Part XXVI

Chapter 1

Jonnie and Angus were straight up against it.

They had their heads bent over the worktable in the console enclosure. Before them lay an open technical manual Angus had found in Terl's recycler basket. Psychlo technical manuals were bad enough but this was exceptionally bad. There is nothing worse than a cloudy operator's handbook produced for an already informed reader which omits basics and essentials.

It was ruining Jonnie's half-formed plans and introducing a tactical dilemma. Entitled “Cautionary Examples for the instruction of Trained Transshipment Console Operators,” it, of course, made no mention of the essential switch position. But it did discuss what was called the "samespace" phenomena.

The manual warned against firing a transshipment item nearer than twenty-five thousand miles.

Jonnie had hoped he could somehow lay a tactical nuclear weapon inside each of those major war vessels and get rid of them.

The "samespace" phenomena informed them that space “considered itself” identical on the principle of nearness. By a law of squares, the farther another point in space was away, the more “different” it was from the point of origin. Total difference did not occur until one reached a point approximately twenty-five thousand miles away.

Teleportation motors used this to run and they were quite different from transshipment functions. A motor ran on the principle that "samespace" resisted distortion heavily. The shorter the distance, the more the distortion. Thus the motor thrived on the refusal of space to distort. But here one was not moving an object; one was moving merely the position of the motor housing. You could even run a dozen motors in the same room and though they would cross-distort, they would function.

But to move an object cleanly, without destruction of it or harm to the transshipment rig, one had to have two spaces to coincide with each other, and space would not do that so long as it “considered itself” "samespace." You would just get a mangled mess.

It was all quite obtuse and Jonnie did not feel well. Every time he leaned over, he felt dizzy. Dr. Allen came out and insisted he take some more of this sulfa.

“We can't bomb the ships with this,” said Jonnie. “And if we bomb their home planets with this rig, the attacking force won't find out about it for months. They're all just reaction drives and they're months from home.” He sighed. “This rig won't serve us offensively!”

The rig worked. They knew that because they had just proven it. They had taken a gyro-mounted camera from drone spares. It was the type of picture-regulating device which a drone used to look for things and it moved any kind of a recorder around through any degrees of a sphere according to how you set it. You could put any picto-recorder in it and they had done just that.

The rig could “cast” an object out and bring it back or it could “cast” one out and leave it. You moved “this space” out there and brought it back in order to just send out an object and recover it. Or you moved “this space” out to the coordinates of “that space” and “that space” now would hold the object and you brought this space back empty. Actually nothing moved through space at all. But “this space” and “that space” were made to coincide.

They had put a picto-recorder in the gyro-mounted camera and sent it to the moon's surface, an easy one since the moon was up and in their line of sight. They had gotten back some very nice pictures of glaringly bright craters.

They had then “cast” the picto-recorder out to Mars, of which they had the path and coordinates, and had just looked at a huge valley that could be imagined to have a river in it.

The rig worked. They had had no doubts of that. But they weren't here to take pretty pictures. They could hear the mutter from the nearby ops room and they knew their friends were being hammered mercilessly. There must be something they could do with this rig.

And it didn't help to feel lightheaded and dizzy.

One might threaten the invaders by saying their planets would be destroyed but more than likely they would just attack this place again.

Suddenly the strung intercom from ops buzzed. Stormalong's voice: “You better hold up firing. We have an unknown vessel about four hundred miles up and to the north. Stand by. Will advise.”

At the end of the line, Stormalong took his finger off the intercom and started to put the gun trace that had just come in through his playback resolver to get a picture from it.

His communicator, a young Buddhist woman on this shift, touched his shoulder. “Sir,” she said in Psychlo, "I’ve got a message on the battle line I can't make out. It 's in a monotone but it sounds sort of like the language I hear you and Sir Robert use to each other. I’ve got the recording of it, sir.”

Stormalong didn't pay much attention. He was pulling the paper transfer out of the trace resolver. “Play it,” he said.

My vessel is not armed. You may train guns on it or on me'....”

Stormalong blinked. English? A funny kind of machine English?

He had the picture out of the resolver now. He looked at it, grabbed the recorder, and raced out to the console.

Jonnie and Angus looked up in alarm. “No, no,” said Stormalong. “I think it's all right. Look!”

He put the picture in front of them urgently. It was a ship shaped like a ball with a ring around it. “Remember the ship I ran into that wasn't there? And the old woman on the Scottish coast? This is the same ship!” He looked at them demandingly. “Do I let it through?”

“Might be a trick,” said Angus.

“Any way you can be sure?” said Jonnie. “You know, that it's not a different ship?”

The Buddhist had followed Stormalong with a cable mike. He grabbed it away from her. “Hello. Hello up there. Do you read me?”

A metallic, monotone, “Yes.”

“What did the old woman serve you?” demanded Stormalong.

The monotone, metallic voice, "Yarb tea.”

Stormalong grinned. “Land in the open field north of this place where guns can be trained on you. Leave your ship by yourself and come unarmed. You will be met by sentries.”

Metallic voice, “Very good. Safe conduct accepted.”

Stormalong sent the needful orders to the guns and guards outside.

He played Jonnie the whole message.

“Who is this guy?” asked Angus. He spoke for them all.

Chapter 2

The small gray man was escorted into the pagoda area by two polite, but alert, Scottish guards. He was about as high as Jonnie's shoulder. He was dressed in a neat gray suit. He looked like a human being except that his skin was gray.

Angus looked at him. “That's a Scottish-knit sweater,” said Angus suspiciously.

“I know, I know,” said the small gray man through his English speaking vocoder. “I am very sorry that we have no time for social amenities. We must conduct our business right now and rapidly!”

One of the guards said, “He has a white flashing light blinking on and off on top of his ship.”

Sir Robert's communicator, the boy named Quong, whispered to Sir

Robert, “He has a radio signal going on the battle frequency that is saying, 'Temporary local safe conduct.' " He said it, of course, in Psychlo.

The small gray man must have had very sharp ears for he promptly said, “Oh! You speak Psychlo!” He was speaking it and he took off the vocoder and put it in his pocket, saying, “We can dispense with this then. They are sometimes inaccurate– they misword critical clauses that lead to disputes.”

As he did this and before they could stop him he took a quick step up on the pedestal before the open console and looked in. “Ah! A standard transshipment console, I see. You have only one.”