EMPIRE (7 page)

* * * *

Russ
stood back and looked at it. “Stand in front of that screen, Greg,” he said, “and we’ll try it on you.”

Greg stepped in front of the screen. The purr of power came on. Suddenly, materializing out of the air, came Greg’s projection. Hazy and undefined at first, it rapidly assumed apparent solidity. Greg waved his arm; the image moved its arm.

Russ left the controls and walked across the laboratory to inspect the image. Examined from all sides, it looked solid. Russ walked through it and felt nothing. There was nothing there. It was just a three-dimensional image. But even from two feet away, it was as if the man himself stood there in all the actuality of flesh and blood.

“Hello, Russ,” the image whispered. It held out a hand. “Glad to see you again.”

Laughing, Russ thrust out his hand. It closed on nothing in mid-air, but the two men appeared to shake hands.

They tested the machine that afternoon. Their images strode above the trees, apparently walking on thin air. Gigantic replicas of Greg stood on a faraway mountain top and shouted with a thunderous voice. Smaller images, no more than two inches high, shinnied up a table leg.

Satisfied, they shut off the machine.

“That’s one of the possibilities you mentioned,” suggested Russ.

Greg nodded grimly.

* * * *

An
autumn gale pelted the windows with driving rain, and a wild, wet wind howled through the pines outside. The fire was leaping and flaring in the fireplace.

Deep in his chair, Russ stared into the flame and puffed at his pipe.

“The factory wants more money on the spaceship,” said Greg from the other chair. “I had to put up some more shares as collateral on a new loan.”

“Market still going down?” asked Russ.

“Not the market,” replied Greg. “My stocks. All of them hit new lows today.”

Russ dragged at the pipe thoughtfully. “I’ve been thinking about that stock business, Greg.”

“So have I, but it doesn’t seem to do much good.”

“Look,” said Russ slowly, “what planets have exchanges?”

“All of them except Mercury. The Jovian exchange is at Ranthoor. There’s even one out at Pluto. Just mining and chemical shares listed, though.”

Russ did not reply. Smoke curled up from his pipe. He was staring into the fire.

“Why do you ask?” Greg wanted to know.

“Just something stirring around in my mind. I was wondering where Chambers does most of his trading.”

“Ranthoor now,” said Greg. “Used to do it on Venus. The listing is larger there. But since he took over the Jovian confederacy, he switched his business to it. The transaction tax is lower. He saw to that.”

“And the same shares are listed on the Callisto market as on the New York boards?”

“Naturally,” said Greg, “only not as many.”

Russ watched the smoke from his pipe. “How long does it take light to travel from Callisto to Earth?”

“Why, about 45 minutes, I guess. Somewhere around there.” Greg sat upright. “Say, what’s light got to do with this?”

“A lot,” said Russ. “All commerce is based on the assumption that light is instantaneous, but it isn’t. All business, anywhere throughout the Solar System, is based on Greenwich time. When a noon signal sent out from Earth reaches Mars, it’s noon there, but as a matter of fact, it is actually 15 minutes or so past noon. When the same signal reaches Callisto, the correct time for the chronometer used in commerce would be noon when it is really a quarter to one. That system simplifies things. Does away with varying times. And it has worked all right so far because there has been, up to now, nothing that could go faster than light. No news can travel through space, no message, no signal can be sent at any speed greater than that. So everything has been fine.”

Greg had come out of the chair, was standing on his feet, the glow of the blaze throwing his athletic figure into bold relief. That calm exterior had been stripped from him now. He was excited.

“I see what you are getting at! We have something that is almost instantaneous!”

“Almost,” said Russ. “Not quite. There’s a time lag somewhere. But it isn’t noticeable except over vast distances.”

“But it would beat ordinary light signals to Callisto. It would beat them there by almost 45 minutes.”

“Almost,” Russ agreed. “Maybe a split second less.”

Greg strode up and down in front of the fireplace like a caged lion. “By heaven,” he said, “we’ve got Chambers where we want him. We can beat the stock quotations to Callisto. With that advance knowledge of what the board is doing in New York, we can make back every dime I’ve lost. We can take Mr. Chambers to the cleaners!”

Russ grinned. “Exactly,” he said. “We’ll know 45 minutes in advance of the other traders what the market will be. Let’s see Chambers beat that.”

Ben Wrail
was taking things easy. Stretched out in his chair, with his cigar lit and burning satisfactorily, he listened to a radio program broadcast from Earth.

Through the window beside him, he could look out of his skyscraper apartment over the domed city of Ranthoor. Looming in the sky, slightly distorted by the heavy quartz of the distant dome, was massive Jupiter, a scarlet ball tinged with orange and yellow. Overwhelmingly luminous, monstrously large, it filled a large portion of the visible sky, a sight that brought millions of tourists to the Jovian moons each year, a sight that even the old-timers still must stare at, drawn by some unfathomable fascination.

Ben Wrail stared at it now, puffing at his cigar, listening to the radio. An awe-inspiring thing, a looming planet that seemed almost ready to topple and crash upon this airless, frigid world.

Wrail was an old-timer. For thirty years — Earth years — he had made his home in Ranthoor. He had seen the city grow from a dinky little mining camp enclosed by a small dome to one that boasted half a million population. The dome that now covered the city was the fourth one. Four times, like the nautilus, the city had outgrown its shell, until today it was the greatest domed city in the Solar System. Where life had once been cheap and where the scum of the system had held rendezvous, he had seen Ranthoor grow into a city of dignity, capital of the Jovian confederacy.

He had helped build that confederacy, had been elected a member of the constitution commission, had helped create the government and for over a decade had helped to make its laws.

But now . . . Ben Wrail spat angrily and stuffed the cigar back in his mouth again, taking a fresh and fearsome grip. Now everything had changed. The Jovian worlds today were held in bond by Spencer Chambers. The government was in the hands of his henchmen. Duly elected, of course, but in an election held under the unspoken threat that Interplanetary Power would withdraw, leaving the moons circling the great planet without heat, air, energy. For the worlds of the Jovian confederacy, every single one of them, depended for their life upon the accumulators freighted outward from the Sun.

Talk of revolt was in the air, but, lacking a leader, it would get nowhere. John Moore Mallory was imprisoned on one of the prison spaceships that plied through the Solar System. Mallory, months ago, had been secretly transferred from the Callisto prison to the spaceship, but in a week’s time the secret had been spread in angry whispers. If there had been riots and bloodshed, they would have been to no purpose. For revolution, even if successful, would gain nothing. It would merely goad Interplanetary Power into withdrawing, refusing to service the domed cities on the moons.

* * * *

Ben Wrail
stirred restlessly in his chair. The cigar had gone out. The radio program blared unheard. His eyes still looked out the window without seeing Jupiter.

“Damn,” said Ben Wrail. Why did he have to go and spoil an evening thinking about this damned political situation? Despite his part in the building of the confederacy, he was a businessman, not a politician. Still, it hurt to see something torn down that he had helped to build, though he knew that every pioneering strike in history had been taken over by shrewd, ruthless, powerful operators. Knowing that should have helped, but it didn’t. He and the other Jovian pioneers had hoped it wouldn’t happen and, of course, it had.

“Ben Wrail,” said a voice in the room.

Wrail swung around, away from the window.

“Manning!” he yelled, and the man in the center of the room grinned bleakly at him. “How did you come in without me hearing you? When did you get here?”

“I’m not here,” said Greg. “I’m back on Earth.”

“You’re what?” asked Wrail blankly. “That’s a pretty silly statement, isn’t it, Manning? Or did you decide to loosen up and pull a gag now and then?”

“I mean it,” said Manning. “This is just an image of me. My body is back on Earth.”

“You mean you’re dead? You’re a ghost?”

The grin widened, but the face was bleak as ever.

“No, Ben, I’m just alive as you are. Let me explain. This is a television image of me. Three-dimensional television. I can travel anywhere like this.”

Wrail sat down in the chair again. “I don’t suppose there’d be any use trying to shake hands with you.”

“No use,” agreed Manning’s image. “There isn’t any hand.”

“Nor asking you to have a chair?”

Manning shook his head.

“Anyhow,” said Wrail, “I’m damn glad to see you — or think I see you. I don’t know which. Figure you can stay and talk with me a while?”

“Certainly
,” said Manning. “That is what I came for. I want to ask your help.”

“Listen,” declared Wrail, “you can’t be on Earth, Manning. I say something to you and you answer right back. That isn’t possible. You can’t hear anything I say until 45 minutes after I say it, and then I’d have to wait another 45 minutes to hear your answer.”

“That’s right,” agreed the image, “if you insist upon talking about the velocity of light. We have something better than that.”

“We?”

“Russell Page and myself. We have a two-way television apparatus that works almost instantaneously. To all purposes, so far as the distance between Earth and Callisto is concerned, it is instantaneous.”

Wrail’s jaw fell. “Well, I be damned. What have you two fellows been up to now?”

“A lot,” said Manning laconically. “For one thing we are out to bust Interplanetary Power. Bust them wide open. Hear that, Wrail?”

Wrail stared in stupefaction. “Sure, I hear. But I can’t believe it.”

“All right then,” said Manning grimly, “we’ll give you proof. What could you do, Ben, if we told you what was happening on the stock market in New York . . .
without you having to wait the 45 minutes it takes the quotations to get here
?”

Wrail sprang to his feet. “What could I do? Why, I could run the pants off every trader in the exchange! I could make a billion a minute!” He stopped and looked at the image. “But this isn’t like you. This isn’t the way you’d do things.”

“I don’t want you to hurt anyone but Chambers,” said Manning. “If somebody else gets in the way, of course they have to take the rap along with him. But I do want to give Chambers a licking. That’s what I came here to see you about.”

“By Heaven, Greg, I’ll do it,” said Wrail. He stepped quickly forward, held out his hand to close the deal, and encountered only air.

Manning’s image threw back its head and laughed.

“That’s your proof, Ben. Good enough?”

“I’ll say it is,” said Wrail shakily, looking down at the solid-seeming hand that his own had gone right through.

* * * *

November
6, 2153, was a day long remembered in financial circles throughout the Solar System. The Ranthoor market opened easy with little activity. Then a few stocks made fractional gains. Mining dropped fractionally. Martian Irrigation still was unexplainably low, as was Pluto Chemical and Asteroid Mining.

Trading through two brokers, Ben Wrail bought 10,000 shares of Venus Farms, Inc. when the market opened at 83½. A few minutes later they bought 10,000 shares of Spacesuits Ltd. at 106¼. The farm stocks dropped off a point. Spacesuits gained a point. Then suddenly both rose. In the second hour of trading the Venus stocks had boomed a full five points and Wrail sold. Ten minutes later they sagged. At the end of the day they were off two points from the opening. In late afternoon Wrail threw his 10,000 shares of Spacesuits on the market, sold them at an even 110. Before the close they had dropped back with a gain of only half a point over the opening.

Those were only two transactions. There were others. Spaceship Fabrication climbed three points before it fell and Wrail cashed in on that. Mercury Metals rose two points and crashed back to close with a full point loss. Wrail sold just before the break. He had realized a cool half million in the day’s trade.

The next day it was a million and then the man who had always been a safe trader, who had always played the conservative side of the market, apparently sure of his ground now, plunged deeper and deeper. It was uncanny. Wrail knew when to buy and when to sell. Other traders watched closely, followed his lead. He threw them off by using different brokers to disguise his transactions.

Hectic day followed hectic day. Ben Wrail did not appear on the floor. Calls to his office netted exactly nothing. Mr. Wrail was not in. So sorry.