The Project Gutenberg eBook of The black alarm

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Title: The black alarm

Author: George O. Smith

Release date: April 20, 2023 [eBook #70605]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Columbia Publications, Inc, 1951

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK ALARM ***

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—"

"That's a lie!" roared Steve.

"Okay," chuckled Wrightwood. "Just watch what happens when you make a fumble. Or," he said slowly after a pause, "do you know that already? Is that why you're leaning so damned far backwards?"

"Is that all you've got to say?"

"Isn't it sufficient?"

"It's too much."

"Call it that, then," grunted Wrightwood. "I'll wait, Steve."

"I'll see you when hell freezes over—"

"Or when it blows up in your face," warned Wrightwood. He said it to Hagen's retreating back. Steve had had enough and he was leaving as quickly as he could.

Steve fumed inwardly. It was sheer frustration; nothing would have satisfied Steve so much as to step forward and send a hard fist into Wrightwood's face just to feel the skin crush and the bone beneath it grate against his knuckle. But against that desire was too many years of viewing William Wrightwood with the awe and fear that a youth holds for an adult who has authority and power over him. As a youth, Steve had neither the physical ability nor the mental agility to cope with his foster father. Now that the tables had been turned by the years and Steve could handle William Wrightwood physically, Hagen understood that physical supremacy would hurt Wrightwood, but would bring only contempt from the man instead of surrender. And the years had given Wrightwood their wealth of experience and mental advance as the years had also aided Steve. Hagen was mentally on the same par with Wrightwood, while the physical parity had reversed but become banal. So it was frustration to Steve knowing that he could smash Wrightwood's face but to no end effect upon the older man.

Somewhere, somehow, to bring Wrightwood to his knees, Hagen had to do something on his own, of his own, for his own, that would command the respect and envy of his foster father; preferably something that would advance Steve while clipping Wrightwood where it hurt the most: his business and his empire.

Steve was still fuming about his foster father's suggestion when he returned to Base One. He sat over his desk, writing the reports of his inspections, and constantly repeated the original question: Was he being overly hard on Wrightwood because he disliked him?

Once or twice the urge to lighten a report came, then once or twice the desire to make one more damning came; and the result of this was to leave Steve in a quandary.

He wanted to be fair.

But no man can be honestly fair when his emotions are involved; he gave up, filled in the report statements in a mechanical manner, transcribing them from his notes as though he had no opinion other than the notes, and when he finished that, he felt at least that he had not been inclined to color the data.

Finishing the paper work, Steve headed for the mess hall and met Lois on the way. "Coffee?" he asked.

She nodded, looking at him carefully. "What's wrong, Steve?"

"Inspection is not a pleasant job."

"What happened?"

Steve stopped short and looked at her. Lois stopped too, to face him seriously. "Bribery?" she asked.

Steve said nothing.

Lois stamped her foot. "What kind of man is Wrightwood?" she stormed. "You'd think we were doing this for spite instead of for his own protection."

Steve nodded. "William Wrightwood is a power-hungry man," he said. "Nothing but being an absolute dictator of the universe would satisfy him, and that would only partially sate him because it is not so much the wielding of power that pleases Wrightwood. It is the gaining of more and more power."

"I hadn't considered that."

Steve nodded and turned; they started towards the mess again. "What makes a man that way?" she asked idly.

"Frustration of one sort or another," he said.

"And what is Wrightwood's particular frustration?"

Steve snorted angrily. "Something in his psyche insists that the inability to father a son means that the man is less than a man."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Sure it's ridiculous. But it is that sort of ridiculous thing that has caused more war and suffering than perhaps any other single thing. William Wrightwood lacks a son. He has—like Napoleon—married and divorced three women because they could not give him a son. He married the fourth because she already had a son. Then he killed her because she could not produce a duplicate for him."

"Oh Steve—that's hard to believe!"

Steve grunted. "It was not murder—legally," he said bitterly. "But bitterness and recrimination are just as deadly as the knife or the bullet."

"But how about his foster son?"

"Wrightwood tried everything he could to make a real son of him."

"Well, that's an admirable trait."

"Like hell," gritted Steve. "It is all right to accept a fatherless child and bring it up as your own. But no man should try to do the impossible. Wrightwood tried to make a natural son out of an adopted son. It could not work; he cramped the natural personality of the son, forced the child to follow the footsteps of what Wrightwood thought a son of his would follow. So instead of following, the son revolted as soon as he could and went his own way in direct opposition. Two lives crudded up by the overwhelming drive of one man."

"You know a lot of him."

"I should," he said simply. "I'm the son."

Lois stopped short again. "You're—William Wrightwood, Junior?"

"I'm Steve Hagen," he snapped.

"But you're his son?"

"I am."

"But you've never said so."

"No one has ever asked me; and I'm not proud of the fact."

Lois was silent.

"And I'm not running undercover," said Steve; "I'd prefer to forget the whole thing."

"Then why tell me about it?"

"Because I don't want to operate under a false banner; especially with you. I've said nothing about it because of the natural objection too many people might have if it became known that William Wrightwood's foster son was working among the Guardians. The outfit that has bucked every attempt of his to be gathered into his own little empire."

Lois looked at Steve with a quizzical glance. "But are you here because you want to work as a Guardian, or because you want to strike back at Wrightwood?"

"That's a question that I have asked myself and cannot answer honestly," he said.

Lois nodded quietly, thinking for a moment. "For too many years people have been denying the right of a son to cash in on his father's position," she said. "I see no reason why the reverse should not be true; we should not castigate a son who wants to do the opposite, insisting that he follow his father's position."

"Let's forget it," said Steve. "Life is too short to be filled with bitterness. I'm here and here I shall stay regardless of the inner motive I—"

The outside alarm blared forth in a series of short and long blasts. Both of them stopped to catch the code, which called for an alert at Base One while Base Seven handled an alarm. Seven might need help; so the personnel of One came tumbling out of their relaxation and made ready, just in case.

"That's not you, Steve," said Lois. "But it's me. Be seein' you."

"No," he admitted, "but there's nothing that says I can't go along and help if I want to. I'm unattached when I'm off of my inspection job. A little action will make me feel useful; I'm tired of arguing with techs about crystallized joints, frayed insulation, and unstandardized measuring equipment."

Lois nodded cheerfully and headed for Morehouse's office; Steve headed for his quarters to prepare for the possible recall alarm.

It came, that recall alarm, a half hour after the first. The men at Base One tumbled into the ships and ripped into the sky, Steve following the flight closely in his inspection ship. The whole crew went anxiously, cheerfully, for the recall alarm meant that the threatened ship might possibly be saved.

The flight from Base One arrived on the scene forty minutes after taking off. The ship was in subspace, ripping along without drive at three or four hundred times the speed of light, still encased in the warp.

But it was spacewarp held up and maintained by the conjunction of warp-planes forced edge to edge by surrounding Guardian ships. The rescue crew had gone to pick up the people who had flown the ship in life-craft; the swampers and barriers were sticking close to go to work if the hard-held warp failed. A mishap on the part of one pilot holding the warp would fracture the englobement; this was as fatal to the life of the spacewarp as puncture is in the flank of a toy balloon.

Base One's flight came swirling in and caught the orders from the Guardian director in charge. Base Seven was used up; every available ship for the job was holding the warp, it was Base One's job to enter the warp and close down on the generator room, to fasten tractors to the free-running ship and slow it down below the speed of light before the warp broke.

As many as could latched onto the ship and applied their drives. The ship slowed and the warp-holding ships slowed with it, keeping their distance.

It was tricky business, for there was just enough lack of spacial homogeneity to make the course a bit rough; it was somewhat like the job of running a fleet of vessels close together in a heavy sea.

Then the rest of Base One's power ships came in to stand between Seven's warp-holding craft, and Base One's warp-planes went forth, entered the hull of the ship, and established a second englobed warp around the ruined generator. A third warp was thrown about the ship just outside of the second, and the whole crew took a deep breath.

Now if one broke, the other would be there.

They were safe; the ship was saved, could be repaired and put in service again.

The tractors slowed the ship and eventually the whole fleet dropped below the velocity of light and their spacewarp generators thrummed down to a growling halt. The galaxy changed in color as the ships entered prime space and the light of the stars was the real light that mankind had always seen instead of the unreal glow caused by the central energies of the suns of the universe. For space itself is warped naturally in the core of a sun, and the energy glows through a subspace populated only by the phantom cores of prime space stars—and the few puny bits of sentient brain that warped space artificially.

Technicians breached the ship with their kits of tools to make repair as the Guardians broke up their pattern and began the trip back to their bases.

Steve felt gratified; it was the first generator saved by the Guardian tactics. And it was worth anything, any cost, any sacrifice to realize that mankind had some control even over mankind's failures.

He followed the flight back to Base, found a magazine, and relaxed.

Steve was awakened from a light sleep by the ringing of the telephone. Blinking and wondering, he answered it; Lois Morehouse said: "Steve, you're wanted here."

"Okay, what's up?"

"The usual."

Steve hung up and pulled himself together. Why they'd want his opinion again he could not understand. It was obvious this time that the Guardians had done a fine job; nothing was lost. All he could think of was the fact that he had gone as an observer and had seen the incident without taking active part in it. That might possibly give the committee a less distorted picture than the recount of a man whose attention was filled with the mechanics of operating against the possible eruption.

He was preparing his account as he entered Morehouse's office, but once inside, he saw instantly that there was no committee investigation.

Morehouse and Charlemagne were there. Lois was there. And an air of trouble was there also.

Morehouse held up a hand. "Hagen, look at that."

Steve turned and looked. In the corner, near the galactic model, stood a rack and panel, obviously disconnected from the generator room of a spacecraft.

"Go take a good look at it."

Steve went. He looked.

"Test it!"

Steve turned. "I'll have to get my equip—"

Morehouse snorted. "Just turn it on and check it!"

Steve shrugged. He snapped the master switch and turned the function switch to test. He checked the meters, wondering whether they were standardized and reading correctly. But he had no need to concern himself about such a refinement; the servo bridge that balanced the stress of warp against the pressure of normal space and integrated it so that the total volume of warped space remained essentially constant was obviously haywire. Instead of operating with a steady thrust of power—operating on test by balancing the power from a standard electric cell against a standard resistance load—the servo bridge was oscillating.

On, off, on, off, on, off, on—

Rapidly like the swinging of the pendulum of a very tiny wall clock, on, off, on, off, on, off, on—

No meters were necessary to check this failure; it was as obviously bad as a flat tire.

Steve turned the gear off and faced Morehouse. He waited, for it was so obvious that he needed to make no explanation. Morehouse wanted something—

"Hagen, that was in the ship we just saved."

"That way?" asked Steve incredulously.

"That way."

"That should have been planeted."

"We agree."

"It's criminal."

"We also agree. So," said Morehouse pointedly, "why didn't you clap a restraint on 'em?"

"Why didn't I what—?"

"You inspected that ship about three hours before it took off."

Steve shook his head. "I'd never have passed it."

"You did. Here's your seal."

Morehouse showed Steve the sheet of paper giving the Astarte a clean bill of health from the Guardian Patrol.

"Hagen, what kind of a game are you playing?"

"Game?"

"Hagen—or Wrightwood?"

Steve looked at Lois. Morehouse said: "She hasn't told us anything that we did not know, Wrightwood."

"Look," said Steve angrily, "my name's Hagen."

"How long have you had it?" asked Morehouse.

"All my life. I answer to it."

"We know that. Lois called at you half way across the campus and you turned; a man taking an assumed name doesn't always react to an unexpected use of it."

"Look," said Steve, as angrily as before, "I've never tried to conceal the fact; all I've tried to do is ignore it. So I'm William Wrightwood Junior, according to a few dozen people who do not believe their eyes or cannot read. To my friends and to the rest of the world, I am Steve Hagen, which is the name my father and mother gave me long before I was born." Steve's eyes grew soft for a moment and he smiled in a reminiscent fashion. "I've been told that my name would have been Catherine if I'd been constructed differently."

"All right, what's your game?"

"Game—schmame. What do you mean?"

"Hagen, why are you here and what do you hope to accomplish?"

"I'm here because I want to be a Guardian."

"And how is William Wrightwood fitted into this picture?"

Steve sat down suddenly. "Look, Commissioner Morehouse, if you think for one moment that I am among the Guardians so that I can cast some discredit upon them so that William Wrightwood can take over, you're much mistaken. Wrightwood can roast in hell for all of me."

Steve turned and looked at Lois. "Do you believe me? Are you on my side—or have you been playing Mata Hari with my feelings?"

Lois flushed. "I believe him, dad."

"Thanks," said Steve drily. "Now about the Mata Hari side of it?"

"Steve, forgive me; I had to know."

"So now you know," he said bitterly. "And so do I."

Charlemagne shrugged. "Steve does a fine enough job," he said. It came ungrudgingly.

"No doubt," said Morehouse. "And somehow I doubt that Wrightwood could plan all these years to plant his son in such a manner. To make—"

"Wrightwood has made pawns of everybody he could control," snapped Steve, "but I'll run my own life."

"We're not running the Guardians as a method of personal revenge, either," Morehouse said.

"What do you mean?"

"None of us can quite justify the idea that you are planted here for sabotage. We did bring you to Base One so that we could keep an eye on you, Hagen."

"Then what—?"

"But granting there is no intention of sabotaging the Guardians, there is still a fine opportunity of seeing to it that William Wrightwood gets clipped."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning the possible overlooking of a generator so bad that the ship would explode, losing for Wrightwood a good bit. Kill off a ship a month by not working too hard, by looking the other way when the generator is about to cave in, by slowing down operations—"

"Look, I—"

Morehouse stood up. "Maybe it isn't even conscious," he said slowly. "Just a subconscious act, blinding the eyes so that a ship is sent forth to explode."

"What am I? An accident prone?"

"Maybe where Wrightwood is concerned," suggested Morehouse.

"Lord knows I have no love for William Wrightwood," said Steve soberly, "and I want to strike back at him. But no man knows better than I do that the way to clip Wrightwood is to wrest some of his power from him or to go ahead and do that which he deemed impossible."

"He is right," said Lois.

Morehouse swivelled around and looked at her. "Lois, are you in love with him?"

"I might be. Eventually I may be. Now, I don't know him well enough. But—"

"You're talking in a circle."

"—but I will say this: I will be a very happy woman if Steve Hagen turns out to be a right guy."

Morehouse looked at her silently; Steve took a deep breath; Charlemagne stared at the ceiling. In the silence the computer behind the alarm screen clicked code; none of them had to turn to look at the galactic sector. They knew it was a distant base responding to a distant alarm, two or three hundred light years across the galaxy.

Morehouse eyed Steve, then. "Hagen, we can't take chances on you."

"I'm being tossed out on a premise?"

"Why don't you resign?"

"Why split hairs?" asked Steve.

"A matter of prestige. You have always had an excellent record. Had you shown any blots, you'd have been cashiered during training school. You graduated high in the class and therefore—according to the laws—we had to accept you. Mostly," said Morehouse sharply and hitting his fist in the palm of his other hand, "because we knew that any reason we give for releasing you must be air tight. Wrightwood owns too many news agencies, congressmen, and top-drawer statesmen. He'll eye anything we do and if he can, he'll yell favoritism, revenge, or rank incompetence."

"And if I resign?"

"That will be your prerogative."

"Also an admission to Wrightwood that he was right?"

"That's your problem."

"I decline."

"We can force your hand, Hagen."

"How?"

"You forget that," said Morehouse, turning and pointing at the faulty warp generator.

"But—"

"It is hard to believe that a Guardian, even a raw recruit, could miss such an obvious fault; it is even more difficult to think that such an oversight was made in malice and revenge."

"I—"

"Then how did it happen?" demanded Morehouse.

"I don't know."

"And you won't resign?"

"No."

"Then until you find out how this warp generator got past your inspection, you'll be released from duty," said Morehouse. "You have no status, Hagen. You will wear the uniform in courtesy only, since you are a member of the organization, and you are subject to our rules. Your pay will continue, since we have no recourse, and your stated duty will be one of investigation on one subject only: Ascertaining the base for this near-explosion!"

"But—"

"That's the edict," said Morehouse.

"Lois—?"

"What can I say?"

"You—?"

"Steve, I think a lot of you. More than I have thought of or considered any other man. And until hatred came out, you were it. Hatred is a nasty thing, Steve; it is not a good thing to found a love or a life upon. So until you rise above your hatred, it's no go. Lose it or burn it or beat it—and then come back."

Hagen turned and left the office. He felt beaten. Where was he to start?

Hours later in his quarters, Steve was still pondering the same question. There were so many angles to follow. Steve did not like to think that maybe Morehouse was right, that, subconsciously, he had overlooked the faulty generator hoping that Wrightwood would lose by the accident. He certainly had not overlooked the generator with malice. On the other hand there were other factors that could be plausible. Wrightwood wanted to control Steve; might not Wrightwood's own men have fouled the generator, knowing that Steve had checked it only hours before? The fact that the Guardians got there in time to save the whole ship indicated that someone was on his toes. Any shadow of suspicion cast upon Steve would work toward Wrightwood's ends.

Nor were the Guardians beyond suspicion. Wanting to bring this thing into the open, what better way than to louse the generator themselves and let the natural course of events take care of Hagen.

It was not a pretty tangle. Every angle remained closed to him; Steve could not open the first door, for he had not the authority to question anybody.

But until he got the answer, Steve was not going to do what he wanted to do.

The days wore on into a week, and then the week grew into a month. Steve, unattached, roved the galactic sector, nosing in generator rooms of spacecraft hoping to pick up some clue.

He had to give up the idea of substitution. The generator delivered to Morehouse's office was the generator that had been taken from the threatened ship; it was the same generator he had checked a few hours before the ship took off.

After two months Steve was ready to admit defeat. Only determination remained, and that was wearing very thin. No longer did he have the regard of his fellows; his unattached state was practically a condition of disgrace and everybody knew it. He saw little of Lois; alone he saw her not at all.

But as the months passed, the trail became colder and colder, and the incident dropped into the files—was covered up by the regular list of calls that sent the Guardians out from time to time to take care of trouble, occasionally to fight a blowup, often to go out and calm down some stormy condition that possibly would not have blown anyway. The muttering of the alarm came constantly from one or the other sector of the galaxy and the Guardians would be out, from one base or another.

But not for Steve; he was licked.

He sat in his quarters quietly unhappy for hours before he pulled the typewriter from its case and placed it deliberately on the top of his desk. With a shake of his head, Steve put a sheet of paper in the typewriter and began to tap out his resignation.

He was licked. Morehouse had given orders that he intended to keep. Hagen was to locate the reason why the Astarte had a faulty generator. Period. Or else.

This was time for the "or else" part of it. The thought passed Hagen's mind that not even an official investigation could uncover the truth at this late date. He had no chance where every man's hand was against him. And so—

The telephone interrupted his train of thought, and he got up to answer it. "Hagen?"

Steve said it was and then tried to identify the voice. It was a hoarse voice, half a coarse whisper and half an undertone which sounded like someone trying to disguise his voice—successfully.

"Hagen, d'ye want some dope on the Astarte?"

"Who are you?"

"I'm a friend. Look Hagen, if you want some dope on the Astarte come to Sanaron."

"What's on Sanaron?"

"The dope you want."

"But—"

"Take off in half an hour and we'll be watching for you," said the voice. Then it hung up.

Hagen wondered. But even a fool's lead was better than nothing and Steve had followed less likely leads than this in the past three months. He left the typewriter as it was and went to the spacefield, where he climbed into the inspection craft and took off for Sanaron.

Sanaron was no long run for the fleet Guardian ship. Steve made it in jig time and as he dropped his ship on Sanaron's one spaceport, he saw a planet craft awaiting him. He was whisked across the face of Sanaron to a large city, deposited on the landing stage of a tall hotel building, and dropped a few stories to a luxurious suite.

And once again Hagen was face to face with William Wrightwood.

"What goes on?" demanded Steve.

"You want some information on the Astarte?"

"I do."

"You've been ordered to locate this information."

Hagen grunted. "Yes."

"Steve, did the fact that you are William Wrightwood Junior have anything to do with this order?"

"What difference does that make?"

Wrightwood sat back in his chair. "Steve, I hate to do this to you, but your answers have confirmed my suspicions. This order and its impossible fulfillment is more like an attempt to have you resign. This smacks of unfair tactic, and upon that fact I am making my final bid."

"What final bid?"

"Since the Guardians have proven themselves unable to operate as a completely impersonalized agency, they fail in the one thing they claim—which is to operate for good or bad, for rich or poor alike. As such, I can prove the ability to operate the Guardians as a more efficient agency, and I shall do it!"

"Not if I can help it."

"Tell me, Steve, what can you do?"

"I can—"

"There was a faulty generator on the Astarte. How did it get there? Would you maliciously try to wreck my ship?"

"What do you think?"

"Of course you wouldn't, knowing that the lives of a hundred people were in the balance. Would I try to wreck my own ship to get you discredited?"

"Hardly, since you'd lose too much."

"Might the Guardians try?"

"No."

"But there are your three possibilities, Steve. One of them is it!"

"So—"

"So it must be your little friends, who knew they could set a fire, then put it out without harm to anybody but the man they want to be rid of."

"That's not my fault," snapped Steve.

"No," smiled Wrightwood, "it's all mine. Remember—I told you that no matter what you did it would ultimately work toward my success? Why don't you try aiding me instead of bucking me?"

Steve found himself answering slowly, instead of snapping out a reply. "Just what do you hope to gain from this?"

"I've gained it," smiled Wrightwood. "I've recordings of this entire meeting, and the tone of your voice during what you have to say is sufficient evidence to prove my point: that the Guardians have been wasting the taxpayers' money by ordering an impossible investigation by a valued man for the spite they hold against his father."

"I might have expected something like this. You've got no news of the Astarte."

"Yes—I have. Play along with me until I control the Guardians and I'll see to it that your position is granted back to you. There's no need of investigating the Astarte anyway; and your Commissioner Morehouse is going to eat crow before he's finished."

"Bah!" growled Steve. Once more he turned and left his father's presence abruptly.

He was whisked back to his waiting ship and he took off as fast as he could. It was no more than a fifty minute run across the star trails to Base One, and Steve was going to make it as fast as he could.

But ten minutes out of Sanaron, the alarm whispered and then broke into full clamor.

No danger alarm, this. This was the real thing!

Steve swapped his ship around in space and headed for the spacial co-ordinates given in the alarm. In his mind's eye he could see the men tumbling out of their quarters and into the waiting Guardian ships and hurtling into the black.

Steve found the stricken ship as the squadron came into detector range and deployed. It was a superliner, one of Interstellar's finest. And as Steve came up to the Lunalight the life-craft broke the spacelocks and streaked out and away.

Once more the englobement of warping planes started; plate to plate they formed, jockeying to make their forward-flung planes of warp lie against one another, edge to edge so that the volume enclosed was contained without leak. Tractor ships hurtled up and latched onto the ship and started to bring it down in speed.

But this was not the time; one of the plane ships faltered and the edge of its warp plane broke contact with its neighbor. The spacewarp fractured, and then with the enigmatic peculiarity of a collapsing warp, the volume began to drop back toward prime space from the center out. The warp generator itself, in the bowels of the ship, broke into prime space first.

Matter, at a thousand times the velocity of light, dropping into a space where matter cannot exceed the velocity of light!

Where the tiniest speck of matter will have infinite mass when the speck reaches the velocity of light.

Where the time-field of the mass becomes zero as the velocity of light is reached.

It was like a stellar nova.

A searing intensity of energy trailed out behind the ship and left a streak a million miles long in a matter of microseconds. The ship itself collapsed over the trail of energy, and the whole exploded finally in a hundred-billion mile long course leaving the trailer of raw, unbound energy spread out for the span of a solar system.

Then the trailer itself exploded, blowing streamers of torrential energy deep into space. Bits and shags of the blazing stuff flew away, great gouts, shapeless and viciously scintillating, roared along the ship's course.

The tractors fled; the plane ships had been hurled back, away, and now were lost in the sky—far behind. They hurried to catch up, for they could hurl their planes of spacial warp against a flaming mass of raw energy and bat it aside like a ping-pong paddle slaps the ball aside. The swampers circled in and the cone projectors fenced with the darting spears of flaming power.

It was Steve that remembered Sanaron. "Charlemagne!" he roared into his mike.

"Who's calling?"

"Hagen. Remember Sanaron."

"Sanaron?"

"Ten minutes back at full drive lies Sanaron!"

"God!"

And then, for the first time in the history of space, in the history of the Guardians, came the dreaded Black Alarm.

Sanaron was a complete stellar system, eight habitable planets well inhabited by every possible form of sentient life. The star, Sanaron, was a nondescript G-zero that would not have had even a number in the Terran catalogs before the conquest of space, but Sanaron was a full-grown star in the flush of its energic cycle. Once the raving centroid of raw energy erupted from the Lunalight fell into the gravitational field of Sanaron it would drop into the star. And then mankind would see, a supernova in operation—for a brief instant before this system cremated itself.

The Black Alarm!

Across the galaxy it went. Guardians from every base in Sector One alerted and took off within a matter of minutes. Guardians from joining sectors moved into Sector One, spreading out through the sector to keep the sector protected; Guardians from outlying sectors moved in, again spreading out. Thinned but active, the Guardians released useful personnel to go out and fight the Black Alarm.

"Charlemagne!"

"Now what?"

"Can I help?"

"Yes," came the cryptic reply; "stay out of our way."

Steve snarled, but he got no reply.

A gout of energy flashed past his viewport, blinding him. Then he realized that he was unprotected, and only a nuisance here.

But—

"Go along with him," said William Wrightwood. "Aid him, and—"

Steve laughed bitterly; swapped ends, and flashed along the line toward Sanaron.

He dropped down upon Wrightwood's hotel and dashed along the corridor. He shouldered his way into the suite with a yell that brought servants and hotel detectives running. It also brought William Wrightwood from his bed, clad in a pair of pale blue silk pajamas.

Somehow it seemed appropriate to flee a holocaust in a pair of passionate pajamas, and for the first time in years Steve saw a bit of humor in his father's mien.

"Black Alarm," he said breathlessly. He shoved Wrightwood back into the bedroom and shut the door on the incoming help.

"Can't save 'em all," said Steve, working his false-fear act for all it was worth. "Slip out with me and we'll es—"

"Good boy, I knew you had what it took."

Wrightwood started to look for clothing.

"No time," snapped Steve. "Lunalight blew up ten minutes spacedrive out of Sanaron. The Guardians have the Black Alarm running, but the magma will get here first. That's raving death from an exploding sun for a billion people living on eight planets. Come on."

Wrightwood looked out of a window frantically. Everything seemed so solid, so safe. Yet—

He turned and nodded at Steve.

With a sly grin Wrightwood could not see, Steve led the older man out into the chill of night and relished the shiver as the cold bit in through the silk pajamas and struck at the man. Then they were into the Guardian craft and into space.

"Where—?"

Steve shrugged. "Want to see it?" he asked.

Horrified, Wrightwood nodded.

Eight minutes later they were approaching the scene. Spread out on a shapeless form ten million miles across, tongues and streamers of raw energy flared forward, flaying space before it as it came. At a hundred and seventy thousand miles per second it came toward Sanaron, so near to the velocity of light that the roaring particles of energy had enormous mass.

No need for the great searchlights here, for the coverage of the explosion was so great that there was no need to filter the blackness away.

Instead, Guardians played before the oncoming death and fought it.

With a quiet disregard for death, Steve ran his little ship to within a mile of the raving storm front and matched its velocity.

White-faced and awed, William Wrightwood watched the horror without really knowing how close he was to death. It was too big to be personal, that flaming front. He saw the circling ships fighting first this tongue and then that, saw the planers fencing the streamers in, holding them while coners sucked away the raving energies and spread them too far apart to be tangible. He saw the swampers soar in to chill a raving island of exploding space, and watched with heaving stomach one of the Guardians get touched by a lance of flame—saw it go searing into death to recreate an island of raw fire of itself.

Then the mad attack against the roaring furnace cleared; Wrightwood began to see that there was a pattern to this.

Methodically the Guardians were isolating the forward-reaching tongues of energy from the main mass; cutting them off, and swamping them. From behind, as Steve circled the scene, planers and swampers were closing in on the trailing flame, chopping it off bit by bit and chilling it out of existence.

Sanaron was no longer a star lost in the stellar field. It was a flaming disc that could be seen, but to look at it hurt the eyes. Steve knew; Sanaron was not too far away.

He hurled his ship to the front again.

And then, as though it were a wave hitting a breakwater, the coruscating front dashed against the massed warp-planes of a whole squadron of Guardians, braced, planted, ready and waiting. The planes buckled and the squadron was forced back but the raving front flattened against the planes and was washed aside; turned back, spread to curl around the edges like tongues of doom reaching for the prey that lurked behind the wall. The squadron retreated, forming its shape as it went, until firm pressor rays behind the out-flung planes felt for and caught the core of Sanaron's outermost planet. With planetary mass behind, the squadron held a parabolic shield in space, ploughing a hole in the racing field of exploding energy.

Fire and flame enveloped the planet, passed around it, held from it by the warp-planes of the Guardians. A ship crumpled and died; its place was refilled by a spare. Another ship ran out of power abruptly and it was replaced until it could drop into the planet and recharge.

Then, as abruptly as the passing of an ocean wave, the roaring furnace in space was passed. The swampers and coners that fought the rear guard of the flaming death appeared in the tortured sky, scurrying around to wipe out the isolated trailers that the passage of the holocaust had left behind.

Another squadron came out of the blackness, a group from a distant sector that plunged past the planet and hit the flame from the rear. Steve circled the field of horror again and Wrightwood, his face pressed against the viewplate, watched the arrival of three more squadrons that hit Sanaron, formed a plate-to-plate shield while fighting for position, and established their protection for the next planet with a matter of seconds to spare.

One streamer leaked through a crevasse in the hastily-made shield, and the inside of the paraboloid was filled with swampers that fought the flame right to the atmosphere of the planet before it died.

And as the sun itself came under attack, the bulk of the racing squadrons came circling in from distant sectors. Men and sentient beings coming prepared to fight a supernova, to stand in there while a sun explodes, fighting space to hold a tenuous barrier in place to save the fragments of humanity that lived on the eight planets of Sanaron.

But Sanaron the Sun had mass, and the flaming particles of the erupting space had mass but were discrete.

There was a turning in the flame, a coalescence that centered, radially inward, upon the sun that waited for it and attracted it. With stellar mass behind, the flung planes of warped space held well, but the mass of energy, as its volume was, and the gouts and streamers of raw flaming space flattened against the plates and curled along them, creeping around and around. And around and around.

"Hold 'em," cried Steve.

Wrightwood turned anxiously. "What are they trying to do?"

Steve smiled wearily. "We're going to establish a complete globe around Sanaron and hold that raving horror out of the stellar mass."

"But—"

"The rest—on the outside—will fight it."

"And if they fail?"

Steve's expression told him.

"But Steve—there's ten thousand ships trapped inside of that sphere of raving energy."

"Yup."

"And they'll—they'll—?"

"They'll? You mean we'll. Yes. We'll die. But we're not going to die; the Guardians never die...."

The sphere of roaring energy closed down on the last avenue of escape. Outside was sheer hell. Below them was the stellar furnace called Sanaron, giver of life and death. Above them was a completed sphere of raw hell trying to drop down and add its raw mass-energy to Sanaron.

Somewhere outside raced and circled the rest of the Guardians, swamping the fires of exploding space and trimming down the depth of the energy bit by bit.

But doggedly they held, and an hour passed before there came a shout over the radio, a shout barely heard through the overwhelming roar of cosmic static. The sphere had thinned!

From that moment on it was certain. Once mankind got the upper hand over his foe, aided and augmented by beings from far across the galaxy devoted to the same program, the horror-fires were due to die swiftly. The flaming skies opened, spread, became isolated bits of intolerable light, and then winked out as sheer mass of numbers hit them from all sides with swamping volumes and rayed cones. Planers swept bits together into a larger flame and called for swampers to come and chill it.

Then, once more plate to plate, the planers formed into a mighty single plane and swept space like a cosmic dragnet, forcing the danger out into deep space where there was no danger.

Then came the final signal; the Black Alarm was finished.

William Wrightwood, Senior, faced Commissioner Morehouse openly. "But so many—?" he faltered. Wrightwood was wearing his foster son's clothing and it looked a bit incongruous to see the jaunty uniform on the elderly Wrightwood.

Morehouse shrugged. "The reptilian culture from Sector Eight is as helpful as the cockeyed gang of cat-men from Nine."

"But—"

"Of course they're not reptiles nor cats. None of them have ever been within a hundred light years of Terra. But they're sentient, brilliantly so. They love their own music and their own literature and their own art, none of which means anything to any other culture, really. But we have a common ground to base the Galactic Civilization upon—someday. We all have the fear of destruction and the willingness to fight against it. To help our neighbor fight it, even though he sees colors we cannot, and can hear sounds we cannot hear."

"My mighty little empire looks a bit small—"

"Indeed."

"Morehouse, it strikes me that you're up a tree."

"I am?"

"You've got a fine man here trapped in a lousy job. I'll bet a hat I can get farther along than either you or he can about finding the truth about the Astarte." Wrightwood smiled. "Then you can take him off that job."

"Maybe," smiled Morehouse. "But remember that I'm giving the orders. I can also rescind them—providing they need rescinding."

"Well?"

"Do they need rescinding?" asked Morehouse. "Does Steve still hate you?"

"No man can really hate another man that he's just succeeded over," said Wrightwood. "Watch!" Wrightwood turned and called: "Hey! Steve!"

Steve Hagen turned away from Lois Morehouse. "Yes, dad?" he replied.

He came across the office holding her hand.

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The Black Alarm

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