“Where are you going to install it?” Meta asked.
“You tell me,” Jason said. “I need a spot for the antenna where there will be no dense metal in front of the bowl to interfere with the signal. Thin plastic will do or, if worst comes to worst, I can mount it outside the hull with a remote drive.”
“You may have to,” she said. “The hull is an unbroken unit; we do all viewing by screen and instruments. I don’t think-wait-there is one place that might do.”
She led the way to a bulge in the hull that marked one of the lifeboats. They went in through the always-open lock, Skop struggling after them with the apparatus.
“These lifeboats are half buried in the ship,” Meta explained. “They have transparent front ports covered by friction shields that withdraw automatically when the boat is launched.”
“Can we pull back the shields now?”
“I think so,” she said. She traced the launching circuits to a junction box and opened the lid. When she closed the shield relay manually, the heavy plates slipped back into the hull. There was a clear view, since most of the viewport projected beyond the parent ship.
“Perfect,” Jason said. “I’ll set up here. Now how do I talk to you in the ship?”
“Bight here,” she said. “There’s a pretuned setting on this communicator. Don’t touch anything else-and particularly not this switch.” She pointed to a large pull-handle set square into the center of the control
board. “Emergency launching. Two seconds after that is pulled, t lifeboat is shot free. And it so happens this boat has no fuel.”
“Hands off for sure,” Jason said. “Now have Husky there run me a line with ship’s power and I’ll get this stuff set up.”
The detector was simple, though the tuning had to be precise. dish-shaped antenna pulled in the signal for the delicately balanc detector. There was a sharp falloff on both sides of the input so din tion could be precisely determined. The resulting signal was fed to amplifier stage. Unlike the electronic components of the first stage, ti one was drawn in symbols on white paper. Carefully glued-on inf and output leads ran to ft.
When everything was ready and clamped into place, Jason nodd to Meta’s image on the screen. “Take her up-and easy, please. No of your nine-G specials. Go into a slow circle around the perimeter, a till tell you differently.”
Under steady power the ship lifted and grabbed for altitude, th eased into its circular course. They made five circuits of the city befc Jason shook his head.
“The thing seems to be working fine, but we’re getting too mu noise from all the local life. Get thirty kilometers out from the city a start a new circuit.”
The results were better this time. A powerful signal came fr the direction of the city, confined to less than a degree of arc. With antenna fixed at a right angle to the direction of the ship’s flight, signal was fairly constant. Meta rotated the ship on its main axis, ur Jason’s lifeboat was directly below.
“Going fine now,” he said. “Just hold your controls as they are a keep the nose from drifting.”
Af~er making a careful mark on the setting circle, Jason turned i receiving antenna through i 8o° of arc. As the ship kept to its circ he made a slow collecting sweep of any signals beamed at the city. Ti were halfway around before he got a new signal.
It was there all right, narrow but strong. Just to be sure, he let I ship complete two more sweeps, and he noted the direction on the gy compass each time. They coincided. The third time around he cal to Meta.
“Get ready for a full right turn, or whatever you call it. I think I hr our bearing. Get ready-now.”
It was a slow turn and Jason never lost the signal. A few times it w ered, but he brought it back on. When the compass settled down, M pushed on more power.
They set their course toward the native Pyrrans.
An hour’s flight at close to top atmospheric speed brought no change. Meta complained, but Jason kept her on course. The signal never varied and was slowly picking up strength. They crossed the chain of volcanoes that marked the continental limits, the ship bucking in the fierce thermals. Once the shore was behind and they were over water, Skop joined Meta in grumbling. He kept his turret spinning, but there was very little to shoot at this far from land.