Read Ebook: Spacehounds of IPC by Smith E E Edward Elmer

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Ebook has 1192 lines and 91509 words, and 24 pages

"All x--I'll be only too glad to pass the buck. But I still think, Steve, that you're playing with dynamite. Who ever heard of an astronomer being wrong?"

"You'd be surprised," grinned the physicist, "Since this fuss has just started, nobody has tried to find out whether they were wrong or not...."

"You have been on my ray almost a minute. Why are you not correcting course and acceleration?"

"Doctor Stevens is computing us and has full control of course and acceleration," replied Breckenridge. "He will answer you."

"I am changing neither course nor acceleration because you are not in position," declared Stevens, crisply, "Please give me your present supposed location, and your latest precision goniometer bearings on the sun, the moon, Mars, Venus, and your Tellurian reference limb, with exact time of observations, gyroscope zero-planes, and goniometer factors!"

"Correct at once or I shall report you to the Observatory," E2 answered loftily, paying no attention to the demand for proof of position.

"Guess that'll hold him for a while, won't it?"

"He'll report us, sure," remonstrated Breckenridge. The older man was plainly ill at ease at this open defiance of the supposedly infallible check-stations.

"Not that baby," returned the computer confidently. "I'll bet you a small farm against a plugged nickel that right now he's working his goniometer so hard that it's pivots are getting hot. He'll sneak back into position as soon as he can calculate his results, and pretend he's always been there."

"The others will be all right, then, probably, by the time we get to them?"

"Gosh, no--you're unusually dumb today, Breck. He won't tell anybody anything--he doesn't want to be the only goat, does he?"

"Oh, I see. How could you dope this out, with only the recorder charts?"

"Because I know the kind of stuff you pilots are--and those humps are altogether too big to be accounted for by anything I know about you. Another thing--the next station, P6, I think is keeping himself all x. If so, when you corrected for E2, which was wrong, it'd throw you all off on P6, which was right, and so on--a bad hump at almost every check-station. See?"

True to prediction, the pilot ray of P6 came in almost upon the exact center of the micrometer screen, and Breckenridge smiled in relief as he began really to enjoy the trip.

"All x--two points four seconds plus--we're riding on 981.286 centimeters, to allow for the reversal and for minor detours. Bye."

"All this may have been coincidence, Breck, but we'll find out pretty quick now," the computer remarked when the flying vessel was nearing the third check-station. "Unless I'm all out of control we'll check in almost fourteen seconds minus on W41, and we may not even find him on the center block of the screen."

When he plugged in W41 was on the block, but was in the extreme upper right corner. They checked in thirteen and eight-tenths seconds minus on the station, and a fiery dialogue ensued when the computer questioned the accuracy of the location of the station and refused point-blank to correct his course.

"Well, Breck, old onion, that tears it," Stevens declared as he unplugged. "No use going any further on these bum reference points. I'm going to report to Newton--he'll rock the Observatory on its foundations!" He plugged into the telegraph room. "Have you got a free high-power wave?... Please put me on Newton, in the main office."

Moving lights flashed and flickered for an instant upon the communicator screen, settling down into a white glow which soon resolved itself into the likeness of a keen-eyed, gray-haired man, seated at his desk in the remote office of the Interplanetary Corporation. Newton smiled as he recognized the likeness of Stevens upon his own screen, and greeted him cordially.

"Have you started your investigation, Doctor Stevens?"

"Started it? I've finished it!" and Stevens tersely reported what he had learned, concluding: "So you see, you don't need special computers on these ships any more than a hen needs teeth. You've got all the computers you need, in the observatories--all you've got to do is make them work at their trade."

"The piloting was all x, then?"

"Absolutely--our curve so far is exactly flat ever since we cut off the starting power. Of course, all the pilots can't be as good as Breckenridge, but give them good computation and good check points and you shouldn't get any humps higher than about half a centimeter."

"Glad to, Mr. Newton--I'll be a regular uncle to her."

"Thanks again, Operator, I'll speak to Captain King, please."

"Pipe down that guff, you unlicked cub, or I'll crown you with a proof-bar!" the chief pilot growled, as soon as Stevens had unplugged.

"You and who else?" retorted the computer, cheerfully. "Pipe down yourself, guy--if you weren't so darn dumb and didn't have such a complex, you'd know that you're the crack pilot of the outfit and wouldn't care who else knew it." Stevens carefully covered and put away the calculating machine and other apparatus he had been using and turned again to the pilot.

"I didn't know Newton had any kids, especially little ones, or I'd have got acquainted with them long ago. Of course I don't know him very well, since I never was around the office much, but the old tiger goes over big with me."

"Hm--m. Think you'll enjoy playing nursemaid all the rest of the trip?" Breckenridge asked caustically, but with an enigmatic smile.

"To borrow your own phrase, Steve, 'You'd be surprised,'" and Breckenridge, though making no effort to conceal his amusement, would say no more.

In a few minutes the door opened, and through it there stepped a grizzled four-striper. Almost hidden behind his massive form there was a girl, who ran up to Breckenridge and seized both his hands, her eyes sparkling.

Stevens was glad indeed that the girl's enthusiastic greeting of the pilot was giving him time to recover from his shock, for Director Newton's "little girl, Nadia" was not precisely what he had led himself to expect. Little she might be, particularly when compared with the giant frame of Captain King, or with Steve's own five-feet-eleven of stature and the hundred and ninety pounds of rawhide and whalebone that was his body, but child she certainly was not. Her thick, fair hair, cut in the square bob that was the mode of the moment, indicated that Nature had intended her to be a creamy blonde, but as she turned to be introduced to him, Stevens received another surprise--for she was one of those rare, but exceedingly attractive beings, a natural blonde with brown eyes and black eyebrows. Sun and wind had tanned her satin skin to a smooth and even shade of brown, and every movement of her lithe and supple body bespoke to the discerning mind a rigidly-trained physique.

"Doctor Stevens, you haven't met Miss Newton, I hear," the captain introduced them informally. "All the officers who are not actually tied down at their posts are anxious to do the honors of the vessel, but as I have received direct orders from the owners, I am turning her over to you--you are to show her around."

"Thanks, Captain, I won't mutiny a bit against such an order. I'm mighty glad to know you, Miss Newton."

"I've heard a lot about you, Doctor. Dad and Breckie here are always talking about the Big Three--what you have done and what you are going to do. I want to meet Doctor Brandon and Doctor Westfall, too," and her hand met his in a firm and friendly clasp. She turned to the captain, and Stevens, noticing that the pilot, with a quizzical expression, was about to say something, silenced him with a fierce aside.

"Clam it, ape, or I'll climb up you like a squirrel!" he hissed, and the grinning Breckenridge nodded assent to this demand for silence concerning children and nursemaids.

"Since you've never been out, Miss Newton, you'll want to see the whole works," Stevens addressed the girl. "Where do you want to begin? Shall we start at the top and work down?"

"All right with me," she agreed, and fell into step beside him. She was dressed in dove-gray from head to foot--toque, blouse, breeches, heavy stockings, and shoes were of the one shade of smooth, lustrous silk; and as they strolled together down the passage-way, the effortless ease and perfect poise of her carriage called aloud to every hard-schooled fibre of his own highly-trained being.

"We're a lot alike you and I--do you know it?" he asked, abruptly and unconventionally.

"Yes, I've felt it, too," she replied frankly, and studied him without affectation. "It has just come to me what it is. We're both in fine condition and in hard training. You're an athlete of some kind, and I'm sure you're a star--I ought to recognize you, but I'm ashamed to say I don't. What do you do?"

"Swim."

"I've got you, now, too--American and British Womens' golf champion. Shake!" and the two shook hands vigorously, in mutual congratulation. "Tell you what--I'll give you some pointers on diving, and you can show me how to make a golf ball behave. Next to Norman Brandon, I've got the most vicious hook in captivity--and Norm can't help himself. He's left-handed, you know, and, being a southpaw, he's naturally wild. He slices all his woods and hooks all his irons. I'm consistent, anyway--I hook everything, even my putts."

"It's a bargain! What do you shoot?"

"Pretty dubby. Usually in the middle eighties--none of us play much, being out in space most of the time, you know--sometimes, when my hook is going particularly well, I go up into the nineties."

"We'll lick that hook," she promised, as they entered an elevator and were borne upward, toward the prow of the great interplanetary cruiser.

"All out--we climb the rest of the way on foot," Stevens told his companion, as the elevator stopped at the uppermost passenger floor. They walked across the small circular hall and the guard on duty came to attention and saluted as they approached him.

"I have orders to pass you and Miss Newton, sir. Do you know all the combinations?"

"I know this good old tub better than the men that built her--I helped calculate her," Stevens replied, as he stepped up to an apparently blank wall of steel and deftly manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush with its surface. "This is to keep the passengers where they belong," he explained, as a section of the wall swung backward in a short arc and slid smoothly aside. "We will now proceed to see what makes it tick."

Ladder after ladder of steel they climbed, and bulkhead after bulkhead opened at Stevens's knowing touch. At each floor the mathematician explained to the girl the operation of the machinery there automatically at work--devices for heating and cooling, devices for circulating, maintaining, and purifying the air and the water--in short, all the complex mechanism necessary for the comfort and convenience of the human cargo of the liner.

Soon they entered the conical top compartment, a room scarcely fifteen feet in diameter, tapering sharply upward to a hollow point some twenty feet above them. The true shape of the room, however, was not immediately apparent, because of the enormous latticed beams and girders which braced the walls in every direction. The air glowed with the violet light of the twelve great ultra-light projectors, like searchlights with three-foot lenses, which lined the wall. The floor beneath their feet was not a level steel platform, but seemed to be composed of many lenticular sections of dull blue alloy.

"We are standing upon the upper lookout lenses, aren't we?" asked the girl. "Is that perfectly all right?"

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