VIII
In the most deliberate fashion Lesbee shoved the blaster into the inner pocket of his coat. Then, as if he were being careful, he used the tractor beam to push Browne about four feet away. There he set him down, released him from the beam, and—with the same deliberateness—drew his hand away from the tractor controls. Thus he made himself completely defenseless.
It was the moment of vulnerability.
Browne leaped at him, yelling: "Miller—pre-empt!"
First Officer Miller obeyed the command of his captain.
What happened then, only Lesbee, the technician with a thousand bits of detailed knowledge, expected.
For years it had been observed that when Control Room Below took over from Bridge, the ship speeded up slightly. And when Bridge took over from Control Room Below, the ship slowed instantly by the same amount—in each instance, something less than half a mile an hour.
The two boards were not completely synchronized. The technicians often joked about it, and Lesbee had once read an obscure technical explanation for the discrepancy. It had to do with the impossibility of ever getting two metals refined to the same precision of internal structure.
It was the age-old story of no two objects in the universe are alike. But in times past, the differential had meant nothing. It was a technical curiosity, an interesting phenomenon of the science of metallurgy, a practical problem that caused machinists to curse good-naturedly when technicians like Lesbee required them to make a replacement part.
Unfortunately for Browne, the ship was now traveling near the speed of light.