Troubled Star

by George O. Smith

"Dropping rapidly."

  "Excellent. Spread the knee-paddles wide and lock them. Have you a reading yet on the Space Velocity Meter?"

  "Just getting off the peg."

  "Um-it is a little early. But that's all right. It will arrive in due time. Keep an eye on the Foreign Body Indicator, Dusty. Any reading?"

  "No."

  "Good. Don't touch the 'Tee' bar, Dusty. That's the steering mechanism and it is in neutral. Is there any indication on the viewpanel yet?"

  "Not yet."

  "Haven't enough velocity yet," said Gant. "But when it appears, it will look like a star map. Now, the central crosshair is the point of aim of your spacecraft. If the star you want lies, say, to the upper left, move the 'Tee' bar forward and to your left. That will swing the ship in that direction and you can line up the drive with the target. Also, since angular position is important when moving in three free dimensions, twisting the crossbar of the 'Tee' will cause the ship to rotate on its axis. The map will turn in the direction, apparently, but it is really the ship turning. That is—"

  "I'm beginning to get a presentation now," said Dusty.

  "Good. Dim and reddish, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "Fine. Now get this straight and clear: The phanobeacon is the control beacon for direction of angular curve. In other words, it takes three points to define the orientation of a plane in space. These three points are you, the star-beacon or course-marker which you will find directly, and the main terminal-beacon which is the phanobeacon. You must drive your ship in the proper plane when making a curve or making any turn. Follow?"

  "Yes," replied Dusty, trying to think it out. He was far from certain about all this, wondering why it was -all necessary. He went over the instructions in his mind, made no more sense out of it than the first time, and then decided to accept it without trying to figure out the reasons. After all, Gant Nerley and his folks ought to know what they were doing.

  "Now," said Gant, after a moment, "In order to orient yourself, you must line up the Phanobeacon on the point of aim. Take the 'Tee' bar firmly, one hand on either side of the axle. Find the thumb-buttons on the handle. Press them all the way inland lock them home with a slight sidewise pressure towards the center. Got that? Now, lift the 'Tee' bar straight up until it is high enough to manipulate with ease. Be careful, don't move it sidewise!"

  – – –

  The last admonition was wasted. Dusty lifted the 'Tee' bar gingerly and not too evenly. The stars on the viewpanel danced dizzily, swiveled, and flowed across the plate. The bright phanobeacon spot moved from the plate along the bottom, danced back in view on a brief curve, and left again along a flat slant. The 'Tee' bar clicked into place and the stars stopped dancing with a snap. Dusty moved the 'Tee' bar gently and the stars flowed upward until the phanobeacon re-appeared.

  "Got it," he said shakily. He moved the 'Tee' bar very gently until the phanobeacon was centered on the screen. Or, rather, almost centered. It moved in jerky little circles like the sights of a rifle in the hands of a tyro.

  "Fine. You're doing well with strange equipment. Now, on the panel you will find a switch marked 'Co-ordinates.' It will be set on 'Rectangular' and you must flip it to 'Polar'."

  The switch changed the cross-hair pattern of the viewpanel from the horizontal and vertical calibrations to a circular pattern with only the main center hairlines remaining. Angle-lines radiated out from the center, crossing the circles.

  "Now, Dusty, inspect the radius-line marked G-705. All the way around. Do you see a winking star?"

  "No."

  "Um. I was hoping we could do it the easy way. The sealed course-plan is not too clear, for which I don't blame Transgalactic. All right. We'll have to do it the hard way. Move the phanobeacon down until it is almost on the lower edge of the viewpanel. Now flip the 'Co-ordinates' switch to the left, leaving it in the bottom position marked 'Polar.' You'll find that the toggle has an 'H' type pattern of motion, laid flatwise."

  The polar co-ordinates disappeared completely from the center of the view-panel and centered around the phanobeacon spot. They made larger and larger arcs as the circles approached the top of the panel.

  "Now this is going to be tricky. You must twist the 'Tee' bar slowly and let the ship rotate, but you must also move it so that the phanobeacon stays near its present off-center position. But before you do this, let me explain what you are actually doing in space. Picture a needle-shaped spacecraft with a line along the axis running out before the ship, marking the line of drive, or direction. At some distance from the line lies a spot which denotes the phanobeacon. Somewhere out beyond, there is another spot that must be sighted within the confines of an angle not greater than the angle made between the point of aim, or line of drive, and the imaginary line running from the nose of the ship to the phanobeacon. So you must cause the ship to rotate on a false axis, making the line of flight describe a cone of revolution with the phanobeacon on the axis of the cone. Now, go ahead and try."

  "Okay." Dusty moved the 'Tee' bar and the stars moved in jaggledy little scallops along a greater arc. The center of the beacon held the polar lines, but they moved with the stars and with the beacon. It made Dusty dizzy and his eyes began to ache. "What am I looking for?" he asked plaintively.

  "Look along the outer circles for a winking st—"

  "Got it!"

  "Good. Turn the 'Tee' bar to neutral," said Gant. "Return the 'Coordinate' switch back to the center of the 'H' pattern. Center the stellar course beacon on the point of aim."

  The winking star flashed at Dusty like a flag. It danced crazily as he manipulated the 'Tee' bar with all of the thumb-handedness of the rookie pilot on his first attempt at the controls. There was so much to do, so many things to handle, so many motions to make. Dusty gripped the 'Tee' bar tightly, too tightly. When he let go with one hand to flip a switch or to make an adjustment, the grip of his other hand moved the bar. It became sweaty and sticky, then it became slippery and he gripped it even tighter, which made it worse because his fine control left him as he strove to hold the handles tighter and tighter.

  In a jagged line like the trail of a rising smoke, the winking star proceeded to the center of the viewpanel. There it hung, wabbling around in tiny circles and occasionally making a brief jerky dart to one side or the other. Dusty mopped his face and the beacon star jumped; he grabbed the handle again and the star leaped across the center and wabbled on the other side of zero-zero.

  "Got it," he said in a quavering voice.

  "Now rotate the ship until the phanobeacon is on the vertical hairline. Then flip the switch to 'Rectangular' again."

  The stars scalloped around in the viewpanel until the phanobeacon was on the vertical line. The field leaped a bit as Dusty found the 'Co-ordinates' switch and returned the calibration-presentation to the horizontal and vertical hairlines.

  "Now?" he asked.

  "You have a bit of time. Be certain that the star-marker lies firm and true. Be careful!"

  Dusty gripped the handles and tried to steady his shaking hands. Then, because he had no more complexity of motions to make, he relaxed a bit. The dancing star-field slowed its mad vibration, which calmed Dusty's jumping nerves still more.

  He leaned back in the pilot's chair slowly, his grip on the 'Tee' bar lightening and becoming more true. He looked at the beacon star and knew what Chat, Bren, and Scyth were working toward.

  – – –

  It lay there on the center of his panel like a winking flashlight. Lost in the star field, which showed a myriad of points, some dim cloudy stuff, and a band of milky white, the beacon would have been nothing without that steady wink ... wink ... wink. He, himself, was lost. He had not the foggiest notion of where he was, excepting that Mother Terra must be far behind. Sol, a smallish yellowish, completely average dwarf would show nothing to call attention to itself from the distance of a few light years. Yes, somewhere back behind him lay Sol and his planets. But the winking beacon on Dusty's viewpanel was like
a banner waved from a distant shore.

  No man is alone so long as a lighthouse flashes its message of safety, or warns against danger.

  Dusty took a deep breath. "Barb!" he called.

  She came up the ladder. "Call me?"

  "How's Scyth?" he asked.

  "He's doing all right. How're you doing?"

  Dusty nodded boyishly. "Look, Maw I'm flyin'," he told her with a chuckle. "Martin Gramer should see me now. This is simple like a duck's ear, and I—"

  Barbara screamed and Dusty whipped his head back to look along the direction of her horrified eyes. To the viewpanel.

  One of the stars, lost in the glitter of the distant background had detached itself from the immobile sky. It was moving, forward, and its glow was brightening. It came hurtling towards them like a white hot cannonball. One second it was no more than any other star, distant, aloof, and cold. Then it had exploded into a disc that expanded like a released puff of gas. It came toward them like a ball of fire hurled into their faces.

  Dusty yelped and twisted on the 'Tee' bar and the stars rolled dizzily across the plate—but not until the white hot monster had flipped past in a quick wave of heat and a final flare of light which made a small section in the back of Dusty's mind recall the effect of having a foil-filled flashbulb fired during a still photography session.

  Shaking, Dusty's grip on the 'Tee' bar tightened and he moved the lever in tight little jerks until the stars returned to the proper positions and the Phanobeacon was properly centered.

  Gant's face showed concern. "What happened, Dusty?"

  Dusty told the Marandanian, and Gant smiled knowingly. "Don't worry about it. It will happen again and "again, and maybe worse. But so long as you keep the course beacon centered properly, you will pass by—and not through those interfering stars. Now, as soon as your beacon star shows a disc, steer up to keep the beacon centered on Line H-001. Once you pass the beacon, look for another beacon on Line F-312 and bring the point of drive to center on the new one. Follow?"

  Dusty nodded at Gant's image on the screen along the bottom of the view-panel. Another star detached itself from the backdrop of stars and hurled itself into Dusty's teeth. The actor flinched but held his drive. The star passed in a bright flash and a quick wave of heat and was gone. Dusty licked dry lips and forced the grip of his hands to relax. Far to one side another star passed in a majestic sweep, too distant to bring them either heat or more light than the ones called 'fixed' on the viewpanel.

  Dusty eyed the star beacon suspiciously. Was it showing a disc yet? And how much time did he have to shift the drive once the disc became certain? Dusty felt a cold wave wriggle down his spine and he knew that cold beads of sweat were beginning to ooze out of his face; he was remembering the staggering speed with which the first star had come leaping at him.

  – – –

  Another star passed him in its characteristic wave of light and heat, and Dusty realized that what looked dangerously close on the viewpanel was in reality quite distant. It meant that so long as his ship was pointed into a clear space, there would be no danger of running into a star no matter how precarious it looked.

  But the cold sweat came because the beacon star lay winking at him dead in the intersection of the crosshairs that marked the drive.

  Disc? Did it show a disc? Does Sirius show more of a disc than Polaris?

  Dusty's hands pulled the 'Tee' bar slightly to move the winking eye ever so subtly upward. That way he would not be aiming his spacecraft dead into the searing hot maw of a variable star. He took a shaky breath and relaxed.

  Gant Nerley shook his head. "I see what you are doing, Dusty, and you must not. You'll make a wide curve and get off the beam. Or worse, you'll hit a star lying close to the course. You have no idea of how wide you'll run. Center it up, Dusty, and keep a close watch, for it will become a disc. You'll have time. Relax."

  Reluctantly Dusty returned the 'Tee' bar to the central position, and the star winked through the crosshairs at him, itself no larger in diameter than the width of one line. It was not obscured by the lines because of the construction of the panel, a design that Dusty could not quite understand. Dark lines should have hidden the stars behind them, but on this gadget they did not. He looked closer and found that the stars themselves lay on top of the lines rather than under them, and he wondered how they managed that stunt. It was, of course, a matter of design. Dusty's experience had been with small telescopes, but this device was not an optical device, so the simple laws of optics did not obtain. As he watched, the winking star became a winking disc and Dusty's nerves twitched.

  When had the change started? Dusty realized that he had been half-hypnotized by the wink ... wink ... wink that meant both safety and ultimate danger. The disc was expanding rapidly, and as Dusty tried to move the disc to Line H-001, the edge of the winking beacon expanded faster than the point of aim moved. He wrenched the 'Tee' bar hard and saw the crosshairs move sluggishly below the exploding circle. Then the beacon flashed past in a wave of heat far greater than any of the other stars, and he was blinded by the light for a second or more. But as the blindness died, there on Line F-312 there was a distant wink ... wink ... wink.

  Chapter X

  Dusty gripped the 'Tee' bar and started to turn the ship toward the new beacon. His approach to dead center was ragged—he overshot and over-corrected, but finally he made it. And then with a burst of good sense, Dusty released the 'Tee' bar very gently and leaned back in his pilot's chair. The crosshairs stayed on their winking beacon.

  Gant Nerley nodded. "Turn the presentation to 'Polar' again, and keep a sharp eye out for a slow beacon along Radius Q-103. You probably made a wide curve around that other beacon and you may be a bit too close to a gas field. You'd burn up in milliseconds if you hit it at your present speed. By the way, what color is the presentation now?"

  "It's getting lighter. Sort of yellowish-white, like."

  "Good. But if and when it begins to blue-up a bit you'd better let up on the 'Force' pedal by a notch or more. Competent pilots can run with their screen in the violet, but you're far from being a competent pilot." He saw the look on Dusty's face and added hastily, "I mean that you've had no experience in galactic travel, Dusty Britton. You're doing magnificently so far. We'd best take no dangerous chances, though, until you have driven interstellar craft as many hours as you've driven your own interplanetary ships."

  Barbara made a choked sound and then covered it by saying, "I see the slow beacon, Dusty. Out there on Circle D-212, along Radius Q-103."

  It was pulsing slowly, rising to full brilliancy over a period of more than a minute and falling again, never really winking out to invisibility. It lay alone in the star field; the gas cloud behind it must be of the same nature as any of the so-called 'dark nebulae' or dust clouds that obscure the stars behind it. But it was far to one side (Circle D-212) and it seemed reasonable to view it calmly.

  "How much time have I?" he asked Gant Nerley.

  "About fifteen minutes."

  "Good. I want a cigarette and a drink."

  It was with increased confidence that Dusty swooped around the next beacon and headed on towards the next—and the next—and then around a long curve-way limned by four of the winking beacons and once more along a long field-free course towards a winker that lay dead ahead for quite some-distance.

  There was one quick jog between two beacons set at an angle like the flags of a slalom run on skis; a wide 'S' curve around the outside of the first, up and over, between, then out and around the second beacon in a long ogee to locate the freeway to the next beacon star. There was a quick turn that took the plane-locating phanobeacon off the screen for several minutes and then another one that put the phanobeacon almost on the crosshairs, and then another slight turn that put the phanobeacon on the lower corner of the viewpanel again. It was, according to Gant Nerley, a "most remarkable rift!"' At which Dusty shrugged because he had never seen any other rift. It looked plenty complicated to Dusty,
and he shuddered to think of what a really tortuous galactic passage would be like.

  They passed by a vast luminous cloud that lay on the spacecraft's beam for minutes. It looked like a matter of mere miles that separated them from it. It was marked by two of the slow-winking beacons, as if that were necessary. The luminous cloud reminded them of a lake, seen from an automobile driving along a highway they could not see the inner star that provided the energy for the luminosity of the cloud, and eventually they left the luminous cloud behind them. They zipped between the elements of a star cluster that drove at them with multiple waves of heat, and on and on they went with Dusty Britton driving his Marandanian spacecraft like a child running a motorboat, following instructions shouted by a careful, protecting parent.

  – – –

  This did not make of Dusty Britton a space pilot any more than turning the valve on a radiator makes one a heating engineer, or replacing a light socket makes one an electrician. But Dusty began to glory in it: his confidence grew high as his skill increased.

  His touch upon the 'Tee' bar became light and sure of itself. He no longer waggled widely or jerked the bar when a deviation became noticed, Dusty corrected his course with deft touches like the driver of an automobile. He was learning, and filled with a self-confidence he had no right to feel, but did not know enough to be scared about. Dusty Britton, who had never been in a space rocket in his life, drove a galactic spacecraft across the galaxy under what can be called "Dual Flight Training."

  Which was all right, so long as the trainee has enough space to make mistakes in. Dusty literally had galactic reaches and these were well marked against the pitfalls. And if Gant Nerley's face radiated confidence and his voice sounded cheerful it was due to Gant Nerley's knowledge that constant admonition, warning, and cries of horror would only cause more trouble than Dusty Britton's meandering course.

  But flight is easy, whereas landing is the most difficult maneuver in the universe.

  So by the time Dusty Britton was homing on the main phanobeacon of Marandis itself, Gant Nerley had his plans. Dusty Britton was not going to barrel that spacecraft down tailfins first like a screaming elevator that might come to Velocity Zero at a plus or minus a half mile from Ground Zero and maybe a plus or minus thirty seconds of Drive Turnoff; to drop like a plummet or ram the spaceport with a planet-shaking crash or burn a crater in the 'port with full drive still warping the space below the ship's tailfin.