Dorothy ran her fingers through her hair. "It's been over twelve years since I last saw Harry," she whispered. "I wonder what he looks like now?"
JOE TIMBIE was sucking laboriously on a water-tube as they pulled themselves into the control room. He laid it aside at their entrance, and wiped his face furiously.
"The interference is terrific," he began, "but I sounded the alarm because I'm definitely getting something every now and then, although it's hard to say what."
"Any idea as to the source?"
"You know how wave n is. Edgar's been cooped up in his cage for about seven hours now, and, if he survives, I damn well think he'll have taken wave n to pieces and put it together again. Then we'll know how to trace the signals."
Dorothy Gilbert sat on a bench swinging her legs thoughtfully. "How's the intensity, Joe?"
Timbie clutched his hair. "O gawd!" he groaned. "It just shouldn't happen to a dog. This wave has the most unholy variations ever conceived by Lucifer. You remember how it was on Earth?"
"Yeah," agreed Nick. "Pretty wavy to say the least."
"Well it's all of that here—only the little jigger has got itself another twist. Not only does the intensity vary according to no laws whatsoever, but every now and then, she comes through full blast, sans interference, backwards!"
"What!" There was a chorus on that.
"You heard rightly. I used to have a hobby back on Terra. Superimposition of recordings. I'd take several records of music, and play them simultaneously, working in various others now and then and thus make a new recording. At times I'd run them in backwards, lyrics and all. So, after awhile, I got pretty accustomed to hearing common English words spoken backwards. And damned if some of the apparently garbled signals didn't sound familiar until suddenly it struck me. I was just beginning to set them down when, whup! in comes the interference, then they're straight again, but so faint I can't make them out."
"Joe," called Dorothy softly, "are they always in reverse when they're strong?"
"Why—yes, they are."
"Does Edgar know that?"
"Nope."
She slid off the table. "I think I'd better tell him before he wastes any more time."
"Hold it a moment," protested Nick. "I want to see if we can get anything. Is the power on, Joe?"
"Yeah. Apparently they stopped just an instant after I rang you."
"Any idea when they might be on again?"
"Ought to be a few minutes, Nick. I've found that they apparently repeat each broadcast three times with a few hours interval between units of three." He shoved a slip of paper over to Nick. "Here's what I've managed to make out so far."
Nick picked it up frowning. "Hmm —not much here—it reads 'horribly warped by effects of motion' . . . then there's a blank—'had to stay and one' —damn, another blank."
"That's where it either faded out or interference came in," explained Joe.
"I see. This is where it reversed, eh? 'Left and I am' blank space 'too slight to lift.' That's all."
"Do you suppose," asked Marquis, "that the phrase 'left and I am' might mean that the person sending the signals is the only one left and he's about at his rope's end ?"
"Maybe," suggested Bob Vickers, "something happened to the crew as a result of their acceleration. 'Horribly warped by effects of motion' sounds ominous. Perhaps the crew went bats and they had to land to save the ship. Then something happened to them on the planet so that they 'had to stay and one'—well, maybe he's telling about the ghastly fate of one of them."
"What—what about 'too slight to lift'?" reminded Fred.
"As I recall," said Nick in hushed tones, "there was one outstanding bad point about Dad's setup. The contracel controls were pretty heavy and it took a strong man to work them alone. If but one man were on the ship, and he sick, or weak from hunger, he couldn't lift those levers." He stared a moment, then added, "Particularly if the gravity on whatever planet the ship is were greater than that of Earth."
"I thought the controls were automatic," protested Dorothy.
"They were. But Dad had manual controls installed just in case."
At this point a wild-eyed, disheveled figure burst in upon them. "I've found them," he cried in a high, strained falsetto. "They're in a tight little orbit around Proxima Centauri."
Dorothy Gilbert took his arm. "Come with me," she whispered. "I have some more data for you; you've done wonderfully."
The two left the room, heads close together. An instant later a faint shriek reached the ears of those in the control room, followed by gibbering noises. Nick made a dive for the exit, to find Edgar cackling faintly to himself as Dorothy led him away. "There, there," she soothed, "it wasn't your fault. Now you just go and get a nice long rest, then we'll help you with the new calculations…”
CHAPTER II
INCREDIBLE WORLD
“HERE IT IS," exclaimed Dorothy wearily, planking down a sheaf of motors. "If you can follow through on this, Joe, we'll find the missing. We keep on straight ahead, at right angles to Earth's ecliptic." She closed her eyes. "Did you know,'' she murmured to no one in particular, "that Edgar's secret ambition is to purr like a cat?"
"How is he?" asked Nick anxiously.
"In a drunken stupor. After all he's been through I didn't have the heart to say no to him. So he emptied an almost full bottle of the rocket blast." She beamed at Nick. "Edgar has a special name for each grade of alcoholate we distill; this is the stiff one."
"We'll have to make some more of that," declared Marquis. "Heigh ho, it's back to the primitive. Y'know, scientists are pretty sure that savages spend most of their ingenuity in figuring out ways to make better and still better hooch. Disgusting, isn't it?"
"Hang on to your stanchions," yelled Timbie as he pressed a button which would send a warning signal throughout the ship, "we're accelerating." Instinctively they obeyed. Without the contracels, they would have been an obscene mass of mangled protoplasm in the seconds that followed; as it was, they experienced something like the feeling one obtains on the downward sweep of a stiff roller coaster.
"Keep a close check on the direction, Joe," grated Nick.
The impact of acceleration did not last long, but it was some five minutes before they really felt normal again. Timbie bent over calculations, a frown working its way across his forehead. "I don't like the way this is working out," he muttered.
"Following Edgar's equations?" asked Dorothy, picking up the sheet. She glanced over them quickly. "Nothing wrong here only—jeepers, you're right, Joe! Stop the bus, quick!"
"What's wrong?" demanded Nick.
"Nothing — except that we've passed them. They're behind us now!"
Timbie's hands flew over the controls rapidly. "Some day, after the contracel principle has really been perfected, we're going to have ships that are practically without inertia so long as the power's on. Ships that can stop dead like that without any terrifying results and go back the way they came as neat as the ancient's trains on their tracks. But we have to decelerate slowly or we're basket cases, if anybody ever finds us at all."
WHEREVER they are," mused Nick, "it's going to be one sweet job finding the planetoid in this space. It'll be practically invisible because of the distance from the sun. We may go by it a couple of times." He jabbed a call button sharply then spoke into a mike. "Grenville? What's doing? Oh, you are!" He turned to the others. "Our chemical engineer is turning his inventive genius to a superior blend of the rocket blast. How lovely."