"Oh, yes, no doubt I could design someting if I wanted to. I don't want to. My current interests are too cosmic." Urushkidan accepted a cup and slurped.
"Look," Ray argued, "if the Jovians catch us, they'll force you to do it for them. And afterward they'll overrun Mars along with the other planets. Logistics will no longer be a problem for them, you see, nor will there be any defense against their missiles."
"Tat would be unfortunate, I admit. Neberteless, it would be downright tragic if my present train of tought were interrupted, as it would be if I gabe your project my full attention, which I would habe to do if it were to habe any chance of success. Te Jobians can afford to employ me on a part-time basis. Let tem conquer te Solar System. In a tousand years tey will be a footnote in te history books. My accomplishments will be remembered while te uniberse endures."
Dyann hefted her sword. "You will do vat he says," she growled.
"You dare not harm me," Urushkidan gibed; "it would leabe you stranded for te Jobians to take rebenge upon."
He finished his coffee. "Where is te tobacco?" he asked. "I habe used my own up."
"Jovians don't smoke," Ray informed him with savage satisfaction. "They consider it a degenerate habit."
"What?" The Martian's howl rattled the pot on the hotplate. "No tobacco aboard?"
"None. And I daresay your supply back in Wotanopolis has been confiscated and destroyed. That puts the nearest cigar store somewhere in the Asteroid Belt."
"Oh, no! How can I tink without my pipe? Te new cosmology ruined by tobacco shortage—" Urushkidan needed bare seconds to reach his decision. "Bery well. Tere is no help for it. If te nearest tobacco is millions of kilometers away, we must build te faster-tan-light engine at once.
"Also," he added thoughtfully, "if te Jobians did conquer te Solar System, tey might well prohibit tobacco on ebery world. Yes, you habe conbinced me, yours is a bital cause."
Ray made no attempt to use the Martian's equations in detail or to find elegant solutions of any. He merely wanted to compute the parameters of something that would work, and he proceeded with slashing approximations that brought screams of almost physical anguish from the other being.
He did, however, recognize the basic nature of Urushkidan's achievement, a final correlation of general relativity and wave mechanics whose formulation had certain surprising consequences.
Relativity deals with matter and energy, including potentials, which move at definite velocities that cannot exceed that of light. In contrast, wave mechanics treats the particle as a psi function which is only probably where it is. In the latter theory, point-to-point transitions are not speeds but shifts in the node of a complex wave. Urushkidan had abolished the contradiction by bringing in his own immensely generalized and refined concept of information as a condition of the plenum rather than as a physical quantity subject to physical limitations. It then turned out that the phase velocity of matter waves—which, unlike the group velocity, can move at any speed—could actually carry information, so that the most probable position of a particle went from region to region with no restrictions on the time derivatives.
The trick was to establish such conditions in reality that the theoretical possibility was realized.
"As I understand it," Ray had said, early on, "the proper configuration of quark interchanges will set up a field of space-strain. A spacecraft will react against the entire mass of the universe, won't even need rockets. In fact, we have here the key to a lot of other things as well, like gravity control. Right?"
"Wrong," answered Urushkidan.
"Well, we'll build it anyhow," Ray said.
His ambition was not as crazy as it might seem—not quite. The theory was in existence and considerable laboratory work had been done. Despite his scorn for empirical science, Urushkidan's mind had stored away the data about these and was perfectly capable of seeing what direction research should take next. Moreover, he was in fact the sole person with a complete grasp of his concepts; no physicist had, as yet, comprehended every aspect of them. Given motivation, he flung the full power of his intellect against the problem of practical application. Ray Tallantyre was actually quite a good engineer where it came to producing hardware. That hardware was not really complex, either, any more than a transistor or a tunnel diode is complex; the subtlety lies in the physical principles employed. In the present case, what was required was, basically, power, which the spacecraft had, and circuits with certain resonances, which could be constructed out of available materials. The result would not be neat, but in a slapdash fashion it ought to work.
Just the same, no R & D undertaking ever went smoothly, and this one labored under special difficulties. On a typical occasion—
"We'll want our secondary generator over here, I think, attached to this bench," Ray said. "Tote it for me, will you, Dyann?"
"All ve've done is vork, vork, vork," she sulked. "I vant to hunt monsters."
"Bring it, you lummox!"
Dyann glared but stooped above the massive machine and, between Ganymedean weight and Varannian muscles, staggered across the deck with it. Meanwhile Ray was checking electrical properties on an oscilloscope. Urushkidan was solving a differential equation while grumbling about heat and humidity and fanning himself with his ears. Elsewhere lay strewn a chaos of parts and tools.
"Damn!" the man exclaimed. "I hoped—but no, this piece of copper tube isn't right either. I need a resistance with so-and-so many ohms and such-and-such a capacitance, and nothing around seems to be modifiable for it."
"Specify your values," Urushkidan said.
Ray pawed through the litter around him, selected another object, and put it in his test circuit. "No, this won't do." He cast it across the room; it clanged against a bulkhead. "Look, if we can't find something, this project is stopped cold."
Having put down the generator, Dyann went forward. She returned with the boat's one and only frying pan. "Vill this maybe be right?" she asked innocently.
"Huh? Get out of my way!" Ray screamed.
"Okay," she answered, offended. "I go hunt monsters."
You know—passed through the man's head; and: What's to lose? He clipped the pan into the circuit. Its properties registered as nearly what he required. If I cut the handle off—Excited, he began to do that.
"Are you mad?" protested Urushkidan.
"Well, I don't like the idea of living off cold beans any better than you do," Ray retorted, "but consider the alternative." He rechecked the emasculated frying pan. "Ye-e-s, given a few adjustments elsewhere, this'll serve." Viciously: "Starward the course of human empire."
"Martian empire," Urushkidan corrected, "unless we decide it is beneat our dignity."
"It'll be Jovian empire if we don't escape. Okay, bulgebrain, what comes next?"
"How should I know? I habe not finished here. How do you expect me to tink in tis foul, tick air, wit no tobacco?"
Dyann clumped in from the forward cabin, attired in a spacesuit whose adjustability she strained to the limit. Its faceplate was still open. Her right hand clutched the rifle she had taken, her left her sword. "I saw monsters out there," she announced happily. "I am goin to hunt them."
"Oh, sure, sure," muttered Ray without really hearing. His attention was on a calculator. "Urushkidan, could you hurry it up a bit with that equation of yours? I really do need to know the exact resonant wave form before I can proceed." He glanced up. The Martian was trying to fill his pipe from the shreds and dottle in an ashtray. "Hey! Get busy!"
"Won't," said Urushkidan.
"By Heaven, you animated bagpipe, if you don't give me some decent cooperation for a change, I'll—I'll—"
"Up your rectifier."
The sound of an airlock valve closing snatched Ray out of his preoccupation. "Dyann?" he called. "Dyann. . . . Hey, she really is going outside."
"Apparently tere are monsters indeed," Urushkidan said.
Ray sprang into the forward cabin and peered through the nearest of its viewports.
His heart stumbled. "Yes, a pair of gannydragons," he exclaimed. "Must've sensed our heat output—they could crack this hull wide open—"
"I will proceed wit te calculation," Urushkidan said uneasily.
—Dyann leaped from lock to ground. In the weird light and thin shriek of wind, the beasts seemed unreal. An Earthling would have compared them to long-legged crocodiles, ten meters from spiky tailtip to shovel jaws. "Thank you. Ormun." she said in her native language, aimed the rifle, and fired.
A dragon bellowed. In this atmosphere, the sound reached her as a squeak. The beast charged. She stood her ground and kept shooting.
A blow knocked her asprawl and sent the firearm from her grasp. She had forgotten the second dragon. Its tail whacked anew, and Dyann tumbled skyward. As she hit the rocks, both animals rushed her.
"Haa-hai!" she yelled, bounced, to her feet, and sprang. She still had her sword, secured to her wrist by a loop of leather. Up she went, over the nearest head, and struck downward. Green ichor spurted forth. It froze immediately.
Dyann landed, got her back against a huge meteorite, and braced herself. The unhurt monster arrived, mouth agape. She hewed with a force that sang through her whole body. The terrible head flew off its neck. She barely jumped free of its still clashing teeth. The decapitated carcass staggered about, blundered against the companion animal, and started fighting.
Dyann circled warily around. The headless dragon collapsed after a while. The other turned about, noticed once more the heat-radiant boat, and lumbered in that direction. It had to be diverted. Dyann scrambled up on top of the meteorite, poised, and sprang. She landed astride the beast's neck.
It hooted and bucked. She tried to cut its head off also, but couldn't get a proper swing to her blade where she was. The injuries she indicted must have done something to what passed for a nervous system, because the monster started galloping around in a wide circle. The violence of the motion was such that she dared not try to jump off, she could merely hang on.
Well-nigh an hour passed before the creature stopped, exhausted. Dyann slid to the ground, whirled her sword on high, and did away with this beast also. "Ho-ha!" she yelled joyously, retrieved her rifle, and skipped back to the boat.
—"Oh, Dyann, Dyann," Ray half sobbed when she was inside and her spacesuit off. "I thought sure you'd be killed—"
"It vas grand fun," she laughed. "Now let's make love."
"Huh?"
She felt of her backside and winced. "Me on top."
Ray retreated nervously. Urushkidan, standing in the entrance to the lab section, snickered and shut the door.
V
The Ganymedean day drew to a close. Stars brightened in a darkened sky, save where Jupiter stood at half phase low to the south, mighty in its Joseph's coat of belts and zones. Weary, begrimed, and triumphant, Ray stepped back from his last job of adjustment. His gaze traveled fondly over the haywired mess that filled much of the forward cabin, all of the after cabin, and, via electrical conduits through the rad wall, most of the engine room.
"Done, I hope, I hope," he crooned. "My friends, we've opened a way to the universe."
Dyann nuzzled him. "You are too clever, my little darlin," she breathed. That rather spoiled the occasion for him. He'd grown fond of her—if nothing else, she was a magnificent companion, once she'd learned that there were limits to his strength as well as his available time—but she could not simper very successfully.
"I fear," said Urushkidan, "tat tis minor achiebement of mine will eclipse my true significance in te popular mind. Oh, well." He shrugged with his whole panoply of tentacles. "I can always use te money."
"Um-m-m, yeah, I haven't had a chance to think about that angle," Ray realized. "I'm safe enough from Vanbrugh—you don't bring a man to court who's prevented a war and given Earth the galaxy—but by gosh, there's also a fortune in this gadget."
"Yes, I will pay you a reasonable fee for helping me patent it," Urushkidan said.
Ray started. "Huh?"
"I would also like your opinion on wheter to charge an exorbitant royalty or rely on a high bolume of sales at a lower price. You are better fitted to deal wit such crass matters."
"Wait one flinkin' minute," Ray snarled. "I had a share in this development too, you know."
Urushkidan uttered a nasty laugh. "Ah, but can you describe te specifications?"
"Uh—uh—" Ray stared at the jungle of apparatus and gulped. He'd had no time to keep systematic notes, and he lacked the Martian's photographic memory. By Einstein, he'd built the damned thing but he had no proper idea whatsoever of how!
"You couldn't have done it without me," he argued.
"Nor could an ancient farmer on Eart habe done witout his mules. Did he consider paying tem a salary on tat account?"
"But . . . you've already got more money than you know what to do with, you bloated capitalist. I happen to know you invested both your Nobel Prizes in mortgages and then foreclosed."
"And why not? Genius is neber properly rewarded unless it rewards itself. Speaking of tat, I habe had no fresh tobacco for an obscene stretch of days. Take us to te nearest cigar store."
"Yes," Dyann said with unwonted timidity, "it might be a good idea if ve tested vether this enyine vorks, no?"
"All right!" Ray shouted in fury. "Sit down. Secure yourselves." He did likewise in the pilot's chair. His fingers moved across the breadboarded control panel of the star drive. "Here goes nothing."
"Nothin," said Dyann after a silence, "is correct."
"Judas on a stick," Ray groaned. "What's the matter now?" He unharnessed and went to stare at the layout. Meters registered, indicators glowed, electrorotors hummed, exactly as they were supposed to; but the boat sat stolidly where she was.
"I told you not to use tose approximations." Urushkidan said.
Ray began to fiddle with settings. "I might have known this," he muttered bitterly. "I'll bet the first piece of flint that the first ape-man chipped didn't work right either."
Urushkidan shredded a piece of paper into the bowl of his pipe, to see if he could smoke it.
"Iukh-ia-ua!" Dyann called. "Is that a rocket flare?"
"Oh, no!" Ray hastened forward and stared. Against the night sky arced a long trail of flame. And another, and another—
"They've found us," he choked.
"Well," said Dyann, not uncheerfully, "ve tried hard, and ve vill go down fightin, and that vill get us admission to the Hall of Skulls." She reached out her arms. "Have ve got time first to make love?"
Urushkidan stroked his nose musingly. "Tallantyre," he said, "I habe an idea tat te trouble lies in te square-wabe generator. If we doubled te boltage across it—"
High in dusky heaven, the Jovian craft braked with a fury of jet-fires, swung about, and started their descent. Beneath them, vegetation crumbled to ash and ice exploded into vapor. An earthquake shudder grew and grew.
The boat's comset chimed. She was being signalled. Numbly, Ray switched on the transceiver. The lean hard features of Colonel Roshevsky-Feldkamp sprang into the screen.
"Uh . . . hello," Ray said.
"You will surrender yourselves immediately," the Jovian told him.
"We will? I mean ... if we do, can we have safe conduct back to Earth?"
"Certainly not. But perhaps you will be allowed to live."
"About tat square-wabe generator—" Urushkidan saw that Ray wasn't listening, sighed, unstrapped himself, and crawled aft.
The first of the newcomer craft sizzled to a landing. She was long and dark; guns reached from turrets like serpent heads. In the screen, Roshevsky-Feldkamp's image thrust forward till Ray had an idiotic desire to punch it. "You will surrender without resistance," the colonel said. "If not, you will suffer corporal punishment after your capture. Prolonged corporal punishment."
"Urushkidan vill die before he gives up," Dyann vowed.
"I will do noting of te sort," said the Martian. He had come to the machine he wanted. Experimentally, he twisted a k
nob.
The boat lifted off the ground.
"Well, well," Urushkidan murmured. "My intuition was correct."
"Stop!" Roshevsky-Feldkamp roared. "You must not do that!"
The boat rose higher. His lips tightened. "Missile them," he ordered.
Ray scrambled back to the pilot's seat, flung himself down, and slammed the main drive switch hard over.
He felt no acceleration. Instead, he drifted weightless while Jupiter whizzed past the viewports.
The engine throbbed, the hull shivered— wasted energy, but what could you expect from an experimental model? Stars blazed in his sight. Struck by a thought, he cast a terrified glance at certain meters. Relief left him weak. Even surface flyers in the Jovian System were, necessarily, equipped with superb magnetohydrodynamic radiation screens. Those of this boat were operating well. Whatever else happened, he wouldn't fry.
The stars began to change color, going blue forward and red aft. Was he traveling so fast already?
"Vat planet is that?" Dyann pointed at a pale gray globe.
"I think—" Ray stared behind him. "I think it was Neptune."
The stars appeared to be changing position. They crawled away from bow and stern till they formed a kind of rainbow around the waist of the boat. Elsewhere was an utter black. Optical aberration, he understood. And I'm seeing by Dopplered radio waves and X-rays. What happens when we pass the speed of light itself? No, we must have already—is this what it feels like, then? The starbow of science fiction song and story pinched out into invisibility; he flew through total blindness. If only we'd figured out some kind of speedometer.
"Glorious, glorious!" chortled Urushkidan, rubbing his tentacles together as if he were foreclosing on yet another mortgage. "My teory is confirmed. Not tat it needs confirmation, but now eben te Eartlings must needs admit tat I am always right. And how tey will habe to pay!"
Dyann's laughter rolled Homeric through the hull. "Ha, ve are free!" she bawled. "All the vorlds are ours to raid. Oh, vat fun it is to ride in a vun-force boat and slay!"
Ray reassembled his wits. They'd better slow down and turn around while they could still identify Sol. He made himself secure in his seat, studied the gauges, calculated what was necessary, set the controls, and pushed the master switch.
Poul Anderson's Planet Stories Page 47