Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition), August 1944 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

LATENT IMAGE 3 all, there are enough people around the Lens that know you are worrying. She'll be all right, I tell you!” “You'll let me know if eae turns up?” ‘“That’s a promise, John.” So John McBride was standing on a roof garden in Hell, thinking how appropriate it was. He was in Hell, all right. Hell was a nice place to be, warm, pleasant, and happily balanced. But it was no. place to be when your wife is nineteen hundred million miles away. Ah, well, another week of this and he would be racing homeward. Home! That was funny, to consider home, a place in space where gravity was furnished by an mechanogravitic warp, and where there were no windows to open, and where you lived in a cube of steel three thousand feet on a side, mostly filled with the items required for living plus the maze of equipment required to maintain the great lens that gave Pluto its sun. ~ Home! It was a far cry from his boy- hood home on Venus, where the greenery of the forest fought with the very walls. But home is where you like it, and McBride liked it. He wished that he were there, for he felt that Enid needed him. Then with that perversity of nature that people call fate, a bellhop approached him and handed him a spacegram. McBride tipped the boy and opened the envelope easily. He’d been getting ‘grams by round numbers for several years, and this was no novelty. He was not aware of its import- ance until he opened the folded page and read: JOHN MC BRIDE SATAN’S HOTEL HELL, PLUTO HIT SKY FOR HOME. ENID IN NO GREAT DANGER FROM FALL, BUT HER RECOVERY WILL BE ASSISTED BY YOUR PRESENCE. CALDWELL. McBride read the words twice, and then looked around himself, wildly. Hit Sky was easy to say—but at 6-G it would take just over one hundred hours to make the pas- sage. Four days minimum! McBride raced to the elevator, chewed his fingernails while the car rode him down the hundred and seven floors with that snail’s pace caused by many stops. He shot out of the elevator door, caromed off the opposite wall into an ash tray which he upset and sent a small cascade of sand across the floor. McBride coasted to a stop before the hotel manager’s desk and tossed the ’gram in front of him. The manager read and looked up in sympathy. McBride said: “Get me a reservation on the next. sunward-bound ship, Emergency stop; they'll make the stopoff ae an emer- gency.’ “Right.” The manager spoke into the phone and then said: “And you'll be check- ing out?” 3 “Yes. Have one of the boys collect my stuff and ship it out to Station 1.” “O.K., McBride, we'll see that your stuff is taken care of. Ben!” he called out through the door, “hurry up on that reser- vation, and see that a car is ready to take Mr. McBride to Hellsport.” “T’won’t be. necessary,” said Ben with a glum face. “The Uranium Lady just took off fifteen minutes ago, and there isn't another ship scheduled out of Hellsport for five days.” “Five days!” groaned McBride. thing flyable on this planet?” “Nothing that would take a run to the Lens,” said Ben. “Sure?” “Almost positive. However, I'll put a re- quest on the radio that may smoke out an unknown.” “Tll buy the thing if they won’t let me go any other way,” said McBride. “We understand,” said the hotel manager. McBride stamped up and down the hotel lobby for an hour. His luggage came down, all collected and prepared. He called Cald- well, and spoke to him for an hour, but Dr. Caldwell’s protestations didn’t help McBride. Enid had fallen from a chair while cleaning out a shelf, and was resting easily, no complications. Yes, there was some pain, enough to make Enid want her husband near. No danger, no, but it would be best if he were there. But McBride was still one hundred hours and nineteen hundred millions miles away John McBride didn’t see the messenger boy bringing the message until he almost bumped into him. “Mr. McBride, here’s your answer,” said the lad, and he saw McBride rip the envelope open with a quick gesture to read the following: 66 Any- MC BRIDE: EXPERIMENTAL SPACESHIP HAY- WIRE QUEEN AT YOUR COMMAND IF YOU CAN REPAIR ALPHATRON. MEET ME AT HELLSPORT. STEVE HAMMOND (SKYWAYS) CoOMmicsookks.€c©