Checkpoint Lambda

CHAPTER 1

Scott ran into the situation on a supposedly almost-routine tour of duty on Checkpoint Lambda. It was to be his first actual independent command as a Space Patrol commissioned officer. Otherwise the affairs of the galaxy seemed to be proceeding in a completely ordinary fashion. On a large scale, suns burned in emptiness, novas flamed, and comets went bumbling around their highly elliptical orbits just as usual. On a lesser scale, where the affairs of men were concerned, there seemed to be no deviation from the customary. The Golconda Ship had vanished, to be sure, but it was the habit of that fabulous vessel to disappear once in every four years, while half the galaxy tried to guess where it had gone, and the rest tried to think of ways to intercept it when it came back.

Other human activities were commonplace. Huge bulk-cargo carriers lifted off from spaceports and moved slowly out to emptiness. At appropriate distances the landing grids which had lifted them let go, and the ungainly objects flickered and abruptly disappeared. Actually, they were on their way to destinations light-centuries distant, wrapped in cocoons of overdrive-field which carried them many times faster than light. Sleek, bright metal ships, graceful in outline, shot into being from nothingness and then swam slowly to the point where the same landing grids’ force-fields could lock on and let them down to worlds totally new. Mile-long ships with swimming pools and hundreds of deck-levels carried cargo and passengers between star clusters, and small, grubby cargo craft ferried minerals from airless satellites to the planets they circled. Space-yachts cruised leisurely, while battered tramp ships doggedly nosed into queer corners of space upon their sometimes legitimate business.

The galaxy was a very busy place. There was most activity, perhaps, near the yellow sun on whose third planet humanity had begun and from which it had spread to distances incomprehensibly immense. But it was busy everywhere.

A space lane stretched from Rigel to Taret, two thousand light-years from one end to the other, colonized worlds clustered upon it like beads upon a string. Space lanes led to the Coalsack and from the Rim to Betelgeuse. Other surveyed lanes forked, then joined, ended, and began once more. Sometimes they crossed each other. At intervals there were spaceports for the exchange of passengers and freight between ship lanes. Men displayed great ingenuity in arranging such things.

There was the sun Canis Lambda, for example. Scott was on his way to take command of the checkpoint that floated in orbit around it. Canis Lambda was a yellow type G sun which should have had as many planets as ancient Sol. At some unimaginably remote period it had possessed them. But like Sol, which possessed an unnamed world that blew itself to bits—bits now floating aimlessly between Mars and Jupiter—Canis Lambda had four now-detonated children, reduced these days from mountains and islands to particles of celestial sand. None was large enough to be called a planet and all seemed useless. Yet the sun Canis Lambda burned brightly in emptiness where no less than six man-marked space lanes crossed each other. And men needed a course-marker, a buoy, a transfer-point there. So they built one.

The first two attempts were failures, because they were only buoys. They vanished, and the Five Comets of Canis Lambda were blamed for their disappearance. The current checkpoint was more ambitious.

Men took an ancient ship that was unsuited for any other use. They drove it to Canis Lambda, took out the overdrive engine and put it in orbit near a mile-thick fragment of an exploded world. They installed radars and telemeters and space-radio equipment. Three decks were filled with growing things to provide food and purify the air. Finished, the former liner was not only a buoy and a checkpoint for space traffic, but it was a hotel and a warehouse and other things besides.

Scott hadn’t seen it when he heard about what he was running into, but he’d studied its plans. It had freight doors in its hull. It had lifeboats in their blisters. It had air-locks and any number of conveniences—cabins, a tiny theatre, a restaurant, even a small hospital far down in its stern-most section. Passengers could board it from a liner following one space lane and wait in it for a liner following a different lane to take them to another world. Freight could be transferred to it also. The buoy—the check-point—was a necessary facility for interstellar traffic.

But one day, while Scott was on his way to take it over as his first independent command, several passengers were there, awaiting a ship for Dettra. They were supposed to transfer. But they didn’t.

This started everything, so far as Scott was concerned.

He heard about it in the control room of the liner taking him to the space buoy. The skipper had checked for passengers to be landed and found that Scott was not only routed for Lambda, but was a lieutenant in the Space Patrol and headed for duty there. He was traveling as a paying passenger and in civilian clothes, as Patrol men always did when off duty. The skipper had assumed he was only another passenger. But when he realized who Scott was, he urgently invited him into the control room.

“I’d no idea you were Patrol,” he told Scott apologetically, “or I’d have invited you here before.”

“I’ve spent enough time in control rooms,” said Scott, “not to mind being just a passenger.”

“We don’t often see a Patrol man,” explained the skipper, “and I didn’t think—.”

“I’m obliged to you,” Scott told him. “I haven’t worried about a thing since we left Dettra.”

It wasn’t quite the truth. Checkpoint Lambda was his first independent command, and he’d been assigned to it for a very special reason. The whole project would work out best, and he’d seem better fitted for other commands later, if absolutely nothing unusual happened on Lambda before he got there, while he was there, and after he left. He’d been uneasy on that account alone but so far everything seemed normal.

“I may have a problem at Lambda,” said the skipper after a pause. “I’m glad you’re aboard to take over if it turns up.”

Scott waited. The Patrol was the only interstellar service with authority to order anybody around, but it leaned over backward to avoid any such behavior.

“Just before we left Dettra,” the skipper explained, “a ship came in to the space port. She was minus some passengers and some freight she should have picked up at Lambda. But at Lambda they insisted there were no such passengers nor any freight for that ship. They said for her to go on her way. There was no point in making contact.”

Scott frowned. At this particular time it wasn’t likely there’d be any confusion about passengers or freight at Lambda. It was exceedingly important that everything be right. Within the past months one change in the landing arrangements at Lambda had become necessary. Among Scott’s special orders were directions for him to take care of that change. But this was way out of line.

“One of the passengers was a girl,” said the skipper.

“She was bound for Dettra. The liner skipper knew her family. She had to be on Lambda! She had to! He put up an argument. So the Lambda Patrol officer came on the vision-screen. He swore at the liner and ordered it on its way. There was some freight to be put off there, too. The Patrol officer refused to take it. He swore again. He was adamant. So the liner had to go on to Dettra. Her skipper told me about it an hour before we lifted off.”

Scott didn’t swear, but this sort of event at this special place at this particular time had implications that would have justified much profanity. He said, “And your problem?”

“You,” said the skipper uncomfortably. “You’re supposed to be landed on Lambda. Before I knew you were Patrol I was wondering what the devil to do if they refused to accept you! I couldn’t think of any reason—.”

“They’ll accept me!” Scott assured him. “Don’t worry about that! I’m taking command there. And I’ll look into the matter of the passengers and freight.” Then he considered for a moment. “I’ll ask you to wait nearby until I’ve checked things, though. The transfer-passengers might prefer going on with you, on this ship, to waiting longer on Lambda.” The skipper looked relieved but still uneasy. “I thought it might be—quarantine stuff.” “It’s not that,” said Scott.

He gave no outward sign, but he didn’t like this at all. The Golconda Ship was due to land at Lambda almost as soon as he got there. Refusal to exchange freight or passengers could mean trouble then.

“I’ll go aboard,” he said casually, “and ask you to wait around for half an hour or so. Of course if there’s nothing really the matter, you can forget the whole thing. But passengers shouldn’t be staying aboard when they’re scheduled to leave.”

The skipper looked relieved. Scott said, “We’re due to break out for Lambda in a couple of hours, aren’t we?”

When the skipper agreed, Scott said casually, “I’ll get set for landing,”

He left the control room and went to his cabin. A Patrol man traveled light. There was no great amount of preparation to make. He did write a brief, specific report of what the skipper had told him. He didn’t need to draw any inferences. Headquarters could put two and two together. But it would be a long time getting action.

There’d have been no need for a buoy if there were a habitable world within a reasonable distance. But the next port beyond Lambda was six days’ journey in overdrive—many light-years in normal space. There’d be no Patrol ship at that port. It could be fifteen days or more before the seemingly innocent news from the checkpoint would reach an operating Patrol base with an available ship. Then it would be acted on, but it could be thirty days or longer before an armed ship could be ordered out and arrive at Checkpoint Lambda. Which would be too late. A tale of passengers not transferring and freight undelivered could mean that the most stupendously profitable crime in human history was under way.

It could also mean murder on Lambda.

Which was exactly what Scott had special orders to prevent.

He looked at his watch. It was midday mess-time by the liner’s clocks. He abruptly found that he couldn’t eat. But he did look into the liner’s dining saloon, and eating seemed less possible than ever. There were families with children. There were honey-mooners. There were elderly people for whom the discomfort of going into and breaking out of overdrive was distressing in the extreme. There were young people. None of them had the least imaginable link with the Golconda Ship, but Scott knew that the dining-saloon on Lambda might have looked like this not long ago. It wasn’t likely that it looked like this now.

The reason was the Golconda Ship. Ordinary shipments of treasure by space craft were routinely put under the special protection of the Space Patrol. The transfer of thousands of millions of credits in interstellar currency happened often enough. In such cases the Patrol made a routine check of the ship’s proposed passengers, made an equally routine check of the crew, and then briskly examined freight parcels. The checking of individuals would show up anybody with ideas of traveling as passengers, then seizing the ship in space. Examination of freight would disclose ambitious people with ideas of stowing away for any similar purpose. Such precautions had always been enough. But a report of passengers who didn’t transfer to their scheduled ship indicated that something else had happened. To Scott’s first independent command. And while he was on the way to it.

The Golconda Ship’s crew hadn’t been checked. It wasn’t necessary. It came from some place, nobody-knew-where, with a cargo of treasure its crew had acquired, nobody-knew-how. In theory, Scott needed only to go to Lambda, take command, and see that when the Golconda Ship arrived there, there was no trouble with the Five Comets. Recent computations had said there could be trouble. Then he was to see that its incredibly valuable cargo was divided into shipments of reasonable size and, in course of time, transferred to a series of other ships which would deliver each fraction of the whole to a different colonized world. That was all. It was almost commonplace. But passengers—including a girl—hadn’t left the checkpoint when they should. Freight had been refused. And strangest of all, a supposed Patrol officer had sworn at the skipper of a merchant ship and ordered him to go on.

There should be no weapons on Lambda to back up a threat. A Patrol officer shouldn’t threaten, anyhow. He was violating all discipline if he used profanity or made threats of any kind to a civilian. The officer who’d sworn at a liner-skipper didn’t sound like a Patrol officer.

Scott very grimly decided that he wasn’t.

The Golconda Ship would be the answer. Its fabulous riches and impenetrable mystery made it the subject of feverish speculation over half the occupied galaxy. Four ships in turn had made voyages to an unknown destination and returned. A fifth was somewhere out in space now. The first had appeared from nowhere years ago, with a cargo of treasure that still seemed unbelievable. There’d been fighting on board, and the first Golconda Ship’s crew was smaller than even a small space tramp should carry. Apparently they’d killed each other off and were down to a skeleton crew which brought the ship to port. But they kept their lips tight-locked. They had treasure of greater value than any ship on any space-voyage or any sea had ever brought to port before. But nothing criminal could be proved against them. Nothing of any use could be learned from them. Ultimately they scattered, every man a multi-millionaire, and the secret of where they’d obtained their treasure still intact.

Four years later the same men gathered again. They had another ship built. It was a very special ship indeed. They went aboard and out to space. Nobody knew where they went. They were gone six standard months. They came to port again with even more treasure than before. Again they kept their mouths shut. Once more they scattered, and every man was a multi-multi-millionaire. The second Golconda Ship had brought back more wealth than most planetary treasuries contained. And nobody knew where it was found or how it was gathered or even—actually—how much there was of it. But the sudden excess of riches caused a financial crisis on the world where they landed it.

A third Golconda Ship and a fourth had made voyages, each time with a crew whose every member was so many times a millionaire that an estimate of his wealth was meaningless. Now a fifth Golconda Ship was due, to make them richer still. But this time it would not make port where an embarrassment of riches would cause a financial panic. It would land at Lambda.

And this was why a few non-transferring passengers and a threatening Patrol officer on Lambda made Scott feel grim and savage and almost helpless as he watched the diners in this space liner’s dining saloon.

They were innocent bystanders. Their lives shouldn’t be endangered. If this liner made freight or passenger-transfer contact with Lambda, they would be in trouble—if things were as wrong as they appeared. He, Scott, would have to arrange matters so that he took all the risks. And, acting alone, the risk would be practically suicidal.

He was about to move away from the doorway when loudspeakers all over the ship blared, chorus; “Attention all passengers! Attention all passengers! Breakout from overdrive coming! Breakout from overdrive coming!”

There were unhappy sounds here and there. Overdrive was the only conceivable way by which space traffic could be moved across light-centuries of space. But ways to mitigate the physical discomfort of going into or out of it had not been developed successfully.

“This is a checkpoint breakout, at Checkpoint Lambda,” the voice said cheerfully. “If you wish, stewards will provide you with anti-malaise pills to reduce breakout discomfort. We are required by law to report our passage past the checkpoints set up along the space lanes we follow. Usually that is all that happens. Today, though, we have a passenger to transfer by tentacle to the buoy Lambda. It will be interesting to watch. This checkpoint buoy was formerly a crack interstellar liner. In its day—”

Scott moved tiff to the control room as the brisk voice described the former liner now floating as a hulk in emptiness. It was still equipped with the solar system drive-engines which could shift its position about the local sun, but they could not conceivably drive it to any other solar system. Here it was, and here it must remain, depending on passing ships for its contacts with the rest of the galaxy. The voice mentioned antennas and radar-mirrors and telemetering equipment as if they were strange. It pictured the transfer of a passenger by space tentacle as an operation of vast interest. Scott reached the control room and heard a mate off to one side completing the saccharine speech into a microphone. The skipper nodded a greeting. He looked uneasy. Every skipper worried about breakout. There was no authenticated record of a ship breaking out to collide immediately with a planet or asteroid or a sun’s blazing photosphere, but a ship did come back to normal space almost at random.

A voice from overhead in the control room said with careful distinctness, “When the gong sounds, breakout will be exactly in five seconds.”

There was a slow, monotonous tick-tock-tick-tock. It lasted an interminable time. Then a recorded gong sounded, and the same carefully distinct voice said, “Five—four—three—two—one—”

The vision-screens flickered. Everybody on the liner felt a ghastly dizziness, and the sensations of a spinning, spiral fall. Then there was nausea, quick and sharp and revolting, but mercifully it lasted only a heartbeat.

Then the screens blazed with light. A thousand million specks of brightness glittered upon the formerly rust-red screens. A tinny voice said, “Checkpoint Lambda. Checkpoint Lambda. Report. Report,” and a tiny whining sound began to come from the liner’s automatically taped log which was now broadcasting in a high-speed transmission for the checkpoint to record. The Milky Way sprawled across no less than four vision-screens, and the distorted black nebula, the Coalsack, loomed large and near. It was of another shape than when seen from Earth. To the left, and ahead, a bright yellow sun with a barely perceptible disk shone luridly. There were peculiar luminosities close by. They would be the Five Comets of Canis Lambda; matters of interest to professional astronomers but not usually to anybody else. Scott, though, regarded them with a frown. The liner’s skipper shook his head.

“Good that we broke out short,” he observed. “I’d hate to come out of overdrive close to them!”

Scott said nothing. All overdrive runs were timed to stop short of their destination, with shorter jumps to closer approximation. The odds against collisions on breakout were enormous, and research expeditions had actually penetrated the hearts of those clumped meteoric hordes which were cometary heads and nuclei. But that was a hair-raising trick, and possible only by the most tedious and painstaking matching of velocities. One definitely wouldn’t want to break out inside a comet. And meteor-streams trailed most of them. The Five Comets of Canis Lambda were particularly undesirable close neighbors for space craft. Two robot checkpoints in succession had vanished from orbit around this sun. Still, most ships merely reported their passage there and went on to the infinite emptiness beyond.

“Umph,” said the skipper. “We’ll go on in.”

The operation of approaching a landing was much more complicated on a liner than on a Patrol ship. There was verification of the ecliptic plane. There was careful measurement of distance. Micrometric adjustment of the short-jump relay. A man couldn’t time an overdrive jump to less than the fiftieth of a second. A properly timed relay could split a fifty-thousandth. The figures were checked, and checked again, and the settings made and verified. All the while the ceiling speaker continued to repeat metallically, “Checkpoint Lambda. Checkpoint Lambda. Report. Report.” The call had been traveling at the speed of light for almost an hour before the liner picked it up from the yet unseen and unseeable space buoy. The liner’s automatic reply was now traveling back to it. But the ship itself would get there before its broadcast.

Another warning to passengers. A gong. A countdown. Then there was dizziness once more, and the feeling of falling, and intolerable nausea. The screens flickered and rearranged the innumerable specks of light which were stars. And then, suddenly, the sun Canis Lambda was blindingly bright with a disk half-a-degree across, and the call from the ceiling speaker became a shout for the fraction of a syllable before the automatic volume-control cut it down.

The skipper looked pleased. One does not often have a chance to show off before a Patrol man. He watched complacently, giving no orders, while the direction of the checkpoint signal was ascertained and its distance measured. Then the liner began to drive toward it on that slow solar system drive by which men first explored the planets of the First System. It was necessary for lift-offs and landings.

But Scott stared ahead. The Five Comets were heading in toward the sun; five separate luminosities, some larger and some smaller, some with enormous trailing tails and others with lesser ones. All were concentrated in one very small region of the sky.

Scott didn’t like the look of things, but unless he knew their distance he couldn’t tell how close together they really were. Even then, distances in space were not easily realized. There was no believable sensation of depth where astronomical objects were concerned. Everything looked flat. It was impossible to see more than angular relationships. Actual distances were no more than numerals on paper. But still Scott didn’t like what he saw.

“Very nice work,” he said politely. “I’ll go get into my vacuum-suit. I’ll be back by the time you’ve raised the buoy.”

He went back to his cabin and changed his civilian clothes for his uniform. He put on the Patrol space suit that was so much less bulky than the vacuum equipment used on merchant ships. It took a considerable time. Then he picked up the report he’d prepared and returned to the control room. The skipper was red-faced and angry and apprehensive.

“Look here!” he greeted Scott indignantly. “They got our approach-call. They said, ‘What ship’s that?’ When I told them they didn’t answer! They don’t answer now!”

As if deliberately to contradict him, the communicator-speaker said harshly. “There is nothing to come aboard you. No freight or passengers will be accepted. Proceed on your voyage. Message ends.”

The skipper looked at Scott.

“What am I to do?”

“Proceed on your voyage,” said Scott drily, “as far as the space buoy.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “As an extreme precaution, put a man by the overdrive button. Set it up to move the ship a short jump away—if they get too insistent.”

The skipper gave orders. Even a brief period in overdrive would put the liner beyond this solar system. Up to now, the skipper had been concerned only because he had a passenger who might be refused by Lambda. There was no precedent to tell him what to do. But Scott had asked for a precaution which made it more than mere irregularity on the part of the checkpoint. There was more wrong here than passengers who didn’t change ship and freight that wasn’t accepted. Scott had come to that conclusion earlier. The skipper said uncomfortably, “I don’t understand this!”

Scott replied, “Presently, you will.”

To him the situation was self-evident. The Golconda Ship was coming back from wherever it had gone on its fifth treasure-hunting voyage. It was going to make port at Checkpoint Lambda instead of a normal space port. It planned to distribute its riches among the financial institutions of a dozen or a hundred worlds instead of one. It was a very sound idea provided that the secret of its intention—which even now Scott didn’t feel he could reveal—and the time of its arrival remained unknown to anybody but the commanding officer of Checkpoint Lambda, until after the operation was over.

But that apparently hadn’t happened.

Taking into consideration a leak in highly classified information, and the report about the passengers for another liner, and now the insistence that this liner should go on without attempting further communication, Scott could have written a very plausible outline of events and conditions on the checkpoint.

Someone who knew where the Golconda Ship would reappear could have organized what could be the most profitable criminal enterprise in human history. Men could have taken passage from various worlds to Lambda, there to wait for transportation elsewhere. Other men from other worlds could arrive to add to their number. Then, suddenly and without warning, the pseudo-passengers could act. It could be swift and terrible. They’d take the space buoy, perhaps with crackling blasters. They might capture and imprison the crew and the authentic passengers. On the other hand, they might not take that risk.

In any event, if that had happened, the present occupants of Lambda would be waiting for the Golconda Ship to arrive and to link to the buoy for heavy-freight transfer. Then there would be swift and terrible action. It was unlikely that anybody on the Golconda Ship would survive. And then the captors of that ship would sail away with wealth so vast that divide it as they might, no one of them would ever be less than fabulously rich.

All this was inference. Only Scott suspected it, and there was no Patrol ship which could be summoned and arrive there within weeks. Scott could make a part of the crime impossible. But there were the Five Comets. If any part of the crew, or anyone listed on the passenger list was still alive it would in effect be murder unless he went aboard and attempted the impossible. He had to prevent their deaths, if they hadn’t already been murdered. The fact that even the attempt would mean that he might be killed couldn’t alter the fact that he had a clear obligation.

But all this was still deduction, even though the facts allowed of no other interpretation. Scott was wryly contemplating the total problem when the communicator-speaker rasped, “What the devil are you doing? There’s nothing to go aboard you and nothing will be received. Get on course and go away!” Somehow the voice sounded like someone speaking correctly against his usual habit—in order to seem something he was not.

Scott went to the transmitter. He said formally, “Calling Checkpoint Lambda. This is Lieutenant Scott, Space Patrol. I have orders to take command of the checkpoint. I am coming aboard. You will prepare to receive me. Message ends.”

There was an indefinable sound, as if someone had uttered a choked exclamation. Then silence. Scott knew what was happening, of course. There was a conference, on the buoy. To decide what to do about him. Scott moved the microphone to one side and said in an official voice, “Captain, if there is difficulty here I shall commandeer this ship by Space Patrol authority to stand off this checkpoint and warn all other ships of suspicious actions aboard and not to make contact with it. We will request that all ships report the situation to the Space Patrol.”

The skipper of the liner gaped at him. Scott pointed to the microphone close to his lips. The sound of his voice would have changed as he spoke to the skipper, but he’d have been overheard. They’ve have heard him on the buoy. He could actually have done what he’d just mentioned. But there were the Five Comets. And also there was an unwritten rule in the Patrol that a Patrol man never waited for help, though he might send for it. In the long run, it paid off.

He put the microphone aside. “Keep a man at the overdrive button,” he said, frowning. “If anything leaves Lambda headed for this ship, he’d better push it. I don’t intend to keep you here, of course. It wouldn’t be practical. But I don’t like this!”

The skipper opened his mouth to ask a question, but a duty-man across the control room said, “I’ve got the buoy, sir.”

A vision-screen faded out and brightened again with a relayed telescopic image. It showed first a monstrous, glittering mass of unoxidized metal that was a fragment of one of the planets Canis Lambda had lost aeons ago. They’d blown themselves to bits like the fifth planet in the First System. Now it was an asteroid, too small to be called a planet or to have an atmosphere or to be of any use except the one that was made of it. It was a marker. Its orbit around the sun was nearly circular and could be computed with precision. And the buoy stayed close to it. Ships seeking the former liner, now a freight station and hotel, could know exactly where to find it in the three-hundred-million-mile orbit the checkpoint followed. The buoy would, quite simply, be where computation placed the marker. And that was known and printed for every imaginable month, day, and hour far into the future.

It loomed large as the magnification on the screen increased. A twinkling speck appeared beside it. Scott stared and shook his head. The Five Comets on the way, and the buoy not moved to safety? Even criminals… But then his lips tensed. Things looked worse than he’d supposed.

The buoy was—had been—a ship not unlike the one Scott was on. Now it sprouted radio and radar and telemetering equipment seemingly by the hundreds of pieces. By the size of the ship, Scott could now guess distances. The glittering marker-asteroid was about two miles from the buoy. They floated in the same orbit, very near each other. More magnified now, peculiar ringed depressions appeared in the substance of the marker. They were craters, like those found on the inner moons and Mars and Mercury in the First System. They were impact-craters from bombardment of the asteroid by rocky masses hurtling through the sky. They were evidence that space wasn’t always empty where the checkpoint floated. Two robot checkpoints had vanished from their orbits here, and astronomers blamed the Five Comets and pointed to the impact-craters as proof that they were the cause.

Scott turned his head. There were the vaguely circular patches of brightness against the stars. They were the Comets, on schedule. Their orbits were commensurable, and every so often they reached aphelion all together. This was such an occasion. It had been known for a long time, but the buoy was ignoring it. It floated obliviously in space, some tens of times its own length from its marker-asteroid.

“I’ll go down to the air-lock,” said Scott. “Keep your man on the overdrive button. After I’m aboard, wait nearby until I release you or at least until half an hour has passed. And—” he passed over his written report—“see that this gets to a Patrol office as soon as possible.”

He went down to the air-lock. Liner crewmen waited to let him out. Merchant ships carried many more men than did comparable Patrol ships. They operated more elaborately. Quite unnecessarily now, they checked the tuning of his suit to communicator-frequency to make sure he’d overhear all talk between the liner and Lambda, and that he could take part in it.

For a long, long time there was nothing. He heard small sounds from someplace where a microphone was open. Then a voice in his helmet-phones said ungraciously, “We’ll receive Lieutenant Scott. Put him in a space suit. We’ll send over a tentacle for him.”

The liner skipper’s voice came through the same headphones in Scott’s helmet.

“He’s on his way to the air-lock.”

Scott watched the small monitor screen in the airlock wall. Its function was to show the immediate outside of the lock, to facilitate emergency operations of any kind. At first Scott could only see a shining field of stars. Then slowly the glittering metal object which was the space buoy seemed to creep past the edge of the screen and into plain view. Its steel hull was coated with that golden plating which old-style overdrive fields required of ships they transported. There were ports along the fish-shaped flanks. There were cargo doors. There were lesser doors which would be personnel air-locks. And there were jungles of antennae for communication and meteor-watch and telemetry at different spots.

Scott’s eyes fixed themselves on an open air-lock door. It could be nothing deadlier than a door already opened for him to enter. But a short-range rocket could issue from it, if any had been shipped to the buoy as freight.

The star-field moved. The liner was shifting position. It changed its angle to the buoy until, if there were a missile in that open lock, it would no longer bear on the liner. It implied an informed uneasiness on the part of the liner’s skipper. Scott took time out to approve of him.

“Here comes our tentacle,” said the grating voice.

Something slender and worm-like came out of an opening. It writhed and straightened, quivered, and continued to extend itself. It came fumbling across the emptiness between the two ships. Scott closed the inner lock door. He felt his formerly flaccid vacuum-suit swell out swiftly. He saw the air pressure gauge needle swing to zero. A flickering yellow light told him that he might open the outer lock-door. He opened it.

It was not a new experience to look out upon infinite nothingness. The liner’s artificial gravity made the bow of the ship seem up and the stern down. But he felt that he stood on an unguarded threshold with pure abyss before him. Some hundreds of yards away the space buoy moved very slowly past. That was stability. The liner was stability. But in between lay such a gulf that all his instincts warned him shrink away.

He grew angry, as he always did when he felt weakness in himself. He watched the wobbling tentacle as it groped toward him. It was not like an inanimate thing at all, but it gave an appalling impression of stupidity and of bumbling ineptitude. It reached the liner’s air-lock.

Scott hooked his belt to it. It began to retract. It pulled him out of the air-lock. He ground his teeth as he felt emptiness below him—when he knew that he could fall for thousands and thousands of years and never reach anything at all.

The harsh voice said, “You can go now. He’s on the way.”

As if in response, the liner surged ahead. At high acceleration it darted away from the space-buoy. It dwindled…

The tentacle ceased to draw Scott toward the buoy. It held him still in the void. Then it stirred as if impatiently. But the liner was still within space-suit communicator range. When it disappeared in overdrive, though, something would happen. The tentacle could thrust Scott away to its own fullest extension with such violence that when it stopped he’d be snapped off its end to go floating away in emptiness forever. Or it could draw back, pulling him toward the buoy’s metal hull with such velocity that he’d crash against the hull-plates, bursting his suit and helmet, turning into a horrible bubbling thing as his blood and tissues changed to steam in emptiness. All things considered, those appeared to be the alternatives as soon as the liner went into overdrive.

Scott inconspicuously unhooked his belt. He held onto the tentacle with a space-gloved hand. He’d made a third alternative possible. The tentacle could extend furiously or retract furiously. But he’d be left floating a few hundred yards from Lambda, with a reaction-jet for propulsion as he tried to fight his way inside.

This last, rather than the others, was what he actually expected.