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Planet Mappers

<h2>13</h2> "What in the world?" Jon's eyes snapped open and immediately began scanning the various telltales on the panel, while from the other three came a chorused, "What's wrong?" "Something out here using atomic energy." Jon's surprised voice made them raise their seats quickly to upright, so they could better see for themselves. Mr. Carver hastily adjusted his visiplate to maximum magnification, and began searching the heavens surrounding them. "A ship, you think?" "Yes, and quite close." And a moment later, aided more surely by his more complex instruments, Jon cried, "There it is! RA 11; square 17 on the plate." His father's flying fingers found the object, then narrowed his focus of vision and stepped up the magnification. His eyes grew large, then hard and tense, as he studied the close-up image. "Slik Bogin's ship—I'd know that anywhere!" he exclaimed, and the boys looked at him in puzzled concern. "Then I must have been right, that day I thought I heard a ship," Mrs. Carver declared. "You must have been," Jak agreed. "But what's Bogin doing out here?" Jon asked with a touch of fear in his voice. "Nothing good, you can bet." His father's voice was grimmer than any of them had ever heard it before. "Any time you run across that pirate, you can lay mighty big odds there's skullduggery afoot." "Great catfish! He's trying to beat us out of this system." "I'll lay a thousand to one he is, if he thinks he can get away with it." "What can we do about it, Father?" There was now a trace of a tremor in Jak's voice. "Jon and I have worked so hard to map these planets—how can Bogin possibly do the same and still beat us?" "No telling. He's a slippery cuss, and if he really wants to try claim-jumping, he'll figure out some dirty scheme." "Can't we get back to Earth ahead of him, Mr. C., and report to the Colonial Board first?" Mrs. Carver was almost in tears. Her husband gave her a tight-lipped smile. "We'll sure try, Honey." His forehead creased with a frown of concentration for some minutes, then he faced Jon, who was watching him from the pilot's seat. "Bogin's headed in the opposite direction, so no use chasing him to see what he's doing. Besides, I've heard his ship is armed, and we aren't, except for our rifles, which are absolutely no good in space. I say, continue our course, checking our signals, then beat it for home. After all, we don't know for sure that Bogin's trying anything—and our best bet is to finish our job as though nothing had happened, but not waste any time doing it ... just in case." "Right, Pop. As near as I could tell, we have twice his speed, and we don't need to worry. We have all the data and pictures to prove we're the Prime Discoverers, and we didn't hear any signals to show he's put out any senders." But there was an uneasy and unhappy silence as the little space-yacht continued to eat up the millions of miles. Tad Carver had intended having his younger son slow down near Planet Three and go into an orbit close enough so he could get a good generalized view of this other Earthlike, though colder, planet. But now he would not do so. Speed and time were essential in getting back to Terra. He would try to keep his worries from the others as much as possible, but there was a deep foreboding in his mind. Only too well he knew the various types of men who braved the spaceways, and that many of them were out and out criminals. And this Slik Bogin was the most ruthless pirate and cutthroat of them all, from reports. There were so many, many crimes charged against him ... though it was true that none had ever been proven. Yet such was the man's evil reputation that all honest spacemen hated him, even as they were somewhat in fear of him. Mr. Carver was sure that the man's spacer was almost a warship in her armament. Nor did he doubt that the master criminal would not hesitate to use his heavy rays to blast out of existence anyone he felt was a menace to his nefarious plans. And this new system the Carvers had discovered was a prize well worth stealing, if possible. Although Mr. Carver had not seen these splendid worlds with his own eyes, he had carefully studied the boys' concise and complete reports, and their many detailed pictures, so he knew what a rich treasure they had struck in finding this sun and its planets and moons. It would make him and his family rich beyond their fondest dreams ... and he would be worse than flat broke if they lost out on getting their claim approved. For Mr. Carver had not told even his wife that all their possessions, including their ship, were mortgaged for every credit he could secure, to enable them to make this costly journey. It was true he had won great wealth on his previous trips into space—but several of his largest investments on Terra had gone sour, and this was a last desperate chance to recoup his fortune in one intensive campaign. As they neared the point in their trajectory that brought them to the Earthward side of Planet Three, Jon began tuning his receiver and turning his directional antenna-loops, so he could pick up the continuous message of their sender. Soon he began hearing words, and tuned more closely, stepping up his power. The four sat erect, expectant. Then their faces blanched and their fists tightened as they heard the words: "This sun and system of five planets, of which this is the third, were discovered and surveyed by Michael Bogin and his crew, on the tenth day of January in the Terran year of 2136." Over and over the message was repeated, while the Carvers stared at each other in horrified surprise and consternation. But Mr. Carver rallied quickly. "He has changed the tape in your senders, boys. We'll probably find the same on Four and Five, and he's on his way to Two now to do the same." "But he'll not be able to change the one we set out around the sun, will he, Pop?" Jon's voice quavered and broke into a boyish soprano. "He can't get in as close as we did, and still slow down enough to retrieve such a small thing, can he?" "I don't see how he could. But he has some darned good technies in that pirate crew of his. They'll figure out some way to destroy ours and substitute one of their own, I'll bet. Well, this changes the picture. Now we know what he's up to, so we'll just have to get to Terra ahead of him, and lay our facts before the Board first." "They'll take our word against his, won't they, especially since we have such complete records and so many photographs?" Jak asked, hoping to be reassured. "There's no telling," Mr. Carver spoke slowly, shaking his head. "If Bogin is trying to get this claim—and now we know he is—he'll work out some way of getting pictures and records, too. We can only hope." "And pray," their mother added determinedly. "We'll make out some way," Jon tried to cheer them all. "Meanwhile, I suggest I cut to one G and that Mom fixes us some grub. We have to eat." "That's a good idea," his father agreed, and Jon manipulated his controls. They all felt the sudden relief of once more being their accustomed weight. Mrs. Carver unstrapped herself and left for the galley. Jak also unstrapped, saying, "I'll go help Mom." "Ask her to make a pile of sandwiches, too, and to bring plenty of drinks so we can eat later without slowing our acceleration," his father called, then added, "Don't let your mother talk about this. Get her mind on something else and keep it there." "Right, Father." "This is serious, Jon," Mr. Carver said when the two were alone in the control room. "I don't like to worry any of you any more than's necessary, but our chances aren't too good, now that those signals have been changed." "We've got some hope left, though, haven't we?" came the anxious inquiry. "I see two fairly good ones—but it all depends on so many factors," Mr. Carver answered after a moment of thought. "We've got to try to get back first and report and show them our records and pictures—which are very detailed, thanks to you two boys. Second, we've got to hope someone back there caught our original signals, and then noticed the change—if they could tell they came from the same system." "How are you making out under this acceleration?" "All right. I don't seem to be any weaker ... but then, what with all the excitement and disappointment, there may be a relapse. But that's not important...." Then, hearing his son's gasp of dismay, he continued rapidly and grimly, "No, Jon, really. I mean that, and I want you to keep it in mind at all times on the rest of this trip. I'm expendable, if we can prove our case. Not that I intend to die," he hastened to add with a grin as Jon started to protest. "But I'd rather take longer to get well and know that you all are provided for the way you should be." "If we cut for Terra right away, without waiting to go on to Four and Five, Bogin couldn't possibly build up speed enough to beat us in, could he?" Jon questioned anxiously. "Not unless his ship's a lot faster than ours. It probably is, because his crew can undoubtedly stand more acceleration, and he'll drive to the limit. But if he stops to change those other signals, I don't see how he can do it. Go ahead, change course, and let's hike for home." "Right. Let's see, now. Terra's behind and down from where we are and the way we're heading. I'll set us into a circle while we're figuring out our course." "Make it just an approximation for now. We can refine it as we go." "Right." Jon worked swiftly at his computer, then at his controls, and they could feel the gallant little ship begin to strain toward the right. "Don't try too short a turn," his father warned. "OK, I'll let up a bit. I was figuring on a two million radius." "Better make it three for safety." In time their circling was completed, the new homeward bound course figured. For days the little ship and its anxious crew were on their way. Three times each day their acceleration was stepped up to two Earth-gravities for a period of four hours, then back to one and a quarter for the same period—four on and four off continually, to give them a rest from the burden of doubled weight, and to make it easier to prepare and eat their meals, and to do what personal and ship's chores had to be done. In between times, as they could, they slept. Jon had set their receptor and analyzer to react to atomics. It was now fanning out behind them in a cone-shaped funnel of force. He hoped by this to be able to tell if Bogin began overtaking them. Of course, space was so vast, and the distance to Sol and Terra so great, and their points of trajectory so different, that the pirate ship might be taking an entirely different course, and not come anywhere near them until the two ships were almost home. On the other hand, Jon was taking the most direct route—and he was sure Bogin would undoubtedly do the same—so they were quite apt to converge sooner or later. And since Jon's receptors covered an ever-larger sphere of space the farther away they reached, he and his father hoped they would be able to tell if and when their enemy began catching up with them. Meantime, the two studied almost continuously together the problem of that supposedly new fuel-metal they had discovered on the planet Marci—hoping it could be used in their engines. They were sadly handicapped, both because neither was an atomic physicist, and because their little ship—well-stocked and provided with many instruments as it was—did not contain anywhere near all the testing equipment needed for such a delicate and complex and dangerous task. Yet they learned much. Jak took over the routine duties of their flight, after some additional instruction on points about which he was not sure. In between times, as the lessened pressure allowed, he studied the new specimens he had collected, saw to it that the ship's hydroponics kept operating correctly, and did whatever he could to relieve his brother and his father of their ordinary duties so they could devote all their waking time to study and experiment. Their mother attended to her housekeeping, and saw to the comfort and well-being of her menfolk. Mr. Carver knew, deep within himself, that he was overdoing, considering his illness. His partially-healed broken leg so often pained and throbbed that he had difficulty concealing his hurt from the sharp eyes of his family. But he loved his wife and sons so greatly that their future well-being was far more important to him than his own, and so he never mentioned these things. The sturdy little yacht had covered almost half the tremendous distance back to Sol. The Carvers were beginning to let up a bit in their anxiety and fears. Surely, each one felt, they were winning the race. Then suddenly their alarm rang. Three of them found themselves on their feet, rushing toward the control panel. "How close are they, Jon?" their father yelled from his co-pilot's couch. "Mmmm. I've stepped this up about two hundred per cent.... I figure it about half a billion miles." "Not very far—in space. They must have lots more speed than we do to have caught up with us like that." "What shall we do?" Mrs. Carver grabbed her husband's arm with trembling fingers. He turned his head and smiled up at her. "We'll figure out some way to beat them, Honey," he soothed. "There's lots more can be done yet." "Sure, Mom, they're still a long way behind us." Jon tried to keep the anxiety out of his voice. "And you know the old saying, 'a stern chase is a long chase.'" "Can't we increase our acceleration and so our speed?" Jak asked. "Yes, we'll have to do that, at least." Mr. Carver's voice was grim. He looked at Jon. "Step it up to two and a half, as soon as you're all in your seats. We'll stay there more of the time from now on, and we'll change the period to six in and two up." "How about one and a half for the two hours?" "We'll try it. If we sleep or nap more while we're at max, we ought to be able to stand it." "We're still almost ..." Jon figured rapidly at the computer, "... three weeks out of Terra, even at that increased speed." His father grimaced, while his wife and elder son uttered gasps of dismay. "I know. It'll be tough, but we've got to win." But after a moment he looked first at his wife, than at Jak. "This is an order," he said seriously. "The minute any of you feel you can't take it any more, say so and we'll cut down, even if we do lose speed. I guess I went off half-cocked just now in saying that we had to win. Our health is more important...." "Except yours, you're trying to say," Jak broke in. "You haven't been sparing yourself any, I notice, and I know enough doctoring to know you're not getting well as fast...." "Pooh, I'm all right, and I'm used to ship accelerations." Mr. Carver turned his head toward his son and made himself grin. "Even under these three G's, I can still get up and lick you, even with a half-healed leg." Jon realized at once that his father was warning him not to worry their mother any more, and forced himself to reply, pretending to be shamefaced, "Yes, sir, you could at that. I'll be good." But the next morning, by the ship's chronoms, after they had fully awakened from a night of tortured sleep, Jon studied his instruments for some time, then reported to his father, "Bogin's still catching up. He's only about four hundred million behind us now." "But how can he possibly be?" Jak demanded. "Probably staying on three G's or better all the time," Jon answered. "Or else he has a different means of propulsion than we have that affects his whole ship and contents, including crew," his father said slowly. "I don't know what it could be. But theoretically there are a lot of different ways of traveling faster than any we've learned how to use yet." "But how could they, Mr. C.?" his wife gasped. "I don't pretend to know much about such things, but I thought that better fuels merely meant increased efficiency in the use of the engines, not an increase of speed. Isn't it acceleration that makes the speed faster?" He turned his head with difficulty—at three gravities acceleration their apparent weight was tripled, and his body now "weighed" over five hundred and fifty pounds, instead of its normal one eighty plus! "You're both right and wrong, Honey," he explained. "The better the fuel, the less we have to carry for the same distance traveled, and that makes our thrust-to-mass ratio less. We can go home faster than we came out here, because some of our fuel is gone and we have less mass. But that's not what I'm talking about. Theoretically, as I said, there are other ways, none of which our scientists have yet figured out how to use, as far as I know. There could be a complete or partial nullification of gravity or of inertia. Or some type of space warp. Or some method of 'cutting through' the other dimensions, so we could go almost instantly from one point in space to another." Jak gasped. "Why, how's that possible, Father?" Jon answered quickly. "I can illustrate, I think. Imagine a sheet of paper, with a dot near either end. The normal way to connect them would be a straight line drawn from one to the other—which is analogous to the way we travel in space now. What Pop's talking about would be the same as if we folded the paper so the two dots touched, and moved from one to the other direct." "That wouldn't be...." "That's silly." The two phrases came simultaneously from Jak and his mother. "It's not silly, Honey. We merely haven't figured out how to do it yet. But theoretical science knows that there are 'folds' in space. We just haven't learned how to use them yet." "No," Jak snorted, "and I'll bet you never do." "And I'll bet they will," Jon blazed. "You just don't realize how wonderful science is—in other lines than your own, I mean. You think it's perfectly natural that medical science has made such tremendous advances in the past couple of centuries. Why shouldn't other branches make just as great strides?" "Because the advances in medicine and surgery have been logical," his brother began hotly, but their father interrupted. "Whoa now, boys, don't get started on an endless argument. You're both right—and both wrong. I'll admit that the three methods I mentioned are pretty far-fetched. But after all, science is always doing the unexpected and the impossible. There's no telling what they'll do next—not even of telling what they may have done while we've been gone." "I'd read about that 'simultaneity' thing," Jon stated. "It was a concept about being able to reproduce the exact nucleonic pattern of some other space and thus being able to transfer to it instantly." "Another idea is of a 'tube' or 'vortex' method of transversing space at almost instantaneous speeds—and many other such," Mr. Carver declared. "But it's a cinch none of us have brains enough to figure out any of them before we reach Terra. And that Bogin's not using any of them, either, since he's so apparently on a straight-line flight like we are. He may have better engines, or better fuel, but to overtake us like he is—now that I've stopped to think about it—can only be done by using greater acceleration than we are, and for a longer time. So while those other ideas are interesting conjectures, they won't help us out of our present predicament." "That's right, Pop." Jon wrenched his mind back to their immediate problem. "We've got to figure out what we can do right now to beat Bogin." They all lapsed into silence then, partly to think of their problem, and partly because their personal energy was weakened by the tremendous pressures they were undergoing. Their new schedule was hard on them all—none of them were really rested, even though they now slept or dozed most of the time. But they were keeping more nearly ahead, although when Jon took his next readings, Bogin's ship had crept up another third of a hundred million miles. "That means he'll catch up with and pass us in about eleven days, and we're still almost twenty out of Terra." Jon could not entirely keep the worry out of his voice. During the noon respite, according to ship's time, they cut their acceleration to one and a half, and Mrs. Carver prepared a hot meal, and cold lunches for the balance of that day. While they were eating, there in the control room, Jak suddenly looked up at his father. "I just wondered, sir. How much pressure could a person stand for long periods, if he was unconscious under some kind of an anaesthetic?" "Why," the elder hesitated, "I don't know exactly. I imagine around five gravities or so, if it was to be for some time, especially if one was in a pressure pack. Why do you ask?" "I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I remembered reading about a series of experiments a Swedish scientist has been making about putting animals—even people—into an unconscious state. It's in one of my reelbooks. Seems to me I remember its saying he has found he could keep them there for several days at a time without any sign of permanent harm." "How'd he do it?" Jon dropped his fork to lean forward. "With a drug he invented. Wait, I'll go get the book." Jak jumped up from the table, but his mother's voice stopped him. "We're not going to try anything like that," she said worriedly. "Not even to beat Bogin." Mr. Carver reached out from his recline seat to lay a hand soothingly on his wife's. "Wait, now, Marci, let's find out first what this is all about. Maybe the boy has something, maybe not. But let's examine it before we decide, shall we?" Her eyes still held the worried look, but she returned the pressure of his hand. "Well, I guess there's no harm in that, Mr. C. But I just don't like taking dangerous chances, that's all." He smiled at her fondly. "Pioneers always have to take chances, Honey," he said gently. "Men would never have gotten anywhere if they hadn't. But we'll make sure we know all about what we're getting into before we leap, you can bet." "Besides," Jon tried to reassure her, "even if this stuff would work, Owl hasn't any of that new drug, so we couldn't try it, much as we might want to." "Oh, that's right. I hadn't thought of that." She smiled with relief. In a moment Jak came running back with a reelbook. "Here it is. Let's see now." He rapidly scanned through the reel with his finder. "Ah, here it is!" He read aloud rapidly, and the three listened intently. "So you see," Jak raised his head triumphantly when he had finished reading, "it's perfectly possible to put us to sleep for a week at a time. And you said the ship was fully automatic," he turned to Jon, "so it doesn't need guiding, and would keep on its course whether we were awake or not." "Well, it's way past our two hours." Mr. Carver spoke up hastily to prevent his wife from saying anything. "Time we were getting back into stepped-up acceleration again. Strap down, and we can study this later." "I still don't like the idea," Mrs. Carver said as the four made themselves as comfortable as possible in the recline seats before Jon turned on more acceleration. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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