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

though they must have been sent from a ship. If so, now that we’re here⁠—particularly the Chicago⁠—there will be no more signals.”

“Not necessarily.” Again Samms’ mind transcended his Tellurian experience and knowledge. He did not suspect the truth, but he was not jumping at conclusions. “There may be highly intelligent life, even upon such a planet as this.”

They waited, and in a few hours a communications beam snapped into life.

“Ready⁠—ready⁠—ready.⁠ ⁠…” it said briskly, for not quite one minute, but that was time enough.

Northrop yelped a string of numbers; Jack blasted the little vessel forward and downward; the three watch officers, keen-eyed at their plates, stabbed their visibeams, ultra-beams, and spy-rays along the indicated line.

“And bore straight through the planet if you have to⁠—they may be on the other side!” Jack cautioned, sharply.

“They aren’t⁠—it’s here, on this side!” Rawlings saw it first. “Nothing much to it, though⁠ ⁠… it looks like a relay station.”

“A relay! I’ll be a.⁠ ⁠…” Jack started to express an unexpurgated opinion, but shut himself up. Young cubs did not swear in front of the First Lensman. “Let’s land, sir, and look the place over, anyway.”

“By all means.”

They landed, and cautiously disembarked. The horizon, while actually quite a little closer than that of Earth, seemed much more distant because there was nothing whatever⁠—no tree, no shrub, no rock or pebble, not even the slightest ripple⁠—to break the geometrical perfection of that surface of smooth, hard, blindingly reflective, fiendishly hot white sand. Samms was highly dubious at first⁠—a ground-temperature of four hundred seventy-five degrees was not to be taken lightly; he did not at all like the looks of that ultra-fervent blue-white sun; and in his wildest imaginings he had never pictured such a desert. Their spacesuits, however, were very well insulated, particularly as to the feet, and highly polished; and in lieu of atmosphere there was an almost perfect vacuum. They could stand it for a while.

The box which housed the relay station was made of non-ferrous metal and was roughly cubical in shape, perhaps five feet on a side. It was so buried that its upper edge was flush with the surface; its top, which was practically indistinguishable from the surrounding sand, was not bolted or welded, but was simply laid on, loose.

Previous spy-ray inspection having proved that the thing was not booby-trapped, Jack lifted the cover by one edge and all three Lensmen studied the mechanisms at close range; learning nothing new. There was an extremely sensitive non-directional receiver, a highly directional sender, a beautifully precise uranium-clock director, and an “eternal” powerpack. There was nothing else.

“What next, sir?” Northrop asked. “There’ll be an incoming signal, probably, in a couple of days. Shall we stick around and see whether it comes in from Cavenda or not?”

“You and Jack had better wait, yes.” Samms thought for minutes. “I do not believe, now, that the signal will come from Cavenda, or that it will ever come twice from the same direction, but we will have to make sure. But I can’t see any reason for it!”

“I think I can, sir.” This was Northrop’s specialty. “No spaceship could possibly hit Tellus from here except by accident with a single-ended beam, and they can’t use a double-ender because it would have to be on all the time and would be as easy to trace as the Mississippi River. But this planet did all its settling ages ago⁠—which is undoubtedly why they picked it out⁠—and that director in there is a Marchanti⁠—the second Marchanti I have ever seen.”

“Whatever that is,” Jack put in, and even Samms thought a question.

“The most precise thing ever built,” the specialist explained. “Accuracy limited only by that of determination of relative motions. Give me an accurate enough equation to feed into it, like that tape is doing, and two sighting shots, and I’ll guarantee to pour an eighteen-inch beam into any two foot cup on Earth. My guess is that it’s aimed at some particular bucket-antenna on one of the Solar planets. I could spoil its aim easily enough, but I don’t suppose that is what you’re after.”

“Decidedly not. We want to trace them, without exciting any more suspicion than is absolutely necessary. How often, would you say, do they have to come here to service this station⁠—change tapes, and whatever else might be necessary?”

“Change tapes, is all. Not very often, by the size of those reels. If they know the relative motions exactly enough, they could compute as far ahead as they care to. I’ve been timing that reel⁠—it’s got pretty close to three months left on it.”

“And more than that much has been used. It’s no wonder we didn’t see anything.” Samms straightened up and stared out across the frightful waste. “Look there⁠—I thought I saw something move⁠—it is moving!”

“There’s something moving closer than that, and it’s really funny.” Jack laughed deeply. “It’s like the paddle-wheels, shaft and all, of an old-fashioned river steamboat, rolling along as unconcernedly as you please. He won’t miss me by over four feet, but he isn’t swerving a hair. I think I’ll block him off, just to see what he does.”

“Be careful, Jack!” Samms cautioned, sharply. “Don’t touch it⁠—it may be charged, or worse.”

Jack took the metal cover, which he was still holding, and by working it back and forth edgewise in the sand, made of it a vertical barrier squarely across the thing’s path. The traveler paid no attention, did not alter its steady pace of a couple of miles per hour. It measured about twelve inches long over all; its paddle-wheel-like extremities were perhaps two inches wide and three inches in diameter.

“Do you think it’s actually alive, sir? In a place like this?”

“I’m sure of it. Watch carefully.”

It struck the barrier and stopped. That is, its forward motion stopped, but its rolling did not. Its rate of revolution did not change; it either did not know or did not care that its drivers were slipping on the smooth, hard sand; that it could not climb the vertical