Dr. Johnston hesitated only fractionally, and Nails Andersen mentally put him down on the plus side of the personnel for the shortness of his com lag. Then he said, "The job will require only two men for the fastest accomplishment. You realize, captain that you are probably signing our death warrants—the two of us. But," he added, glancing only casually at the display on the console, "I can understand the need to sign that warrant, and I shall not quibble."
The intercom spoke. "This is Dr. Green, captain. There is no key on the person of Major Elbertson. We have searched thoroughly, sir. I understand the need is of an emergency nature. The key is not on his person. We have taken every possible measure to arouse him, as well, and have been unsuccessful."
Andersen flipped his switch. "Let me speak to the Hot Rod Security officer," he said briefly.
"Chauvenseer speaking, sir," the man's voice came on.
"Do you know what the key looks like?"
"Yes, sir. It looks somewhat like a common Yale key, sir. But I've never seen another just like it."
"There is only the one?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where would he keep it, if not on his person?"
"I don't know, sir. We came straight to the morgue—the shield area, from the air lock. I don't believe he stopped off anywhere he could have put it."
The captain turned to the second Security officer. "Search Elbertson's spacesuit," he said. Then to the intercom, "Search his hammock. Search every spot he went near. That key must be found in minutes. Commandeer as many men as can help in the search without getting in the way."
He paused a moment, then flipped another intercom key.
"Mr. Blackhawk," he said.
The intercom warmed at the far end. "Yes sir?" Mike's voice was relaxed.
"Is there any way to turn off Hot Rod without the Security key?"
"Why sure, captain." Mike's voice held a grin. "I could pull the power switch."
"Pull it. Fast. Hot Rod's out of control."
Mike's hand flashed to a master switch controlling the power that fed Hot Rod, and blessing as he did it the fallacy of engineering that had required external power to power the mighty energy collector.
In the big balloon now happily following the wheel at the end of its tether, the still-undamaged power-off fail-safe went into operation. The mirror surface behind each ruby rod rotated into its shielding position, dispersing the energy that the huge mirror directed towards the rods, back into space.
Hot Rod was secure.
Mike received only one further communication from the captain.
"Mr. Blackhawk," he was asked over the intercom, "is there any way that you secure the Hot Rod power switch so that it cannot be turned on without my personal authorization?"
"Sure, captain, I can—"
The captain interrupted. "Mr. Blackhawk, I should prefer that you not tell me or anyone else aboard the method you will use; and that you make your method as difficult as possible to discover. This I shall leave," he added dryly, "to your rather ... fertile ... imagination.
"There is reason to believe that Project Hot Rod was turned on by a saboteur. Your method must be proof against him, and if he exists, he will not be stupid." The captain switched off.
Mike turned to the control panel, and after a few minutes thought busied himself for some time.
Then he headed for the bridge where Dr. Johnston, Chauvenseer, and the captain had dismissed the others and were utilizing every check that Dr. Johnston could dream up to assure themselves that Hot Rod was actually turned off and would remain secure at least for the duration of the flare; and trying as well to find out just what form the sabotage had taken.
Without interrupting the others, Mike seated himself at the subsidiary post at the computer's console on Bessie's right, and got her to brief him while he examined the close-up display of Hot Rod.
After a few minutes he reached over and increased the magnification to its maximum, showing only a small portion of the balloon, then moved the focus to display the control room entrance as well as part of the anchor tube and the cable between the two.
"I think I've found your saboteur, sir," he said.
The captain was at his side almost instantly. "Where is he?" he asked briefly.
"Not he, sir. It. And I'm not sure just where—but look. Hot Rod's cable is taut. There's thrust on the balloon. That probably means a puncture and escaping nitrogen.
"I think," he said, "that the saboteur may have been a meteor that punctured the balloon, and the nitrogen escaping through the hole it made is now producing enough thrust to keep that cable taut. Though," he added thoughtfully, "I don't see why the servos couldn't maintain the beam to Thule—though obviously, they couldn't."
"How dangerous is such a puncture?" asked the captain. "How seriously would Hot Rod be damaged? How soon must it be repaired?"
"The puncture itself shouldn't be too dangerous. Even if all the nitrogen's gone, the balloon's in a vacuum and won't collapse—and that's about the only serious effect a puncture would have. Just a moment. We'll estimate its size by the thrust it's giving the ship," he added, and turned to Bessie.
"Ask the Cow whether we're getting thrust on the ship; and if so, how much. Wait a minute," he added, "if you ask for thrust on the ship, she'll say there isn't any because Hot Rod would be pulling us, not pushing. And if you ask her for the thrust on Hot Rod, she hasn't got any sensors out there.
"Hm-m-m. Ask her if we have added any off-orbit velocity; and if so how much."
The computer displayed the answer almost as soon as she received the question.
"Well," said Mike, "that's not too large a hole. Ask her how ... let's see ... how many pounds of thrust that velocity represents. That way we don't confuse her with whether it's push or pull."
The Cow displayed the answer, six hundred forty pounds of thrust.
"O.K.," said Mike. "Thanks." Then to the captain and the scientist and Security officer who were waiting beside him: "The puncture is obviously small enough to serve as a jet, rather than to have let the nitrogen out in onewhoosh, since that would have given you far more than six hundred forty pounds of thrust. Therefore, it will probably be quite simple to patch the hole.
"Nitrogen is obviously escaping, but it wouldn't be worth a man's life to send him out into that flare-storm to patch it. We may even have enough nitrogen aboard to replace what we lose.
"The best I can figure," he said, "is that the meteor must have hit the orientation servos and thrown them off for a bit. We'll have to wait till after the flare to make more than an educated guess, though.
"We shouldn't be too far off-orbit by the time the flare's over, either, even with that jet constant. It'll take quite a bit of work, but we should be able to get her back into position with not too many hours of lost worktime.
"Except for Thule, I'd say we got off fairly light.
"Yes," he added grimly, "it looks like that's what your saboteur was. Rather an effective saboteur, but you'll have a hard time putting him up against a firing wall."
Having satisfied himself as to existing conditions, Mike excused himself shortly and went back to the engineering quarters, but his mind was no longer on Ishie's strange device. He glanced rapidly at the instruments regulating the power flow to the wheel, then stretched out comfortably on the acceleration couch and in minutes was asleep.
The captain, Dr. Johnston and Chauvenseer remained on the bridge another hour, convincing themselves that Mike's analysis was correct, and dictating a report to Earth, before the captain called in an aide to take over the bridge, and the three retired.
In the morgue, Dr. Y Chi Tung, who still slept peacefully as he had since the moment he reached his hammock, muttered quietly in his sleep, "Confusion—"
Mike snapped awake and glanced guiltily at the clock. Six hours had passed.
A situation report from the Cow was the first thing on his agenda any time that he had been out of contact for any length of time, flare or not.
It was not his job to be in constant contact with the complete situation of the ship and its vast complexities; he was not the captain. Nor was it in the manuals that he should have access to the computer's huge memory banks and abilities other than through "channels"—i.e., Bessie. But the book definition of the information he needed for his job, and his own criteria, were somewhat different, and he had built on Earth and installed shortly after he came aboard, a subcontrol link which put him in direct contact with the placid-Cow.
His original intention in rigging the link had been to use the calculator for that occasional math problem which might be more quickly resolved with her help; but then the criteria of needed information, curiosity, or both, had got the better of him, and the secret panel hidden in the legitimate control panels of an engineer's console was actually quite a complete link, covering all of the Cow's multiple functions without interfering in any was with Bessie's control links, or revealing its existence. This linkage gave Mike the only direct access to the computer's store of information and abilities other than that of the operator at the control console.
And Mike's secret pride was the vocoder circuit with which he had terminated his link, originated because a teletype system similar to that used at the control console would have been too obvious; and his nimble fingers got all tangled up on a keyboard anyhow.
Bessie might speak to the Cow through the teletype link and switches of her control console, but only Mike had the distinction of being able to speak directly to the big computer, and get the complacent, somewhat mooing answers; and only Mike knew of the existence of the vocoder aboard.
It had taken some care to get used to the literal-minded conversation that resulted; but eventually Mike felt he had worked out a satisfactory communications ability with the overly obvious "cow."
What he wanted now was a situation report. If he simply asked for that, however, he'd have received such miles of data that he'd have been listening for hours. So instead he broke his question down into the facets that he needed.
In a few minutes he had elicited the information that the solar flare was now predicted to be terminated and the major part of the flare protons past their solar orbital position within another ten hours; that Earth co-ordinates had shifted, indicating their own orbital shift to be a trifle over thirty-seven kilometers north in the past eight hours.
North? he thought. Hot Rod's pull on a taut cable would be to the south.
No. Lab One could be re-oriented to trail the thrusting balloon. But the lab's servos should have prevented that re-orientation unless the thrust were really heavy.
"What is our velocity?" he asked. Temporarily he was baffled by the placid Cow's literal translation of his request as one for any actual velocity, since she had replied with a figure very close to their original orbital speed. "What is our velocity at right angles to original course?" he inquired.
And the Cow's reply came: "Two-o-o hundred and fifty-seven point seven six ce-entimeters per se-econd."
That should be about right for six hundred forty pounds of thrust for, say, six and a half hours; and the distance of the orbit shift was about right.
But the direction?
"Is Hot Rod pulling us north?" he asked.
"No-o-o," came the placid reply.
"If it's pulling us south, then why—" He stopped himself. Any "why" required inductive reasoning, and of that the Cow was not capable. Instead of asking why they were moving north with a south thrust, Mike broke his question into parts. He'd have to answer the "why" himself, he knew.
"Is Hot Rod pulling us south?" he asked.
"No-o-oo," came the answer.
This time he was more careful. "In which direction is the thrust on Hot Rod oriented?" he asked.
"No-oorth."
"Then Hot Rod is—" Quickly he stopped and rephrased the statement which would have had a question in its tone but not its semantics, into a question that would read semantically. "Is Hot Rod pulling us north?"
"No-o-oo," came the reply.
Carefully. "Is Hot Rod pulling us?"
"No-o-oo."
Mike was stumped. Then he figured a literalness in his phrasing.
"Is Hot Rod pushing or in any other way giving motion to Space Lab One?" he asked.
"No-o-oo," came the answer.
Now Mikewasstumped.
"Is Space Lab One under acceleration?" he asked.
"Ye-es," said the Cow.
"Then where in hell is that acceleration coming from?" Mike was exasperated.
"We a-are uunder no-o-o acceleration fro-om he-ell," the literal mind told him.
Mike laughed ruefully. No acceleration from hell—well, that was debatable. But no thrust from the hellmaker was not a debatable point. The Cow wasn't likely to be wrong, though her appalling literalness was such that an improperly phrased question might make her seem to be.
Computers, he thought, would eventually be the salvation of the human race, whetting their inventors' brains to higher and higher efforts towards the understanding of communications.
Very carefully now he rephrased his question. "From what, and from what point is the acceleration of Space Lab One originating?"
"From the co-ontinu-ous thrust o-originating at a po-oint thirteen fe-et from the a-axial center of the whe-el, in hu-ub section five no-orth, one hundred twelve degrees fro-om reference ze-ero of the engine-eering lo-ongitude references sta-ation assigned in the con-struction ma-anual dealing with relative po-ositions o-of ma-asses lo-ocated o-on Spa-ace La-ab O-one."
Mike glanced up at the tube overhead, which represented the axial passageway down the hub of the wheel. Thirteen feet from the imaginary center of that tube, and in his own engineering compartment.
Then his gaze traveled on around the oddly built, circular room with its thirty-two-foot diameter. The reference to hub section five north meant this compartment. The degrees reference referred to the balancing co-ordinates by which the Cow kept the big wheel statically balanced during rotation. There was a bright stripe of red paint across the floor which indicated zero degrees; and degrees were counted counterclockwise from the north pole of the wheel.
His eyes strayed across the various panels and racks and came to rest in the one hundred twelve degree area. A number of vacant racks, some holding the testing equipment he had moved there not too many hours before—and churkling quietly in its rack near the floor, Ishie's Confusor of Confusion.
Mike contemplated the device with awed respect, then phrased another question for the Cow.
"Exactly how much thrust is being exerted on that point?" he asked.
The computer reeled off a string of numbers so fast that he missed them, and was still going into the far decimal places when Mike said:
"Whoa! Approximate number of pounds, please."
"A-approximately six hundred forty. You-u didn't specify the limits o-of a-accuracy tha-at you-u wanted." The burred tone was still complacent.
"Just what acceleration has that given us?" asked Mike, still looking at the Confusor. "Approximately," he added quickly.
"Present a-acceleration is a-approximately eight point nine five ti-imes te-en to the mi-inus third ce-entimeters per se-econd per se-econd. I ca-an ca-arry that to-o-o several mo-ore de-ecimal pla-aces if you-u wi-ish."
"No, thanks, I think you've told me enough."
Mike stood up.
This, he thought, needs Ishie. And coffee, he told himself as a second thought.
And then as a third thought, he turned back to his secret vocoder panel, and said: "The information you have just given me is to be regarded as top secret and not to be discussed except over this channel and by my direct order. Absolutely nothing that would give any one a clue to the fact that there is a method of acceleration aboard. Understood?"
"Ye-es, Mah-ike."
"O.K."
Mike switched off the vocoder, flipped his intercom to the temporary galley in the morgue, and ordered two breakfasts readied. Then he set off for the morgue.
Mike Blackhawk located Dr. Y. Chi Tung's hammock, and nudged the scientist unceremoniously. The small physicist awoke and attempted to sit up in one gesture; bumped his head on the hammock above, and laid back down just as suddenly.
"Come on down to engineering will you Ishie?" The request was spoken softly.
"Hokey, dokey," said Ishie and crawled out of the narrow aperture with the agility of a monkey.
Gesturing to the other to follow him, Mike led the way to the galley first, where the two picked up the readied breakfast and took them to Mike's quarters.
The "cups" of coffee were squeeze bottles; the trays were soft plastic packages, similar to the boil-in-the-bag containers of frozen food that had been common on Earth for some time.
Mike hesitated at the entrance to his engineering quarters, considering whether to shut the bulkhead, but discarded the idea as being more of an attention-getter than a seal for secrecy. He gestured Ishie to the bunk, and parked himself at his console.
"We're in trouble," he said. "You and I together are responsible for the first space attack on Earth."
He stopped and waited, owl-eyed, but the small physicist simply tackled his breakfast with no further comment than a raised eyebrow.
"We," said Mike solemnly, "wiped out Thule Base last night."
"As Confusion would say, there's no Thule like a dead Thule. What are you getting at Mike? You sound serious."
"You mean you slept through ... you didn't know we ... you didn't hear the ... yes, I guess you slept! Well...."
Rapidly Mike sketched the events of the past nine hours, bringing his story completely up to date, including the information he'd gleaned from the Cow, but making no reference to his access to the computer's knowledge. Instead, he attributed the conclusions to himself.
The physicist sat so still when he had finished that Mike became seriously concerned. "Thule...." he began, but Ishie started to speak.
"Mike, it did? It couldn't ... but ... of course, it must have ... the fields ... six hundred forty pounds of thrust! Only six hundred forty, yet ... yes, it could, if the thrust were exactly aligned ... thrust ... Mike, thrust!Mike, thrust!Real thrust! Mike do you know what this means?" His eyes were alight. His voice was reverent. He sprang from the bunk and knelt before the rack that held the churkling Confusor.
"My pretty," he said. "My delicate pretty. What you have done! Mike, we've got a space drive!"
"Ishie. Don't you realize? We wiped out Thule!"
"Thule, schmule—Mike, we've got a space drive!"
Mike grinned to himself. He needn't have worried. Not about Ishie, any how.
But now Ishie was gesturing him over.
"Mike," he said, "you must show me in detail. In exact detail. What did you do? What was your procedure?"
Mike came over and casually reached towards the churkling device, saying "Why, I—" but Ishie reacted with catlike swiftness, blocking the man before he could even touch the rack.
"No, don't touch it! Justtellme what you did!"
Carefully now, Mike began outlining in detail his inspection of the device and each step he had taken as he added to its complexities.
When he had finished, the two sat back on their heels thinking. Finally, Mike spoke.
"Ishie, will you please tell me just how does this thing ... this Confusor ...getthat thrust? Just exactly what is involved here?"
Ishie took his time answering, and when he did his words come slowly. "Ah, yes. Confusor it is. I was attempting to confound Heisenberg's statement; but instead I think between us we have confused the issue.
"Heisenberg said that there was no certainty in our measurement of the exact orbit of an electron. That the instrument used to measure the position of the electron must inevitably move the electron; and the greater the attempt at precise measurements, the greater the error produced by the measurements.
"It was my hope," he went on, "to provide greater accuracy of measurement, by use of statistics over the vast number of electrons in orbit around the hydrogen atoms within the test mass. But this, apparently, will not be.
"Now to see what it is we have done.
"First, let us make a re-expression of the laws of math-physics. You understand that I am feeling my way here, for what we have done and what I thought I was doing are quite different, and I am looking with hindsight now at math-physics from the point of reality of this thrust.
"As I understand it, there's a mutual exclusiveness of particles, generally expressed by the statement that two particles may not occupy the same space at the same time.
"But as I would put it, this means each particle owns its own place. Now, inertia says that each particle not only owns its own place, but owns its own temporal memory of where it's going to be unless something interferes with it.
"Now let me not confuse you with semantics. When I say 'memory' and 'knowing' I am not implying a sentient condition. I am speaking of the type of memory and knowing that is a strain in the structure of the proton or atom. This is ... well, anyhow, not sentient. You will have to translate for yourself.
"So to continue, inertia, the way I would put it, says that each particle not only owns its own place, but owns its own temporal memory of where it is going unless it is interfered with.
"In other words, the particle arriving here, now, got here by remembering in this other sense that it was going from there to there to there with some inherent sort of memory. This memory can't be classified as being in relation to anything but the particle itself. No matter how you move the things around it, as long as the things around it don't exert an influence on the particle, the particle's memory of where it's been and where it's going form a continuous straight line through space and must, therefore, have spatial co-ordinates against which to form a 'memory' pattern of former and future action.
"Now as I understand gravity, it's simply the statement that all particles in space are covetous, in this same non-sentient sense, of the position in space of all their neighboring particles. In other words, it's a contravention or the attempted contravention of the statement that two particles may not be in the same place at the same time. It seems that all particles have an urge to try to be in each other's space. And this desire is modified by the distance that separates them.
"This adds up to three rules:
"1. No two particles may occupy the same space at the same time.
"2. Even though they can't, they try.
"3. They all know where they're going, and where they've been without relation to anything but the spatial co-ordinates around them.
"That third statement seems to me to knock something of a hole in Einstein's relativity theory. Unless you wish to grant all these particles some method of determining their relationship to particles that are not near them.
"Communication between particles by any means is apparently limited by the speed of light, which is a relationship between space and time, but apparently, from what we know of inertia, if the universe contained only a single particle, and that particle was in motion, it would continue to move regardless of the fact that its motion could not be checked upon in relation to other particles.
"This indicates to me that the particle has an existence in space because it is created out of space, and that space must, therefore, have some very real properties of its own regardless of what is or is not in it. The very fact that there is a limiting speed to light and particle motion introduces the concept that space has physical properties.
"In order to have an electromagnetic wave, one must have a medium in which an electric field or a magnetic field may exist. In order to have matter, which I believe to be a form of electromagnetic field in stasis, one must have special properties which make the existence of matter possible. In order to have inertia, one must also have spatial properties which make the existence of inertia possible.
"People are fond of pointing out that there's nothing to get hold of in free space in order to climb the ladder of gravity, or in order to move between the planets, and that the only possibility of motion of a vehicle in space is to throw something away, or, in other words, lose mass in order to gain speed by reaction. Which is simply a statement that as far as we can tell a force can only be exerted relative to two points—or between two points or masses.
"But this does not account for the continuance of motion once started.
"Inertia says a body will move once started, but it doesn't say why or how. How does that particle once started gain the knowledge to continue without some direct control over its spatial framework? That it will continue, we know. That in the presence of a gravitic field or a magnetic field or other attractive force at right angles to its motion, we can create an acceleration which will maintain it in an exactly circular path called an orbit. But how does it remember, as soon as that field ceases to exist, where it was going before it was last influenced? That it will continue in a straight line indefinitely, without such an influence, we know. That it can be influenced over a distance by various field effects, we also know. But what is the mechanism of influence whereby it influences itself to continue in a straight line? And what handle did we get hold of to convert that influence of self to our own advantage in moving this ship?"
Mike stared at Ishie with vast respect.
"I thought you physics boys did it all with math," he said softly, "and here you've outlined the facts of space that an Indian can feel in his bones—and you've done it in good, solid English that makes some sense.
"In other words," Mike was almost talking to himself as he tried to reword Ishie's theorizing into his own type of thinking, "the particle in motion creates a strain in the fabric—the field—of space; and that fabric must attempt to relieve itself of the strain. A particle in motion makes it possible for the fabric of space to smooth itself out behind the particle; and the fabric attempts to smooth itself on through the area occupied by the particle while it is moving, and so the fabric of space smoothing itself is a constant thrust behind the particle's motion, continuing that motion and making the particle scat to where he wasn't going.
"When that same particle is stopped," Mike was visualizing the process to himself, "the force of the attempt to smooth itself out by the fabric of space exists equally around the particle on all sides; so that the particle will be held stopped by the attempt of the fabric to smooth itself until set into motion again by a force greater than that of inertia—for inertia, then, is the attempt of the fabric of space to smooth itself.
"Quite possibly," Mike was speaking very slowly now as he mocked up and watched the forces of this inertia, "matter itself is created out of the fabric of space, and in its creation, in the stasis condition that keeps it existing as a particle rather than dissolving back into the original fabric, it creates the strain in the fabric—in space—that will then seek to smooth itself so long as the particle shall exist.
"Thus this, then, is inertia—the attempt of the fabric of space to smooth itself; to get rid of the strain of the particle that has been created from itself."
Ishie shook his head. "Not quite," he said, "but you're getting close."
Mike shook himself like a dog coming out of water.
"Oh, well," he said. "Anyway, we've got a space drive—flea sized. Now the question before the board becomes, just what are we going to do with it? Turn it over to the captain?"
"Confusion say," said Ishie, "he who has very little is often most generous. But he who has huge fortune is very cautious about dispersing it. Let's first be sure what we've got," he grinned slyly at Mike, "before we become overgenerous with information."
Mike heaved a huge sigh of relief. He had been afraid he would have to argue Ishie into this point of view.
"Speaking of math, Mike, you're no slouch at it yourself, if you figured out all those orbit co-ordinates in your head, and arrived at an exact figure on the amount of thrust. It would be very nice for our future investigations if we had some method of putting the Cow to work on this." The little physicist sat back, grinned knowingly, and continued: "Where's your secret panel, Mike? We've got to keep this information from going to anybody else."
"Oh, I already—" Mike stopped. "I mean," he floundered, "uh ... how did you know?" A foolish grin spread over his face. "It's right behind you," he said. "And I've got it by voice," he said. "Just push the switch in the corner and talk to it."
Ishie turned, glanced at the panel, and went over to the switch, pushing it. "I wondered how you were concealing the teletype," he said. "You mean you really talk to it?"
The Sacred Cow's voice came back. "Reference not understoo-od. Ple-ease explai-ain."
"Oy!" said Ishie. "It even sounds like a cow!"
"Ye-es, si-ir," said the Cow. "A cow is an he-erbivorous ma-ammal, usua-ally do-omesticated, and fou-ound in mo-ost of the cou-ountries of Ea-arth. Wha-at specific da-ata did you-u wi-ish? The mi-ilk su-upply—"
"Hold it," Mike said, forestalling a long dissertation on the dairy industry.
Catching on quickly to the literal-mindedness of the placid computer, Ishie fired a direct question.
"What is our current position in relation to the equatorial orbit that we should be following?" he asked.
There was a sput from the speaker, very much as though someone had been caught off guard and almost said something, and then the placid reply came back.
"That information is top secret. Please identify yourself as Mike and I will answer you."
Ishie groaned, depressed the cutoff switch and turned to Mike.
"You fixed it," he said. "If a simple question like that gets an answer like that, how long do you think it will take the captain to find out something's wrong with the Cow?"
Mike lunged for the switch, but Ishie held him back.
"Hold it, Boy. You've made enough electronic mistakes for one day. This takes some thinking over."
"We better think fast," said Mike. "The captain'll ask that question any second now, or a question like it."
"All right," said Ishie. "First we've got to withdraw your original order—and you'd better not trust your own memory as to what it was. You ask the Cow to tell you what order you gave her making certain information top secret. Then when she tells you exactly what you said, you tell her to cancelthatorder."
Mike did as he was told.
"Why," said Ishie, "did you give such an order in the first place? Never mind answering that question," he added, "but it's lucky she hasn't been refusing to give people the time of day, and referring them to you. As a matter of fact"—glancing up at the clock on the wall—"it looks like she has. That clock hasn't moved since I got here."
Even as he spoke, the clock whirred, jumped forty-five minutes, and settled down to its steady, second-by-second spin.
"Ishie," said Mike, "we figured out a space drive, and that was great. But if we can figure out how to communicate an idea to a computer, we'rerealgeniuses."
Ishie turned on the vocoder. "Please supply us," he told the Cow, "with a complete recording of your latest conversation with Mike."
And as the computer started back over the dialogue that has just occurred between herself and Mike, Ishie interrupted. "Not that," he said, "I mean the last previous conversation."
Then he sat back as the Cow unreeled a fifteen minute monologue which repeated both sides of the conversation including the order to make everything top secret.
Having listened through this, Ishie said: "At the point where Mike asks you about acceleration, you will now erase the rest of the conversation and substitute this comment from yourself: 'The lab is being accelerated by an external magneto-ionic effect.' This will be your only explanation of acceleration applied to the ship. Now please repeat your conversation with Mike."
Then he sat back to listen through the recording again.
This time when it came to the part about acceleration, without hesitation, the Cow referred blithely to the external magneto-ionic effect that was causing acceleration.
When Ishie asked the computer: "How could this effect be canceled?" and listened to a long syllogistic outline which, if condensed to a single, understandable sentence meant simply "by reversing the field in respect to the lab with a magnet on board the lab."
Ishie heaved a great sigh of relief, and said, "Now, Mike, we can go to work. For of course," he added, "we must have authority to install our magnetic coils, and what better authority is there than the Cow?
"Confusion say it is better to have the voice of authority speak with your words than to be the voice of authority.
"Now," he said, "let us see what we have really got here."
As they worked, time progressed. The empty racks around the Confusor slowly filled with more test instruments both borrowed and devised; and the formerly unoccupied corner of the section of panels took on more and more the look of a complete installation, in the center of which the Confusor still churkled quietly, pitting its strength against the mighty monster to which it was so firmly tied.
Two hours were spent in testing circuits, each one exhaustively. Then Ishie turned to Mike.
"We need still yet another test that we have not provided. A strain gauge to find out how much thrust a mosquito puts out. There's one in the physics lab. I'll run get it."
"You willnot," said Mike. "Genius you may be, but proton-proof you're not. We can rig that right here."
Walking over to the spare parts locker, Mike brought back a complete readout display panel, a spare from one of the Cow's bridge consoles; and quickly connected it in to the data link on which the vocoder operated. Then, carefully instructing the computer as to the required display, he settled back.
"That'll do it," he said. "The Cow can tell us all we need to know right on that panel—about acceleration, lack of it, or change of it that we may cause by changing the parameters of our experiment. Those racks were checked out to stand up under eighty gees," he added. "Typical overspecification. They never said what would happen to the personnel under those conditions."
Ishie turned the Confusor off and then back on, and watched the display gauge rise to the six hundred forty mark, and then show the fraction above it .12128. Then carefully, ever so infinitesimally, he adjusted a knob on the device. The readout sank back towards zero, coming to rest reading 441.3971.
"We'll have to put a vernier control on this phase circuit," Ishie said to himself. "It jumped thirty per-cent, and I scarcely breathed on it."
After a few more checks on the operation of the phase control, he turned to the power control for the magnetic field. Carefully, Ishie lowered the field strength, eye on the readout panel. As the field strength lowered, the reading increased.
The indication was that by lowering the field strength only ten per cent, he had increased the thrust to sixteen hundred pounds—which, he felt, was close to the tolerance of the machine structure.
Carefully he increased the field strength again. Faithfully the reading followed it down the scale.
Then he had another thought. Running the field strength down and the pressure up, and again arriving at sixteen hundred pounds, he turned off the Confusor, waited a few moments, and turned it back on.
The reading remained zero.
Apparently, then a decrease in field strength would cause an increase in thrust; but the original field strength was necessary in order to initiate the thrust field.
Carefully he nudged the field strength back up, and suddenly there were seven hundred ten pounds indicated thrust.
Thrust could apparently be initiated by a field strength a few per cent lower, but not much lower, than the original operating point.
Captain Naylor Andersen arrived on the bridge with an accusing air, but feeling refreshed. He had slept longer than he intended—and though he had asked Bessie to call him when she came back on duty two hours earlier, he had not been called.
"You needed the sleep, captain," she told him unrepentant. "I checked with the Cow. The flare's predicted to continue for another eight hours. We're simply in standby."
However, various observatories on Earth had not been asleep. Within fifteen minutes of the time he reached the bridge, a message from U.N. Headquarters chattered in over the teletype.
"Tracking stations report your orbital discontinuity too great to have been achieved by jet action of nitrogen escaping from Hot Rod. Hot Rod pressures insufficient to achieve your present apparent acceleration. Please explain discrepancy between these reports and your own summation of ten hours previous. Suggest close and continual observation of Project Hot Rod. Suspect, repeat strongly suspect, possibility of sabotage. End message."
Nails Andersen stared at the sheet that the com officer had placed in his hands. Then he pressed the intercom to the morgue.
"Dr. Kimball. Please report to the bridge. Dr. P.E.R. Kimball. Please report to the bridge immediately."
Then he turned to Bessie. "Ask the Cow for an orbit computation from the time of the ... er ... meteor last night."
Under Bessie's practiced, computer-minded fingers, the answer wanted came quickly—a displayed string of figures, each to three decimal places, accompanied by a second display on the captain's console showing the old equatorial orbit across a grid projection of the Earth's surface to a point of departure over the mid-Atlantic where it began curving ever farther north, up across the tip of South America, very slightly off course.
The captain glanced at the display of Hot Rod and its taut-cable, and realized with a sickening sense of unreality that no jet action on Hot Rod could have caused it to lead the station in this northerly direction; and that instead it was placidly trailing behind. It was now farther south of the Space Lab than its original position; but their orbit had been displaced to the north.
Perk appeared beside the console, but the captain ignored the astronomer for a moment longer, while he leaned back thinking.
What could be the answer? A leak in the Space Lab itself? That would give acceleration; minor, not to have triggered an alarm—it should have triggered an alarm—but acceleration. Sufficient for the off-orbit shown? He did a brief calculation in his head. It wouldn't take much. Very little, for the time that had passed—Very well, then. He put down a leak in his mind as a possibility. Now, water or air? It could be either, if his reasoning this far were correct. He looked up.
"Have the Cow display barometric readings for each section of the rim and for each compartment in the central hub," he said briefly to Bessie; and to the astronomer, "Dr. Kimball, take that side seat at the computer console and check our progress on this orbital deviation," and he gestured at the display on his screen.
Perk moved to the post with only a nod.
The barometric displays held constant, with only fractional deviations that might have been imposed by the spin of the big wheel, or error in the instruments themselves. Balanced against temperature readings, they worked out to possible fractions of gain or loss so small as to be insignificant, indicating only the inaccuracies of measurement that inevitably occur in comparing the readings of a number of instruments.
The captain had hardly digested the readings displayed by the computer when Perk looked up with a puzzled frown.
"The computer records a continuous acceleration over the past eleven hours and forty-three minutes," he said, "and attributes it," he looked even more puzzled, "to a magneto-ionic effect?" There was a definite question in his voice.
"It's only about six hundred forty pounds," he added. "It must be an external effect caused by the flare."
"Please investigate the effect as thoroughly as possible," the captain told Perk, then dictated a message to the com officer.
"'To U.N. Headquarters, Earth, from Captain Naylor Andersen, commanding Space Lab One. Original assumption that disaster was attributable to meteoric impact on Project Hot Rod appears mistaken. Investigation indicates we are under acceleration from an external magneto-ionic effect which is exerting about—'" he called to Perk. "Did you say six hundred forty pounds?"
The astronomer nodded, and the captain continued, "'Which is exerting about six hundred forty pound pressure against this satellite. We are now working out corrective measures and will inform you immediately they are prepared. If your observatories can give us any advice, please message at once. End.'"
Then the captain depressed his intercom switch to the morgue. "Dr. Chi. Please report to the bridge. Repeat. Dr. Chi Tung. Please report to the bridge at once."
His own intercom hummed, and a voice came on. "Dr. Chi Tung is not in the morgue. He left with Mr. Blackhawk some time ago."
The captain frowned, but pushed the engineering room intercom. "Is Dr. Chi with you, Mr. Blackhawk?" he asked, and when Mike's voice answered, "Yes, sir," he said, "Will you both report to the bridge at once, please?"
When the two arrived, only a little tardily, on the bridge, the captain addressed Ishie.
"You heard of the disaster last night?" The physicist nodded. "We assumed then," the captain told him, "that a meteor had caused the disturbance. That it had gone through the balloon making a hole through which the balloon's nitrogen was escaping, making a jet action and accelerating the ship.
"It seems, however, that we are under acceleration, and that the acceleration is too great to be such jet action, since Hot Rod does not have sufficient pressure.
"The computer reports that the acceleration is derived from an external magneto-ionic effect. Would such an effect be a result of a flare?" he asked.
"I believe it could, captain. I should have to do a bit of math, but...."
"We will assume, then, that the computer is correct," the captain told him. "Could such an effect have a sufficiently great effect on this ship to give it as much as six hundred forty pounds of thrust?"
"Again, I should have to check the math, captain, but I would assume so."
"Mr. Blackhawk," the captain turned to his engineer, "could such a thrust throw Hot Rod off her communications beam and cause last night's disaster?"
"I guess I'd have to check by math, too, captain...." Mike appeared to debate the question. "It would be a very small acceleration at first, of course," he said, "from six hundred forty pounds of thrust. But Hot Rod's cable is slack, and the velocity needn't be great to give it quite a jolt when the slack was taken up. Yes, I feel sure that could happen, captain."