FIRST LENSMAN by E. E. Doc Smith

Author:E. E. Doc Smith [Smith, E. E. Doc]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-01T18:18:30+00:00

CHAPTER 11

A small, black scout-ship, commanded jointly by Master Pilot John K. Kinnison and Master Electronicist Mason M. Northrop, was blasting along a course very close indeed to RA17: D+10. In equipment and personnel, however, she was not an ordinary scout. Her control room was so full of electronics racks and computing machines that there was scarcely footway in any direction; her graduated circles and vernier scales were of a size and a fineness usually seen only in the great vessels of the Galactic Survey. And her crew, instead of the usual twenty-odd men, numbered only seven – one cook, three engineers, and three watch officers. For some time the young Third Officer, then at the board, had been studying something on his plate; comparing it minutely with the chart clipped into the rack in front of him. Now he turned, with a highly exaggerated deference, to the two Lensmen.

“Sirs, which of your Magnificences is officially the commander of this here bucket of odds and ends at the present instant?”

“Him.” Jack used his cigarette as a pointer. “The guy with the misplaced plucked eyebrow on his upper lip. I don’t come on duty until sixteen hundred hours—one precious Tellurian minute yet in which to dream of the beauties of Earth so distant in space and in both past and future time.”

“Huh? Beauties? Plural? Next time I see a party whose pictures are cluttering up this whole ship I’ll tell her about your polygamous ideas. I’ll ignore that crack about my mustache, though, since you can’t raise one of your own. I’m ignoring you, too—like this, see?” Ostentatiously turning his back upon the lounging Kinnison, Northrop stepped carefully over three or four breadboard hookups and stared into the plate over the watch officer’s shoulder. He then studied the chart. “Was ist los, Stu? I don’t see a thing.”

“More Jack’s line than yours, Mase. This system we’re headed for is a triple, and the chart says it’s a double. Natural enough, of course. This whole region is unexplored, so the charts are astronomicals, not surveys. But that makes us Prime Discoverers, and our Commanding Officer—and the book says ‘Officer’, not ‘Officers’—has got to . . .”

“That’s me, now,” Jack announced, striding grandly toward the plate. “Amscray, oobsbay. I will name the baby. I will report. I will go down in history . . .”

“Bounce back, small fry. You weren’t at the. time of discovery.” Northrop placed a huge hand flat against Jack’s face and pushed gently. “You’ll go down, sure enough— not in history, but from a knock on the knob—if you try to steal any thunder away from me. And besides, you’d name it ‘Dimples’—what a revolting thought!”

“And what would you name it? ‘Virgilia’, I suppose?”

“Far from it, my boy.” He had intended doing just that, but now he did not quite dare. “After our project, of course. The planet we’re heading for will be Zabriska; the suns will be A-, B-, and C-Zabriskae, in order of size; and the watch officer then on duty, Lieutenant L.

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