Talents, Incorporated Read online

  Chapter 7

  The Mekinese ship was a cruiser, and it broke out of overdrive withinthe Tralee solar system just two days, four hours, and some odd minutesafter Gwenlyn predicted its coming. Presumably, it had made thecustomary earlier breakout to correct its course and measure thedistance remaining to be run. In overdrive there was not as yet a way toknow accurately one's actual speed, and at astronomical distances smallerrors piled up. Correction of line was important, too, because a coursethat was even a second off arc could mount up to hundreds of thousandsof miles. But even with that usual previous breakout, the Mekinesecruiser did not turn up conveniently close to its destination. It neededa long solar-system drive to make its planetfall.

  Bors's long-range radar picked it up before it was near enough to notifyits arrival to the planet--if it intended to notify at all. Most likelyits program was simply and frighteningly to appear overhead andarrogantly demand the services of the landing-grid to lower it to theground.

  Bors's radar detected the cruiser and instantly cut itself off. The cryof "_Co-o-ntact!_" went through the ship and all inner doors closed,sealing the ship into sections. Bors was already at the board in thecontrol room. He did not accept the predictions of Talents, Incorporatedas absolute truth. It bothered him that such irrational means ofsecuring information should be so accurate. So he compromised in his ownmind to the point where, when Talents, Incorporated gave specificinformation, it was possible; no more. Then, having admitted so much, heacted on the mere possibility, and pretended to be surprised when itturned out to be a fact.

  That was the case now. A ship had appeared in this solar system at thetime the ship-arrival Talent on the _Sylva_ predicted. Bors scowled, andswung the _Isis_ in line between Tralee and the new arrival. He turned,then, and drove steadily out toward it. The other ship's screens wouldshow a large blip which was the planet, and in direct line a very muchsmaller blip which was the _Isis_. The small blip might not be noticedbecause it was in line with the larger. If it were noticed, it would beconfusing, because such things should not happen. But the cruisers ofMekin were not apt to be easily alarmed. They represented a greatempire, all of whose landing-grids were safely controlled, and thoughthere was disaffection everywhere there was no reason to suspectrebellion at operations in space.

  For a long time nothing happened. The _Isis_ drove to meet the cruiser.The two vessels should be approaching each other at a rate which was thetotal of their speeds. Bors punched computer-keys and got thegravitational factor at this distance from Tralee's sun. He set the_Isis's_ solar-system drive to that exact quantity. He waited.

  His own radar was now non-operative. Its first discovery-pulse wouldhave been observed by the Mekinese duty-officer. The fact that it didnot repeat would be abnormal. The duty-officer would wonder why itdidn't come again.

  The astrogation-radar cut off. Then a single strong pulse came. It wouldbe a ranging-pulse. Cargo-ship radars sacrificed high accuracy for wideand deep coverage. But war-vessels carried pulse instruments which couldmeasure distances within feet up to thousands of miles, and byphase-scrambling among the echoes even get some information about thesize and shape of the object examined. Not much, but some.

  Bors relaxed. Things were going well. When four other ranging-pulsesarrived at second intervals, he nodded to himself. This was a warship'sreaction. It could be nothing else. That officer knew that something wascoming out from Tralee. It was on approximately a collision course. Buta ship traveling under power should gain velocity as long as its drivewas on. When traveling outward from the sun and not under power, itshould lose velocity by so many feet per second to the sun'sgravitational pull. Bors's ship did neither. It displayed the remarkablyunlikely characteristic of absolutely steady motion. It was not normal.It was not possible. It could not have any reasonable explanation, inthe mind of a Mekinese.

  Which was its purpose. It would arouse professional curiosity on thecruiser, which would then waste some precious time attempting toidentify it. There wouldn't be suspicion because it didn't actsuspiciously. Still, it couldn't be dismissed, because it didn't behavein any recognizable fashion. The cruiser would want to know more aboutit; it shouldn't move at a steady velocity going outward from a sun.

  In consequence, Bors got in the first shot.

  He said, "Fire one!" when the Mekinese would be just about planning toturn their electron-telescope upon it. A missile leaped away from the_Isis_. It went off at an angle, and it curved madly, and theinstrumentation of the cruiser could spot it as now there, now here, nownearer, and now nearer still. But the computers could not handle anobject which not only changed velocity but changed the rate at which itsvelocity changed.

  Missiles came pouring out of the Mekinese ship. They were infinitesimal,bright specks on the radar-screen. They curved violently in flighttrying to intercept the _Isis's_ missile. They failed.

  There was a flash of sun-bright flame very, very far away. There was alittle cloud of vapor which dissipated swiftly. Then there was nothingbut two or three specks moving at random, their target lost, theirpurpose forgotten. The fact of victory was an anticlimax.

  "All clear," said Bors grimly.

  The inner-compartment doors opened. The normal sounds of the ship wereheard again. Bors began to calculate the data needed for the journey toGaren. There was the angle and the distance and the proper motions andthe time elapsed.... He found it difficult to think in such terms. Hewas discontented. He'd ambushed a Mekinese cruiser. True, he'd let hisown ship be seen, and the Mekinese had warning enough to launch missilesin their own defense. It was not even faintly like the ambush of acruiser on the bottom of a Kandarian sea, waiting to assassinate a fleetwhen its complement went on board. But Bors didn't like what he'd justdone.

  The figures wouldn't come out right. Impatiently, he sent for Logan. Themathematical Talent came into the control room.

  "Will you calculate this for me?" Bors asked irritably.

  Logan glanced casually at the figures and wrote down the answer.Instantly. Without thought or reflection. Instantly!

  Bors couldn't quite believe it. The distance between the two stars was arounded-off number, of course. The relative proper motion of the twostars had a large plus-or-minus bugger factor. The time-lapse due todistance had a presumed correction and there was a considerable probableerror in the speed of translation of the ship during overdrive. It was amoderately complicated equation, and the computation of the probableerror was especially tricky. Bors stared at it, and then stared atLogan.

  "That's the answer to what you have written there," said Logancondescendingly, "but your figures are off. I've been talking to yourcomputer men. They've given me the log figures on past overdrive jumpsand the observed errors on arrival. They're systematic. I noticed it atonce."

  Bors said, "What?"

  "There's a source of consistent error," Logan said patiently. "I foundthe values to correct it, then I found the source. It's in youroverdrive speed."

  Bors blinked. Speed in overdrive could not be computed exactly. Theapproximation was very close--within a fraction of a tenth of one percent--but when the distance traveled was light-years the uncertaintypiled up.

  "If you use these figures," said Logan complacently--and he scribbledfigures swiftly--"you'll get it really accurate."

  Having finished writing the equation, he wrote the solution. Bors askedsuspicious questions. Logan answered absently. He knew nothing aboutoverdrive. He didn't understand anything but numbers and he didn't knowhow he did what he did with them. But he'd worked backward from observederrors in calculation and found a way to keep them out of the answer.And he'd done it all in his head. It was unbelievable--yet Borsbelieved.

  "I'll try your figures," he said. "Thanks."

  Logan went proudly away, past an orderly bringing cups of coffee to thecontrol room. Bors aimed the ship according to the calculation Logan hadgiven him, scrupulously setting the breakout timer to the exact figurelisted.

  He was still uncomfortable about the dest
ruction of the Mekinese cruiserwhen he said curtly, "Overdrive coming!" He'd have preferred a moresportsmanlike type of warfare. He faced the old, deplorable fact thatfighting men had had to adjust to throughout the ages; one can fight anhonorable enemy honorably, but against some men scruples count ashandicaps.

  "Swine!" growled Bors. "They'll make us like them!" Then into themicrophone he said, "Five, four, three, two, one...."

  He pressed the overdrive button. The sensation of going into overdrivewas acutely uncomfortable, as always. Bors swallowed squeamishly andtook his cup of coffee.

  The _Isis_, then, lay wrapped in a cocoon of stressed space. Itsproperties included the fact that its particular type of stress couldtravel much more swiftly than the stresses involved in the propagationof radiation, of magnetism, or gravity. And this state of stress--thisoverdrive field--did not have a position. It _was_ a position. The shipinside it could not be said to be in the real cosmos at all, but whenthe field collapsed it would be somewhere, and the way it pointed, andhow long before collapse, determined in what particular somewhere itwould be when it came out. But travel in overdrive was tedious.

  As civilization increases man's control of the cosmos, it takes the funout of it. In prehistoric days a man who had to hunt animals or gohungry may often have gone hungry, but he was never bored by thesameness of his meals. A man who traveled on horseback often got to hisdestination late, but he was not troubled with ennui on the way. Inoverdrive, Bors's ship traveled almost with the speed of thought, butthere was absolutely nothing to think about while journeying. Not aboutthe journey, anyhow.

  While the ship drove on, however, the cargo-ship seized on Tralee madeits way toward Glamis and a meeting with the fleet, then gloomilysweeping in orbit around Glamis Two. The food it carried would raisemen's spirits a little, but it would not solve the problem of what thefleet was to do. Morgan, on the flagship, expounded the ability of hisTalents to perform the incredible, but nobody could find any applicationof the incredible to the fix the fleet was in. On Kandar, the populationknew that there had been a battle off the gas-giant planet, but they didnot know the result. The Mekinese fleet had not come. The fleet ofKandar had not returned. The caretaker government met in council anddesperately made guesses. It arrived at no hopeful conclusion whatever.The most probable--because most hopeless--conviction seemed to be thatthe fleet of Mekin had been met and fought, but that it was victorious,and in retaliation for resistance it had gone away to send back swarmsof grisly bomb-carriers which would drop atomic bombs in such quantitythat for a thousand years to come there would be no life on Kandar.

  The light cruiser, the _Isis_, was unaware of these frustrations. Itremained in overdrive, where absolutely nothing happened.

  Bors reviewed his actions and could not but approve of them tepidly.He'd sent food to the fleet, he'd destroyed two enemy fighting ships andhe'd done what he could to harm the Mekinese puppets on Tralee. He'd hadthem publicly humiliated with well-chosen epithets. He'd destroyed therecords and archives of the secret political police.... Many people onTralee already blessed him, without knowing who he was. There might yetbe hope of better days.

  But all things end, even journeys at excessively great multiples of thespeed of light. The overdrive timer rang warning bells. Taped breakoutnotifications sounded from speakers throughout the ship. There was acount-down of seconds, and the abominably unpleasant sensation ofbreakout, and the ship was in normal space again.

  There was the sun of Garen, burning peacefully in a vast void withmillions of minute, unwinking lights in the firmament all about it.There was a gas-giant planet, a mere fifteen million miles away. Furtherout there were the smaller, frozen worlds. Nearer the sun, on the farside of its orbit, there was the planet Garen.

  The _Isis_ drove for that planet, while Bors tried to decide whether theremarkable accuracy of this breakout was due to accident or to Logan'scomputations.

  Logan appeared as Bors was gloomily contemplating the days needed toreach Garen on solar system drive, because overdrive was too fast. Loganlooked offhand and elaborately casual, but he fairly glowed withtriumph.

  "I found out the fact behind the bugger factor, Captain," he saidcondescendingly. "The speed of a ship in overdrive varies as the changein mass to the minus fourth. Your computers couldn't tell that! Here's atable for calculating the speed of a ship in overdrive according to itsmass and the strength of the overdrive field."

  "Fine," said Bors without enthusiasm.

  "And to go with it," said Logan, his voice indifferent, but his eyesshining proudly, "just for my own amusement, I computed a complete tableof overdrive speeds for this particular ship, with different strengthsof field. They run from one point five light-speeds up to the maximumyour equipment will give. You have to correct for changes of mass, ofcourse."

  Bors was not quite capable of enthusiasm over the computation of tablesof complex figures. He simply could not share Logan's thrill ofachievement in the results of the neat rows of numerals. Nor had hestruggled unduly to grasp the implication of Logan's explanation.

  Instead, he said politely, "Very nice. Thank you very much."

  Logan's eyes ceased to shine. His wounded pride made him defiant.

  "Nobody else anywhere could have worked out that table!" he saidstridently. "Nobody! Morgan said you'd appreciate my work! He said youneeded my talent! But what good do you see in it? You think I'm afreak!"

  Bors realized that he'd been tactless. Logan's experiences beforeTalents, Incorporated had made him unduly sensitive. He'd done somethingof which he was proud, but Bors didn't appreciate its magnitude. Loganreacted to the frustration of his vanity.

  "Hold it!" said Bors. "I'm not unappreciative. I'm stupid and worriedabout something. You just figured an overdrive jump for me that's themost accurate I ever heard of! But I'm desperate for time and we've gotto spend two days in solar-system drive because we can't make anoverdrive hop of less than light-days! So we're losing forty-eight hoursor more."

  Logan said as stridently as before:

  "But I just showed you you don't have to! Cut the field-strengthaccording to that table."

  Bors was jolted. It was suddenly self-evident. Logan had said he'dfigured a table of overdrive fields for the _Isis_ which would work foranything between one point five light-speeds to maximum. One point fivelight-speeds!

  It was one of those absurdities in technology that so often go so longbefore they are noticed. During the development of overdrive, it hadbeen the effort of every technician to get the fastest possible drive.It was known that with a given mass and a given field-strength, onecould get an effective speed of an unbelievable figure. Men had spenttheir lives trying to increase that figure. But nobody'd ever tried tofind out how _slowly_ one could travel in overdrive, becausesolar-system drive took care of _short_ distances!

  "Wait a minute!" said Bors, staring. "Do you really mean I can drivethis ship under two light-speeds in overdrive?"

  "Look at the table!" said Logan, trembling with anger. "Look at it!You'll find the figures right there!"

  Bors looked. Then he stood up quickly. He left the ship in the care ofhis second-in-command and plunged into a highly technical discussionwith its engineers.

  He ran into violent objections. The whole purpose of overdrive was highspeed between stars. The engineers insisted that one had to use thestrongest possible field. If the field were made feeble, it would becomeunstable. Everybody knew that the field had to be of maximum strength.

  "We'll try minimum," said Bors coldly. "Now let's get to work!"

  He had to do much of the labor himself, because the engineers found itnecessary to stop at each stage of the effort to explain why it shouldnot be done. He had almost to battle to get an auxiliary circuitparalleling the main overdrive unit, with a transformer to bring downvoltage, and a complete new power-supply unit to be cut into theoverdrive line while leaving the standard ready for use without delay.

  He went back to the control room. He took a distance-reading on the hu
geplanet off to port. He threw on the new, low-power overdrive field. Heheld it for seconds and broke out. It was still in sight.

  The speed of the _Isis_, with the adjusted overdrive, was one pointseven lights.

  Now, instead of spending days in solar-system drive for planetaryapproach, Bors went into the new-speed drive and broke out in elevenminutes twenty seconds, and was within a hundred thousand miles ofGaren. He'd saved two days and secured the promise of many more suchvaluable feats.

  As soon as the _Isis_ broke to normal space near Garen, there was a callon the communicator. A familiar voice;

  "_Calling_ Isis! _Calling_ Isis! Sylva _calling_ Isis!"

  Bors said softly, "Damnation! For the second time, what are you doing inthis place?"

  Gwenlyn's voice laughed.

  "_Traveling for pleasure, Captain Bors! I've news for you. We wereallowed to land and then told to leave again. There's a warship downbelow. I told you about it before. It's still there. There's a hugecargo-ship, too, and there are riots because it's almost finishedloading with requisitioned foodstuffs for Mekin. Mekin is--would youbelieve it?--unpopular on Garen!_"

  "Very well," said Bors. "I'll see what can be done. Will you carry amessage for me?"

  "_Happy to oblige, Captain!_"

  "Tell them that--" Then Bors stopped short. It was not probable that thefleet wave-form and frequency were known to Mekinese ships. But thepossibility of low-speed overdrive travel was much too important amilitary secret to risk under any circumstances. He said, "I'll be alongvery shortly with some highly encouraging news."

  "_Who do I tell this to?_"

  "I name no names on microwaves," he told her. "Get going, will you?"

  "_To hear_," said Gwenlyn cheerfully, "_is to obey_."

  Her communicator clicked off. The _Sylva_ showed on a radar-screen, buthad not been near enough to be sighted direct. The blip shot out fromthe planet.

  Bors growled to himself. The _Isis_ floated a hundred thousand miles offGaren. There was no challenge. There was no query from the planet. ButGwenlyn said that there were riots down below. They could be seriousenough to absorb the attention usually given to routine. But there wasanother reason for this inattention. Garen was a part of the Mekineseempire which was not encouraged to trade off-planet except throughMekin. Very few non-Mekinese ships would ever land there, and thereforewouldn't be watched for. It was unlikely that a long-range radarhabitually swept space off Garen. The battleship should be more alert,but again there was no danger of space-borne rebellion, and the affairof Kandar might not have been bruited so far away.

  But the spaceport would respond to calls, certainly. Bors consideredthese circumstances. A large cargo-ship loaded with foodstuffsrequisitioned to be sent to Mekin. A population which had beenrebellious before--witness the battleship aground to overaweresistance--and now was rioting.

  Bors called for the extra members of his crew. He uncomfortably outlinedthe action he had in mind. There was one part that he disliked. He hadto stay on board ship. The important action, as he saw it, would takeplace elsewhere. It was so obviously painful for him to outline a courseof action in which other men must take risks he couldn't share, that hismen regarded him with pleased affection which he did not guess at. Inthe end he asked for twenty volunteers, and got fifty.

  He swung the _Isis_ around to the night side of the planet. Its two portblisters opened and two boats floated free in the orbit Bors hadestablished. The ship moved on ahead.

  Just at sunup where the spaceport stood, a voice growled down from outerspace.

  "_Calling ground!_" it said contemptuously. "_Calling ground! This isthe last ship left of the fleet of Kandar. We're pirates now and we'relooking for trouble! There's a battleship down there. Come up and fightor we blast you in your spaceport! Just to prove we can do it--watch!_"

  Bors said, "Fire one," and a missile went off toward the planet. It wasfused to detonate at the very tip of the fringes of the planet'satmosphere.

  It did. There was light more brilliant than a thousand suns. The longlow shadows of sunrise vanished. The new-rising sun turned dim bycomparison.

  The voice from space spoke with intolerable levity. "_Come up with yourmissiles ready! We'll give you ten thousand miles of height. And if youtry to duck out in overdrive...._"

  The voice was explicit about what it would do to the Mekinese-occupiedareas of Garen if the battleship fled.

  It came up to fight. It could do nothing else.