Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

alive, tubes glowed and indicators blinked, but the boat sat stolidly where it was.

“I told you not to use tose approximations,” said Urushkidan.

Ray fiddled with the main-drive settings. “It’s like any other gadget,” he complained. “You sweat yourself dry designing it from theory, and then you have to tinker till it works.”

He began changing the positions of resistors and condensers, cutting sections out of the circuit to work on them. Urushkidan shredded a piece of paper, wetted it, and tried to smoke it.

“Ray!” Dyann’s voice came sharp and urgent from the forward cabin. “I saw a rocket flare.”

“Oh, no!” He sprang back to her and peered into the night sky. A long trail of flame arced across it. And another, and another⁠—

“The Jovians,” he groaned. “They’ve found us.”

“They may not see us,” said Dyann hopefully.

“They have metal detectors. We’re done for.”

“Vell, ve can only die vunce. Kiss me, sveetheart.” Dyann folded Ray in one arm while the other reached for her sword.

The patrol rockets went over the horizon, braking, and swam back. Blast-flames spattered off the valley floor and frozen-gas vapors boiled furiously up toward mighty Jupiter.

The boat telescreen blinked its indicator light. Numbly, Ray tuned it in. The lean hard face of Colonel Roshevsky-Feldkamp sprang into its frame.

“Ah, there you are,” said the Jovian.

“If we surrender,” said Ray, “will you give us safe conduct back to Earth?”

“Certainly not. But you may be allowed to live.”

Urushkidan spoke from the lab. “Ballantyne, I tink te trouble lies in tis square-wave generator. If we doubled te boltage⁠—”

The first patrol ship sizzled to a landing. Roshevsky-Feldkamp leaned forward till his face seemed to project from the screen and Ray had a wild desire to punch its nose. “So you’ve been working on our project.” He said, “Well, so much the more labor spared us.”

Dyann cut loose with a short-range blaster she had located somewhere on the lab ship.

“Urushkidan will die before he surrenders to you,” said Ray belligerently.

“I will do noting of te sort,” said the Martian. Experimentally, he cut the square-wave generator back into the circuit and turned a dial.

The boat lifted off the ground.

“Hey, there,” roared the colonel. “You can’t do that!”

The Jovian soldiers who had been pouring from the grounded ship looked stupidly upward.

“Shell them!” snapped the colonel.

Ray slammed the main star drive switch clear over.

There was no feeling of acceleration. They were suddenly floating weightless and Jupiter whizzed past the forward port.

“Stop!” howled the Jovian.

The engine throbbed and sang, energy pulsing in great waves through its shuddering substance. The stars crawled eerily across the ports. “Aberration,” gasped Ray. “We’re approaching the speed of light.”

Space swam and blazed with a million million suns. They bunched near the forward port, thinning out toward the rear, as the ship added its fantastic velocity vector to their light-rays. A distorted pale-green globe grew rapidly before the vessel.

“Vat planet is that up ahead?” pointed Dyann.

“I think⁠—” muttered Ray. He looked out the rearward port. “I think it was Neptune.”

“Triumph!” chortled Urushkidan, rubbing his tentacles together. “My teory is confirmed. Not tat it needs confirmation, but now even an Eartman can see tat I am always right. And oh, how tey’ll habe to pay!”

The colors of the stars shifted toward blue in front and red behind. Doppler effect, thought Ray wildly. He was probably seeing by radio waves and gamma rays now. How fast were they going, anyway? He should have thought to install some kind of speed gauge. Several times the velocity of light at least.

“Ha, this is fun,” laughed Dyann.

“Hmmm⁠—we better stop while we can still see the Solar System,” said Ray, and cut the main drive.

The ship kept on going.

“Hey!” screamed the Earthling. “Stop! Whoa!”

“We can’t stop,” said Urushkidan coolly. “We’re in a certain pseudobelocity-state now. Te engine merely accelerates us.”

“Well, how in hell do you brake?” groaned Ray.

“I don’t know. We’ll habe to figure tat out. I tought you knew tis would happen.”

“Now I do.” Ray floated free of his chair, beating his forehead with his fists. “I hope to heaven we can do it before the food runs out.”

Dyann looked at Urushkidan speculatively. “If vorst comes to vorst,” she murmured, “roast Martian⁠—”

“Let’s get busy,” gasped Urushkidan.

It took a week to improvise a braking system. By that time they were no longer very sure where they were.

“This is all my fault,” said Dyann contritely. “If I had brought Ormun along she vould have looked after us.”

“One thing that worries me,” said Ray, “is the Jovians. They aren’t fools, and they won’t be sitting on their hands waiting for us to come back and give the star drive to Earth.”

“First,” said Urushkidan snappishly, “tere is te problem of finding our sun.”

Ray looked out the port. The ship was braked and, in the normal space-time state of matter, was floating amidst a wilderness of unfamiliar constellations. “It shouldn’t be too hard,” he said thoughtfully. “Look, there are the Magellanic Clouds, I think, and we should be able to locate Rigel or some other bright star. That way we can get a fix and locate ourselves relative to Sol.”

“Tere are no astronomical tables aboard ship,” pointed out Urushkidan, “and I certainly don’t clutter my brain wit mere numerical data.”

“Vich star is Rigel?” asked Dyann.

“Why⁠—uh⁠—well⁠—that one⁠—no, it might be that one over there⁠—or perhaps⁠—how should I know?” growled Ray.

“We will simply habe to go back te way we came, as nearly as we can judge it,” said Urushkidan.

“Maybe ve can find somevun who knows,” suggested Dyann.

Ray thought of landing on a planet and asking a winged, three-headed monster, “Pardon me, do you know which way Sol is?” To which the monster would doubtless reply, “Sorry, I’m a stranger here myself.” He chuckled wryly. They’d encountered a difficulty which all the brave futuristic stories about exploring the Galaxy seemed to have overlooked.

They had headed out in the ecliptic plane, very nearly on a line joining the momentary positions of Jupiter and Neptune. That didn’t help much, though, in a boat never meant for interplanetary flight and