First Lensman by E. E. Smith

Author:E. E. Smith
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Human-alien encounters -- Fiction, Psychic ability -- Fiction, Space security -- Fiction, Science fiction, Space warfare -- Fiction, Imaginary wars and battles -- Fiction, Space colonies -- Fiction, Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2020-07-07T00:07:28+00:00

XI

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. Stu­art Rawl­ings, will en­gross these and all other per­ti­nent data in the log.

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