The Project Gutenberg eBook of Beyond our control
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Title: Beyond our control
Author: Randall Garrett
Release date: October 6, 2023 [eBook #71821]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1957
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEYOND OUR CONTROL ***
Beyond Our Control
By RANDALL GARRETT
Illustrated by RICHARD KLUGA
_The "technical difficulties" on Satellite
Four became a menace to the entire Earth!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity January 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER I
The big building stood out at night, even among the other towering
spires of Manhattan. The bright, glowing symbol on its roof attracted
the attention of anyone who looked up at the night sky of New York; and
from the coast of Connecticut, across Long Island Sound, the huge ball
was easily visible as a shining dot of light.
The symbol--as a symbol--resembled the well-known symbol of an
atom. It consisted of a central globe surrounded by a swarm of
swiftly-moving points of light that circled the glowing sphere
endlessly. It represented the Earth itself and the robot-operated
artificial satellites that whirled around it. It was the trademark of
Circum-Global Communications.
But it was more than just a symbol; it was also the antenna for the
powerful transmitters that kept constant contact with the satellite
relay stations which, in turn, re-broadcast the TV impulses to all
parts of the globe.
Inside the CGC Building, completely filling the upper twenty floors,
were the sections of the vast electronic brain that computed and
integrated the orbits of the small artificial moons and kept the
communication beams linked to them. And below the brain, occupying
another four floors, were the control and monitoring rooms, in which
the TV communications of a world were selected and programmed.
In Johannesburg, South Africa, the newly-elected President spoke in
front of a TV camera. His dark, handsome face was coldly implacable
as he said: "They wanted _apartheid_ when they were in power; we
see no reason to believe they have changed their minds. They wanted
_apartheid_--very well, they shall continue to have _apartheid_!"
His image and his voice, picked up by the camera and mike, were
transmitted by cable to the beam broadcaster in the old capital of
Pretoria. From there, it was broadcast generally all over South Africa;
at the same time, it was relayed by tight beam to Satellite Nine,
which happened to be in the sky over that part of the Earth at that
time.
Satellite Nine, in turn, relayed it to all the other satellites in line
of sight. Satellite Two, over the eastern seaboard of North America,
picked it up and automatically relayed it to the big antenna on top of
New York's Circum-Global Communications Building.
There it was de-hashed and cleaned up. The static noise which it had
picked up in its double flight through the ionosphere was removed; the
periods of fading were strengthened, and the whole communication was
smoothed out and patched up.
From the CGC Building, it was re-broadcast over the United States.
A man in Bismarck, North Dakota, looked at the three-dimensional,
full-color image of the President of South Africa, listened to his
clear, carefully-modulated words, and said: "Serves 'em right, by
George!"
* * * * *
Besides the world-wide television news and entertainment networks, CGC
also handled person-to-person communication through its subsidiary,
Intercontinental Visiphone. If the man in Bismarck had wanted to call
the President of the Union of South Africa, his visiphone message would
have gone out in almost exactly the same way, and the two men could
have talked person-to-person, face to face. (Whether the President of
South Africa would have accepted the call or not is another matter.)
From all over the world, programs and communications were picked up by
the satellites and relayed to the CGC Building, where they were sorted
and sent out again.
The man in charge of the technical end of the whole operation was a
short, stocky, graying man named MacIlheny.
James Fitzpatrick MacIlheny, Operational Vice-President of
Circum-Global Communications, was one of those dynamic men who can
allow their subordinates to call them by a nickname and still retain
their respect. His wife called him "Jim"; his personal friends called
him "Fitz"; and his subordinates called him "Mac." He knew his own job,
and the job of every man under him; if one of the men slipped up, he
heard about it in short order, but, on the other hand, if the work was
well done, he heard about that in short order, too. MacIlheny was as
free with his pats on the back as he was with the boot a little lower
down. As a result, his men respected him and he respected them.
MacIlheny liked his work, so he was quite often found in his office or
in the monitoring rooms long after his prescribed quitting time. On
the evening of 25 March 1978, he had stayed overtime nearly four hours
to watch the installation of a new computer unit. As a matter of cold
fact, since the day was Saturday, he needn't have been in the office at
all, but--well, a new computer isn't put in every day, and MacIlheny
liked computer work.
It was exactly 1903 hours when the PA system clicked on and an
operator's voice said: "Is Mr. MacIlheny still in the building, please?
Mr. MacIlheny, please call Satellite Beam Control."
MacIlheny stood up from the squatting position he had been in, handed a
flashlight to one of the technicians standing nearby, and said: "Hold
this, Harry; I'll be back in a minute."
The installation crew went on with their work while MacIlheny went over
to a wall phone. He picked it up and punched the code number for Beam
Control.
"This is MacIlheny," he said when the recog signal came.
"Mac? This is Blake. Can you come down right away? We've lost Number
Four!"
"What happened?"
"Don't know. She was nearly overhead, going along fine, when we lost
contact all of a sudden. One minute she was there, the next minute she
was gone. We've lost the beam, and--just a second!" There was a pause
at the other end, then Blake said: "We just got a report from some
of the ground stations within range. Satellite Number Four has quit
broadcasting altogether--there's no signal from her at all!"
"I'll be right down," MacIlheny snapped. He hung up the phone and
headed for the elevator.
* * * * *
It wasn't good. Number Four, like the other satellites, was in a nearly
circular orbit high above the atmosphere of Earth. She should follow a
mathematically predictable course, subject only to slight variations
from the pull of the other satellites and the pull of the moon, plus
the small perturbations caused by the changing terrain of the Earth
beneath her. She'd have to be badly off course to be out of range of
Beam Control.
The elevator dropped MacIlheny down from the computer level to the
monitor and control level. The men at the monitor screens didn't look
up from their work as MacIlheny passed, but there was a feeling of
tension in the air. The monitors knew what had happened.
To the man in Bismarck, North Dakota, or the housewife in Tampa,
Florida, the disappearance of the satellite meant nothing more than a
slight irritation. If the program they were watching happened to be
one that was shunted through Number Four, their screen had simply gone
dark for a moment. Then, with apologies for "technical difficulties
beyond our control," another program had been switched into the channel.
For the businessman in San Francisco and the government official in New
York, the situation was worse. Important intercontinental conferences
were cut off in mid-sentence, and vital orders were left hanging in the
air.
For seven transcontinental stratoliners, the situation was almost
tragic. The superfast, rocket-driven, robot-controlled ships, speeding
their way through the lower ozonosphere, fifteen miles above the
surface of the Earth, were suddenly without the homing beams they
depended upon to guide them safely to their destinations. Their
beam-detection instruments went into a search pattern while alarm
bells shattered the quiet within. Passengers in the lounges and in the
cocktail rooms looked suddenly wide-eyed.
On one of the ships, there was a near panic when one fool screamed:
"We're going to crash! Get parachutes!"
Not until the flight captain caught the hysterical passenger on the
chin with a hard right uppercut and explained that everything was
in good order did the passengers quiet down. He didn't worry them by
explaining that there were no parachutes aboard; at eighty thousand
feet of altitude and a velocity of over forty miles per minute, a
parachute would be worse than useless.
Each of the stratoliners had to be taken over by the flight captain and
eased down manually.
MacIlheny had a pretty good idea of what was going on all over the
United States, and he didn't like it. He pushed open the door of the
Beam Control Section and strode in. Blake met him halfway across the
room.
"Nothing yet, as far as contact goes," he said. "We've heard from the
spotter station in Topeka; they missed it at the same time we did--1702
hours, two seconds."
MacIlheny glanced at the chronometer on the wall. The satellite had
been missing for nearly four minutes now.
"Get the Long Island Observatory; tell 'em to keep an eye peeled for
Number Four. It ought to be out of Earth's shadow," MacIlheny ordered.
"And start a sweep search with the radar. Cover the whole area. Get
a prediction from the Orbit Division; find the cone of greatest
probability and search it carefully. Unless the damned thing just blew
up, it's got to be up there somewhere!"
"I've already called Orbits," Blake said. "I'll get Long Island on the
line." He headed for the phone.
MacIlheny went over to one of the control boards and looked over the
instruments. He swept his eyes across them, reading them as a group, in
the same way an ordinary man reads a sentence. Satellite Number Four
had vanished, as far as the Beam Controls were concerned. Data from the
electronic brain indicated that the acceleration of the satellite had
been something terrific, but whether it had slowed down or speeded up
was something the brain couldn't tell yet.
A thin, sandy-haired man at a nearby board said: "What do you think,
Mac?"
"There's only one thing could have done it, Jackson," MacIlheny said.
"A meteor."
"That's what we figured. It must have been a doozie!"
"Yeah. But which direction did it hit from? If it hit from the side,
Number Four will be twisted around; its new orbit will be at an
angle to the old one. If it overtook the satellite from behind, the
additional velocity will lift it into a newer, higher orbit. If it
was hit from the front, it'll be slowed down, and it may hit the
atmosphere."
"Not much chance of its being overtaken," Jackson said. "A meteor would
have to be hitting it up at a pretty good clip to shove Four ahead
_that_ fast!"
"Right," MacIlheny agreed. "And meteors just don't travel that fast in
that direction."
"No--no, they don't."
MacIlheny felt a sense of frustration. The satellite was gone, vanished
he knew not whither. It had disappeared into some limbo which, at the
moment, was beyond his reach. Until it was located, either visually or
by radar, it might as well not exist.
There was actually nothing further he could do until it was found; he
couldn't find it himself.
"What's our next contact?" he asked.
"Satellite Number Eight. It'll be coming over the horizon in--" Jackson
glanced at the chronometer. "--in eight minutes, twenty-seven seconds.
We'll just have to hold on till then, I suppose."
MacIlheny thought about the stratoplanes he knew were up there. "Yeah,"
he said tightly. "Yeah. Just wait."
CHAPTER II
Four minutes came and went, while MacIlheny and the others smoked
cigarettes and tried to maintain a certain amount of calm as they
waited.
At the end of the four minutes, the phone rang. Blake, who was nearest,
answered.
"Yes. Good! Okay, thanks, Dr. Vanner!" He cradled the receiver and
turned to MacIlheny. "The Observatory. They've spotted Number Four.
She's slowed way down and dropped. They're feeding the orbit figures to
Orbits Division now, by teletype. She evidently hit a fast meteor, head
on."
MacIlheny nodded. "It figures. Tell Orbits to feed us a computation
we can sight by--feed it directly into the Brain first, so we can
get things going. We've got to get that satellite back up where she
belongs!"
As the figures came in, it became obvious that the orbit of Number
Four had been radically altered. Evidently, a high-speed, fairly
massive meteor had struck her from above and forward, slowing her
down. Immediately, the satellite had begun to drop, since angular
acceleration no longer gave her enough centrifugal force to offset the
gravitational pull of the Earth. As she dropped, however, she picked up
more speed, and was able to establish a new, different orbit.
With this information fed into it, the electronic brain in the top
twenty floors of the CGC Building went smoothly to work. Now that it
knew where the satellite was, it could again focus the beams on her.
Since the direction and velocity of the artificial moon in her new
orbit were also known, the trackers could hold the beam on her.
MacIlheny rubbed his chin with a nervous forefinger as he watched the
instruments on the control board come to life again as contact was
re-established.
Meanwhile, Orbits Division was still at work. In order to re-establish
the old orbit, the atomic rocket engines in the satellite would have to
be used. Short bursts, fired at precisely the right time, in precisely
the right direction, would lift her back up to where she belonged.
It was up to Orbits Division to compute exactly how long and in what
direction the remote-controlled rockets should apply their thrust.
As the beams again locked on the wayward satellite, MacIlheny kept his
eyes on the control board. Lights flickered and rippled across the
panel; needles on various meters wavered and jumped. MacIlheny watched
for several seconds before he said:
"Blake! What the hell's wrong there?"
Blake watched a set of oscilloscopes, four green-glowing screens which
traced and re-traced bright yellow-green lines across their surfaces.
His dark brows lowered over his eyes.
"We can't get anything to her, Mac. She's dead. Either that meteor hit
her power supply or else it did more damage than we thought."
"No control, then?"
Blake shook his head. "No control."
MacIlheny frowned. If the remote controls wouldn't work, then it
wouldn't be possible to realign the orbit of the satellite. "Keep
trying," he said. Then he turned from the control board, went to the
phone, and punched the number of the Orbits Division.
"Orbits Division, Masterson here," said a gruff voice from the other
end.
"This is MacIlheny. How does that orbit on Number Four look now?"
"We've got it, Mac. I'll send the corrective thrust data to the brain
as soon as--"
"Never mind the corrective thrust," MacIlheny interrupted impatiently.
"We can't use it yet. We don't have any positive contact with her;
she's dead--no response to the radio controls."
"You mean you can't get her out of that orbit?" Masterson's voice was
harsh.
"That's exactly what I mean. She's stuck in her new orbit until we find
some other way to change it. It can't be done from here."
There was a pause at the other end, then Masterson said: "Mac, I hate
to say this, but you've got a hot potato on your hands. That thing's in
a cometary orbit!"
"_Cometary?_"
"That's right. Instead of a normal, near-circular path, she's going in
an elongated ellipse. At perigee, she'll be less than a hundred and
fifty miles above the surface."
"_Uh!_" MacIlheny felt as though someone had slugged him. If the
satellite went that low, the air resistance would slow her even more
before she broke free again. Each successive passage through the
atmosphere would slow her more and more until she finally fell to
Earth. If she fell into the ocean, that would be bad enough; but if she
hit a populated area....
* * * * *
Fortunately, by that time her velocity would be considerably cut down;
if she were to hit the atmosphere with her present velocity, the shock
wave alone would be disastrous.
"Okay," said MacIlheny at last. "Notify every observatory within sight
range of her orbit! Keep a check on her every foot of the way! We'll
have to send up a drone."
"Right!" There was a subdued click as Masterson hung up.
MacIlheny turned. Blake was standing beside him. "I've got White Sands
on the line, Mac."
MacIlheny flashed an appreciative grin. "Thanks, Blake." He went to
Blake's office and closed the door. In the screen of the visiphone, he
saw the face of Paul Loch, of Commercial Rockets, Inc., White Sands.
"How's it going, Mac?" Loch asked. "I understand you're having trouble
with Number Four."
"It's worse than just trouble, Paul," MacIlheny told him. He carefully
explained what had happened.
Loch nodded. "Looks rough. What do you figure on doing?"
"How much will it cost me to rent one of your RJ-37 jobs with a drone
robot in it?"
"Fully fueled?" Loch thought a moment, then named a figure.
"That's pretty steep," MacIlheny objected.
Loch spread his hands. "Actually, it's just a guess; but I'm pretty
sure we won't be able to get insurance on her for something like this.
What do you plan to do?"
"I want to take an RJ-37 up there to Number Four and use it to put the
satellite back in a safe orbit. It'll have to be done quickly or we'll
lose the satellite and a few thousand square miles of Earth."
Loch paused again, turning the idea over in his mind. MacIlheny said
nothing; he knew how the mind of Paul Loch worked. Finally, Loch said:
"Tell you what; get the Government to underwrite the insurance, and
we'll give you the RJ-37 at cost. Fair enough?"
MacIlheny nodded. "Get her ready. If the President won't okay the
insurance, we'll have to pay the extra tariff. We absolutely can't
afford to lose that satellite."
"It'll be ready in half an hour," Loch promised as he cut off.
MacIlheny began punching the code numbers for Washington, but the phone
rang before he was through.
_Pure luck_, MacIlheny thought to himself as the President's face came
onto the screen.
"Evening, Fitz," said the President of the United States.
"Good evening, Mr. President."
"Fitz, I understand you're having a little trouble with one of your
satellites. The Naval Observatory tells me it's in a collision orbit
of some kind. Where will it come down?"
MacIlheny shrugged. "I don't know, sir. It'll depend on how much
resistance it offers to the atmosphere at that altitude, and that will
depend on how badly it was torn up by the meteor."
"I see. What do you propose to do?"
"I'm going to try to get one of Commercial's RJ-37's up there to put
her back on course. I don't want to lose a twelve-million-dollar space
station."
"I can understand that, but--" The President looked off his screen
suddenly as though someone had attracted his attention. "Hold the line
a minute, Fitz," he said. And the screen went blank. MacIlheny waited.
When the President came back, he wore a frown on his face. "The French
government has been informed of what has happened. They want to know
what we intend to do."
"Did you tell them, sir?"
"Not yet, but I will. But there are going to be other governments
interested pretty quickly. Nobody wants something like that falling
down on their heads. We may have to send up a hydrogen bomb and blow it
out of existence if you can't get it back into a safe orbit."
"I know." He paused. "Mr. President, I have an idea. Suppose we load
the RJ-37 with a thermonuclear warhead. If we can't change the orbit
of the satellite, we'll blast her."
A slow grin spread across the face of the Chief Executive. "Very neat,
Fitz; it'll also mean the government will have to underwrite the full
insurance cost of the RJ-37 if you have to detonate the bomb."
MacIlheny grinned back. "It will, at that. But don't worry, Mr.
President; I won't set off the warhead unless I absolutely have to. I
want to save that satellite--not destroy it."
"All right, Fitz. I'll call White Sands and authorize the whole
project. And I'll try to keep the foreign governments happy."
"Fine, sir. We'll know more after her first passage through perigee. If
her orbit changes too much--"
"I'll leave it up to you, Fitz. Good luck."
* * * * *
The special controls for remote operation of the RJ-37 were in a room
just off the main monitors. It was set up just like the control cockpit
of the ship itself, with all the instruments in their proper places.
If a pilot moved a control knob here, the same knob would move the
same amount in the ship. Instead of the heavy paraglass window in the
nose of the ship, the control room in the CGC Building had a wide,
three-dimensional color TV screen. It gave the illusion of actually
being in the ship.
The remote control cockpit was occupied by a Space Service officer--a
Major Hamacher, who had been ordered up from a tour of inspection at
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He was a square-faced, clear-eyed, prematurely
graying man in his early thirties.
MacIlheny was relieved when he saw the major; the officer looked as
though he could do the job. MacIlheny had wanted to use one of the
Company pilots, but the President had vetoed that idea. If the ship was
going to be insured by the government, then piloting it would be the
government's job, too.
It had been nearly an hour, now, since the accident which had disabled
Satellite Number Four. She had been carefully tracked by several
observatories across the face of the Earth, and the figures had been
carefully checked and rechecked.
Lower and lower the satellite dropped, as it spun around Earth in its
elongated orbit. At a hundred and fifty miles altitude, the air is
thin--thinner than the air in any but the very best vacuum tubes. But
it is still dense enough to slow down anything traveling as fast as the
satellite. The slight friction would be enough to alter the course of
the flying moon.
Major Hamacher sat in the control chair, his hat off and his sleeves
rolled up. As soon as the satellite started up again and her new orbit
stabilized, the major would take off the RJ-37 and guide it to Number
Four.
The men waited tensely. MacIlheny gnawed impatiently at the stem of his
pipe, which had gone dead minutes before without his noticing it.
They waited. Very soon, now, Number Four would hit perigee.
It never did.
The observatories saw what happened. As the satellite came lower and
lower, it looked as though it were following a perfectly normal path.
Then, quite suddenly, there was a flare of light from beneath her! She
leaped up again, under the driving thrust of her underjets.
Number Four had--somehow--changed her own orbit before the tenuous
atmosphere could even begin to drag her down.
CHAPTER III
After a few short bursts which lifted the satellite up into a higher
orbit, the jets stopped. The artificial moon went on coasting
innocently around the Earth.
"Well--I'll--be--damned!" said MacIlheny softly. The others, either
silently or verbally, agreed with him.
"Get a reading on that new orbit!" MacIlheny snapped after a moment.
Blake was already on the telephone.
MacIlheny turned to Major Hamacher. "Be ready to take that bird up as
soon as we get orbital readings and bearings. There's something screwy
as hell going on up there, and I want to find out what it is! Those
jets shouldn't be working at all. What could have turned them on at
exactly the right moment?" He was talking more to himself than to the
major, who was busily making last-minute adjustments on the instruments.
The computations on the new orbit came in, were run through the
computers, and then fed into the autopilot section of the remote
controls for the RJ-37.
"Any time you're ready, Major," MacIlheny said.
The major adjusted his controls, threw a switch, and pressed a stud.
Over two thousand miles away, in White Sands Spaceport, New Mexico, the
atomic-powered, fully armed RJ-37 squirted a tongue of white-hot flame
out of her rocket motors, climbed into the air, and launched herself
toward space.
Over Major Hamacher's shoulder, MacIlheny and Blake watched the screen
that showed the scene from the forward port of the space rocket.
For a while, there was nothing to see. As the ship gained altitude, it
burst through a layer of low-hanging clouds, then there was nothing but
the blue sky overhead. Gradually, as the air thinned, the sky became
darker, more purplish. Stars began to appear, and finally the ship was
in the blackness of space.
The major's hands glided smoothly over the controls, guiding the ship
along its precalculated orbit, slowly overtaking the runaway satellite.
At first there was nothing to see--only the distant, fixed stars,
glittering like tiny shards of diamond against a spread of blackest
velvet. Then it became apparent that one of the shards was moving with
relationship to the others. It became brighter, bigger. Then it was no
longer a point of light, but a globe of metal floating in the infinite
darkness of space.
Under the careful manipulation of Major Hamacher, the remote-controlled
RJ-37 moved cautiously up to Satellite Number Four. As the details of
the globe came into focus, every man in the room gasped involuntarily.
"What the hell is _that_?" asked Blake.
No one answered. It was obvious to everyone there that whatever it was
that had crashed into Number Four and driven it off course, it was most
certainly _not_ a meteorite.
* * * * *
At last, MacIlheny said: "I'll be willing to bet my last dollar that
that's a spaceship of some kind."
From a gaping hole in the side of the satellite, there protruded a
long, cigar-shaped shaft of bluish metal. It looked almost as though
someone had shoved a fat blue cigar halfway into a silver tennis ball.
Major Hamacher said softly: "I wonder what kind of metal that ship is
made of?"
"Yeah," said MacIlheny, "I wonder."
It was a good question. The steel hull of the Number Four had crumpled
and torn like cardboard around the hole where the impact of the ship
had melted and volatalized the metal. But the hull of the alien
spaceship wasn't even dented.
"What now?" asked the major.
"Take the RJ-37 in carefully, and lock on with magnetic grapples,"
MacIlheny ordered.
Blake glanced at him. "What if the pilot or crew of that ship is still
alive?"
"They probably are," MacIlheny said. "But we've got an H-bomb in our
ship; if they try anything funny...."
"What makes you think they're alive?" the major asked as he eased the
ship in.
"Somebody set off the atom jets when Number Four approached perigee,"
MacIlheny reminded him.
The RJ-37 approached Number Four closely, then the magnetic grapples
were turned on, and the ship stuck to the hull of the battered space
station with a metallic clank. The RJ-37 was only a few yards from
the edge of the gaping hole that had been torn in the hull of the
satellite. In front of them loomed the queer blue shaft of the alien
ship.
"Okay, hold it," said MacIlheny. "Let's see what happens next. Surely
they felt the jar when the ship landed." Forcing himself to be calm,
MacIlheny struck a match and fired the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe.
* * * * *
They didn't have to wait long. From the edge of the hole, there
suddenly appeared a moving shape. It was a manlike figure clad in a
brilliant crimson spacesuit. The helmet was a dark purple, and it was
difficult to see the head within.
"Looks like a man," said Blake.
"Not quite," MacIlheny said. "Look at the joints in the arms and legs.
He's got two knees and two elbows."
"What's that he's holding cradled in his arms?" Blake wondered.
The major grunted. "Weapon of some sort. Look how he's pointing it
straight at us."
For a full minute, the figure stood there, for all the world as though
he were on the surface of a planet instead of on the outer hull of a
space station. Then, slowly, it lowered the thing in its hands. When
nothing happened, the figure put the weapon down on the steel hull at
its feet and held its oddly double-jointed arms out from its body.
"Wild Bill Hickok," breathed Blake softly.
"Huh?" said the major.
"Hickok used to say: 'I'm a peaceable man.' I guess that's what this
guy's trying to say."
"Looks like it," agreed MacIlheny. "I wish there were some way of
signaling him."
"We've got the spotlights," suggested the major.
MacIlheny shook his head. "Leave 'em alone. We couldn't make any sense
with them, and our friend out there might think they were weapons of
some kind. I don't know what that thing he laid down will do, but I
don't want to find out just yet."
The alien, his hands still out from his sides, walked slowly toward the
RJ-37, his legs moving with a strange, loose suppleness. He came right
up to the forward window and peered inside--at least, the attitude of
his head suggested peering; within the dark purple helmet, the features
could not be distinguished clearly.
At last, the figure stepped back and started making wigwag signs with
his arms.
"Smart boy," said MacIlheny. "He recognizes that the ship is remote
controlled. Wonder what he's trying to say."
The alien waved his hands and made gestures, but there was no
recognizable pattern. None of the hand-signals meant anything to the
Earthmen.
Blake leaned over and whispered into MacIlheny's ear. "Hadn't we better
call the President, Mac? He'll want to know."
MacIlheny considered for a moment, then nodded. "Give him a direct beam
on what's coming over this screen. Then give me a pair of earphones
connected to his office. I want to be able to hear what he says, but I
don't want him countermanding my orders to Major Hamacher."
* * * * *
The alien was still making his meaningless signals when Blake brought
in a pair of earphones and clamped them on MacIlheny's head. A throat
mike around his neck completed the communication circuit. "Can you hear
me, Mr. President?" MacIlheny asked.
"Yes. Your man Blake explained everything to me."
"Got any advice?"
"Not yet. Let's see what happens. By the way, I've given the
impression to the rest of the world that it was through your efforts
that Number Four avoided crashing; I don't think we'd better let this
leak out just yet."
"Right. Meantime, I'm going to try to capture that lad."
"How?" asked the President.
"Invite him into the ship and bring him back with it."
"All right," said the President, "but be careful."
"He's given up," said Blake, gesturing toward the screen.
The alien had given up his incomprehensible gesticulating and stood
with his odd arms folded in an uncomfortable-looking knot.
"Major," said MacIlheny, "open the cargo hold."
The officer looked puzzled, but did as he was told. After all, the
President himself had ordered him to obey MacIlheny. He touched a
button on one side of the control panel. After four or five seconds, a
light came on above it, indicating that the cargo hold of the RJ-37 was
open. The alien evidently saw the door swing inward; he hesitated for a
moment, then went around to the side of the ship, out of range of the
TV camera.
But he didn't go inside immediately. MacIlheny hadn't expected him to;
the alien couldn't be _that_ stupid. After perhaps half a minute, the
alien figure reappeared and strode deliberately back to his own ship.
He opened a port in the side and disappeared within.
Then, quite suddenly, the screen went blank.
"What happened?" snapped MacIlheny.
Blake, who had been watching the beam control instruments, said: "I
don't know how he's done it, but he's managed to jam our radio beam!
We're not getting any signal through!"
The President's voice crackled in MacIlheny's ears.
"Fitz! Detonate that bomb! We can't take any chances!"
MacIlheny half grinned. "Major," he said, "set off the H-bomb."
The major pressed a red button on the control panel.
* * * * *
Twenty minutes later, the screen came on again, showing the same scene
as before. No one was surprised. By then, reports had come in that the
satellite was still visible, still in its orbit. The H-bomb had failed
to go off; the signal had never reached the detonation device.
The alien was standing in front of the camera, holding a large piece of
mechanism in his hands. On Earth, the thing would have been almost too
heavy to lift, but the gravitational pull of Satellite Number Four was
almost negligible.
"_He's got the H-bomb!_"
MacIlheny recognized the President's voice in his ears.
The alien bowed toward the camera, then straightened and went back to
his own ship. He clambered up the side of it with magnetic soles as
easily as he had walked on the hull of the space station. Near the
end of his ship, he opened a small door in the hull. Within was utter
blackness.
Working slowly and deliberately, he pushed the H-bomb into the
blackness. It wasn't just ordinary darkness; it seemed to be an actual,
solid wall, painted deep black. As the bomb went in, it looked as
though it were cut off abruptly at the black wall. Finally, there was
nothing outside except the two detonating wires, which had been clipped
off from inside the Earth ship. The alien took the wires in his hands.
"My God!" said the major. "He's going to blow up his own ship! Is he
crazy?"
"I don't think so," said MacIlheny slowly. "Let's see what happens."
As the two wires came in contact, the black wall inside the small door
became lighter, a pearly gray in color. There was no other result.
"Well I'll be damned," said Blake in a low, shocked voice.
The alien closed the door in the side of his ship and came back down
to the camera. He bowed again. Then he pointed to the weapon that he
had been carrying and waved his hands. He picked it up and brought it
around the RJ-37. From the microphones inside the ship came a faint
scraping sound. Then the alien reappeared in front of the ship. His
arms were empty; he had put the weapon inside the open cargo hold.
"A fair trade is no robbery," Blake said softly.
The alien bowed once more, then turned on his heel and walked back to
his ship. This time, he got inside and closed the door. Then the blue
ship moved.
Slowly, like a car backing out of a garage, it pulled out of the hole
in the satellite. Nowhere on its surface was there a mark or a scratch.
When it was finally free of the satellite, it turned a little, its nose
pointing off into space. A pale, rose-colored glow appeared at the tail
of the ship, and the cigar of blue metal leaped forward. To all intents
and purposes, it simply vanished.
"That," said the major in awe, "is what I call acceleration."
* * * * *
"Here's the way I see it, Mr. President," said MacIlheny several hours
later. "When he cracked up by accidentally plowing into Number Four,
something happened to his energy supply. Maybe he was already low, I
don't know. Anyway, he was out of fuel."
"What do you think he used for fuel?"
"The most efficient there is," said MacIlheny. "Pure energy. Imagine
some sort of force field that will let energy in, but won't let it out.
It would be dead black on the outside, just like that whatever-it-was
in the alien's ship. He just set off the H-bomb inside that field; what
little radiation did get out made the field look gray--and that's a
damned small loss in comparison with the total energy of that bomb."
"You know, Fitz, I'm going to have a hell of a job explaining where
that bomb went," said the President.
"Yeah, but we've got his gun or whatever in exchange."
"But how do you know our technicians will be able to figure it out?"
"I think they will," MacIlheny said. "Their technology must be similar
to ours or he wouldn't have been able to figure out how to fire the
jets on the satellite or how to set off that bomb. He wouldn't have
even known what the bomb was unless he was familiar with something
similar. And he wouldn't have been able to blank out our controls
unless he had a good idea of how they operated. They may be a little
ahead of us, but not too much, and I'll bet we have some things they
haven't."
"The trouble is," the President said worriedly, "that we don't know
where he came from. He knows where we are, but we don't have any idea
where his home planet is."
"That's true. On the other hand, we know something about his physical
characteristics, while he doesn't know anything about ours. For
instance, I doubt if he'd be happy here on Earth; judging by the helmet
he wore, he can't stand too much light. He had it polarized almost
black. Probably comes from a planet with a dim, red sun."
"Well, Fitz, when they do come, I hope it's for trade and not for war."
MacIlheny grinned. "It won't be war. Don't you remember? We've started
trading already!"
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