Gold Star

simple, I guess,» he said. «A simple man like me believes there's a reason for everything, you know? I mean, I'm not one of the most pious fellows, as you well know, but I believe that something out there looks after the universe.» He shrugged. «You see, a scientist will beat his brains out for a lifetime trying, for example, to find out why the pre-blink signal goes ahead of a ship by microseconds. I'm so simple I just accept it. It's there, and there's a reason why it's there, and maybe God put it there for a reason.» «Ah,» she said. «You said something about the pre-blink signal's being a guide for the ship.» «Well, it could be. I don't know. I know this. When I was messing around with the pre-blink signals recorded over the centuries, the ones we paid through the nose for, I matched your signal, the one on the tape from NE794, with a signal from a ship of the line which went out from old Earth almost one thousand years ago.» «But the basic design of the generator has never changed.» «No. I wanted to see the tapes on NE793 before I talked to you about this idea of mine. That's what I've been doing. Listen to this.» He played the pre-blink signal of Rimfire, the one which had been recorded on the tape of the last beacon she'd contacted. To Jan it sounded the same as any pre-blink signal, loud and clear, speaking of the vast power of Rimfire's generator. She shrugged. «Okay, now I'm tuning it, the way you tuned your brief little signal.» The new sound matched Jan's signal exactly. «What she was doing, Jan, was sending a split signal. There's no word, yet, for the difference. But one of them, when converted to sound, is different. It has the same sound characteristics as that old ship of the line a thousand years ago. I think maybe it has to do with the fact that Rimfire's generator is the biggest and most powerful one built yet. I don't know how to put it, but maybe all that power created a, well, for lack of a better word, a harmonic.» «I'm listening, but I still don't understand,» Jan said. «Well, just suppose that the ship, in whatever state it exists in subspace, does ride the pathway laid down by the pre-blink signal. Suppose Rimfire's new generator was putting out two pre-blink signals, each one different. The destination of a ship is determined by computer, and the computer places the order inside the generator's computer, as determined by the coordinates punched in. Suppose that harmonic, or whatever that second signal is, overrode the pre-blink signal determined by the chosen coordinates.» «I think I understand,» Jan said. «Then she'd go off like on a tangent. She could be anywhere.» «Or nowhere,» Pete said. «Or in the core of a sun.» «I take it that you think you can do something to our generator to make it put out a pre-blink signal to match that harmonic on Rimfire's signal?» «The computer says I can,» he said. «It's possible because this old generator on the 47 is such a horse. We can leap with a fraction of a full charge, so I think I can reduce the intensity of the magnetic field in the chamber. It'll be trial and error. When we get a sound-tone match with the harmonic then we'll try sending a stat on that power. If Rimfire went off somewhere on that harmonic maybe we can contact her.» «Sounds logical to me,» Jan said. «And you're the man who thinks he can't figure things out?» She kissed him. When he first issued the instructions to the computer a red light flashed and words appeared on the screen. «Your order not within test specifications,» the computer told him. He punched in instructions to override test specifications. His fingers tended to slip on the keys, because he was nervous, and the perspiration was popping out on his finger pads. «Unusual action to be recorded,» the computer told him. He punched in a program. Inside the generator the dense, compact magnetic field began to expand. He had begun with the generator on one-quarter of full charge. The ship's servomechanisms hummed, clicked, whined. As the magnetic field became less dense, and expanded, the quarter charge expanded accordingly, almost filling the available charge-storage chambers. «Well, honey, wanta change your mind and tell me to forget it?» «You promised me Martian emeralds,» Jan said. She sat in her command chair, tense, but trying not to show it. «Here goes.» He punched the button. They lived. Things were normal. There was a slightly different feel to the blink, but they were back in normal space a short distance from the beacon. He checked the sound generated by the pre-blink signal, compared it to the sound he was trying to duplicate. He hit the exact tone of the Rimfire's harmonic signal on the fifth try. The blink had taken them back to NE793. He double-checked, then swiveled to the communications panel. «Rimfire, this is Stranden 47.» he sent, using the harmonic, and the ship's instruments saw the Blinkstat message go out, but not toward any of the established blink beacons on the range. The signal left the 47 on an angle pointing out toward the rim, into a sac of empty space, a black, huge hole in the starfields. The instruments looked through the blackness, saw only the intergalactic void beyond. Twice more he sent the message. Then they waited. If Rimfire's generator had malfunctioned and sent the ship out into that black void, she could be far, far outside the galaxy, so far that she would be lost forever. The direction taken by the Blinkstat led to infinity, with, perhaps, another island universe somewhere out there so far away that the ship's optics could not even detect it. «Well,» he said, after a quarter hour during which there was nothing, «it was a good try.» «That's it?» Jan asked. «That's all we're going to do?» «That's it,» he said. She keyed the message for transmission one more time, worked with the communications bank, turned the signal detector to full power so that there was a noise of space static on the speakers. Nothing. «Wait,» Pete said, as she started to turn down the volume. «Send that message one more time.» He leaped to the communications bank, his fingers flying, adjusting, turning, cutting out the space static. Jan sent the stat and heard it come back instantly, faint, distorted. Pete wheeled to check the tape, amplified the tape, enhanced it, ran it through an electronic maze to purify it, strengthen it. It was, when he played it back, 47's own message. «Rimfire, this is Stranden 47.» «She's out there, Jan,» he whispered. «Oh, Lord, she's out there.» «How do you know?» «That was an echo off a Blinkstat receiver. It couldn't be anything else. Our stat went into Rimfire's receiver.» He worked with the panel. «Look, it works like this.» He sent the Blinkstat message downrange toward a distant beacon, the communications equipment still on high volume. The echo which bounced back from the receiving beacon was louder than the weak echo from the black sac of space. «See what I mean? There's only one thing that will bounce back an echo, and that's a stat receiver. There's only one possible stat receiver that could be out there in that empty space, and that's Rimfire's.» He did a little dance. He pranced around the control room and swept Jan from her chair and held her close. «We've got her, honey. We've got her. Martian emeralds? I'll put so many on you you'll have to walk slowly, there'll be so much weight. Hell, we can buy a planet. We can do anything. We'll be free.» She was laughing. She loved seeing him so happy. She kissed him, swiftly, hard, a wet little peck, and he sobered and kissed her hard and held her. Then he pushed her away. «Let's get with the program,» he said. First he calibrated the distance represented by the returned echo. His face lost its happy grin when he had the results. He couldn't believe the distance involved. A jump of parsecs, two or three, was a long jump. The echo came from over six parsecs away, an impossible distance. And yet it was there, repeated tests showed that it was there, and he had to trust his equipment. He had the computer figure coordinates which would put him within visual of the stat receiver which had sent back the echo, and then he prayed silently. «Jan, we don't have to do this.» She looked at him seriously. «I think we do.» «If it were just me—» «You can't get rid of me.» She put her arms around him. «What was I without you? What would I be now if you hadn't been so damned persistent? I go where you go, buddy.» He postponed it. He ordered a full meal from food preparation's servomechanisms, and they ate in the little dining room, the lights turned low, a scene from old Earth on the decopanel, a scene of white beaches and blue water and white, flying birds. Then he made love to her, and she began to be frightened, because he was so serious about it, as if it might be the last time. «You're worried,» she said, as they went into the control room. «A little.» «Don't be. It'll be all right. We'll find the Rimfire and bring her back and—» «That's what we're going to do,» he said. «Want me to do it?» she asked, as his hand hesitated over the blink button. He had returned the generator to its test-specification condition, the magnetic field compact, the charge full. He had allowed a considerable leeway when he figured the coordinates for the jump. «Hold it,» he said, moving his hand, putting the safety over the blink button. «Lord,» Jan said, «I was all ready for it.» «We owe this much to the company,» he said. «We need to tell them what we're going to do.» «They might give us orders not to do it.» He considered. He compromised. He put it all into Blinkstat form, sent it the short distance to the NE 793 beacon with instructions to hold for transmission until further orders or seventy-two hours later, whichever came first. He took the action for a couple of reasons. First, he owed some loyalty to his company. After all, it was the Stranden Corporation which had made it possible for him to be with Jan. Second, if something went wrong they'd know where to look for him and for Rimfire. It was, in the end, Jan who pushed the button. She wanted to. He let her. The 47 emerged into the total blackness of empty space. The viewports showed nothing, no tiny glint of star, no spread of the galaxy. Pete manipulated the instruments. The mass of the galaxy was behind them. It glowed, a soft, warm-looking light in the blackness. He ran a star search. A few rim stars were within detection distance, lying behind them. And there was something else. Something nearby. His heart leaped. He activated all instruments, and the object was only a short ten-thousand-mile hop away. That was the distance he'd allowed for safety when he'd programmed the blink. «Ah ha,» he said, figuring coordinates. «That's her.» He blinked and his hands trembled with the thought of the riches that would be his as he adjusted the opticals. He pushed the button to activate the search screen, expected to see Rimfire, huge, majestic. He saw, instead, a tiny metallic object alone in that deep, black space, and it took only a few tests to find out that it was a blink beacon. He moved the ship closer. It was a beacon unlike any he'd ever seen. The configuration was all wrong, and yet it was there. It had a strange lack of grace