Complete Venus Equilateral (1976) SSC

by George O. Smith

  And at that time there occurred a rarity. Not an impossibility like the chances of collision with a meteor—those things happen only once in a lifetime, and Channing had had his collision. Nor was it as remote as getting a royal flush on the deal. It happened, not often, but it did happen to ships occasionally.

  Another ship passed within detector range.

  The celestial globe shimmered faintly and showed a minute point at extreme range. Automatic marker spheres appeared concentrically within the celestial globe, and colures and diameters marked the globe off into octants.

  Bells rang briefly, and the automatic meteor circuits decided that the object was not approaching the Relay Girl. Then they relaxed. Their work was done until another object came within range for them to inspect. They were no longer interested, and they forgot about the object with the same powers of complete oblivion that they would have exerted on a meteor of nickel and iron.

  They were mechanically incapable of original thought. So the object, to them, was harmless.

  Channing looked up at the luminescent spot, sought the calibration spheres, made a casual observation, and forgot about it. To him it was a harmless meteor.

  Even the fact that his own velocity was a thousand miles per second, and the object’s velocity was the same, coming to them on a one-hundred-and-seventy-degree course and due to pass within five thousand miles, did not register. Their total velocity of two thousand miles did not register just because of that rarity with which ships pass within detector range, while meteors are encountered often.

  Had Channing been thinking about the subject in earnest, he would have known—for it is only man, with all too little time, who uses such velocities. The universe, with eternity in which to work her miracle, seldom moves in velocities greater than forty or fifty miles per second.

  Channing forgot it, and as the marker spheres switched to accommodate the object, he turned to more important things.

  In the other ship, Hellion Murdoch frowned. He brightened, then, and depressed the plunger that energized his solar beam and projector. He did not recognize the oncoming object for anything but a meteor, either; and his desire was to find out how his invention worked at top speeds.

  Kingman asked: “Another one?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Murdoch idly. “I want to check my finders.”

  “But they can’t miss.”

  “No? Look, lawyer, you’re not running a job that may be given a stay or reprieve. The finders run on light velocities. The solar beam runs on the speed of light, squared. We’ll pass that thing at five thousand miles’ distance and at two thousand miles per second velocity. A microsecond of misalignment, and we’re missing, see? I think we’re going to be forced to put correction circuits in, so that the vector sums and velocities and distances will all come out with a true hit. It will not be like sighting down a searchlight beam at high velocity.”

  “I see. You’ll need compensation?”

  “Plenty, at this velocity and distance. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to try it out.”

  The latter fact saved the Relay Girl. By a mere matter of feet and inches; by the difference between the speed of light and the speed of light, squared, at a distance of five thousand miles, plus a slight miscompensation. The intolerably hot umbra of Murdoch’s beam followed below the pilot’s greenhouse of the Relay Girl all the way past, a matter of several seconds. The spillover was tangible enough to warm the Relay Girl to uncomfortable temperatures.

  Then with no real damage done, the contact with ships in space was over, but not without a certain minimum of recognition.

  “Hell!” said Kingman. “That was a spacecraft!”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. You missed.”

  “I’d rather have hit,” said Murdoch coldly. “I hope I missed by plenty.”

  “Why?”

  “If we scorched their tails any, there’ll be embarrassing questions asked.”

  “So?”

  “So nothing until we’re asked. Even then, you know nothing.”

  -

  In the Relay Girl, Channing mopped his forehead. “That was Hell itself,” he said.

  Arden laughed uncertainly. “I thought that it would wait until we got there; I didn’t expect Hell to come after us.”

  “What—exactly—happened?” Walt asked, coming into the scanning room.

  “That was a spaceship.”

  “One of this System’s?”

  “I wonder,” said Don honestly. “It makes a guy wonder. It was gone too fast to make certain. It probably was Solarian, but they tried to burn us with something …”

  “That makes it sound like something alien,” Walt admitted. “But that doesn’t make a good sense.”

  “It makes good reading,” laughed Channing. “Walt, you’re the Boy Edison. Have you been tinkering with anything of lethal learnings?”

  “You think there may be something powerful afloat?”

  “Could be. We don’t know everything.”

  I’ve toyed with the idea of coupling a solar intake beam with one of those tubes that Baler and Carroll found. Recall, they smashed up quite a bit of Lincoln Head before they uncovered the secret of how to handle it. Now that we have unlimited power—or are limited only by the losses in our own system—we could, or should be able to, make something raw-ther tough.”

  “You’ve toyed with the idea, hey?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Of course, you haven’t really tried it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “How did it work?”

  “Fair,” grinned Walt. “I did it with miniatures only, of course, since I couldn’t get my hooks on a full-grown tube.”

  “Say,” asked Arden, “how did you birds arrive at this idea so suddenly? I got lost at the first premise.”

  “We passed a strange ship. We heated up to uncomfortable temperatures in a matter of nine seconds flat. They didn’t warn us with thought waves or vector invectives. Sheer dislike wouldn’t do it alone. I guess that someone is trying to do the trick started by our esteemed Mr. Franks here a year or so ago. Only with something practical, instead of an electron beam. Honest-to-goodness energy, right from Sol himself, funneled through some tricky inventions. What about that experiment of yours? Did you bring it along?”

  Walt looked downcast. “No,” he said. “It was another one.”

  “Let’s see.”

  “It’s not too good.”

  “Same idea?”

  Walt went to get his experiment. He returned with a tray full of laboratory glassware, all wired into a maze of electronic equipment.

  Channing went white. “You, too?” he yelled.

  “Take it easy, sport. This charges only to a hundred volts. We get thirteen hundred microfarads at one hundred volts. Then we drain off the dielectric fluid, and get one billion three hundred million volts’ charge into a condenser of only one hundred micro-microfarads. It’s an idea for the nuclear physics boys. I think it may tend to solidify some of the uncontrollables in the present system of developing high electron velocities.”

  “That thirteen-million-dielectric-constant stuff is strictly electrodynamic, I think,” said Channing. “Farrell may have developed it as a byproduct, but I have a hunch that it will replace some heretofore valuable equipment. The Franks-Farrell generator will outdo Van de Graaff’s little job, I think.”

  “Franks-Farrell?”

  “Sure. He thunk up the dielectric. You thunk up the application. He won’t care, and you couldn’t have done it without. Follow?”

  “Oh, sure. I was just trying to figure out a more generic term for it.”

  “Don’t. Let it go as it is for now. It’s slick, Walt, but there’s no weapon in it.”

  “You’re looking for a weapon?”

  “Uh-huh. Ever since Murdoch took a swing at Venus Equilateral, I’ve been sort of wishing that we could concoct something big enough and dangerous enough to keep us free from any other wiseacres.
Remember, we stand out there like a sore thumb. We’re as vulnerable as a half-pound of butter at a banquet for starving Armenians. The next screwball who wants to control the System will have to control Venus Equilateral first. And the best things we can concoct to date include projectile-tossing guns at velocities less than the speed of our ships, and an electron shooter than can be overcome by coating the ship with any of the metal salts that enhance secondary transmission.”

  “Remind me to requisition a set of full-sized tubes when we return. Might as well have some fun.”

  “O.K., you can have ‘em. Which brings us back to the present Question: was that an abortive attempt upon our ship, or was that a mistaken try at melting a meteor?”

  “I know how to find out. Let’s call Chuck Thomas and have him get on the rails. We can have him request Terran Electric to give us any information they may have on energy beams to date.”

  “They’d tell you?” scorned Arden.

  “Did they write ‘No’, and we find out that they did, we’ll sue them dead. They’re too shaky to try anything deep right now.”

  “Going to make it an official request, hey?”

  “Right. From the station, it’ll go out in print, and their answer will be on the ‘type, too, since business etiquette requires it. They’ll get the implication if they’re on the losing end. That’ll make them try something slick. If they’re honest, they’ll tell all.”

  “That’ll do it, all right,” said Walt. “They’re too shaky to buck us anymore. And if they are trying anything, it’ll show.”

  The rest of the trip was without incident. They put in at Canalopsis and found Keg Johnson with an official ‘gram waiting for them.

  Don Channing ripped it open and read:

  -

  VENUS EQUILATERAL

  ATTENTION DR. CHANNING:

  NO PROJECT FOR ENERGY BEAM CAPABLE OF REMOVING METEORS UNDER WAY AT TERRAN ELECTRIC, OR AT ANY OF THE SUBSIDIARY COMPANIES. IDEAS SUGGESTED ALONG THESE LINES HAVE BEEN DISPROVEN BY YOUR ABORTIVE ATTEMPT OF A YEAR AGO, AND WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED UNLESS THEORY IS SUBSTANTIATED IN EVERY WAY BY PRACTICAL EVIDENCE.

  IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, WE WILL DELVE INTO THE SUBJECT FROM ALL ANGLES. PLEASE ADVISE.

  TERRAN ELECTRIC CO.

  BOARD OF LEGAL OPERATIONS

  MARK KINGMAN, LL.D.

  -

  Channing smiled wryly at Keg Johnson and told him of their trouble.

  “Oh?” said Keg with a frown. “Then you haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Hellion Murdoch has been on the loose for weeks.”

  “Weeks!” Channing yelled.

  “Uh-huh. He feigned gangrene, was taken to the base hospital, where he raised hob in his own inimitable way. He blasted the communications setup completely, ruined three spaceships, and made off with the fourth. The contact ship just touched there recently and found hell brewing. If they hadn’t had a load of supplies and prisoners for the place, they wouldn’t have known about it for months, perhaps.”

  “So! Brother Murdoch is loose again. Well! The story dovetails in nicely.”

  “You think that was Hellion himself?”

  “I’d bet money on it. The official report on Hellion Murdoch said that he was suffering from a persecution complex, and that he was capable of making something of it if he got the chance. He’s slightly whacky—dangerously so.”

  “He’s a brilliant man, isn’t he?”

  “Quite. His name is well known in the circles of neurosurgery. He is also known to be an excellent research worker in applied physics.”

  “Nuts, hey?” asked Walt.

  “Yeah, he’s nuts. But only in one way, Walt. He’s nuts to think that he is smarter than the entire Solar System all put together. Well, what do we do now?”

  “Butter ourselves well and start scratching for the answer. That betatron trick will not work twice. There must be something.”

  “O.K., Walt, we’ll all help you think. I’m wondering how much research he had to do to develop that beam. After all, we were five thousand miles away, and he heated us up. He must’ve thought that we were a meteor—and another thing, too: he must’ve thought that his beam was capable of doing something at five thousand miles’ distance or he wouldn’t have tried. Ergo, he must have beaten that two-hundred-mile bugaboo.”

  “We don’t know that the two-hundred-mile bugaboo is still bugging in space,” said Walt slowly. “That’s set up so that the ionization byproducts are not dangerous. Also, he’s not transmitting power from station to station, et cetera. He’s ramming power into some sort of beam and to the devil with losses external to his equipment. The trouble is, damn it, that we’ll have to spend a month just building a large copy of my miniature setup.”

  “A month is not too much time,” Channing agreed. “And Murdoch will take a swing at us as soon as he gets ready to reach. We can have Chuck start building the big tubes immediately, can’t we?”

  “Just one will be needed. We’ll use one of the standard solar intake tubes that we’re running the station from. There’s spare equipment aplenty. But the transmitter-terminal tube will take some building.”

  “Can we buy one from Terran Electric?”

  “Why not? Get the highest rating we can. That should be plenty. Terran probably has them in stock, and it’ll save us building one.”

  “What is their highest rating?” Don asked.

  “Two hundred megawatts.”

  “O.K. I’ll send ‘em a coded requisition with my answer to their letter.”

  “What are you going to tell ‘em?”

  “Tell ‘em not to investigate the energy-gun idea unless they want to for their own reasons,” Channing grinned. “They’ll probably assume—and correctly—that we’re going to tinker, ourselves.”

  “And?”

  “Will do nothing since it is an extraplanetary proposition. Unless it becomes suitable for digging tunnels, or melting the Martian ice cap,” laughed Channing.

  -

  Mark Kingman took the letter to Murdoch, who was hidden in the depths of the Black Widow.

  Hellion read it twice, and then growled.

  “They smell something sure,” he snarled. “Why didn’t we make that a perfect hit!”

  “What are we going to do now?”

  “Step up our plans. They’ll have this thing in a few weeks. Hm-m-m. They order a transmitter-terminal tube. Have you got any in stock?”

  “Naturally. Not in stock, but available for the Northern Landing power line order.”

  “You have none, then. You will have some available within a few days. That half-promise will stall them from making their own, and every day that they wait for your shipment is a day in our favor. To keep your own nose clean, I’ll tell you when to ship the tube. It’ll be a few days before I strike.”

  “Why bother?” asked Kingman. “They won’t be around to call names.”

  “No, but their friends will, and we want to keep them guessing.”

  “I see. Those tubes are huge enough to cause comment, and there will be squibs in all papers telling of the giant tube going to Venus Equilateral, and the Sunday supplements will all break out in wild guesses as to the reason why Venus Equilateral wants a two-hundred-megawatt tube. Too bad you couldn’t keep your escape a secret a while longer.”

  “I suppose so. It was bound to be out sooner or later, anyway. A good general, Kingman, is one whose plans may be changed on a moment’s notice without sacrificing. We’ll win through.”

  The days wore on, and the big turret on the top of the Black Widow took shape. The super-tubes were installed, and Murdoch worked in the bowels of the ship to increase the effectiveness of the course integrators and to accommodate high velocities and to correct for the minute discrepancies that would crop up due to the difference in velocities between light and sub-electronic radiation.

  And on Venus Equilateral, the losing end of a war of nerves was taking place. The correspondence by ‘type was gro
wing into a reasonable pile, while the telephone conversations between Terran Electric and Venus Equilateral became a daily proposition. The big tubes were not finished; the big tubes were finished, but rejected because of electrode misalignments; the big tubes were in the rework department; the big tubes were on Luna for their testing. And again they were not met. They were returned to Evanston and were once more in the rework department. You have no idea how difficult the manufacture of two-hundred-megawatt tubes really is …

  So the days passed, and no tubes were available. The date passed which marked the mythical date of ‘if’—if Venus Equilateral had started their own manufacturing on the day they were first ordered from Terran Electric, they would have been finished and available.

  Then, one day, word was passed along that the big tubes were snipped. They were on their way, tested and approved, and would be at Venus Equilateral within two days. In the due course of time, they arrived, and the gang at the relay station went to work on them.

  But Walt Franks shook his head. “Don, we’ll be caught like a sitting rabbit.”

  “I know. But?” answered Channing.

  There was no answer to that question, so they went to work again.

  The news of Murdoch’s first blow came that day. It was a news report from the Interplanetary Network that the Titan Penal Colony had been attacked by a huge black ship of space that carried a dome-shaped turret on the top. Beams of invisible energy burned furrows in the frozen ground, and the official buildings melted and exploded from the air pressure within them. The Titan station went off the ether with a roar, and the theorists believed that Murdoch’s gang had been augmented by four hundred and nineteen of the Solar System’s most vicious criminals.

  “That rips it wide open,” said Channing. “Better get the folks to withstand a siege. I don’t think they can take us.”

  “That devil might turn his beams on the station itself, though,” said Walt.

  “He wants to control communications.”

  “With the sub-electron beams we now have, he could do it on a mere piece of the station. Not perfectly, but he’d get along.”

  “Fine future,” gritted Channing. “This is a good time to let this project coast, Walt. We’ve got to start in from the beginning and walk down another track.”