First Lensman E. E. Smith (superbooks4u txt) 📖

front of him. Now he turned, with a highly exaggerated deference, to the two Lensmen.

“Sirs, which of your Magnificences is officially the commander of this here bucket of odds and ends at the present instant?”

“Him.” Jack used his cigarette as a pointer. “The guy with the misplaced plucked eyebrow on his upper lip. I don’t come on duty until sixteen hundred hours⁠—one precious Tellurian minute yet in which to dream of the beauties of Earth so distant in space and in both past and future time.”

“Huh? Beauties? Plural? Next time I see a party whose pictures are cluttering up this whole ship I’ll tell her about your polygamous ideas. I’ll ignore that crack about my mustache, though, since you can’t raise one of your own. I’m ignoring you, too⁠—like this, see?” Ostentatiously turning his back upon the lounging Kinnison, Northrop stepped carefully over three or four breadboard hookups and stared into the plate over the watch officer’s shoulder. He then studied the chart. “Was ist los, Stu? I don’t see a thing.”

“More Jack’s line than yours, Mase. This system we’re headed for is a triple, and the chart says it’s a double. Natural enough, of course. This whole region is unexplored, so the charts are astronomicals, not surveys. But that makes us Prime Discoverers, and our Commanding Officer⁠—and the book says ‘Officer,’ not ‘Officers’⁠—has got to.⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s me, now,” Jack announced, striding grandly toward the plate. “Amscray, oobsbay. I will name the baby. I will report. I will go down in history.⁠ ⁠…”

“Bounce back, small fry. You weren’t at the time of discovery.” Northrop placed a huge hand flat against Jack’s face and pushed gently. “You’ll go down, sure enough⁠—not in history, but from a knock on the knob⁠—if you try to steal any thunder away from me. And besides, you’d name it ‘Dimples’⁠—what a revolting thought!”

“And what would you name it? ‘Virgilia,’ I suppose?”

“Far from it, my boy.” He had intended doing just that, but now he did not quite dare. “After our project, of course. The planet we’re heading for will be Zabriska; the suns will be A-, B-, and C-Zabriskae, in order of size; and the watch officer then on duty, Lieutenant L. Stuart Rawlings, will engross these and all other pertinent data in the log. Can you classify ’em from here, Jack?”

“I can make some guesses⁠—close enough, probably, for Discovery work.” Then, after a few minutes: “Two giants, a blue-white and a bluish yellow; and a yellow dwarf.”

“Dwarf in the Trojan?”

“That would be my guess, since that is the only place it could stay very long, but you can’t tell much from one look. I can tell you one thing, though⁠—unless your Zabriska is in a system straight beyond this one, it’s got to be a planet of the big fellow himself; and brother, that sun is hot!”

“It’s got to be here, Jack. I haven’t made that big an error in reading a beam since I was a sophomore.”

“I’ll buy that⁠ ⁠… well, we’re close enough, I guess.” Jack killed the driving blasts, but not the Bergenholm; the inertialess vessel stopped instantaneously in open space. “Now we’ve got to find out which one of those twelve or fifteen planets was on our line when that last message was sent.⁠ ⁠… There, we’re stable enough, I hope. Open your cameras, Mase. Pull the first plate in fifteen minutes. That ought to give me enough track so I can start the job, since we’re at a wide angle to their ecliptic.”

The work went on for an hour or so. Then:

“Something coming from the direction of Tellus,” the watch officer reported. “Big and fast. Shall I hail her?”

“Might as well,” but the stranger hailed first.

“Spaceship Chicago, NA2AA, calling. Are you in trouble? Identify yourself, please.”

“Spaceship NA774J acknowledging. No trouble.⁠ ⁠…”

“Northrop! Jack!” came Virgil Samms’ highly concerned thought. The superdreadnaught flashed alongside, a bare few hundred miles away, and stopped. “Why did you stop here?”

“This is where our signal came from, sir.”

“Oh.” A hundred thoughts raced through Samms’ mind, too fast and too fragmentary to be intelligible. “I see you’re computing. Would it throw you off too much to go inert and match intrinsics, so that I can join you?”

“No sir; I’ve got everything I need for a while.”

Samms came aboard; three Lensmen studied the chart.

“Cavenda is there,” Samms pointed out. “Trenco is there, off to one side. I felt sure that your signal originated on Cavenda; but Zabriska, here, while on almost the same line, is less than half as far from Tellus.” He did not ask whether the two young Lensmen were sure of their findings. He knew. “This arouses my curiosity no end⁠—does it merely complicate the thionite problem, or does it set up an entirely new problem? Go ahead, boys, with whatever you were going to do next.”

Jack had already determined that the planet they wanted was the second out; A-Zabriskae Two. He drove the scout as close to the planet as he could without losing complete coverage; stationed it on the line toward Sol.

“Now we wait a bit,” he answered. “According to recent periodicity, not less than four hours and not more than ten. With the next signal we’ll nail that transmitter down to within a few feet. Got your spotting screens full out, Mase?”

“Recent periodicity?” Samms snapped. “It has improved, then, lately?”

“Very much, sir.”

“That helps immensely. With George Olmstead harvesting broadleaf, it would. It is still one problem. While we wait, shall we study the planet a little?”

They explored; finding that A-Zabriskae Two was a disappointing planet indeed. It was small, waterless, airless, utterly featureless, utterly barren. There were no elevations, no depressions, no visible markings whatever⁠—not even a meteor crater. Every square yard of its surface was apparently exactly like every other.

“No rotation,” Jack reported, looking up from the bolometer. “That sand-pile is not inhabited and never will be. I’m beginning to wonder.”

“So am I, now,” Northrop admitted. “I still say that those signals came from this line and distance, but it looks as