Beam Pirate
By GEORGE O. SMITH
Illustrated by Alfred
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mark Kingman was in a fine state of nerves. He looked upon life andthe people in it as one views the dark-brown taste of a hangover. Itseemed to him at the present time that the Lord had forsaken him, forthe entire and complete success of the solar beam had been left only toVenus Equilateral by a sheer fluke of nature. Certainly he, nor anyoneelse, could have foreseen the Channing Layer, that effectively blockedany attempt to pierce it with the strange, sub-level energy spectrumover which the driver tube and the power-transmission tube worked,representing the extremes of the so-called spectrum.
But Venus Equilateral, for their part, were well set. Ships plied thespaceways using their self-contained power only during atmosphericpassage, and paid Venus Equilateral well for the privilege. The RelayStation itself was powered on the solar beam, and the costly shipmentsof potential power had been stopped. There were other relay stationsthat belonged to the communications company; Luna, Deimos and Phobos,and the six that circled Venus in lieu of a satellite; all were poweredby the solar beam. And the solar observatory on Mercury used but littlepower, so the needs of the observatory became the sole income forTerran Electric's planetary rights of the solar beam, since Mercuryowned no air of its own.
Mark Kingman was beginning to feel the brunt of Channing's statementto the effect that legal-minded men were of little importance when itcame to the technical life in space, where men's lives and livelihooddepended more on technical skill than upon the legal pattern set fortheir protection in the complex society of planetary civilization.
It seemed that way. For instead of gaining their ends by legalrestrictions on the power-transmission tube investigations, TerranElectric had lost their chance. Venus Equilateral had the legal rightto tinker with the transmission tubes all they wanted to, and inreturn, Terran Electric held all of the planetary rights to VenusEquilateral's solar beam—which in the domain covered by naturalcelestial bodies was about as valuable as the gold-mining rights to thecrater Tycho.
And everyone knows that Luna, as a valuable piece of real estate, isuseful only to Venus Equilateral as a place to plant the Lunar RelayStation that handled the Terran Beam and punched downward at theHeaviside Layer. Luna's valuable assets as to mineral rights consistedof a bit of talc—no longer used because of plastic engineering—andpumice—no longer used because of synthetic engineering.
And Kingman knew that only if Terra were not abundant in granite wouldthe Lunar granite come in handy as a source of tombstones; and thatmade him writhe because when he thought of tombstones he also thoughtof his position with Terran Electric, which had been endangered becauseof his own legal connivances.
He swore vengeance.
So, like the man who doggedly makes the same mistake twice in a row,Kingman was going to move Heaven, Hell, and the three planets in aneffort to take a swing at the same jaw that had caught his fist betweenits teeth before.
Out through the window of his office, he saw men toiling with the bigtube of the far roof; the self-same tube that had carried the terrificload of Venus Equilateral for ten days without