Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

GIMMICK it in the face of Della appeared. “Where do you think you’re going?” ““To test it.” “Testing is supposed to be done on planetoids. You’re heading for the Furry system.” “I can’t test a psychological weapon on rocks.” “True enough,” she looked at him, inspecting his face with respect. “Even insane, you have guts enough. Well have luck.’’ She switched off. He was alone again. From his box he took out the works of one of his color-sound co-ordinators and plugged it in near the control board. He amused himself having it play colors in response to the tones of his voice while he took out a theramin and wired the two in together neatly. Now when he moved the motion was turned into sound by the theramin and the sound into color by the color-composer. Surrounded by a rippling play of colors, bathed in sound, and grinning, he wired the whole works into the ground ends of the meaningless an- tenna that decorated the outside of the communtercraft. He turned the volume down and wired more things into more things, in good logical- seeming patterns, nowhere contradict- ing intelligent patterns of wiring or doing anything which would make an appearance of slipshod work. Then he went back to reading magazines, the cabin walls a quiet dancing of color in delicate, subtle patterns, responding to the sound of his breathing and the rustle of turning pages. When the Furry planetary system came near he began to watch the radar screen. He passed the outmost blinker rocks of the Furry system, navigator’s guides which swung a radar beam as a lighthouse guide to safe routes and a detector of incoming strangers. A few minutes past the first one 97 and he knew he had been observed, for the randomly swinging beam swung back and focused on his ship. Somewhere on a planet a long way ahead the relayed signal had reached a screen and been seen by a Furry observer. The radar beams picked him out and followed him like suspicious eyes as he passed one blinker after another, as. somewhere in the direction he was going Furries gathered around the screens to stare, and orders were given. Abruptly his ship-scanning screen, which had been making meaningless geometric patterns from random static, picked up definite ship shapes somewhere and focused on them. A view of spaceships swung up on mag- nification to total clarity. Their move- ments were oddly uncertain. One started in his direction then swung around again and grouped in with others in a battle formation before a planet—true defenders. But then the entire battle forma- tion, as though taking courage in numbers, moved forward again. They accelerated as though planning to intercept him before he came near any planet he might damage. | He knew how his _ speedster looked on the screen. It was a weird jumble of coils and antenna sticking out ran- domly in any direction. At the nose of the craft was a parabolic bowl which blew bubbles. In it grew blue glowing spheres which expanded and thinned and vanished slowly as they grew while another tiny blue sphere appeared in the bottom and began to expand. It must at that moment have had all the available physicists in the fleet staring fascinated into their screens, cursing the failures of clarity in the relayed blinker rock pickup, worried and disconcerted because they could not think of any weapon it could be, connicloooks.c© nn