The Black Alarm

FEATURE NOVEL OF TOMORROW

By George O. Smith

Steve Hagen was determined to live his own life, and he chose the dangerous career of the Guardians. But was he as free as he imagined himself to be?

There's a subtle difference between rational and irrational hatred. The latter leads directly to fanaticism—and one definition of a fanatic is "a person who redoubles his efforts after having forgotten his aim".

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Science Fiction Quarterly November 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Twenty years as private secretary to William Wrightwood had prepared Miss Peters to meet any contretemps except the angry, purposeful arrival of Steve Hagen, who strode through her outer office with no more than a nod at her, and opened the door to Wrightwood's private office.

"Is this another of your tricks—" roared Steve, cutting off his voice by shutting the door behind him abruptly.

Miss Peters had a quiet nervous breakdown, for Hagen was William Wrightwood's stepson, who had renounced his rechristening not long after reaching adulthood. She began to plan an explanation—which would not hold water since Wrightwood was the kind of executive who gives orders not to be disturbed and demands that they be observed. Not even the angry arrival of his estranged stepson was excuse for not having an appointment.

She wondered what was going on, and slyly opened the key of the desk phone.

"You're as devious as a scenic railway and you know it."

"Walter, my boy—"

"My name is Steve Hagen and you know it!"

"If you persist; but to me you will always be my son."

"I wouldn't have you for a father as a gift," roared Steve. "Now tell me how you wrangled this."

"I didn't wrangle anything. Just what makes you think—?"

"This is just too damned trite for accident."

"I've not had any finger in the pie of your little interstellar fire-department, son."

"No? Then explain why and how a rookie out of training school gets an appointment to District One Control Base?"

"You were an honor student, were you not?"

"Not that high. Base One is staffed with men of experience, not raw trainees."

"Never?"

"Not in twenty years, at least. And the last rookie that did it came from school to Base One because he was Marshall Craig's son."

"You should be gratified."

"I'm mad as hell. I want no interference nor help from you—or the likes of you."

"That's not a nice thing to say about a foster father."

"Do I owe you allegiance because I was taken into your clutches at the age of three?" demanded Hagen angrily.

"Your mother—"

"Leave her out of this!" gritted Hagen. "Get back to the subject; just what do you think you're doing?"

"I'm not doing anything!" roared William Wrightwood. "And no one can say that I am."

"If you think for one moment that I'm going to do anything for you—"

The smoothness came back into Wrightwood's voice. "I don't have to play games with new recruits," he said. "Things work out my way in the long run."

"All but one," sneered Hagen; "you haven't been able to steer me."

"Have I ever tried?"

"Hell, yes."

"Then it is the proper responsibility of any man to try to mold and direct the character of his son—"

"Like Fagin, training pickpockets?"

"Son, you've yet to learn that villainy is just a point of view."

"So it may be—but this is my view."

"Wal—Steve, if you insist—just why do you want to join the Guardians instead of taking your place as head of Interstellar?"

"And command a squadron of Large Oak Desks?"

"It takes your kind of brains to run a company as big as Interstellar, but any idiot can buckle on a sword and play pirate."

"So—you've trained me for better things?" sneered Hagen.

"Yes. I have."

"I don't like it. I—"

"I'm not stopping you," said Wrightwood. "Go on and play your game of fireman; I'll wait until you come to your senses. Then, as usual, I'll have my way. But remember—I did not in any way tamper with your affairs. Go look elsewhere for a reason why you were appointed to First Base."

Hagen growled in his throat. "You'd not tell me if you had tinkered," he said. It was lame and he knew it. He turned on his heel and left the office in as precipitate a manner as he had arrived.

Hagen was awake when his first alarm came. For three days he had been wondering just why and how a rookie could be qualified for Base One; this had cheated him of sleep, and made his waking hours a mad pattern of hard duty and pointless wondering. But when the gong rang in his dormitory room at Base One, he reacted eagerly.

Although this was Hagen's first alarm, years of precision drill had given him the instinctive pattern for action. He dressed in the required time, caught up his equipment and met the stream of men pouring out of their rooms; he followed them from the huge building, out across the spaceport, to the myriad of Guardian spacecraft that awaited them.

Steve wondered where they were going, then realized that it was more than probable that the squadron commander himself did not know yet, and would not know until about one second before the flight took off for deep space. Somewhere, down in the bowels of the huge building, computers were digesting information rapidly, spilling out answers that would have to be summed into an equation before anyone would know the source of the alarm.

It was, Steve knew with the rest of the men, an imminent alarm. The machinery had not blown—yet; it might not blow—ever. It might be stopped by the Guardians before it went—or they might arrive in time to save everything but the mere hull of the ship that sped through subspace with the warp generator heading towards failure because of any one, or two, or a hundred various reasons.

It was Steve's job—with the other Guardians—to save what they could—if they could—and if not, to stop the spread of raw energy.

He reached his Guardian ship and settled himself into the crash pads. He pressed the button that told the squadron commander that he was ready, and his warning lamp winked into life on the broad lamp-board in the commander's ship; one more light among the rest. Then Hagen waited.

Forty seconds later came the warning bell, and the squadron began to take off, ship by ship, second by second. With a precision that would have been impossible without the master control of the commander's ship, the squadron took off, and reached the speed of light in one second. Then, second by second, the velocity doubled, re-doubled, and re-re-redoubled until the stars of the nearby galaxy were flowing past them like oncoming headlights along a busy highway.

When the warning bell came, the squadron began to take off, ship by ship, second by second, with a precision that would have been impossible without the master control of the commander's ship.

Along with the driving constants that swept them into deep space, angular vectors were applied that would match their velocity with that of the doomed spacecraft by the time they reached it. The computers in the 'constants' building had supplied the master control panel with all the data during the time between the arrival of the alarm and the departure of the squadron.

Steve Hagen peered into the utter blackness of subspace, watching the space-warped cores of stars stream past, watching for the first sight of the faltering ship. It came before the squadron eventually, decelerating as hard as it could.

"Made it!" came the exultant cry from the spearhead of the squadron.

The fleet divided. Rescue craft darted around the spaceliner and picked up tracers left by fleeing life-craft; they followed these to give aid to crew and passengers fleeing the imminent blowup.

Tractors latched onto the spaceliner and aided the drivers to decelerate the ship, and the command came: "Goggles!"

Steve snapped dark glasses down over his face just as the intolerably bright floodlamps flared. This was not to shed light over the scene; any moment now, there would be a flaring hell of raw energy. The floodlamps were to cut the total contrast between the streamers of ultra-incandescence and utter blackness of subspace.

The barriers nosed forward warily, and Steve took the control of his swamper from the master and edged between two of them. They waited, waited.

For theirs was not yet; the trick at this point was to slow the spaceliner down below the velocity of light before the weakened warp generator went out completely. If the tractors could do this, barriers and swampers and nullers would have nothing to do.

Steve watched the spherical warp, a faint boundary about the spaceliner, and tried to measure whether it was collapsing faster than the speed was diminishing.

And as he watched, it twisted out of its spherical shape. The tractors hurtled back, their beams skewed out of grasp by the twisting of the space warp, their straining drivers hurling them with the release of resistance.

The warp diminished, and the nose of the spaceliner pierced it—

Exposing gross matter to universal space where gross matter cannot exceed the velocity of light.

The mass of the exposed nose increased without limit; the velocity of the nose was smashed back below the speed of light; excess energy poured forth in raw radiation; the intolerable mass curled universal space around it and radiant energy circled the curl.

The artificial space warp—still enclosing the ship that travelled a hundred times the speed of light in subspace—folded over the slowed nose of the ship, buckled, and burst like a soap bubble. The rest of the ship rammed into the curled space and added its mass-energy to the vortex.

A burst of energy flared forth, hit the planes held by barrier ships, flattened against impenetrable planes of force, and hurled the barrier ships back. Their drivers fought, straining to contain the exploding gout of twisted space. Around the edges of the planes seared tongues and sheets of energy.

Steve fanned his cone wide, and he had no time to watch the rest of the swampers dart back and forth to suck away the long reaching tongues.

The warp exploded, hurling bits of its own tangled space invisibly, to emerge as isolated bursts that raved and grew as the twisted space strove to smooth itself out. Nullers darted back and forth, hurling spherical bombs of energy that nullified the growing flames, and the barriers crept forward once more, containing the main vortex.

Steve joined the maelstrom of Guardians that circled and looped through space to kill off the spread of vortexes; he saw Halligan's ship race past his nose and watched a streamer of flame reach out and lick the flank of Halligan's swamper. The skin curled off and fed the flame; air from the ship fanned it out and gave it direction.

Halligan limped away as Hagen swept his cone over the tongue, killing it.

He looked around for more, but saw that the most of the job was done. It had come suddenly; one moment the sky was filled with flowing globes of intolerable brightness and darting ships; then the islands of energy died—apparently in the length of time it had taken Steve to wipe out the tongue that licked at Halligan.

The Fleet circled—watching.

The barriers had enclosed the main warp in a faceted enclosure, their barrier planes intersecting to make a complete prison. Then, in through the surface of the volume went nullifier bombs; once more space exploded as the main vortex was broken. Then it was dash, blot-out, and circle; dart, dodge, and wipe away tongue and finger of flame again until the last scintillating trace of vortex was gone.

Steve wiped his face.

"Halligan!"

"Check, Cap'n."

"Y'all right?"

"Shook up but alive."

"Can y' make it back?"

"I'll be late but I can make it."

"Hagen!"

"Yes sir?" said Steve.

"You follow Halligan for safety."

"Cap'n, maybe I'd better have Norman," came Halligan's voice.

"Hurt worse than you admit, huh? Okay, Norman, you heard him. Hagen, this is no slur; you'll have your chance when you have more savvy."

"I'm aware of my inexperience," said Hagen.

"We'll let you get experience enough; stay with the wipe-up squad."

"Check."

Hagen felt a bit miffed, but he knew that he should not be hurt. This was his first alarm, his first job in the Guardians. Halligan had every reason to prefer a more seasoned man to a raw recruit when his life depended upon it.

Then, automatically, Hagen felt better. He was, at least, appointed to help the clean-up squad. They would patrol this space at random, watching for a trace of flaming vortex. If none appeared for two hours, they would watch for a total of six to be certain before going home. Minute vortexes, space warped into a complete circle with a flow of radiant energy coursing around in them, might maintain for some time invisibly, feeding and growing by their contact with the discrete atoms of interstellar space, attracted by the monstrous force of gravity centered on the vortex. If left unswamped, they might grow into a real menace to navigation.

But the barriers would blanket space, and the swampers would be ready to wipe out any vortex broken against the plane of force. Then, their job done, they could go home for a well-earned rest.

Hagen watched the squadron re-form, watched waiting rescue craft collect from the distant flights, then watched them disappear, heading back the way they all had come. He felt a bit of panic; he felt alone in the depths of interstellar space in a unique spacecraft that was sixty percent accumulator, fifteen percent driver, and fifteen percent swamper-beam. The other zero-percent was put there for his comfort and protection. He was one hundred and sixty pounds of analog computer, employed to serve a monstrosity of spacecraft built for a single purpose. He was there only because no man could cram enough binary circuits and analog differentials to equal one thousandth of the human brain into one hundred and sixty pounds and a few cubic feet.

But Steve Hagen was a Guardian!

Steve's return with the clean-up squad was made without mishap. It had been lonely work, for the half-dozen vortex-fighters swept the skies singly, roaming back and forth along the millions of miles across which the explosion had taken place. Sometimes they dropped into the realm below the speed of light to wipe out a bit of wispy cloud that looked as though it might be trouble brewing in the more firm structure of universal space. But mostly they raced back and forth at speeds that multiplied the velocity of light by many times. Nothing they saw reacted with their damping beams; nothing splashed against the nullifying bombs—and then, these, too, had to be destroyed lest they start a counter-vortex of their own.

Steve had been too busy during the mop-up operations to pay attention to his own feelings. On the way home he had taken time to think, and then came that first recoiling in abject fear. Utter emptiness, absolute nothing, sheer black space closed down upon him with an inherent fear as strong as the inherent fear of falling. Man had a million of years of evolution on earth, with a constant of one gravity pulling him down onto something that his senses told him was flat, hard substantial, and everlasting. Of all that man could count upon, the earth was the one thing that he could consider unchanging.

But here in space, with no solid planet below him to rest upon, to succor him and give him strength, Steve felt the abject panic of helplessness. The mighty power leashed in the room behind him was invisible; the surging drivers that hurled him along at a thousand times the speed of light operated without a murmur, a tick, or a sign of their positive power. The warp generator that folded space around him to create his own subspace, a feat of gravitic energy that not even Sol himself could perform, gave him no comfort.

So Steve fought panic and was glad to see the first sight of Base One. He landed in his allotted space, climbed down out of his swamper shakily, and walked off the spaceport slowly, hoping that Lois Morehouse would be there. She was—standing at the edge of the landing area; she waved to him and Steve changed his course to go towards her.

Lois was a good-looking girl of about twenty-three, a bit too healthy-looking to suit the present standard of fragile beauty. She glowed with health, could send a sizzling backhand, sink an iron shot, or ride water-skis with the best of them. She was the daughter of Commissioner Morehouse, the nominal top-brass of the Guardians, and as such was the eye of every single man in the squadron. Just why, in three or four days, Lois had found a raw rookie interesting had never occurred to Steve to question.

For while Hagen had formally and legally renounced his stepfather and his stepfather's business and way of life, Steve could not renounce the upbringing his stepfather had given him. Steve had none of the truly, apologetically, deferential bearing of the average rookie, who usually came of families of average means and worked his way up. Hagen had attended the finest schools, had gone to the best college, had played football and been sought-after by three leading fraternities. None of this had made him a snob; it was just that he saw nothing odd or upsetting about the fact that an attractive girl found him interesting. Had he been brought up according to his present financial, emotional, and social status, Steve would have been inclined to retire and leave the pursuit of Lois Morehouse to men who had experience and position.

He did not realize it himself, but Steve Hagen was trained to be the kind of man who felt no shyness at walking into the office of the Big Brass and sitting down to tell him what he thought. So he saw nothing odd about walking over to Lois Morehouse and smiling affably.

"How was it?" she asked him.

"Rough," he said. "Shucks, Lois, I wouldn't know whether it was rough or whether it was a milk run; this is the first I'd ever seen."

"How was the trip back?"

Steve laughed nervously. "I was never so glad to see solid planet before in my life."

"You sound as though this were your first space run."

"If it had been, I'd be a screaming imbecile by now. Luckily, I've been in space a lot; it's just that this was the first time I've made it in a little over-powered can, completely alone. Brrrrr."

Lois smiled at him. "What happened on your first practise drill?" she asked.

"We didn't go as far."

"But—"

"Well, I'd had that experience softened, too."

Lois nodded. Steve said: "I could use coffee. Want?"

"I want, Steve. But dad will be looking for me," she told him wistfully.

"Good Lord, Morehouse doesn't make you work?" he exclaimed in mock horror.

"What did you think?" she asked him with a quizzical glance.

"I thought it was a case of plain, everyday, common, down-to-earth nepotism."

"So do a lot of people, but it isn't true; I'm told that I earn my salary."

Steve laughed. "I didn't intend that crack of mine to rub salt in an open wound."

"Oh, I'll not take it seriously," she said. "But you go on and saturate yourself with coffee; glad you made it all right."

"See you later," he nodded, and turned from her to walk briskly towards the mess. Seeing Lois had steadied him as he had known it would. Hagen was not given to mental analysis, either of himself or of others, but he did realize the truth of what his professors had taught him in psychology I—that the feeling of kinship with good solid earth and the regard of a woman were the absolute basic things that go toward making a man feel well in heart. So long as he can retain these—

"Steve!" came the call. Hagen whirled instantly and held up a hand to Lois; he turned and started to cross the space between them but Lois waved him back. She cupped her hands to her lips and called: "You'll be at the brawl Saturday?"

"Yes," he called back. "You gotta date?"

Lois shook her head.

Steve beat upon his chest, then polished his fingernails on the lapel of his leather space jacket.

Lois nodded, shaking her auburn hair vigorously. Then she turned and headed towards the office building, and Steve went on towards the mess. Steve Hagen was feeling positively cheerful.

He was still there when Halligan came limping in, to land uncertainly in his accustomed spot. Like the rest, Steve went out to see the man, and they all waved him home, surrounding him and pelting him with both hand-shakes, mild insults and warm greetings. Halligan replied to the insults stoically, grinned at the rest, and peered around the group until he saw Steve. Then he shouldered his way through.

"Steve," he said seriously, "I did not mean anyth—"

Hagen smiled. "Naturally," he said, accepting Joe Halligan's hand. "I'd have been no use to you and I know it. I'll need some more practise."

Halligan laughed. "I need coffee, have some on me?"

"I'll go along for the walk," said Steve. "But I'm loaded to the space-valves right now."

"Come on then, and watch a hungry man tear into a steak."

"I hope you're hungry enough for stew."

Halligan grunted. "Watch a hungry man tear into a plate of stew, then."

Everybody laughed, and in the midst of it, Steve asked: "Aren't you going to check in?"

"I suppose regulations call for it," said Halligan cheerfully. "But Cap'n Charlemagne knows the score, and the commish has heard it from him. Both of them know I'm in safely; also, they'll both feel that an hour of relaxation will do both me and the service more good than an hour of recounting the same tale. I'll go in later."

The crowd began to disperse, and Steve followed Halligan towards the messhall. "You can stand some practise," mentioned Joe. "And you'll get it. But I'll take you on for a round or two if you like."

"I'd like," nodded Steve. "And thanks."

"No thanks necessary," said Halligan. "Just repayment; that was a fast job of wiping out that streamer that caught me."

"I didn't think—"

Halligan laughed. "Of course," he said cheerfully, "what I'm really after is for you to get experience enough to prevent it. Now, you see, after a year or so of vortex-fighting, you'll develop some sort of second-sight or other, and the next guy that runs in the way of a streamer, you'll know what to do about it before the poor bird gets clipped. And if not, you'll not wait until the guy gets out of the way before you squelch it; your aim will be good enough to shave the paint off the hull before the vortex streamer gets it."

"I was afraid to cut too close."

"We'll practise with light beams until you can write your name in three types of script," predicted Halligan. "Then—hello, Edwards. Joining us for coffee?"

Roy Edwards looked unhappy as he stopped before them. "Later maybe," he said. "We've got to attend the inevitable."

"Oh nuts. On an empty meat locker?"

"You might toss a coin; you'll not be needed at the same time."

Steve nodded. "You stoke the boiler," he said to Halligan. To Edwards, he said, "I don't know what this is all about, but Joe's ready to eat raw bear. I've eaten."

"That'll be fine," said Edwards cheerfully. "I hate to bust in on this love-feast, but there's plenty of time later. Grab your chow, Joe, and come in as soon as you can."

Halligan smiled. "Sure thing. And kid, don't let a lot of pompous pin-stripe-and-spats scare you. Treat 'em as you'd treat one of the Guardians; so long."

"What's up?" asked Steve.

"About once a year there's a stink over a blowup," said Edwards. "This is it."

"What kind of stink?"

"Charges of laxity, charges of wastefulness, and so forth."

"Laxity?" exclaimed Hagen.

"Interstellar often holds the quaint notion that a more alert outfit would be able to arrive at the scene of the blowup in time to stop it; after all, a spacecraft is worth a lot of moola, and they hate to lose it."

Hagen grunted. "I can't see any outfit getting there before we did."

"Tell 'em that."

"Just how do they think they can create a better outfit?"

"By removing the Guardians from governmental control and making of them a private organization, a subsidiary of Interstellar."

"I don't see—"

"There's a lot of truth on both sides," said Edwards, "but that is not for us to settle. All we can do is to stand up for our own ideals. Just tell 'em what you saw, and what you did; and if you don't let a few facts interfere with a good story, remember that they're ready to discount half of what you say anyway. So—here's the inevitable."

Hagen entered the office quietly, nodded at Commissioner Morehouse, smiled at Lois, and eyed Howard Forrest with mild hostility. Forrest, the representative of Interstellar, returned his hostility with a stony-cold glance.

It had been years since Forrest and Hagen had met. The last time had been a hard scene; Forrest had come to Hagen to ascertain the depth of Steve's feelings regarding the renunciation of his name and heir-apparent-ship to the commercial empire of William Wrightwood. Forrest, a clever man with words, had done some of the finest orating of his life at that time, weaving a verbal web glowing with the glories of running the whole show. He had given Steve a very rough time.

Steve had yet to learn the first principle of politics, which is never to admit for one moment that your opponent could possibly be right, or have an idea that keyed with your own. Steve had attempted to answer Forrest, and all he got in reply was hard-shelled argument.

The slightest hint of Steve's that Government had any rights at all was greeted with fine rhetoric and impeccably presented logic to the effect that Hagen's viewpoint was none other than a leaning towards Statism, Socialism, and ultimately Communism. Steve resented this. Yet his lack of preparation for rebuttal left him unable to reply with good soundness. Hagen had no intention of supporting any form of governmental control of everything. He believed in the desirability of self-sufficiency and free enterprise, but he also felt that his stepfather had taken this freedom as far in one direction as downright dictatorship would lead it in the other direction.

Forrest had waved away the latter and had fastened upon Steve's support of free enterprise, pointing out that a group of trained vortex-fighters with a personal interest in their job would be more inclined to do the job more thoroughly.

Forrest had finally reduced everything to a matter of dollars and cents and initiative, leaving Steve only with the weak defense of retreating inside of a verbal shell and replying that he wasn't going to return because he did not want to return and that was that. Howard Forrest had left still making predictions about the future. Now, Forrest looked at Hagen with eyes that saw him not as a former heir to the throne of Interstellar, but as a complete stranger.

This was as Hagen wanted it.

He was Steve Hagen; not William Wrightwood Junior, and he did not want to own up to any relationship with either his stepfather or Forrest. Steve decided to be curt, cold, concise, and distant.

He had little chance to be any of these. He was asked to deliver his opinion of the recent eruption, and he did so, addressing alternately his superiors, Forrest, and three stony-faced gentlemen who had been introduced as members of a fact-finding board to whom Interstellar had complained.

Then Hagen expected some form of cross-questioning.

He got none. When he finished, Commissioner Morehouse explained that this was the opinion of a new man unbiased by experience, and drew the teeth of any argument by admitting calmly that any Guardian had every right to talk completely in favor of his chosen service.

Hagen was then excused; he left after tossing a sly smile at Lois.

But once outside, Steve paused. It was not like Forrest to use him so calmly; this would have been a fine chance to blow an argument full of holes.

Unless—

Unless Forrest realized that Hagen's position with the Guardians was of no great importance. At least at the present time.

Which meant that Hagen's position might be of great interest in the future. This implied that Forrest, Wrightwood, and Interstellar had some plan in mind. Theirs was more than getting Steve Hagen back into the fold; that might have been accomplished by several means. Certainly Wrightwood and Interstellar had enough of power and money to place a very deep curse on any man who befriended Steve. He would be forced back from sheer want, from sheer inability to fight an organization so strong that it would not permit any other outfit to hire him.

Nor was it a matter of waiting until Hagen came to his senses.

It implied some sort of deep-laid scheme, and some of it smacked of Hagen's call to Base One instead of being sent to the Galactic Equivalent of Brooklyn until he knew his way around. He smelled the fingers of politics once again, and decided to step upon them.

Steve turned from his walk down the hall and went to Captain Charlemagne's office.

The squadron leader looked up when Hagen was announced, and smiled genially. "How did you make out?"

Hagen shrugged. "I told my tale in a dry voice, and I don't know whether it went over or not; they didn't ask me any questions."

"They never do. They just compare the notes they make from one man to the other and weed out discrepancies. That's why all of us being questioned are called in one at a time. I doubt that you made any errors, Steve."

"Thanks, Captain Charlemagne." Hagen wanted to call his leader 'Cap'n' like the rest, but felt that it was not his place to be too bold at this moment. "But I came here to ask a question."

"Go right ahead."

"Why was I called to Base One?"

"You've been wondering?"

"Of course. I came off with a high grade in training school, but not that high. So far as I know, I'm the first rook to be called directly from training to Base One in many's the year."

"That's true," nodded Charlemagne.

"You weren't to be told yet, but since you ask, there's really no harm in your knowing; you're going to be assigned to a sort of special routine once we get you some experience in space."

"Special routine?"

"Nothing very grandiose, Steve. We've partly been forced and partly been convinced to revise our inspection procedure. Formerly, routine inspections have been carried out by men convalescing from injuries, or men released from active duty for one reason or another. It has been pointed out that such men—usually men of long experience, can hardly look upon such a routine job as anything but punishment, or a sop tossed to an invalid, or some other odious proposition, and they can hardly be expected to execute such a job without some bias. For instance, a man put upon such a job because of some minor infraction of the rules will smart under this punishment and take it out on spaceport managers, liner captains, and so forth—or will bugger the works by overlooking the possible danger spots. An invalid cannot be expected to do the job thoroughly. A pensioner is usually old enough to be less active."

"I see; now we're making this a part of initial training?"

"Right. And since Base One is staffed with experienced Guardians, we needed a newcomer to handle this job; you're it."

Hagen smiled. "When do I start?" he asked.

"Normally we'd start you after your second time out," said Charlemagne. "But since you've been told of your assignment, I see no reason why you should sit around day after day waiting for it to arrive. If you think you can make a long jaunt from star to star without getting the screaming meemies from space loneliness, you can start tomorrow."

"I think I can."

"Larrimer thinks you can lick it," smiled Charlemagne; "he said you ran the swamper as though you'd been with the mop-up squad for years."

"I hardly think so."

"You're a well-liked rookie," said the captain. "You'll make out. And," he added ruefully, "we'll be looking for another rookie in not too long a time. We wouldn't care to keep a potentially good man running errands too long. Just long enough," he said seriously, "so that he knows what the score is."

Steve found this was tedious work. Furnished with an itinerary, Steve spent the first day on Planet III of the star nearest to Base One, prowling in and out among the planetary installations of the Interstellar Company, finding nothing worth reporting. Pilots and engineroom mechanics knew that their lives depended upon the proper maintenance of their equipment, and they behaved accordingly.

Furthermore, most of them resented Steve's insistence upon inspection because they deemed it a reflection on their workmanship. The fact that he admittedly knew less than they about the finer points of warp generators made it impossible for him to pay more than a cursory compliment as a sop to the interference.

On the other hand Hagen occasionally located a weak spot and pointed it out to them; some of them were grateful, and some impertinent. Of the former, they nodded sagely and mumbled something about beginner's luck or the familiarity that breeds contempt. Of the latter, their acknowledgment of the weak spot came either as something admittedly less than perfect but not really dangerous—or that they knew it was there, but had not reached that spot in their repair routine. Steve could not argue any of these points, so he clamped down on the sharp answers he felt coming up and passed it by with only a scowl. Had he been less certain of himself, Steve would have been ruffled or possibly hurt by this sort of treatment. But Hagen was the kind of man who knew that he was not completely capable in such things—although he was quite capable in other things, which lent the whole proposition some compensation. It is the man who has no particular accomplishment of his own who cannot stand to be pushed around by people who have—or he with the overpowering inferiority complex who thinks he has no particular excellence.

Steve had neither inferiority complex nor lack of certain successes; he would study and he would learn, and one day he would speak with authority.

And so it went as the days rolled on and on. His time was not entirely uneventful. The ship he drove on these inspections was a scout model, equipped with space alarm recorder; and although it did not have the automatic scale-model of the galactic sector such as in the main office of Commissioner Morehouse, it did have a manual model. When a muttering call came in on the alarm circuit, Steve would take the time to classify it, to fix it, then to calculate and enumerate which of the stations was going out on the call.

This sort of classifying gave Steve a sort of dull shock. For even though he had known the facts, it took seeing them and calculating them to drive it home. The Guardians were not constantly fighting the great menace; such blowups as Steve had been initiated into almost upon his arrival at Base One were actually few and far between.

Most of these were minor calls. A tramper with a vacillating warp generator would call the Guardians to have them come out to clamp down on the space warp before it blew, or long enough for the engineers to make repair or adjustment. Occasionally the spacecraft would try to drop speed before the warp blew out, and almost make it; in which case the resulting eruption took all of the simple technique of a smouldering fire in a wastebasket. There were far more calls for danger than calls for blowup. Ships' engineers, mindful of the fact that the life of every man aboard depended upon the efficient working of the warp generator, knowing that the ship would blow and be lost if it failed, were inclined to call for aid and help at the slightest indication of instability; it kept the Guardians busy.

But that was what they were for. Hagen enjoyed that feeling, although he would have scoffed at any man who accused Steve of harboring a desire to serve mankind.

All Steve cared about was the fact that it was far better to hale a crew of Guardians out of bed and hurl them across space to protect their fellow men than to lose men and material unnoticed.

And Steve knew, too, that blowups were 'headline stuff' and no indictment of space travel. For every alarm that came whispering its troubles across the galaxy, a hundred-thousand people traversed the spacelanes from star to star without mishap. He often wondered how long he would be in this business before he began to shake his head at the chances mankind took. Or whether this sort of bias would take place in him. Certainly, a man living where the dangers are pointed out while the safeties are not noticed should begin to place too much importance on the obvious.

But so far Steve had none of this; he plodded on his job and did it as well as he could, knowing that as soon as he finished this phase of his activities as a Guardian, he would have more interesting work. This expectation dispelled the routine drabness of being an inspector; his off-duty hours were too happily filled for him to do more than consider the future.

For Steve could not contemplate the future without thinking of Lois Morehouse. She was interested in him, he knew. And like any man of intellect, Steve was used to thinking of any desirable woman in the light of a possible mate and judging her values and virtues accordingly. But until he knew more about her, Steve could formulate nothing more than the fact that she was desirable; the big thing was to discover whether it could last beyond the first stages. Steve had known too many girls with a Perfect Thirty-Six—with an I.Q. to match—to place much judgement upon outward appearances.

So, before Steve took on the job of meeting her every morning across the breakfast table, Steve wanted to know more about her. He guessed—rightly—that Lois wanted to find out more about him.

He gave her every chance, starting with the evening of the dance.

He had little time. The routine of his inspection tours took Steve farther away from Base One as time went on, and Hagen had small chance to do other than run in and out. His spare time was his, of course; Steve was not on twenty-four hour duty. He could have his way in one of two possibilities; he could either stay near the base of operations or he could spend the spare time in space-flight to and from Base One. He did the latter until the running time versus the visiting time ran smack into the Law of Diminishing Returns, at which point he loafed his spare time away on a planet near to his course across the galactic sector. At these times Hagen calmly awaited the future, when he could be back at the Base.

Steve had not seen nor heard from his foster father since that meeting in Wrightwood's office, and he knew that another meeting was inevitable. Hagen would have preferred to have the meeting on a ground of his own selection where he could choose his own weapons, but this was not to be.

Yet Steve was not totally unprepared when, inspecting one of the larger planetary installations of Interstellar, he was asked into the main office. It was not of Hagen's choosing, but it was better than to have Wrightwood land at Base One, where the wily magnate could by word, gesture, and incomplete statement indicate more than the truth before Steve's fellow Guardians. Such a program requires too vigorous a rebuttal; no reply or denial is adequate to remove the doubt that always lingers.

So Steve entered the main office with a wry smile and nodded at Wrightwood. He waited the older man out.

"How are you doing?" asked Wrightwood.

"All right."

"A bit dull, isn't it?"

"Life is often dull," remarked Hagen noncommittally.

"Look, Steve, why not take it a bit easier?"

"What do you mean?"

William Wrightwood eyed Steve coldly. "Now look," he said quietly, "we'll admit for once and for all, that you and I don't get along."

"Well, that's a concession."

"All right, take it as you will. But it's true; for some inexplicable reason you hate my guts—"

Steve grunted. "It's not so damned inexplicable."

Wrightwood sighed. "What's done is done," he said softly. "But take a look at the present and the future instead of the past; view this, honestly if you can, in the eye of an outsider."

"Can you?"

"I can and I have; I've also the opinion of outsiders."

"Do tell."

"I will. You are in what might be called an unpleasant situation. You are the legal heir to the Interstellar holdings whether or not you deny it. You were rechristened Wrightwood whether you try to deny it or not. In the eyes of the world you are my son, brought up by my money and educated by my background. You—"

"Thanks—"

Wrightwood held up a hand to still Steve's sour voice. "Hear me out. Instead of acting as heir to my fortune and crown prince to my business, you engage and embark upon a career which is in diametric opposition to my interest. In shorter words, you have left my company in anger and signed up with the opposition."

"Correct."

"So now, possibly to salve your own qualms, you are leaning so far over backwards that you are about to fall on the back of your head."

Steve snorted.

"Deny it," smiled Wrightwood in a superior manner. "Just to prove to yourself and to your superiors, you've been cracking down hard on me."

Steve eyed Wrightwood sharply. "Seems to me that your underlings might be more considerate of your holdings," he snapped.

"What do you mean?"

"It doesn't take a lot to keep things ship-shape. Faulty wiring, frayed connections, generators with rattles, loose bearings, electron tubes working past their safety-period. I found three hydrogen thyatrons running at one-and-one-half times their rating because they were so old that they were beginning to get sluggish. Just last week in one of your ships.

"Sure," sneered Steve, "you can get another couple of hundred operating hours out of a tube by running the filament hotter than normal when it starts to get weak. But you're running a spaceline, not a spot-welder; when one of them blows, it's a job for the mop-up squad. Someone's cutting corners, saving a hundred bucks worth of tubes for a couple of weeks doesn't pay for lost lives and—"

"I'm aware of the safety factors," said Wrightwood angrily. "The trouble with these safety factors is that they've been set up because someone in your outfit took the figures presented by the tube manufacturers and divided them by two. Instead of running on a hundred percent safety factor, you've forced us to run on five or six hundred percent. And do you know why?"

Steve did not reply.

"Because one of the guys who makes standards for the Guardians holds some stock in a tube company."

"That's a lie!" roared Steve, slamming his fist on the table.

"It's no lie; it's just a fine way to raise the sale of tubes. And tubes are only one part of the whole. Now—"

Steve roared again. "When the lives of a couple of hundred people depend upon a chunk of wire the size of a piece of string, heated to incandescence by electric current, any safety factor can damn well afford to be trebled and trebled again!"

Wrightwood shook his head solemnly. "This isn't all," he said; "this is only the beginning. The whole adds up to a staggering sum. But I didn't bring you in here to hurl accusations at you. I merely want to ask you to use a bit of tolerant common sense."

"Now I'm lacking in com—"

"Now, now, let's stop roaring like a ruffled lion. The only common sense you lack, Steve, is the sense that should tell you that running Interstellar is more self-satisfying than being commissioner of the Guardians. But look. Let's for the moment admit that a ship—called X—comes into Tandrel and as it arrives the time-meters on the thyratrons say that their safe life is up. What then?"

"Replace 'em."

Wrightwood nodded.

Steve looked at the man quizzically. If one of the first tenets of argument is never to admit for a moment that you are wrong, then why was William Wrightwood doing it?

Wrightwood shrugged. "Replace them," he agreed. "However, remember the following items:

"One: Thyratrons such as we use are manufactured on Earth; that's a long way from here.

"Two: If we replace the thyratrons on Tandrel, the replacements must be shipped out from Earth as unpaid cargo, and entry-duty, taxes, shipping charges, and the rest of the hidden costs cause an increase in their price.

"Three: Since the 'Life-Service' of the tube contains a couple of hundred percent of safety factor, why shouldn't some of that safety factor be employed to get the ship back home—maybe ten hours at the most—thus saving a lot of money?"

Steve began to see the beginnings of an attack on the Theory of Limits, against which there is only a dogmatic defence, ending in the reduction to an absurdity, and culminating in the posing of an unanswerable decision. It is sort of like the age-old argument as to where space begins and where being a planet ends.

Being a-space does not begin when one leaves the planet; men flew through the air for centuries before they crossed the void to the other planets. Yet somewhere in the trip across interplanetary space, the first travellers must have traversed first the limit of Earth, passed into Space, and then entered the boundary of Venus.

Where Earth ends and space begins is the Limit; and the easiest thing to attack is this Theory of Limits.

Earth claims legally that the boundary of Her Domain begins at a height of five hundred miles above the surface. This is a dogmatic decision, adhered to because it has been agreed upon by all. So, legally, an orbiting Station at 499 miles is not in space; while legally the sister Station operating at 501 miles is in Deep Space. Factually, each of these stations lie within two-tenths of one percent of being in, or out, of space; and since the surface of the Earth is far from being as smooth as a sheet of plate glass, the Limit is based upon Earth's somewhat arbitrary Sea Level.

Similarly, if a tube's life is rated at ten thousand operating hours, and a safety factor is accepted at five hundred, can the tube be deemed inoperative at five hundred and ten hours? Especially when these 'over-age' tubes are returned to Earth or to whatever planet can use them and resold as 'Used' tubes to factories and installations where their failure will not cause a call-out of the Guardians. Many such 'Used' tubes, Steve knew, gave a total of twenty thousand hours of service.

But Steve had his answer ready and waiting. "A few hours more or less isn't of vital importance," he said; "but what about the really weak jobs?"

Wrightwood nodded. "That particular gentleman has been reprimanded. But since then you've grounded three of my ships with less than a total of twenty hours overtime."

Steve shrugged. "Just so they wouldn't end up with five or six thousand hours on them—waiting for a lazy day on Earth to change them at leisure. Especially when the ship has been Earthing every week or so."

"But why be more than normally hard? Why attack Interstellar harder than the rest?"

"I don't; I have my orders and I'll see that they're carried out."

"You can't think for yourself?" sneered Wrightwood.

"I can and I do—and I think we're right."

"You'll change—when you learn what they're doing to you," said Wrightwood.

"What do you mean?"

Wrightwood leaned back calmly. "I'm big enough of a man," he said slowly, "to let you go ahead and join the Guardians. But the Guardians are afraid of you."

"Bah!"

"Look here," snapped Wrightwood, sitting forward abruptly. "You raised hell with me because you thought I was meddling in your life. I wasn't; the only reason they got you entered at Base One is because you're too bright to drop without an explanation, and the Guardians were afraid to let Steve Hagen go to some remote base because Hagen is none other than William Wrightwood, Junior! They want to keep a sharp, official eye on you, and hand you stale jobs until you get tired and quit. Because they haven't got a plausible excuse for tossing you out. So I—"