The Red Stuff

CHAPTER I

At 20.58 G.M.T. on the 6th January 2051 the radio-operator of the Madge G. reported to the Captain that he had picked up a message globe and asked for further instruc­tions.

The Madge G. after a cautious route well out of the elliptic to hurdle the asteroid belt had corrected course and was now in fall towards her desti­nation, Callisto, Moon IV, of Jupiter. Her Captain, John G. Troyte, was not pleased by his operator's report. The passage of the aster­oids is always a strain for a con­scien­tious man; even at wide berth there is still the chance of lonely out­flyers from the main swarm which will go through a ship as if she were a paper hoop. There is not a lot to be done about it: should the out­flyer be any­thing above the size of a foot­ball, it is just too bad; if it is smaller, prompt action can save the ship, provi­ding no vital part is hit. Alert­ness sus­tained for the long period is extremely tiring and Captain Troyte felt that he had earned a period of repose and relax­ation during the fall towards Callisto.

What was more, he was pretty certain it would not turn out to be a message-globe after all. He had had such a report half a dozen times in the course of his career, and it had always turned out to be untrue. In the whole of his time in space he could only recall five being picked up at all. They were a good idea, only they didn't come off: they'd have been all right if there hadn't been quite so much space for them to get lost in, but, practice being so different from theory, it was little wonder that the clause for their compul­sory carriage had been struck out of the shipping regu­lations. They stood, in his opinion, as little chance of being picked up as a two-ounce bottle in mid-Atlantic, probably less. He went along to the radio-cabin himself. The operator was humming in rhythmic har­mony with the High-Shakers broad­cast from Tedwich, Mars, when he entered.

“Turn off that blamed racket,” said Captain Troyte shortly. “Now what's all this about a globe?”

The operator clicked out the High-Shakers, and touched a switch to bring in the pre-set receiver. He listened a moment and then handed over the head-phones. The Captain held one to his ear, and waited: after a few seconds came an unmis­takable da da, da da di. He looked at his watch, timing it. Exactly ten seconds later it came again —da da, da da di. He waited until it had repeated once more.

“Good heavens, I really believe it is,” he said.

“Can't be anything else, sir,” said the operator, smugly.

“Got a line on it?”

The operator had. He gave the angles. The Captain considered. The globe was ahead. By rough clock-face placing, at four o'clock 30 degrees oblique on the last reading, and widening. There was no like­li­hood of colli­ding with it.

“Is it coming towards us, or are we chasing it?” he demanded.

“Can't say, sir. At a guess I should say we're more or less chasing it. It's signal strength had improved, but only slowly.”

“H'm,” said the Captain thought­fully. “We'll have to get it in. Keep an ear on it. Don't do any­thing until you're sure the signal strength is past maxi­mum, there'd be a nasty mess if we were to hit it head on. When it's begun to fade get the acti­vator going, and we'll fish it in. But for God's sake do it gently, we don't want the thing hurtling at us like a cannon ball. Better let me know once you've got it started.”

The Captain returned to his own cabin more inter­ested than he admitted. The message-globe was an ingenious contri­vance which had looked like being more useful than it had proved. The problem had been to provide a ship with some means of communi­cating its trouble in case of radio fail­ure or wreck. In theory it was to be dis­charged in the direc­tion of the nearest space­line where its signal could scarcely fail to be picked up; in actual use very few had been picked up and it had progres­sively less chance of being found as the area of space opera­tion increased. The general opinion which had led to its omis­sion from the statutory list of equip­ment was that the majority of the globes sent off conti­nued to tick out their signals unde­tec­ted until their power gave out where­upon they floated about in space as additional hazards. There was a feeling that the hazards of space were quite nume­rous enough with­out them.

The radio operator hung his phones on a hook where he could hear the inter­mittent signal from the globe conve­niently, pondered whether he should try to listen to the High-Shakers at the same time, decided against it, and hunted for the sealed box in which the acti­vator had lain ever since the Madge G. was launched. After study of the instruc­tions which he had not seen since the day when he'd mugged them up for his final exami­nation, he got it set up. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

Two and a half hours later the meter showed the signal strength of the globe to be falling off slightly. He lit a cigarette, took another look at the operating instruc­tions and grunted. Then he pressed a key on the activator, and waited.

Nearly a thousand miles away in space the 2½-foot-diameter steel globe revolved slowly as it drifted in a leisurely way upon the orbit into which it had fallen. To all appear­ance it was as inert as any other frag­ment of flot­sam in the void. Then gradually, almost imper­cep­tibly at first, its revo­lu­tion began to slow. In a few minutes it was revolving clumsily like a ball with its weight out of true. Another five minutes and it failed to complete a revolution, it paused as though just short of top dead centre, swung back, oscil­lated gently awhile and then came to rest.

Back on the Madge G., the radio operator called up the navigator who did some quick figuring. Out in space the globe swung a little in response to the cal­cu­la­tions. The radio operator pressed another key. An observer, had there been one close to the globe, would have seen little jets of flame spurt from that side of it distant from the Madge G. as the relays went in. Simul­tan­eously he would have watched it break from its orbit and scud away on a course calcu­lated to inter­sect with that of the ship far out of sight.

The radio operator informed the Captain that the globe was on its way. The Captain joined him, and together they bent over the signal-meter.

“What did you give?” asked Captain Troyte.

“Five seconds on low power, sir,” the operator told him.

The strength of reception according to the needle was almost constant.

“H'm. Our own speed, near as damn it,” said the Captain after a few minutes. “Better give it the same again.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The operator pressed his key once more. Far away in the shining steel ball the relays clicked as before. Fuel was injected into the minia­ture combus­tion chambers and ignited. Little daggers of flame stabbed out into the dark­ness behind the gtobe, and it thrust forward on its way at twice its former speed.

“That'll do,” the Captain said. “You've no idea of its distance yet?”

“Impossible to tell, sir. If the batteries are strong it may be a long way off. If they're down at all it may be only a hundred miles or so away. No way of knowing, sir.”

“All right. Tell your relief to keep a check on it, and I'll have the navigator set a watch for it. If it is a long way off it may be a number of hours before we spot it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Madge G. continued uninter­rupted in her fall towards Jupiter. The operator after further consul­tation with the navi­gator corrected the globe's course slightly in com­pen­sa­tion for the in­creased speed. Again there was nothing to do but wait while some­where out­side in the black­ness of space the little globe tore through the empti­ness on a course designed to bring it to a rendez­vous with the ship at a point far ahead.

“Better read up on this,” said the operator, throwing the instruc­tion book to his relieving operator. “You may have to fish it in.”

The relief looked at the book.

“Oh God. Just my bloody luck. Might have known it when I skipped the lecture on the things,” he said, gloomily.

Five hours later his telephone rang.

“Think we've spotted it, Bill,” said the voice of the assistant-navigator. “Hold on. Let you know in a minute or two.”

He came through again in under the two minutes.

“No doubt about it now. Couldn't be sure before because the way it lies you can only see a crescent of it. It's coming in a few points from dead astern, making a fairly acute angle with our own course. Keep your box of tricks handy, and hold on here.”

The radio operator arranged the remote control set in front of him and waited, tele­phone in hand.

“Coming up,” said the assis­tant navi­gator's voice. “Coming along nicely.” He paused. “Over­hauling us fast. About three miles or so off I reckon. Doesn't seem to be con­verg­ing much ... Hang it, it isn't con­verg­ing at all: it's diverging. Must have pretty well crossed our course behind us. Better bring it over a bit, Bill. Give it a touch on the port tubes. Just a touch, gently as you can ... God, man, call that a touch? It leapt like a fright­ened kangeroo. Stand by to correct with star­board tubes. She's coming ... coming ... Blast, she's out of the field of this instru­ment — half a minute ... Yes, there she is swinging right across, and ahead of us now. Correct when I tell you ... ready ... ready... now!”

Through the instru­ment he caught the little flutter of fire to the right of the sphere as the radio-operator obeyed.

“Okay,” he said, “direction good. Travelling dead ahead of us. Only diverging slightly, but she's running away. Get ready to brake her. Better try three seconds on low power ... No, she's still pulling ahead ... Give another two seconds ... No, damn it, that's too much: we'll over­run her. One second low power accele­ration ... That's better: that's much better. Now the least possible touch on her star­board tubes, again. And gently this time...”

The jockeying went on for quite a while. Gradually by correction, re­correct­ion and correction again the globe was juggled closer and closer until ship and globe were falling through space together with only a few hundred feet between them. Again the globe was steadied, and once more orien­tated towards the ship. The operator gave the lightest touch he could on the main tubes, and almost imme­diately braked her again.

“Great work, Bill,” approved the assistant-navi­gator. “She's still moving, coming in nicely. Stand by for magnets ... I'll tell you when ... ready... now!”

The operator pressed another key. A moment later there was a clang which rang through the Madge G., as if she had been hit with a sledge hammer.

“Whew,” said the radio operator as he wiped his brow and started to search for his cigarette case.

Outside, as the current flowed into the magnets, the drifting globe had swerved in one last wild pounce at the ship, find now clung there like a limpet.

Two space-suited-clad figures emerged from the port and walked along the side of the ship on their magnetic soles. Reaching the globe, they slid it back along the metal hull and into the air lock. It was trundled in on the main deck, and a hand threw an electric blanket over it to even up the temperature before they went to work on it.

An hour later Captain Troyte received the bunch of papers taken from the message compart­ment of the globe. He read them through with some surprise and incre­dulity. Then he picked up the tele­phone and spoke to the navi­gator.

“Where's Pomona Negra?” he inquired.

“Where's what, sir?”

“Pomona Negra. I gather it's an asteroid.”

“I'll ring you back, sir.”

The navi­gator came back through with his infor­ma­tion a few minutes later after con­sult­ing his tables.

“Pretty nearly at the other side of its orbit now, sir.”

“Other side of the sun, in fact?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, that lets us out,” said the Captain, grate­fully. He sent the papers over to the radio ope­rator with instruc­tions to trans­mit to Chap­man Station, Mars, in their en­tirety.

“Gawd,” said the operator. “All that lot! Pity we ever hooked that perishing globe.”

Which was truer than he knew.