Calling The Empress
By George O. Smith
Illustrated by Williams
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chart in the terminal building at Canalopsis Spaceport, Mars, was a huge thing that was the focus of all eyes. It occupied a thirty-by-thirty space in the center of one wall, and it had a far-flung iron railing about it to keep the people from crowding it too close, thus shutting off the view. It was a popular display, for it helped to drive home the fact that space travel was different from anything else. People were aware that their lives had been built upon going from one fixed place to another place, equally immobile. But in Interplanet travel one left a moving planet for another planet, moving at a different velocity. You found that the shortest distance was not a straight line but a space curve involving higher mathematics.
The courses being traveled at the time were marked, and those that would be traversed in the very near future were drawn upon the chart, too, all appropriately labeled. At a glance, one could see that in fifty minutes and seventeen seconds, the Empress of Kolain would take off from Mars, which was the red disk on the right; and she would travel along the curve so marked to Venus, which was almost one hundred and sixty degrees clockwise around the Sun. People were glad of the chance to go on this trip because the famous Relay Station would come within a telescope's sight on the way.
The Empress of Kolain would slide into Venus on the day side and a few hours later she would lift again to head for Terra, a few degrees ahead of Venus and about thirty million miles away.
Precisely on the zero-zero, the Empress of Kolain lifted upward on four tenuous pillars of dull-red glow and drove a hole in the sky. The glow was almost lost in the bright sunshine, and soon it died. The Empress of Kolain was a little world in itself, and would so remain until it dropped onto the ground at Venus, almost two hundred million miles away.
Driving upward, the Empress of Kolain could not have been out of the thin Martian atmosphere when a warning bell rang in the telephone and telespace office at the terminal. The bell caught official ears, and all work was stopped as the personnel of the communications office ran to the machine to see what was so important that the "immediate attention" signal was rung.
Impatiently the operator waited for the tape to come clicking from the machine. It came, letter by letter, click by click, at fifty words per minute. The operator tore the strip from the machine and read aloud: "Hold Empress of Kolain. Reroute to Terra direct. Will be quarantined at Venus. Whole planet in epidemic of Venusian Fever."
"Snap answer," growled Keg Johnson. "Tell 'em: 'Too little and too late. Empress of Kolain left thirty seconds before warning bell. What do we do now?'"
The operator's fingers clicked madly over the keyboard. Across space went the reply, across the void to the Relay Station. It ran through the Station's mechanism and went darting to Terra. It clicked out as sent in the offices of Interplanet Transport. A vice president read the message and swore roundly. He swore in three Terran languages, in the language of the Venusians, and even managed to visualize a few choice remarks from the Martian Pictographs that were engraved on the Temples of Canalopsis.
"Miss Deane," he yelled at the top of his voice. "Take a message! Shoot a line to Channing on Venus Equilateral. Tell him: 'Empress of Kolain on way to Venus. Must be contacted and rerouted to Terra direct. Has million dollars' worth of Martian Line Moss aboard; will perish under quarantine. Spare no expense.' Sign that 'Williams, Interplanet.'"
"Yes, Mr. Williams," said the secretary. "Right away."
More minutes of light-fast communication. Out of Terra to Luna, across space to Venus Equilateral Relay Station, the nerve center of Interplanetary Communications. The machines clicked and tape cleared from the slot. It was pasted neatly on a sheet of official paper, stamped rush and put in a pneumatic tube.
As Don Channing began to read the message, Keg Johnson on Mars was chewing worriedly on his fourth fingernail, and Vice President Williams was working on his second. But Johnson had a head start and therefore would finish first. Both men knew that nothing more could be done. If Channing couldn't do it, nobody could.
Channing finished the 'gram and swore. It was a good-natured swear word, far from downright vilification, though it did consign certain items to the Nether Regions. He punched a button with some relish, and a rather good-looking woman entered. She smiled at him with more intimacy than a secretary should, and sat down.
"Arden, call Walt in, will you?"
Arden Wastphal smiled. "You might have done that yourself," she told him. She reached for the call button with her left hand, and the diamond on her fourth finger glinted like a pilot light.
"I know it," he answered, "but that wouldn't give me a chance to see you."
"Baloney," said Arden. "You just wait until next October. I'll be in your hair all the time then."
"By then I may be tired of you," said Channing with a smile. "But until then, take it or leave it." His face grew serious, and he tossed the message across the table to her. "What do you think of that?"
Arden read, and then remarked: "That's a huge order, Don. Think you can do it?"
"It'll cost plenty. I don't know whether we can contact a ship in space. It hasn't been done to date, you know, except for short distances."
The door opened without a knock and Walt Franks entered. "Billing and cooing?" he asked. "Why do you two need an audience?"
"We don't," answered Don. "This was business."
"For want of evidence, I'll believe that. What's the dope?"
"Walt, what are the chances of hooking up with the Empress of Kolain, which is en route from Mars to Venus?"
"About equal to a celluloid snowball—you know where," said Franks, looking slyly at Arden.
"Take off your coat, Walt. We've got a job."
