Spacehounds of IPC, E. E. Smith [best books to read for students TXT] 📗

we don't, we'll widen our spiral and keep on trying until we do hit them."

"Heavens, Steve! Are you planning on telegraphing steadily for days at a time?"

"Sure, but not by hand, of course—I'll have an automatic sender and automatic pointers."

Stevens had at his command a very complete machine-shop, he had an ample supply of power, and all that remained for him to do was to assemble the parts which he had built during the long journey from Titan to Ganymede. Therefore, at sunrise of the designated day, he was ready, and, with Nadia hanging breathless over his shoulder, he closed the switch, a toothed wheel engaged a delicate interrupter, and a light sounder began its strident chatter.

"Ganymede point oh four seven ganymede point oh four seven ganymede point oh four seven..." endlessly the message was poured out into the ether, carried by a tight beam of ultra-vibrations and driven by forces sufficient to propel it well beyond the opposite limits of the orbit of Mars.

"What does it say? I can't read code."

Stevens translated the brief message, but Nadia remained unimpressed.

"But it doesn't say anything!" she protested. "It isn't addressed to anybody, it isn't signed—it doesn't tell anybody anything about anything."

"It's all there, ace. You see, since the beam is moving sidewise very rapidly at that range and we're shooting at a small target, the message has to be very short or they won't get it all while the beam's on 'em—it isn't as though we were broadcasting. It doesn't need any address, because nobody but the Sirius can receive it—except possibly the Jovians. They'll know who's sending it without any signature. It tells them that Ganymede wants to receive a message on the ultra-band centering on forty-seven thousandths. Isn't that enough?"

"Maybe. But suppose some of them live right here on Ganymede—you'll be shooting right through the ground all night—or suppose that even if they don't live here, that they can find our beam some way? Or suppose that Brandon hasn't got his machine built yet, or suppose that it isn't turned on when our beam passes them, or suppose they're asleep then? A lot of things might happen."

"Not so many, ace—your first objection is the only one that hasn't got more holes in it than a sieve, so I'll take it first. Since our beam is only a meter in diameter here and doesn't spread much in the first few million kilometers, the chance of direct reception by the enemy, even if they do live here on Ganymede, is infinitesimally small. But I don't believe that they live here—at least, they certainly didn't land on this satellite. As you suggest, however, it is conceivable that they may have detector screens delicate enough to locate our beam at a distance; but since in all probability that means a distance of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, I think it highly improbable. We've got to take the same risk anyway, no matter what we do, whenever we start to use any kind of driving power, so there's no use worrying about it. As for your last two objections, I know Brandon and I know Westfall. Brandon will have receivers built that will take in any wave possible of propagation, and Westfall, the cautious old egg, will have them running twenty-four hours a day, with automatic recorders, finders, and everything else that Brandon can invent—and believe me, sweetheart, that's a lot of stuff!"

"It's wonderful, the way you three men are," replied Nadia thoughtfully, reading between the lines of Stevens' utterance. "They knew that you were on the Arcturus, of course—and they knew that if you were alive you'd manage in some way to get in touch with them. And you, away out here after all this time, are superbly confident that they are expecting a call from you. That, I think, is one of the finest things I ever heard of."

"They're two of the world's best—absolutely." Nadia looked at him, surprised, for he had not seen anything complimentary to himself in her remark. "Wait until you meet them. They're men, Nadia—real men. And speaking of meeting them—please try to keep on loving me after you meet Norm Brandon, will you?"

"Don't be a simp!" her brown eyes met his steadily. "You didn't mean that—you didn't even say it, did you?"

"Back it comes, sweetheart! But knowing myself and knowing those two...."

"Stop it! If Norman Brandon or Quincy Westfall had been here instead of you, or both of them together, we'd have been here from now on—we wouldn't even have gotten away from the Jovians!"

"Now it's your turn to back water, guy!"

"Well, maybe, a little—if both of them were here, they ought to equal you in some things. Brandon says himself that he and Westfall together make one scientist—Dad says he says so."

"You don't want to believe everything you hear. Neither of them will admit that he knows anything or can do anything—that's the way they are."

"Dad has told me a lot about them—how they've always been together ever since their undergraduate days. How they studied together all over the world, even after they'd been given all the degrees loose. How they even went to the other planets to study—to Mars, where they had to live in space-suits all the time, and to Venus, where they had to take ultra-violet treatments every day to keep alive. How they learned everything that everybody else knew and then went out into space to find out things that nobody else ever dreamed of. How you came to join them, and what you three have done since. They're fine, of course—but they aren't you," she concluded passionately.

"No, thank Heaven! I know you love me, Nadia, just as I love you—you know I never doubted it. But you'll like them, really. They're a wonderful team. Brandon's a big brute, you know—fully five centimeters taller than I am, and he weighs close to a hundred kilograms—and no lard, either. He's wild, impetuous, always jumping at conclusions and working out theories that seem absolutely ridiculous, but they're usually sound, even though impractical. Westfall's the practical member—he makes Norm pipe down, pins him down to facts, and makes it possible to put his hunches and wild flashes of genius into workable form. Quince is a...."

"Now you pipe down! I've heard you rave so much about those two—I'd lots rather rave about you, and with more reason. I wish that sounder would start sounding."

"Our first message hasn't gone half way yet. It takes about forty minutes for the impulse to get to where I think they are, so that even if they got the first one and answered it instantly, it would be eighty minutes before we'd get it. I sort of expect an answer late tonight, but I won't be disappointed if it takes a week to locate them."

"I will!" declared the girl, and indeed, very little work was done that day by either of the castaways.

Slowly the day wore on, and the receiving sounder remained silent. Supper was eaten as the sun dropped low and disappeared, but they felt no desire to sleep. Instead, they went out in front of the steel wall, where Stevens built a small campfire. Leaning back against the wall of their vessel, they fell into companionable silence, which was suddenly broken by Stevens.

"Nadia, I just had a thought. I'll bet four dollars I've wasted a lot of time. They'll certainly have automatic relays on Tellus, to save me the trouble of hunting for them, but like an idiot I never thought of it until just this minute, in spite of the speech I made you about them. I'm going to change those directors right now."

"That's quite a job, isn't it?"

"No, only a few minutes."

"Do it in the morning; you've done enough for one day—maybe you've hit them already, any way."

They again became silent, watching Jupiter, an enormous moon some seven degrees in apparent diameter.

"Steve, I simply can't get used to such a prodigious moon! Look at the stripes, and look at that perfectly incredible...."

A gong sounded and they both jumped to their feet and raced madly into the Hope. The ultra-receiver had come to life and the sounder was chattering insanely—someone was sending with terrific speed, but with perfect definition and spacing.

"That's Brandon's fist—I'd know his style anywhere," Stevens shouted, as he seized notebook and pencil.

"Tell me what it says, quick, Steve!" Nadia implored.

"Can't talk—read it!" Stevens snapped. His hand was flying over the paper, racing to keep up with the screaming sounder.

"...ymede all x stevens ganymede all x stevens ganymede all x placing and will keep sirius on plane between you and tellus circle fifteen forty north going tellus first send full data spreading beam to cover circle fifteen forty quince suggests possibility this message intercepted and translated personally I think such translation impossible and that he is wilder than a hawk but just in case they should be supernaturally intelligent...."

Stevens stopped abruptly and stared at the vociferous sounder.

"Don't stop to listen—keep on writing!" commanded Nadia.

"Can't," replied the puzzled mathematician. "It doesn't make sense. It sounds intelligent—it's made up of real symbols of some kind or other, but they don't mean a thing to me."

"Oh, I see—he's sending mush on purpose. Read the last phrase!"

"Oh, sure—'mush' is right," and with no perceptible break the signals again became intelligible.

"... if they can translate that they are better scholars than we are signing off until hear from you brandon."

The sounder died abruptly into silence and Nadia sobbed convulsively as she threw herself into Stevens' arms. The long strain over, the terrible uncertainty at last dispelled, they were both incoherent for a minute—Nadia glorifying the exploits of her lover, Stevens crediting the girl herself and his two fellow-scientists with whatever success had been achieved. A measure of self-control regained, Stevens cut off his automatic sender, changed the adjustments of his directors and cut in his manually operated sending key.

"What waves are you using, anyway?" asked Nadia, curiously. "They must be even more penetrating than Roeser's Rays, to have such a range, and Roeser's Rays go right through a planet without even slowing up."

"They're of the same order as Roeser's—that is, they're sub-electronic waves of the fourth order—but they're very much shorter, and hence more penetrating. In fact, they're the shortest waves yet known, so short that Roeser never even suspected their existence."

"Suppose there's a Jovian space-ship out there somewhere that intercepts our beams. Couldn't they locate us from it?"

"Maybe, and maybe not—we'll just have to take a chance on that. That goes right back to what we were talking about this morning. They might be anywhere, so the chance of hitting one is very small. It isn't like hitting the Sirius, because we knew within pretty narrow limits where to look for her, and even at that we had to hunt for her for half a day before we hit her. We're probably safe, but even if they should have located us, we'll probably be able to hide somewhere until the Sirius gets here. Well, the quicker I get busy sending the dope, the sooner they can get started."

"Tell them to be sure and bring me all my clothes they can find, a gallon of perfume, a barrel of powder, and a carload of Delray's Fantasie chocolates—I've been a savage so long that I want to wallow in luxury for a while."

"I'll do that—and I want some real cigarettes!"

Stevens first sent a terse, but complete account of everything that had happened to the Arcturus, and a brief summary of what he and Nadia had done since the cutting up of the IPV. The narrative finished, he launched into a prolonged and detailed scientific discussion of the enemy and their offensive and defensive weapons. He dwelt precisely and at length upon the functioning of everything he had seen. Though during the long months of their isolation he had been too busy to do any actual work upon the weapons of the supposed Jovians, yet his keen mind had evolved many mathematical and physical deductions, hypotheses, and theories, and these he sent out to the Sirius, concluding:

"There's all the dope I can give you. Figure it out, and don't come at all until you can come loaded for bear; they're bad medicine. Call us occasionally, to keep us informed as to when to expect you, but don't call too often. We don't want them locating you, and if they should locate us through your ray or ours, it would be just too bad. So-long. Stevens and Newton."

Nadia had insisted upon staying up and had been brewing pot after pot of her substitutes for coffee while he sat at the key; and it was almost daylight when he finally shut off the power and arose, his right arm practically paralyzed from the unaccustomed strain of hours of telegraphing.

"Well, sweetheart, that's that!" he exclaimed in relief. "Brandon and Westfall are on the job. Nothing to