Chapter 9

The Sirius Takes a Hand

The Sirius loafed along through the ether at normal acceleration just outside the orbit of Mars and a million miles north of the ecliptic plane. In the control room, which had been transformed into a bewilderingly complete laboratory, Norman Brandon strode up and down, waving his arms, his unruly black hair on end, addressing savagely his friend and fellow-scientist, who sat unmoved and at ease.

“For cat’s sake, Quince, let’s get busy! They’re outside somewhere, since the police have scoured every cubic kilometer within range of the power plants without finding a trace of them. We’ve got the power question licked right now--with these fields we can draw sixty thousand kilofranks from cosmic radiation, which is lots more than we’ll ever need. We haven’t drawn a frank from a plant in a month, and we’ve had to cut our field strength down to a whisper to keep from burning out our accumulators. We can hunt as far as Neptune easy--we can go to Alpha Centauri if we want to. This thing of piffling and monkeying around here’s pulling my cork, and for the ten thousand four hundred and sixty seventh time I say let’s prowl and prowl now! In fact, I’m getting so sick of sticking around doing nothing that I’m going out anyway, if I have to go alone in a lifeboat!”

[Illustration: The flying fortresses were finally wrenched from the ground and hurled upward.]

Impetuous and violent as Brandon had always been, never before had he gone to such lengths as to suggest a disruption of the partnership; and Westfall, knowing that Brandon, in his most violent moments, never threatened idly, thought long before he replied.

“You will not go alone, of course. If you insist upon going without further preparation I will go too, no matter how foolish I think such a course to be. We have power, it is true, but in all other respects we are in no condition to meet an opponent having command of such resources as must certainly be possessed by those who attacked the Arcturus. Our detectors are inefficient, our system of vision is crude, to say the least, and many other things are still in the experimental stage. We have not the slightest idea whom or what we may encounter. It is all too probable that we would simply be throwing away uselessly the lives of more good men. It is also foolish from a general viewpoint, for as you already know, we and our assistants happen to be in better position to study these things than is any one else at the present time. However, I will compromise with you. We can learn much in a month if you will really try, instead of wasting time in fuming around the ship and indulging in these idiotic tantrums. If you will buckle down and really study the problems confronting us for thirty days, we will set out at the end of that time, ready or not.”

“All x. I hate to do it, but we’ve been together too long to bust it up now,” and Brandon turned toward his bench. Scarcely had he reached it when a series of dots and dashes roared from an amplifier. Both men leaped for the receiver which had so unexpectedly burst into sound, reaching it just as it relapsed into silence, and from the tape of the recorder they read the brief message.

“ ... h four seven ganymede point oh four seve...”

“That’s Steve!” yelled Brandon. “Nobody else could build an ultra-sender! Direction?”

“No need of calculating distance or direction. Ganymede is the third major satellite of Jupiter.”

“Sure. Of course, Quince--never thought of that. Dope enough--point oh four seven.”

As Stevens had told Nadia, the message was completely informing to those for whom it was intended, and soon Brandon’s answer was flying toward the distant satellite. He then started to call the officers of the Inter-planetary Corporation, but was restrained by his conservative friend.

“It would be better to wait a while, Norman. In a few hours we will know what to tell them.”

At high acceleration the Sirius drove toward the Jupiter-Earth-North plane, and Brandon calculated from his own bearings and from the current issue of the “Ephemeris” the time at which Stevens’ reply should be received. Two minutes before that time he was pacing up and down in front of the ultra-receiver, and fifteen seconds after it he snapped:

“Come on, Perce, get busy! Shake a leg!”

“Oh, come, Norman; give him a few minutes’ leeway, at least,” said Westfall, with amused tolerance. “Even if your calculations are that accurate--which of course they are,” he added hastily at a stormy glance from hot black eyes, “since we received that message direct, instead of through one of our relay stations, Stevens probably has been throwing it around for hours or perhaps days, looking for us, and the shock of hearing from us at last might well have put him out of control for a minute or two.”

The carrier wave hissed into the receiver, forestalling Brandon’s fiery reply, followed closely by the code signals they had been expecting. As soon as the story had been told, and while Brandon was absorbed in the scientific addenda of Stevens, Westfall thoughtfully called up Newton, Nadia’s father.

“Nadia is alive, free, safe, well, and happy,” he shot out without preliminary or greeting, as soon as the now lined features of the director showed upon the communicator screen, and the careworn countenance smoothed magically into the keen face of the fighting Newton of old, as Westfall recounted rapidly the tale of the castaways.

“They apparently have not suffered in any way,” he concluded. “All that Stevens wants is some cigarettes, and your daughter’s needs, while somewhat more numerous than his, seem to be only clothes, powder, perfume, and candy. Therefore we need not worry about them. The fate of the others is still unknown, but there seems to be a slight possibility that some of them may yet be rescued. You may release as much or as little of this story as may seem desirable. Stevens is still sending data of a highly technical nature. We shall arrive there at 21:32 next Tuesday.”

In due time the message from Ganymede ended and Brandon, with many pages of his notebook crammed with figures and equations, snapped off the power of the receiver and turned to his bench. Gone was the storming, impetuous rebel; his body was ruled solely by the precise and insatiable brain of the research scientist.

“He’s great, that kid Perce! When I see him, I’m going to kiss him on both cheeks. He’s got enough dope on them to hang them higher than Franklin’s kite, and we’ll nail those jaspers to the cross or I’m a polyp! He’s crazier than a loon in most of his hunches, but he’s filled four of our biggest gaps. There is such a thing, as a ray-screen, you kill-joy, and there are also lifting or tractor rays--two things I’ve been trying to dope out and that you’ve been giving me the Bronx cheer on. The Titanians have had a tractor ray for ages--he sent me complete dope on it--and the Jovians have got them both. We’ll have them in three days, and it ought to be fairly simple to dope out the opposite of a tractor, too--a pusher or presser beam. Say, round up the gang, will you, while I’m licking some of this stuff into shape for you to tear apart? Where are Venus and Mars? Um ... m ... m. Tell Alcantro and Fedanzo to come over here pronto--give ‘em a special if necessary. We’ll pick up Dol Kenor and Pyraz Amonar on the way--no, get them to Tellus, too. Then we’ll get action quicker. Those four are all I want--get anybody else you want to come along.”

His hands playing over the keys of an enormous calculating machine, Brandon was instantly immersed in a profound mathematico-physical problem; deaf and blind to everything about him. Westfall, knowing well that far-reaching results would follow Brandon’s characteristic attack, sat down at the controls of the communicator. He first called Mars, the home planet of Alcantro and Fedanzo, the foremost force-field experts of three planets; and was assured in no uncertain terms that those rulers of rays were ready and anxious to follow wherever Brandon and Westfall might lead. Thence to Venus, where Dol Kenor, the electrical wizard, and Pyraz Amonar, the master of mechanism, also readily agreed to accompany the expedition. He then called the General-in-Chief of the Interplanetary Police, requesting a detail of two hundred picked men for the hazardous venture. These most important calls out of the way, he was busy for over an hour giving long-distance instructions so that everything would be in readiness for the servicing of the immense space-cruiser the following Tuesday night.

Having guarded against everything his cautious and far-seeing mind could envisage, he went over to Brandon’s desk and sat down, smoking contemplatively until the idea had been roughed out in mathematical terms.

“Here’s the rough draft of the ray screen, Quince. We generate a blanket frequency, impressed upon the ultra carrier wave. That’s old stuff, of course. Here’s the novelty, in equation 59. With two fields of force, set up from data 27 to 43, it will be possible actually to project a pure force of such a nature that it will react to de-heterodyne the blanketing frequency at any predetermined distance. That, of course, sets up a barrier against any frequency of the blanketed band. Incidentally, an extension of the same idea will enable us to see anywhere we want to look--calculate a retransmitting field.”

“One thing at a time, please. That screen may be possible, but those fields will never generate it. Look at datum 31, in which your assumptions are unsound. In order to make any solution at all possible you have assumed cosine squared theta negligible. Mathematically, it is of course vanishingly small compared to the first power of the cosine, but fields of that type must be exact, and your neglect of the square is indefensible. Since you cannot integrate with the squared term in place, your whole solution fails.”

“Not necessarily. We’ll go back to 29, and put in sine squared theta minus one equal to z sub four. That gives us a coversed sine in 30, and then we integrate...”

Thus the argument raged, and all the assistants whose work was not too pressing gathered around unobtrusively, for it was from just such fierce discussions as this that the ultra-radio and other epoch-making discoveries had come into being. Yard after yard of calculator paper was filled with equations and computations. Weirdly shaped curves were drawn, with arguments at every point--arguments hot and violent from Brandon, from Westfall cold and precise, backed by lightning calculations and with facts and diagrams culled from the many abstruse works of reference, which by this time literally covered the bench and overflowed upon the floor.

It was in this work that the strikingly different temperaments and abilities of the two scientists were revealed. Brandon never stood still, but walked around jerkily, chewing savagely the stem of an ancient and reeking pipe, gesticulating vigorously, the while his keen and agile mind was finding a way over, around, or through the apparently insuperable obstacles which beset their path; by means of mathematical and physical improvisations, which no one not inspired by sheer genius could have evolved. Westfall, seated quietly at the calculator, mercilessly shredded Brandon’s theories to ribbons, pointing out their many flaws with his cold, incisive reasoning and with rapid calculations of the many factors involved. Then Brandon would find a remedy for each weakness in turn and, when Westfall could no longer find a single flaw in the structure, they would toss the completed problem upon a table and attack the next one with unabated zeal. Brandon, in his light remark that the two made one real scientist, had far understated the case--those two brains, each so powerful and each so perfectly complementing the other, comprised the master-scientist who was to revolutionize science completely in a few short years.

To such good purpose did they labor that the calculations were practically finished by the time they reached the earth. There the ship was serviced with a celerity that spoke volumes for the importance of her mission--even the Aldebaran, the dazzlingly gold-plated queen of the fleet, waited unattended and disregarded on minus time while the entire force of the Interplanetary Corporation concentrated upon the battle-scarred old hulk of the Sirius. Brandon was surprised when he saw the two companies of police, but characteristically accepted without question the wisdom of any decision of his friend, and cordially greeted Inspector-General Crowninshield, only a year or so older than himself, but already in charge of a Division.

“Keen-looking bunch, Crown. Lot of different outfits--volunteers for special duty from the whole Tellurian force?”

“Yes. Everybody wanted to go, and there threatened to be trouble over the selection, so we picked the highest ratings from the whole Service. If there ever was such a thing as a picked force, we shall have it with us.”

“What d’you mean, ‘us’? You aren’t going, are you?”

“Try to keep me from it! The names of all five of us I-G’s were put in a hat, and I was lucky.”

“Well, you may come in handy, at that,” Brandon conceded. “And here’s the big boss himself. Hi, Chief!”

“Ho, Brandon! Ho, Westfall!” Newton, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the IPC, shook hands with the two scientists. “Your Martians and Venerians are in Lounge Fifteen. I suppose that you have a lot of things to thrash out, so you may as well start now. Everything is being attended to--I’ll take charge now.”

“You going along, too?” asked Brandon.

“Going along, too? I’m running this cruise!” Newton declared. “I may take advice from you on some things and from Crowninshield on others, but I am in charge!”

“All x--it’s a relief, at that,” and Brandon and Westfall went to join their fellow-scientists in the designated room of the space-cruiser.

What a contrast was there as the representatives of three worlds met! All six men were of the same original stock or of a similar evolution--science has not, even yet, decided the question definitely. Their minds were very much alike, but their respective environments had so variantly developed their bodily structures that to outward seeming they had but little in common.

Through countless thousands of generations the Martians had become acclimated to a planet having little air, less water, and characterized by abrupt transitions from searing heat to bitter cold: from blinding light to almost impenetrable darkness. Eight feet tall and correspondingly massive, they could barely stand against the gravitational force of the Earth, almost three times as great as that of Mars, but the two Martian scientists struggled to their feet as the Terrestrials entered.

“As you were, fellows--lie down again and take it easy.” Brandon suggested in the common Interplanetarian tongue. “We’ll be away from here very soon, then we can ease off.”

“We greet our friends standing as long as we can stand,” and, towering a full two feet above Brandon’s own six-feet-two, Alcantro and Fedanzo in turn engulfed his comparatively tiny hand in a thick-shelled paw and lifted briefly the inner lids of quadruply-shielded eyes. For the Martian skin is not like ours. It is of incredible thickness; dry, pliable, rubbery, and utterly without sensation: heavily lined with fat and filled throughout its volume with tiny air-cells which make it an almost perfect non-conductor of heat and which prevent absolutely the evaporation of the precious moisture of the body. For the same reasons their huge and cat-like eyes are never exposed, but look through sealed, clear windows of membrane, over which may be drawn at will one or all of four pairs of lids--lids transparent, insensible, non-freezable, air-spaced insulators. Even the air they exhale carries from their bodies a minimum of the all-important heat and moisture, for the passages of their nostrils do not lead directly to the lungs, as do ours. They are merely the intakes for a tortuous system of tubes comprising a veritable heat-exchanger, so that the air finally expelled is in almost perfect equilibrium with the incoming supply in temperature and in moisture content. A grayish tan in color, naked and hairless--though now, out of deference to Terrestrial conventions, wearing light robes of silk--indifferent alike to any extreme of heat or cold, light or darkness: such were the two forbidding beings who arose to greet their Terrestrial friends, then again reclined.

“I suppose that you have been given to drink?” Westfall made sure that they had been tendered the highest hospitality of Mars.

“We have drunk full deeply, thanks; and it was not really necessary, for we drank scarcely three weeks ago.”

Brandon and Westfall turned then and greeted the two Venerians, as different from the Martians as they were from the Terrestrials. Of earthly stature, form, and strength, yet each was encased in a space-suit stretched like a drum-head, and would live therein or in the special Venerian rooms of the vessel as long as the journey should endure. For the atmosphere of Venus is more than twice as dense as ours, is practically saturated with water-vapor, carries an extremely high concentration of carbon dioxide, and in their suits and rooms is held at a temperature of one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit. The lenses of their helmets were of heavy, yellowish-red composition, protecting their dead-white skins and red eyes from all actinic rays--for the Venerian lives upon the bottom of an everlasting sea of fog and his thin epidermis, utterly without pigmentation, burns and blisters as frightfully at the least exposure to actinic light as does ours at the touch of a red-hot iron.

Out in space at last, cruising idly with the acceleration set at a point bearable for the Martians, Westfall called the meeting to order and outlined the situation facing them. Brandon then handed around folios of papers, upon which the Venerians turned the invisible infra-red beams of the illuminators upon their helmets, thus flooding them with the “light” to which their retinas were most responsive.

“Here’s the data,” Brandon began. “As you see from Sheet 1, we can already draw any amount of power we shall need from cosmic radiation alone...”