Page:Amazing Stories Volume 02 Number 06.pdf/30

Rh URELY you cannot pilot the course of a projectile through the air like you can a ship at sea?"

"Of course we can, only more accurately. I believe wireless direction finders were beginning in your day. Is it not natural that we should have improved them? We use two recording charts, one for the vertical, and the other for the horizontal course. The triangulation is automatic, and makes a dot on the chart that indicates the position every half mile. In particular case, the chart indicates a smooth, regular curve with two humps where the air blasts were let off, just as it would in the case of an unguided projectile. At Chicago, as you know, the double pen-inker ran dry, and that ends the record. Usually these charts show slight ups and downs, so that even the characteristics of the individual pilot can be recognized, just as the flight of a certain pilot could be told on your day."

"All this is clear enough now that you explain it, but I cannot conceive anyone quick enough to turn on the air blast that shoots out of the nose of your projectiles at the exact instant that will check it as it touches the ground."

"Intelligence and practice, nothing else. If you hadn't the intelligence you couldn't do it; practice is all that is necessary. Why, man! In your day they had jugglers who could do feats of conjuring too quickly for the eye to follow. But besides all that, there are automatic controls that turn on the front air blast at the exact time required to counteract the velocity. I am told that the pilots do not consider it good form to use the automatic controls except in emergencies."

"What went wrong with this projectile?"

"Ah well, you see a woman is still an unknown quantity. I'll admit they are much more brainy, but for dependability and consideration, I prefer the man. This woman pilot has missed her vocation, because she is too clever. In this age very clever people are seldom matrimonially inclined. Miss Morgan is the exception. She wants to marry and have a family."

"Then why doesn't she do it?"

"Because she is too intelligent."

"What in the name of heaven has that to do with it?"

"I'm afraid you do not understand these matters yet, but if she married a man of her own intelligence, the chances are her children would be fools or abnormal in some way."

"Well, then what's to stop her marrying a man of less intelligence?"

"She ranks in the eighty seventh division, and as the maximum for husband and wife is one hundred and ten, you see she would have to marry a man of twenty three units or less. How could you expect a pretty, highspirited, clever girl to be willing to do that?"

"Twenty-three? That visiting doctor of yours tested my brain with all sorts of contrivances and tests, and finally put me down at twenty-one."

"Oh, I never thought. I beg your pardon! But you belong to a different age, and the standards are not the same. In most ways you should be at least fifty units; I'm forty eight myself. Naturally enough they can't quite place you yet, but probably they will regrade you when they see how you respond to modern ways of life. If in your day, for instance, some of those Egyptologists had discovered a Pharaoh still alive under a pyramid, where would they have placed him in your society? He might have wanted to kill every one he didn't like, or take somebody's wife, or do a hundred things that weren't done in your day. Many changes have been effected since your time, so you musn't mind being regarded with suspicion until you are better known."

Roger Wells was secretly much amused at his host's confusion. He thought it a great joke that he should be regarded as a sort of savage resurrected from the middle ages.

"I don't mind it at all, so long as they don't put me in the zoo or exhibit me on the stage, or dissect me in the medical school," he laughingly replied.

The old world man relapsed into silence and deep thought as to what he was to do in this strange new world, where he had no friends or equals and so very little in common with this new, intellectual race.

"A general broadcast news bulletin," exclaimed his host, taking out the little communicator and adjusting the dial until an orange spot appeared. Presently the voice of the announcer came clear and sharp from the miniature instrument:

"Number Two projectile from the Pacific is at last in communication with the outside world. It appears that the glancing blow when it struck the sunken submarine caused a sideway shock that was not wholly taken up by the shock absorbers, consequently several of the instruments were smashed, including the communicator. Miss Morgan, the pilot, being an exceptionally clever young woman, at once set to work rebuilding the broken equipment. Considering her tools and lack of spare parts, her skill in repairing the sending set is considered a very clever piece of work. The projectile contains oxygen for five days and food tablets for a month, beside the chemical in the medicine chest for suspending animation in case of necessity. The noted engineers now assembled have calculated that three days will be sufficient to complete the rescue."

ISS Henrietta Morgan had been told all about the old world man and his survival in the long lost submarine. Since she had been the unconscious cause of his deliverance, she expressed a desire to speak to him. To his surprise and delight, he was conducted to a small dark room on the yacht, hung with black velvet curtains. Here he not alone heard her, but he saw her projected in the air from a series of lenses arranged in semicircle. At first, he thought he had really been transferred to the projectile in some extraordinary way. But when he stood up to shake hands with her, he realized that it was only reflected light in perfect perspective. He knew that she could not see him, for she was looking directly at her transmitter as she talked. She was very beauti-