Operation: Outer Space by Murray Leinster (best short novels of all time TXT) 📖

was a deep-browed man rather impatiently turning to face his new visitors.

Holden clumsily unfastened the face-plate of his helmet and gloomily explained his mission. He introduced Cochrane and Babs, verifying in the process that the dark man was the Jones he had come to see. A physics laboratory high in the fastnesses of the Lunar Apennines is an odd place for a psychiatrist to introduce himself on professional business. But Holden only explained unhappily that Dabney had sent them to learn about his discovery and arrange for a public-relations job to make it known.

Cochrane saw Jones' expression flicker sarcastically just once during Holden's explanation. Otherwise he was poker-faced.

"I was explaining the discovery to these two," he observed.

"Shoot it," said Cochrane to West. It was reasonable to[Pg 34] ask West for an explanation, because he would translate everything into televisable terms.

West said briskly—exactly as if before a television camera—that Mr. Dabney had started from the well-known fact that the properties of space are modified by energy fields. Magnetic and gravitational and electrostatic fields rotate polarized light or bend light or do this or that as the case may be. But all previous modifications of the constants of space had been in essentially spherical fields. All previous fields had extended in all directions, increasing in intensity as the square of the distance ...

"Cut," said Cochrane.

West automatically abandoned his professional delivery. He placidly re-addressed himself to his beer.

"How about it, Jones?" asked Cochrane. "Dabney's got a variation? What is it?"

"It's a field of force that doesn't spread out. You set up two plates and establish this field between them," said Jones curtly. "It's circularly polarized and it doesn't expand. It's like a searchlight beam or a microwave beam, and it stays the same size like a pipe. In that field—or pipe—radiation travels faster than it does outside. The properties of space are changed between the plates. Therefore the speed of all radiation. That's all."

Cochrane meditatively seated himself. He approved of this Jones, whose eyebrows practically met in the middle of his forehead. He was not more polite than politeness required. He did not express employer-like rapture at the mention of his employer's name.

"But what can be done with it?" asked Cochrane practically.

"Nothing," said Jones succinctly. "It changes the properties of space, but that's all. Can you think of any use for a faster-than-light radiation-pipe? I can't."

Cochrane cocked an eye at Jamison, who could extrapolate at the drop of an equation. But Jamison shook his head.

"Communication between planets," he said morosely, "when we get to them. Chats between sweethearts on Earth and Pluto. Broadcasts to the stars when we find that another one's set up a similar plate and is ready to chat with us. There's nothing else."

Cochrane waved his hand. It is good policy to put a specialist in his place, occasionally.

"Demonstration?" he asked Jones.[Pg 35]

"There are plates across the crater out yonder," said Jones without emotion. "Twenty miles clear reach. I can send a message across and get it relayed twice and back through two angles in about five per cent of the time radiation ought to take."

Cochrane said with benign cynicism:

"Jamison, you work by guessing where you can go. Jones works by guessing where he is. But this is a public relations job. I don't know where we are or where we can go, but I know where we want to take this thing."

Jones looked at him. Not hostilely, but with the detached interest of a man accustomed to nearly exact science, when he watches somebody work in one of the least precise of them all.

Holden said:

"You mean you've worked out some sort of production."

"No production," said Cochrane blandly. "It isn't necessary. A straight public-relations set-up. We concoct a story and then let it leak out. We make it so good that even the people who don't believe it can't help spreading it." He nodded at Jamison. "Right now, Jamison, we want a theory that the sending of radiation at twenty times the speed of light means that there is a way to send matter faster than light—as soon as we work it out. It means that the inertia-mass which increases with speed—Einstein's stuff—is not a property of matter, but of space, just as the air-resistance that increases when an airplane goes faster is a property of air and not of the plane. Maybe we need to work out a theory that all inertia is a property of space. We'll see if we need that. But anyhow, just as a plane can go faster in thin air, so matter—any matter—will move faster in this field as soon as we get the trick of it. You see?"

Holden shook his head.

"What's that got in it to make Dabney famous?" he asked.

"Jamison will extrapolate from there," Cochrane assured him. "Go ahead, Jamison. You're on."

Jamison said promptly, with the hypnotic smoothness of the practiced professional:

"When this development has been completed, not only will messages be sent at multiples of the speed of light, but matter! Ships! The barrier to the high destiny of mankind; the limitation of our race to a single planet of a minor sun—these[Pg 36] handicaps crash and will shatter as the great minds of humanity bend their efforts to make the Dabney faster-than-light principle the operative principle of our ships. There are thousands of millions of suns in our galaxy, and not less than one in three has planets, and among these myriads of unknown worlds there will be thousands with seas and land and clouds and continents, fit for men to enter upon, there to rear their cities. There will be starships roaming distant sun-clusters, and landing on planets in the Milky Way. We ourselves will see freight-lines to Rigel and Arcturus, and journey on passenger-liners singing through the void to Andromeda and Aldebaran! Dabney has made the first breach in the barrier to the illimitable greatness of humanity!"

Then he stopped and said professionally:

"I can polish that up a bit, of course. All right?"

"Fair," conceded Cochrane. He turned to Holden. "How about a public-relations job on that order? Won't that sort of publicity meet the requirements? Will your patient be satisfied with that grade of appreciation?"

Holden drew a deep breath. He said unsteadily:

"As a neurotic personality, he won't require that it be true. All he'll want is the seeming. But—Jed, could it be really true? Could it?"

Cochrane laughed unpleasantly. He did not admire himself. His laughter showed it.

"What do you want?" he demanded. "You got me a job I didn't want. You shoved it down my throat! Now there's the way to get it done! What more can you ask?"

Holden winced. Then he said heavily:

"I'd like for it to be true."

Jones moved suddenly. He said in an oddly surprised voice:

"D'you know, it can be! I didn't realize! It can be true! I can make a ship go faster than light!"

Cochrane said with exquisite irony:

"Thanks, but we don't need it. We aren't getting paid for that! All we need is a modicum of appreciation for a neurotic son-in-law of a partner of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe! A public-relations job is all that's required. You give West the theory, and Jamison will do the prophecy, and Bell will write it out."

Jones said calmly:

"I will like hell! Look! I discovered this faster-than-light field in the first place! I sold it to Dabney because he[Pg 37] wanted to be famous! I got my pay and he can keep it! But if he can't understand it himself, even to lecture about it ... Do you think I'm going to throw in some extra stuff I noticed, that I can fit into that theory but nobody else can—Do you think I'm going to give him starships as a bonus?"

Holden said, nodding, with his lips twisted:

"I should have figured that! He bought his great discovery from you, eh? And that's what he gets frustrated about!"

Cochrane snapped:

"I thought you psychiatrists knew the facts of life, Bill! Dabney's not unusual in my business! He's almost a typical sponsor!"

"When you ask me to throw away starships," said Jones coldly, "for a publicity feature, I don't play. I won't take the credit for the field away from Dabney. I sold him that with my eyes open. But starships are more important than a fool's hankering to be famous! He'd never try it! He'd be afraid it wouldn't work! I don't play!"

Holden said stridently:

"I don't give a damn about any deal you made with Dabney! But if you can get us to the stars—all us humans who need it—you've got to!"

Jones said, again calmly:

"I'm willing. Make me an offer—not cash, but a chance to do something real—not just a trick for a neurotic's ego!"

Cochrane grinned at him very peculiarly.

"I like your approach. You've got illusions. They're nice things to have. I wouldn't mind having some myself. Bill," he said to Dr. William Holden, "how much nerve has Dabney?"

"Speaking unprofessionally," said Holden, "he's a worm with wants. He hasn't anything but cravings. Why?"

Cochrane grinned again, his head cocked on one side.

"He wouldn't take part in an enterprise to reach the stars, would he?" When Holden shook his head, Cochrane said zestfully, "I'd guess that the peak of his ambition would be to have the credit for it if it worked, but he wouldn't risk being associated with it until it had worked! Right?"

"Right," said Holden. "I said he was a worm. What're you driving at?"

"I'm outlining what you're twisting my arm to make me do," said Cochrane, "in case you haven't noticed. Bill, if[Pg 38] Jones can really make a ship go faster than light—"

"I can," repeated Jones. "I simply didn't think of the thing in connection with travel. I only thought of it for signalling."

"Then," said Cochrane, "I'm literally forced, for Dabney's sake, to do something that he'd scream shrilly at if he heard about it. We're going to have a party, Bill! A party after your and my and Jones' hearts!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Holden.

"We make a production after all," said Cochrane, grinning. "We are going to take Dabney's discovery—the one he bought publicity rights to—very seriously indeed. I'm going to get him acclaim. First we break a story of what Dabney's field means for the future of mankind—and then we prove it! We take a journey to the stars! Want to make your reservations now?"

"You mean," said West incredulously, "a genuine trip? Why?"

Cochrane snapped at him suddenly.

"Because I can't kid myself any more," he rasped. "I've found out how little I count in the world and the estimation of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe! I've found out I'm only a little man when I thought I was a big one, and I won't take it! Now I've got an excuse to try to be a big man! That's reason enough, isn't it?"

Then he glared around the small laboratory under the dust-heap. He was irritated because he did not feel splendid emotions after making a resolution and a plan which ought to go down in history—if it worked. He wasn't uplifted. He wasn't aware of any particular feeling of being the instrument of destiny or anything else. He simply felt peevish and annoyed and obstinate about trying the impossible trick.

It annoyed him additionally, perhaps, to see the expression of starry-eyed admiration on Babs' face as she looked at him across the untidy laboratory table, cluttered up with beer-cans.

[Pg 39]

CHAPTER THREE

It is a matter of record that the American continents were discovered because ice-boxes were unknown in the fifteenth century. There being no refrigeration, meat did not keep. But meat was not too easy to come by, so it had to be eaten, even when it stank. Therefore it was a noble enterprise, and to the glory of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, to put up the financial backing for even a crackpot who might get spices cheaper and thereby make the consumption of slightly spoiled meat less unpleasant. Which was why Columbus got three ships and crews of jailbirds for them from a government still busy trying to drive the Moors out of the last corner of Spain.

This was a precedent for the matter on hand now. Cochrane happened to know the details about Columbus because he'd checked over the research when he did a show on the Dikkipatti Hour dealing with him. There were more precedents. The elaborate bargain by which Columbus was to be made hereditary High Admiral of the Western Oceans, with a bite of all revenue obtained by the passage he was to discover—he had to hold out for such terms to make the package he was selling look attractive. Nobody buys anything that is underpriced too much. It looks phoney. So Cochrane made his preliminaries rather more impressive than they need have been from a strictly practical point of view, in order to