Empire

"Okay," agreed Craven, "you find me something solid and within reach that's measurable. Something, preferably, about 200 million miles or so across. Then I'll tell you how far we are from the Sun. This ship is not in an orbit. It's not fixed in space. I have no accurate way of measuring distances and angles simultaneously and accurately. Especially angles as small as these would be."

Craven and Stutsman glared at one another.

"It's a long way however you look at it," the financier said. "If we're going to get there, we'll have to start as soon as possible. How soon can we start, Doctor?"

"Very soon. I have the gravity concentration field developed and Manning left me just enough power to get a good start." He chuckled, took off his glasses, wiped the lenses and put them back on again. "Imagine him giving me that power!"

"But after we use up that power, what are we going to do?" demanded Chambers. "This collector lens of yours won't furnish us enough to keep going."

"You're right," Craven conceded, "but we'll be able to get more. We'll build up what speed we can and then we'll shut off the drive and let momentum carry us along. In the meantime our collector will gather power for us. We're advancing toward the source of radiation now, instead of away from it. Out here, where there's little gravity stress, fewer conflicting lines of gravitation, we'll be able to spread out the field, widen it, make it thousands of miles across. And the new photo-cells will be a help as well."

"How are the photo-cells coming?" asked Chambers.

Craven grinned. "We'll have a bank of them in within a few hours, and replace the others as fast as we can. I have practically the whole crew at work on them. Manning doesn't know it, but he found the limit of those photo-cells when he was heaving energy at us back in the Solar System. He blistered them. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but it was. You have to hand it to Manning and Page. They are a couple of smart men."

To the eye there was only one slight difference between the old cells and the new ones. The new type cell, when on no load, appeared milky white, whereas the old cells on no load were silvery. The granular surface of the new units was responsible for the difference in appearance, for each minute section of the surface was covered with even more minute metallic hexagonal pyramids and prisms.

"Just a little matter of variation in the alloy," Craven explained. "Crystalization of the alloy, forming those little prisms and pyramids. As a result, you get a surface thousands of times greater than in the old type. Helps you absorb every bit of the energy."

The Interplanetarian arrowed swiftly starward, driving ahead with terrific momentum while the collector lens, sweeping up the oncoming radiations, charged the great banks of accumulators. The G-type star toward which they were heading was still pale, but the two brighter stars to either side blazed like fiery jewels against the black of space.

"You say we'll be only a week or so behind Manning?" asked Chambers.

Craven looked at the financier, his eyes narrowed behind the heavy lenses. He sucked in his loose lips and turned once again to the control board.

"Perhaps a little longer," he admitted finally. "We're losing time, having to go along on momentum in order to collect power. But the nearer we get to those stars, the more power we'll have and we'll be able to move faster."

Chambers drummed idly on the arm of his chair, thinking.

"Perhaps there's time yet," he said, half to himself. "With the power we'll have within the Solar System, we can stop Manning and the revolution. We can gain control again."

Craven was silent, watching the dials.

"Manning might even pass us on the way back to look for us," Chambers went on. "He thinks we're still out there. He wouldn't expect to find us where we are, light years from where we started."

Craven shot him a curious look. "I wouldn't be too sure of that. Manning has a string of some sort tied to us. He's got us tagged ... good and proper. He's always been able to find us again, no matter where we were. I have a hunch he'll find us again, even way out here."

Chambers shrugged his shoulders. "It really doesn't matter. Just so we get close enough to the Sun so we can load those accumulators and jam the photo-cells full. With a load like that we can beat him hands down."

The financier fell into a silence. He stared out of the vision plate, watching the stars. Still far away, but so much nearer than they had been.

His brain hummed with dreams. Old dreams, revived again, old dreams of conquest and of empire, dreams of a power that held a solar system in its grip.

Craven broke his chain of thoughts. "Where's our friend Stutsman? I haven't seen him around lately."

Chambers chuckled good-naturedly. "He's sulking. He seems to have gotten the idea neither one of us likes him. He's been spending most of his time back in the engine room with the crew."

"Were you talking about me?" asked a silky voice.