course—and they knew that if you were alive you’d manage in some way to get in touch
with them. And you, away out here after all this time, are superbly confident that they
are expecting a call from you. That, I think, is one of the finest things I ever heard of.”
“They’re two of the world’s best—absolutely.” Nadia looked at him, surprised, for
he had not seen anything complimentary to himself in her remark. “Wait until you meet
them. They’re men, Nadia—real men. And speaking of meeting them—please try to
keep on loving me after you meet Norm Brandon, will you?”
“Don’t be a simp!” Her brown eyes met his steadily. “You didn’t mean that—you
didn’t even say it, did you?”
“Back it comes, sweetheart! But knowing myself and knowing those two . . .”
“Clam it! If Norman Brandon or Quincy Westfall had been here instead of you, or
both of them together, we’d have been here from now on—we wouldn’t even have got
away from the Jovians!”
“Now it’s your turn to back water, guy!”
“Well, maybe, a little—if both of them were here they ought to equal you in some
things. Brandon says himself that he and Westfall together make one scientist—Dad
says he says so.”
“You don’t want to believe everything you hear. Neither of them will admit that he
knows anything or can do anything—that’s the way they are.”
“Dad has told me a lot about them—how they’ve always been together ever since
their undergraduate days. How they studied together all over the world, even after
they’d been given all the degrees loose. How they even went to the other planets to
study—to Mars, where they had to live in space-suits all the time, and to Venus, where
they had to take ultra-violet treatments every day to keep alive. How they learned
everything that everybody else knew and then went out into space to find out things that
nobody else ever dreamed of. How you came to join them, and what you three have
done since. They’re fine, of course—but they aren’t you,” she concluded passionately.
“No, thank Heaven! I know you love me, Nadia, just as I love you—you know I
never doubted it. But you’ll like them, really; nobody could help it. They’re a wonderful
team. Brandon’s a big brute, you know—fully five centimeters taller than I am, and he
weighs close to a hundred kilograms—and no lard, either. He’s a wild, impetuous
lobster, always jumping at conclusions and working out theories that seem absolutely
ridiculous, but they’re usually sound, even though impractical. Westfall’s the practical
member— he makes Norm pipe down, pins him down to facts, and makes it possible to
put his hunches and wild flashes of genius into workable form. Quince is a . . .”
“Now you pipe down! I’ve heard you rave so much about those two—I’d lots
rather rave about you, and with more reason. I wish that sounder would start sounding.”
“Our first message hasn’t gone half way yet. It takes about forty minutes for the
impulse to get to where I think they are, so that even if they got the first one and
answered it instantly, it’d be eighty minutes before we’d get it. I sort of expect an answer
late tonight, but I won’t be disappointed if it takes a week to locate them.”
“I will!” declared the girl, and indeed, very little work was done that day by either
of the castaways.
Slowly the day wore on, and the receiving sounder remained silent. Supper was
eaten as the sun dropped low and disappeared, but they felt no desire to sleep. Instead,
they went out in front of the steel wall, where Stevens built a small campfire. Leaning
back against the wall of their vessel they fell into companionable silence, which was
suddenly broken by Stevens.
“Nadia, I just had a thought. I’ll bet four dollars I’ve wasted a lot of time. They’ll
certainly have automatic relays on Tellus, to save me the trouble of hunting for them,
but like an idiot I never thought of it until just this minute, in spite of the speech I made
you about them. I’m going to change those directors right now.”
“That’s quite a job, isn’t it?”
“No, only a few minutes.”
“Do it in the morning; you’ve done enough for one day—maybe you’ve hit them
already, anyway.”
They again became silent, watching Jupiter, an enormous crescent moon almost
seven degrees in apparent diameter.
“Steve, I simply can’t get used to such a prodigious moon! Look at the stripes,
and look at that perfectly incredible . . .”
A gong sounded and they both jumped to their feet and raced madly into the
Hope. The ultra-receiver had come to life and the sounder was chattering
insanely—someone was sending with terrific speed, but with perfect definition and
spacing.
“That’s Brandon’s fist—I’d know his style anywhere,” Stevens shouted, as he
seized notebook and pencil.
“Tell me what it says, quick, Steve!” Nadia implored.
“Can’t talk—read it!” Stevens snapped. His hand was flying over the paper,
racing to keep up with the screaming sounder.
“. . . ymede all x stevens ganymede all x stevens ganymede all x placing and will
keep sirius on plane between you and tellus circle fifteen forty north going tellus first
send full data spreading beam to cover circle fifteen forty quince suggests possibility
this message intercepted and translated personally I think such translation impossible
and that he is wilder than a hawk but just in case they should be supernaturally
intelligent . . .”
Stevens stopped abruptly and stared at the vociferous sounder.
“Don’t stop to listen—keep on writing!” commanded Nadia.
“Can’t,” replied the puzzled mathematician. “It doesn’t make sense. It sounds
intelligent—it’s made up of real symbols of some kind or other, but they don’t mean a
thing to me.”
“Oh, I see—he’s sending mush on purpose. Read the last phrase!”
“Oh, sure—’mush’ is right,” and with no perceptible break the signals again
became intelligible.
“. . . if they can translate that they are better scholars than we are signing off until
hear from you brandon.”
The sounder died abruptly into silence and Nadia sobbed convulsively as she
threw herself into Stevens’ arms. The long strain over, the terrible uncertainty at last
dispelled, they were both incoherent for a minute—Nadia glorifying the exploits of her
lover, Stevens crediting the girl herself and his two fellow-scientists with whatever
success had been achieved. A measure of self-control regained, Stevens cut off his
automatic sender, changed the adjustments of his directors and cut in his manually-
operated sending key.
“What waves are you using, anyway?” asked Nadia, curiously. “They must be
even more penetrating than Roeser’s Rays, to have such a range, and Roeser’s Rays
go right through a planet without even slowing up.”
“They’re of the same order as Roeser’s—that is, they’re sub-electronic waves of
the fourth order—but they’re very much shorter, and hence more penetrating. In fact,
they’re the shortest waves yet known, so short that Roeser never even suspected their
existence.”
“Suppose there’s a Jovian space-ship out there somewhere that intercepts our
beams. Couldn’t they locate us from it?”
“Maybe, and maybe not—we’ll just have to take a chance on that. That goes right
back to what we were talking about this morning. They might be anywhere, so the
chance of hitting one is very small. It isn’t like hitting the Sirius, because we knew within
pretty narrow limits where to look for her and she had receivers tuned to this exact
frequency. Even at that we had to hunt for her for half a day before we hit her. We’re
probably safe, but even if they should have located us, we’ll probably be able to hide
somewhere until the Sirius gets here. Well, the quicker I get busy sending the dope, the
sooner they can get started.”
“Tell them to be sure and bring me all my clothes they can find, a gallon of
perfume, a barrel of powder, and a carload of Delray’s Fantasia chocolates—I’ve been a
savage so long that I want to wallow in luxury for a while.”
“I’ll do that—and I want some real cigarettes!”
Stevens first sent a terse, but complete account of everything that had happened
to the Arcturus, and a brief summary of what he and Nadia had done since the cutting
up of the IPV. The narrative finished, he launched into a prolonged and detailed
scientific discussion of the enemy and their offensive and defensive weapons. He dwelt
precisely and at length upon the functioning of everything he had seen. Though during
the long months of their isolation he had been too busy to do any actual work upon the
weapons of the supposed Jovians, yet his keen mind had evolved many mathematical
and physical deductions, hypotheses, and theories, and each of these he sent out to the
Sirius in full, concluding:
“There’s all the dope I can give you. Figure it out, and don’t come at all until you