It had been hard to imagine why Jakes had decided to pump the old man, just as it was hard to imagine his being good enough at either chess or at “buttering up” to get the information.
But the information on the sheet of paper had an authentic note. Apparently Smedley had been spending all his time studying Planet X. He had the advantage of being two thousand million miles nearer than any other trained observer. He had found a steady change in the orbit, had plotted it, and then checked it with later observation.
According to that, Planet X was heading inward to strike the orbit of Earth, and gaining speed every day. Whatever race was on, it must be driving the whole planet, just as men drove their spaceships, though at considerably less acceleration!
Jakes had claimed he had a headache after the chess session, and had gone to bed. But Bob, Juan and Commander Griffith sat up trying to find a flaw in the figures, without success.
They’d spent more time trying to see how it affected their plans and the value of the flight by Wing Nine, with no decision.
The little line moving up the ramp of the Lance of Deimos grew shorter. The checker took Bob’s card and stamped it with only a casual inspection, and Bob breathed easier. He hadn’t been told not to come; nor had he received orders to accompany the scouting trip.
Apparently his father had forgotten that Bob was supposed to be part of the Wing.
He killed time by putting his few belongings into his little bunk room until it was only a few minutes before take-off. Then he went up quietly to the control room and dropped into the soft acceleration seat that had replaced the older version. His father glanced up, and turned.
“How’d you get here?” he asked sharply.
“Showed my card and was checked in like the rest of your crew. You informed me Wing Nine was taking off this morning, sir, and I’m reporting for duty!”
For a second, something that might have been pain and fear flickered across Griffith’s face.
Then a taut smile replaced it, and there was pride in his slow nod. “Quite right, cadet. There can be no favoritism here. Glad you’re aboard.”
Anderson nodded cheerfully, and even Hoeck managed the ghost of a smile. They looked tense, but with excitement and expectation rather than fear. Bob hadn’t thought about being afraid, until then; surprisingly, he was not. He had the curious feeling that nothing too bad could happen to him in the Lance of Deimos. He knew it was nonsense, but it was pleasant nonsense. In another ship he’d probably have been scared stiff.
Blast-off was at a full five gravities of acceleration. It was Bob’s first experience with the new seats and he was amazed at how much difference they made. They couldn’t completely compensate for the pressure, since he had to be free to move, but it was easier to take five gravities with them than three without.
Outpost dropped behind sharply and was soon lost to sight. Ahead lay Neptune. They swung around the big planet, coming fairly close and letting its pull turn their course toward the place where Planet X would be. Bob noticed that Hoeck had based his course on the orbit Jakes had gotten from Dr. Smedley, and not on the predictions of the official Navy computer.
Then general call sounded in his radio, and he saw his father busy at the microphone. He was telling the personnel of all the ships everything that he had been able to find about the invading planet, including the fact that its orbit was believed to be changing. Most of what he had to say, they had partly learned before, but he obviously hadn’t wanted to brief them while they were still on Outpost. Rumors were not the same as official information to the men.
When his father had finished, the automatic pilot was on and there was little to do in the control room. Anderson’s voice sounded more relaxed, though only his eyes and hands showed through the skin of the seat. “I still don’t see how any race can live out that far from the sun,” he said. “Temperature must be about absolute zero.”
“They’d have to have some way of warming the planet,” Bob’s father answered. “No real science could develop without heat to handle metals. Any planet which can maneuver like a spaceship has a culture too advanced to suit me.”
Bob had his own puzzle. “But how did they escape discovery so long, then?” he wanted to know. “All right, maybe they were too far out for spotting by telescopes before this. But if they were traveling around in their ships, there should be some account of them.”
Griffith nodded. “I heard an unofficial statement that some scientists think the planet doesn’t belong to the sun at all. It may have somehow gotten loose from another star and come clear across space to us. In that case, we didn’t run into this race before because it’s just arriving in this section of the universe.”
“Which would make it even harder to see how they kept it warm,” Anderson said. “Atomic power would work for a while, but eventually they’d run short of power. At the speed they’re making, it would take thousands of years to cross from the nearest star to the sun.”
There were no answers to these questions. Their only hope of finding out was in the faint chance that they would be able to land on X and somehow establish communications. But even Griffith wasn’t too optimistic. If the planet was deliberately swinging down to Earth’s orbit, it didn’t look like too friendly a move.
The ships of Wing Nine went on piling up speed. The seats still worked perfectly, but they had one major disadvantage—a man couldn’t leave them to do anything beyond his immediate reach. Oh, he could stagger a few steps and back, but not enough to be of any use in a possible battle. That would still have to be fought at lower acceleration.
They were already decelerating when Planet X first began to show up on the screen of the telescope. It was a world slightly smaller than Earth, but a mere point on the screen.
“Right where Smedley’s orbit put it,” Griffith commented. “That seems to prove his theory.”
Bob would have been happier if Smedley had been wrong; his faith in the Lance wasn’t quite so strong as he stared out at the impossible planet toward which they were heading.
Hour by hour, it swelled in the screen. Nobody commented when the first sign of clouds showed up. They had known that somehow it had to be a planet warm enough for that—even though heat couldn’t possibly reach them from the sun, which lay over four thousand million miles away and was no more than a bright star on the screen.
It looked like a peaceful world though. The clouds were soft and fleecy, and there were signs of continents and seas below them. Like Earth, this planet seemed bluish-green from space, adding to the appearance of familiarity.
“Commander!” It was Anderson’s voice, suddenly sharp. He had stretched out a hand to point at one section of the screen. “Ships!”
They were tiny specks on the screen, perhaps a hundred of them. But they were in a flying-wing formation, and were moving rapidly. There was no mistaking the fact that it could only be a military force.
“They still might be peaceable,” Griffith said, but he sounded doubtful. “Try to contact them.”
Anderson took over the radio controls, by-passing Sparks, and there was a long, tense wait as the radio beam traveled out across the long distance separating the two groups. Then the answer came back. The Lance bucked faintly, as she had done in the encounter with the black ship. Anderson tried again, and again the ship received a backward jolt. This time it was followed by a blazing sphere of blue fire that sprang up fifty miles ahead of the ships and suddenly exploded. Another jolt was followed by another explosion at the same distance.
“Ultimatum,” Griffith guessed. “Either we go back, or we get that thrown at us. They speak pretty plain language down there!” He punched the intercom quickly. “Bombardiers, ready your lithium bombs!”