The Unorthodox Engineers

One

‘Colonel Nash has just checked out of the spaceport, sir. Says he’ll be with you in about half an hour. He’s bringing a Commander Brumas with him.’

‘Coming to see me?’ Colonel Belling cast a thoughtful glance at the wall clock. ‘He didn’t happen to say what he wanted?’

‘No, sir.’ The Port Liaison Officer was apologetic. ‘But he was in one hell of a hurry. The Navy virtually commandeered the field to give the ship priority clearance to land. Looks like some sort of emergency. It’s not often they risk landing a heavy cruiser at a metropolitan spaceport.’

‘A heavy cruiser?’

‘Navy craft. The Labship Tycho Brahe, no less.’

Was it in trouble?’

‘Not apparently. But I think Colonel Nash was. When . the Port Marshal went out to meet him off the tender the Colonel shouted ‘Get away!’, or something like that, and ran up the walkway like he was jet assisted.’

Thanks for calling.’ Belling cut the connection to the spaceport and turned back to the wall clock speculatively. Then he picked up the handset again.

‘Duty room… Is Lieutenant Van Noon still in the depot?’

‘Yes, sir. But he’s due to check out in a few minutes on twenty-one days’ leave.’

‘Stop him. He’s not to leave without my personal authority. Put him under arrest if necessary, but don’t let him go.’

‘Understood, Colonel. What’s the charge this time?’

‘No charge. Just hold him until I send for him. I have a feeling that Colonel Nash isn’t the only one who’s going to be in trouble.’

‘Glad to see you, Ivan!’ Belling held out his hand. ‘You know, I haven’t seen you since you went to Tazoo.’

‘Tazoo?’ Nash mopped his perspiring brow. ‘I wish to hell I was still on Tazoo.’

‘Oh? I gathered it was a bit of a hell-hole.’

‘The galaxy’s worst—or so. I thought at the time. But that was before I came across Getawehi.’

‘Getawehi? What’s wrong with Getawehi?’

‘That’s just the problem,’ said Nash, with a look of resignation. ‘I’m damned if I know what’s wrong with Getawehi. I can’t even talk about it without sounding irrational. That’s why I asked Commander Brumas along. He’s handling the Navy’s side of the Getawehi project and a saner man you couldn’t wish to meet. He doesn’t find it easy to talk about Getawehi either. For that reason he’s come armed with a video record which shows some of his peculiar problems. I think he’d better state his case first.’

‘You have me intrigued,’ said Belling. ‘The entire resources of the General Engineering Reserve are at your service. If you can broadly define your problem, I’ll call up one of our specialists who may be able to assist.’

‘Forget your specialists,’ said Nash heavily. ‘Get that nutter Van Noon up here. This is the type of outwards-facing-interior problem that only he knows how to handle.’

‘You know,’ said Belling, ‘I had the feeling this was going to be one of those days as soon as I heard you were coming.’ He reached for the handset again.

‘Duty room… Is Van Noon available?’

‘Yes, sir. Under close arrest. He had to be restrained from leaving. Do you wish to enter a charge sheet?’

‘No, no. Just get him up here fast. And while you’re at it, drop a noose over Sergeant Hine .and the rest of the UE squad. I have a feeling we may be lucky enough to be rid of the whole damn lot by morning.’

‘You sent for me, sir?’ Lieutenant Fritz Van Noon entered the office cautiously.

‘Yes, Fritz.’ Colonel Belling motioned Van Noon towards a chair. ‘Sorry to have to cancel your leave, but something very important has come up. Colonel Nash you already know, but I want you to meet Commander Brumas, currently heading the Navy’s Space-Engineering Research team. He has an emergency on his hands.’ He turned to his visitor. ‘Commander, this is Fritz Van Noon, who runs our Unorthodox Engineering group.’

Despite his obvious agitation, the naval officer relaxed somewhat at Fritz’s entry. He had evidently found Colonel Belling’s approach to his problems no more comforting than those of his own Service authorities.

‘What’s on your mind, Commander?’ asked Van Noon.

‘Getawehi.’ Brumas said it with the air of a man who has repeated a story so many times that he is sure that by now the whole world must be familiar with its details.

‘Getawehi? Sounds like an insect repellent.’

‘No such luck. It’s a planet and one of the most Godlost territories in space. We’ve a twenty-man construction team trapped down there, and we can’t lift them off.’

‘And you think the Engineering Reserve might be able to help you?’ Van Noon shot a quick look at Colonel Belling—who was apparently finding some innocent amusement in the ceiling to judge from the expression on his face and the elevation of his eyeballs.

‘Not the Engineering Reserve,’ corrected Brumas sharply. ‘Specifically the Unorthodox Engineers. The other kind we already have, but after exposure to Getawehi problems they tend to go down with nervous breakdowns like they were infectious. No, this is a far-out situation, and it’s going to take some intensely screwball ideas to solve it.’

‘Then you’re on to the right person,’ said Belling maliciously.

‘Exactly what’s so special about Getawehi?’ asked Fritz.

Brumas sat forward in his chair. ‘Let me give you the background first. There’s a big joint-service science project called Ixion on at the moment. The Navy’s part was to land and assemble an equipment project on Getawehi. Superficially it seemed a simple job. It proved to be the biggest balls-up in Naval history. Not only have we been unable to complete the assignment, but we’ve also lost most of our equipment and left our construction team stranded on Getawehi. If we can do nothing else, we have at least to find a way to get the team off.’

‘I don’t quite see what the UE group can do that Space Rescue can’t.’

No—but then you haven’t been to Getawehi. The whole planet’s a rotten cosmological joke. Everything about Getawehi is sideways-up. From its orbital velocity and apparent mass it has no business even being in its present orbit around its primary, Geta. And not content with being a complete mathematical absurdity, its own rotation is subject to such peculiar perturbations and variations that its progress can only be described as lolloping. It doesn’t even have a stable period of rotation.’

‘You must appreciate I’m supposed to be on leave,’ said Van Noon warily.

Brumas was unswerving. ‘But it’s only when you take a closer look at Getawehi that the real peculiarities of the planet begin to emerge. Take, for instance, the dance of the drunken lander.’

Van Noon looked appealingly towards Colonel Belling, but the latter avoided meeting his eyes and busied himself with loading the video projector.

The screen brightened to show a stereo close-up of the planet’s surface, a view obviously taken from a spacecraft in a precarious synchronous orbit. Under the cameras the terrain of Getawehi was nothing remarkable. On the screen an ashen-grey soil, spotted with wisps of heather-purple fern and tall grasses, gave way reluctantly to the edge of a grey, rock-strewn steppe—a typical patch of ecological poverty in the cosmological scheme.

‘This is the spot,’ said Brumas, ‘where the first team made touchdown. The prognosis was favourable. Getawehi has a breathable atmosphere at tolerable pressure, no predatory animals above the size of a mouse, and temperatures well within the range of working suits.’

‘I’ve still got twenty-one days due to me,’ said Van Noon plaintively.

Brumas ignored the interruption. ‘I’m replaying the recording at ten times its actual speed, so that the effect will appear exaggerated. What you will see is only one example of the kind of tricks that Getawehi has up its sleeve. In a few moments you will see the landing of the ferry. At this playback speed the actual transit time will appear quite brief, but we are mainly interested in what happened after it landed.’

The actual moment of touchdown was obscured by a swiftly-subsiding dustcloud, which cleared to show the egg-shaped lander standing firmly on its tripod legs but leaning at a decided angle from the vertical.

For the first time, Van Noon began to take an active interest.

‘Odd!’ he said.

‘It gets more odd the farther it goes,’ Brumas assured him. ‘As a matter of interest, it’s the only ship we’ve been able to put down without it toppling. Not that that did very much good.’

From the vantage point of the camera almost vertically overhead in space, the legs of the lander could be seen to be firm, but the angle at which the nose-cone faced the sky changed direction and deviated in angle in the most alarming way.

‘At this point we assumed,’ said Brumas, ‘that what we were observing was the failure of one or more shock-absorbers on the legs, and a hunting pneumatic servo trying to compensate. But it isn’t true.’

‘No,’ said Van Noon. ‘I didn’t think it would be.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘The lander’s centre of gravity. Even with a weighted base—which you haven’t got on a ferry—you couldn’t lean it at that angle to the vertical without it falling over.’

‘Very good!’ approved Brumas. ‘So what’s your reaction to that little paradox?’

‘I feel sick.’

‘I can seriously…?’

‘I was being serious. If the lander hasn’t toppled it can only be because its centre of gravity hasn’t been greatly displaced by the angle at which it’s leaning. There’s only one set of conditions where that would be possible.’

‘Which is?’

‘That the gravitational attraction of Getawehi is not perpendicular to the surface of the planet. On Getawehi, “up” is not only angled from the geocentric vertical, but it’s even subject to short-period changes of direction.’

‘This boy’s brilliant!’ said Brumas, glancing at Belling. ‘Now, Fritz, leaving aside the fact that gravity variations on that scale are a physical impossibility, let’s see how you do on the next bit.’

‘You mean there’s more?’

‘I haven’t started yet. This is only by way of introduction. You name the impossible, and Getawehi has it.’

The nose-cone of the lander swung to encompass three hundred degrees of arc in as many seconds, then the whole space vehicle gave a skip and a stagger, spun completely about on one landing leg, then reestablished itself about a ship’s diameter away from its original position.

‘Ingenious!’ said Fritz Van Noon.

‘Isn’t it? I thought you’d be intrigued. But the worst is yet to come.’

Having found its legs, so to speak, the lander adopted a fairly rapid series of gyratory steps while miraculously remaining approximately vertical. Its path was increasingly haloed by a ring of escaping crewmen, like frenzied ants encircling a honeypot. Each step the ship took was preceded by the curious hop-skip motion with which it had preluded its new mode of transport. Its continuing drunken dance through the fern banks soon carried it out on to the edge of the steppe. There it abruptly disappeared from view except for an unmoving brown stain.

Brumas swore and stopped the projector. ‘Sorry about that! I’ll give you that last sequence again at true speed.’

‘It might help,’ said Van Noon morosely. ‘An inebriated lander I could learn to live with, but I know from bitter experience that the abrupt removal of several million credits of Government money invariably needs a good explanation.’

After a brief interval the lander re-appeared, moving now at its actual speed and engaged in the last of its strides through the fern and out on to the plain. The extreme angle of its tilt was clearly visible, and its last swivel-round was remarkably controlled considering the vehicle’s four-hundred-ton Terran deadweight.

As the landing carriage touched the plain’s edge, one leg folded beneath its burden. The lander tipped sideways and began to fall. But more than falling, the whole ship appeared to dissolve as it toppled, the debris melting like candlewax dropped on a hot stove. There was a brief flare, scarcely visible in Geta’s strong sunlight, then there was nothing left of the vessel save for a large area of brown metallic stain on the sand-ash and a few chunky ceramic components which survived the remarkable fate of the rest of the ship.

For a long time Van Noon was silent. Then finally he spoke.

‘That was quite some trick,’ he said. ‘How’s it done?’

‘I’ll go into that later,’ said Brumas. ‘Right now the point at issue is that we’ve a job to do on Getawehi—a job we started but can’t finish. We’ve three supply ships orbiting the planet which we daren’t instruct to make planetfall for obvious reasons. And we’ve a twenty-man construction team stranded on Getawehi which we can’t lift off. We’ve had a hundred per cent mortality rate on transfer ferries attempting touchdown, and we can’t even communicate with the ground force except by line-of-sight laser channel, due to radio interference.’

‘All of which adds up to one heck of a problem,’ said Van Noon.

‘Precisely!’ Brumas and Colonel Nash exchanged glances. ‘But as I said, this is only the introduction. Colonel Nash is the one who has the real problems.’

Two

The thunder of fusing hydrogen died as the Labship Tycho Brahe, having cleared the necessary seventeen thousand astronomical units, transmuted easily into its hyperspace analogue and fled through the weird corridors of the dimensionless continua. Aboard, it was time for relaxation. Geta lay far out on the edge of the local spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Indeed, Geta and its single planet hovered right on the border of the vast ocean of interstellar space. The farther galaxies hung like incredibly distant islands in an ocean of darkness, with Andromeda dominating.

A five-day trip. And as the vibration of the planetary drive faded from the fabric of the ship, Van Noon forsook the computer and traced his second in command to the radio room.

‘Colonel Nash wants to see us, Jacko. At last we’re going to get a briefing on Project Ixion.’

Jacko Hine was not impressed. ‘If it’s all the same to you, Fritz, I’d rather get off here and start walking home. The more I learn about Getawehi the crazier it all becomes.’

‘Why? What’s the matter now?’

‘I’ve been checking the recordings to see why Brumas thought it necessary to use a laser channel to communicate with the ground force. I found the answer. In addition to an enormous magnetic field, Getawehi has an output of radio mush which exceeds that from Terra by about nineteen hundred to one.’

Van Noon stopped abruptly. ‘Synchrotron emission or static?’

Jacko dropped the memory chips on the table. ‘Neither. Modulated carrier waves. There’s no doubt of it. Long waves, short waves, vhf, uhf, and damn nigh into the X-ray band. You name it, and Getawehi has it. And some of those transmitters pack a punch which would make a Terran megacast station look like a spark transmitter.’

Van Noon began to look rather grey. ‘But there can’t be any such transmitters on Getawehi. Hell, Jacko, it’s uninhabited. There’s no life form on Getawehi with an intelligence much above a jack-rabbit. So who’s doing the broadcasting—ants?’

‘I wouldn’t know. But I can say that the radio output from the surface, mainly broadband carriers modulated by random noise, constitutes an almost perfect radio blanket.’

‘But it’s damn ridiculous! Radio galaxies I have heard of, but what the heck am I supposed to make of a radio planet? It can’t be a case of synchrotron emission, because you don’t get that sort of electron energy on a habitable planet. Anyway, it wouldn’t give you a modulated carrier. But what’s left? Nothing much less than an array of conventional transmitting equipments—which is impossible—and even if it weren’t, you’d still need power to get that sort of output. You can’t get that by rubbing two blades of grass together.’

Jacko smiled ruefully. ‘It makes a change to hear you condemn something as impossible. What’s happened to the spirit of sweet unorthodoxy this morning?’

‘It’s gone a trifle sour on me. Hell, Jacko, Brumas has a ground crew down there. If there were big radio transmitters on Getawehi they’d surely have investigated them by now. So where’s their report?’

‘There wouldn’t necessarily be a report. Communications between ground and the spacewatch have been rather sparse.’

‘But why? With a laser channel in operation they could have a thousand-way circuit in operation if they chose.’

‘Except for one thing. A reliable line-of-sight channel presupposes the space end of the transmission to be in a synchronous orbit. But you can’t establish a synchronous orbit around something which lollops about in space like Getawehi does.’

‘I take your point,’ said Van Noon wearily. ‘We’ve just been trying to get some sense out of Getawehi’s peculiar rotation scheme. The computer keeps throwing it back requesting further information. We can’t find any set of postulates which goes halfway towards meeting the facts.’

Jacko stood up. ‘You know, Fritz, We’ve seen some pretty crazy situations in the past few years. But from the way things are stacking up I have the premonition that Getawehi’s going to be the craziest yet.’

‘And I’ve a nasty suspicion you’re right. No planet is entitled to be as crazy mixed-up as this. Even that self-disposing lander was a highly unusual bit of do-it-yourself. Let’s go see what gives with Project Ixion. If it’s half as mad as Nash is suggesting, you’re going to have company on that long walk home.’

Colonel Nash looked up from a report-strewn table as Fritz and Jacko entered. He was obviously not looking forward to the interview.

‘Sit down, gentlemen. You’ve no doubt wondered why I’ve left it this late to introduce you to Project Ixion. Frankly, it’s because we’ve all been hoping that somewhere down the line there’s been a ridiculous mistake. But I’m afraid our last analysis leaves us no such get-out. The improbable is absolutely true.’

‘Exactly what is Project Ixion?’ asked Fritz.

‘I’m only an engineer,’ said Nash. ‘I don’t pretend to understand the theoretical work behind it. It has something to do with determining the possibility of borrowing entropy levels from other parts of the universe. If it could be done, it would place at our disposal almost limitless sources of power.’

‘That I can see,’ said Fritz. But why do it on Getawehi?’

‘Theory suggested Getawehi as an ideal testbed for the experiment. Geta and its planetary satellite are ideally placed—right out on the edge of nowhere. Freedom from massed stars was something which the experiment demanded. From the theoretical standpoint there’s no better place that we know of than Getawehi.’

‘So what’s the problem?’ asked Van Noon.

‘The Ixion Project consisted of assembling two substantial prefabricated structures on Getawehi. One was a large turntable, and the second was a cantilever dish, which should have mounted on the turntable roughly after the manner of a steerable-dish radio telescope.’

‘So?’

‘So this…’ Nash threw a clip of message forms across the desk. Fritz picked it up and read speculatively.

Getawehi ground force, to Nash, Tycho Brahe

You old idiot. Quite apart from our ridiculous confinement, I must inform you in no uncertain terms that no repeat no part of Ixion turntable can be assembled from the parts you provided. You must be mad!

Wooley, Commanding.

Van Noon turned to the next one and read on.

Wooley, Commanding groundforce, Getawehi

I assure you all parts of Ixion were assembled and tested on Terra before transhipment. Try holding plans right way up.

Nash, Tycho Brahe.

Colonel Nash shifted his chair uncomfortably.

Getawehi groundforce, to Nash, Tycho Brahe

No part of the turntable fits even with plans held sideways!. It is impossible these parts ever assembled into anything anywhere. You must be joking. Why don’t you resign?

Wooley, Commanding.

Van Noon passed the first sheets to Jacko and continued reading.

Wooley, Commanding groundforce, Getawehi

Sorry to learn of your nervous condition. I am acquiring a competent engineer as replacement soonest. Suggest you avoid alcohol if you cant handle that either.

Nash, Tycho Brahe.

There was one final sheet, which read :

Getawehi groundforce, to Nash, Tycho Brahe I’ll give you alcohol you bl…

The rest of the signal was certified as corrupt by the Signals Officer, but he omitted to indicate whether the corruption was semantic or technical. Van Noon looked up.

‘So who was wrong?’ he said.

‘Nobody,’ said Nash. ‘I saw the completed Ixion structure on Terra and it checked out to specification. It was dismantled and crated by Wooley’s own team. The parts space-delivered to Getawehi were one hundred per cent accurate.’

‘But he says—’

‘I know what he says—and this is the paradox—I happen to believe him. Wooley’s a hell of a good engineer. If he says the parts don’t fit, then they don’t fit. It’s not a question of personalities or expertise. It’s simply the fact that something built on Terra will not re-assemble on Getawehi. Don’t ask me why.’

Fritz considered this in silence for a while. ‘That takes a bit of swallowing.’

‘I know. That’s why I asked you to come. You specialize in impossibilities—well here’s another one for you.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Do? Brumas wants the construction team rescued from Getawehi. Naturally that’s the first priority. But knowing the way you do things, I want you to go one step further. I want you to go down there and finish Ixion itself.’

Van Noon examined his knuckles. ‘That may not be easy. This is a joint Service exercise with divided responsibilities. What sort of backing and resources can I count on?’

‘Commander Brumas and I took the precaution of clarifying the position with GenCom. You must have friends up there, because their answer was unequivocal. As from the moment of this interview you are appointed Senior Adviser for the whole Getawehi-Ixion project. All units involved will take their instructions from you. Nice work, Lieutenant! As from this instant it’s all your show.’

With a thunderstruck expression, Van Noon shook the offered hand.

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously. There’s far too much money invested in this enterprise and far too much to gain to let it fail now. Frankly, this is a vote of confidence in unorthodoxy.’

‘Very well!’ Van Noon turned to Sergeant Hine. ‘If you can manage to get your mouth closed, Jacko, we’ve got work to do.’

‘Like what, Fritz?’

‘Like beating the daylights out of the computer, for a start. There must be some reason why that damn planet lollops all over space like that. And unless we can come to grips with the problem I’d guess we’re in for a pretty rough landing.’

Two days later, standard shipboard time, the Tycho Brahe quit hyperspace with a delicious quiver and proceeded on planetary drive to the rendezvous. In high orbit three supply ships circled the innocuous-looking mudball of Getawehi, while far below the solitary pinnace rode the lower circuit making a precariously bad job of maintaining a synchronized station above the ground base. Around them the fiery orb of Geta seemed to trace her possessive path as if guarding her solitary ugly-duckling of a planet.

When the rendezvous was complete, Van Noon abandoned the computer for a telescope and found the results equally uninformative. From any angle of off-world approach, Getawehi refused to deliver up its secrets. Superficially it was a sparsely vegetated, rather uninviting ball of rock and earth. It had never achieved a life-form capable of developing any degree of civilization and seemed content to go rolling perversely through space until the stars grew cold. Its only claim to activity was on the radio-frequency bands, where its output, inexplicably, was both prodigious and impenetrable.

Jacko watched the pencil being fractured by Fritz’s powerful fingers. ‘So how’re we going to play it, Fritz?’

‘I’m not sure yet. We don’t seem able to gain any meaningful information from up here, so we’ll have to go to where it’s all happening.’

‘Well, so far the planet has wrecked every ferry they’ve sent. Were you thinking of taking the whole UE group?’

‘Not initially. Just the two of us, if you’re game. I need to get down there to get the feel of the place.’

Jacko shrugged. ‘I’ve got a pilot’s licence, but in the circumstances I make no guarantee about the quality of touchdown.’

‘That’s understood, Jacko. If you can get us down without any broken bones, it’ll be the best we can expect.’

‘Brumas isn’t going to be very happy. He’s lost too many ferries already.’

‘He’ll be a lot less happy if he goes back to Terra minus his ground crew. Frankly I don’t see any alternative. Down there we stand a chance of doing something constructive. With the rest of the UE group still spaceborne we’ve at least hedged our bets.’

‘What sort of equipment do you want to take?’

‘Just light-engineering kit. If we need anything special they can do a spacedrop.’

‘Assuming we can get into contact.’

‘Wooley has his laser link down there, but the thought comes to me that if we can get control of one of those super-power transmitters down there, the communications problem should be over.’

‘That’s the bit that has me worried, Fritz. Where the hell are these transmitters? There’s not a sign of them in the telescopes.’

‘I scarcely expected to find equipment shacks and antennae laid out in a row. Let’s face it, Jacko, we’re playing in a pretty weird sector of the universe. We’re up against so many unknowns that we’d be lucky to recognize a dog before it bit us.’

Three

‘Can’t you hold her, Jacko?’ Van Noon was watching anxiously through the ferry viewpoints as the ground details of Getawehi grew more specific and less stable with their continued descent.

‘The automatic control system is fighting me. The inertial guidance platform says that Getawehi is directly under, while Getawehi’s gravitation says that it’s sideways.’

‘So who’s right?’

‘Both and neither. It’s all relative, but it does raise complications. To exaggerate slightly, imagine trying to land a ship on a ramp angled at forty-five degrees from the horizontal. Do you approach at a true right-angle to the surface of the ramp, or do you follow the geocentric vertical?’

‘Which way’s softest?’

‘Either way you’re in trouble. If you choose the first, you’re liable to topple. If you choose the second you’re liable to skid down a one-in-one slope on one landing pad. Throw in the fact that your ramp is not only inconstant in angle but also varies in direction, and you have a rough idea of the dilemma facing both myself and the ship’s computer at this moment.’

‘What will be the result if we remain controlled by the inertial platform?’

‘We crash.’

‘What if we cut the automatics and try to achieve Getawehi’s conception of the vertical?’

‘We might just make it, if we conserve fuel and don’t apply the corrections until the final moment. Only one problem—we don’t know what Getawehi’s conception of the vertical is. Even with the best of luck we’re bound to come down askew on some parameter or other.’

‘Gyp the automatics and fall by line-of-sight for a while.’

Jacko looked at him grimly. ‘Right. I’m cutting all automatics except the stabilization gyro. We’d have had to do that sooner or later anyway. A small craft like this doesn’t have enough fuel to make course corrections on a continuous oscillatory basis.’

Van Noon took up station by a viewpoint and watched the wildly plunging horizon with some dismay. ‘How far are we aiming to land from the base camp?’

‘Under these conditions I couldn’t guarantee any position within a twenty kilometre radius. I’m heading far out so that we don’t risk putting a jet burn across the camp. The camp’s at the foot of the valley, and I’m aiming to come in between those two mountain ranges, about halfway up the pass.’

The rising scream from the ferry’s outer skin told them of their entry into Getawehi’s atmosphere. The laser altimeter raced suddenly alive and began to count down the distance to the surface, acknowledging Jacko’s gentle manipulation of the thrusters .

Through the viewport the horizon spun wildly and disappeared from view. Fritz took one look through the opposite port at the alarming prospect of Getawehi approaching sideways-on, then ducked back to Jacko at the controls.

‘If you call that a line-of-sight approach, we’d best go back for an optician.’

Jacko took his hands from the controls momentarily. ‘If you think you can hold this she-devil in control any better, you’re perfectly at liberty to try.’

The success of this impromptu manoeuvre was dramatic. The ferry immediately ceased its wild swinging and settled into a more restricted pattern of deviation from the geocentric vertical. Jacko looked at the controls in considerable amazement.

‘I don’t get it!’

Van Noon thought for a moment, then his lips twisted into a grin of amusement. ‘I think I do. Both line-of-sight and inertial guidance are related to the geocentric vertical. All we did was substitute your reactions for those of the automatics. But we were wrong. All we have operating now is a simple stabilization gyroscope. Don’t you see what that means?’

‘No.’

‘Where does the axis of a gyroscope point?’

‘Near a planetary mass? Towards the centre of gravity if it’s halfways orientated from the start.’

‘Precisely! And since Getawehi’s gravitational centre is not a fixed point, the gyroscope is swinging the ship to follow the gravitational drift. That was the tendency the inertial guidance system was fighting. But we don’t have to fight it—the gyroscope is already giving us the factor we need. It’s automatically correcting us to Getawehi’s concept of the vertical.’

Jacko wasn’t convinced. He concentrated on the task of matching their deceleration to altitude, seldom allowing his hands to move more than a hairsbreadth away from the guidance controls. His caution was proved unnecessary. With a reserve of power still to spare, they continued safely to the point where they were ready to make a soft landing.

But the actual moment of touchdown brought disaster. By virtue of being orientated to Getawehi’s gravitational direction, the ferry hit the ground at an angle. The landing mechanisms refused to accept the situation, and the leg servos tried to force the ship to adopt a station at right-angles to the terrain. Such a stance was inconsistent with their centre of gravity. The whole structure staggered alarmingly and seemed likely to topple.

‘Bail out, Jacko! If this thing goes over it’s going to do some damage.’

Jacko needed no prompting. He hit the emergency release, and jumped as the hatch fell open. Within seconds they scrambled clear of the great egg-shaped bulk of the swaying ferry, and scarcely had they paused to gain breath when the vessel gave a skip and a grunt and toppled disastrously behind them.

Shorn suddenly of the ship walls, they looked at each other in amazement as the full experience of Getawehi’s peculiar gravity became a physical reality for them. The first sensation was vertigo, the second, nausea. What had been uphill when they first made touchdown was perceptibly shifting until it became across-the-hill, and, even as they watched, became downhill. Fritz’s natural body orientation changed with the shifting direction of “up”, and the heavens swung around him in a great arc as he moved into equilibrium with the changing conditions.

‘Interesting!’ gasped Fritz at last, desperately trying not to throw up.

‘I hope it’s not going to do that often. I expect it when I’m drunk, but cold sober it comes as a bit of a shock to the system.’

‘I know what you mean, Jacko. On Terra “up” is up, and it’s inclined to remain that way. On Getawehi “up” not only varies in direction but also in slope according to what angle to the geocentric its gravity is pulling.’

But how in hell does that work?’

‘I don’t know, but I’ll figure an answer to it soon. Of course, even on Terra there’s a slight distortion of gravitational direction due to the pull of the moon—hence the tides. But it’s so slight it can’t normally be noticed. If Getawehi had some extremely massive satellites, that could be a possible answer.’

‘Except that Getawehi hasn’t got any satellites. With the mass they’d need to produce an effect like that it would scarcely be possible to miss them.’

‘Hmm. We’ll come back to that problem when we’ve had a chance to talk to Wooley’s crew. In the meantime, consider the potential uses of a variable-direction gravity. Given a soapbox on wheels and decent set of brakes, you have all you need in the way of low-cost transport. You wait until your destination lies downhill, release the brakes and coast towards it. When your destination shifts uphill you drop anchor and wait.’

‘You couldn’t run wheels over this stuff.’ Jacko kicked the soft ashy soil moodily.

‘I wasn’t thinking of it,’ said Van Noon. ‘That was purely by way of illustration. Something more in the nature of a sledge… to get us to the base camp.’

‘Moses!’ Jacko turned back towards the fallen ferry. It was now a stiff uphill climb, and the ferry approached from the side, looked precariously unsafe. ‘I’ve just the thing, Fritz. The plastic cabin liners. Six sections meeting to form a dome. You couldn’t have a better shape.’

As he spoke the world seemed to rear perilously upwards, ship uppermost, as some new component of Getawehian gravity roughly doubled its field and threw the gravitational angle to something approaching forty-five degrees from the geocentric vertical. Standing now on a hillside plain which fell away below them in a one-in-one slope as far as the eye could see, they stopped in horror. The huge ferry vehicle, its weight now twice that on landing, crushed the soft ash-soil at the edge of the depression it had made for itself on falling, and began to roll murderously down upon them.

Their instinctive reaction was to turn and run down the monstrous incline in front of them. With rare presence of mind Van Noon caught Jacko’s arm and forced him to run a diagonal path which took them barely clear of the rolling bulk as the rogue spacecraft rolled a deep trail in the ash-soil. The wisdom of Van Noon’s diagonal path of escape was soon apparent. The rolling ship rapidly achieved a velocity which would have fatally outstripped a running man.

Then the angle of the terrain began to flatten again and the intolerable gravity lessened. The ferry rolled to a cumbersome halt as the incline down which it was moving became insufficient to support its motion. Finally the two unorthodox engineers trudged ironically up a slight incline after their errant vessel, approaching it from tail-on in case it took it upon itself to roll again.

‘Lesson one,’ said Jacko. ‘First catch your spaceship.’

‘We seem to be luckier than Wooley’s ground crew. At least it hasn’t dissolved on us.’

‘There’s still time,’ said Jacko miserably. ‘The hatch is on the side. Dare we go in?’

Van Noon cast a wary look at the unstable skyline. ‘Not for very long. We don’t know how often Getawehi goes in for a big pull like that. It’d be fatal to be trapped inside if it rolled again. What we really need is explosives to dig a real big ditch alongside. Once we got her into that we could work inside fairly safely.’

‘There’s explosives in the tool hold.’

‘Do you know exactly where?’

‘I stowed them there myself.’

Fritz had been attempting to time the apparent rotation of the highest point of the skyline. Its movement was highly erratic, but there was a certain degree of progression. The coming angle was one soon to place the ship in a position to slip only noseward if it moved at all.

‘When I give the word, you try to get in there and out again with the explosives in about seven minutes flat. If you hit trouble, get out without the explosives. But whatever you do, keep inside seven minutes.’

Jacko nodded. When Fritz gave the signal he climbed swiftly to the hatch, fought the cover open, and disappeared inside. Van Noon spent an agonizing few minutes which lengthened into eight before a flurry of activity in the hatchway deposited a dozen packets of plastic mining explosive at his feet, followed by a box of detonators. It was ten minutes before Jacko himself got clear, having miscalculated the intricacies of manoeuvring in a space cabin with the gravitational attraction sideways on.

Van Noon was watching the shifting angle cautiously. He waved Jacko away urgently, but although the terrain began to slope in a direction which could have set the ferry rolling again, the angle did not become acute enough to bring the vessel into motion. Fritz was quick to seize the opportunity. Mentally estimating the circumference of the vessel, he paced out the distance through which the hull needed to rotate in order to leave the hatch at the top.

They placed a chain of explosives across this distance line, with a one-minute detonator at the end. Priming the detonator, they ran across-hill to a safe distance and waited. The explosion ripped a long, deep trough in the soft ash, the edge of which reached almost to the ferry’s hull. The shock of the explosion was just sufficient to overcome the forces which kept the great vessel from moving down the incline.

Ponderously it rolled into the crater and settled, almost a third of its bulk below ground level.

Now they were able to work on the ferry with the minimum of risk, although the uncertainties of exactly what was “up” were peculiarly unsettling within the confines of the fallen ship. Time and again they were disturbed by the sudden fear that the hull was beginning to roll again, as some sudden change in gravitic direction or intensity made the “floor” apparently shift under them.

It took two hours to cut the cabin liners into sections suitable for two sleds. The shapes they obtained could scarcely have been more suitable for the purpose had they been custom designed. The only brake they could devise was a crude foot-operated device like a ploughshare bolted on to angle brackets at the rear of the sections. On test the brakes proved savagely effective, but the failing light made them put away thoughts of starting their journey before morning.

Very few of the services in the ferry still worked. From the growing acridness of the atmosphere inside, it was obvious that the chemical powerplant had been damaged. For this reason Van Noon decided they would be safer sleeping in the open. They spent the remaining time before darkness removing from the ship various tools and such few items of provisions as could be carried on the sleds.

Night came with explosive suddenness. The night sky was the first tangible reminder of their peculiar extragalactic location. Part of the sky was strangely dark and lacking in stars, while the rest was aglow with the enormous spread of the Milky Way.

They scuffed shallow grooves in the ash-soil in which to settle their sleeping pods, then climbed in, anxious to get some rest to meet the demands of the coming day. Such was their trust in the ecological and atmospheric climate of Getawehi that neither thought to place their face visors over their pods to ward off precipitation or biological attack. Their only inconvenience seemed to be the shifting gravity, which imparted to the pods the feeling of movement, as if lodged in the branches of a vast and slowly-swaying tree.

It was two hours after Geta had set that Van Noon was awakened by a startled cry from Jacko.

‘Fritz!’

‘What the devil’s the matter?’

‘Look at the mountains—they’re burning!’

Van Noon roused himself and followed the indicated line. Surely enough, whole sections of the ranks of distant hills were lit with a red glow of such intensity that the sky was saturated with a blood-red cast.

‘What the hell is it?’

‘Damned if I know, Jacko. That range is best part of thirty kilometres away. It would need to be one heck of a fire to be clearly visible from here.’

As they watched, the burning mountains seemed to shift and change with running patterns and pulsations, forming a spectacle more absorbing than the species-long pastime of watching the flickering heart of a home-fire.

‘It doesn’t look right,’ said Van Noon after a while. ‘Those currents in the flame are moving too fast and too regularly to be true. A fire is a set of small burning nuclei—individual conflagrations. But the way the flame out there flickers, it looks as if the mountain is burning en masse.’

‘Could it be volcanic?’

‘Not the kind of volcanism we’re familiar with. Anyway, there was nothing in the reports about any sort of volcanic action.’

‘So what’s happening over there, then? Don’t tell me the whole mountain is made up of paraffin wax?’

‘Nothing about this place would surprise me,’ said Van Noon moodily. ‘But there’s one thing that worries me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘There’s too much power about. Those burning mountains are a pretty powerful display of something— so is the radio output and the mixed-up gravity. They’re all power manifestations of considerable magnitude. But it’s always output, with never a sign of the origin. It’s as if there’s a very much larger force at work—a force so large that it can afford to spill over a few billion kilowatts as side effects and never notice the loss.’

‘I had the same idea. None of the demonstrations we’ve seen so far seem lacking for a few billion ergs. I’m not keen on the implications. If there is a large power source around, I like to know where it is and what it is. It helps to know if you have to get out from under in a hurry.’

Getawehi swung “up” sideways, momentarily exerted a gravitational pull which almost broke their backs, then reduced its attraction to such an extent that their pods almost left the surface. There was another twist in gravitational angle, then the burning mountains, which had so far seemed to be up a slight gradient, slipped to the bottom of a racing slope of one-in-two. Then, as if to complete the performance, the burning mountains went out—like the turning-off of a lamp.

‘You know, Fritz,’ said Jacko as he sank back into his pod, ‘Colonel Nash was right. There is no place in space quite like Getawehi.’

Four

At first light the next morning they had a trial run of the sleds. By reasonable guesswork their present position from the base camp was about fifty kilometres—an uncomfortable journey if made on foot over the soft ash. For direction they had only to follow the valley floor between the two mountain shoulders to a point where the mountains succumbed to the broad and rocky steppe, the edge of which had been the scene of the disastrous first landing by the construction crew.

To their delight the sleds ran easily over the ashy soil, even when presented with only slight gravitational gradients. The vehicles were prone, however, to come to an unexpected halt on meeting patches of the purple fern which clustered the landscape. A few outcropping rocks were an additional hazard which required careful negotiation. There was no way of steering the flat-bottomed sleds. Wherever obstacles were encountered, it was necessary to halt and manually drag the sled to a new position. Occasionally the gravitational angle produced slopes insufficient to support their motion, and these had to be borne in patient immobility, as did the passing of all slopes other than the one leading in the required direction.

After a survival-ration breakfast they secured to the sleds such items of tools and provisions as they were able to make fast. Then, waiting for the terrain to slope in a suitable direction, they set off. The air was crystal clear and inhabited with a crisp coolness and a heather-honeyed perfume which was decidedly pleasant. Far to their right the burning mountains, now quiescent, stood up glassy and apparently untouched by the conflagration of the night. Nearer and to their left, a vast outcropping of grey-white striated rock formed, with the burning mountains, the shoulders of the valley, some forty kilometres across, through which lay their route.

Their mode of transport proved both exhilarating and predictably hazardous. Swooping down an apparent slope of one-in-three, the ground reared suddenly upwards before them. Fritz managed to drive to a halt, but the momentum of Jacko’s sled ploughed it a metre depth into the ash soil before it came to rest. Climbing out from the ditch which he had dug, Jacko’s look of murderous reproach threw Fritz into fits of laughter.

However, it was Van Noon who nearly became the first casualty. Driving down a deep slope, where the sled velocity must have been nearing fifty kilometres an hour, the progress of Fritz’s sled was suddenly arrested by a patch of fern. Fritz parted company with the sled and proceeded without visible means of support for a considerable distance before he made a spread-eagled landing. He got up, shaken, but miraculously unhurt. Nevertheless much of the equipment he had been carrying on the sled was lost in the ash and could not be recovered.

Despite these and similar incidents and frequent halts while their intended direction lay sullenly uphill or across, they made very good progress. By tacking across their general course they found they could make use of nearly half of the available angles. The mountain shoulders gave them an easy sense of direction without reckoning and at last they reached the end of the broad valley. Before them now began one of the great steppes of Getawehi, a spotted, rock-strewn desert, completely without vegetation. It continued as far as the eye could see—monotonous and inhospitable.

Jacko viewed the prospect critically.

‘We could never cross that on the sleds, Fritz. Too many rocks. There’s less than a hundred metre straight run anywhere.’

‘It’s fortunate that we don’t have to. By my calculation the construction team ditched somewhere between the steppe and the end of the grey-white mountain. If so, we should be nearly within sighting range by now.’

They scanned the area anxiously, but found no sign of the base camp.

‘Have you got any distress rockets or anything similar in those bits and pieces of yours, Jacko?’

‘No. But I’ve got some plastic explosive left, and a few detonators. We could at least make a big bang.’

‘That should do the trick. If we can only get some sort of answering signal to guide us we should be able to locate them fairly easily from here. They should be on the lookout anyway, because they must have seen our ferry fall.’

They arranged three explosions, separated by a one minute and then a thirty-second interval. After what seemed like a ten minute wait a slight column of smoke rose up near the grey-white mountain’s end at about five kilometres distance.

‘That appears to be them,’ said Van Noon. ‘Let’s go over and meet the troops.’

By a fortunate coincidence of angle and direction they covered the distance in record time. Swooping from the heights of a big slope they came suddenly across a string of a dozen men labouring on foot up an ashen trail. The party was encumbered with axes, ropes, and miscellaneous rescue equipment. As Van Noon and Jacko braked to a halt, the file of men dropped their loads, and, with a loud cheer, came dashing to greet them.

The teamleader was the first to arrive.

‘My name’s Wooley. We saw your fire-bucket come down behind the mountains somewhere, but nightfall beat us to it. We were just on our way to find you. Frankly we didn’t expect any survivors, from the angle she was making when she hit.’

‘We were lucky,’ said Van Noon. ‘We managed to get out before she toppled.’ He had the distinct impression that Wooley was not too enthusiastic about their arrival.

‘Just the two of you aboard?’

‘Yes, but I’m afraid we lost the ship. She’ll never make space again. But there’s a lot of useful stores and equipment in her if you can get them out.’

‘We’ll get them out somehow,’ said Wooley. ‘As for losing the ship, that was a foregone conclusion. The spacecraft isn’t yet made which can land undamaged on Getawehi. I don’t wish to seem critical, but just what did you hope to achieve by joining the suicide club?’

‘I’m Van Noon,’ said Fritz. ‘By some mischance I seem to have finished up with the responsibility for this little lot.’

‘Van Noon?’ Wooley screwed up his face. ‘Weren’t you mixed up in that affair on Tazoo?’

‘For my sins, yes,’ said Fritz ruefully. ‘But by all accounts Getawehi has Tazoo beaten by several orders of magnitude. Jacko and I decided that if we didn’t want to spend the next five years driving computers neurotic we’d better get down here and get the feel of it ourselves.’

‘Then welcome to Getawehi!’ said Wooley sadly. ‘But believe me, you’re in for a whole lot more surprises yet.’

In the meantime, a few of the construction team had borrowed Jacko’s sled and had been making short experimental trips across the terrain whenever the opportunity presented itself. Wooley had watched these antics without much enthusiasm, but one particularly successful run captured his interest. He examined Fritz’s sled more closely.

‘Did you come all the way on this?’

‘About fifty kilometres since sunrise.’

Wooley turned and clasped Fritz’s hand in a sudden handshake. ‘Sorry, Fritz! I knew I was being replaced as head of team, but I thought we’d merely get a new boy who’d be making all the same mistakes until he wound up six weeks later in the same situation as I’m in. I hadn’t stopped to think of the unorthodox angle. You know, if we’d been at the wreck and wanted cabin liners back at the base camp… Dammit, we’d have carried the bloody things!’

‘Forget it!’ said Fritz. ‘You’re not being replaced. It’s simply that the overall control for the entire project has transferred itself from its lofty orbital heights to the place where things actually happen.’

‘You mean they’ve given you control of the whole lot?’ Wooley was incredulous.

‘Just that. The veritable hot potato.’

‘No potato that,’ said Wooley sadly shaking his head. ‘What they dumped on you was a small mountain. Come back to base and I’ll try to explain.’

‘I’d appreciate that,’ said Fritz. ‘It’s about time somebody gave me a rational explanation of why a group of experienced engineers can’t assemble a kit of prefabricated parts.’

For a moment Wooley’s eyes looked haunted. ‘I didn’t say I’d give you a rational explanation… I only said I’d try to explain.’

The base camp was a camp in little more than name only. Originally the site of a single space-drop of heavy equipment, it had become the focal point of the endeavours of the construction team solely because there was no incentive to go elsewhere. Behind the site lay the grey-white mountain chain. In front lay the vast mottled steppe. On the ashy no-man’s-land between the two, were gathered various space-drop capsules, some of which had obviously contained parts for the Ixion project. Also there were capsules from later drops, clearly marked as having contained emergency survival supplies.

Living quarters, such as there were, had been constructed from well-entrenched girderwork “borrowed” from the abandoned assembly project, overtopped by parachute material from the space-drop canopies. All the men seemed fit, but it was obvious that the prolonged period of enforced grounding on Getawehi, coupled with strict rationing, was beginning to have its effect. The most disquieting aspect was the look of resignation which rested in their eyes.

Fritz looked out over the broad steppe, something about the configuration of ferns and rocks stirring a thread of memory.

‘Isn’t this the place where your first ferry sank?’

’Sank!’ Wooley was incensed. ‘It didn’t sink… it was melted.’

‘You have to be joking!’

‘Do I just! You watch this!’

Wooley turned, seized a crowbar from an abandoned tool-kit, and tossed it out on to the rock-strewn desert. One end struck the grey sand, while the other touched a protruding rock. There was a blue spark as it touched. For seconds it seemed as if nothing was going to happen. Then to Fritz and Jacko’s astonishment the tool began to glow a visible cherry red. Its temperature continued to increase through white heat to a point where the iron bent and fused into a pool of molten iron. The incandescent metal dribbled into a thread and ran apart. The arc which struck as the curious circuit broke was more in the nature of an explosion, and the watching trio ran for their lives as the area was deluged with droplets of red-hot iron and warm sand.

‘Convinced?’ asked Wooley, when they had retreated to a safe distance.

‘Convinced,’ agreed Van Noon weakly. ‘It must have taken a couple of thousand amps to melt a bar like that.’

‘It must have taken many millions of amps to melt our ship,’ said Wooley gloomily, ‘but it did it somehow.’

‘But this is ridiculous, Fritz!’ said Jacko. ‘How can you have an electrified desert?’

‘Not too ridiculous really. Even on Terra you can find a surprising amount of electrical currents in the earth if you go looking for them. On Terra the source is usually electro-chemical—minute differences in electrode potential between regions containing different concentrations of mineral substances. But I don’t know of any natural source capable of producing some dozens of volts at many millions of amps—or why the system doesn’t discharge itself.’

‘We’ve done some investigating,’ said Wooley. ‘The grey rocks you can ignore, but we call the black rocks “terminals”. Actually they aren’t simple rocks at all, but columnar graphite structures presumably reaching down to the bedrock. They have an insulating sheath, a sort of lacerated asbestos, which we theorize came to be deposited by electrophoresis of the soil silicates. But however it came about, it’s damned effective in insulating the columns from the rest of the plain.

‘The remaining bulk of the desert is merely a minerised silicate-base earth, not unlike Terran clay.

Average potential difference between the terminal columns and the base land is about twenty-seven volts.

But it varies pretty widely and can touch a couple of hundred volts in the high season.’

‘AC or DC?’ asked Jacko.

Wooley began to look rather haggard and turned away for a moment.

‘You aren’t going to believe this,’ he said. ‘Generally it’s DC with the terminals positive with respect to the base-land. But sometimes you get AC—especially on Tuesday and Sunday mornings.’

Five

‘And if you think that’s mad,’ said Wooley, ‘wait until you start on the Ixion project.’

‘You know, Fritz, I’m beginning to get sorry I came.’ Jacko looked at Van Noon appealingly. ‘Can’t I just go home and sleep it off?’

‘Try closing your eyes, Jacko. Maybe it’ll go away.’

‘I tried that,’ said Wooley. ‘But it comes back every morning, large as sunrise.’

‘Well, what is the Ixion problem?’ Van Noon asked. ‘The one thing I haven’t been able to do is get anyone to talk about it.’

‘Wait till you’ve seen it for yourself. I don’t think you’ll want to talk about it either.’

They were approaching a stockpile of carefully classified girderwork, part of the Ixion turntable structure recovered from spacedrop capsules. Wooley consulted a parts list, then drew a few sections from the stockpile and dropped them on the ground.

‘A simple demonstration. Girder A measures two metres exactly between hole centres. Don’t take my word for it—check it out.’

Jacko produced a steel tape from the recesses of one of his pockets and made the necessary measurement.

‘Two metres—check!’

‘Girders B and C each measure one metre between hole centres, yes?’

‘Check!’ Jacko looked at Fritz as if seeking release from the infantile nature of what was being demanded.

‘Very well!’ Wooley was unperturbed. ‘If you assemble girder B to girder C, end to end with a suitable rivet, the total length between extreme hole centres should be two metres. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Wrong,’ said Wooley sadly. He dropped a rivet on to the ground and waited while Jacko moved the components into line and fitted the fastening loosely into the holes. ‘If you don’t believe me, measure it yourself.’

There was no need for measurement. Even viewed from a standing position the combined length of the two half girders was obviously much less than that of the whole one. Refusing to believe the evidence of his eyes, Jacko knelt and carefully measured the combined length of girders B and C.

‘One point five seven,’ he said hopelessly. Again refusing to accept the sum, he kicked the girders apart and checked each carefully before re-assembly. Fritz, who had watched the whole performance with detailed interest, seemed to have withdrawn into a state of deep concentration. At last he took the offered measuring tape from Jacko and repeated the whole ritual for himself. Intrigued by the situation, he found several other objects and measured them individually and together. Then he straightened.

‘Incredible,’ he said, ‘but very definitely true.’

‘Then explain it to me,’ said Jacko. ‘In all my books twice one is two—and it’s never before been in dispute.’

‘But your books were written on Terra, not Getawehi. On Getawehi they don’t apply.’

‘But that’s insane!’ Jacko was adamant. ‘Mathematics is merely a system for expressing the properties and relations of quantities. It’s universal, not a local phenomenon. Once one is one, twice one is two…

Van Noon rapidly reviewed his previous calculations.

‘Not on Getawehi. It seems to be different here. Once one is one… but twice one is only a bit over one and a half—one point five seven zero eight, to be more exact. And three times one is about two point three six.’

‘Wooley, you don’t agree…?’ Jacko was still fighting. The look on Wooley’s face, however, convinced him that the battle was lost. ‘I still don’t see how it’s possible,’ he finished lamely.

‘It’s long been suspected that our mathematics may not be universal,’ said Fritz. ‘Dimensionless numbers, for instance, although having an accepted value in the part of the universe where we customarily use them, are more likely to be local coincidences than physical absolutes. But on Getawehi we seem to have hit on something even more fundamental.’

‘Such as?’

‘I’m not sure yet, but for my money it’s something to do with unity.’

‘Unity?’

‘Yes. Unity… one… a whole. I’m no mathematician, but it seems to me there’s a darn great hole in our idea of the structure of numbers. We’ve explored number structure up to infinity and several orders beyond—but something we’ve always taken for granted is the constant mathematical value of unity.’

‘But it has to have a constant mathematical value.’ Jacko’s voice was ragged. ‘Once one is one… It can’t be otherwise by its very definition.’

‘So we’ve always assumed. But what if we happened to be wrong? What if there’s a difference between the value of one as representing a whole thing—and the value of one as a mathematical factor. They seem both to be the same in the corner of the universe where our books were written—but one used as a factor on Getawehi is demonstrably only point seven eight five of what it was on Terra.’

‘You’re not right, you know, Fritz. I’ll prove it to you.’

‘How?’

‘Take a metre length of iron, cut it in half and then join it together again. By your reasoning we should finish up with a total length only a little above three-quarters of what we started with.’

‘Let’s try it,’ said Van Noon. ‘We have to settle this one way or the other before we all go merrily insane.’

Wooley provided welding equipment, and they tried it. The final measurement was a little over point seven eight of a metre.

‘But I still don’t see how you can reconcile it with the law of conservation of matter,’ said Jacko.

‘Where do you keep the Scotch?’ asked Fritz Van Noon.

‘So what are we going to do with Project Ixion?’ asked Jacko the next day.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Fritz. ‘It’s not going to be easy even if it proves possible. The Ixion assembly is a pretty complex girderwork construction. Every part has to be accurate if it’s going to fit. My first thoughts are to take every girder, cut it in half, and re-join. In that way we might be able to construct what is, in effect, a scaled-down version of the original design.’

‘Is that acceptable?’ asked Jacko. ‘Surely some of the parts have a critical size.’

‘I don’t know. I tried to put this question to the Tycho Brahe, but I don’t think my message was received. Apparently the pinnace can hold our position by line of sight, but it’s not easy for us to track the pinnace because of its unstable orbit. Anyway, I suspect this is a problem for the design team on Terra rather than something which can be settled on the Tycho.’

‘Then you want me to try cutting and joining the girders?’

‘We’d better have a go. We certainly can’t make matters any worse than they are. I’ve a suspicion, however, that the problem isn’t going to be solved that simply.’

‘You’re the boss!’ said Jacko. ‘I still can’t convince myself that it happens at all, but at least we’ll go through the motions.’

Six hours later Jacko found Van Noon crouching at the laser terminal trying to maintain sighting on the pinnace. Such was the relative crudity of the ground terminal that sighting on a small and erratic spaceborne target such as the pinnace was so precarious as to be nearly impossible.

Jacko shook his head wearily. ‘Project Ixion’s no go, Fritz. We’ve tried cutting and joining the girders, but it doesn’t help. Where the assembly calls for a total span to be formed of thirty components along one edge and only five in another, the whole scheme falls down. Short of cutting every girder into the total number of parts required to form the entire project—and then re-joining them—we don’t stand a chance of getting anything to fit.’

Van Noon stood up. ‘I was rather afraid of that. We’d need God-knows how much computer down here to calculate the operations needed to resurrect the original design, and even then we’ve no guarantee that the final de-scaled assembly would do the job it was designed to do.’

‘Is it worth continuing with the work?’

‘No. Abandon the whole thing. There has to be a more rational way out of this. As far as I can see, Ixion in its present form is destined to be a dead duck. I wonder where the heck they found a name like that for it anyway?’

‘Mythology—rather symbolic as it turns out,’ said Jacko mournfully. ‘Ixion was a character who killed his father-in-law and then tried to make love to Jupiter’s wife. As punishment, Jupiter ordered him to be tied to a fiery wheel and rolled for ever throughout Hades. Right now I know exactly how Ixion felt.’

Van Noon was suddenly alert. ‘Say that again, Jacko.’

‘Right now I know exactly how Ixion felt…’

‘Not that! About the wheel?’

‘Tied to a fiery wheel and rolled for ever throughout Hades…’

‘That could be it!’

‘What’s on your mind, Fritz?’

‘I’ve just realized how it’s done. Why didn’t I think of it before?’

‘You’re way ahead of me. How what is done?’

‘The gravity, of course. And the burning mountains, the radio output, and the self-consuming spaceship—they’re all part of the same scheme.’

‘Can we just go back to the start?’

Van Noon was jubilant. ‘That has to be the answer! Wheels within wheels… the fiery wheel of Ixion… rolling forever throughout Hades… suddenly the pieces all fit together. All we have to do is prove it.’

‘I’ll get them to spacedrop a good psychiatrist.’

‘Not for me, Jacko. I never use ‘em. But get me a good computer and a hyper-radio link with Terra, I think I’ve just made the Ixion project obsolete.’

Six

‘Radio Officer presents his compliments, sir. Requests yourself and Commander Brumas to come to the radio room immediately.’

Nash returned the salute and shot a quizzical look at Brumas, who was sitting near him at the conference table. Then he looked back to the courier.

‘Is it important?’

‘Radio messages loud and clear from Lieutenant Van Noon on Getawehi, sir.’

‘Radio messages? I thought radio was impossible under these conditions? Dammit!’ He looked round at the expectant faces of the officers present at the conference. ‘In the circumstances, gentlemen, I’m afraid I must call this meeting to a close. It would seem Van Noon has already achieved something of the impossible. There’ll be a progress report at twenty-hundred hours ship’s standard time. Until then, all sections are to stand in readiness. This may be the break we’re looking for.’

With Brumas at his heels, Nash reached the radio room in record time. The Radio Officer was supervising a narrow-band lock on the big receiver, which appeared to be tuned to a slowly drifting signal.

‘Van Noon to Tycho Brahe. Are you receiving me? I say again…’

‘Can we answer?’ asked Nash.

‘Not by radio. We haven’t anything available with the sort of power that Van Noon’s using. All our transmissions would get lost in the mush. We’re just linking a relay so that we can answer via the laser circuit on the pinnace. It’s easier for us to get messages in that way than it is for Van Noon to get messages out.’

‘Fine, do it!’ Nash waited impatiently for the hookup to be completed.

‘Hullo, Fritz! We are receiving you perfectly. How the Devil did you come by a high-power transmitter like that?’

Van Noon’s voice came over the noise with rare fidelity. ‘If I told you, Colonel, you wouldn’t believe me. Anyway, thank heavens I’ve managed to raise you. I’ve been calling for nearly two hours.’

‘We weren’t watching for you on the radio bands because we didn’t think it possible for you to use them.’

‘Anything’s possible once you know how.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say it. How’re you making out with the Ixion project?’

‘I agree with Wooley that we might as well sell the existing parts for scrap. No one could ever assemble them on Getawehi.’

‘That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear.’ Nash was disappointed. ‘Is there no hope at all?’

‘Not for the Ixion structure. But the Ixion principle might be a different matter. Unless I miss my guess, we can duplicate the function of the Ixion project without actually building it. But I’m going to need help.’

‘You name it, and you’ve got it, Fritz. By the way, Commander Brumas is anxious to speak to you, so I’m handing over for a moment.’

‘Hullo, Commander! You’ll be pleased to know the whole team down here is fit and well.’

‘I suppose that’s some consolation.’ Brumas was grave. ‘Did you get around to having any ideas as to how we can get them off Getawehi?’

‘Get them off?’ Van Noon sounded surprised, then the humour came through in his voice. ‘I don’t think that’ll be much of a problem. When the Tycho Brahe makes planetfall they can wander aboard just like anybody else.’

There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the hiss of white noise on the radio link and the muted hum of the radio room equipment.

Finally Brumas spoke. ‘I don’t think I quite understood you there, Fritz. For a moment I thought you were suggesting that the Tycho Brahe make planetfall on Getawehi!’

‘That’s exactly what I did say, Commander, I need the Tycho Brahe down here. I need the hyper-radio link, I need the ship’s computers, and I need a mass of manpower.’

‘But you can’t jeopardize the Tycho Brahe. For pity’s sake, Fritz! You know what happens to a ship attempting to land on that damned planet!’

‘I know what used to happen, but we’ve got ourselves a few answers since then.’

‘You can’t be serious, Fritz?’ Colonel Nash was back on the circuit. ‘There’s no point in writing off the Labship as well.’

‘I don’t intend to write it off. All I need is a direct two-way speech link with the senior pilot during the talk-down. Given that, I’ll guarantee a safe touch down and that the ship will remain intact after landing.’

‘I can’t permit it,’ said Brumas. ‘The risk is far too great.’

‘Are your recorders on, Commander?’ asked Van Noon.

‘Certainly. Standard procedure—why do you ask?’

‘Because I want this firmly placed on record. I was appointed Senior Adviser for the whole exploit. My considered senior advice is that you should bring the Tycho Brahe down to Getawehi. If you should ignore this advice, I demand that this recording be placed in evidence at any court martial which may subsequently transpire. If you don’t do as I ask you have no chance at all of recovering the team on Getawehi.’

’Damn you, Fritz!’ said Brumas. ‘Let me speak to Wooley. I want evidence as to the unsoundness of your state of mind.’

‘You already have evidence. Look through your telescopes. Wooley’s out in the valley with his crew, laying out landing markers to guide your descent.’

‘Very well, Fritz… you win!’ Nash’s voice carried begrudged acquiescence. ‘It’ll take about an hour to put the ship in a state of readiness. After that you can begin talk-down. But I hope you know how much responsibility you’re taking on yourself. There’s two hundred men aboard the Tycho Brahe.’

‘I know it, Colonel. But I wouldn’t put a mouse down on Getawehi unless I was absolutely sure.’

‘I still don’t see how the hell you can be so certain. Every other ship that has touched the planet has come to a sticky end.’

‘It’s just that I’m beginning to gain an understanding of Getawehi. It seems that she and I both have the same sort of outwards-facing-interior approach.’

High above them in the uncertain heavens a tiny fire-point denoted the position of the descending Tycho Brahe. Its visual distance belied the muted thunder of its thrusters. Even from the extreme altitude the sound carpeted the land with a pattern of sound which were reflected and amplified by the valley’s throat. With sweat on his brow, and a shielded microphone pressed at his throat, Van Noon was making the critical talkdown. At his side, Jacko, operating both rangefinder and telescope, recited a constant steam of information which served as an informative background to Fritz’s constant monologue.

The Labship, thrusters balancing its fall through the stratosphere, was weaving an erratic course into thicker air. Its point of destination was a mere approximation due to its curious deviations from the geocentric vertical. Everything now depended on the smooth continuance of the radio link with the Tycho Brahe’s pilot, and upon the pilot’s ready acceptance of Fritz’s instructions. In such a manoeuvre the pilot’s word was law. It was his decision to accept or reject advice affecting the safety of his ship, and his replies were routed via a laser link from the ship to the ground.

‘Make ready for touchdown. Central thruster to maximum…’ Van Noon’s voice continued precisely above the wave of sound as the mammoth ship loomed in the air above them. ‘Gently cut back… try for a very soft landing… don’t worry about the angle you’re making… Doing nicely now… only metres to go… Make sure the leg servos are off, and as soon as you feel the ground, cut thrusters.’

‘Are you mad? With the terrain sloping at this angle?’ The pilot’s voice came back with swift dissension.

Van Noon was firm. ‘Do as I say, or you’ve no chance whatever.’

‘Check! I can feel the ground. What about the gyro?’

‘Leave it running.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure about nothing on Getawehi. But leave it running. Oh, and one thing more… for Pete’s sake don’t let your engineers dismantle anything. If they do, they’ll never get it re-assembled.’

A blinding hailstorm of dislodged ash soil settled in a broad area to reveal the Tycho Brahe safely planetbound but leaning at a decided angle to the vertical. Open mouthed, everyone waited for her to topple.

Those of Wooley’s team who were able to manoeuvre sleds ‘downhill’ came shooting across the valley, convinced they were on their way to a major catastrophe. Van Noon only smiled slightly to himself and directed Jacko to watch the stability of the Labship’s landing pads, which were buried deeply in the loose Getawehian soil.

As the uncertain gravity altered its angle and continued its slow rotary progress it became apparent that the towering mass of the ship was not going to topple. Jacko reported that the landing assemblies were firmly planted and showed no sign of wanting to tear out and wander, as had those of the first ferry on Getawehi. With an air of uncertainty the great craft moved in a broad arc as the angle at which the ship was leaning followed the migrating highest point of the horizon. Even so, it was nearly half an hour before the shipboard establishment cancelled the state of emergency and could be encouraged to open the hatches and leave the ship.

Characteristically, once the decision had been made, Colonel Nash was first out. He moved thirty paces from the ship, turned and looked dubiously at the huge bulk leaning above him. He winced and then set off downhill at a steady run until he was sure he had put more than a ship’s length between himself and the metal Nemesis. During the course of the run, what had been downhill became across-the-hill and finally began to curve upwards. He stopped then, shaking his head sadly, and walked the rest of the way to Fritz’s control point.

Van Noon wearily laid down the microphone and saluted. ‘Welcome to Getawehi, Colonel!’’

‘It’s an experience I could well have done without,’ said Nash. ‘I must congratulate you on safely conducting our touchdown, but it does raise a few interesting questions.’

‘Like what, sir?’

‘Like how the hell did you do it? Every other craft has either toppled or walked its way to destruction.’

‘Simple,’ said Fritz. ‘I played Getawehi at its own game. If Getawehi wants it that “up” is angled umpteen degrees from the geocentric vertical, then so be it. Let the ship come down out of vertical, and let it stay that way when it’s landed. The thing you mustn’t do is try to fight it. It’s axiomatic that Getawehi is going to have a last word.’

‘But won’t the Tycho Brahe walk?’

‘No, and for the same reason. The leg servos, which are responsive to the geocentric vertical, have been cut out. We’re not trying to use a stiff leg where a bent one is needed.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Nash heavily. His eyes were still nervously watching the trials of the leaning spaceship. Then he shrugged resignedly. ‘Very well, Fritz! You’ve got the Tycho Brahe down here, hyper-radio transmitters, computers, and all. You’ve demonstrated that the Ixion structure cannot be built— so now let’s hear your plans for an alternative.’

‘First,’ said Fritz, ‘I have to prove a theory. For that I need the computers and a lot of manpower. If I can prove what I suspect is true, I shall then need contact with Terra to verify that Getawehi itself can supply the information that Ixion was intended to collect.’

‘The entire ship’s facilities and the manpower’s yours. All I ask is that we can make a getaway from Getawehi in a reasonably short period of time. Which reminds me, you haven’t yet explained how you managed to acquire such a powerful radio transmitter.’

‘I left the details of that to Jacko Hine. But I don’t think he much likes talking about it either.’

Seven

It took three weeks. Teams ranged over a several hundred mile radius before Fritz could collect and collate the necessary information. For most of this time the shipboard computers on the Tycho Brahe worked continuously, sifting the data from the on-line transducers and from recorders which the sled teams kept bringing in. Piece by piece the pattern which Van Noon had intuitively deduced was verified and described in the mathematical detail which only a high-power computing complex has the ability to construct. From this Van Noon re-drew his simplified models more suited for communication between humans. When he was satisfied, he established a hyper-radio link with Terra. For three days more the ship’s computers chattered to and were interrogated by their counterparts back home, while Van Noon himself argued on a more prosaic level with the Ixion Project design team.

On the last day he gained the point he had been seeking, and called an immediate conference of all senior personnel concerned. When they were seated, he rose and passed the message transcript round the table.

Van noon, Tycho Brahe

We agree all points. The information supplied proves the Ixion entropy concept valid and viable. The project has now been drawn to a successful conclusion. This is a historic moment. Congratulations to all concerned

Ixion control.

After a few minutes Colonel Nash rose uncertainly to his feet.

‘Gentlemen… I’m sure we’re all glad to know that the Ixion concept is viable. And I’m sure we’re all delighted to share in the congratulations for the successful conclusion of the project—especially after it was so nearly a disaster. But I have one important question to ask. Fritz… what the hell is going on?’

Van Noon stood up, grinning broadly. ‘I must apologize, gentlemen, if the last phases of the operation seemed something of a mystery. The trouble was that I leaped to a conclusion about Getawehi which was so unorthodox that I doubt if you’d have given me a second hearing had I attempted to explain. Fortunately, events have proven me right. In case any of you haven’t already reasoned the position for yourselves, I shall now be happy to explain. Of course, the whole key lies in the peculiar nature of Getawehi’s gravity.’

‘You have an idea of what causes the variations?’ Brumas was sharply attentive.

‘Yes. I theorized that the effect was consistent with the presence of orbiting satellites of very considerable mass. In point of fact, what we were experiencing was the result of several interacting gravitational attractions rather than the single one to which we are accustomed on Terra.’

‘Ingenious!’ said Brumas. ‘But not very convincing. To take the main point—Getawehi has no satellites.’

‘I’m afraid you’re wrong,’ said Van Noon. ‘We have orbital plottings of three major satellites and the reasonable suspicion that at least another twenty minor ones exist.’

‘Rubbish! I tell you there are no such things.’ Brumas was becoming annoyed. ‘Dammit, we’ve been observing the planet from space for over six months now.’

‘From space you wouldn’t see them. You see, Commander, they happen to be internal satellites—orbiting beneath the planetary surface.’

‘Nonsense?’ Brumas flared with anger. ‘If this is some sort of a joke… !’

Colonel Nash rose and calmed the sudden uproar. ‘Gentlemen, I think you now see why Lieutenant Van Noon didn’t attempt to discuss the matter before. Very few of you have been exposed, as I have, to Van Noon’s contempt for orthodoxy. At first sight it always hits below the belt. But somehow the damned idiot always makes it so plausible that I can assure you it’s futile to get into an argument with him.’ He turned back to Van Noon. ‘I assume, Fritz, that you do have some justification for this amazing statement?’

‘Certainly!’ Fritz was unruffled. ‘By the use of weight-loaded strain gauges distributed over a wide area, we have been able to plot the mass, size, and orbits of the three major satellites. The orbital information is precise and all orbits fall well within the mantle of Getawehi. The mass and size figures are enough to make your hair curl.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because the only material known in the universe which could possibly have that mass and density is material which has itself suffered gravitational collapse—degenerate star-matter. Matter so far collapsed on itself that its atoms are virtually in contact with each other.’

‘As would be material from completely exhausted dwarf-stars?’

‘Yes. Factually, these small satellite bodies constitute over two-thirds of Getawehi’s actual mass. Their orbital speed is low, and the planet is virtually an envelope which lollops around the variable centre of gravity of the satellite group. Getawehi’s surface gravity is a compromise between its own weak attraction and the higher, yet mobile, attraction of the hyper-dense orbiting nuclei.’

‘Are we to understand, then, that Getawehi is hollow?’ Nash was puzzled.

‘Far from it. Its internal structure is probably not too dissimilar from that of Terra, except that the crust and solid mantle of Getawehi must be many times thinner. Also the whole inner core must be in a molten state—probably molten nickel-iron. It’s within this core of liquid metal that the satellites orbit.’

‘If you say so.’ Nash settled back and chewed his moustache. ‘Very well, Fritz! I’ll accept that, because I’ve no doubt that you have it well documented. Now tell us what you used as a substitute for the Ixion assembly?’

‘In a moment,’ said Fritz. ‘First let me deal with the electrified desert, since it’s all part of the same story. There just had to be some natural mechanism available capable of producing substantial voltages at an almost limitless current. I approached the problem by considering what type of generator could produce this order of electrical output. The only reqasonable answer was a homopolar generator.’

‘A what?’

‘A homopolar generator—the simplest electrical generator ever devised. It consists essentially of a large conducting disc or rotor, spinning in a magnetic field. Once I had hit on the idea of satellites orbiting in a molten metal core, the answer was obvious. Gatewehi has a strong magnetic field, and nine-tenths of her volume is a rotating ball of conductive, liquid metal. Getawehi is a homopolar generator, and one of no mean proportions. The black rod-like terminals apparently project through the solid mantle and act as current pickoffs. I suspect that variations in output are somehow associated with satellite turbulence and to the fact that frequently the whole system gets its axis out of line with the planetary magnetic field.’

‘But you still haven’t built another Ixion,’ argued Nash.

‘I didn’t need to. As I thought, the Ixion structure was a massive but fairly simple device, intended to detect some of the oddities of entropy distribution in the continuum by measurement of fairly simple parameters. It was obvious that it was going to work because all the dimensionless numbers relating to entropy calculations are different on Getawehi—and even the dimensional numbers have adapted to follow suit.’

‘But the hardware?’

‘It wasn’t needed. The criterion of Ixion was not its complexity, but its size. When I offered Terra not a large turntable but a planet-sized ball of rotating metal complete with current pickoffs, they were overjoyed.

They had to re-calculate their parameters, but we were able to feed them in a few days of the type of data that the Ixion structure might have taken centuries to produce.’

‘Hmm!’ Nash was thoughtful. ‘As usual, Fritz, you seem to have all the answers. But I can see some of the technical boys have their toes curling up. I suggest we adjourn for a while to allow them to catch up on the figurework. As for you, Fritz, you’re coming with me.’

‘Where to, Colonel?’

‘To show me what the hell Getawehi uses as a high-power radio transmitter. I swear I’ve examined every square inch of this planet by telescope without detecting even so much as a banana plug.’

Van Noon shrugged. ‘I suppose you won’t be satisfied until you’ve seen it for yourself… and you may not believe it even then.’

As the sleds neared the range it was possible to see the light from the burning mountains even in broad daylight. Despite a favourable angle of slope, Colonel Nash halted his sled at a distance and took out his field glasses to study the phenomenon. Van Noon drew up alongside.

‘How does it work?’ asked Nash at last.

Fritz waved his hand. ‘As with the steppe, the whole ground-mass is electrified. The mountain itself is a great mineral outcrop which consists largely of conductive silicates and laminated strata of various metals including gallium and its compound arsenide.’

‘So?’

‘So the whole mountain is electrically alive, with random electrical potentials everywhere. In the high voltage periods the great mountain currents surge through the partially conducting, partially semiconducting layers, inducing all manner of curious effects. One of these effects is to cause some of the gallium arsenide layer to convert the current flow direct into light.’

‘Of course—electroluminescence!’

‘It doesn’t stop there,’ said Fritz. ‘None of the metalloid layers are particularly pure, and all of them contain numerous slip-faults. In these circumstances it is inevitable that you find a profusion of naturally formedp and n junctions which would drive a solid-state physicist psychotic. As the potentials vary you get huge transistor switching actions with thousands of amps being diverted up and down the mountainside like the great grand-daddy of all thyristors gone crazy. That’s why you get the glow running and shimmering through the mountain like that.’

‘Fantastic! If I hadn’t seen it myself I’d never have believed it.’

‘You haven’t seen anything yet,’ said Van Noon.

By the time they reached the foot of the mountain itself the glow had died as abruptly as on the occasion when Fritz and Jacko had first seen it. Now the fissured and laminated glassy blocks of the mountain lay apparently lifeless and inert, and only the instrumented probes which Fritz applied to the surface showed the drift and drain of the electrical currents still surging in the mountain.

‘Look to the end there,’ said Van Noon. ‘Where the mountain reaches down to the steppe there’s a silvery outcropping containing a series of thrust faults. That’s a typical formation distributed widely over the surface of Getawehi. Like the burning mountain, the lamellar layers show marked transistor action. The outcrop is predominantly laminated silicon semiconductor layers. Subjected to the terrain currents, almost every similar outcrop is a radio transmitter at some state of the current flow.’

Nash stopped and wiped his brow. ‘I won’t buy that one, Fritz. I grant you that you have the current and you appear to have the semiconductor material. But even I know that you don’t get a radio transmitter by throwing random transistors into a box.’

‘No,’ said Fritz, ‘but there is a logical explanation. In these fractured semiconductor masses you have potentially every aspect of transmitter function: capacitance, resistance, inductance, switching, amplification, and even piezo-electric oscillation. And you have time.’

‘I don’t see what time has to do with it?’

’Evolution takes time, Colonel. Pass too much current through a transistor junction and you destroy it. Start with an infinity of potential transistor circuit paths and destroy and modify them slowly, and one day you’ll strike a circuit which will function—it will dissipate current rather than be destroyed by it. Continue the process for long enough and the only circuits which survive will be those capable of dissipating energy. Thus active circuits will become the rule rather than the exception—by a process analogous to natural selection on a biological level. The burning mountain survives by dissipating the electrical energy in the form of light. The small outcrops predominantly dissipate in the radio frequencies.’

‘I still find it hard to believe,’ said Nash.

‘When you consider the capabilities of natural selection processes, a radio transmitter is a far less unlikely product than is a human being,’ said Fritz quietly.

Nash looked at his hands reflectively, then nodded. ‘And you used one of these outcrops as a transmitter to contact the Tycho Brahe?’

‘We had to—er—modify it to suit our needs. But yes—that’s basically what we did do.’

‘I see,’ said Nash. ‘Your ingenuity does you credit, Fritz… but then I suppose that’s what we employ unorthodox engineers for.’

‘In this case,’ said Fritz, ‘I can’t help feeling that Jacko surpassed himself. He can claim to be the first man—and I suspect also the last—ever to add an audio modulator to a solid state transmitter… with a pickaxe!’