<h2><SPAN name="II" id="II"></SPAN>II</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> IP-M-122 picked them up. The M-122 got out there
two days later, in response to the calls the T-247 had sent
out. As soon as she got within ten million miles of the little
tender, she began getting Cole's signals, and within twelve
hours had reached the tiny thing, located it, and picked it
up.</p>
<p>Captain Jim Warren was in command, one of the old
school commanders of the IP. He listened to Kendall's report,
listened to Cole's tale—and radioed back a report of
his own. Space pirates in a large ship had attacked the
T-247, he said, and carried it away. He advised a close
watch. On Pluto, his investigations disclosed nothing more
than the fact that three mines had been raided, all platinum
supplies taken, and the records and machinery removed.</p>
<hr class="hrhide" />
<p>The M-122 was a fifty-man patrol cruiser, and Warren
felt sure he could handle the menace alone, and hung around
for over two weeks looking for it. He saw nothing, and no
further reports came of attack. Again and again, Kendall tried
to convince him this ship he was hunting was no mere space
pirate, and again and again Warren grunted, and went
on his way. He would not send in any report Kendall made
out, because to do so would add his endorsement to that
report. He would not take Kendall back, though that was
well within his authority.</p>
<p>In fact, it was a full month before Kendall again set
foot on any of the Minor Planets, and then it was Mars,
the base of the M-122. Kendall and Cole took passage<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></SPAN></span>
immediately on an IP supply ship, and landed in New York
six days later. At once, Kendall headed for Commander
McLaurin's office. Buck Kendall, lieutenant of the IP, found
he would have to make regular application to see McLaurin
through a dozen intermediate officers.</p>
<p>By this time, Kendall was savagely determined to see
McLaurin himself, and see him in the least possible time.
Cole, too, was beginning to believe in Kendall's assertion
of the stranger ship's extra-systemic origin. As yet neither
could understand the strange actions of the machine, its
attack on the Pluto mines, and the capture and theft of a
patrol ship.</p>
<p>"There is," said Kendall angrily, "just one way to see McLaurin
and see him quick. And, by God, I'm going to. Will
you resign with me, Cole? I'll see him within a week then,
I'll bet."</p>
<p>For a minute, Cole hesitated. Then he shook hands with
his friends. "Today!" And that day it was. They resigned, together.
Immediately, Buck Kendall got the machinery in motion
for an interview, working now from the outside, pulling
the strings with the weight of a hundred million dollar fortune.
Even the IP officers had to pay a bit of attention when
Bernard Kendall, multi-millionaire began talking and demanding
things. Within a week, Kendall <i>did</i> see McLaurin.</p>
<p>At that time, McLaurin was fifty-three years old, his crisp
hair still black as space, with scarcely a touch of the gray
that appears in his more recent photographs. He stood six
feet tall, a broad-shouldered, powerful man, his face grave
with lines of intelligence and character. There was also a
permanent narrowing of the eyes, from years under the blazing
sun of space. But most of all, while those years in space
had narrowed and set his eyes, they had not narrowed and
set his mind. An infinitely finer character than old Jim
Warren, his experience in space had taught him always to
expect the unexpected, to understand the incomprehensible
as being part of the unknown and incalculable properties of
space and the worlds that swam in it. Besides the fine technical
education he had started with, he had acquired a liberal<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></SPAN></span>
education in mankind. When Buck Kendall, straight and
powerful, came into his office with Cole, he recognized in him
a character that would drive steadily and straight for its
goal. Also, he recognized behind the millionaire that had
succeeded in pulling wires enough to see him, the scientist
who had had more than one paper published "in an amateur
way."</p>
<p>"Dr. Bernard Kendall?" he asked, rising.</p>
<p>"Yes, sir. Late Buck Kendall, lieutenant of the IP. I quit
and got Cole here to quit with me, so we could see you."</p>
<p>"Unusual tactics. I've had several men join up to get an
interview with me." McLaurin smiled.</p>
<p>"Yes, I can imagine that, but we had to see you in a
hurry. A hidebound old rapscallion by the name of Jim
Warren picked us up out by Pluto, floating around in a six-man
tender. We made some reports to him, but he wouldn't
believe, and he wouldn't send them through—so we had to
send ourselves through. Sir, this system is about to be attacked
by some extra-systemic race. The IP-T-247 was so
attacked, her crew killed off, and the ship itself carried away."</p>
<p>"I got the report Captain Jim Warren sent through, stating
it was a gang of space pirates. Now what makes you believe
otherwise?"</p>
<p>"That ship that attacked us, attacked with a neutron
gun, a gun that shot neutrons through the hull of our ship
as easily as protons pass through open space. Those neutrons
killed off four of the crew, and spared us only because
we happened to be behind the water tanks. Masses of
hydrogen will stop neutrons, so we lived, and escaped in
the tender. The little tender, lightless, escaped their observation,
and we were picked up. Now, when the 247 had
been picked up, and locked into their ship, that ship started
accelerating. It accelerated so fast along my line of sight
that it just dwindled, and—vanished. It didn't vanish in
distance, it vanished <i>because it exceeded the speed of light</i>."</p>
<p>"Isn't that impossible?"</p>
<p>"Not at all. It can be done—if you can find some way of
escaping from this space to do it. Now if you could cut<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></SPAN></span>
across through a higher dimension, your <i>projection</i> in this
dimension might easily exceed the speed of light. For instance,
if I could cut directly through the Earth, at a speed
of one thousand miles an hour, my projection on the surface
would go twelve thousand miles while I was going eight.
Similar, if you could cut <i>through</i> the four dimensional space
instead of following its surface, you'd attain a speed greater
than light."</p>
<p>"Might it not still be a space pirate? That's a lot easier
to believe, even allowing your statement that he exceeded
the speed of light."</p>
<p>"If you invented a neutron gun which could kill through
tungsten walls without injuring anything within, a system
of accelerating a ship that didn't affect the inhabitants of that
ship, and a means of exceeding the speed of light, all within
a few months of each other, would you become a pirate?
I wouldn't, and I don't think any one else would. A pirate
is a man who seeks adventure and relief from work. Given
a means of exceeding the speed of light, I'd get all the adventure
I wanted investigating other planets. If I didn't
have a cent before, I'd have relief from work by selling it for
a few hundred millions—and I'd sell it mighty easily too,
for an invention like that is worth an incalculable sum. Tie
to that the value of compensated acceleration, and no
man's going to turn pirate. He can make more millions selling
his inventions than he can make thousands turning
pirate with them. So who'd turn pirate?"</p>
<p>"Right." McLaurin nodded. "I see your point. Now before
I'd accept your statements <i>in re</i> the 'speed of light'
thing, I'd want opinions from some IP physicists."</p>
<p>"Then let's have a conference, because something's got to
be done soon. I don't know why we haven't heard further
from that fellow."</p>
<p>"Privately—we have," McLaurin said in a slightly worried
tone. "He was detected by the instruments of every
IP observatory I suspect. We got the reports but didn't
know what to make of them. They indicated so many funny
things, they were sent in as accidental misreadings of the<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></SPAN></span>
instruments. But since <i>all</i> the observatories reported them,
similar misreadings, at about the same times, that is with
variations of only a few hours, we thought something must
have been up. The only thing was the phenomena were
reported progressively from Pluto to Neptune, clear across the
solar system, in a definite progression, but at a velocity of
crossing that didn't tie in with any conceivable force. They
crossed faster than the velocity of light. That ship must have
spent about half an hour off each planet before passing on
to the next. And, accepting your faster-than-light explanation,
we can understand it."</p>
<p>"Then I think you have proof."</p>
<p>"If we have, what would you do about it?"</p>
<p>"Get to work on those 'misreadings' of the instruments
for one thing, and for a second, and more important, line
every IP ship with paraffin blocks six inches thick."</p>
<p>"Paraffin—why?"</p>
<p>"The easiest form of hydrogen to get. You can't use solid
hydrogen, because that melts too easily. Water can be turned
into steam too easily, and requires more work. Paraffin
is a solid that's largely hydrogen. That's what they've
always used on neutrons since they discovered them. Confine
your paraffin between tungsten walls, and you'll stop
the secondary protons as well as the neutrons."</p>
<p>"Hmmm—I suppose so. How about seeing those physicists?"</p>
<p>"I'd like to see them today, sir. The sooner you get
started on this work, the better it will be for the IP."</p>
<p>"Having seen me, will you join up in the IP again?"
asked McLaurin.</p>
<p>"No, sir, I don't think I will. I have another field you
know, in which I may be more useful. Cole here's a better
technician than fighter—and a darned good fighter, too—and
I think that an inexperienced space-captain is a lot
less useful than a second-rate physicist at work in a laboratory.
If we hope to get anywhere, or for that matter, I
suspect, stay anywhere, we'll have to do a lot of research
pretty promptly."<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"What's your explanation of that ship?"</p>
<p>"One of two things: an inventor of some other system
trying out his latest toy, or an expedition sent out by a
planetary government for exploration. I favor the latter for
two reasons: that ship was <i>big</i>. No inventor would build a
thing that size, requiring a crew of several hundred men to
try out his invention. A government would build just about
that if they wanted to send out an expedition. If it were an
inventor, he'd be interested in meeting other people, to see
what they had in the way of science, and probably he'd
want to do it in a peaceable way. That fellow wasn't interested
in peace, by any means. So I think it's a government
ship, and an unfriendly government. They sent that ship
out either for scientific research, for trade research and
exploration, or for acquisitive exploration. If they were out
for scientific research, they'd proceed as would the inventor,
to establish friendly communication. If they were out
for trade, the same would apply. If they were out for acquisitive
exploration, they'd investigate the planets, the sun,
the people, only to the extent of learning how best to
overcome them. They'd want to get a sample of our people,
and a sample of our weapons. They'd want samples of our
machinery, our literature and our technology. That's exactly
what that ship got.</p>
<p>"Somebody, somewhere out there in space, either doesn't
like their home, or wants more home. They've been out
looking for one. I'll bet they sent out hundreds of expeditions
to thousands of nearby stars, gradually going further
and further, seeking a planetary system. This is probably
the one and only one they found. It's a good one too.
It has planets at all temperatures, of all sizes. It is a fairly
compact one, it has a stable sun that will last far longer than
any race can hope to."</p>
<p>"Hmm—how can there be good and bad planetary systems?"
asked McLaurin. "I'd never thought of that."</p>
<p>Kendall laughed. "Mighty easy. How'd you like to live
on a planet of a Cepheid Variable? Pleasant situation, with
the radiation flaring up and down. How'd you like to live on<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></SPAN></span>
a planet of Antares? That blasted sun is so big, to have a
comfortable planet you'd have to be at least ten billion miles
out. Then if you had an interplanetary commerce, you'd
have to struggle with orbits tens of billions of miles across
instead of mere millions. Further, you'd have a sun so blasted
big, it would take an impossible amount of energy to lift
the ship up from one planet to another. If your trip was,
say, twenty billions of miles to the next planet, you'd be
fighting a gravity as bad as the solar gravity at Earth
here all the way—no decline with a little distance like
that."</p>
<p>"H-m-m-m—quite true. Then I should say that Mira
would take the prize. It's a red giant, and it's an irregular
variable. The sunlight there would be as unstable as the
weather in New England. It's almost as big as Antares, and
it won't hold still. Now that <i>would</i> make a bad planetary
system."</p>
<p>"It would!" Kendall laughed. But as we know—he laughed
too soon, and he shouldn't have used the conditional. He
should have said, "It does!"</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></SPAN></span></p>
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