Lucky, rested his chin on the palm of his right hand, and his calm, brown eyes were thoughtful. "No, Bigman, he isn't the man we're after."
"But he's got to be, Lucky. Even if he's blind, really blind, it's an argument against him. Sure, Lucky," Bigman grew excited again, his small hands clumping into fists, "he could get close to the V-frog without seeing it. He could kill it."
Lucky shook his head. "No, Bigman. The V-frog's mental influence doesn't depend on its being seen. It's direct mental contact. That's the one fact we can't get around." He said slowly, "It had to be a robot who did that. It had to be, and Norrich is no robot."
"Well, how do you know he-?" But Bigman stopped.
"I see you've answered your own question. We sensed his emotion during our first meeting, when the V-frog was still with us. He has emotions, so he's not the robot and he's not the man we're looking for."
But even as he said so, there was a look of deep trouble on his face and he tossed the book-film on advanced robotics to one side as though despairing of help from it.
The first Agrav ship ever to be built was named Jovian Moon and it was not like any ship Lucky had ever seen. It was large enough to be a luxury liner of space, but the crew and passenger quarters were abnormally crowded forward,. since nine tenths of the ship's volume consisted of the Agrav converter and the hyperatomic force-field condensers. From the midsec-tion, curved vanes, ridged into a vague resemblance to bat's wings, extended on either side. Five to one side, five to the other, ten in all.
Lucky had been told that these vanes, in cutting the lines of force of the gravitational field, converted the gravity into hyperatomic energy. It was as prosaic as that, and yet they gave the ship an almost sinister appearance.
The ship rested now in a gigantic pit dug into Jupiter Nine. The lid, of reinforced concrete, had been retracted, and the whole area was under normal Jupiter Nine gravity and exposed to the normal airlessness of Jupiter Nine's surface.
Nevertheless the entire personnel of the project, nearly a thousand men, were gathered in this natural amphitheater. Lucky had never seen so many men in space suits at one time. There was a certain natural excitement because of the occasion; a certain almost hysterical restlessness that manifested itself in horseplay made possible by the low gravity.
Lucky thought grimly: And one of those men in space suits is no man at all.
But which one? And how could he tell?
Commander Donahue made his short speech of dedication to a group of men grown silent, impressed despite themselves; while Lucky, looking up at Jupiter, glanced at a small object near it that was not a star but a tiny sliver of light, curved like the paring of a small fingernail, almost too small for the curve to be seen. If there had been any air in the way, instead of Jupiter Nine's airless vacuum, that small curve would have been blurred into a formless spot of light.
Lucky knew the tiny crescent to be Ganymede, Jupiter Three, Jupiter's largest satellite and worthy moon of the giant planet. It was nearly three times the size of Earth's moon; it was larger than the planet Mercury. It was almost as large as Mars. With the Agrav fleet completed, Ganymede would quickly become a major world of the solar system.
Commander Donahue christened the ship at last in a voice husky with emotion, and then the assembled audience, in groups of five and six, entered the air-filled interior of the satellite through the various locks.
Only those who were to be aboard the Jovian Moon remained. One by one they climbed the ramp to the entrance lock, Commander Donahue first.
Lucky and Bigman were last to board. Commander Donahue turned away from the air lock as they entered, stiffly unfriendly.
Bigman leaned toward Lucky, to say tightly, "Did you notice, Lucky, that Red Summers is on board?"
"I know."
"He's the cobber who tried to kill you."
"I know, Bigman."
The ship was lifting now in what was at first a majestic creep. The surface gravity of Jupiter Nine was only one eightieth of Earth, and though the weight of the ship was still in the hundreds of tons, that was not the cause of the initial slowness. Even were gravity absent altogether, the ship would still retain its full content of matter and all the inertia that went with it. It would still be just as hard to put all that matter into motion, or, if it came to that, to stop it or change its direction of travel, once it had begun moving.
But first slowly, then more and more rapidly, the pit was left behind. Jupiter Nine shrank beneath them and became visible in the visiplatps as a rugged gray rock. The constellations powdered the black sky and Jupiter was a bright marble.
James Panner approached them and placed an arm on the shoulder of each man. "Would you two gentlemen care to join me in my cabin for a meal? There'll be nothing to watch here in the viewing room for a while." His wide mouth pulled back in a grin that swelled the cords of his thick neck and made it seem no neck at all but a mere continuation of head.
"Thank you," Lucky said. "It's kind of you to invite us."
"Well," said Panner, "the commander isn't going to and the men are a little leery of you, too. I don't want you to get too lonely. It will be a long trip."
"Aren't you leery of me, Dr. Panner?" Lucky asked dryly.
"Of course not. You tested me, remember, and I passed."
Panner's cabin was a small one in which the three barely fitted. It was obvious that the quarters in this, the first Agrav ship, were as cramped as engineering ingenuity could make them. Panner broke out three cans of ship-ration, the concentrated food that was universally eaten on space ships. It was almost home to Lucky and Bigman; the smell of heating rations, the feeling of crowding walls, outside of which was the infinite emptiness of space, and, sounding through those walls, the steady vibrating hum of hyperatomic motors converting field energies into a directional thrust or, at the very least, powering the energy-consuming innards of the ship.
If ever the ancient belief of the "music of the spheres" could be said to have come literally true, it was in that hum of hyperatomics that was the very essential of space flight.
Panner said, "We're past Jupiter Nine's escape velocity now, which means we can coast without danger of falling back to its surface."
Lucky said, "That means we're in free fall down to Jupiter."
"With fifteen million miles to fall, yes. Once we've piled up enough velocity to make it worthwhile, we'll shift to Agrav."
, He took a watch out of his pocket as he spoke. It was a large disc of gleaming, featureless metal. He pressed a small catch, and luminous figures appeared upon its face. A glowing line of white encircled it, turning red in a sweeping arc until the redness closed in upon itself and the arc turned white again.
Lucky said, "Are we scheduled to enter Agrav so soon?"
"Not very long," said Panner. He placed the watch on the table, and they ate silently.
Panner lifted the watch again. "A little under a minute. It should be completely automatic." Although the chief engineer spoke calmly enough, the hand that held the watch trembled very slightly.
Panner said, "Now," and there was silence. Complete silence.
The hum of the hyperatomics had stopped. The very power to keep the ship's lights on and its pseudo-grav field in operation were now coming from Jupiter's gravitational field.
Panner said, "On the nose! Perfect!" He put away his watch, and though the smile on his broad, homely face was a restrained one, it virtually shouted relief. "We're actually on an Agrav ship now in full Agrav operation."
Lucky was smiling, too. "Congratulations. I'm pleased to be on board."
"I imagine you are. You worked hard enough for it. Poor Donahue."
Lucky said gravely, ''I'm sorry I had to push the commander so hard, but I had no choice. One way or another, I had to be on board."