Complete Venus Equilateral (1976) SSC

by George O. Smith

  Channing got up and left. As he strode down the stairs to the apartment level, he met many of the men who had been laid off. None of them said a word, but all of them wore bright, knowing smiles.

  By Monday morning, however, Burbank was himself again. The rebuff given him by Don Channing had worn off and he was sparkling with ideas. He speared Franks with the glitter in his eyes and said: “If our beams are always on the center, why is it necessary to use multiplex diversity?”

  Franks smiled. “You’re mistaken,” he told Burbank. “They’re not always on the button. They vary. Therefore, we use diversity transmission so that if one beam fails momentarily, one of the other beams will bring the signal in. It is analogous to tying five or six ropes onto a hoisted stone. If one breaks, you have the others.”

  “You have them running all the time, then?”

  “Certainly. At several minutes of time lag in transmission, to try and establish a beam failure of a few seconds’ duration is utter foolishness.”

  “And you disperse the beam to a thousand miles wide to keep the beam centered at any variation?” Burbank shot at Channing.

  “Not for any variation. Make that any normal gyration and I’ll buy it.”

  “Then why don’t we disperse the beam to two or three thousand miles and do away with diversity transmission?” asked Burbank triumphantly.

  “Ever heard of fading?” asked Channing with a grin. “Your signal comes and goes. Not gyration; it just gets weaker. It fails for want of something to eat, I guess, and takes off after a wandering cosmic ray. At any rate, there are many times per minute that one beam will be right on the nose and yet so weak that our strippers cannot clean it enough to make it usable. Then the diversity system comes in handy. Our coupling detectors automatically select the proper signal channel. It takes the one that is the strongest and subdues the rest within itself.”

  “Complicated?”

  “It was done in the heyday of radio—1935 or so. Your two channels come in to a common detector. Automatic volume-control voltage comes from the single detector and is applied to all channels. This voltage is proper for the strongest channel, but is too high for the ones receiving the weaker signal, blocking them by rendering them insensitive. When the strong channel fades and the weak channel rises, the detector follows down until the two signal channels are equal and then it rises with the stronger channel.”

  “I see,” said Burbank. “Has anything been done about fading?”

  “It is like the weather, according to Mark Twain,” smiled Channing, ” ‘Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.’ About all we’ve learned is that we can cuss it out and it doesn’t cuss back.”

  “I think it should be tried,” said Burbank.

  “If you’ll pardon me, it has been tried. The first installation at Venus Equilateral was made that way. It didn’t work, though we used more power than all of our diversity transmitters together. Sorry.”

  “Have you anything to report?” Burbank asked Channing.

  “Nothing. I’ve been more than busy investigating the trouble we’ve had in keeping the beams centered.”

  Burbank said nothing. He was stopped. He hoped that the secret of his failure was not generally known, but he knew at the same time that when three hundred men are aware of something interesting, some of them will see to it that all the others involved will surely know. He looked at the faces of the men around the table and saw suppressed mirth in every one of them. Burbank writhed in inward anger. But he was a good poker player. He didn’t show it at all.

  He then went on to other problems. He ironed some out, others he shelved for the time being. Burbank was a good businessman. But like so many other businessmen, Burbank had the firm conviction that if he had the time to spare and at the same time was free of the worries and paperwork of his position, he could step into the laboratory and show the engineers how to make things hum. He was infuriated every time he saw one of the engineering staff sitting with hands behind head, lost in a gazy, unreal land of deep thought. Though he knew better, he was often tempted to raise hell because the man was obviously loafing.

  But give him credit. He could handle business angles to perfection. In spite of his tangle over the beam control, he had rebounded excellently and had ironed out all of the complaints that had poured in. Ironed it out to the satisfaction of the injured party as well as the Interplanetary Communications Commission, who were interested in anything that cost money.

  He dismissed the conference and went to thinking. And he assumed the same pose that infuriated him in other men under him: hands behind head, feet upon desk.

  The moving-picture theater was dark. The hero reached longing arms to the heroine, and there was a sort of magnetic attraction. They approached one another. Bat the spark misfired. It was blacked out with a nice slice of utter blackness that came from the screen and spread its lightlessness all over the theater. In the ensuing darkness, several osculations resounded that were more personal and more satisfying than the censored clinch. The lights flashed on and several male heads moved back hastily. Female lips smiled happily. Some of them parted in speech.

  One of them said: “Why, Mr. Channing!”

  “Shut up, Arden,” snapped the man. “People will think that I’ve been kissing you.”

  “If someone else was taking advantage of the situation,” she said, “you got gypped. I thought I was kissing you and I cooked with gas!”

  “Did you ever try that before?” asked Channing interestedly.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I liked it. I merely wondered, if you’d worked it on other men, what there was about you that kept you single.”

  “They all died after the first application,” she said. “They couldn’t take it.”

  “Let me outta here! I get the implication. I am the first bird that hasn’t died, hey?” He yawned luxuriously.

  “Company or the hour?” asked Arden.

  “Can’t be either,” he said. “Come on, let’s break a bottle of beer open. I’m dry!”

  “I’ve got a slight headache,” she told him, “From what, I can’t imagine.”

  “I haven’t a headache, but I’m sort of logy.”

  “What have you been doing?” asked Arden. “Haven’t seen you for a couple of days.”

  “Nothing worth mentioning. Had an idea a couple of days ago and went to work on it.”

  “Haven’t been working overtime or missing breakfast?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then I don’t see why you should be ill. I can explain my headache away by attributing it to eyestrain. Since Billyboy came here, and censored the movies to the bone, the darned things flicker like anything. But eyestrain doesn’t create an autointoxication. So, my fine fellow, what have you been drinking?”

  “Nothing that I haven’t been drinking since I first took to my second bottlehood some years ago.”

  “You wouldn’t be suffering from a hangover from that hangover you had a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Nope. I swore off. Never again will I try to drink a whole quart of Two Moons in one evening. It got me.”

  “It had you for a couple of days.” Arden laughed. “All to itself.”

  Don Channing said nothing. He recalled, all too vividly, the rolling of the tummy that ensued after that session with the only fighter that hadn’t yet been beaten: Old John Barleycorn.

  “How are you coming on with Burbank?” asked Arden. “I haven’t heard a rave for—well, ever since Monday morning’s conference. Three days without a nasty dig at Our Boss. That’s a record.”

  “Give the devil his due. He’s been more than busy placating irate citizens. That last debacle with the beam control gave him a real Moscow winter. His reforms came to a stop whilst he entrenched. But he’s been doing an excellent job of squirming out from under. Of course, it has been helped by the fact that even though the service was rotten for a few hours, the customers couldn’t rush out to some other agency to get co
mmunications with the other planets.”

  “Sort of: Take us, lousy as we are?”

  “That’s it.”

  Channing opened the door to his apartment and Arden went in. Channing followed, and then stopped cold.

  “Great Jeepers!” he said in an awed tone. “If I didn’t know—”

  “Why, Don! What’s so startling?”

  “Have you noticed?” he asked, “It smells like the inside of a chicken coop in here!”

  Arden sniffed. “It does sort of remind me of something that died and couldn’t get out of its skin.” She smiled. “I’ll hold my breath. Any sacrifice for a drink.”

  “That isn’t the point. This is purified air. It should be as sweet as a baby’s breath.”

  “Some baby,” whistled Arden, “What’s baby been drinking?”

  “It wasn’t cow juice. What I’ve been trying to put over is that the air doesn’t seem to have been changed in here for nine weeks.”

  Channing went to the ventilator and lit a match. The flame bent over, flickered, and went out.

  “Air intake is O.K.,” he said. “Maybe it is I. Bring on that bottle, Channing; don’t keep the lady waiting.”

  He yawned again, deeply and jaw-stretchingly. Arden yawned, too, and the thought of both of them stretching their jaws to the breaking-off point made both of them laugh foolishly.

  “Arden, I’m going to break one bottle of beer with you, after which I’m going to take you home, kiss you good night, and toss you into your own apartment. Then I’m coming back here and I’m going to hit the hay!”

  Arden took a long, deep breath. “I’ll buy that,” she said. “And tonight, it wouldn’t take much persuasion to induce me to snooze right here in this chair!”

  “Oh, fine,” Don cheered. “That would fix me up swell with the neighbors. I’m not going to get shot-gunned into anything like that!”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Arden.

  “From the look in your eye,” said Channing, “I’d say that you were just about to do that very thing. I was merely trying to dissolve any ideas that you might have.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said pettishly. “I haven’t any ideas. I’m as free as you are, and I intend to stay that way!”

  Channing stood up. “The next thing we know, we‘ll be fighting,” he observed. “Stand up, Arden. Shake.”

  Arden stood up, shook herself, and then looked at Channing with a strange light in her eyes. “I feel sort of dizzy,” she admitted. “And everything irritates me.”

  She passed a hand over her eyes wearily. Then, with a visible effort, she straightened. She seemed to throw off her momentary ill feeling instantly, she smiled at Channing, and was her normal self in less than a minute.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Do you feel funny, too?”

  “I do!” he said. “I don’t want that beer. I want to snooze.”

  “When Channing would prefer snoozing to boozing he is sick,” she said. “Come on, fellow, take me home.”

  Slowly they walked down the long hallway. They said nothing. Arm in arm they went, and when they reached Arden’s door, their good-night kiss lacked enthusiasm. “See you in the morning,” said Don.

  Arden looked at him. “That was a little flat. We’ll try it again—tomorrow or next week.”

  -

  Don Channing’s sleep was broken by dreams. He was warm. His dreams depicted him in a humid, airless chamber, and he was forced to breathe that same stale air again and again. He awoke in a hot sweat, weak and feeling—lousy!

  He dressed carelessly. He shaved hit-or-miss. His morning coffee tasted flat and sour. He left the apartment in a bad mood, and bumped into Arden at the corner of the hall.

  “Hello,” she said. “I feel rotten. But you have improved. Or is that passionate breathing just a lack of fresh air?”

  “Hell! That’s it!” he said.

  He snapped up his wristwatch, which was equipped with a stop-watch hand. He looked about, and finding a man sitting on a bench, apparently taking it easy while waiting for someone, Channing clicked the sweep hand into gear. He started to count the man’s respiration.

  “What gives?” asked Arden. “What’s ‘It’? Why are you so excited? Did I say something?”

  “You did,” said Channing after fifteen seconds. “That bird’s respiration is better than fifty! This whole place is filled to the gills with carbon dioxide. Come on, Arden, let’s get going!”

  Channing led the girl by several yards by the time that they were within sight of the elevator. He waited for her, and then sent the car upward at a full throttle. Minutes passed, and they could feel that stomach-rising sensation that conies when gravity is lessened. Arden clasped her hands over her middle and hugged. She squirmed and giggled.

  “You’ve been up to the axis before,” said Channing. “Take long, deep breaths.”

  The car came to a stop with a slowing effect A normal braking stop would have catapulted them against the ceiling.

  “Come on,” he grinned at her, “here’s where we make time!”

  Channing looked up at the little flight of stairs that led to the innermost level. He winked at Aiden and jumped. He passed up through the opening easily. “Jump,” he commanded. “Don’t use the stairs.”

  Arden jumped. She sailed upward, and as she passed through the opening, Channing caught her by one arm and stopped her flight. “At that speed you’d go right on across,” he said.

  She looked up, and there, about two hundred feet overhead, she could see the opposite wall.

  Channing snapped on the lights. They were in a room two hundred feet in diameter and three hundred feet long. “We’re at the center of the station,” Channing informed her. “Beyond that bulkhead is the air lock. On the other side of the other bulkhead, we have the air plant, the storage spaces, and several rooms of machinery. Come on,” he said.

  He took her by the hand and with a kick he propelled himself along on a long, curving course to the opposite side of the inner cylinder. He gained the opposite bulkhead as well.

  “Now, that’s what I call traveling,” said Arden. “But my tummy goes whoosh, whoosh every time we cross the center.”

  Channing operated a heavy door. They went in through rooms full of machinery and into rooms stacked to the center with boxes; stacked from the wall to the center and then packed with springs. Near the axis of the cylinder, things weighed so little that packing was necessary to keep them from floating around.

  “I feel giddy,” said Arden.

  “High in oxygen,” said he. “The CO2 drops to the bottom, being heavier. Then, too, the air is thinner up here because centrifugal force swings the whole out to the rim. Out there we are so used to ‘down’ that here, a half-mile above—or to the center, rather—we have trouble ta saying, technically, what we mean. Watch!”

  He left Arden standing and walked rapidly around the inside of the cylinder. Soon he was standing on the steel plates directly over her head. She looked up, and shook her head.

  “I know why,” she called, “but it still makes me dizzy. Come down from up there or I’ll be sick.”

  Channing made a neat dive from his position above her head. He did it merely by jumping upward from his place toward her place, apparently hanging head down from the ceiling. He turned a neat flip-flop in the air and landed easily beside her. Immediately, for both of them, things became right-side-up again.

  Channing opened the door to the room marked AIR PLANT. He stepped in, snapped on the lights, and gasped in amazement.

  “Hell!” he groaned.

  The place was empty. Completely empty. Absolutely and irrevocably vacant. Oh, there was some dirt on the floor and some trash in the corners, and a trail of scratches on the floor to show that the life-giving air plant had been removed, hunk by hunk, out through another door at the far end of the room.

  “Whoa, Tillie!” screamed Don. “We’ve been stabbed! Arden, get on the type and have—No wait a minute until we find out a few more
things about this!”

  -

  They made record time back to the office level. They found Burbank in his office, leaning back, and talking to someone on the phone.

  Channing tried to interrupt, but Burbank removed his nose from the telephone long enough to snarl, “Can’t you see I’m busy? Have you no manners or respect?”

  Channing, fuming inside, swore inwardly. He sat down with a show of being calm and folded his hands over his abdomen like the famed statue of Buddha. Arden looked at him, and for all the trouble they were in, she couldn’t help giggling, Channing, tall, lanky, and strong, looked as little as possible like the popular, pudgy figure of the Sitting Buddha.

  A minute passed.

  Burbank hung up the phone.

  “Where does Venus Equilateral get its air from?” snapped Burbank.

  “That’s what I want—”

  “Answer me, please. I’m worried.”

  “So am I. Something—”

  “Tell me first, from what source does Venus Equilateral get its fresh air?”

  “From the air plant. And that is—”

  “There must be more than one,” said Burbank thoughtfully.

  “There’s only one.”

  “There must be more than one. We couldn’t live if there weren’t,” said the Director.

  “Wishing won’t make it so. There is only one.”

  “I tell you, there must be another. Why, I went into the one up at the axis day before yesterday and found that instead of a bunch of machinery, running smoothly, purifying air, and sending it out to the various parts of the station, all there was was a veritable jungle of weeds. Those weeds, Mr. Channing, looked as though they must have been put in there years ago. Now, where did the air-purifying machinery go?”

  Channing listened to the latter half of Burbank’s speech with his chin at half-mast. He looked as though a feather would knock him clear across the office.

  “I had some workmen clear the weeds out. I intend to replace the air machinery as soon as I can get some new material sent from Terra.”