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Authors: Edward Elmer Smith
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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 tail. Tail over to belly landing. Hipe!"
The Bergenholms were cut and as the tremendously massive super-
dreadnought, inert, shot off at an angle under its Tellurian intrinsic velocity, Master Pilot
Number One proved his rating. As much a virtuoso of the banks and tiers of blast keys
and levers before him as a concert organist is of his instrument, his hands and feet
flashed hither and yon. Not music?—the bellowing, crescendo thunders of those jets
were music to the hard-boiled space-hounds who heard them. And in response to the
exact placement and the precisely-measured power of those blasts the great sky-rover
spun, twisted, and bucked as her prodigious mass was forced into motionlessness
relative to the terrain beneath
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 tail. Tail over to belly landing. Hipe!"
The Bergenholms were cut and as the tremendously massive super-
dreadnought, inert, shot off at an angle under its Tellurian intrinsic velocity, Master Pilot
Number One proved his rating. As much a virtuoso of the banks and tiers of blast keys
and levers before him as a concert organist is of his instrument, his hands and feet
flashed hither and yon. Not music?—the bellowing, crescendo thunders of those jets
were music to the hard-boiled space-hounds who heard them. And in response to the
exact placement and the precisely-measured power of those blasts the great sky-rover
spun, twisted, and bucked as her prodigious mass was forced into motionlessness
relative to the terrain beneath
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