Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 192: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

scratched thoughtfully at his chin. “Well, | guess that’s the best we can do, though. When they built this thing, they didn’t think we’d have to fight anybody with it, just get up here was all they were thinking about.” He punched a tape and fed it into the autopilot and sat with his thumb on the firing switch, watching the satellite. The control station was sliding over the horizon behind them now; they would soon lose contact. He had better report what they had, he thought, in case they were not there when they came around again. But what did they have? Well, there was no evidence, really, only a feeling— ‘Thumbtack, this is Rubberneck,” he said. “Visual contact Bertha condition King. | say again, Bertha condition King. Over.” The answer came faintly but promptly. “Thumbtack, Roger. Maintain contact and continue to_ investigate. Acknowledge.” “Rubberneck, Roger. Out.” Bertha was abeam them now, relative to Earth. Goodrich gave thought to the problem of fixing its range and relative velocity. “Get me a couple of timed fixes on Bertha, Mac,” he said. “How about the pictures? I'll have to swing the ship.” “Let the pictures go, for now, we've got a few. Get the fixes and then swing the ship to one eighty azimuth, zero inclination. I’m going to fire a three foot-second blast and see what happens.” He punched a new tape for the evasive action, keeping a wary eye on the sphere, with a runner on the front end for the three foot-second blast. If their move provoked Bertha to action, all he had to do was trip the switch again and keep right on going. “O.K. on the fixes,” McKay said. He juggled the flywheel controls and the ship swung gently about. He took another CORniclooo SS CO