"It has to be that, Captain."
Doyle stood perfectly still. This time he did not look at Rhodes but stared straight ahead. Then he took a long pull on his cigarette, glanced at the ash, and said in a steady voice,
"Apply the data. Fire on the bell."
Four hours later, Libby was still droning out firing data, his face gray, his eyes closed. Once he had fainted but when they revived him he was still muttering figures. From time to time the Captain and the Navigator relieved each other, but there was no relief for him.
The salvos grew closer together, but the shocks were lighter.
Following one faint salvo, Libby looked up, stared at the ceiling, and spoke.
"That's all, Captain."
"Call polar stations!"
The reports came back promptly, "Parallax constant, sidereal-solar rate constant."
The Captain relaxed into a chair. "Well, Blackie, we did it -- thanks to Libby!" Then he noticed a worried, thoughtful look spread over Libby's face. "What's the matter, man? Have we slipped up?"
"Captain, you know you said the other day that you wished you had Earth-normal gravity in the park?"
"Yes. What of it?"
"If that book on gravitation you lent me is straight dope. I think I know a way to accomplish it."
The Captain inspected him as if seeing him for the first time. "Libby, you have ceased to amaze me. Could you stop doing that sort of thing long enough to dine with the Admiral?"
"Gee, Captain, that would be swell!"
The audio circuit from Communications cut in. "Helio from Flagship: 'Well done, Eighty-eight.'" Doyle smiled around at them all. "That's pleasant confirmation."
The audio brayed again.
"Helio from Flagship: 'Cancel last signal, stand by for correction.'"
A look of surprise and worry sprang into Doyle's face -- then the audio continued:
"Helio from Flagship: 'Well done, E-M3'"
Methuselah's Children
PART I
"MARY SPERLING, you're a fool not to marry him!"
Mary Sperling added up her losses and wrote a check before answering, "There's too much difference in age." She passed over her credit voucher. "I shouldn't gamble with you-sometimes I think you're a sensitive."
"Nonsense! You're just trying to change the subject. You must be nearly thirty and you won't be pretty forever."
Mary smiled wryly. "Don't I know it!"
"Bork Vanning can't be much over forty and he's a plus citizen. You should jump at the chance."
"You jump at it. I must run now. Service, Ven."
"Service," Ven answered, then frowned at the door as it contracted after Mary Sperling. She itched to know why Mary would not marry a prime catch like the Honorable Bork Vanning and was almost as curious as to why and where Mary was going, but the custom of privacy stopped her.
Mary had no intention of letting anyone know where she was going. Outside her friend's apartment she dropped down a bounce tube to the basement, claimed her car from the robopark, guided it up the ramp and set the controls for North Shore. The car waited for a break in the traffic, then dived into the high-speed stream and hurried north. Mary settled back for a nap.
When its setting was about to run out, the car beeped for instructions; Mary woke up and glanced out. Lake Michigan was a darker band of darkness on her right. She signaled traffic control to let her enter the local traffic lane; it sorted out her car and placed her there, then let her resume manual control. She fumbled in the glove compartment.
The license number which traffic control automatically photographed as she left the controlways was not the number the car had been wearing.
She followed a side road uncontrolled for several miles, turned into a narrow dirt road which led down to the shore, and stopped. There she waited, lights out, and listened. South of her the lights of Chicago glowed; a few hundred yards inland the controlways whined, but here there was nothing but the little timid noises of night creatures. She reached into the glove compartment, snapped a switch; the instrument panel glowed, uncovering other dials behind it. She studied these while making adjustments. Satisfied that no radar watched her and that nothing was moving near her, she snapped off the instruments, sealed the window by her and started up again.
What appeared to be a standard Camden speedster rose quietly up, moved out over the lake, skimming it-dropped into the water and sank. Mary waited until she was a quarter mile off shore in fifty feet of water, then called a station. "Answer," said a voice.
"'Life is short--'"
"'-but the years are long.'"
"'Not,'" Mary responded, "'while the evil days come not.'"
"I sometimes wonder," the voice answered conversationally. "Okay, Mary. I've checked you."
"Tommy?"
"No-Cecil Hedrick. Are your controls cast loose?"
"Yes. Take over."
Seventeen minutes later the car surfaced in a pool which occupied much of an artificial cave. When the car was beached, Mary got out, said hello to the guards and went on through a tunnel into a large underground room where fifty or sixty men and women were seated. She chatted until a clock announced midnight, then she mounted a rostrum and faced them.
"I am," she stated, "one hundred and eighty-three years old. Is there anyone here who is older?"
No one spoke. After a decent wait she went on, "Then in accordance with our customs I declare this meeting opened. Will you choose a moderator?"
Someone said, "Go ahead, Mary." When no one else spoke up, she said, "Very well." She seemed indifferent to the honor and the group seemed to share her casual attitude-an air of never any hurry, of freedom from the tension of modern life.
"We are met as usual," she announced, "to discuss our welfare and that of our sisters and brothers. Does any Family representative have a message from his family? Or does anyone care to speak for himself?"
A man caught her eye and spoke up. "Ira Weatheral, speaking for the Johnson Family. We've met nearly two months early. The trustees must have a reason. Let's hear it."
She nodded and turned to a prim little man in the first row. "Justin... if you will, please."
The prim little man stood up and bowed stiffly. Skinny legs stuck out below his badly-cut kilt. He looked and acted like an elderly, dusty civil servant, but his black hair and the firm, healthy tone of his skin said that he was a man in his prime. "Justin Foote," he said precisely, "reporting for the trustees. It has been eleven years since the Families decided on the experiment of letting the public know that there were, living among them, persons who possessed a probable, life expectancy far in excess of that anticipated by the average man, as well as other persons who had proved the scientific truth of such expectation by having lived more than twice the normal life span of human beings."
Although he spoke without notes he sounded as if he were reading aloud a prepared report. What he was saying they all knew but no one hurried him; his audience had none of the febrile impatience so common elsewhere. "In deciding," he droned on, "to reverse the previous long-standing policy of silence and concealment as to the peculiar aspect in which we differ from the balance of the human race, the Families were moved by several considerations. The reason for the original adoption of the policy of concealment should be noted:
"The first offspring resulting from unions assisted by the Howard Foundation were born in 1875. They aroused no comment, for they were in no way remarkable. The Foundation was an openly-chartered non-profit corporation--"
On March 17, 1874, Ira Johnson, medical student, sat in the law offices of Deems, Wingate, Alden, & Deems and listened to an unusual proposition. At last he interrupted the senior partner. "Just a moment! Do I understand that you are trying to hire me to marry one of these women?"