The Project Gutenberg eBook of Beyond our control

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Title: Beyond our control

Author: Randall Garrett

Illustrator: Richard Kluga

Release date: October 6, 2023 [eBook #71821]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1957

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEYOND OUR CONTROL ***

Beyond Our Control

By RANDALL GARRETT

Illustrated by RICHARD KLUGA

The "technical difficulties" on Satellite

Four became a menace to the entire Earth!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Infinity January 1958.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

CHAPTER I

The big building stood out at night, even among the other towering spires of Manhattan. The bright, glowing symbol on its roof attracted the attention of anyone who looked up at the night sky of New York; and from the coast of Connecticut, across Long Island Sound, the huge ball was easily visible as a shining dot of light.

The symbol—as a symbol—resembled the well-known symbol of an atom. It consisted of a central globe surrounded by a swarm of swiftly-moving points of light that circled the glowing sphere endlessly. It represented the Earth itself and the robot-operated artificial satellites that whirled around it. It was the trademark of Circum-Global Communications.

But it was more than just a symbol; it was also the antenna for the powerful transmitters that kept constant contact with the satellite relay stations which, in turn, re-broadcast the TV impulses to all parts of the globe.

Inside the CGC Building, completely filling the upper twenty floors, were the sections of the vast electronic brain that computed and integrated the orbits of the small artificial moons and kept the communication beams linked to them. And below the brain, occupying another four floors, were the control and monitoring rooms, in which the TV communications of a world were selected and programmed.

In Johannesburg, South Africa, the newly-elected President spoke in front of a TV camera. His dark, handsome face was coldly implacable as he said: "They wanted apartheid when they were in power; we see no reason to believe they have changed their minds. They wanted apartheid—very well, they shall continue to have apartheid!"

His image and his voice, picked up by the camera and mike, were transmitted by cable to the beam broadcaster in the old capital of Pretoria. From there, it was broadcast generally all over South Africa; at the same time, it was relayed by tight beam to Satellite Nine, which happened to be in the sky over that part of the Earth at that time.

Satellite Nine, in turn, relayed it to all the other satellites in line of sight. Satellite Two, over the eastern seaboard of North America, picked it up and automatically relayed it to the big antenna on top of New York's Circum-Global Communications Building.

There it was de-hashed and cleaned up. The static noise which it had picked up in its double flight through the ionosphere was removed; the periods of fading were strengthened, and the whole communication was smoothed out and patched up.

From the CGC Building, it was re-broadcast over the United States. A man in Bismarck, North Dakota, looked at the three-dimensional, full-color image of the President of South Africa, listened to his clear, carefully-modulated words, and said: "Serves 'em right, by George!"

Besides the world-wide television news and entertainment networks, CGC also handled person-to-person communication through its subsidiary, Intercontinental Visiphone. If the man in Bismarck had wanted to call the President of the Union of South Africa, his visiphone message would have gone out in almost exactly the same way, and the two men could have talked person-to-person, face to face. (Whether the President of South Africa would have accepted the call or not is another matter.)

From all over the world, programs and communications were picked up by the satellites and relayed to the CGC Building, where they were sorted and sent out again.

The man in charge of the technical end of the whole operation was a short, stocky, graying man named MacIlheny.

James Fitzpatrick MacIlheny, Operational Vice-President of Circum-Global Communications, was one of those dynamic men who can allow their subordinates to call them by a nickname and still retain their respect. His wife called him "Jim"; his personal friends called him "Fitz"; and his subordinates called him "Mac." He knew his own job, and the job of every man under him; if one of the men slipped up, he heard about it in short order, but, on the other hand, if the work was well done, he heard about that in short order, too. MacIlheny was as free with his pats on the back as he was with the boot a little lower down. As a result, his men respected him and he respected them.

MacIlheny liked his work, so he was quite often found in his office or in the monitoring rooms long after his prescribed quitting time. On the evening of 25 March 1978, he had stayed overtime nearly four hours to watch the installation of a new computer unit. As a matter of cold fact, since the day was Saturday, he needn't have been in the office at all, but—well, a new computer isn't put in every day, and MacIlheny liked computer work.

It was exactly 1903 hours when the PA system clicked on and an operator's voice said: "Is Mr. MacIlheny still in the building, please? Mr. MacIlheny, please call Satellite Beam Control."

MacIlheny stood up from the squatting position he had been in, handed a flashlight to one of the technicians standing nearby, and said: "Hold this, Harry; I'll be back in a minute."

The installation crew went on with their work while MacIlheny went over to a wall phone. He picked it up and punched the code number for Beam Control.

"This is MacIlheny," he said when the recog signal came.

"Mac? This is Blake. Can you come down right away? We've lost Number Four!"

"What happened?"

"Don't know. She was nearly overhead, going along fine, when we lost contact all of a sudden. One minute she was there, the next minute she was gone. We've lost the beam, and—just a second!" There was a pause at the other end, then Blake said: "We just got a report from some of the ground stations within range. Satellite Number Four has quit broadcasting altogether—there's no signal from her at all!"

"I'll be right down," MacIlheny snapped. He hung up the phone and headed for the elevator.

It wasn't good. Number Four, like the other satellites, was in a nearly circular orbit high above the atmosphere of Earth. She should follow a mathematically predictable course, subject only to slight variations from the pull of the other satellites and the pull of the moon, plus the small perturbations caused by the changing terrain of the Earth beneath her. She'd have to be badly off course to be out of range of Beam Control.

The elevator dropped MacIlheny down from the computer level to the monitor and control level. The men at the monitor screens didn't look up from their work as MacIlheny passed, but there was a feeling of tension in the air. The monitors knew what had happened.

To the man in Bismarck, North Dakota, or the housewife in Tampa, Florida, the disappearance of the satellite meant nothing more than a slight irritation. If the program they were watching happened to be one that was shunted through Number Four, their screen had simply gone dark for a moment. Then, with apologies for "technical difficulties beyond our control," another program had been switched into the channel.

For the businessman in San Francisco and the government official in New York, the situation was worse. Important intercontinental conferences were cut off in mid-sentence, and vital orders were left hanging in the air.

For seven transcontinental stratoliners, the situation was almost tragic. The superfast, rocket-driven, robot-controlled ships, speeding their way through the lower ozonosphere, fifteen miles above the surface of the Earth, were suddenly without the homing beams they depended upon to guide them safely to their destinations. Their beam-detection instruments went into a search pattern while alarm bells shattered the quiet within. Passengers in the lounges and in the cocktail rooms looked suddenly wide-eyed.

On one of the ships, there was a near panic when one fool screamed: "We're going to crash! Get parachutes!"

Not until the flight captain caught the hysterical passenger on the chin with a hard right uppercut and explained that everything was in good order did the passengers quiet down. He didn't worry them by explaining that there were no parachutes aboard; at eighty thousand feet of altitude and a velocity of over forty miles per minute, a parachute would be worse than useless.

Each of the stratoliners had to be taken over by the flight captain and eased down manually.

MacIlheny had a pretty good idea of what was going on all over the United States, and he didn't like it. He pushed open the door of the Beam Control Section and strode in. Blake met him halfway across the room.

"Nothing yet, as far as contact goes," he said. "We've heard from the spotter station in Topeka; they missed it at the same time we did—1702 hours, two seconds."

MacIlheny glanced at the chronometer on the wall. The satellite had been missing for nearly four minutes now.

"Get the Long Island Observatory; tell 'em to keep an eye peeled for Number Four. It ought to be out of Earth's shadow," MacIlheny ordered. "And start a sweep search with the radar. Cover the whole area. Get a prediction from the Orbit Division; find the cone of greatest probability and search it carefully. Unless the damned thing just blew up, it's got to be up there somewhere!"

"I've already called Orbits," Blake said. "I'll get Long Island on the line." He headed for the phone.

MacIlheny went over to one of the control boards and looked over the instruments. He swept his eyes across them, reading them as a group, in the same way an ordinary man reads a sentence. Satellite Number Four had vanished, as far as the Beam Controls were concerned. Data from the electronic brain indicated that the acceleration of the satellite had been something terrific, but whether it had slowed down or speeded up was something the brain couldn't tell yet.

A thin, sandy-haired man at a nearby board said: "What do you think, Mac?"

"There's only one thing could have done it, Jackson," MacIlheny said. "A meteor."

"That's what we figured. It must have been a doozie!"

"Yeah. But which direction did it hit from? If it hit from the side, Number Four will be twisted around; its new orbit will be at an angle to the old one. If it overtook the satellite from behind, the additional velocity will lift it into a newer, higher orbit. If it was hit from the front, it'll be slowed down, and it may hit the atmosphere."

"Not much chance of its being overtaken," Jackson said. "A meteor would have to be hitting it up at a pretty good clip to shove Four ahead that fast!"

"Right," MacIlheny agreed. "And meteors just don't travel that fast in that direction."

"No—no, they don't."

MacIlheny felt a sense of frustration. The satellite was gone, vanished he knew not whither. It had disappeared into some limbo which, at the moment, was beyond his reach. Until it was located, either visually or by radar, it might as well not exist.

There was actually nothing further he could do until it was found; he couldn't find it himself.

"What's our next contact?" he asked.

"Satellite Number Eight. It'll be coming over the horizon in—" Jackson glanced at the chronometer. "—in eight minutes, twenty-seven seconds. We'll just have to hold on till then, I suppose."

MacIlheny thought about the stratoplanes he knew were up there. "Yeah," he said tightly. "Yeah. Just wait."

CHAPTER II

Four minutes came and went, while MacIlheny and the others smoked cigarettes and tried to maintain a certain amount of calm as they waited.

At the end of the four minutes, the phone rang. Blake, who was nearest, answered.

"Yes. Good! Okay, thanks, Dr. Vanner!" He cradled the receiver and turned to MacIlheny. "The Observatory. They've spotted Number Four. She's slowed way down and dropped. They're feeding the orbit figures to Orbits Division now, by teletype. She evidently hit a fast meteor, head on."

MacIlheny nodded. "It figures. Tell Orbits to feed us a computation we can sight by—feed it directly into the Brain first, so we can get things going. We've got to get that satellite back up where she belongs!"

As the figures came in, it became obvious that the orbit of Number Four had been radically altered. Evidently, a high-speed, fairly massive meteor had struck her from above and forward, slowing her down. Immediately, the satellite had begun to drop, since angular acceleration no longer gave her enough centrifugal force to offset the gravitational pull of the Earth. As she dropped, however, she picked up more speed, and was able to establish a new, different orbit.

With this information fed into it, the electronic brain in the top twenty floors of the CGC Building went smoothly to work. Now that it knew where the satellite was, it could again focus the beams on her. Since the direction and velocity of the artificial moon in her new orbit were also known, the trackers could hold the beam on her.

MacIlheny rubbed his chin with a nervous forefinger as he watched the instruments on the control board come to life again as contact was re-established.

Meanwhile, Orbits Division was still at work. In order to re-establish the old orbit, the atomic rocket engines in the satellite would have to be used. Short bursts, fired at precisely the right time, in precisely the right direction, would lift her back up to where she belonged. It was up to Orbits Division to compute exactly how long and in what direction the remote-controlled rockets should apply their thrust.

As the beams again locked on the wayward satellite, MacIlheny kept his eyes on the control board. Lights flickered and rippled across the panel; needles on various meters wavered and jumped. MacIlheny watched for several seconds before he said:

"Blake! What the hell's wrong there?"

Blake watched a set of oscilloscopes, four green-glowing screens which traced and re-traced bright yellow-green lines across their surfaces. His dark brows lowered over his eyes.

"We can't get anything to her, Mac. She's dead. Either that meteor hit her power supply or else it did more damage than we thought."

"No control, then?"

Blake shook his head. "No control."

MacIlheny frowned. If the remote controls wouldn't work, then it wouldn't be possible to realign the orbit of the satellite. "Keep trying," he said. Then he turned from the control board, went to the phone, and punched the number of the Orbits Division.

"Orbits Division, Masterson here," said a gruff voice from the other end.

"This is MacIlheny. How does that orbit on Number Four look now?"

"We've got it, Mac. I'll send the corrective thrust data to the brain as soon as—"

"Never mind the corrective thrust," MacIlheny interrupted impatiently. "We can't use it yet. We don't have any positive contact with her; she's dead—no response to the radio controls."

"You mean you can't get her out of that orbit?" Masterson's voice was harsh.

"That's exactly what I mean. She's stuck in her new orbit until we find some other way to change it. It can't be done from here."

There was a pause at the other end, then Masterson said: "Mac, I hate to say this, but you've got a hot potato on your hands. That thing's in a cometary orbit!"

"Cometary?"

"That's right. Instead of a normal, near-circular path, she's going in an elongated ellipse. At perigee, she'll be less than a hundred and fifty miles above the surface."

"Uh!" MacIlheny felt as though someone had slugged him. If the satellite went that low, the air resistance would slow her even more before she broke free again. Each successive passage through the atmosphere would slow her more and more until she finally fell to Earth. If she fell into the ocean, that would be bad enough; but if she hit a populated area....

Fortunately, by that time her velocity would be considerably cut down; if she were to hit the atmosphere with her present velocity, the shock wave alone would be disastrous.

"Okay," said MacIlheny at last. "Notify every observatory within sight range of her orbit! Keep a check on her every foot of the way! We'll have to send up a drone."

"Right!" There was a subdued click as Masterson hung up.

MacIlheny turned. Blake was standing beside him. "I've got White Sands on the line, Mac."

MacIlheny flashed an appreciative grin. "Thanks, Blake." He went to Blake's office and closed the door. In the screen of the visiphone, he saw the face of Paul Loch, of Commercial Rockets, Inc., White Sands.

"How's it going, Mac?" Loch asked. "I understand you're having trouble with Number Four."

"It's worse than just trouble, Paul," MacIlheny told him. He carefully explained what had happened.

Loch nodded. "Looks rough. What do you figure on doing?"

"How much will it cost me to rent one of your RJ-37 jobs with a drone robot in it?"

"Fully fueled?" Loch thought a moment, then named a figure.

"That's pretty steep," MacIlheny objected.

Loch spread his hands. "Actually, it's just a guess; but I'm pretty sure we won't be able to get insurance on her for something like this. What do you plan to do?"

"I want to take an RJ-37 up there to Number Four and use it to put the satellite back in a safe orbit. It'll have to be done quickly or we'll lose the satellite and a few thousand square miles of Earth."

Loch paused again, turning the idea over in his mind. MacIlheny said nothing; he knew how the mind of Paul Loch worked. Finally, Loch said: "Tell you what; get the Government to underwrite the insurance, and we'll give you the RJ-37 at cost. Fair enough?"

MacIlheny nodded. "Get her ready. If the President won't okay the insurance, we'll have to pay the extra tariff. We absolutely can't afford to lose that satellite."

"It'll be ready in half an hour," Loch promised as he cut off.

MacIlheny began punching the code numbers for Washington, but the phone rang before he was through.

Pure luck, MacIlheny thought to himself as the President's face came onto the screen.

"Evening, Fitz," said the President of the United States.

"Good evening, Mr. President."

"Fitz, I understand you're having a little trouble with one of your satellites. The Naval Observatory tells me it's in a collision orbit of some kind. Where will it come down?"

MacIlheny shrugged. "I don't know, sir. It'll depend on how much resistance it offers to the atmosphere at that altitude, and that will depend on how badly it was torn up by the meteor."

"I see. What do you propose to do?"

"I'm going to try to get one of Commercial's RJ-37's up there to put her back on course. I don't want to lose a twelve-million-dollar space station."

"I can understand that, but—" The President looked off his screen suddenly as though someone had attracted his attention. "Hold the line a minute, Fitz," he said. And the screen went blank. MacIlheny waited. When the President came back, he wore a frown on his face. "The French government has been informed of what has happened. They want to know what we intend to do."

"Did you tell them, sir?"

"Not yet, but I will. But there are going to be other governments interested pretty quickly. Nobody wants something like that falling down on their heads. We may have to send up a hydrogen bomb and blow it out of existence if you can't get it back into a safe orbit."

"I know." He paused. "Mr. President, I have an idea. Suppose we load the RJ-37 with a thermonuclear warhead. If we can't change the orbit of the satellite, we'll blast her."

A slow grin spread across the face of the Chief Executive. "Very neat, Fitz; it'll also mean the government will have to underwrite the full insurance cost of the RJ-37 if you have to detonate the bomb."

MacIlheny grinned back. "It will, at that. But don't worry, Mr. President; I won't set off the warhead unless I absolutely have to. I want to save that satellite—not destroy it."

"All right, Fitz. I'll call White Sands and authorize the whole project. And I'll try to keep the foreign governments happy."

"Fine, sir. We'll know more after her first passage through perigee. If her orbit changes too much—"

"I'll leave it up to you, Fitz. Good luck."

The special controls for remote operation of the RJ-37 were in a room just off the main monitors. It was set up just like the control cockpit of the ship itself, with all the instruments in their proper places. If a pilot moved a control knob here, the same knob would move the same amount in the ship. Instead of the heavy paraglass window in the nose of the ship, the control room in the CGC Building had a wide, three-dimensional color TV screen. It gave the illusion of actually being in the ship.

The remote control cockpit was occupied by a Space Service officer—a Major Hamacher, who had been ordered up from a tour of inspection at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He was a square-faced, clear-eyed, prematurely graying man in his early thirties.

MacIlheny was relieved when he saw the major; the officer looked as though he could do the job. MacIlheny had wanted to use one of the Company pilots, but the President had vetoed that idea. If the ship was going to be insured by the government, then piloting it would be the government's job, too.

It had been nearly an hour, now, since the accident which had disabled Satellite Number Four. She had been carefully tracked by several observatories across the face of the Earth, and the figures had been carefully checked and rechecked.

Lower and lower the satellite dropped, as it spun around Earth in its elongated orbit. At a hundred and fifty miles altitude, the air is thin—thinner than the air in any but the very best vacuum tubes. But it is still dense enough to slow down anything traveling as fast as the satellite. The slight friction would be enough to alter the course of the flying moon.

Major Hamacher sat in the control chair, his hat off and his sleeves rolled up. As soon as the satellite started up again and her new orbit stabilized, the major would take off the RJ-37 and guide it to Number Four.

The men waited tensely. MacIlheny gnawed impatiently at the stem of his pipe, which had gone dead minutes before without his noticing it.

They waited. Very soon, now, Number Four would hit perigee.

It never did.

The observatories saw what happened. As the satellite came lower and lower, it looked as though it were following a perfectly normal path. Then, quite suddenly, there was a flare of light from beneath her! She leaped up again, under the driving thrust of her underjets.

Number Four had—somehow—changed her own orbit before the tenuous atmosphere could even begin to drag her down.

CHAPTER III

After a few short bursts which lifted the satellite up into a higher orbit, the jets stopped. The artificial moon went on coasting innocently around the Earth.

"Well—I'll—be—damned!" said MacIlheny softly. The others, either silently or verbally, agreed with him.

"Get a reading on that new orbit!" MacIlheny snapped after a moment. Blake was already on the telephone.

MacIlheny turned to Major Hamacher. "Be ready to take that bird up as soon as we get orbital readings and bearings. There's something screwy as hell going on up there, and I want to find out what it is! Those jets shouldn't be working at all. What could have turned them on at exactly the right moment?" He was talking more to himself than to the major, who was busily making last-minute adjustments on the instruments.

The computations on the new orbit came in, were run through the computers, and then fed into the autopilot section of the remote controls for the RJ-37.

"Any time you're ready, Major," MacIlheny said.

The major adjusted his controls, threw a switch, and pressed a stud.

Over two thousand miles away, in White Sands Spaceport, New Mexico, the atomic-powered, fully armed RJ-37 squirted a tongue of white-hot flame out of her rocket motors, climbed into the air, and launched herself toward space.

Over Major Hamacher's shoulder, MacIlheny and Blake watched the screen that showed the scene from the forward port of the space rocket.

For a while, there was nothing to see. As the ship gained altitude, it burst through a layer of low-hanging clouds, then there was nothing but the blue sky overhead. Gradually, as the air thinned, the sky became darker, more purplish. Stars began to appear, and finally the ship was in the blackness of space.

The major's hands glided smoothly over the controls, guiding the ship along its precalculated orbit, slowly overtaking the runaway satellite.

At first there was nothing to see—only the distant, fixed stars, glittering like tiny shards of diamond against a spread of blackest velvet. Then it became apparent that one of the shards was moving with relationship to the others. It became brighter, bigger. Then it was no longer a point of light, but a globe of metal floating in the infinite darkness of space.

Under the careful manipulation of Major Hamacher, the remote-controlled RJ-37 moved cautiously up to Satellite Number Four. As the details of the globe came into focus, every man in the room gasped involuntarily.

"What the hell is that?" asked Blake.

No one answered. It was obvious to everyone there that whatever it was that had crashed into Number Four and driven it off course, it was most certainly not a meteorite.

At last, MacIlheny said: "I'll be willing to bet my last dollar that that's a spaceship of some kind."

From a gaping hole in the side of the satellite, there protruded a long, cigar-shaped shaft of bluish metal. It looked almost as though someone had shoved a fat blue cigar halfway into a silver tennis ball.

Major Hamacher said softly: "I wonder what kind of metal that ship is made of?"

"Yeah," said MacIlheny, "I wonder."

It was a good question. The steel hull of the Number Four had crumpled and torn like cardboard around the hole where the impact of the ship had melted and volatalized the metal. But the hull of the alien spaceship wasn't even dented.

"What now?" asked the major.

"Take the RJ-37 in carefully, and lock on with magnetic grapples," MacIlheny ordered.

Blake glanced at him. "What if the pilot or crew of that ship is still alive?"

"They probably are," MacIlheny said. "But we've got an H-bomb in our ship; if they try anything funny...."

"What makes you think they're alive?" the major asked as he eased the ship in.

"Somebody set off the atom jets when Number Four approached perigee," MacIlheny reminded him.

The RJ-37 approached Number Four closely, then the magnetic grapples were turned on, and the ship stuck to the hull of the battered space station with a metallic clank. The RJ-37 was only a few yards from the edge of the gaping hole that had been torn in the hull of the satellite. In front of them loomed the queer blue shaft of the alien ship.

"Okay, hold it," said MacIlheny. "Let's see what happens next. Surely they felt the jar when the ship landed." Forcing himself to be calm, MacIlheny struck a match and fired the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe.

They didn't have to wait long. From the edge of the hole, there suddenly appeared a moving shape. It was a manlike figure clad in a brilliant crimson spacesuit. The helmet was a dark purple, and it was difficult to see the head within.

"Looks like a man," said Blake.

"Not quite," MacIlheny said. "Look at the joints in the arms and legs. He's got two knees and two elbows."

"What's that he's holding cradled in his arms?" Blake wondered.

The major grunted. "Weapon of some sort. Look how he's pointing it straight at us."

For a full minute, the figure stood there, for all the world as though he were on the surface of a planet instead of on the outer hull of a space station. Then, slowly, it lowered the thing in its hands. When nothing happened, the figure put the weapon down on the steel hull at its feet and held its oddly double-jointed arms out from its body.

"Wild Bill Hickok," breathed Blake softly.

"Huh?" said the major.

"Hickok used to say: 'I'm a peaceable man.' I guess that's what this guy's trying to say."

"Looks like it," agreed MacIlheny. "I wish there were some way of signaling him."

"We've got the spotlights," suggested the major.

MacIlheny shook his head. "Leave 'em alone. We couldn't make any sense with them, and our friend out there might think they were weapons of some kind. I don't know what that thing he laid down will do, but I don't want to find out just yet."

The alien, his hands still out from his sides, walked slowly toward the RJ-37, his legs moving with a strange, loose suppleness. He came right up to the forward window and peered inside—at least, the attitude of his head suggested peering; within the dark purple helmet, the features could not be distinguished clearly.

At last, the figure stepped back and started making wigwag signs with his arms.

"Smart boy," said MacIlheny. "He recognizes that the ship is remote controlled. Wonder what he's trying to say."

The alien waved his hands and made gestures, but there was no recognizable pattern. None of the hand-signals meant anything to the Earthmen.

Blake leaned over and whispered into MacIlheny's ear. "Hadn't we better call the President, Mac? He'll want to know."

MacIlheny considered for a moment, then nodded. "Give him a direct beam on what's coming over this screen. Then give me a pair of earphones connected to his office. I want to be able to hear what he says, but I don't want him countermanding my orders to Major Hamacher."

The alien was still making his meaningless signals when Blake brought in a pair of earphones and clamped them on MacIlheny's head. A throat mike around his neck completed the communication circuit. "Can you hear me, Mr. President?" MacIlheny asked.

"Yes. Your man Blake explained everything to me."

"Got any advice?"

"Not yet. Let's see what happens. By the way, I've given the impression to the rest of the world that it was through your efforts that Number Four avoided crashing; I don't think we'd better let this leak out just yet."

"Right. Meantime, I'm going to try to capture that lad."

"How?" asked the President.

"Invite him into the ship and bring him back with it."

"All right," said the President, "but be careful."

"He's given up," said Blake, gesturing toward the screen.

The alien had given up his incomprehensible gesticulating and stood with his odd arms folded in an uncomfortable-looking knot.

"Major," said MacIlheny, "open the cargo hold."

The officer looked puzzled, but did as he was told. After all, the President himself had ordered him to obey MacIlheny. He touched a button on one side of the control panel. After four or five seconds, a light came on above it, indicating that the cargo hold of the RJ-37 was open. The alien evidently saw the door swing inward; he hesitated for a moment, then went around to the side of the ship, out of range of the TV camera.

But he didn't go inside immediately. MacIlheny hadn't expected him to; the alien couldn't be that stupid. After perhaps half a minute, the alien figure reappeared and strode deliberately back to his own ship. He opened a port in the side and disappeared within.

Then, quite suddenly, the screen went blank.

"What happened?" snapped MacIlheny.

Blake, who had been watching the beam control instruments, said: "I don't know how he's done it, but he's managed to jam our radio beam! We're not getting any signal through!"

The President's voice crackled in MacIlheny's ears.

"Fitz! Detonate that bomb! We can't take any chances!"

MacIlheny half grinned. "Major," he said, "set off the H-bomb."

The major pressed a red button on the control panel.

Twenty minutes later, the screen came on again, showing the same scene as before. No one was surprised. By then, reports had come in that the satellite was still visible, still in its orbit. The H-bomb had failed to go off; the signal had never reached the detonation device.

The alien was standing in front of the camera, holding a large piece of mechanism in his hands. On Earth, the thing would have been almost too heavy to lift, but the gravitational pull of Satellite Number Four was almost negligible.

"He's got the H-bomb!"

MacIlheny recognized the President's voice in his ears.

The alien bowed toward the camera, then straightened and went back to his own ship. He clambered up the side of it with magnetic soles as easily as he had walked on the hull of the space station. Near the end of his ship, he opened a small door in the hull. Within was utter blackness.

Working slowly and deliberately, he pushed the H-bomb into the blackness. It wasn't just ordinary darkness; it seemed to be an actual, solid wall, painted deep black. As the bomb went in, it looked as though it were cut off abruptly at the black wall. Finally, there was nothing outside except the two detonating wires, which had been clipped off from inside the Earth ship. The alien took the wires in his hands.

"My God!" said the major. "He's going to blow up his own ship! Is he crazy?"

"I don't think so," said MacIlheny slowly. "Let's see what happens."

As the two wires came in contact, the black wall inside the small door became lighter, a pearly gray in color. There was no other result.

"Well I'll be damned," said Blake in a low, shocked voice.

The alien closed the door in the side of his ship and came back down to the camera. He bowed again. Then he pointed to the weapon that he had been carrying and waved his hands. He picked it up and brought it around the RJ-37. From the microphones inside the ship came a faint scraping sound. Then the alien reappeared in front of the ship. His arms were empty; he had put the weapon inside the open cargo hold.

"A fair trade is no robbery," Blake said softly.

The alien bowed once more, then turned on his heel and walked back to his ship. This time, he got inside and closed the door. Then the blue ship moved.

Slowly, like a car backing out of a garage, it pulled out of the hole in the satellite. Nowhere on its surface was there a mark or a scratch. When it was finally free of the satellite, it turned a little, its nose pointing off into space. A pale, rose-colored glow appeared at the tail of the ship, and the cigar of blue metal leaped forward. To all intents and purposes, it simply vanished.

"That," said the major in awe, "is what I call acceleration."

"Here's the way I see it, Mr. President," said MacIlheny several hours later. "When he cracked up by accidentally plowing into Number Four, something happened to his energy supply. Maybe he was already low, I don't know. Anyway, he was out of fuel."

"What do you think he used for fuel?"

"The most efficient there is," said MacIlheny. "Pure energy. Imagine some sort of force field that will let energy in, but won't let it out. It would be dead black on the outside, just like that whatever-it-was in the alien's ship. He just set off the H-bomb inside that field; what little radiation did get out made the field look gray—and that's a damned small loss in comparison with the total energy of that bomb."

"You know, Fitz, I'm going to have a hell of a job explaining where that bomb went," said the President.

"Yeah, but we've got his gun or whatever in exchange."

"But how do you know our technicians will be able to figure it out?"

"I think they will," MacIlheny said. "Their technology must be similar to ours or he wouldn't have been able to figure out how to fire the jets on the satellite or how to set off that bomb. He wouldn't have even known what the bomb was unless he was familiar with something similar. And he wouldn't have been able to blank out our controls unless he had a good idea of how they operated. They may be a little ahead of us, but not too much, and I'll bet we have some things they haven't."

"The trouble is," the President said worriedly, "that we don't know where he came from. He knows where we are, but we don't have any idea where his home planet is."

"That's true. On the other hand, we know something about his physical characteristics, while he doesn't know anything about ours. For instance, I doubt if he'd be happy here on Earth; judging by the helmet he wore, he can't stand too much light. He had it polarized almost black. Probably comes from a planet with a dim, red sun."

"Well, Fitz, when they do come, I hope it's for trade and not for war."

MacIlheny grinned. "It won't be war. Don't you remember? We've started trading already!"

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