CHAPTER I
HEIRS OF SPACE FLIGHT
NICK HARTNETT stepped off the upper lip of the thousand-foot shaft and floated gently downwards. When he had fallen about half the distance, he reached out for a stanchion, grasped it easily and pulled himself gracefully into the lounge-room of the Columbia.
What he saw there was precisely what he expected to see. There was Dorothy Gilbert, curled in a spring-hammock, reading a book. Nick was looking over her shoulder before she knew he had entered.
"Bodie's Parecliptic Orbits,' " he read aloud. "Dorothy, don't you ever think of anything but your job?"
She looked up, smiling, brushing aside a lock of tousled hair that sought her eye. "Often, Nick. But where would we be if I didn't check my courses against those plotted by a competent authority?"
"Just about where we'll be if you do," he guessed, tugging at his ear with long, knobby fingers. "You're my idea of a competent authority yourself."
"Thanks, Nick. How are the contracels holding out?"
"Wonderfully!" he grinned. "It seems as if my father did a fair job of inventing there—though maybe not quite good enough." He knelt and touched a button inset in the floor; instantly the metallic luster of it dulled and clouded, then the clouds seemed to vanish as the floor became transparent. In an instant it appeared to have vanished entirely, revealing an immense sweep of blackness interspersed with white-hot, tiny specks of light that were stars and planets.
Nick stared out at them. The whole field of stars was moving, it seemed, though, in actuality, it was the ship itself that spun on its axis, providing them with the illusion of gravity they required. It was hard for Hartnett to realize that this view was almost brand-new to human eyes, that only twenty or thirty people could ever have seen stars and the solar system from this vantage point, outside the plane of the ecliptic. There were seven persons in the Columbia now, and there had been eighteen or twenty in its predecessor which had been reported lost some years before. Those two ships, the only ones in the System's great armada to be equipped with the counter-acceleration devices that made it possible to venture out of the confines of the Solar System, were also the only ones to leave the plane of the ecliptic.
"Where's Earth?" Nick asked absently without looking up.
Dorothy closed the book on a finger and leaned over the edge of the hammock to look. "It's not in sight now," she said. "Wait until we spin a little farther. Of course, I can't guarantee you'll be able to see it then, either, because the ship may hide it. But we'll see. We're looking out one side of the ship and Earth is directly in back of us."
He snapped off the vision and the floor returned to normal. "As soon as we get the reports from the two goops," he mused, "we can start making definite plans for the outing."
“WE heard you," came a voice from just outside the lounge, and, a second later, Bob Vickers appeared, climbing hand-overhand against the slight pull of the acceleration that managed to seep through the not-quite-perfect guard of the contracels. He pulled himself into the lounge and turned back, extending a hand to Fred Marquis, who followed him in.
The two glared at Nick with injured expressions. "So this," stated Vickers sadly, "is how you refer to your loyal aides behind their backs." He turned to Marquis: "Colleague, we may as well tear up that paper and save ourselves further humiliation."
Dorothy Gilbert closed her book with a snap. "Far be it from me to poke my pretty nose into your little brawls, but haven't you two been—rather long in getting the data ?"
Marquis made a sweeping bow. "Fair lady," he replied softly, "I appeal to your innate sense of justice and fair play. Did or did not our noble captain, on two occasions, call us all away from our gruelling labor to strain our ears trying to hear an alleged distress signal?"
Dorothy laughed gaily, shaking her hair away from her forehead. "Indeed, our noble captain did. Not only was your invaluable time wasted, but mine as well. I was rechecking the course and had to start from scratch after the interruption."
"My lady is as gracious as she is charming," bowed Vickers. He faced Nick. "We will be generous, sir, and accept your apology."
"The ship's company," sighed Nick, "is reminded that the original Hartnett expedition was not entirely lost. It is to be assumed that they are still trying to contact someone, us in particular. Thus the careful attention to what appeared to be distress signals.
"Now may I suggest that you save your precious time by letting me know what you found?"
"That," murmured Marquis to Vickers, "is as close to an apology as he'll ever get."
MARQUIS unrolled a small chart, holding it so both Dorothy and Nick could see. "This," he explained, "you can check at your leisure, though I'm a monkey's uncle if you find anything wrong with it. To sum it up briefly, the Columbia is not only the largest space-ship ever made but also the fastest and most powerful."
"Very nice," replied Nick, "but that alone isn't good enough. We can still be the fastest thing aspace and not be capable of a voyage to Alpha Centauri and back within the span of a lifetime."
"If this is correct," interrupted Dorothy, jabbing at an equation with her index finger, "then we can do it easily."
"It's too damn bad," mused Nick, "that my father was so secretive about things. Whatever it is we have here, I’ll bet he had just as good—if not better—on the Orion ten years ago."
"Didn't he leave any notes?" asked Vickers.
"None. Apparently he feared their falling into the wrong hands in case anything happened to him. The only thing he did leave was wave n, the one he promised to use for communications. That's what the contracel formula came over."
Dorothy's nose wrinkled in puzzlement. "I was under the impression," she said, "that the contracel formula was radioed to Earth mysteriously—only it was badly garbled, just fractions coming through. And you, Nick, were the only one who could make anything out of it."
"Partly true," he admitted. "The `mysterious' radio message however was something I cooked up to keep the newspapers satisfied. I wanted to let out the publicity that the Hartnett expedition wasn't completely done in, but I didn't want to draw attention to wave n. The fewer people who know it exists, the better. If I hadn't thrown them off track with a little hocus-pocus, the secret might be out."
Vickers blinked. "Excuse me," he put in—"in this case, I guess I am a goop. But can you explain the contracel to me? I never really got it."
"I'm no better off," grinned Nick. "I managed to get enough data from the radio so as to know how to throw the thing together, but as to precisely what it does and why I can only guess … and I'd rather not get out on a limb on it.
"All I know is this: interstellar travel, to be anything at all, requires really tremendous speed. To get that speed you have to accelerate like hell. And human bodies aren't equipped to take the acceleration required.
"Well, what Dad did was to figure out a counter-acceleration device, which he called the 'contracel' for short. All I know is that it blankets the effects of really terrific acceleration so far as our feeling it goes."
"Have you any idea, Nick," asked Dorothy Gilbert, suddenly serious, "where the Hartnett party is?"
He shook his head. "They were outward bound for Alpha Centauri, just as we'll be after we get home and check these results. I've no idea how far they got, because I don't know how to check distances by wave n. In fact, I don't think it can be done; the damned thing doesn't travel right.
"You, Dorothy, and Bob, Edgar, and I are all members of the family of the original Hartnett expedition. The reason I wanted you three was because I really expect to look for Dad and his friends on our way to Alph. You, Fred, and Grenville and Timbie aren't exactly family members in our little circle, but you're next thing to it. We'll have to have a bigger crew for the outing, of course."