Authors: E. E. 'Doc' Smith
‘Wonderful, my boy!’ he breathed. ‘Marvelous! A perfect subject for year after year of deepest study and the most profound thought. Perfect!’
‘But what can we
do
about it?’ Seaton demanded. ‘We don’t want to hang around here twiddling our thumbs for a year waiting for those torpedoes to get to wherever they’re going!’
‘We can do nothing but wait and study. That problem is one of splendid difficulty, as you yourself realize. Its solution may well be a matter of lifetimes instead of years. But what is a year more or less? You can destroy the Fenachrone eventually, so be content.’
‘But content is just exactly what I
ain’t
!’ declared Seaton, emphatically. ‘I want to do it, and do it
now
!’
‘Perhaps I might volunteer a suggestion,’ said Caslor, diffidently; and as both Rovol and Seaton looked at him in surprise he went on: ‘Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean concerning the mathematical problem in discussion, about which I am entirely ignorant. But has it occurred to you that those torpedoes are not intelligent entities, acting upon their own volition and steering themselves as a result of their own ordered mental processes? No, they are mechanisms, in my own province, and I venture to say with the utmost confidence that they are guided to their destinations by streamers of force of some nature, emanating from the vessels upon whose tracks they are.’
‘“Nobody Holme” is right!’ exclaimed Seaton, tapping his temple with an admonitory forefinger. ‘’Sright, ace – I thought maybe I’d quit using my head for nothing but a hat rack now, but I guess that’s all it’s good for, yet. Thanks a lot for the idea – that gives me something I can get my teeth into, and now that Rovol’s got a problem to work on for the next century or so, everybody’s happy.’
‘How does that help matters?’ asked Crane. ‘Of course it is not surprising that no lines of force were visible, but I thought that
your detector screens would have found them if any such guiding beams had been present.’
‘The ordinary bands, if of sufficient power, yes. But there are many possible tracer rays not reactive to a screen such as I was using. It was very light and weak, designed for terrific velocity and for instantaneous automatic arrest when in contact with the enormous forces of a power-bar. It wouldn’t react at all to the minute energy of the kind of beams they’d be most likely to use for that work. Caslor’s certainly right. They’re steering their torpedoes with tracer beams of almost infinitesimal power, amplified in the torpedoes themselves – that’s the way I’d do it myself. It may take a little while to rig up the apparatus, but we’ll get it and then we’ll run those birds ragged. We won’t need the fourth-dimensional correction after all.’
When the bell announced the beginning of the following period of labor, Seaton and his co-workers were in the Area of Experiment waiting, and the work was soon under way.
‘How are you going about this, Dick?’ Crane asked.
‘Going to examine the nose of one of those torpedoes first, and see what it actually works on. Then build a tracer detector that’ll pick it up at high velocity. Beats the band, don’t it, that neither Rovol nor I, who should have thought of it first, never did see anything as plain as that? That those things are following a lead?’
‘That is easily explained. Both of you were not only devoting all your thoughts to the curvature of space, but were also too close to the problem – like the man in the woods, who cannot see the forest because of the trees.’
‘Probably. It was plain enough, though, when Caslor showed it to us.’
While he was talking Seaton had projected himself into the torpedo he had lined up so many times the previous day. With the automatic motions set to hold him stationary in the tiny instrument compartment of the craft, now traveling at a velocity many thousands of times that of light, he set to work. A glance located the detector mechanism, a set of short-wave coils and amplifiers, and a brief study made plain to him the principles underlying the directional loop finders and the controls which guided the flying shell along the path of the tracer. He then built a detector structure of pure force immediately in front of the torpedo, and varied the frequency of his own apparatus until a meter upon one of the panels before his eyes informed him that his detector was in perfect resonance with the frequency of the tracer. He then moved ahead of the torpedo, along the guiding pencil of force.
‘Getting it, eh?’ Dunark congratulated him.
‘After a fashion. My directors out there ain’t so hot, though. I’m shy on control somewhere, so much so that if I put on anywhere near full velocity I lose the track. Think I can clear that up with a little experimenting, though.’
He fingered controls lightly, depressing a few more keys,
and set one vernier, already at a ratio of a million to one, down to ten million. He then stepped up his velocity, and found that the guides worked well up to a speed much greater than any ever reached by the Fenachrone vessels or torpedoes, but failed utterly to hold at anything approaching the full velocity possible to his fifth-order projector. After hours and days of work and study – in the course of which hundreds of the Fenachrone vessels were destroyed – after employing all the resources of his mind, now stored with the knowledge accumulated by hundreds of generations of highly-trained research specialists in vibrations, he became convinced that it was an inherent impossibility to trace any ether wave with the velocity he desired.
‘Can’t be done, I guess, Mart,’ he confessed, ruefully. ‘You see, it works fine up to a certain point; but beyond that, nothing doing. I’ve just found out why – and in so doing, I think I’ve made a contribution to science. At velocities well below that of light, light-waves are shifted a minute amount, you know. At the velocity of light, and up to a velocity not even approached by the Fenachrone vessels on their longest trips, the distortion is still not serious – no matter how fast we want to travel in the
Skylark
I can guarantee that we will still be able to see things. That is to be expected from the generally-accepted idea that the apparent velocity of any ether vibration is independent of the velocity of either source or receiver. However, that relationship fails at velocities far below that of fifth-order propagation. At only a very small fraction of that speed the tracers I am following are so badly distorted that they disappear altogether, and I have to distort them backwards. That wouldn’t be too bad, but when I get up to about one percent of the velocity I want to use I can’t calculate a force that will operate to distort them back into recognizable wave-forms. That’s another problem for Rovol to chew on, for another hundred years.’
‘That will, of course, slow up the work of clearing the galaxy of the Fenachrone, but at the same time I see nothing about which to be alarmed,’ Crane replied. ‘You are working very much faster than you could have done by waiting for the torpedoes to arrive. The present condition is very satisfactory, I should say,’ and he waved his hand at the galactic model, in nearly three-fourths of whose volume the green lights had been replaced by pink ones.
‘Yeah, pretty fair as far as that goes – we’ll clean up in ten days or so – but I hate to be licked. However, I might as well quit sobbing and get to work.’
In due time the nine hundred and sixth Fenachrone vessel was checked off on the model, and the two Tellurians went in search of Drasnik, whom they found in his study, summing up and analyzing a mass of data, facts, and ideas which were being projected in the air around him.
‘Well, our first job’s done,’ Seaton stated. ‘Did you find out anything that you feel like passing around?’
‘My investigation is practically
complete,’ replied the First of Psychology, gravely. ‘I have explored many Fenachrone minds, and without exception I have found them chambers of horror of a kind unimaginable to one of us. However, you are not interested in their psychology, but in facts bearing upon your problem. While such facts were scarce, I did discover a few interesting items. I spied upon them in public and in their most private haunts. I analyzed them individually and collectively, and from the few known facts and from the great deal of guesswork and conjecture there available to me I have formulated a theory. I shall first give you the known facts. Their scientists cannot direct nor control any ray not propagated through the ether, but they can detect one such frequency or band of frequencies which they call “infra-rays” and which are probably the fifth-order rays, since they lie in the first level below the ether. The detector proper is a type of lamp, which gives a blue light at the ordinary intensity of such rays as received from space or an ordinary power plant, but gives a red light under stronger excitation.’
‘Uh-huh, I get that O.K. Rovol’s great-great-great grandfather had ’em – I know all about them,’ Seaton encouraged Drasnik, who had paused, with a questioning glance. ‘I know exactly how and why such a detector works. We gave ’em an alarm, all right. Even though we were working on a tight beam from here to there, our secondary projector there was radiating enough to affect every such detector within a million miles.’
‘Another significant fact is that a great many persons – I learned of some five hundred, and there were probably many more – have disappeared without explanation and without leaving a trace; and it seems that they disappeared very shortly after our communication was delivered. One of these was Fenor, the Emperor. His family remain, however, and his son is not only ruling in his stead, but is carrying out his father’s policies. The other disappearances are all alike and are peculiar in certain respects. First, every man who vanished belonged to the Party of Postponement – the minority party of the Fenachrone, who believe that the time for the Conquest has not yet come. Second, every one of them was a leader of thought in some field of usefulness, and every such field is represented by at least one disappearance – even the army, as General Fenimol, the Commander-in-Chief, and his whole family, are among the absentees. Third, and most remarkable, each such disappearance included an entire family, clear down to children and grandchildren, however young. Another fact is that the Fenachrone Department of Navigation keeps a very close check upon all vessels, particularly vessels capable of navigating outer space. Every vessel built must be registered, and its location is always known from its individual tracer. No Fenachrone vessel is missing.
‘I also sifted a mass of gossip and conjecture, some of which may bear upon the subject. One belief is that all the persons were put to death by Fenor’s secret service, and that the Emperor was assassinated in
revenge. The most widespread belief, however, is that they have fled. Some hold that they are in hiding in some remote shelter in the jungle, arguing that the rigid registration of all vessels renders a journey of any great length impossible and that the detector screens would have given warning of any vessel leaving the planet. Others think that persons as powerful as Fenimol and Ravindau could have built any vessel they chose with neither the knowledge nor consent of the Department of Navigation; or that they could have stolen a Navy vessel, destroying its records; and that Ravindau certainly could have so neutralized the screens that they would have given no alarm. These believe that the absent ones have migrated to some other solar system or to some other planet of the same sun. One old general loudly gave it as his opinion that the cowardly traitors had probably fled clear out of the galaxy, and that it would be a good thing to send the rest of the Party of Postponement after them. There, in brief, are the salient points of my investigation insofar as it concerns your immediate problem.’
‘A good many straws pointing this way and that,’ Seaton commented. However, we know that the “postponers” are just as rabid on the idea of conquering the universe as the others are, only they are a lot more cautious and won’t take even a gambler’s chance of defeat. But you’ve formed a theory – what is it?’
‘From my analysis of these facts and conjectures, in conjunction with certain purely psychological indices which we need not take time to go into now, I am certain that they have left their solar system, probably in an immense vessel built a long time ago and held in readiness for just such an emergency. I am not certain of their destination, but it is my opinion that they left this galaxy, and are planning upon starting anew upon some suitable planet in some other galaxy, from which, at some future date, the conquest of the universe shall proceed as it was originally planned.’
‘Great balls of fire!’ blurted Seaton. ‘They couldn’t – not in a million years!’ He thought a moment, then continued more slowly: ‘But they could – and, with their dispositions, they probably would. You’re one hundred percent right, Drasnik. We’ve got a real job of hunting on our hands now. So long, and thanks a lot.’
Back in the projector Seaton prowled about in brown abstraction, his villainous pipe poisoning the circumambient air, while Crane sat, quiet and self-possessed as always, waiting for the nimble brain of his friend to find a way over, around, or through the obstacle confronting them.
‘Got it, Mart!’ Seaton yelled, darting to the board and setting up one integral after another. ‘If they did leave the planet in a ship, we’ll be able to watch them go – and we’ll see what they did, anyway, no matter what it was!’
‘How? They’ve been gone almost a month already,’ protested Crane.
‘We know within half an hour the exact time of their departure.
We’ll simply go out the distance light has traveled since that time, gather in the rays given off, amplify them a few billion times, and take a look at whatever went on.’
‘But we have no idea of what region of the planet to study, or whether it was night or day at the point of departure when they left.’
‘We’ll get the council room, and trace events from there. Day or night makes no difference – we’ll have to use infra-red anyway, because of the fog, and that’s as good at night as in the daytime. There is no such thing as absolute darkness upon any planet, anyway, and we’ve got power enough to make anything visible that happened there, night or day. Mart, I’ve got power enough here to see and to photograph the actual construction of the pyramids of Egypt in that same way – and they were built thousands of years ago!’