it. It comes to this: the planetologist with the Pathfinder, Professor Thorwald1, came to the unmistakable conclusion that the disrupted planet was inhabited.'
The room started to buzz. 'Quiet, please! There are samples of fossil- bearing rock in the Pathfinder, but there are other exhibits as well, which Professor Thorwald concluded -Dr. Pickering and Commander Miller and I concur- concluded to be artefacts, items worked by intelligent hands.
'That fact alone would be enough ,to send a dozen ships scurrying into the asteroid belt,' he went on. 'It is probably the most important discovery in System-study since they opened the diggings in Luna. But Professor Thorwald formed another conclusion even more startling. With the aid of the ship's bomb officer, using the rate-of- radioactive-decay method, he formed a tentative hypothesis that the planet-he calls it Planet Lucifer-was disrupted by artificial nuclear explosion. In other words, they did' it themselves.'
The silence was broken only by the soft sighing of the room's ventilators. Then Thurlow exploded, 'But Captain, that's impossible!'
Captain Yancey looked at him. 'Do you know all the answers, young man? I'm sure I don't.'
'I'm sorry, sir.'
'In this case I wouldn't even venture to have an opinion. I'm not competent. However, gentlemen, if it be true, as Professor Thorwald certainly thought it was, then I hardly need point out to you that we have more reason than ever to be proud of our Patrol-and our responsibility is even heavier than we had thought.
'Now to business-I am very reluctant to leave the Pathfinder where she is. Aside from sentimental reasons she is a ship of the Patrol and she is worth a good many millions. I think we can repair her and take her back.'
XIII LONG WAY HOME !
MATT TOOK PART in the rebuilding of the inner door of the Pathfinder's airlock and the checks for airtightness, all under the careful eye of the chief engineer. There was little
other damage inside the ship. The rock, or meteor, that had punched the gaping hole in the inner door had expended most of its force in so doing; an inner bulkhead had to be patched and a few dents smoothed. The outer, armored door was quite untouched; it was clear that the invader, by bad chance, had come in while the outer door was standing open.
The plants in the air-conditioner had died for lack of attention and carbon dioxide. Matt took over the job while the others helped in the almost endless chores of checking every circuit, every instrument, every gadget necessary to the ship's functioning. It was a job which should have been done at a repair base and could not have been accomplished if there had actually been much wrong.
Oscar and Matt squeezed an hour out of sleep to explore 1987-CD, a job that mixed mountain climbing with suit-jet work. The asteroid had a gravitational field, of course, but even a mass the size of a small .mountain is negligible compared with that of a-planet. They simply could not feel it; muscles used to opposing the tenacious pull of robust Terra made nothing of the frail pull of 1987-CD. ' At last the Pathfinder was cast loose and her drive tested by a scratch crew consisting of Captain Yancey at the controls and Lieutenant Novak in the power room. The Aes Triplex lay off a few miles, waited until she blasted her jet for a few seconds, then joined her. The two ships tied together and Captain Yancey and the chief engineer came back into the Aes Triplex.
'She's all yours, Hartley,' he announced. 'Test her yourself, then take over when you are ready.'
'If she suits you she suits me. With your permission, sir, I'll transfer my crew now.'
'So? Very well, Captain-take command and carry out your orders. Log it, Mister,' Captain Yancey added, over his shoulder to the officer of the watch.
Thirty minutes later the split crew passed out through the airlock of the Aes Triplex and into the airlock of the other. P.R.S. Pathfinder was back in commission.
Remaining with the Aes Triplex was Captain Yancey,
Lieutenant Thurlow, now executive officer and astrogator, Sublieutenant Peters, now chief engineer, Cadet Jensen, chief communications officer, and Cadets Jarman and Dodson, watch officers, all departments-and Dr. Picketing, ship's surgeon.
Commander Miller, captain of the Pathfinder, had one less officer than Captain Yancey, but all of his officers were experienced; Captain Yancey had elected to burden himself with the cadets. He would have assumed command of the derelict himself and taken his chances with her, except for one point- the law did not permit it. He could place a master aboard her and put her back in commission, but there was no one present with authority to relieve him of his own ship-he was prisoner of his own unique status, commanding officer operating alone.
In her original flight plan it had been intended that the Pathfinder should make port at Deimos, Mars, when Mars overtook her and was in a favorable position. The' delay caused by the disaster made the planned orbit quite out of the question; Mars would not be at the rendezvous. Furthermore Captain Yancey wanted to get the astounding evidence contained in the Pathfinder to Terra Base as quickly as possible; there was little point in sending it to the outpost on Mars' outer satellite.
Accordingly reaction mass was pumped from the Aes Triplex to the smaller ship until her tanks were full and a fast, fairly direct, though uneconomical, orbit to Earth was plotted for her. The Aes Triplex, using an economical 'Hoh-mann'-type, much longer orbit, would mosey in past the orbit of Mars, past the orbit of Earth (Earth would not be anywhere close at the time), in still further, swinging! around the Sun and out again, catching up with Earth J nearly a year later than the Pathfinder. She had mass to Hohmann, Dr. Walter-The Attainability of the Celestial Bodies, Munich, 1925. This pioneer work in astrogation, written long before the flight of the Kilroy Was Here, remains the foundation work in its field. All subsequent work is refinement of basic principles set forth by Hohman. accomplish this, even after replenishing the Pathfinder, but she was limited to time-wasting, but fuel-saving, orbits more usual to merchant vessels than to ships of the Patrol.
Matt, in one of his multiple roles as assistant astrogator, noticed a peculiarity of the orbit and called it to Oscar's attention. 'Say, Oz, come and look at this-when we get to perihelion point, the other side of the Sun, we almost clip a cloud off your home town. See?'
Oscar looked over the charted positions. 'Well, darn if we don't! What's the nearest approach?'
'Less than a hundred thousand miles. Well tack on her a bit-the Old Man is a heller for efficient orbits, I find. Want to jump ship?'
'We'd be going a trifle fast for that,' Oscar commented dryly.
'Oh, where's the old pioneer spirit? You could swipe one of the jeeps and be gone before you're missed.'
'Gosh, I'd like to. It would be nice to have some leave.' Oscar shook his head sadly and stared at the chart.
'I know what's eating on you-since you've been made the head of a department you've acquired a sense of responsibility. How does it feel to be one of the mighty?'
Tex had come into the chartroom while they were talking. He chipped in with, 'Yeah, come on, Oz-tell your public.'
Oscar's fair skin turned pink. 'Quit riding me, you guys. It's not my fault.'
'Okay, you can get up now. Seriously,' Matt went on, 'this is quite a break for all of us-acting ship's officers on what was supposed to be a training tour. You know what I think?'
'Do you think?' inquired Tex.
'Shut up. If we keep our noses clean and get any chance to show some stuff, it might mean brevet commissions for all of us.'
'Captain Yancey give me a brevet?' said Tex. 'A fat chance!'
'Well, Oscar almost certainly. After all, he is chief com officer.'
'I tell you that doesn't mean a thing,' protested Oscar. ] 'Sure, I've got the tag-with nobody to communicate with, j We're out of range, except for the Pathfinder, and she's ; pulling away fast.' j
'We won't always be out of range.' ;
'It won't make any difference. Can you see the Old Man letting me-or any of us-do anything without staring down the backs of our necks? Anyhow, I don't want a brevet. Suppose we got back and it wasn't confirmed? Embarrassing!'
'I'd jump at the chance,' announced Tex. 'It may be the only way I'll ever get one.'
'Drop the orphan-child act,- Tex. Suppose your Uncle Bodie heard you talking like that.' j'
In fact, the atmosphere in the ship was very different,] even though the Captain, or Lieutenant Thurlow, or
