“But—I don’t understand.”
He smiled grimly. “When matter is hurled through that veil it becomes radiant energy. Radiant energy hurled into the sub-space, as I was just hurling it, emerges on the other side as the mass-equivalent of matter minus whatever percentage is lost in the conversion.
“It represents the back pressure that eventually ruptures the separation and causes stars to go nova. We might easily penetrate subspace with the right kind of equipment. But when we emerged on the other side we would be reduced to radiant energy.”
Jeff dropped into the easy chair beside the desk. “It’s no good,” he said. “Were licked!”
His face fell and he stared stolidly at the floor. His eyes were hollow and his face was gaunt. Sheer hopelessness lowered his vitality even more. For minutes he sat, enveloped in a mental fog, and the only sounds in the big building were the sounds of his breathing and the periodic exhaling of Lucille as she smoked her cigarette.
Jeff became more deeply immersed in thought but it was all circle-thinking—for the sum and substance of it was to lead him back along the same lines he had started out on. He sat half-hypnotized and half-asleep but unable to relax because of the strain.
Lucille snuffed out the cigarette and watched him with a puzzled frown.
Before her economic empire began to crumble away, Lucille had been too deeply immersed in her vast complex of business affairs to try to understand Jeff. What little thought she gave him was unfavorable because she believed him to be in league with her financial enemy, Charles Horne. She knew differently now, but unaccountably that new knowledge merely made Jeff more of a riddle than ever.
She was at a loss to understand it.
Lucille had imagined that now, with her mind free of business pressures, she could study and observe him as she might study a corporation report, and come up with a precise picture of what made him tick. But perversely his motivations and drives remained as unreadable as a book of Sanskrit—but a book, none the less, that aroused in her a curiosity and eagerness to master.
All her life she had been trained to manipulate people and situations to her own advantage, to the purpose of increasing her wealth of material possessions. Now she mourned their loss as symbols of her success even more than she mourned the luxuries which they had brought her. At one time she had believed that Jeff’s sympathy for her plight sprang simply from the fact that he had never had wealth, and therefore was incapable of realizing the bitterness of losing it.
But she’d found out again, she had misread him. It was much more than that. Neither the ruthless but thrilling competition to gather money nor the power and pleasures it could bring meant a thing in Jeff’s scheme of things. He just couldn’t care less. Yet, she realized, he was far from being stupid.
He worked on great and mysterious machines of which she knew as little as he knew about the intricacies of corporation structure and their involved interrelationship. And while Lucille had been proud of her ability to handle the mathematics of finance with machine-like swiftness, Jeff easily juggled the outlandish symbols of sheer mathematical abstracts that were hopelessly beyond her ken.
Suddenly shocked, she realized that—like it or not—she was traveling swiftly away from every former value she had ever known. Only days ago, thousands of people had depended on her for jobs, prosperity, and their very lives, but how disconcertingly were the tables turned! For now she found herself depending for her chance of life upon this scientist—a young man, moreover, who showed an irritating lack of respect for an empress of industry so recently deposed.
She bit her lip. It—it just wasn’t right! If she could only get to know him and to forecast his reactions, she could make a good try toward putting him in his place, and thus at least partially salve her wounded pride. Yet, with complete and final obliteration facing her, what could she do? What should she do?’
Meanwhile niggling little fears chipped away at her confidence, undermining her arrogance, dulling her usually keen thought processes.
She tried to apply herself to the task Jeff had assigned her; one which she was sure that he could do blindfolded in jig-time, but her concentration wavered. How in the world could anyone do anything these fearsome days but crawl into a coma of dank, hopeless despair?
Yet Jeff worked on, often lost in thought to the exclusion of everything else.
She half-understood how a man might think and work toward escape from an almost-certain death. She had heard that definition of a rational man—the man with five minutes to live who took four of them to think of a plan and one minute to execute it. But she and most of the people she knew were so paralyzed with fear that clear thinking was impossible.
Yet Jeff worked on and on and now that he realized defeat he was still sitting there, thinking.
“Jeff,” she cried, “what kind of man are you?”
“Me?” he asked with a crooked smile. ‘Tm a rank failure, as of this moment.”
“But-”
“This is finis,” he told her. “The end. We can’t go through sub-space and that is the final answer.” He leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “Poor kids,” he said in a whisper, and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He stood up. “Pfui!” he said in a voice of complete dejection.
“Oh, Jeff!” cried Lucille. She caught him by the shoulders and drew him to her. He half-sat on the desk beside her. Lucille cradled his head in her arms and pressed his face to her breast. She swayed back and forth, rocking him gently and murmuring wordless sounds of comfort in a soft low voice.
Almost at once Jeff straightened. “Why do we go on trying?” he asked raggedly.
Lucille put her hand against his cheek. “There’s always hope,” she said quietly.
He shook his head.
“What else have we left?”
Suddenly he turned toward the huge latticework that generated the window into sub-space. “Might as well open that all the way,” he said. “It would be so quick that the nervous system would have no time to register anything. Instantaneous release from this incessant terror and—”
“Jeff! No!”
“Oh, I won’t,” he said in a dejected tone. “But there’s darned little to live for.” Then he took a deep breath, shook his head as if to shake dejection from his mind and stood up straight.
“Back to work,” he said in a voice of forced brightness. “That’s the answer, even if the nova catches us still fingering dials and watching meters.”
“What next?” asked Lucille. Unable to suggest, she asked questions because she hoped to prod his mind into some channel safer than the sordid contemplation of failure.
‘Take another try at it, I guess,” he said. He turned to the equipment.
CHAPTER XV
Charles Horne sat in the control room of his stolen spacecraft and added up his take. So many hundred tons of this, so many millions of gallons of that, so many billion cubic feet of the other. He had a large volume in front of him; a strange volume to be found in such a place.
It was a great mail-order house catalogue—a curious volume for Horne, but one eminently practical for his purpose. For between the two covers of the heavy tome were listed a whole dictionary of items to supply almost every imaginable need of mankind.
Horne well appreciated the fact that he would soon be leaving terra forever. Anything he forgot up to the time of his departure would be forever lost and never to be regained, unless he could fashion a suitable substitute, either aboard the spacecraft or on that distant unknown planet.
Horne had spent hours poring through the catalogue and listing items—chiefly those of importance to his physical comfort which he might naturally have overlooked, since he had taken them for granted almost from the day of his birth.
He had had many idle hours in which to think and reflect, for piloting a spacecraft is not like driving a car nor even like handling one of the huge inter-continental passenger jets. A car requires constant supervision at the wheel; and while an
airliner can run on “George”—the autopilot— for long periods of time, readjustments by pilot may be necessary, and the International Air Traffic Commission regulations require at least three responsible officers to be on watch at all times while on flights.
A spacecraft, on the other hand, requires little or no supervision for days on end, because of the medium through which it travels.
The Roman Spacecraft had been fitted with the finest in automatic machinery. It was therefore necessary to drive the ship manually only at take-off, during such maneuvers as were necessary once the ship arrived at its destination, and in landing.
To take a trip of fifty million miles, for instance, the pilot takes off manually and sets the ship on course at a constant acceleration. He then retires until half the distance is covered, at which time he turns the ship end for end and applies the same power.
This results in deceleration, and at the end of the same period of time, the fifty million miles have been crossed and the ship is then at zero velocity relative to its starting point. This is theoretical of course, but the difference is so small that a couple of hours of effort at the control board brings one to the desired point.
So, in the intervals between his snatching loaded cargo vessels and his hurling the stolen ships along their orbit, Horne had plenty of time to think and plan. Then, when he left each ship and returned to earth, he had more time for pondering.
He had planned well, had Charles Horne—very well. He only lacked the mapping of certain intricate details which could be supplied by Jeff Benson, who was quite adept at such calculations. Those few calculations, plus a few snivets of equipment supplied by Benson—and one other detail.
One more factor.
It was a poor master who had no servants—a poor emperor who had no subjects. A poor man who had no mate.
There would be small point in heading for Procyon alone. There was no future in it, either for Horne or the human race. Not that the welfare of the human race concerned Horne in the least, but the end-result would be one and the same.
There were many women Horne could take along. A single announcement of his plan would have given him the chance to make a selection from virtually all the women of his rather expansive social orbit. He could pick and choose. He could take a harem if he wanted to.
As usual, Horne wanted the unattainable. Like any other man who could select his mate with a casual wave of his hand, Horne wanted the one woman that he had never been able to capture.
Lucille Roman had spirit—she had beauty and she had ability. All admirable qualities for a wife and mother—but Horne was not viewing Lucille Roman as anything but a creature to be conquered, a will to be bent to his own. He wanted to hear this woman, who had always acted his superior, acknowledge the fact that he was the dominant force.
Horne could have for the asking beautiful women who would offer him honor, love and affection, freely and without conquest.
Horne preferred the conquest.
He wanted also the mighty jet that Benson had been using as a window into sub-space. With millions of tons of stolen shipping passing through space at varying velocities, Horne wanted the huge jet to drive them, once they were collected and tied together.
The eight jets on the spacecraft were able to achieve escape velocity with an eleven-thousand-ton load.
His millions of tons of stolen goods were now all beyond the velocity of escape from the solar system so that, if he tied them all together and used the spacecraft jets, he could still accelerate.
But the amount of acceleration in free space is a function of the force applied versus the mass to which it is applied. A heavy stone falls at the same rate of speed as a light stone on the surface of the earth because the attraction is proportional to the mass. As the mass increases, requiring more force to move it, so accordingly increases the force of attraction.
But in free space, with an increasing mass but with a constant force from his jets, every increase in mass would result in a proportional decrease in acceleration.
The mighty jet in Jeff Bensons laboratory rendered puny the total force of Roman’s eight lesser jets. With Bensons jet driving the countless tons of stolen shipping, the resulting acceleration would rise to a practical level.
Benson would supply that, plus the calculations necessary for the trip to Procyon.
And, thought Horne with a sly grin, he would collect Benson, the jet and Lucille Roman in one fell swoop. Once he was on the way with all the necessary calculations made and the equipment working, Jeff Benson could be disposed of. Then, with no possible interference from man or beast, Charles Horne could take over the job of breaking Lucille Roman’s will.
So she would use a woman’s weapons on him, to bilk him of his aluminum interest! Horne would retaliate by using a man’s weapons and strength to conquer her!
Horne had plotted well. He had made a few errors, but his batting average was high.
The fact of the matter was that he had made only one major mistake, and that had not resulted in disaster. It had only delayed his plans a bit and another bit of plotting had rectified the error.
So Charles Horne landed in the vacant lot behind Jeff Benson’s laboratory. He was filled with confidence that he could cope with Benson, could talk the man into anything.
He opened the door boldly and walked in with a confident smile.
“Howdedo, folks,” he greeted them.
“Horne!”
“I’ll be—”
“None other,” chuckled Horne.
“Where’ve you been?” demanded Jeff.
“‘Making plans,” said Horne. “Now I’ve come for you.”
“You’ve what?” asked Jeff.
“Come for you!”
Lucille looked around the laboratory and picked up a large half-round file. A few short weeks before she would have reacted like any other person not too familiar with tools. She would have reached for a hammer or some other blunt weapon. But she had watched Jeff at work. A hammer might be an obvious bludgeon but a fourteen-inch, half-round bastard file is a very nasty weapon.
“Why?” she asked with a definite snap.
Horne faced her. “I’ve come to apologize to you, too,” he said smoothly. “You wouldn’t have lent me your rocket
“How right you are,” snapped Lucille.
“But it was necessary that I have it. You’d not have trusted me, even though I’d come to you in good faith.”
“Impossible.”
“Huh?”
“It’s entirely impossible that you could offer even a poor substitute for good faith/’
“This may convince you,” smiled Horne.
“Yes?”
Horne faced Jeff. “Give a dog a bad name,” he said with a smile, “and it’s a bad dog forever after. I’ve a bad name. Therefore the only way I could prove myself was to do what had to be done by force, and then come back to show you that I mean well, after all.”
Lucille hefted the file. “What’s on your nasty little mind?” she smiled.
“We’re on our way to Proeyon ”
Lucille laughed scathingly.
“Impossible,” said Jeff.
“You see?” said Horne with a lift of his eyebrows. “Even if I had come to you with my plan, you’d not have taken it seriously.”
“Come to the point,” said Lucille.
“Were merely going to cross interstellar space,” said Horne.
“But that is impractical.”
“Not at all,” said Horne. “What I have in mind will work. I’ve supplies on the way. What I need now to drive them is your big superjet, Benson.”
“But it is not a jet,” objected Jeff. “I’ve been using it to investigate subspace.”
Horne smiled. “Isn’t it the same kind of general layout as a jet?”
“It started off as one but—the trouble is that it’s too big . . .” Jeff’s voice trailed off as he became engrossed in thought.
“Look,” said Horne, “for mont
hs I’ve been lifting loaded cargo ships out of the ocean and towing them out into space. I’ve sent them along a course at varied velocities so that they will all converge—more or less—a few billion miles beyond Pluto in a couple of weeks!”
. . . might work . . muttered Jeff, still deep in thought.
Lucille stamped her foot “Jeff! Don’t trust him!”
“I dislike violence,” said Horne apologetically. “But I’ve been forced to it. Had there been another way, I’d have taken it. At any rate, with the millions of tons of supplies I have out in space waiting for use, we can make it—even though it takes longer than anticipated.”
. . the big jet might do the trick,” mumbled Jeff. He went to the big latticework tube and turned it on. While it was warming up, Jeff went to the instrument cabinet and took out a couple of pieces of observing equipment. He peered into the eye piece of the first and made some scrawling calculations on a pad of paper.
“It’s there, all right . . Again his voice trailed off as he began to juggle an equation.
Lucille looked at him and frowned.
Horne continued, “We can tow the big jet out into space, corral an assortment of seagoing ships when they converge, chase the few that have wandered off because of my inability to handle space navigation—astrogation, isn’t it?— and when we can tie ‘em all together and drive ‘em with your big jet.”
. . . an idea that hadn’t occurred to me . . . mumbled Jeff, using his slide rule for a moment.
“Jeff. Don’t believe Horne!”
“This is no time for petty dislikes,” said Horne to Lucille.
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Seems to me that if all of us are to be canned up like sardines in a single shell of aluminum for half of our lives, we should be able to choose congenial company.”
“We are all partners in this,” said Horne quietly. “I’m in it because I have the plans and have executed my part. Jeff is in it because his technical ability was and is needed to get us on the way. Similarly, you have a large part in this enterprise because you manufactured the first rocket capable of performing such a feat.”
Fire in the Heavens (1958) Page 14