Part 15 (1/2)

But Trent wasn't listed on that page. Trent wasn't even in that part of the book. The heading of this particular chapter of listings was,”Non-Cl.u.s.ter Planets Between Huyla and Claire.”It described the maverick solar systems not on regular trade routes and requiring long voyages from commercial s.p.a.ceports if anybody was to reach them. People rarely wanted to.

Link stared. He found signs that this had been repeatedly referred to by somebody with engine oil on his fingers. One page had plainly been read and re-read and re-read. The margin was darkened as if an oily thumb had held a place there while the item was gloated over.

From any normal standpoint it was not easy to understand.

”SORD,” said theDirectory.There followed the galactic coordinates to three places of decimals.”Yel.

sol-type approx. 1.4 sols ma.s.s, mny faculae all times, spectrum-”

The spectrum symbols could be skipped. If one wanted to be sure that a particular sun was such-and-such, one would take a spectro-photo and compare it with theDirectory.Otherwise the spectrum was for the birds. Link labored over the abbreviations that compilers of reference books use to make things difficult.

”3rd. pl. blved. hab. ox atm. 2/3 sea nml brine, usual ice-caps cloud-systems hab. est. 1.”

Then came the interesting part. In the clear language that informative books use with such reluctance, he read: ”This planet is said to have been colonized from Surheil 11 some centuries since, and may be inhabited, but no s.p.a.ceport is known to exist. The last report on this planet was from a s.p.a.ceyacht some two centuries ago. The yacht called down asking permission to land and was threatened with destruction if it did. The yacht took pictures from s.p.a.ce showing specks that could be villages or the ruins of same, but this is doubtful. No other landings or communications are known. Any records which might have existed on Surheil 11 were destroyed in the Economic Wars on that planet.”

In theGlamorgan'scontrol room, Link was intrigued. He went back to the abbreviations and deciphered them. Sord was a yellow sol-type sun with a ma.s.s of 1.4 sols and many faculae. Its third planet was believed habitable. It had an oxygen atmosphere, two-thirds of its surface was sea, the sea was normal brine and there were the usual ice caps and cloud systems of a planet whose habitability was estimated at one.

And two centuries ago its inhabitants had threatened to smash a s.p.a.ceyacht which wanted to land on it.

According to Thistlethwaite, the bill for last evening's relaxation, for Link, amounted to twenty-some years to be served in jail. Even with some sentences running concurrently, it was preferable not to return to Trent. On the other hand- But it didn't really need to be thought about. Thistlethwaite plainly intended to go to Sord Three, whose inhabitants strongly preferred to be left alone. But they seemed to have made an exception in his favor.

He was so anxious to get there and so confident of a welcome that he'd bought theGlamorganand loaded her up with freight, and he'd taken an unholy chance in his choice of a s.h.i.+p. He'd taken another in depending on Link as an astrogator. But it would be a pity to disappoint him!

So Link carefully copied down in the log the three coordinates of Sord Three, and hunted up its proper solar motion, and put that in the log, and then put the figures for Trent in the computer and copied the answer in the log, too. It seemed the professional thing to do. Then he sc.r.a.ped away frost from the ports and got observations of theGlamorgan'scurrent heading, and went back to the board and adjusted that.

He was just entering the last item in the log when Thistlethwaite came in. His hands were black from the work he'd done, and somehow he gave the impression of a man who had used up all his store of naughty words and still was unrelieved.

”Well?” asked Link pleasantly.

”We're leakin' air,” said the whiskered man bitterly. ”It's whistlin' out! Playin' tunes as it goes! I had to seal off the s.p.a.ceboat blister. If we need that s.p.a.ceboat we'll be in a fix! When my business gets goin', I'll never use another junk s.h.i.+p like this! You raised h.e.l.l in that take-off!”

”It's very bad?” asked Link.

”I shut off all the compartments I couldn't seal tight,” said Thistlethwaite bitterly. ”And there's still some leakage in the engine room, but I can't find it. I ain't found it so far, anyways.”

Link said, ”How's the air supply?”

”I pumped up on Trent,” said the little man. ”If they'd known, they'd ha' charged me for that, too!”

”Can we make out for two weeks?” asked Link.

”We can make out for ten!” snapped the whiskery one. ”There's only two of us an' we can seal off everything but the control room an' the engine room an' a way between 'em. We can go ten weeks.”

”Then,” said Link relievedly, ”we're all right.” He made final adjustments. ”The engines are all right?”

He looked up pleasantly, his hand on a switch.

”With coddlin',” said Thistlethwaite. ”What're you doin'?” he demanded suspiciously. ”I ain't give you-”

Link threw the circuit completing switch. The universe seemed to reel. Everything appeared to turn inside out, including Link's stomach. He had the feeling of panicky fall in a contracting spiral. The lights in the control room dimmed almost to extinction. The whiskery man uttered a strangled howl. This was the normal experience when going into overdrive travel at a number of times the speed of light.

Then, abruptly, everything was all right again. The vision ports were dark, but the lights came back to full brightness. TheGlamorganwas in overdrive, hurtling through emptiness very, very much faster than theory permitted in the normal universe. But the universe immediately around theGlamorganwas not normal. The s.h.i.+p was in an overdrive field, which does not occur normally, at all.

”What the h.e.l.l've you done?” raged Thistlethwaite. ”Where you headed for? I didn't tell you-”

”I'm driving the s.h.i.+p,” said Link pleasantly, ”for a place called Sord Three. There ought to be some good business prospects there. Isn't that where you want to go?”

The little man's face turned purple. He glared.

”How'd you find that out?” he demanded ferociously.

”Well, I've got friends there,” said Link untruthfully. The little man leaped for him, uttering howls of fury.

Link turned off the s.h.i.+p's gravity. Thistlethwaite wound up bouncing against the ceiling. He clung there, swearing. Link kept his hand on the gravity b.u.t.ton. At any instant he could throw the gravity back on, and as immediately off again.

”Tut, tut!” said Link reproachfully. ”Such naughty words. And I thought you'd be pleased to find your junior partner displaying energy and enthusiasm and using his brains loyally to further the magnificent business enterprise we've started!”

Chapter 2.

TheGlamorganbored on through s.p.a.ce. Not normal s.p.a.ce, of course. In the ordinary sort of s.p.a.ce between suns and planets and solar systems generally, a s.h.i.+p is strictly limited to ninety-eight-point-something per cent of the speed of light, because ma.s.s increases with speed, and inertia increases with ma.s.s. But in an overdrive field the properties of s.p.a.ce are modified. The effect of a magnet on iron is changed past recognition. The effect of electrostatic stress upon dielectrics is wholly abnormal. And inertia, instead of multiplying itself with high velocity, becomes as undetectable as at zero velocity. In fact, theory says that a s.h.i.+p has no velocity on an overdrive field. The speed is of the field itself. The s.h.i.+p is carried. It goes along for the ride.

But there was no thinking about such abstractions on theGlamorgan.The effect of overdrive was the same as if the s.h.i.+p did pierce s.p.a.ce at many times the speed of light. Obviously, light from ahead was transposed a great many octaves upward, into something as different from light as long wave radiation is from heat. This radiation was refracted outward from the s.h.i.+p by the overdrive field, and was therefore without effect upon instruments or persons. Light from behind was left there. Light from the sides was also refracted outward and away. TheGlamorganfloated at ease in a hurtling, unsubstantial s.p.a.ce-stress center, and to try to understand it might produce a headache, but hardly anything more useful.

But though theGlamorganin overdrive attained the end of speed without the need for velocity, the human relations.h.i.+p between Link and Thistlethwaite was less simple. The whiskery little man was impa.s.sioned about his enterprise. Link had guessed his highly secret destination, and Thistlethwaite was outraged by the achievement. Even when Link showed him how Sord Three had been revealed as the objective of the voyage, Thistlethwaite wasn't mollified. He clamped his lips shut tightly. He refused to give any further intimation about what he proposed to do when he arrived at Sord Three. Link knew only that he'd touched ground there in a s.p.a.ceboat with one companion and they'd left with a valuable cargo, and now Thistlethwaite was bound back there again, if Link could get him there.

There were times when it seemed doubtful. Then Link blamed himself for trying it. Still, Thistlethwaite had chosen theGlamorganon his own and had gotten as far as Trent in her. But there were times when it didn't appear that the s.h.i.+p would ever get anywhere else. The log book had a plenitude of emergencies written in its pages as theGlamorganwent onward.

She leaked air. They didn't try to keep the inside pressure up to the standard 14.7 pounds. They compromised on eleven, because they'd lose less air at the lower pressure. Even so, the fact that the Glamorganleaked was only one of her oddities. She also smelled. Her air system was patched and her generators were cobbled, and at odd moments she made unrefined noises for no reason that anybody could find out. The water pressure system sometimes worked and sometimes did not. The refrigeration unit occasionally turned on when it shouldn't and sometimes didn't when it should. It was wise to tap the thermostat several times a day to keep frozen stores from thawing.

The overdrive field generator was also a subject for nightmares. Link didn't understand overdrive, but he did know that a field shouldn't be kept in existence by hand-wound outer layers on some of the coils, with wedges driven in to keep contacts tight which ought to be free to cut off in case of emergency. But it could be said that everything about the s.h.i.+p was an emergency. Link would have come to have a very great respect for Thistlethwaite because he kept such tinkered wreckage working. But he was appalled at the idea of anybody deliberately trusting his life to it.

The thing was, he realized ultimately, that Thistlethwaite was an eccentric. The galaxy is full of crackpots, each of whom has mysterious secret information about illimitable wealth to be found on the nonexistent outer planets of rarely visited suns, or in the depths of the watery satellites of Cepheids. But crackpots only talk. Their ambition is to be admired as men of mystery and vast secret knowledge. They will never try actually to find the treasures they claim to know about. If you offer to provide a s.h.i.+p and crew to pick up the riches they describe in such detail, they'll impose impossible conditions. They don't want to risk their dreams by trying to make them come true.

But Thistlethwaite wasn't that way. He wasn't a crackpot. In his description of the wealth awaiting him, Link considered that he must be off the beam. There was no such treasure in the galaxy. But he'd been on Sord Three, and he'd had some money-enough to buy theGlamorganand her cargo-and he was trying to get back. He'd cut Link in out of necessity, because theGlamorganhad to get off Trent when she did, or not get off at all. So Thistlethwaite was not a crackpot. But an eccentric, that he was!

Fuming but resolute, the little man tried valiantly to make the s.h.i.+p hold together until his project was completed. From the beginning, four compartments besides the s.p.a.ceboat blister were sealed off because they couldn't be made airtight. A fifth compartment lost half a pound of air every hour on the hour. Thistlethwaite labored over it, daubing extinguisher foam on joints and cracks until he found where the foam vanished first. Then he lavishly applied sealing compound. This was not the act of a crackpot who only wants to be admired. It was consistent with a far-out mentality which would run the wildest of risks to carry out a purpose. Moreover, when after days of labor he still couldn't bring the air loss down below half a pound a day, he sealed off that compartment too. TheGlamorganhad been a tub to begin with. Now she displayed characteristics to make a reasonably patient man break down and cry.

Link offered to help in the sealing-off process. Thistlethwaite snapped at him.

”You tend to your knitting and I'll tend to mine,” he said acidly. ”You're so smart at workin' out things I want to keep to myself.”

”I only found out where we're going,” said Link. ”I didn't find out why.”

”To get rich,” snapped Thistlethwaite. ”That's why! I want to get rich! I spent my life bein' poor. Now I want to get kowtowed to! My first partner got money and he couldn't wait to enjoy it. I've waited. I'm not telling anybody anything! I know what I'm goin' to do. I got a talent for business. I never had a chance to use it. No capital. Now I'm going to get rich and do things like I always wanted to do.”

Link asked more questions and the little man turned waspishly upon him.