Calling The Empress
By George O. Smith
Illustrated by Williams
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chart in the terminal building at Canalopsis Spaceport, Mars,was a huge thing that was the focus of all eyes. It occupied athirty-by-thirty space in the center of one wall, and it had afar-flung iron railing about it to keep the people from crowding ittoo close, thus shutting off the view. It was a popular display, forit helped to drive home the fact that space travel was different fromanything else. People were aware that their lives had been built upongoing from one fixed place to another place, equally immobile. But inInterplanet travel one left a moving planet for another planet, movingat a different velocity. You found that the shortest distance was not astraight line but a space curve involving higher mathematics.
The courses being traveled at the time were marked, and those thatwould be traversed in the very near future were drawn upon the chart,too, all appropriately labeled. At a glance, one could see that infifty minutes and seventeen seconds, the Empress of Kolain would takeoff from Mars, which was the red disk on the right; and she wouldtravel along the curve so marked to Venus, which was almost one hundredand sixty degrees clockwise around the Sun. People were glad of thechance to go on this trip because the famous Relay Station would comewithin a telescope's sight on the way.
The Empress of Kolain would slide into Venus on the day side and afew hours later she would lift again to head for Terra, a few degreesahead of Venus and about thirty million miles away.
Precisely on the zero-zero, the Empress of Kolain lifted upward onfour tenuous pillars of dull-red glow and drove a hole in the sky. Theglow was almost lost in the bright sunshine, and soon it died. TheEmpress of Kolain was a little world in itself, and would so remainuntil it dropped onto the ground at Venus, almost two hundred millionmiles away.
Driving upward, the Empress of Kolain could not have been out of thethin Martian atmosphere when a warning bell rang in the telephone andtelespace office at the terminal. The bell caught official ears, andall work was stopped as the personnel of the communications officeran to the machine to see what was so important that the "immediateattention" signal was rung.
Impatiently the operator waited for the tape to come clicking from themachine. It came, letter by letter, click by click, at fifty words perminute. The operator tore the strip from the machine and read aloud:"Hold Empress of Kolain. Reroute to Terra direct. Will be quarantinedat Venus. Whole planet in epidemic of Venusian Fever."
"Snap answer," growled Keg Johnson. "Tell 'em: 'Too little and toolate. Empress of Kolain left thirty seconds before warning bell. Whatdo we do now?'"
The operator's fingers clicked madly over the keyboard. Across spacewent the reply, across the void to the Relay Station. It ran throughthe Station's mechanism and went darting to Terra. It clicked out assent in the offices of Interplanet Transport. A vice president read themessage and swore roundly. He swore in three Terran l