The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ buy that ... well, we're close enough, I guess." Jack killed the driving blasts, but not the Bergenholm; the inertialess vessel stopped instantaneously in open space. "Now we've got to find out which one of those twelve or fifteen planets was on our line when that last message was sent.... There, we're stable enough, I hope. Open your cameras, Mase. Pull the first plate in fifteen minutes. That ought to give me enough track so I can start the job, since we're at a wide angle to their ecliptic."

      The work went on for an hour or so. Then:

      "Something coming from the direction of Tellus," the watch officer reported. "Big and fast. Shall I hail her?"

      "Might as well," but the stranger hailed first.

      "Space-ship Chicago, NA2AA, calling. Are you in trouble? Identify yourself, please."

      "Space-ship NA774J acknowledging. No trouble...."

      "Northrop! Jack!" came Virgil Samms' highly concerned thought. The superdreadnaught flashed alongside, a bare few hundred miles away, and stopped. "Why did you stop here?"

      "This is where our signal came from, sir."

      "Oh." A hundred thoughts raced through Samms' mind, too fast and too fragmentary to be intelligible. "I see you're computing. Would it throw you off too much to go inert and match intrinsics, so that I can join you?"

      "No sir; I've got everything I need for a while."

      Samms came aboard; three Lensmen studied the chart.

      "Cavenda is there," Samms pointed out. "Trenco is there, off to one side. I felt sure that your signal originated on Cavenda; but Zabriska, here, while on almost the same line, is less than half as far from Tellus." He did not ask whether the two young Lensmen were sure of their findings. He knew. "This arouses my curiosity no end—does it merely complicate the thionite problem, or does it set up an entirely new problem? Go ahead, boys, with whatever you were going to do next."

      Jack had already determined that the planet they wanted was the second out; A-Zabriskae Two. He drove the scout as close to the planet as he could without losing complete coverage; stationed it on the line toward Sol.

      "Now we wait a bit," he answered. "According to recent periodicity, not less than four hours and not more than ten. With the next signal we'll nail that transmitter down to within a few feet. Got your spotting screens full out, Mase?"

      "Recent periodicity?" Samms snapped. "It has improved, then, lately?"

      "Very much, sir."

      "That helps immensely. With George Olmstead harvesting broadleaf, it would. It is still one problem. While we wait, shall we study the planet a little?"

      They explored; finding that A-Zabriskae Two was a disappointing planet indeed. It was small, waterless, airless, utterly featureless, utterly barren. There were no elevations, no depressions, no visible markings whatever—not even a meteor crater. Every square yard of its surface was apparently exactly like every other.

      "No rotation," Jack reported, looking up from the bolometer. "That sand-pile is not inhabited and never will be. I'm beginning to wonder."

      "So am I, now," Northrop admitted. "I still say that those signals came from this line and distance, but it looks as though they must have been sent from a ship. If so, now that we're here—particularly the Chicago—there will be no more signals."

      "Not necessarily." Again Samms' mind transcended his Tellurian experience and knowledge. He did not suspect the truth, but he was not jumping at conclusions. "There may be highly intelligent life, even upon such a planet as this."

      They waited, and in a few hours a communications beam snapped into life.

      "READY—READY—READY...." it said briskly, for not quite one minute, but that was time enough.

      Northrop yelped a string of numbers; Jack blasted the little vessel forward and downward; the three watch officers, keen-eyed at their plates, stabbed their visibeams, ultra-beams, and spy-rays along the indicated line.

      "And bore straight through the planet if you have to—they may be on the other side!" Jack cautioned, sharply.

      "They aren't—it's here, on this side!" Rawlings saw it first. "Nothing much to it, though ... it looks like a relay station."

      "A relay! I'll be a...." Jack started to express an unexpurgated opinion, but shut himself up. Young cubs did not swear in front of the First Lensman. "Let's land, sir, and look the place over, anyway."

      "By all means."

      They landed, and cautiously disembarked. The horizon, while actually quite a little closer than that of Earth, seemed much more distant because there was nothing whatever—no tree, no shrub, no rock or pebble, not even the slightest ripple—to break the geometrical perfection of that surface of smooth, hard, blindingly reflective, fiendishly hot white sand. Samms was highly dubious at first—a ground-temperature of four hundred seventy-five degrees was not to be taken lightly; he did not at all like the looks of that ultra-fervent blue-white sun; and in his wildest imaginings he had never pictured such a desert. Their space-suits, however, were very well insulated, particularly as to the feet, and highly polished; and in lieu of atmosphere there was an almost perfect vacuum. They could stand it for a while.

      The box which housed the relay station was made of non-ferrous metal and was roughly cubical in shape, perhaps five feet on a side. It was so buried that its upper edge was flush with the surface; its top, which was practically indistinguishable from the surrounding sand, was not bolted or welded, but was simply laid on, loose.

      Previous spy-ray inspection having proved that the thing was not booby-trapped, Jack lifted the cover by one edge and all three Lensmen studied the mechanisms at close range; learning nothing new. There was an extremely sensitive non-directional receiver, a highly directional sender, a beautifully precise uranium-clock director, and an "eternal" powerpack. There was nothing else.

      "What next, sir?" Northrop asked. "There'll be an incoming signal, probably, in a couple of days. Shall we stick around and see whether it comes in from Cavenda or not?"

      "You and Jack had better wait, yes." Samms thought for minutes. "I do not believe, now, that the signal will come from Cavenda, or that it will ever come twice from the same direction, but we will have to make sure. But I can't see any reason for it!"

      "I think I can, sir." This was Northrop's specialty. "No space-ship could possibly hit Tellus from here except by accident with a single-ended beam, and they can't use a double-ender because it would have to be on all the time and would be as easy to trace as the Mississippi River. But this planet did all its settling ages ago—which is undoubtedly why they picked it out—and that director in there is a Marchanti—the second Marchanti I have ever seen."

      "Whatever that is," Jack put in, and even Samms thought a question.

      "The most precise thing ever built," the specialist explained. "Accuracy limited only by that of determination of relative motions. Give me an accurate enough equation to feed into it, like that tape is doing, and two sighting shots, and I'll guarantee to pour an eighteen-inch beam into any two foot cup on Earth. My guess is that it's aimed at some particular bucket-antenna on one of the Solar planets. I could spoil its aim easily enough, but I don't suppose that is what you're after."

      "Decidedly not. We want to СКАЧАТЬ