Read Online Second Stage Lensman by E. E. (Doc) Smith - Free Book Online
Authors: E. E. (Doc) Smith
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aboard which were apt at any time to become intensely and unpredictably interested in anything, anywhere. Hence it did not take Kinnison long to obtain what little information there was.
The vacancy they were approaching was Rift Ninety Four, a vast space, practically empty of stars, lying between the main body of the galaxy and a minor branch of one of its prodigious spiral arms. The opalescence ahead was the branch—Dunstan's Region. Henderson was right; it had never been explored.
The Galactic Survey, which has not even yet mapped at all completely the whole of the First Galaxy proper, had of course done no systematic work upon such outlying sections as the spiral arms. Some such regions were well known and well mapped, it is true; either because its own population, independently developing means of space—flight, had come into contact with our Civilization upon its own initiative or because private exploration and investigation had opened up profitable lines of commerce. But Dunstan's Region was bare. No people resident in it had ever made themselves known; no private prospecting, if there had ever been any such, had revealed anything worthy of exploitation or development. And, with so many perfectly good uninhabited planets so much nearer to Galactic Center, it was of course much too far out for colonization.
Through the rift, then, and into Dunstan's Region the Dauntless bored at the unimaginable pace of her terrific full-blast drive. The tracers' beams grew harder and more taut with every passing hour; the fleeing speedster itself grew large and clear upon the plates. The opalescence of the spiral arm became a firmament of stars. A sun detached itself from that firmament; a dwarf of Type G. Planets appeared.
One of these in particular, the second out, looked so much like Earth that it made some of the observers homesick. There were the familiar polar ice-caps, the atmosphere and stratosphere, the high-piled, billowy masses of clouds. There were vast blue oceans, there were huge, unfamiliar continents glowing with chlorophyllic green.
At the spectroscopes, at the bolometers, at the many other instruments men went rapidly and skillfully to work.
"Hope the ape's heading for Two, and I think he is," Kinnison remarked, as he studied the results. "People living on that planet would be human to ten places, for all the tea in China. No wonder he was so much at home on Tellus… Yup, it's Two—there, he's gone inert."
"Whoever is piloting that can went to school just one day in his life and that day it rained and the teacher didn't come," Henderson snorted. "And he's trying to balance her down on her tail—look at her bounce and flop around! He's just begging for a crack-up."
"If he makes it it'll be bad—plenty bad," Kinnison mused. "He'll gain a lot of time on us while we're rounding the globe on our landing spiral."
"Why spiral, Kim? Why not follow him down, huh? Our intrinsic is no worse than his—it's the same one, in fact."
"Get conscious, Hen. This is a superbattlewagon—just in case you didn't know it before."
"So what? I can certainly handle this super a damn sight better than that ground—gripper is handling that scrap-heap down there." Henry Henderson, Master Pilot Number One of the Service, was not bragging. He was merely voicing what to him was the simple and obvious truth.
"Mass is what. Mass and volume and velocity and inertia and power. You never stunted this much mass before, did you?"
"No, but what of it? I took a course in piloting once, in my youth." He was then a grand old man of twenty-eight or thereabouts. "I can line up the main rear center pipe onto any grain of sand you want to pick out on that field, and hold her there until she slags it down."
"If you think you can spell 'able', hop to it!"
"QX, this is going to be fun." Henderson gleefully accepted the challenge, then clicked on his general-alarm microphone. "Strap down, everybody, for inert maneuvering, Class Three, on the
The vacancy they were approaching was Rift Ninety Four, a vast space, practically empty of stars, lying between the main body of the galaxy and a minor branch of one of its prodigious spiral arms. The opalescence ahead was the branch—Dunstan's Region. Henderson was right; it had never been explored.
The Galactic Survey, which has not even yet mapped at all completely the whole of the First Galaxy proper, had of course done no systematic work upon such outlying sections as the spiral arms. Some such regions were well known and well mapped, it is true; either because its own population, independently developing means of space—flight, had come into contact with our Civilization upon its own initiative or because private exploration and investigation had opened up profitable lines of commerce. But Dunstan's Region was bare. No people resident in it had ever made themselves known; no private prospecting, if there had ever been any such, had revealed anything worthy of exploitation or development. And, with so many perfectly good uninhabited planets so much nearer to Galactic Center, it was of course much too far out for colonization.
Through the rift, then, and into Dunstan's Region the Dauntless bored at the unimaginable pace of her terrific full-blast drive. The tracers' beams grew harder and more taut with every passing hour; the fleeing speedster itself grew large and clear upon the plates. The opalescence of the spiral arm became a firmament of stars. A sun detached itself from that firmament; a dwarf of Type G. Planets appeared.
One of these in particular, the second out, looked so much like Earth that it made some of the observers homesick. There were the familiar polar ice-caps, the atmosphere and stratosphere, the high-piled, billowy masses of clouds. There were vast blue oceans, there were huge, unfamiliar continents glowing with chlorophyllic green.
At the spectroscopes, at the bolometers, at the many other instruments men went rapidly and skillfully to work.
"Hope the ape's heading for Two, and I think he is," Kinnison remarked, as he studied the results. "People living on that planet would be human to ten places, for all the tea in China. No wonder he was so much at home on Tellus… Yup, it's Two—there, he's gone inert."
"Whoever is piloting that can went to school just one day in his life and that day it rained and the teacher didn't come," Henderson snorted. "And he's trying to balance her down on her tail—look at her bounce and flop around! He's just begging for a crack-up."
"If he makes it it'll be bad—plenty bad," Kinnison mused. "He'll gain a lot of time on us while we're rounding the globe on our landing spiral."
"Why spiral, Kim? Why not follow him down, huh? Our intrinsic is no worse than his—it's the same one, in fact."
"Get conscious, Hen. This is a superbattlewagon—just in case you didn't know it before."
"So what? I can certainly handle this super a damn sight better than that ground—gripper is handling that scrap-heap down there." Henry Henderson, Master Pilot Number One of the Service, was not bragging. He was merely voicing what to him was the simple and obvious truth.
"Mass is what. Mass and volume and velocity and inertia and power. You never stunted this much mass before, did you?"
"No, but what of it? I took a course in piloting once, in my youth." He was then a grand old man of twenty-eight or thereabouts. "I can line up the main rear center pipe onto any grain of sand you want to pick out on that field, and hold her there until she slags it down."
"If you think you can spell 'able', hop to it!"
"QX, this is going to be fun." Henderson gleefully accepted the challenge, then clicked on his general-alarm microphone. "Strap down, everybody, for inert maneuvering, Class Three, on the
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