Space Lash

the loss of a couple of hours — and we might not have to start over, if this run is really all right.”

“You're partly right. Letting it run won't cost us much time. But we will have to do it over anyway; we won't be able to tell if the first run was really okay until we get the data reduced, which we can't do here. We'll just have to do the whole thing twice.”

And Ledermann slowly nodded his head.

Hoey's reaction, some hours later, was more impressive. He and Luisi were celebrating their release, to the accompaniment of an improvised song whose burden was the supreme difficulty of doing nothing at all, when Toner broke the news as gently as possible that the whole thing would have to be done over.

He wrapped the information in flattery, lubricated it with all the soft soap he could bring himself to use and sweetened it with a respectable bonus offer; but neither pilot accepted the word at all philosophically. They were still visibly nettled sixty hours later when the tenders once more pulled away from the Holiad. This may have had something to do with the results.

They did calm down again, just a little, during the setup of the measuring line, however. Earlier practice may have helped, for it took them less than ninety minutes this time to get their little vessels “fixed” relative to each other.

“That's it, Doc!” Hoey's voice was almost jubilant. Toner, who had pretty well convinced himself by this time that the first run had really been all right, was able to answer in similar mood.

“Good going — that was very quick work. I'm starting the A tapes now. About how far are you from where the other run was made?”

“A couple of flight-hours, I'd say; we didn't try to check it exactly. You didn't say it was necessary.” “It isn't Relax. And I do mean relax.”

“I know, boss. We're getting used to it. Let things roll.”

“They're rolling.”

Even in the calmer atmosphere of the second run, tension built up a little during Program A. Even though this part had gone without a visible hitch the first time, there was no way of knowing whether the unknown interference had a preference for Program B.

Of course, it might have. The programs were different — and the word “unknown” certainly was a key one. No one is quite sure, yet.

Toner and Ledermann of course knew to the second just when the Program B interruption, if it had really been one, had occurred; Hoey and Luisi knew almost as well from the physicists' account of the affair. All four were watching clocks; and perhaps it was the tension wound up by the whirling clock hands which caused the trouble; perhaps not. No one was ever sure. Whatever the cause, six seconds before the critical moment, when both scientists were gripping their chair arms and staring frozenly at their consoles, Hoey sneezed.

It was quite a sneeze, and the fact that Toner heard it clearly through the medium communicator did not operate to lessen its effects. The pilot's head had been resting in the padded support which formed part of his seat — the support in which it was supposed to remain through the experiment. The muscular convulsion of the sneeze snapped that head some twenty centimeters forward and down.

The Anfforddus had, roughly, a million times the mass of Hoey's head, so its center of mass moved only about a millionth as far. This amounted to about a fifth of a micron. The fact that this was within the set tolerances for the experiment did not at once dawn on Toner — for one thing, it would have taken him a moment to figure it out under any circumstances, and for another his reaction was reflexive rather than rational. He was like a confirmed anti-vivisectionist reacting to an account of a mechanical heart's being tested on a dog; he exploded. He jumped — much farther than Hoey, though fortunately it didn't matter how much the Holiad moved. He also began to talk, though just what he said is uncertain — Ledermann charitably wiped that part of the monitor tape, later. It took the younger man some thirty seconds to calm his superior down enough to listen to reason, and perhaps fifteen more to supply the reason. Another five seconds passed while Toner actually recovered control of himself, and started to apologize to Hoey.

But Hoey did not hear the apology — we think.

In the fifty seconds or so since his sneeze, radiation from his ship travelled some fifteen million kilometers. This is easy to compute; it is pretty certainly a fact. It may possibly be a useful one, though no one so far has put it to any real use.

The trouble is, of course, that there is no way to be sure whether the sneeze put any significant alteration into the radiation pattern which the Anfforddus was broadcasting. This, equally of course, is because no one can be sure just how big a change must be in order to be significant.

Toner had just started to talk in a normal tone when Ledermann gave an astonished yelp; and the director, whose attention had shifted entirely to the screen of the medium communicator, looked back to his console.

Its lights were out. It was blank. So, when he turned back to it, was the medium screen. And so was Ledermann's console.

One hundred seconds later, after repeated calls to the tenders had proven futile, the Holiad's captain snapped her into irrelevance drive. Between four and five seconds later still, a hundredth of a parsec from where she had been lying, the research vessel halted again. Presumably she was within a few tens of thousands of kilometers of Hoey's tender, but no sign of the little ship could be detected by eye or instrument.

Calls continued to go unanswered. Searchers went out with detection and rescue equipment; the former gave no response, the latter went unused. Not a particle of solid matter could be found within light-minutes of either tender's former position; and it was not until much later, when the routine sample-bottles were being checked back on Rhyddid, that the slightly high count of aluminum atoms in that particular volume of space was noticed.

Of course, this may not be a significant fact, either.

“And just who was that?” The query came in the growl which seems to be a distinguishing property of sergeants, whether their linear dimensions be two meters or two hundred astronomical units. It received no immediate answer. “Well? Who was it? It came from just about where you should be, VA741. Was it you?”

“I–I guess so.”

“You guess so? A soldier lets out a yelp that can be heard halfway across the spiral, and he only guesses that he did it?”

“I did it, I–I…'

“You did. Never mind the guessing. Why did you do it? You know why we're here?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“You know what we're doing here?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“In fact, up to now you've been helping to do it.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“And you know why we've been sweeping this stuff together.”

“Yes, Sergeant. To clear a path for…'

“Shut up. How much use will the path be if the Flickers find it before our boys have a chance to come through?”

“Not much, I suppose, Sergeant.”

“You suppose. Well, I suppose I should be glad it even occurred to you. Now that you've squealed like a stuck baby, how long do you suppose it will be before Flicker scouts are poking around this cloud?”

“I don't know, Sergeant.”

“I don't know either, but I'll be very surprised if we drift a hundredth of the way around the spiral. If it were possible to travel faster than radiation, they'd be spearing you before you cleared another cubic parsec.”

“They may show up anyway; we can't tell yet.”

“That, soldier — I use the term loosely — is the only reason you're not under formal charges right now. If we're spotted in the next little while — say, before the cloud you're sweeping up right now starts to radiate — I'll assume it wasn't your fault. But if we're found after that, when that squeal of yours has spread out a few hundred