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Ebook has 176 lines and 9015 words, and 4 pages

LIE ON THE BEAM

by John Victor Peterson

Sweeping from perihelion, the black destroyer curved toward the gibbous white ball of Venus, its jets stabbing mocking fingers at the majesty of the sun whose clutching gravity it had cheated. Within the heavily shielded control cabin, the hard skull-face of the commander split into a fleshless smile. From his fanged jaws a single word was spat into the spaceship's intercommunication system:

Throughout the urgently racing ship other skull-faced, chitinous-hided men thronged to bomb tubes and waited, heavy eyelids nature had fashioned as protection against the dust storms of the parent world drooping over eager, glittering eyes.

ADRAKOLARN--

Thousands of miles away, on the surface of Sol's second planet, a heavy, milky fog crept like a sentient thing up the side of a towering apartment dwelling. In and out of window recesses it stole, climbing higher and higher as if seeking entrance.

Soundlessly, mysteriously a window slid open. The fog gained momentum before a sudden wind and swept into the dimly lighted chamber. The silvery-haired young man on the bed did not awaken. His slender form turned and twisted beneath thin coverings and the jargon of astronautics came thickly from his lips.

A nightmare possessed him within which he was plunging down into Venus' clouds in a small spaceship. Suddenly his ports were shattered in a head-on collision with a high-flying native pterodactyl. In the dream as in actuality the great dampness of Venus poured chokingly into his lungs.

Almost instantly the urgent buzzing of a televisor signal brought him struggling upright, coughing thick, humid air from congested bronchial tubes.

Half drunken from the high oxygen content of the surface atmosphere, Frederic Ward slipped from his bed and reeled over to shut the port-like window. Damn these Venusians anyhow, he thought, meanwhile wheezing, coughing and spitting. Probably thought one of their clique was sleeping here instead of a decently-evolved native of Pittsburgh, Earth. That froglike brute down in Air Control probably had the atmospherics switchboard all awry. Well, I'll buzz him when I get this telecall answered. I'll tell him off proper. He has my temperature and humidity chart. Of all the nerve!

Still grumbling, Ward turned to the television transceiver, clicking on the audios and videos.

"Engineer Ward, Astronautics Authority, speaking."

The sight of Ward's room caused a grin to light up momentarily the fat, tired face on the receiving grid.

"What's up, Silvy? Getting acclimated to our lovely Venus?"

"What's on your mind, Wagner?" Ward snapped back, in no mood for joking even if the buzzing of the televisorphone had probably saved him from an oxy-hangover or, perhaps, even drowning in the early morning tidal mists.

"Plenty. Get out here soon's you can. One of the trajectory beams is out and there are a couple of earth cruisers nearing perihelion from Mars. If they don't get a signal at zero-one-three-zero they're liable to coast on into Sol. Surface weather here's damned near zero-zero, too. I need you badly."

"Where in the name of the twenty-seven local fish-gods is Portiz? He's emergency man, isn't he?"

Wagner's moonface dropped down six lines on the 441 line kinescope grid.

"Portiz," he explained lamely, "is incapacitated."

"Okay, Silvy, okay," Wagner said tiredly. "Now get out here, please, sir. Oops! There goes the patrol signal!"

"Leave the circuit on!" Silvy Ward snapped and stood watching the video grid as Wagner jacked up the power in the distant radio receiver.

"... are two ships trajecting in which are not listed on the incoming flights. One on an A-orbit coming in at terrific velocity from base-direction Mars; one on a C-orbit out of Earth. Approximate distances, six and five thousand miles respectively. Should hit atmosphere simultaneously, thus endangering themselves and other incoming ships. Advise."

More trouble. Ward began to grumble again as he snapped off the televisor and began dressing. Always somebody who says to hell with the Authority and plots his own Hohman orbit. Unusually an eccentric millionaire with a luxurious spaceyacht filled with a swan-necked crew of "Oh, r'ally? You don't say?" debutantes and matrons, boyfriends, gigolos, etc. If they arrive in one piece without benefit of the AA's trajectory beams, range and landing beams, okay; if they get into trouble and the Authority doesn't get them to surface in one place, well then the Authority takes it in the neck and the paperwork is terrific over in General Inspection.

Ward was disgruntled. Leave it to Portiz to get plastered. Leave it to Wagner to let a keying device, a teletype, a station location marker, a transmitter, the instrument landing beams or something go blooey in zero-zero weather. Sure! Silvy Ward, old faithful Silvy's here to handle it and get a few more gray hairs thirty years ahead of Mother Nature's usual schedule. Back in HQ on Earth a radio engineer is considered something like a Martian maharajah; he just doesn't have to get down on his knees and fool around with leads and circuits, keeping one eye cocked on an oscillograph and the other on a multi-wave meter. But leave it to HQ to send me to this bronchitis-stimulating hole called Pali-Vanyi, Venus, with a drunkard and an inexperienced college graduate for my only assistants when the Old Man damn' well knows I should have at least four old timers.

Good man, Portiz, but he lets his reputation and connections carry him. Let Venus get him worn down to a frazzle and then started to drink like a native squid. Wagner's a good man, too. Fooled around with coeds and rocket polo too much in Astrotech, that's all. Boned for exams and passed them, but his knowledge is mostly theoretical. Usually blows up in a pinch, like now.

The air conditioning apparatus had practically straightened out the previously cockeyed atmospherics, and Silvy was waking up. But he was still a bit rankled as he zipped on rubberoid coveralls, donned a filtration mask, went out to the garage and drove his caterpillar-treaded fog flivver out into the nearly-liquid ground atmosphere of dear, damp Venus.

The fog certainly was settling in on Pali-Vanyi port! Usually the Hump, the five thousand foot mountain range which runs along the east of the field, breaks the storm winds which blow in intermittently from Draka Malarga, the mighty eastern sea. Sure, sometimes there's a real typhoon ripping beyond the mountain, chopping Malarga into thousand foot waves, at the same time there'll be a four thousand foot ceiling at the spaceport and probably ten miles visibility to north, south and west. But take tonight: the weather broadcasts said that Draka Malarga was practically calm and the plesiosaurs and their girl friends were probably sporting on the waves; Pali-Vanyi was completely fogged in! Ah, Venus, weatherman's headache and Authority's dire pain!

Wagner was looking blankly at the great bank of keying devices on the trajectory transmitters when Silvy walked in through the airlock. He turned around forlornly, laying a fat hand suggestively on a complicated blueprint.

"You look tired, Wag," the engineer stated; then his alert eyes caught the reason why. The flight chart explained that: a series of entries on the incoming flights column. In this weather that meant work for the operator at the station. Traffic Control normally brought the ships in by voice contact after said ships had consecutively swung off the trajectory beams and radio range beams; but with zero-zero weather, the Authority men had to concentrate upon the instrument landing beams as well. Wherefore Ward didn't reprimand Wagner. After all, if a keyer breaks down, it isn't necessarily because a human being has failed.

"I'm half dead," Wagner acknowledged with a forced grin. "Twenty ships came in in the last hour. Twenty of 'em off twenty different trajectory beams. Twenty of 'em on the landing beams. I just got the bulk of 'em in properly when a keyer goes out with Earth's two cruisers swinging into perihelion near the sun!"

"What're all those ships here for?" Ward asked as he stripped off dripping coveralls and proceeded to the multitrajectory beam transmitter.

"Usual thing. Owing to the present tense situation which has developed between Venus and dear old Red, the representatives of Earth and Venus have decided to have a conclave to effect measures against our dear Martian cousins. Everybody's afraid things will go smash when Mars and Venus are in opposition two Earth years hence."

"Oh," grunted Silvy Ward. Political wrangling wasn't his forte.

Removing the transparent cover from the silent keyer, Ward made a cursory examination. The keying device proper seemed to be okay. He promptly got out the circuit tester and started checking the continuity of the circuits.

Wherewith things started to happen with a vengeance. Traffic Control called, stating that a freighter was dropping in over the field and asking for the north-south landing beams. Wagner hurried over to cut in the juice on the remote controls.

Immediately the open receiver which was tuned to the Patrol frequency snarled out:

"Patrol V-11 calling Pali-Vanyi base."

The base station over in Traffic Control cut in on the same wavelength.

"Okay, V-11. Report."

"The ship on A-orbit from direction Mars is a destroyer. Not near enough to read markings. Refuses to answer our signals or to cut velocity. Advise."

"Contact ship," was the smug advice.

"Doing our best!" Patrol V-11 snapped back.

Wagner had his head half turned from the landing indicators to hear the patrol communications. From the corner of his full-lipped mouth he shot:

"What in the devil's going on up there, Silvy?"

"Dunno," Ward answered. An inexplicable chill was running along his spine. A conclave here in the twin city of Pali-Vanyi to effect measures against Mars--A destroyer coming in, refusing to answer the Patrol queries--

The inner door opened behind him. Ward spun around. Anger darkened his face as he glared at the tall, dark skinned man who had unsteadily come to rest against the door jamb.

The dark one looked owlishly at Wagner and Ward, twisted a loose mouth open and mumbled:

"Portiz reporting for duty."

"I'm sober as a king," Portiz answered.

"King Henry the Eighth," Wagner said softly.

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