«It’s cockeyed,» snapped Craig, «because man’s brain never fashions a letter-perfect image. The Candles pattern themselves directly after the thoughts they pick up. When you think of something you don’t give them all the details—your thoughts are sketchy. You can’t blame the Candles for that. They pick up what you give them and fill in the rest as best they can. Therefore camels with flowing manes, camels with four and five humps, camels with horns, an endless parade of screwball camels, if camels are what you are thinking of.»
He flung the pencil down angrily.
«And don’t you kid yourself the Candles are doing it to amuse us. More than likely they believe we are thinking up all those swell ideas just to please them. They’re having the time of their lives. Probably that’s the only reason they’ve tolerated us here—because we have such amusing thoughts.
«When Man first came here they were just pretty, colored balls rolling around on the surface, and someone called them Roman Candles because that’s what they looked like. But since that day they’ve been everything Man has ever thought of.»
Page heaved himself out of the chair.
«I shall report your attitude to Washington, Captain Craig.»
«Report and be damned,» growled Craig. «Maybe you’ve forgotten where you are. You aren’t back on Earth, where bribes and boot-licking and bulldozing will get a man almost anything he wants. You’re at the power center on the Sunward side of Mercury. This is the main source of power for all the planets. Let this power plant fail, let the transmission beams be cut off and the Solar System goes to hell!»
He pounded the desk for emphasis.
«I’m in charge here, and when I say a thing it stands, for you as well as anyone. My job is to keep this plant going, keep the power pouring out to the planets. And I’m not letting some half-baked fool come out here and make me trouble. While I’m here, no one is going to stir up the Candles. We’ve got plenty of trouble without that.»
Page edged toward the door, but Craig stopped him.
«Just a little word of warning,» he said, speaking softly. «If I were you, I wouldn’t try to sneak out any of the puddle jumpers, including your own. After each trip the oxygen tank is taken out and put into the charger, so it’ll be at first capacity for the next trip. The charger is locked and there’s just one key. And I have that.»
He locked eyes with the man at the door and went on.
«There’s a little oxygen left in the jumper, of course. Half an hour’s supply, maybe. Possibly less. After that there isn’t any more. It’s not nice to be caught like that. They found a fellow that had happened to just a day or so ago over near one of the Twilight Belt stations.»
But Page was gone, slamming the door.
The Candles had stopped dancing and were rolling around, drifting bubbles of every hue. Occasionally one would essay the formation of some object, but the attempt would be half-hearted and the Candle once more would revert to its natural sphere.
Old Creepy must have put his fiddle away, Craig thought. Probably he was making an inspection round, seeing if everything was all right.
Although there was little chance that anything could go wrong. The plant was automatic, designed to run with the minimum of human attention.
The control room was a wonder of clicking, chuckling, chortling, snicking gadgets. Gadgets that kept the flow of power directed to the substations on the Twilight Belt. Gadgets that kept the tight beams from the substations centered exactly on those points in space where each must go to be picked up by the substations circling the outer planets.
Let one of those gadgets fail—let that spaceward beam sway as much as a fraction of a degree—Curt shuddered at the thought of a beam of terrific power smashing into a planet—perhaps into a city. But the mechanism had never failed—never would. It was foolproof. A far cry from the day when the plant had charged monstrous banks of converters to be carted to the outer worlds by lumbering spaceships.
This was really free power, easy power, plentiful power. Power carried across millions of miles on Addison’s tight-beam principle. Free power to develop the farms of Venus, the mines of Mars, the chemical plants and cold laboratories on Pluto.
Down there in the control room, too, were other gadgets as equally important. The atmosphere machine, for example, which kept the air mixture right, drawing on those tanks of liquid oxygen and nitrogen and other gases brought across space from Venus by the monthly oxygen ship.
The refrigerating plant, the gravity machine, the water assembly.
Craig heard the crunch of Creepy’s footsteps on the stairs and turned to the door as the old man shuffled into the room.
Creepy’s brows were drawn down and his face looked like a thundercloud.
«What’s the matter now?» asked Craig.
«By cracky,» snapped Creepy, «you got to do something about that Rastus.»
Craig grinned. «What’s up this time?»
«He stole my last bottle of drinking liquor,» wailed Creepy. «I was hoarding it for medical purposes, and now it’s gone. He’s the only one that could have taken it.»
«I’ll talk to Rastus,» Craig promised.
«Some day,» threatened Creepy, «I’m going to get my dander up and whale the everlastin’ tar out of that smoke. That’s the fifth bottle of liquor he’s swiped off me.»
The old man shook his head dolefully, whuffled his walruslike mustache.
«Aside from Rastus, how’s everything else going?» asked Craig.
«Earth just rounded the Sun,» the old man said. «The Venus station took up the load.»
Craig nodded. That was routine. When one planet was cut off by the Sun, the substations of the nearest planet took on an extra load, diverted part of it to the first planet’s stations, carrying it until it was clear again.
He arose from the chair and walked to the port, stared out across the dusty plains. A dot was moving across the near horizon. A speedy dot, seeming to leap across the dead, gray wastes.
«Knut’s coming!» he yelled to Creepy.
Creepy hobbled for the doorway. «I’ll go down to meet him. Knut and me are having a game of checkers as soon as he gets in.»
Craig laughed, relieved by Knut’s appearance. «How many checker games have you and Knut played?» he asked.
«Hundreds of ’em,» Creepy declared proudly. «He ain’t no match for me, but he thinks he is. I let him beat me regular to keep the interest up. I’m afraid he’d quit playing if I beat him as often as I could.»
He started for the door and then turned back. «But this is my turn to win.»
The old man chuckled in his mustache. «I’m goin’ to give him a first-class whippin’.»
«First,» said Craig, «tell him I want to see him.»
«Sure,» said Creepy, «and don’t you go telling him about me letting him beat me. That would make him sore.»
Craig tried to sleep but couldn’t. He was worried. Nothing definite, for there seemed no cause to worry. The tracer placed on the big warp revealed that it was moving slowly, a few feet an hour or so, in a direction away from the center. No other large ones had shown up in the detectors.
Everything, for the moment, seemed under control. Just little things. Vague suspicions and wondering—snatches here and there that failed to fall into the pattern.
Knut, for instance. There wasn’t anything wrong with Knut, of course, but while he had talked to him he had sensed something. An uneasy feeling that lifted the hair on the nape of his neck, made the skin prickle along his spine.
Yet nothing one could lay one’s hands on.