Page:Stirring Science Stories, February 1941.djvu/12

 again. Scarcely knowing what he was saying and not caring at all he called softly: "I can hear you!"

The chiming sound mounted shrilly, seemed to be struggling to form words. Finally, in a silvery tinkle of language he heard: "We're superhet with your malloidin coils. Can't keep it up like this. Full stop—all power in malloidin for reception. Okay?"

That, at least, he could understand. Someone had performed the almost impossible task of superhetrodyning some sort of nodular wave of constant phase-velocity into a coil set up as an anchor-band! He groaned at the thought of the power it must have taken and flung the ship to a halt, reversing his power to flow through the anchoring coil that was receiving the message. It sounded again: "That's better. Can you make it 7:7:3, please?"

He snapped insulated gloves on his hands and adjusted the armature windings. "God knows where they get their juice from," he thought. "But I hope they have plenty of it."

"We can't hear you. Angel Maclure," said the voice from the coils. "This must be going through to you, though, because you've followed our requests. I can't get detailed, because this little message will burn out every power-plant we have. Do not return to Earth. Do not return to Earth. Do you get that? Come instead to coordinates x-3, y-4.5, z-.1—get that? three, four point five, point one. We'll be able to contact you further there. But whatever you do, don't return to Earth. Signing off—"

The metallic voice clicked into silence. Maclure, mind racing, grabbed for a star-map. The coordinates indicated in the message were those of a fairly distant and thinly-filled sector of space. He hesitated. Why the hell not? No man had ever been beyond Pluto, but was he a man?

He grinned when he remembered his tight-fisted, close-mouthed father who had made him what he was with a gruelling course of training that began actually before he was born.

Yes, he decided, he was a man all right, and with all of a man's insatiable curiosity he set his course for the distant cubic parsec that was indicated by the coordinates he had so strangely heard through a drive-unit receiver. And with all the fantastic speed of which his craft was capable he did not want to drive it beyond its capacity. Having set the controls he relaxed in a sort of trance in preparation for his week-long trip.

FTER locating himself among the unfamiliar stars of his destination he rearranged his coils. "That wasn't necessary," they said almost immediately in the metallic chimes, "We're coming out for you." Then they fell silent. But minutes later a craft hove alongside and fastened onto his hull with a sort of sucker arrangement. It was no larger than his own, but somehow sleeker and simpler in its lines.

They had clamped right over his bulkhead and were hammering on it. He opened up, trusting to luck and logic that their atmosphere was not chlcrinous. "Come in," he called.

"Thanks," said the foremost of three ordinary individuals. "My name's Jackson."

"Yeah?" asked Maclure, staring at him hard. He was dressed exactly as Maclure was dressed, and his features were only slightly different.

Jackson smiled deprecatingly. "You're right," he said. "But you can call me Jackson anyway. I'd rather not show you my real shape. Okay?"