The City and the Stars / The Sands of Mars (44 page)

This sounded faintly alarming to Gibson, and Mackay hastened to reassure him.

“There really isn’t the slightest need to worry,” he repeated. “There’s always a certain hull leakage taking place; the air supply simply takes it in its stride.”

However busy Gibson might be, or pretend to be, he always found time to wander restlessly around the echoing labyrinths of the ship, or to sit looking at the stars from the equatorial observation galley. He had formed a habit of going there during the daily concert. At 15.00 hours precisely the ship’s public address system would burst into life and for an hour the music of Earth would whisper or roar through the empty passageways of the
Ares.
Every day a different person would choose the programs, so one never knew what was coming— though after a while it was easy to guess the identity of the arranger. Norden played light classics and opera; Hilton practically nothing but Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. They were regarded as hopeless lowbrows by Mackay and Bradley, who indulged in astringent chamber music and atonal cacophonies of which no one else could make head or tail, or indeed particularly desired to. The ship’s micro-library of books and music was so extensive that it would outlast a lifetime in space. It held, in fact, the equivalent of a quarter of a million books and some thousands of orchestral works, all recorded in electronic patterns, awaiting the orders that would bring them into life.

Gibson was sitting in the observation gallery, trying to see how many of the Pleiades he could resolve with the naked eye, when a small projectile whispered past his ear and attached itself with a “thwack!” to the glass of the port, where it hung vibrating like an arrow. At first sight, indeed, this seemed exactly what it was and for a moment Gibson wondered if the Cherokee were on the warpath again. Then he saw that a large rubber sucker had replaced the head, while from the base, just behind the feathers, a long, thin thread trailed away into the distance. At the end of the thread was Dr. Robert Scott, M.D., hauling himself briskly along like an energetic spider.

Gibson was still composing some suitably pungent remark when, as usual, the doctor got there first.

“Don’t you think it’s cute?” he said. “It’s got a range of twenty meters— only weighs half a kilo, and I’m going to patent it as soon as I get back to Earth.”

“Why?” said Gibson, in tones of resignation.

“Good gracious, can’t you see? Suppose you want to get from one place to another inside a space-station where there’s no rotational gravity. All you’ve got to do is to fire at any flat surface near your destination, and reel in the cord. It gives you a perfect anchor until you release the sucker.”

“And just what’s wrong with the usual way of getting around?”

“When you’ve been in space as long as
I
have,” said Scott smugly, “you’ll know what’s wrong. There are plenty of hand-holds for you to grab in a ship like this. But suppose you want to go over to a blank wall at the other side of a room, and you launch yourself through the air from wherever you’re standing. What happens? Well, you’ve got to break your fall somehow, usually with your hands, unless you can twist round on the way. Incidentally, do you know the commonest complaint a spaceship M.O. has to deal with? It’s sprained wrists, and
that’s
why. Anyway, even when you get to your target you’ll bounce back unless you can grab hold of something. You might even get stranded in mid-air. I did that once in Space Station Three, in one of the big hangars. The nearest wall was fifteen meters away and I couldn’t reach it.”

“Couldn’t you spit your way towards it?” said Gibson solemnly. “I thought that was the approved way out of the difficulty.”

“You try it someday and see how far it gets you. Anyway, it’s not hygienic. Do you know what I had to do? It was most embarrassing. I was only wearing shorts and vest, as usual, and I calculated that they had about a hundredth of my mass. If I could throw them away at thirty meters a second, I could reach the wall in about a minute.”

“And did you?”

“Yes. But the Director was showing his wife round the Station that afternoon, so now you know why I’m reduced to earning my living on an old hulk like this, working my way from port to port when I’m not running a shady surgery down by the docks.”

“I think you’ve missed your vocation,” said Gibson admiringly. “You should be in my line of business.”

“I don’t think you believe me,” complained Scott bitterly.

“That’s putting it mildly. Let’s look at your toy.”

Scott handed it over. It was a modified air pistol, with a spring-loaded reel of nylon thread attached to the butt.

“It looks like——”

“If you say it’s like a ray-gun I’ll certify you as infectious. Three people have made that crack already.”

“Then it’s a good job you interrupted me,” said Gibson, handing the weapon back to the proud inventor. “By the way, how’s Owen getting on? Has he contacted that missile yet?”

“No, and it doesn’t look as if he’s going to. Mac says it will pass about a hundred and forty-five thousand kilometers away— certainly out of range. It’s a damn shame; there’s not another ship going to Mars for months, which is why they were so anxious to catch us.”

“Owen’s a queer bird, isn’t he?” said Gibson with some inconsequence.

“Oh, he’s not so bad when you get to know him. It’s quite untrue what they say about him poisoning his wife. She drank herself to death of her own free will,” replied Scott with relish.

Owen Bradley, Ph.D., M.I.E.E., M.I.R.E., was very annoyed with life. Like every man aboard the
Ares,
he took his job with a passionate seriousness, however much he might pretend to joke about it. For the last twelve hours he had scarcely left the communications cabin, hoping that the continuous carrier wave from the missile would break into the modulation that would tell him it was receiving his signals and would begin to steer itself towards the
Ares.
But it was completely indifferent, and he had no right to expect otherwise. The little auxiliary beacon which was intended to call such projectiles had a reliable range of only twenty thousand kilometers; though that was ample for all normal purposes, it was quite inadequate now.

Bradley dialed the astrogation office on the ship’s intercom, and Mackay answered almost at once.

“What’s the latest, Mac?”

“It won’t come much closer. I’ve just reduced the last bearing and smoothed out the errors. It’s now a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers away, traveling on an almost parallel course. Nearest point will be a hundred and forty-four thousand, in about three hours. So I’ve lost the sweep— and I suppose we lose the missile.”

“Looks like it, I’m afraid,” grunted Bradley, “but we’ll see. I’m going down to the workshop.”

“Whatever for?”

“To make a one-man rocket and go after the blasted thing, of course. That wouldn’t take more than half an hour in one of Martin’s stories. Come down and help me.”

Mackay was nearer the ship’s equator than Bradley; consequently he had reached the workshop at the South Pole first and was waiting in mild perplexity when Bradley arrived, festooned with lengths of coaxial cable he had collected from stores. He outlined his plan briefly.

“I should have done this before, but it will make rather a mess and I’m one of those people who always go on hoping till the last moment. The trouble with our beacon is that it radiates in all directions— it has to, of course, since we never know where a carrier’s coming from. I’m going to build a beam array and squirt
all
the power I’ve got after our runaway.”

He produced a rough sketch of a simple Yagi aerial and explained it swiftly to Mackay.

“This dipole’s the actual radiator— the others are directors and reflectors. Antique, but it’s easy to make and it should do the job. Call Hilton if you want any help. How long will it take?”

Mackay, who for a man of his tastes and interests had a positively atavistic skill with his hands, glanced at the drawings and the little pile of materials Bradley had gathered.

“About an hour,” he said, already at work. “Where are you going now?”

“I’ve got to go out on the hull and disconnect the plumbing from the beacon transmitter. Bring the array round to the airlock when you’re ready, will you?”

Mackay knew little about radio, but he understood clearly enough what Bradley was trying to do. At the moment the tiny beacon on the
Ares
was broadcasting its power over the entire sphere of space. Bradley was about to disconnect it from its present aerial system and aim its whole output accurately towards the fleeing projectile, thus increasing its range many-fold.

It was about an hour later that Gibson met Mackay hurrying through the ship behind a flimsy structure of parallel wires, spaced apart by plastic rods. He gaped at it in amazement as he followed Mackay to the lock, where Bradley was already waiting impatiently in his cumbersome spacesuit, the helmet open beside him.

“What’s the nearest star to the missile?” Bradley asked.

Mackay thought rapidly.

“It’s nowhere near the ecliptic now,” he mused. “The last figures I got were— let’s see— declination fifteen something north, right ascension about fourteen hours. I suppose that will be— I never can remember these things!— somewhere in Böotes. Oh yes— it won’t be far from Arcturus: not more than ten degrees anyway, I’d say at a guess. I’ll work out the exact figures in a minute.”

“That’s good enough to start with. I’ll swing the beam around, anyway. Who’s in the Signals Cabin now?”

“The Skipper and Fred. I’ve rung them up and they’re listening to the monitor. I’ll keep in touch with you through the hull transmitter.”

Bradley snapped the helmet shut and disappeared through the airlock. Gibson watched him go with some envy. He had always wanted to wear a spacesuit, but though he had raised the matter on several occasions Norden had told him it was strictly against the rules. Spacesuits were very complex mechanisms and he might make a mistake in one— and then there would be hell to pay and perhaps a funeral to be arranged under rather novel circumstances.

Bradley wasted no time admiring the stars once he had launched himself through the outer door. He jetted slowly over the gleaming expanse of hull with his reaction units until he came to the section of plating he had already removed. Underneath it a network of cables and wires lay nakedly exposed to the blinding sunlight, and one of the cables had already been cut. He made a quick temporary connection, shaking his head sadly at the horrible mismatch that would certainly reflect half the power right back to the transmitter. Then he found Arcturus and aimed the beam towards it. After waving it around hopefully for a while, he switched on his suit radio.

“Any luck?” he asked anxiously.

Mackay’s despondent voice came through the loudspeaker.

“Nothing at all. I’ll switch you through to communications.”

Norden confirmed the news.

“The signal’s still coming in, but it hasn’t acknowledged us yet.”

Bradley was taken aback. He had been quite sure that this would do the trick; at the very least, he must have increased the beacon’s range by a factor of ten in this one direction. He waved the beam around for a few more minutes, then gave it up. Already he could visualize the little missile with its strange but precious cargo slipping silently out of his grasp, out towards the unknown limits of the Solar System— and beyond.

He called Mackay again.

“Listen, Mac,” he said urgently, “I want you to check those co-ordinates again and then come out here and have a shot yourself. I’m going in to doctor the transmitter.”

When Mackay had relieved him, Bradley hurried back to his cabin. He found Gibson and the rest of the crew gathered glumly round the monitor receiver from which the unbroken whistle from the distant, and now receding, missile was coming with a maddening indifference.

There were very few traces of his normally languid, almost feline movements as Bradley pulled out circuit diagrams by the dozen and tore into the communications rack. It took him only a moment to run a pair of wires into the heart of the beacon transmitter. As he worked, he fired a series of questions at Hilton.