make that two Scotches," Channing told Joe.
"Make it three," chimed in Arden. "I've got to work for him, too!"
"Is that so bad?" asked Channing. "All you've got to do is to listen carefully and do as you're told. We have to answer to the bird, too."
"Yeah," said Arden, "but you fellows don't have to listen to a dopey guy ask foolish questions all day. It's driving me silly."
"What I'd like to know," murmured Franks, "is what is the idea of pulling me off the job? Nuts, I've been on the Beam Control for years. I've got the finest crew of men anywhere. They can actually foresee a shift and compensate for it, I think. I picked 'em myself and I've been proud of my outfit. Now," he said brokenly, "I've got no outfit. In fact, I have darned little crew left at all. Only my dozen lab members. I'll have to go back to swinging a meter myself before this is over."
It was quite a comedown. From the master of over three hundred highly paid, highly prized, intelligent technicians, Walt Franks was now the superintendent of one dozen laboratory technicians. It was a definite cut in his status.
Channing finished his drink and, seeing that Franks' attention was elsewhere, he told Arden: "Thanks for taking care of him, but don't use all your sympathy on him. I feel that I'm going to need your shoulder to cry on before long."
"Any time you want a soft shoulder," said Arden generously, "let me know. I'll come a-running."
Channing went out. He roamed nervously all the rest of the day. He visited the bar several times, but the general air of the place depressed him. From a place of recreation, laughter and pleasantry, Joe's place had changed to a room for reminiscences and remorse, a place to drown one's troubles—or poison them—or to preserve them in alcohol.
He went to see the local moving picture, a piece advertised as being one of the best mystery thrillers since Hitchcock. He found that all of the interesting parts were cut out and that the only thing that remained was a rather disjointed portrayal of a detective finding meaningless clues and ultimately the criminal. There was a suggestion at the end that the detective and the criminal had fought it out, but whether it was with pistols, field pieces, knives, cream puffs or words was left to the imagination. It was also to be assumed that he and the heroine, who went into a partial blackout every time she sat down, finally got acquainted enough to hold hands after the picture.
Channing stormed out of the theatre after seeing the above and finding that the only cartoon had been barred because it showed an innocuous cow without benefit of shorts.
He troubled Joe for a bottle of the best and took to his apartment in disappointment. By eight o'clock in the evening, Don Channing was asleep with all of his clothing on. The bed rolled and refused to stay on an even keel, but Channing found a necktie and tied himself securely in the bed and died off in a beautiful, boiled cloud.
He awoke to the tune of a beautiful hangover. He gulped seven glasses of water and staggered to the shower. Fifteen minutes of iced needles and some coffee brought him part way back to his own, cheerful self. He headed down the hall toward the elevator.
He found a note in his office directing him to appear at a conference in Burbank's office. Groaning in anguish, Don went to the Director's office expecting the worst.
It was bad. In fact, it was enough to drive everyone in the conference to drink. Burbank asked opinions on everything, and then tore the opinions apart with little regard to their validity. He expressed his own opinion many times, which was a disgusted sense of the personnel's inability to do anything of real value.
"Certainly," he stormed, "I know you are operating. But have there been any new developments coming out of your laboratory, Mr. Channing?"
Someone was about to tell Burbank that Channing had a doctor's degree, but Don shook his head.
"We've been working on a lot of small items," said Channing. "I cannot say whether there has been any one big thing that we could point to. As we make developments, we put them into service. Added together, they make quite an honest effort."
"What, for instance?" stormed Burbank.
"The last one was the coupler machine improvement that permitted better than ten thousand words per minute."
"Up to that time the best wordage was something like eight thousand words," said Burbank. "I think that you have been resting too long on your laurels. Unless you can bring me something big enough to advertise, I shall have to take measures."
"Now you, Mr. Warren," continued Burbank. "You are the man who is supposed to be superintendent of maintenance. May I ask why the outer hull is not painted?"
"Because it would be a waste of paint," said Warren. "Figure out the acreage of a surface of a cylinder three miles long and a mile in diameter. It is almost eleven square miles! Eleven square miles to paint from scaffolding hung from the outside itself."
"Use bos'n's chairs," snapped Burbank.
"A bos'n's chair would be worthless," Warren informed Burbank. "You must remember that to anyone trying to operate on the outer hull, the outer hull is a ceiling and directly overhead.
"Another thing," said Warren, "you paint that hull and you'll run this station by yourself. Why d'ya think we have it shiny?"
"If we paint the hull," persisted Burbank, "it will be more presentable than that nondescript steel color."
"That steel color is as shiny as we could make it," growled Warren. "We want to get rid of as much radiated heat as we can. You slap a coat of any kind of paint on that hull and you'll have plenty of heat in here."
"Ah, that sounds interesting. We'll save heating costs—"
"Don't be an idiot," snapped Warren. "Heating costs, my grandmother's eye. Look, Burbank, did you ever hear of the Uranium Pile? Part of our income comes from refining uranium and plutonium and the preparation of radioisotopes. And—Good Lord, I'm not going to try to explain fission-reacting materials to you; get that first old copy of the Smyth Report and get caught up to date.
"The fact remains," continued Warren, cooling somewhat after displaying Burbank's ignorance, "that we have more power than we know what to do with. We're operating on a safe margin by radiating just a little more than we generate. We make up the rest by the old methods of artificial heating.
"But there have been a lot of times when it became necessary to dissipate a lot of energy for divers reasons and then we've had to shut off the heating. What would happen if we couldn't cool off the damned coffee can? We'd roast to death the first time we got a new employee with a body temperature a degree above normal."
"You're being openly rebellious," Burbank warned him.
"So I am. And if you persist in your attempt to make this place presentable, you'll find me and my gang outright mutinous! Good day, sir!"
He stormed out of the office and slammed the door.
"Take a note, Miss Westland, 'Interplanetary Communications Commission, Terra. Gentlemen: Michael Warren, superintendent of maintenance at Venus Equilateral, has proven to be unreceptive to certain suggestions as to the appearance and/or operation of Venus Equilateral. It is my request that he be replaced immediately. Signed, Francis Burbank, Director.'" He paused to see what effect that message had upon the faces of the men around the table. "Send that by special delivery!"
Johnny Billings opened his mouth to say something, but shut it with a snap. Westland looked up at Burbank, but she said nothing. Arden gave Channing a sly smile, and Channing smiled back. There were grins about the table, too, for everyone recognized the boner. Burbank had just sent a letter from the interworld communications relay station by special deliverymail. It would not get to Terra for better than two weeks; a use of the station's facilities would have the message in the hands of the Commission within the hour.
"That will be all, gentlemen." Burbank smiled smugly. "Our next conference will be next Monday morning!"
"Mr. Channing," chortled the pleasant voice of Arden Westland, "now that the trifling influence of the boss versus secretary taboo is off, will you have the pleasure of buying me a drink?"
"Can you repeat that word for word and explain it?" grinned Don.
"A man isn't supposed to make eyes at his secretary. A gal ain't supposed to seduce her boss. Now that you are no longer Acting Director, and I no longer your stenog, how about some sociability?"
"I never thought that I'd be propositioned by a typewriter jockey," said Channing, "but I'll do it. What time is it? Do we do it openly, or must we sneak over to the apartment and snaffle a snort on the sly?"
"We snaffle. That is, if you trust me in your apartment."
"I'm scared to death," Channing informed her. "But if I should fail to defend my honor, we must remember that it is no dishonor to try and fail."
"That sounds like a nice alibi," said Arden with a smile. "Or a come-on. I don't know which. Or, Mr. Channing, am I being told that my advances might not be welcome?"
"We shall see," Channing said. "We'll have to make a careful study of the matter. I cannot make any statements without first making a thorough examination under all sorts of conditions. Here we are. You will precede me through the door, please."
"Why?" asked Arden.
"So that you cannot back out at the last possible moment. Once I get you inside, I'll think about keeping you there!"
"As long as you have some illegal fluid, I'll stay." She tried to leer at Don but failed because she had had all too little experience in leering. "Bring it on!"
"Here's to the good old days," toasted Don as the drinks were raised.
"Nope. Here's to the future," proposed Arden. "Those good old days—all they were was old. If you were back in them, you'd still have to have the pleasure of meeting Burbank."
"Grrrr," growled Channing. "That name is never mentioned in this household."
"You haven't a pix of the old bird turned to the wall, have you?" asked Arden.
"I tossed it out."
"We'll drink to that." They drained glasses. "And we'll have another."
"I need another," said Channing. "Can you imagine that buzzard asking me to invent something big in seven days?"
"Sure. By the same reasoning that he uses to send a letter from Venus Equilateral instead of just slipping it in on the Terra beam. Faulty."
"Phony."
The door opened abruptly and Walt Franks entered. "D'ja hear the latest?" he asked breathlessly.
"No," said Channing. He was reaching for another glass automatically. He poured, and Walt watched the amber fluid creep up the glass, led by a sheet of white foam.
"Then look!" Walt handed Channing an official envelope. It was a regular notice to the effect that there had been eleven failures of service through Venus Equilateral.
"Eleven! What makes?"
"Mastermind."
"What's he done?"
"Remember the removal of my jurisdiction over the beam control operators? Well, in the last ten days, Burbank has installed some new features to cut expenses. I think that he hopes to lay off a couple of hundred men."
"What's he doing, do you know?"
"He's shortening the dispersion. He intends to cut the power by slamming more of the widespread beam into the receptor. The tighter beam makes aiming more difficult, you know, because at seventy million miles, every time little Joey on Mars swings his toy horseshoe magnet on the end of his string, the beam wabbles. And at seventy million miles, how much wabbling does it take to send a narrow beam clear off the target?"
"The normal dispersion of the beam from Venus is over a thousand miles wide. It gyrates and wabbles through most of that arc. That is why we picked that particular dispersion. If we could have pointed the thing like an arrow, we'd have kept the dispersion down."
"Right. And he's tightened the beam to less than a hundred miles' dispersion. Now, every time a sunspot gets hit amidships with a lady sunspot, the beam goes off on a tangent. We've lost the beam eleven times in a week. That's more times than I've lost it in three years!"
"O.K.," said Channing. "So what? Mastermind is responsible. We'll sit tight and wait for developments. In any display of abilities, we can spike Mr. Burbank. Have another drink?"
"Got any more? If you're out, I've got a couple of cases cached underneath the bed in my apartment."
"I've plenty," said Channing. "And I'll need plenty. I have exactly twenty-two hours left in which to produce something comparable to the telephone, the electric light, the airplane, or the expanding universe! Phooey. Pour me another, Arden."
A knock at the door; a feminine voice interrupted simultaneously. "May I come in?"
It was Walt's secretary. She looked worried. In one hand she waved another letter.
"Another communiqué?" asked Channing.
"Worse. Notice that for the last three hours, there have been less than twelve percent of messages relayed!"
"Five minutes' operation out of an hour," said Channing. "Where's that from?"
"Came out on the Terra beam. It's marked number seventeen, so I guess that sixteen other tries have been made."
"What has Mastermind tried this time?" stormed Channing. He tore out of the room and headed for the Director's office on a dead run. On the way, he hit his shoulder on the door, caromed off the opposite wall, righted himself, and was gone in a flurry of flying feet. Three heads popped out of doors to see who was making the noise.
Channing skidded into Burbank's office on his heels. "What gives?" he snapped. "D'ya realize that we've lost the beam? What have you been doing?"
"It is a minor difficulty," said Burbank calmly. "We will iron it out presently."
"Presently! Our charter doesn't permit interruptions of service of that magnitude. I ask again: What are you doing?"
"You, as electronics engineer, have no right to question me. I repeat, we shall iron out the difficulty presently."
Channing snorted and tore out of Burbank's office. He headed for the Office of Beam Control, turned the corner on one foot, and slammed the door in roughly.
"Chuck!" he yelled. "Chuck Thomas! Where are you?"
No answer. Channing left the beam office and headed for the master control panels, out near the air lock end of Venus Equilateral. He found Thomas stewing over a complicated piece of apparatus.
"Chuck, for the Love of Michael, what in the devil is going on?"
"Thought you knew," answered Thomas. "Burbank had the crew install photoelectric mosaic banks on the beam controls. He intends to use the photomosaics to keep Venus, Terra, and Mars on the beam."
"Great Snivelling Scott! They tried that in the last century and tossed it out three days later. Where's the crew now?"
"Packing for home. They've been laid off!"
"Get 'em back! Put 'em to work. Turn off those darned photomosaics and use the manual again. We've lost every beam we ever had."
A sarcastic voice came in at this point. "For what reason do you interfere with my improvements?" sneered the voice. "Could it be that you are accepting graft from the employees to keep them on the job by preventing the installation of superior equipment?"
Channing turned on his toe and let Burbank have one. It was a neat job, coming up at the right time and connecting sweetly. Burbank went over on his head.
"Get going," Channing snapped at Thomas.
Charles Thomas grinned. It was not Channing's one-ninety that decided him to comply. He left.
Channing shook Burbank's shoulder. He slapped the man's face. Eyes opened, accusing eyes rendered mute by a very sore jaw, tongue, and throat.
"Now listen," snapped Channing. "Listen to every word! Mosaic directors are useless. Know why? It is because of the lag. At planetary distances, light takes an appreciable time to reach. Your beam wabbles. Your planet swerves out of line because of intervening factors; varying magnetic fields, even the bending of light due to gravitational fields will shake the beam microscopically. But, Burbank, a microscopic discrepancy is all that is needed to bust things wide open. You've got to have experienced men to operate the beam controls. Men who can think. Men who can, from experience, reason that this fluctuation will not last, but will swing back in a few seconds, or that this type of swerving will increase in magnitude for a half-hour, maintain the status, and then return, pass through zero and find the same level on the minus side.
"Since light and centimeter waves are not exactly alike in performance, a field that will swerve one may not affect the other as much. Ergo your photomosaic is useless. The photoelectric mosaic is a brilliant gadget for keeping a plane in a spotlight or for aiming a sixteen-inch gun, but it is worthless for anything over a couple of million miles.
"So I've called the men back to their stations. And don't try anything foolish again without consulting the men who are paid to think!"
Channing got up and left. As he strode down the stairs to the apartment level, he met many of the men who had been laid off. None of them said a word, but all of them wore bright, knowing smiles.
By Monday morning, however, Burbank was himself again. The rebuff given him by Don Channing had worn off and he was sparkling with ideas. He speared Franks with the glitter in his eye and said: "If our beams are always on the center, why is it necessary to use multiplex diversity?"
Franks smiled. "You're mistaken," he told Burbank. "They're not always on the button. They vary. Therefore, we use diversity transmission so that if one beam fails momentarily, one of the other beams will bring the signal in. It is analogous to tying five or six ropes onto a hoisted stone. If one breaks, you have the others."
"You have them running all the time, then?"
"Certainly. At several minutes of time-lag in transmission, to try and establish a beam failure of a few seconds' duration is utter foolishness."
"And you disperse the beam to a thousand miles wide to keep the beam centered at any variation?" Burbank shot at Channing.
"Not for any variation. Make that anynormalgyration and I'll buy it."
"Then why don't we disperse the beam to two or three thousand miles and do away with diversity transmission?" asked Burbank triumphantly.
"Ever heard of fading?" asked Channing with a grin. "Your signal comes and goes. Not gyration, it just gets weaker. It fails for want of something to eat, I guess, and takes off after a wandering cosmic ray. At any rate, there are many times per minute that one beam will be right on the nose and yet so weak that our strippers cannot clean it enough to make it usable. Then the diversity system comes in handy. Our coupling detectors automatically select the proper signal channel. It takes the one that is the strongest and subdues the rest within itself."
"Complicated?"
"It was done in the heyday of radio—1935 or so. Your two channels come in to a common detector. Automatic volume control voltage comes from the single detector and is applied to all channels. This voltage is proper for the strongest channel, but is too high for the ones receiving the weaker signal; blocking them by rendering them insensitive. When the strong channel fades and the weak channel rises, the detector follows down until the two signal channels are equal and then it rises with the stronger channel."
"I see," said Burbank, "Has anything been done about fading?"
"It is like the weather, according to Mark Twain," smiled Channing. "'Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.' About all we've learned is that we can cuss it out and it doesn't cuss back."
"I think it should be tried," said Burbank.
"If you'll pardon me, it has been tried. The first installation at Venus Equilateral was made that way. It didn't work, though we used more power than all of our diversity transmitters together. Sorry."
"Have you anything to report?" Burbank asked Channing.
"Nothing. I've been more than busy investigating the trouble we've had in keeping the beams centered."
Burbank said nothing. He was stopped. He hoped that the secret of his failure was not generally known, but he knew at the same time that when three hundred men are aware of something interesting, some of them will see to it that all the others involved will surely know. He looked at the faces of the men around the table and saw suppressed mirth in every one of them. Burbank writhed in inward anger. He was a good poker player. He didn't show it at all.
He then went on to other problems. He ironed some out, others he shelved for the time being. Burbank was a good business man. But like so many other businessmen, Burbank had the firm conviction that if he had the time to spare and at the same time was free of the worries and paper work of his position, he could step into the laboratory and show the engineers how to make things hum. He was infuriated every time he saw one of the engineering staff sitting with hands behind head, lost in a gazy, unreal land of deep thought. Though he knew better, he was often tempted to raise hell because the man was obviously loafing.
But give him credit. He could handle business angles to perfection. In spite of his tangle over the beam control, he had rebounded excellently and had ironed out all of the complaints that had poured in. Ironed it out to the satisfaction of the injured party as well as the Interplanetary Communications Commission, who were interested in anything that cost money.
He dismissed the conference and went to thinking. And he assumed the same pose that infuriated him in other men under him; hands behind head, feet upon desk.
The moving picture theater was dark. The hero reached longing arms to the heroine, and there was a sort of magnetic attraction. They approached one another. But the spark misfired. It was blacked out with a nice slice of utter blackness that came from the screen and spread its lightlessness all over the theater. In the ensuing darkness, there were several osculations that were more personal and more satisfying than the censored clinch. The lights flashed on and several male heads moved back hastily. Female lips smiled happily. Some of them parted in speech.
One of them said: "Why, Mr. Channing!"
"Shut up, Arden," snapped the man. "People will think that I've been kissing you."
"If someone else was taking advantage of the situation," she said, "you got gypped. I thought I was kissing you and I cooked with gas!"
"Did you ever try that before?" asked Channing interestedly.
"Why?" she asked.
"I liked it. I merely wondered, if you'd worked it on other men, what there was about you that kept you single."
"They all died after the first application," she said. "They couldn't take it."
"Let me outta here! I get the implication. I am the first bird that hasn't died, hey?" He yawned luxuriously.
"Company or the hour?" asked Arden.
"Can't be either," he said. "Come on, let's break a bottle of beer open. I'm dry!"
"I've got a slight headache," she told him, "From what, I can't imagine."
"I haven't a headache, but I'm sort of logy."
"What have you been doing?" asked Arden. "Haven't seen you for a couple of days."
"Nothing worth mentioning. Had an idea a couple of days ago and went to work on it."
"Haven't been working overtime or missing breakfast?"
"Nope."
"Then I don't see why you should be ill. I can explain my headache away by attributing it to eyestrain. Since Billyboy came here, and censored the movies to the bone, the darned things flicker like anything. But eyestrain doesn't create an autointoxication. So, my fine fellow, what have you been drinking?"
"Nothing that I haven't been drinking since I first took to my second bottlehood some years ago."
"You wouldn't be suffering from a hangover from that hangover you had a couple of weeks ago?"
"Nope. I swore off. Never again will I try to drink a whole quart of Two Moons in one evening. It got me."
"It had you for a couple of days," laughed Arden. "All to itself."
Don Channing said nothing. He recalled, all too vividly, the rolling of the tummy that ensued after that session with the only fighter that hadn't yet been beaten: Old John Barleycorn.
"How are you coming on with Burbank?" asked Arden. "I haven't heard a rave for—well, ever since Monday morning's conference. Three days without a nasty dig at Our Boss. That's a record."
"Give the devil his due. He's been more than busy placating irate citizens. That last debacle with the beam control gave him a real Moscow winter. His reforms came to a stop whilst he entrenched. But he's been doing an excellent job of squirming out from under. Of course, it has been helped by the fact that even though the service was rotten for a few hours, the customers couldn't rush out to some other agency to get communications with the other planets."
"Sort of: 'Take us, as lousy as we are?'"
"That's it."
Channing opened the door to his apartment and Arden went in. Channing followed, and then stopped cold.
"Great Jeepers!" he said in an awed tone. "If I didn't know—"
"Why, Don! What's so startling?"
"Have you noticed?" he asked. "It smells like the inside of a chicken coop in here!"
Arden sniffed. "It does sort of remind me of something that died and couldn't get out of its skin." Arden smiled. "I'll hold my breath. Any sacrifice for a drink."
"That isn't the point. This is purified air. It should be as sweet as a baby's breath."
"Some baby," whistled Arden. "What's baby been drinking?"
"It wasn't cow-juice. What I've been trying to put over is that the air doesn't seem to have been changed in here for nine weeks."
Channing went to the ventilator and lit a match. The flame bent over, flickered, and went out.
"Air intake is O.K.," he said. "Maybe it is I. Bring on that bottle, Channing; don't keep the lady waiting."
He yawned again, deeply and jaw-stretchingly. Arden yawned, too, and the thought of both of them stretching their jaws to the breaking-off point made both of them laugh foolishly.
"Arden, I'm going to break one bottle of beer with you, after which I'm going to take you home, kiss you good night, and toss you into your own apartment. Then I'm coming back here and I'm going to hit the hay!"
Arden took a long, deep breath. "I'll buy that," she said. "And tonight, it wouldn't take much persuasion to induce me to snooze right here in this chair!"
"Oh, fine," cheered Don. "That would fix me up swell with the neighbors. I'm not going to get shotgunned into anything like that!"
"Don't be silly," said Arden.
"From the look in your eye," said Channing, "I'd say that you were just about to do that very thing. I was merely trying to dissolve any ideas that you might have."
"Don't bother," she said pettishly. "I haven't any ideas. I'm as free as you are, and I intend to stay that way!"
Channing stood up. "The next thing we know, we'll be fighting," he observed. "Stand up, Arden. Shake."
Arden stood up, shook herself, and then looked at Channing with a strange light in her eyes. "I feel sort of dizzy," she admitted. "And everything irritates me."
She passed a hand over her eyes wearily. Then, with a visible effort, she straightened. She seemed to throw off her momentary ill feeling instantly. She smiled at Channing and was her normal self in less than a minute.
"What is it?" she asked. "Do you feel funny, too?"
"I do!" he said. "I don't want that beer. I want to snooze."
"When Channing would prefer snoozing to boozing he is sick," she said. "Come on, fellow, take me home."
Slowly they walked down the long hallway. They said nothing. Arm in arm they went, and when they reached Arden's door, their good-night kiss lacked enthusiasm. "See you in the morning," said Don.
Arden looked at him. "That was a little flat. We'll try it again—tomorrow or next week."
Don Channing's sleep was broken by dreams. He was warm. His dreams depicted him in a humid, airless chamber, and he was forced to breathe that same stale air again and again. He awoke in a hot sweat, weak and feeling—lousy!
He dressed carelessly. He shaved hit-or-miss. His morning coffee tasted flat and sour. He left the apartment in a bad mood, and bumped into Arden at the corner of the hall.
"Hello," she said. "I feel rotten. But you have improved. Or is that passionate breathing just a lack of fresh air?"
"Hell! That's it!" he said. He snapped up his wrist watch, which was equipped with a stop-watch hand. He looked about, and finding a man sitting on a bench, apparently taking it easy while waiting for someone, Channing clicked the sweep hand into gear. He started to count the man's respiration.
"What gives?" asked Arden, "What's 'It'? Why are you so excited? Did I say something?"
"You did," said Channing after fifteen seconds. "That bird's respiration is better than fifty! This whole place is filled to the gills with carbon dioxide. Come on, Arden, let's get going!"
Channing led the girl by several yards by the time that they were within sight of the elevator. He waited for her, and then sent the car upward at a full throttle. Minutes passed, and they could feel that stomach-rising sensation that comes when gravity is lessened. Arden clasped her hands over her middle and hugged. She squirmed and giggled.
"You've been up to the axis before," said Channing. "Take long, deep breaths."
The car came to a stop with a slowing effect. A normal braking stop would have catapulted them against the ceiling. "Come on," he grinned at her, "here's where we make time!"
Channing looked up at the little flight of stairs that led to the innermost level. He winked at Arden and jumped. He passed up through the opening easily. "Jump," he commanded. "Don't use the stairs."
Arden jumped. She sailed upward, and as she passed through the opening, Channing caught her by one arm and stopped her flight. "At that speed you'd go right on across," he said.
She looked up, and there about two hundred feet overhead she could see the opposite wall.
Channing snapped on the lights. They were in a room two hundred feet in diameter and three hundred feet long. "We're at the center of the station," Channing informed her. "Beyond that bulkhead is the air lock. On the other side of the other bulkhead, we have the air plant, the storage spaces, and several rooms of machinery."
"Come on," he said. He took her by the hand and with a kick he propelled himself along on a long, curving course to the opposite side of the inner cylinder. He gained the opposite bulkhead as well.
"Now, that's what I call traveling," said Arden. "But my tummy goeswhoosh,whooshevery time we cross the center."
Channing operated a heavy door. They went in through rooms full of machinery and into rooms stacked to the center with boxes; stacked from the wall to the center and then packed with springs. Near the axis of the cylinder, things weighed so little that packing was necessary to keep them from floating around.
"I feel giddy," said Arden.
"High in oxygen," said he. "The CO2, drops to the bottom, being heavier. Then, too, the air is thinner up here because centrifugal force swings the whole out to the rim. Out there we are so used to 'down' that here, a half mile above—or to the center, rather—we have trouble in saying, technically, what we mean. Watch!"
He left Arden standing and walked rapidly around the inside of the cylinder. Soon he was standing on the steel plates directly over her head. She looked up, and shook her head.
"I know why," she called, "but it still makes me dizzy. Come down from up there or I'll be sick."
Channing made a neat dive from his position above her head. He did it merely by jumping upward from his place toward her place, apparently hanging head down from the ceiling. He turned a neat flip-flop in the air and landed easily beside her. Immediately, for both of them, things became right-side-up again.
Channing opened the door to the room marked: "Air Plant." He stepped in, snapped on the lights, and gasped in amazement.
"Hell!" he groaned. The place was empty. Completely empty. Absolutely, and irrevocably vacant. Oh, there was some dirt on the floor and some trash in the corners, and a trail of scratches on the floor to show that the life giving air plant had been removed, hunk by hunk, out through another door at the far end of the room.
"Whoa, Tillie!" screamed Don. "We've been stabbed! Arden, get on the type and have ... no, wait a minute until we find out a few more things about this!"
They made record time back to the office level. They found Burbank in his office, leaning back, and talking to someone on the phone.
Channing tried to interrupt, but Burbank removed his nose from the telephone long enough to snarl, "Can't you see I'm busy? Have you no manners or respect?"
Channing, fuming inside, swore inwardly. He sat down with a show of being calm and folded his hands over his abdomen like the famed statue of Buddha. Arden looked at him, and for all the trouble they were in, she couldn't help giggling. Channing, tall, lanky, and strong, looked as little as possible like the popular, pudgy figure of the Sitting Buddha.
A minute passed.
Burbank hung up the phone.
"Where does Venus Equilateral get its air from?" snapped Burbank.
"That's what I want—"
"Answer me, please. I'm worried."
"So am I. Something—"
"Tell me first, from what source does Venus Equilateral get its fresh air?"
"From the air plant. And that is—"
"Theremustbe more than one," said Burbank thoughtfully.
"There's only one."
"There must be more than one. We couldn't live if there weren't," said the Director.
"Wishing won't make it so. There is only one."
"I tell you, there must be another. Why, I went into the one up at the axis day before yesterday and found that instead of a bunch of machinery, running smoothly, purifying air, and sending it out to the various parts of the station, all there was was a veritable jungle of weeds. Those weeds, Mr. Channing, looked as though they must have been put in there years ago. Now, where did the air-purifying machinery go?"
Channing listened to the latter half of Burbank's speech with his chin at half-mast. He looked as though a feather would knock him clear across the office.
"I had some workmen clear the weeds out. I intend to replace the air machinery as soon as I can get some new material sent from Terra."
Channing managed to blink. It was an effort. "You had workmen toss the weeds out—" he repeated dully. "The weeds—"
There was silence for a minute, Burbank studied the man in the chair as though Channing were a piece of statuary. Channing was just as motionless. "Channing, man, what ails you—" began Burbank. The sound of Burbank's voice aroused Channing from his shocked condition.
Channing leaped to his feet. He landed on his heels, spun, and snapped at Arden: "Get on the type. Have 'em slap as many oxy-drums on the fastest ship as they've got! Get 'em here at full throttle. Tell 'em to load up the pilot and crew with gravanol and not to spare the horsepower! Scram!"
Arden gasped. She fled from the office.
"Burbank, what did you think an air plant was?" snapped Channing.
"Why, isn't it some sort of purifying machinery?" asked the wondering Director.
"What better purifying machine is there than a plot of grass?" shouted Channing. "Weeds, grass, flowers, trees, alfalfa, wheat, or anything that grows and uses chlorophyll. We breathe oxygen, exhale CO2. Plants inhale CO2, and exude oxygen. An air plant means just that. It is a specialized type of Martian sawgrass that is more efficient than anything else in the system for inhaling dead air and revitalizing it. And you've tossed the weeds out!" Channing snorted in anger. "We've spent years getting that plant so that it will grow just right. It got so good that the CO2detectors weren't even needed. The balance was so adjusted that they haven't even been turned on for three or four years. They were just another source of unnecessary expense. Why, save for a monthly inspection, that room isn't even opened, so efficient is the Martian sawgrass. We, Burbank, are losing oxygen!"
The Director grew white. "I didn't know," he said.
"Well, you know now. Get on your horse and do something. At least, Burbank, stay out of my way while I do something."
"You have a free hand," said Burbank. His voice sounded beaten.
Channing left the office of the Director and headed for the chem lab. "How much potassium chlorate, nitrate, sulphate, and other oxygen-bearing compounds have you?" he asked. "That includes mercuric oxide, spare water, or anything else that will give us oxygen if broken down."
There was a ten-minute wait until the members of the chem lab took a hurried inventory.
"Good," said Channing. "Start breaking it down. Collect all the oxygen you can in containers. This is the business! It has priority! Anything, no matter how valuable, must be scrapped if it can facilitate the gathering of oxygen. God knows, there isn't by half enough—not even a tenth. But try, anyway."
Channing headed out of the chemistry laboratory and into the electronics lab. "Jimmie," he shouted, "get a couple of stone jars and get an electrolysis outfit running. Fling the hydrogen out of a convenient outlet into space and collect the oxygen. Water, I mean. Use tap water, right out of the faucet."
"Yeah, but—"
"Jimmie, if we don't breathe, what chance have we to go on drinking? I'll tell you when to stop."
"O.K., Doc," said Jimmie.
"And look. As soon as you get that running, set up a CO2indicator and let me know the percentage at the end of each hour! Get me?"
"I take it that something has happened to the air plant?"
"It isn't functioning," said Channing shortly. He left the puzzled Jimmie and headed for the beam-control room. Jimmie continued to wonder about the air plant. How in the devil could an air plant cease functioning unless it were—dead! Jimmie stopped wondering and began to operate on his electrolysis set-up furiously.
Channing found the men in the beam-control room worried and ill at ease. The fine co-ordination that made them expert in their line was ebbing. The nervous work demanded perfect motor control, excellent perception, and a fine power of reasoning. The perceptible lack of oxygen at this high level was taking its toll already.
"Look, fellows, we're in a mess. Until further notice, take five-minute shifts. We've got about thirty hours to go. If the going gets tough, drop it to three-minute shifts. But, fellows, keep those beams centered until you drop!"
"We'll keep 'em going if we have to call our wives up here to run 'em for us," said one man. "What's up?"
"Air plant's sour. Losing oxy. Got a shipload coming out from Terra, be here in thirty hours. But upon you fellows will rest the responsibility of keeping us in touch with the rest of the system. If you fail, we could call for help until hell freezes us all in—and no one would hear us!"
"We'll keep 'em rolling," said a little fellow who had to sit on a tall stool to get even with the controls.
Channing looked out of the big, faceted plexiglass dome that covered the entire end of the Venus Equilateral Station. "Here messages go in and out," he mused. "The other end brings us things that take our breath away."
Channing was referring to the big air lock at the other end of the station, three miles away, right through the center.
At the center of the dome, there was a sighting 'scope. It kept Polaris on a marked circle, keeping the station exactly even with the Terrestrial North. About the periphery of the dome, looking out across space, the beam-control operators were sitting, each with a hundred-foot parabolic reflector below his position, outside the dome, and under the rim of the transparent howl. These reflectors shot the interworld signals across space in tight beams, and the men, half the time anticipating the vagaries of space-warp, kept them centered on the proper, shining speck in that field of stars.
Above his head the stars twinkled. Puny man, setting his will against the monstrous void. Puny man, dependent upon atmosphere. "'Nature abhors a vacuum,' said Torricelli," groaned Channing. "Nuts! If nature abhorred a vacuum, why did she make so much of it?"
Arden Westland entered the apartment without knocking. "I'd give my right arm up to here for a cigarette," she said, marking above the elbow with the other hand.
"Na-hah," said Channing. "Can't burn oxygen."
"I know. I'm tired, I'm cold, and I'm ill. Anything you can do for a lady?"
"Not as much as I'd like to do," said Channing. "I can't help much. We've got most of the place stopped off with the air-tight doors. We've been electrolyzing water, baking KClO3and everything else we can get oxy out of. I've a crew of men trying to absorb the CO2content and we are losing. Of course, I've known all along that we couldn't support the station on the meager supplies we have on hand. But we'll win in the end. Our microcosmic world is getting a shot in the arm in a few hours that will re-set the balance."
"I don't see why we didn't prepare for this emergency," said Arden.
"This station is well balanced. There are enough people here and enough space to make a little world of our own. We can establish a balance that is pretty darned close to perfect. The imperfections are taken care of by influxes of supplies from the system. Until Burbank upset the balance, we could go on forever, utilizing natural purification of air and water. We grow a few vegetables and have some meat critters to give milk and steak. The energy to operate Venus Equilateral is supplied from the uranium pile. Atomic power, if you please. Why should we burden ourselves with a lot of cubic feet of supplies that would take up room necessary to maintain our balance? We are not in bad shape. We'll live, though we'll all be a bunch of tired, irritable people who yawn in one another's faces."
"And after it is over?"
"We'll establish the balance. Then we'll settle down again. We can take up where we left off," said Don.
"Not quite. Venus Equilateral has been seared by fire. We'll be tougher and less tolerant of outsiders. If we were a closed corporation before, we'll be tighter than a vacuum-packed coffee can afterwards. And the first bird that cracks us will get hissed at."
Three superliners hove into sight at the end of thirty-one hours. They circled the station, signaling by helio. They approached the air lock end of the station and made contact. The air lock was opened and space-suited figures swarmed over the South End Landing Stage. A stream of big oxygen tanks was brought into the air lock, admitted, and taken to the last bulwark of huddled people on the fourth level.
From one of the ships there came a horde of men carrying huge square trays of dirt and green, growing sawgrass.
For six hours, Venus Equilateral was the scene of wild, furious activity. The dead air was blown out of bad areas, and the hissing of oxygen tanks was heard in every room. Gradually the people left the fourth level and returned to their rightful places. The station rang with laughter once more, and business, stopped short for want of breath, took a deep lungful of fresh air and went back to work.
The superliners left. But not without taking a souvenir. Francis Burbank went with them. His removal notice was on the first ship, and Don Channing's appointment as Director of Venus Equilateral was on the second.
Happily he entered the Director's office once more. He carried with him all the things that he had removed just a few short weeks before. This time he was coming to stay.
Arden entered the office behind him. "Home again?" she asked.
"Yop," he grinned at her. "Open file B, will you, and break out a container of my favorite beverage?"
"Sure thing," she said.
There came a shout of glee. "Break out four glasses," she was told from behind. It was Walt Franks and Joe.
It was Arden that proposed the toast. "Here's to a closed corporation," she said. They drank on that.
She went over beside Don and took his arm. "You see?" she said, looking up into his eyes. "We aren't the same. Things have changed since Burbank came, and went. Haven't they?"
"They have," laughed Channing. "And now that you are my secretary, it is no longer proper for you to shine up to me like that. People will talk."
"What's he raving about?" asked Joe.
Channing answered, "It is considered highly improper for a secretary to make passes at her boss. Think of what people will say; think of his wife and kids."
"You have neither."
"People?" asked Channing innocently.
"No—you ape—the other."
"Maybe so," nodded Don, "but it is still in bad taste for a secretary—"
"No man can use that tone of voice on me!" stormed Arden with a glint in her eye. "I resign! You can't call me a secretary!"
"But Arden—darling—"
Arden relaxed into the crook of Channing's arm. She winked at Walt and Joe. "Me—," she said, "I've been promoted!"
Maintaining Communications through the worst of interference was a type of problem in which dire necessity demanded a solution. Often there are other problems of less demanding nature. These are sometimes called "projects" because they may be desirable but are not born of dire necessity.
Barring interference, the problem of keeping communication with another planet across a hundred million miles of interplanetary space is partially solved by the fact that you can see your target! Keeping the cross-hairs in a telescope properly centered is a technical job more arduous than difficult.
But seeing a spacecraft is another problem. Consider the relative sizes of spacecraft and planet. Where Terra is eight thousand miles in diameter, the largest of spacecraft is eight hundred feet long. Reduced to a common denominator and a simple ratio, it reads that the earth is 50,000 times as large as the largest spacecraft. Now go outside and take a look at Venus. At normal distances, it is a mote in the sky. Yet Venus is only slightly smaller than the earth. Reduce Venus by fifty thousand times, and no astronomer would ever suspect its existence.
Then take the invisible mote and place it in a volume of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic miles and he who found the needle in a haystack is a piker by comparison.
It could have been lives at stake that drove the job out of the "project" class and into the "necessity" stage. The fact that it was ebb and flow of a mundane thing like money may lower the quality of glamor.
But there it was—a problem that cried out for a solution; a man who was willing to pay for the attempt; and a group of technicians more than happy to tackle the job.
The chart in the terminal building at Canalopsis Spaceport, Mars, was a huge thing that was the focus of all eyes. It occupied a thirty-by-thirty space in the center of one wall, and it had a far-flung iron railing about it to keep the people from crowding it too close, thus shutting off the view. It was a popular display, for it helped to drive home the fact that space travel was different from anything else. People were aware that their lives had been built upon going from one fixed place to another place, equally immobile. But on interplanet travel, one left a moving planet for another planet, moving at a different velocity. You found that the shortest distance was not a straight line but a space curve involving higher mathematics.
The courses being traveled at the time were marked, and those that would be traversed in the very near future were drawn upon the chart, too; all appropriately labeled. At a glance, one could see that in fifty minutes and seventeen seconds theEmpress of Kolainwould take off from Mars, which was the red disk on the right, and she would travel along the curve so marked to Venus, which was almost one hundred and sixty degrees clockwise around the Sun. People were glad of the chance to go on this trip because the Venus Equilateral Relay Station would come within a telescope's sight on the way.
The Empress of Kolainwould slide into Venus on the day side; and a few hours later she would lift again to head for Terra, a few degrees ahead of Venus and about thirty million miles away.
Precisely on the zero-zero, theEmpress of Kolainlifted upward on four tenuous pillars of dull-red glow and drove a hole in the sky. The glow was almost lost in the bright sunshine, and soon it died. TheEmpress of Kolainbecame a little world in itself, and would so remain until it dropped onto the ground at Venus, almost two hundred million miles away.
Driving upward, theEmpress of Kolaincould not have been out of the thin Martian atmosphere when a warning bell rang in the telephone and telespace office at the terminal. The bell caught official ears, and all work was stopped as the personnel of the communications office ran to the machine to see what was so important that the "immediate attention" signal was rung.
Impatiently the operator waited for the tape to come clicking from the machine. It came, letter by letter, click by click, at fifty words per minute. The operator tore the strip from the machine and read aloud: "HoldEmpress of Kolain. Reroute to Terra direct. Will be quarantined at Venus. Whole planet in epidemic of Venusian Fever."
"Snap answer," growled the clerk. "Tell 'em: 'Too little and too late.Empress of Kolainleft thirty seconds before warning bell. What do we do now?'"
The operator's fingers clicked madly over the keyboard. Across space went the signal, across the void to the Relay Station. It ran through the Station's mechanism and went darting to Terra. It clicked out as sent in the offices of Interplanet Transport. A vice president read the message and swore roundly. He swore in three Terran languages, in the language of the Venusians, and even managed to visualize a few choice remarks from the Martian Pictographs that were engraved on the Temples of Canalopsis.
"Miss Deane," he yelled at the top of his voice. "Take a message! Shoot a line to Channing on Venus Equilateral. Tell him: 'Empress of Kolainon way to Venus. Must be contacted and rerouted to Terra direct. Million dollars' worth of Martian Line Moss aboard; will perish under quarantine. Spare no expense.' Sign that 'Keg Johnson, Interplanet.'"
"Yes, Mr. Johnson," said the secretary. "Right away."
More minutes of light-fast communication. Out of Terra to Luna, across space to Venus Equilateral. The machines clicked and tape cleared away from the slot. It was pasted neatly on a sheet of official paper, stampedrush, and put in a pneumatic tube.
As Don Channing began to read the message, Williams on Mars was chewing worriedly on his fourth fingernail, and Vice President Keg Johnson was working on his second. But Williams had a head start and therefore would finish first. Both men knew that nothing more could be done. If Channing couldn't do it, nobody could.
Channing finished the 'gram and swore. It was a good-natured swear-word, far from downright vilification, though it did consign certain items to the nether regions. He punched a button with some relish, and a rather good-looking woman entered. She smiled at him with more intimacy than a secretary should, and sat down.
"Arden, call Walt, will you?"
Arden Westland smiled. "You might have done that yourself," she told him. She reached for the call button with her left hand, and the diamond on her finger glinted like a pilot light.
"I know it," he answered, "but that wouldn't give me the chance to see you."
"Baloney," said Arden. "You just wait until next October. I'll be in your hair all the time then."
"By then I may be tired of you," said Channing with a smile. "But until then, take it or leave it." His face grew serious, and he tossed the message across the table to her. "What do you think of that?"
Arden read, and then remarked: "That's a huge order, Don. Think you can do it?"
"It'll cost plenty. I don't know whether we can contact a ship in space. It hasn't been done to date, you know, except for short distances."
The door opened without a knock and Walt Franks walked in. "Billing and cooing?" he asked. "Why do you two need an audience?"
"We don't," answered Don. "This was business."
"For want of evidence, I'll believe that. What's the dope?"
"Walt, what are the chances of hooking up with theEmpress of Kolain, which is en route from Mars to Venus?"
"About equal to a snowball—you know where," said Franks looking slyly at Arden.
"Take off your coat, Walt. We've got a job."
"You mean—Hey! Remind me to quit Saturday."
"This is dead in earnest, Walt." Don told the engineer all he knew.
"Boy, this is a job I wouldn't want my life to depend on. In the first place, we can't beam a transmitter at them if we can't see 'em. And in the second place, if we did, they couldn't receive us."
"We can get a good idea of where they are and how they're going," said Channing. "That is common knowledge."
"Astronomy is an exact science," chanted Franks. "But by the time we figure out just where theEmpress of Kolainis with respect to us at any given instant we'll all be old men with gray beards. She's crossing toward us on a skew curve—and we'll have to beam it past Sol. It won't be easy, Don. And then if we do find them, what do we do about it?"
"Let's find them first and then work out a means of contacting them afterwards."
"Don," interrupted Arden, "what's so difficult?"
Franks fell backward into a chair. Don turned to the girl and asked: "Are you kidding?"
"No. I'm just ignorant. What is so hard about it? We shoot beams across a couple of hundred million miles of space like nothing and maintain communications at any cost. What should be so hard about contacting a ship?"
"In the first place, we can see a planet, and they can see us, so they can hold their beams. A spaceship might be able to see us, but they couldn't hold a beam on us because of the side sway. We couldn't see them until they are right upon us and so we could not hope to hold a beam on them. Spaceshipsmightbroadcast, but you have no idea what the square law of radiated power will do to a broadcast signal when millions upon millions of miles are counted in. A half million watts on any planet will not quite cover the planet as a service area on broadcast frequencies. But there's a lot of difference between covering a few stinking miles of planet and a volume the size of the Inner Solar System. So they don't try it. A spaceship may as well be on Rigel as far as contacting her in space goes.
"We might beam a wide-dispersion affair at them," continued Channing. "But it would be pretty thin by the time it got there. And, having no equipment, they couldn't hear us."
"May we amend that?" asked Franks. "They are equipped with radio. But the things are used only in landing operations where the distance is measured in miles, not Astronomical Units."
"O.K.," smiled Channing. "It's turned off during flight and we may consider the equipment as being non-existent."
"And, according to the chart, we've got to contact them before the turnabout," offered Arden. "They must have time to deflect their course to Terra."
"You think of the nicest complications," said Channing. "I was just about to hope that we could flash them, or grab at 'em with a skeeter. But we can't wait until they pass us."
"That will be the last hope," admitted Franks. "But say! Did any bright soul think of shooting a fast ship after them from Canalopsis?"
"Sure. The answer is the same as Simple Simon's answer to the Pieman: 'Alas, they haven't any!'"
"No use asking why," growled Franks. "O.K., Don, we'll after 'em. I'll have the crew set up a couple of mass detectors at either end of the station. We'll triangulate, and calculate, and hope to hit the right correction factor. We'll find them and keep them in line. You figure out a means of contacting them, huh?"
"I'll set up the detectors andyoufind the means," suggested Don.
"No go. You're the director of communications."
Don sighed a false sigh. "Arden, hand me my electronics text," he said.
"And shall I wipe your fevered brow?" cooed Arden.
"Leave him alone," directed Franks. "You distract him."
"It seems to me that you two are taking this rather lightly," said Arden.
"What do you want us to do? Get down on the floor and chew the rug? You know us better than that. If we can find the answer to contacting a spaceship in flight, we'll add another flower to our flag. But we can't do it by clawing through the first edition of Henney's 'Handbook of Radio Engineering.' It will be done by the seat of our pants, if at all; a pair of side-cutters, and a spool of wire, a hunk of string and a lump of solder, a—"
"A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair?" asked Franks.
"Leave Kipling out of this. He didn't have to cover the entire Solar System. Let's get cooking."
Don and Walt left the office just a trifle on the fast side. Arden looked after them, out through the open door, shaking her head until she remembered something that she could do. She smiled and went to her typewriter, and pounded out a message back to Keg Johnson at Interplanet. It read: