Spacehounds of IPC
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Edward Elmer Smith >> Spacehounds of IPC
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"The piloting was all x, then?"
"Absolutely--our curve so far is exactly flat ever since we cut
off the starting power. Of course, all the pilots can't be as good as
Breckenridge, but give them good computation and good check points and
you shouldn't get any humps higher than about half a centimeter."
"They'll get both, from now on," the director assured him. "Thanks. If
your work for the trip is done, you might show my little girl, Nadia,
around the _Arcturus_. She's never been out before, and will be
interested. Would you mind?"
"Glad to, Mr. Newton--I'll be a regular uncle to her."
"Thanks again, Operator, I'll speak to Captain King, please."
"Pipe down that guff, you unlicked cub, or I'll crown you with a
proof-bar!" the chief pilot growled, as soon as Stevens had unplugged.
"You and who else?" retorted the computer, cheerfully. "Pipe down
yourself, guy--if you weren't so darn dumb and didn't have such a
complex, you'd know that you're the crack pilot of the outfit and
wouldn't care who else knew it." Stevens carefully covered and put away
the calculating machine and other apparatus he had been using and turned
again to the pilot.
"I didn't know Newton had any kids, especially little ones, or I'd have
got acquainted with them long ago. Of course I don't know him very well,
since I never was around the office much, but the old tiger goes over
big with me."
"Hm--m. Think you'll enjoy playing nursemaid all the rest of the trip?"
Breckenridge asked caustically, but with an enigmatic smile.
"Think so? I _know_ so!" replied Stevens, positively. "I always did
like kids, and they always did like me--we fall for each other like ten
thousand bricks falling down a well. Why, a kid--_any_ kid--and I team
up just like grace and poise.... What's gnawing on you anyway, to make
you turn Cheshire cat all of a sudden? By the looks of that grin I'd
say you had swallowed a canary of mine some way or other; but darned if
I know that I've lost any," and he stared at his friend suspiciously.
"To borrow your own phrase, Steve, 'You'd be surprised,'" and
Breckenridge, though making no effort to conceal his amusement, would
say no more.
In a few minutes the door opened, and through it there stepped a
grizzled four-striper. Almost hidden behind his massive form there was
a girl, who ran up to Breckenridge and seized both his hands, her eyes
sparkling.
"Hi, Breckie, you old darling! I knew that if we both kept after
him long enough Dad would let me ride with you sometime. Isn't this
_gorgeous_?"
Stevens was glad indeed that the girl's enthusiastic greeting of the
pilot was giving him time to recover from his shock, for Director
Newton's "little girl, Nadia" was not precisely what he had led himself
to expect. Little she might be, particularly when compared with the
giant frame of Captain King, or with Steve's own five-feet-eleven of
stature and the hundred and ninety pounds of rawhide and whalebone that
was his body, but child she certainly was not. Her thick, fair hair,
cut in the square bob that was the mode of the moment, indicated that
Nature had intended her to be a creamy blonde, but as she turned to be
introduced to him, Stevens received another surprise--for she was one
of those rare, but exceedingly attractive beings, a natural blonde with
brown eyes and black eyebrows. Sun and wind had tanned her satin skin
to a smooth and even shade of brown, and every movement of her lithe and
supple body bespoke to the discerning mind a rigidly-trained physique.
"Doctor Stevens, you haven't met Miss Newton, I hear," the captain
introduced them informally. "All the officers who are not actually tied
down at their posts are anxious to do the honors of the vessel, but as
I have received direct orders from the owners, I am turning her over to
you--you are to show her around."
"Thanks, Captain, I won't mutiny a bit against such an order. I'm mighty
glad to know you, Miss Newton."
"I've heard a lot about you, Doctor. Dad and Breckie here are always
talking about the Big Three--what you have done and what you are going
to do. I want to meet Doctor Brandon and Doctor Westfall, too," and her
hand met his in a firm and friendly clasp. She turned to the captain,
and Stevens, noticing that the pilot, with a quizzical expression, was
about to say something, silenced him with a fierce aside.
"Clam it, ape, or I'll climb up you like a squirrel!" he hissed, and the
grinning Breckenridge nodded assent to this demand for silence
concerning children and nursemaids.
"Since you've never been out, Miss Newton, you'll want to see the whole
works," Stevens addressed the girl. "Where do you want to begin? Shall
we start at the top and work down?"
"All right with me," she agreed, and fell into step beside him. She was
dressed in dove-gray from head to foot--toque, blouse, breeches, heavy
stockings, and shoes were of the one shade of smooth, lustrous silk; and
as they strolled together down the passage-way, the effortless ease and
perfect poise of her carriage called aloud to every hard-schooled fibre
of his own highly-trained being.
"We're a lot alike you and I--do you know it?" he asked, abruptly and
unconventionally.
"Yes, I've felt it, too," she replied frankly, and studied him without
affectation. "It has just come to me what it is. We're both in fine
condition and in hard training. You're an athlete of some kind, and I'm
sure you're a star--I ought to recognize you, but I'm ashamed to say I
don't. What do you do?"
"Swim."
"Oh, of course--Stevens, the great Olympic high and fancy diver! I would
_never_ have connected our own Doctor Stevens, the eminent mathematical
physicist, with the King of the Springboard. Say, ever since I quit
being afraid of the water I've had a yen to do that two-and-a-half twist
of yours, but I never met anybody who knew it well enough to teach it
to me, and I've almost broken my back forty times trying to learn it
alone!"
"I've got you, now, too--American and British Womens' golf champion.
Shake!" and the two shook hands vigorously, in mutual congratulation.
"Tell you what--I'll give you some pointers on diving, and you can show
me how to make a golf ball behave. Next to Norman Brandon, I've got
the most vicious hook in captivity--and Norm can't help himself. He's
left-handed, you know, and, being a southpaw, he's naturally wild. He
slices all his woods and hooks all his irons. I'm consistent, anyway--I
hook everything, even my putts."
"It's a bargain! What do you shoot?"
"Pretty dubby. Usually in the middle eighties--none of us play much,
being out in space most of the time, you know--sometimes, when my hook
is going particularly well, I go up into the nineties."
"We'll lick that hook," she promised, as they entered an elevator and
were borne upward, toward the prow of the great interplanetary cruiser.
CHAPTER II
----But Does Not Arrive
"All out--we climb the rest of the way on foot," Stevens told his
companion, as the elevator stopped at the uppermost passenger floor.
They walked across the small circular hall and the guard on duty came
to attention and saluted as they approached him.
"I have orders to pass you and Miss Newton, sir. Do you know all the
combinations?"
"I know this good old tub better than the men that built her--I helped
calculate her," Stevens replied, as he stepped up to an apparently blank
wall of steel and deftly manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush
with its surface. "This is to keep the passengers where they belong," he
explained, as a section of the wall swung backward in a short arc and
slid smoothly aside. "We will now proceed to see what makes it tick."
Ladder after ladder of steel they climbed, and bulkhead after bulkhead
opened at Stevens's knowing touch. At each floor the mathematician
explained to the girl the operation of the machinery there automatically
at work--devices for heating and cooling, devices for circulating,
maintaining, and purifying the air and the water--in short, all the
complex mechanism necessary for the comfort and convenience of the human
cargo of the liner.
Soon they entered the conical top compartment, a room scarcely fifteen
feet in diameter, tapering sharply upward to a hollow point some
twenty feet above them. The true shape of the room, however, was not
immediately apparent, because of the enormous latticed beams and
girders which braced the walls in every direction. The air glowed
with the violet light of the twelve great ultra-light projectors, like
searchlights with three-foot lenses, which lined the wall. The floor
beneath their feet was not a level steel platform, but seemed to be
composed of many lenticular sections of dull blue alloy.
"We are standing upon the upper lookout lenses, aren't we?" asked the
girl. "Is that perfectly all right?"
"Sure. They're so hard that nothing can scratch them, and of course
Roeser's Rays go right through our bodies, or any ordinary substance,
like a bullet through a hole in a Swiss cheese. Even those lenses
wouldn't deflect them if they weren't solid fields of force."
As he spoke, one of the ultra-lights flashed around in a short, quick
arc, and the girl saw that instead of the fierce glare she had expected,
it emitted only a soft violet light. Nevertheless she dodged
involuntarily and Stevens touched her arm reassuringly.
"All x, Miss Newton--they're as harmless as mice. They hardly ever have
to swing past the vertical, and even if one shines right through you you
can look it right in the eye as long as you want to--it can't hurt you
a bit."
"No ultra-violet at all?"
"None whatever. Just a color--one of the many remaining crudities of our
ultra-light vision. A lot of good men are studying this thing of direct
vision, though, and it won't be long before we have a system that will
really work."
"I think it's all perfectly wonderful!" she breathed. "Just think of
traveling in comfort through empty space, and of actually seeing through
seamless steel walls, without even a sign of a window! How can such
things be possible?"
"I'll have to go pretty well back," he warned, "and any adequate
explanation is bound to be fairly deep wading in spots. How technical
can you stand it?"
"I can go down with you middling deep--I took a lot of general science,
and physics through advanced mechanics. Of course, I didn't get into any
such highly specialized stuff as sub-electronics or Roeser's Rays, but
if you start drowning me, I'll yell."
"That's fine--you can get the idea all x, with that to go on. Let's sit
down here on this girder. Roeser didn't do it all, by any means, even
though he got credit for it--he merely helped the Martians do it. The
whole thing started, of course, when Goddard shot his first rocket to
the moon, and was intensified when Roeser so perfected his short waves
that signals were exchanged with Mars--signals that neither side could
make any sense out of. Goddard's pupils and followers made bigger and
better rockets, and finally got one that could land safely upon Mars.
Roeser, who was a mighty keen bird, was one of the first voyagers, and
he didn't come back--he stayed there, living in a space-suit for three
or four years, and got a brand-new education. Martian science always
was hot, you know, but they were impractical. They were desperately
hard up for water and air, and while they had a lot of wonderful
ideas and theories, they couldn't overcome the practical technical
difficulties in the way of making their ideas work. Now putting other
peoples' ideas to work was Roeser's long suit--don't think that I'm
belittling Roeser at all, either, for he was a brave and far-sighted
man, was no mean scientist, and was certainly one of the best organizers
and synchronizers the world has ever known--and since Martian and
Tellurian science complemented each other, so that one filled in the
gaps of the other, it wasn't long until fleets of space-freighters were
bringing in air and water from Venus, which had more of both than she
needed or wanted.
"Having done all he could for the Martians and having learned most of
the stuff he wanted to know, Roeser came back to Tellus and organized
Interplanetary, with scientists and engineers on all three planets,
and set to work to improve the whole system, for the vessels they used
then were dangerous--regular mankillers, in fact. At about this same
time Roeser and the Interplanetary Corporation had a big part in the
unification of the world into one nation, so that wars could no longer
interfere with progress."
* * * * *
"With this introduction I can get down to fundamentals. Molecules are
particles of the first order, and vibrations of the first order include
sound, light, heat, electricity, radio, and so on. Second order,
atoms--extremely short vibrations, such as hard X-rays. Third order,
electrons and protons, with their accompanying Millikan, or cosmic,
rays. Fourth order, sub-electrons and sub-protons. These, in the
material aspect, are supposed to be the particles of the fourth order,
and in the energy aspect they are known as Roeser's Rays. That is, these
fourth-order rays and particles seem to partake of the nature of both
energy and matter. Following me?"
"Right behind you," she assured him. She had been listening intently,
her wide-spaced brown eyes fastened upon his face.
"Since these Roeser's Rays, or particles or rays of the fourth order,
seem to be both matter and energy, and since the rays can be converted
into what is supposed to be the particles, they have been thought to be
the things from which both electrons and protons were built. Therefore,
everybody except Norman Brandon has supposed them the ultimate units of
creation, so that it would be useless to try to go any further...."
"Why, we were taught that they _are_ the ultimate units!" she protested.
"I know you were--but we really don't know anything, except what we
have learned empirically, even about our driving forces. What is called
the fourth-order particle is absolutely unknown, since nobody has been
able to detect it, to say nothing of determining its velocity or other
properties. It has been assumed to have the velocity of light only
because that hypothesis does not conflict with observational data. I'm
going to give you the generally accepted idea, since we have nothing
definite to offer in its place, but I warn you that that idea is very
probably wrong. There's a lot of deep stuff down there hasn't been dug
up yet. In fact, Brandon thinks that the product of conversion isn't
what we think it is, at all--that the actual fundamental unit and the
primary mechanism of the transformation lie somewhere below the fourth
order, and possibly even below the level of the ether--but we haven't
been able to find a point of attack yet that will let us get in
anywhere. However, I'm getting 'way ahead of our subject. To get back to
it, energy can be converted into something that acts like matter through
Roeser's Rays, and that is the empirical fact underlying the drive of
our space-ships, as well as that of almost all other vehicles on all
three planets. Power is generated by the great waterfalls of Tellus and
Venus--water's mighty scarce on Mars, of course, so most of our plants
there use fuel--and is transmitted on light beams, by means of powerful
fields of force to the receptors, wherever they may be. The individual
transmitting fields and receptors are really simply matched-frequency
units, each matching the electrical characteristics of some particular
and unique beam of force. This beam is composed of Roeser's Rays, in
their energy aspect. It took a long time to work out this tight-beam
transmission of power, but it was fairly simple after they got it."
He took out a voluminous notebook, at the sight of which Nadia smiled.
"A computer might forget to dress, but you'd never catch one without a
full magazine pencil and a lot of blank paper," he grinned in reply and
went on, writing as he talked.
"For any given frequency, _f_, and phase angle, _theta_, you integrate,
between limits zero and _pi_ divided by two, sine theta d...."
"Hold it--I'm sinking!" Nadia exclaimed. "I don't integrate at all
unless it is absolutely necessary. As long as you stick to general
science, I'm right on your heels, but please lay off of integrations
and all that--most especially stay away from those terrible electrical
integrations. I always did think that they were the most poisonous kind
known. I want only a general idea--that's all that I can understand,
anyway."
"Sure, I forgot--guess I was getting in deeper than is necessary,
especially since this whole thing of beam transmission is pretty crude
yet and is bound to change a lot before long. There is so much loss
that when we get more than a few hundred million kilometers away from
a power-plant we lose reception entirely. But to get going again,
the receptors receive the beam and from them the power is sent to the
accumulators, where it is stored. These accumulators are an outgrowth
of the storage battery. The theory of the accumulator is...."
"Lay off the theory, please!" the listener interrupted. "I understand
perfectly without it. Energy is stored in the accumulators--you put it
in and take it out. That's all that is necessary."
* * * * *
"I'd like to give you some of the theory--but, after all, it wouldn't
add much to your understanding of the working of things, and it might
mix you up, as some of it is pretty deep stuff. Then, too, it would
take a lot of time, and the rest of your friends would squawk if I
kept you here indefinitely. From the accumulators, then, the power
is fed to the converters, each of which is backed by a projector.
The converters simply change the aspect of the rays, from the
energy aspect to the material aspect. As soon as this is done, the
highly-charged particles--or whatever they are--thus formed are
repelled by the terrific stationary force maintained in the projector
backing the converter. Each particle departs with a velocity supposed
to be that of light, and the recoil upon the projector drives the
vessel, or car, or whatever it is attached to. Still with me?"
"Struggling a little, but my nose is still above the surface. These
particles, being so infinitesimally small that they cannot even be
detected, go right through any substance without any effect--they are
not even harmful."
"Exactly. Now we are in position to go ahead with the lights, detectors,
and so on. The energy aspect of the rays you can best understand as
simply a vibration in the ether--an extremely high frequency one.
While not rigidly scientific, that is close enough for you and me.
Nobody knows what the stuff really is, and it cannot be explained or
demonstrated by any model or concept in three-dimensional space. Its
physical-mathematical interpretation, the only way in which it can be
grasped at all, requires sixteen coordinates in four dimensions, and
I don't suppose you'd care to go into that."
"I'll say I wouldn't!" she exclaimed, feelingly.
"Well, anyway, by the use of suitable fields of force it can be used
as a carrier wave. Most of this stuff of the fields of force--how to
carry the modulation up and down through all the frequency changes
necessary--was figured out by the Martians ages ago. Used as a pure
carrier wave, with a sender and a receiver at each end, it isn't so
bad--that's why our communicator and radio systems work as well as they
do. They are pretty good, really, but the ultra-light vision system
is something else again. Sending the heterodyned wave through steel
is easy, but breaking it up, so as to view an object and return the
impulses, was an awful job and one that isn't half done yet. We see
things, after a fashion and at a distance of a few kilometers, by
sending an almost parallel wave from a twin-projector to disintegrate
and double back the viewing wave. That's the way the lookout plates and
lenses work, all over the ship--from the master-screens in the control
room to the plates of the staterooms and lifeboats and the viewing-areas
of the promenades. But the whole system is a rotten makeshift, and...."
"Just a minute!" exclaimed the girl. "I and everybody else have been
thinking that everything is absolutely perfect; and yet every single
thing you have talked about, you have ended up by describing as
'unknown,' 'rudimentary,' 'temporary,' or a 'makeshift.' You speak as
though the entire system were a poor thing that will have to do until
something better has been found, and that nobody knows anything about
anything! How do you get that way?"
"By working with Brandon and Westfall. Those birds have got real brains
and they're on the track of something that will, in all probability, be
as far ahead of Roeser's Rays as our present system is ahead of the
science of the seventeenth century."
"Really?" she looked at him in astonishment. "Tell me about it."
"Can't be done," he refused. "I don't know much about it--even they
didn't know any too much about some of it when I had to come in. And
what little I do know I can't tell, because it isn't mine."
"But you're working with them, aren't you?"
"Yes, in the sense that a small boy helps his father build a house.
They're the brains--I simply do some figuring that they don't want to
waste time doing."
Nadia, having no belief whatever in his modest disclaimer, but in secret
greatly pleased by his attitude, replied:
"Of course you couldn't say anything about an unfinished project--I
shouldn't have asked. Where do we go from here?"
"Down the lining of the hull, outside the passengers' quarters to the
upper dirigible projectors," and he led the way down a series of steep
steel stairways, through bulkheads and partitions of steel. "One thing
I forgot to tell you about--the detectors. They're worked on the same
principle as the lights, and are just about as efficient. Instead, of
light, though, they send out cones of electro-magnetic waves, which set
up induced currents in any conductor encountered beyond our own shell.
Since all dangerous meteorites have been shown to contain conducting
material, that is enough to locate them, for radio finders automatically
determine the direction, distance, and magnitude of the disturbance, and
swing a light on it. That was what happened when that light swung toward
us, back there in the prow."
"Are there any of those life-boats, that I've heard discussed so much
lately, near here?" asked the girl.
"Lots of 'em--here's one right here," and at the next landing he opened
a vacuum-insulated steel door, snapped on a light, and waved his hand.
"You can't see much of it from here, but it's a complete space-ship
in itself, capable of maintaining a dozen or fifteen persons during
a two-weeks' cruise in space."
"Why isn't it a good idea to retain them? Accidents are still possible,
are they not?"
"Of course, and there is no question of doing away with them entirely.
Modern ships, however, have only enough of them to take care of the
largest number of persons ever to be carried by the vessel."
"Has the _Arcturus_ more than she needs?"
"I'll say she has, and more of everything else, except room for
pay-load."
"I've heard them talking about junking her. I think it's a shame."
"So do I, in a way--you see, I helped design her and her sister-ship,
the _Sirius_, which Brandon and Westfall are using as a floating
laboratory. But times change, and the inefficient must go. She's a good
old tub, but she was built when everybody was afraid of space, and we
had to put every safety factor into her that we could think of. As a
result, she is four times as heavy as she should be, and that takes a
lot of extra power. Her skin is too thick. She has too many batteries of
accumulators, too many life-boats, too many bulkheads and air-breaks,
too many and too much of everything. She is so built that if she should
break up out in space, nobody would die if they lived through the
shock--there are so many bulkheads, air-breaks, and life-boats that
no matter how many pieces she broke up into, the survivors would find
themselves in something able to navigate. That excessive construction
is no longer necessary. Modern ships carry ten times the pay-load on
one-quarter of the power that this old battle-wagon uses. Even though
she's only four years old, she's a relic of the days when we used to
slam through on the ecliptic route, right through all the meteoric
stuff that is always there--trusting to heavy armor to ward off
anything too small for the observers and detectors to locate. Now, with
the observatories and check-stations out in space, fairly light armor
is sufficient, as we route ourselves well away from the ecliptic and so
miss all the heavy stuff. So, badly as I hate to see her go there, the
old tub is bound for the junk-yard."
* * * * *
A few more flights of stairs brought them to the upper band of dirigible
projectors, which encircled the hull outside the passengers' quarters,
some sixty feet below the prow. They were heavy, search-light-like
affairs mounted upon massive universal bearings, free to turn in any
direction, and each having its converter nestling inside its prodigious
field of force. Stevens explained that these projectors were used in
turning the vessel and in dodging meteorites when necessary, and they
went on through another almost invisible door into a hall and took an
elevator down to the main corridor.
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