One Step From Earth

The burden of the more than doubled gravity had been anticipated. Aldo and the pilot changed acceleration couches so that the engineer could face the instrument panels and the MT screen. When the restraining catches were released, Nissim's couch also swung about so that he could reach the screen. Before these preparations were finished Stan had flattened his couch and was soundly asleep. The other two men did not notice: they were now able to start on their part of the mission. Aldo, as the MT specialist, made the preparatory tests while Nissim watched closely.

"All the remotes we sent down developed sigma effect before they had penetrated a fifth of the atmosphere," Aldo said, plugging in the test instruments. "Once the effect was strong enough we lost all control and we have never had an accurate track past the halfway mark. We've just lost contact with them." He checked all the readings twice and left the wave form on the scope when he sank back to rest his tired back and arms.

"The wave looks right," Nissim said.

"It is. So is everything else. Which means that one-half of your theory, at least, is correct."

"Wonderful!" Nissim said, smiling for the first time since they had begun the flight. His fists clenched as he thought of the verbal drubbings he would administer to the other physicists who had been rash enough to disagree with him. "Then the error is not in the transmitter?"

"Absolutely."

"Then let's transmit and see if the signal gets through. The receiver is tuned and waiting."

"C. Huygens calling Saturn One, come in. How do you read me?"

They both watched as the transcribed tape clicked into the face of the screen and vanished; then Aldo switched the MT to receive. Nothing happened. He waited sixty seconds and sent the message again — with the same results.

"And there is the proof," Nissim said happily. "Transmitter, perfect. Receiver, perfect — we can count on that. But no signal getting through. Therefore my spatial-distortion factor must be present. Once we correct for that, contact will be reestablished."

"Soon, I hope," Aldo said, slightly depressed, looking up at the curved walls of their cell. "Because until the correction is made we are staying right here, sealed into the heart of this king-sized ball bearing. And even if there were an exit we have no place to go, stuck here at the bottom of an ammonia sea under twenty thousand miles of lethal atmosphere."

"Relax. Have a drink while I work out the first corrections. Once the theory is correct the engineering is just a matter of hardware."

"Yeah," Aldo said, leaning back and closing his eyes.

* * *

Stan was still exhausted when he woke up; sleep under this heavy gravity was less than satisfactory. He yawned and shifted position, but stretching proved more debilitating than satisfying. When he turned to the others he saw Nissim working concentratedly with his computer while Aldo held a blood-stained handkerchief to his nose.

"Gravity bleeding?" Stan asked. "I better paint it with some adrenalin."

"Not gravity." Aldo's voice was muffled by the cloth. "That bastard hit me."

"Right on that big beak," Nissim said, not looking up from his computer. "It was too good a target to miss.

"What seems to be the trouble?" Stan asked, glancing quickly from one to the other. "Isn't the MT working?"

"No it's not," Aldo said warmly. "And our friend here blames me for that and—"

"The theory is correct, the mechanics of application are wrong."

" — when I suggested that there might be an error or two in his equations he swung on me in a fit of infantile anger."

Stan moved in quickly to stop the developing squabble, his drill field voice drowning out the others.

"Hold on now. Don't both talk at once because I can't understand a thing. Won't someone please put me into the picture and let me know exactly what's happening?"

"Of course," Nissim said, then waited impatiently until Aldo's complaints had died down. "How much do you know about MT theory?"

"The answer is simple — nothing. I'm a torch jockey and I stick to my trade. Someone builds them, someone fixes them, I fly them. Would you kindly simplify?"

"I'll attempt to." Nissim pursed his lips in thought. "The first thing you must realize is that an MT does not scan and transmit like, say, a television transmitter does. No signal, as we commonly think of signals, is sent. What is done is that the plane of the screen of the transmitter is placed into a state of matter that is not a part of space as we normally know it. The receiving screen is placed in the same condition and tuning is accomplished once they are locked onto the same frequency. In a sense they became part of one another and the distance of the intervening space does not matter. If you step into one you will step out of the other without any awareness of either time or spatial separation. I am explaining very badly."

"You're doing fine, Nissim. What comes next?"