“Go get a haircut,” bawled Leeming into his microphone. He jiggled around in his seat while the ship boomed onward.
“And clean up that hog-pen. Haven’t you been taught how to salute? Baloney baffles brains!”
They didn’t answer that, either.
But down in the spaceport control-tower the duty officer pulled a face and said to Montecelli, “You know, I think that Einstein never worked out the whole of it.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I have a theory that as one approaches the velocity of light one’s inhibitions shrink to zero.”
“You may have something there,” Montecelli conceded.
“Pork and beans, pork and beans, Holy God, pork and beans,” squawked the control-tower speaker with swiftly fading strength. “Get undressed because I want to test your eyes. Now inhale. Keen by name and keen by—”
The duty officer switched it off.
TWO
He picked up the escort in the Sirian sector, the first encounter being made when he was fast asleep. Activated by a challenging signal on a pre-set frequency, the alarm sounded just above his ear and caused him to dive out of the bunk while no more than half awake. For a moment he gazed stupidly around while the ship vibrated and the autopilot went tick-tick.
“Zern kaid-whit?” rasped the loudspeaker. “Zern kaid-whit?”
That was code and meant; “identify yourself-friend or foe?”
Taking the pilot’s seat, he turned a key that caused his transmitter to squirt forth a short and ultra-rapid series of numbers. Then he rubbed his eyes and looked into the forward starfield. Apart from the majestic haze of suns shining in the dark there was nothing to be seen with the naked eye. So he switched on his thermosensitive detector screens and was rewarded with a line of brilliant dots paralleling his course to starboard while a second group, in arrow formation, was about to cut across far ahead of his nose. He was not seeing the ships, of course, but only the visible evidence of their white-hot propulsion tubes and flaming tails.