Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

BEAM PIRATE 19 At a given instant, Pete may be buying at sixty-five on Venus; Joe may be selling like turious at seventy-one on Mars; and Jimmy may be bucking him up again by buying at sixty-five on Terra. Then the picture and the tickets catch up with one another, and Joe will start buying again at sixty-five, whilst Pete and Jimmy are selling at seventy-one. Once they get their periodicity running, they’re able to tinker the market for quite a time. That’s where your man comes in, Bill. Have him study the market and step in at the right time and grab us all a few cheap ones. Get me?” “Sure,” said Cartright. “I get it. In that way, we'll tend to stabilize the market, as well as getting the other guy’s shares.” “Right. Pll leave it up to you. Handle this thing for the best interests of all of us.” Cartright smiled once again, and left with a thoughtful expression on his face, Chan- ning picked up the miniature of the power- transmission tube and studied it as though the interruption had not occurred. “We'll have to use about four of these per stage,” he said. “We'll have to use an input terminal tube to accept the stuff from the previous stage, drop it across the low-resistance load, resistance couple the stage to another output terminal tube where we can make use of the coupling circuits without feedback. From there into the next tube, with the high resistance load, and out of the power-putter-outer tube across the desk to the next four-bottle stage.” “That’s getting complicated,” said Walt. ‘Four tubes per stage of amplification.” “Sure. As the arts and sciences get more advanced, things tend to get more compli- cated.” : “That’s essentially correct,” agreed Walt with a smile. “But you’re foreguessing. We haven’t even got a detector that will detect driver radiation.” “TI know, and perhaps this thing will not work. But after all, we’ve got the tubes and we might as well think them out just in case. We'll detect driver radiation soon enough, and then we might as well have a few odd thoughts on how to amplify it for public use. Nothing would tickle me more than to in- crease those three circles on our letterhead to four. ‘Planet to Planet, and Ship to Ship’ is our hope. This one-way business is not to my > liking. How much easier it would have been if I’d been able to squirt a call in to the Station when I was floating out there beyond Jove in that wrecked ship. That gave me to think, Walt. Driver-radiation detection is the answer.” “How so?” “We'll use the detector to direct our radio beam, and the ship can have a similar gadget coupled to their beam, detecting a pair of drivers set at one hundred and eighty degrees from one another so the thrust won’t upset the Station’s celestial alignment. We can point one of them at the ship’s course, even, making it easier for them.” “Speaking of direction,” said Walt thought- fully, “have you figured out why the solar beam is always pointing behind Sol?” “T haven’t given that much thought. I’ve always thought that it was due to the align- ment plates not being in linear perfection so that the power beam bends. They can make the thing turn a perfect right angle, you know.” “Well, I’ve been toying with the resurrected heap you dropped into Lake Michigan a couple of months ago, and I’ve got a good one for you. You know how the beam seems to lock into place when we’ve got it turned to Sol, not enough to make it certain, but more than detectably directive?” “Yep. We could toss out the motor control that keeps her face turned to the sun.” “That’s what I was hoping to gain—” started Walt, but he stopped as the door opened and Arden entered, followed by a man and woman. “Hello,” said Watt in a tone of admiration. “This is Jim Baler and _ his sister Christine,” said Arden. “Baler, the guy with the worried look on his face is my legally wedded spouse—souse—no, spouse. And the guy with the boudoir gorilla gleam in his vulpine eye is that old vulture, Walt Franks.” Walt took the introduction in his stride and offered Christine his chair. Arden stuck her tongue out at him, but Walt shrugged it off, ignoring her. Channing shook hands with Jim Baler and _ then sought the “S” drawer of his file cabinet. He found the Scotch and the soda, and then grinned: “Should have the ice under ‘I,’ but its sort of perishable, and so we keep it in the refrigerator. Arden, breach the ‘G’ drawer and haul out the glasses, will you, please? I suppose we could re- frigerate the whole cabinet, but it wouldn't sound right if people heard that we kept their mail on ice. Well—” ‘““Here’s how, if we don’t already know,” said Walt, clinking glasses with Christine. “Walt earned that ‘wolf’ title honestly,” laughed Arden, “he likes to think. Frankly, he’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing!” comiclooks ©