Spacehounds of IPC | Page 5

central portion of the upper lookout screen to a small
micrometer screen at Breckenridge's desk and plugged it into the first
check-station. Instantly a point of red light, surrounded by a vivid
orange circle, appeared upon the screen, low down and to the left of
center, and the timing galvanometer showed a wide positive deflection.
"Hashed again!" growled Breckenridge. "I must be losing my grip, I
guess. I put everything I had on that sight, and missed it ten divisions. I
think I'll turn in my badge--I've cocked our perfect curve already,
before we got to the first check-station!" His hands moved toward the
controls, to correct their course and acceleration.
"As you were--hold everything! Lay off those controls!" snapped the
computer. "There's something screwy, just as I thought--and it isn't you,
either. I'm no pilot, of course, but I do know good compensation when I
see it, and if you weren't compensating that point I never saw it done.
Besides, with your skill and my figures I know darn well that we aren't
off more than a tenth of one division. He's cuckoo! Don't call him--let
him start it, and refer him to me."
"All x--I'll be only too glad to pass the buck. But I still think, Steve,
that you're playing with dynamite. Who ever heard of an astronomer
being wrong?"
"You'd be surprised," grinned the physicist, "Since this fuss has just
started, nobody has tried to find out whether they were wrong or not...."
"IPV Arcturus, attention!" came from the speaker curtly.
"IPV Arcturus, Breckenridge," from the chief pilot.

"You have been on my ray almost a minute. Why are you not
correcting course and acceleration?"
"Doctor Stevens is computing us and has full control of course and
acceleration," replied Breckenridge. "He will answer you."
"I am changing neither course nor acceleration because you are not in
position," declared Stevens, crisply, "Please give me your present
supposed location, and your latest precision goniometer bearings on the
sun, the moon, Mars, Venus, and your Tellurian reference limb, with
exact time of observations, gyroscope zero-planes, and goniometer
factors!"
"Correct at once or I shall report you to the Observatory," E2 answered
loftily, paying no attention to the demand for proof of position.
"Be sure you do that, guy--and while you're at it report that your station
hasn't taken a precision bearing in a month. Report that you've been
muddling along on radio loop bearings, and that you don't know where
you are, within seven thousand kilometers. And speaking of
reporting--I know already that a lot of you astronomical guessers have
only the faintest possible idea of where you really are, plus, minus, or
lateral; and if you don't get yourselves straightened out before we get to
W41, I'm going to make a report on my own account that will jar some
of you birds loose from your upper teeth!" He unplugged with a vicious
jerk, and turned to the pilot with a grin.
"Guess that'll hold him for a while, won't it?"
"He'll report us, sure," remonstrated Breckenridge. The older man was
plainly ill at ease at this open defiance of the supposedly infallible
check-stations.
"Not that baby," returned the computer confidently. "I'll bet you a small
farm against a plugged nickel that right now he's working his
goniometer so hard that it's pivots are getting hot. He'll sneak back into
position as soon as he can calculate his results, and pretend he's always
been there."

"The others will be all right, then, probably, by the time we get to
them?"
"Gosh, no--you're unusually dumb today, Breck. He won't tell anybody
anything--he doesn't want to be the only goat, does he?"
"Oh, I see. How could you dope this out, with only the recorder
charts?"
"Because I know the kind of stuff you pilots are--and those humps are
altogether too big to be accounted for by anything I know about you.
Another thing--the next station, P6, I think is keeping himself all x. If
so, when you corrected for E2, which was wrong, it'd throw you all off
on P6, which was right, and so on--a bad hump at almost every
check-station. See?"
* * * * *
True to prediction, the pilot ray of P6 came in almost upon the exact
center of the micrometer screen, and Breckenridge smiled in relief as
he began really to enjoy the trip.
"How do we check on chronometers?" asked P6 when Stevens had
been introduced. "By my time you seem to be about two and a half
seconds plus?"
"All x--two points four seconds plus--we're riding on 981.286
centimeters, to allow for the reversal and for minor detours. Bye."
"All this may have been coincidence, Breck, but we'll find out pretty
quick now," the computer remarked when the flying vessel was nearing
the