“That’s fine,” answered Edith with a smile. “What happens if it works like a charm and takes off at superspeed? How do your radio-controlled gadgets work then?”

  “We’d lose the ship, of course, if we didn’t have a time clock on the drive. If all goes well, the first drive will run for exactly ten seconds. Then we’ll have about a ten-day flight to find it again, because it will be a long way from here—straight out!” He smiled. “Of course, if we want to take a small chance, we could turn it on its own primary drive and superspeed it back if all goes well. But the radio controls will be as sluggish as the devil, because there should be about a three-or four-hour transmission delay.”

  The other ship was a minute speck in the distance. Then a ship alarm rang, and the entire crew came to the alert. Barden said, “This is it!” in a strained voice, and he pulled the big switch.

  Along the wall was the bank upon bank of synchrometers, reading every possible factor in the controlled ship. Before the panel were trained technicians, each with a desk full of controls. Behind them were the directors, with the master controls, and behind them stood Barden and Edith Ward. From holes above peeked the lenses of cameras, recording the motions of every technician, and, behind the entire group, more cameras pointed at the vast master panel. The recorders took down every sound, and the entire proceeding was synchronized by crystal-controlled clocks running from a primary standard of frequency.

  At the starting impulse, the warm-up time pilot lit, and the relays clicked as one, like a single, sharp chord of music. When the warm-up period ended, the pilot changed from red to green and another bank of relays crashed home with a flowing roar, each tiny click adding to the thunder of thousands of others like it.

  “That’s the end of the rattle,” observed Barden. “From here on in we’re running on multicircuit thyratrons.”

  The meter panel flashed along its entire length as the myriad of ready lights went on. The automatic starter began its cycle, and the synchrometers on the vast panel began to indicate. Up climbed the power, storing itself in the vast reservoir bit by bit, like the slow, inexorable winding of a mighty clock spring. Up it went, and the meters moved just above the limit of perception, mounting and passing toward the red mark that indicated the critical point.

  As slow as their climb was, each meter hit the red mark at the same instant.

  There was a murmur of low voices as each technician gave his notes to the recorders. No scribbling here; the voice itself, with its inflection, its ejaculation, and its personal opinion under stress, would be set down.

  Then the master switch went home with a tiny flare of ionized gases—

  And, silently, every panel went dead.

  “Oh!” said Edith Ward in a solemn tone.

  “Not yet,” Barden objected. “This may be success.”

  “But—?”

  “How do you hope to control a radio-controlled drone that is traveling faster than the velocity of propagation.”

  “But how will you ever know?”

  “When we—”

  He was interrupted by the chatter of the radiation counter. Light splashed in through the tiny ports in a brilliant flare.

  “Well, we won’t,” said Barden helplessly.

  “Won’t what?”

  “Ever catch up with it! Not where it’s gone!”

  “So—?”

  “So we’ve solved that problem,” he said bitterly. “Your informant was right. From what the counter says, that was a vicious number. Well, I guess I am licked, finally. I admit it.”

  “Somehow,” said Edith solemnly, “I know I should feel elated. But I am not. Fact of the matter is, I am ashamed that there is a portion of my brain that tells me that I am proven correct. I… fervently wish it were not so.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I wish but one thing.”

  “What?”

  “I’d have preferred to have been aboard that crate!”

  “Tom!” she said plaintively. “Not—oblivion.”

  “No,” he said with a wistful smile. “At superspeed, my recording instruments could record nothing. Perhaps if I’d been aboard I could have found out what really happened. There is no way.”

  “But what can we do?”

  “Build another one, and spend my time trying to find out how to get a recording from a body that isn’t really existent in this space at all.”

  “That sounds impossible.”

  “Then there is but one answer,” he said, “and that is to go out with it, and hope that by some machination I can control the reaction before it gets beyond stopping.”

  “Tom,” she said quietly, “you are still convinced that such a thing is possible?”

  “I am,” he said. And then he stopped as his face filled with wonder.

  “What?” she asked, seeing the change.

  “Look,” he said, his voice rising in excitement. “We caught radiation.

  Right?”

  “Right.”

  “That means that the ship was not exceeding the velocity of light when it went up!”

  “Yes, but—?”

  “Then on the instantaneous recorders there must be a complete record of what every instrument should have been reading but did not due to the mechanical inertia of these meters! Right?”

  “But suppose—”

  “Look, Edith. The theory of the drive is based upon the development of a monopolar magnetic field that encloses space in upon itself like a blister, twisted off from the skin of a toy balloon. Now that field would collapse if the fission started, because the fission is initiated, as you claim, by magnetostrictive alignment of the planetary orbits of the field electrons in the atoms. Obviously, the magnetostrictive effect is more pronounced near the center of the monopolar generator. Ergo, that would go first, dropping the speed of the ship to below the velocity of light by a considerable amount. Then, as the fission continued, spreading outward, the various instruments would go blooey— but not until they’d had… did you say thirteen microseconds after initiation the major fission took place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give it twelve microseconds to drop the ship below the speed of light, and I have still one full microsecond for recordings!”

  Edith Ward looked up in admiration. “And you’ll bet your life on what your instruments can see in one millionth of a second?”

  “Shucks,” he grinned. “Way, way back they used microsecond pulses to range aircraft, and they got to the point where a microsecond of time could be accurately split into several million parts of its own. Besides, I made those instruments!”

  “Q.E.D.,” said Edith Ward quietly. “But how are you going to develop a monopolar magnetic field without the magnetostrictive effect? The prime consideration is not the field, but the fact that aligning the planetary orbits means that two things tend to occupy the same place at the same time.

  That isn’t—they tell me—possible.”

  “Too bad the reverse isn’t true,” he said.

  “You mean the chance of something occupying two places at the same time?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What then?”

  “Then we could develop two monopolar fields of opposing polarities to inclose the twin-ship proposition. Then the atomic orbits would not be affected, since they would receive the bipolar urge.”

  “Couldn’t you change from one to the other very swiftly?”

  “Not without passing through zero on the way. Every time we passed through zero we’d end up at sub-speed. The ship would really jackrabbit.”

  “Oh.”

  “But,” he said thoughtfully, “what happens if the monopolar field is generated upon a true square wave?”

  “A true square wave is impractical.”

  “You mean because at the moment of transition, the wave front must assume, simultaneously, all values between zero and maximum?”

  “Yes,” she said, “and it is impossible to have any item operating under two values.”

  “That is an existent item,” said Barden with a smile. “Bringing back H.

  G. Wells’ famous point of whether an instantaneous cube could exist.”

  “This I do not follow.”

  “Look, Edith,” said Tom patiently. “Any true square wave must have a wave front in which the rise is instantaneous, and assuming all values between zero and maximum for the duration of an instant. An instant is the true zero-time, with a time-quantum of nothing—the indivisible line that divides two adjoining events. Just as a true line has no thickness.

  “Now,” he went on, “generating the monopolar field on a true square wave would flop us from one field to the other in true no-time. At that instant, we would be existing in all values from maximum negative to maximum positive, at the same time as zero— but not truly assigned a real value. Therefore we should not stop.

  “However,” he went on, “that is an impossibility because the true instant of no duration is impossible to achieve with any mechanism, electrical or otherwise. However, the fields set up to make possible this square wave do permit the full realization of the problem. For a practical duration, however small, the value of the wave does actually assume all values from maximum negative to maximum positive!”

  She looked at him with puzzlement. “I thought they taught you only this one science,” she said.

  “That would have been useless,” he grinned. “As useless as trying to teach a Hottentot the full science of electronics without giving him the rest of physics as a basis. No, little lady, I got the full curriculum, including a full training in how to think logically! How else?”

  “You win,” she said solemnly. “Fudge up your true square wave, and I’ll buy a ticket back home in your crate!”

  “Thanks, Edith,” he said. “That’s a high compliment. But there’s more of us than we-all. I’ll have to take a vote.”

  There was a roar at Barden’s explanation. And his head technician stood up, waving for silence. “There’s enough lifecraft aboard,” he shouted over the noise. “Anybody who wants to get out can take ‘em. They can make Terra from here in a couple of months in a lifecraft if they want to.”

  That got a roar of approval.

  “Lucky I had two ships all fitted out,” said Tom. “Also, with all this spare junk for radio-controlling the other crate we’ve got a shipload of spare parts. Probably take about a week flat to tinker it together, but it is far better to do it out here than to go all the way home to Terra—that’d take about four weeks.”

  “I wonder why they didn’t think of that square-wave idea,” said Edith.

  “Lord only knows.”

  “That’s what bothers me,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because we are playing with the other man’s cards, remember.

  We’re not leading authorities in this art. You got both the square-wave generator and the monopolar field out of them. Now why hadn’t they tried it before?”

  “On the theory that no beginner ever has a valid idea? No soap.

  Maybe they’ve been too close to the woods to see anything but them trees.

  Of course, there’s another little angle we’ve not considered.”

  “Go on. First it was a political difference between factions for and against subjugation. Then I came in and threw in my two cents, which sort of hardened the argument a bit. We didn’t know whether my stuff was shoved in to stop production or to save Sol. We know now that your informant was telling the truth, but not the whole truth. We know that mine was honest, but not why he was. Then we came to the possibility that someone somewhere tossed us a fish because they were afraid to try it.

  Why the stopper on that?”

  “Possibly they want us really to try it out, and not total destruction.”

  “But—??”

  “Look, Edith. Supposing you wanted to have something developed for you by a consulting laboratory. You’ve done that yourself at Solar Labs.

  Wouldn’t you give them whatever information you had available?”

  She nodded. “Nice explanation,” she said solemnly. “Excepting that if I were doing it, I’d not call one man and start him experimenting on one pretext, and then call another member of the laboratory and tell him that the information would lead to disaster.”

  “In other words, the big problem is motive.”

  “Precisely. And that’s what we’re up against. Try to figure out the hidden motives of extrasolar cultures.”

  “You believe there are two?”

  Tom Barden nodded. “Uh-huh,” he said. “And all the talking we can do from now until we find out won’t help, because we cannot interpret the thoughts of an alien culture in our own terms and hope to come out right!”

  And that, of course, was that. It was definitely true. Reviewing all the evidence during the next ten days, they came up with a startlingly minute amount of fact. Barden had been given a scientific field because of a political argument; Edith Ward had been warned that the information was incomplete and would lead to disaster.

  Build upon those slender bricks, and they tumble all too quickly.

  Barden’s story could be construed as an attempt to get consulting service on a dangerous project without danger to the alien race. Ward’s informant might have been an attempt to give Sol a good chance to solve it in safety, but in solution there would be no proof—or even in failure. For there was no way of telling proof from failure at many light-years of distance unless the failure bloomed the entire system into a nova.

  And regardless of any theoretical argument, it was still a technical impossibility to construct any spaceship capable of traversing light-years without some means of super speed. Not without a suitable crew to do a job when it arrived.

  Then, to reverse the argument, supposing that Barden’s tale was correct. The opposing faction might hope to forestall any work by issuing the warning.

  But if Barden’s tale were correct, why did the so-called altruists offer him a science that was dangerous to pursue?

  Unless, perhaps, the political argument was conquest versus dominance. Both factions wanted conquest and dominance. One demanded the elimination of all races that might offer trouble. The other faction might argue that a completely dead enemy offers no real reward for conquest—for of what use is it to become king when the throne is safe only when all subjects are dead?

  Yes, there’s paranoia. The paranoid will either become king of all or king of none—or none will remain to be king, including himself. That theory is quite hard on rational people.

  So went the arguments, and when the ten days were completed, they were no closer to the truth than they had been before.

  Not entirely true. For they hoped to drive—somewhere—at a velocity higher than the speed of light.

  With a firm hand, Tom Barden pressed the start button. The relays clicked and the pilot lights flared red, and then, after the warm-up period they turned green.

  “This is it,” he said, grasping the small lever that would start the automatic sequence.

  Silence—almost silence came. From one corner came a small muttering and the click of beads. A throat was cleared unnecessarily, for it, like all others, was both dry and clear. A foot shuffled nervously—

  “No!” shouted a voice.

  Barden looked at Edith Ward. “Still—?” he said.

  She nodded and put her hand over his on the lever. “Want me to prove it?” she said, pushing it home.

  There was a tinnily musical note that crept up the scale from somewhere in the sub-audible, up through the audible scale, and into the shrilling tones that hurt the ear. It was hard to really tell when it passed above the audible, for the imagination followed it for seconds after the ear ceased to function.

  There was a creak that rang throughout the ship. A tiny cricket-voice that came once and changed nothing but to increase the feel of tenseness.

  Then—nothing pertinent.

  Except—

  “Great Scott! Look at Sol!”

  The already-tiny sun was dwindling visibly; it took less than three or four seconds for Sol’s disk to diminish from visible to complete ambiguity against the curtain of the stars.

  “We’re in!” exploded Barden.

  “Hey!” screamed a watcher at the side port. A flare whisked by, illuminating the scene like a photoflash bulb. A second sun passed at planetary distance. It joined the starry background behind.

  Barden shut off the drive and the tense feeling stopped.

  “Well, we’re in!” he said in elation. “We’re in!”

  The scanning room went wild. They gave voice to their feelings in a yell of sheer exuberance, and then started pounding one another on the back. Barden chinned himself on a cross-brace and then grabbed Edith Ward about the waist and danced her in a whirling step across the floor.

  The crew caught up with them, separating them. They piled into Barden, ruffling his hair and rough-housing him until he went off his feet, after which someone produced a blanket and tossed him until the blanket ripped across. Then they carried him to the desk and set him unceremoniously across it, face down, and left him there to catch his breath.

  “Like New Year’s Eve,” he grunted.

  The crowd opened to let Edith through. She came toward the desk as Tom unraveled himself and sat on the top. “A fine bunch of wolves,” she chuckled gleefully. “Tom, have you ever been kissed by twenty-two men?”

  “Wouldn’t care for it,” he said. “They’re not my type. And besides, it’s twenty-three.” He made the correction himself.

  Then things calmed down. They were—as one man put it—”a long way from home!”

  “But what I want to know is why we can see the sun when we’re going away from it at several times the velocity of light?” demanded Tom.

  “Well, your own problem answers your own question,” said Edith, patting her hair back into place. “Remember the square wave problem?

 

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