Spacehounds of IPC

by E. E. Smith

"Down the lining of the hull, outside the passengers' quarters to the upper dirigible projectors," and he led the way down a series of steep steel stairways, through bulkheads and partitions of steel. "One thing I forgot to tell you about—the detectors. They're worked on the same principle as the lights, and are just about as efficient. Instead, of light, though, they send out cones of electromagnetic waves, which set up induced currents in any conductor encountered beyond our own shell. Since all dangerous meteorites have been shown to contain conducting material, that is enough to locate them, for radio finders automatically determine the direction, distance, and magnitude of the disturbance, and swing a light on it. That was what happened when that light swung toward us, back there in the prow."

"Are there any of those life-boats, that I've heard discussed so much lately, near here?" asked the girl.

"Lots of 'em—here's one right here," and at the next landing he opened a vacuum-insulated steel door, snapped on a light, and waved his hand. "You can't see much of it from here, but it's a complete space-ship in itself, capable of maintaining a dozen or fifteen persons during a two-weeks' cruise in space."

"Why isn't it a good idea to retain them? Accidents are still possible, are they not?"

"Of course, and there is no question of doing away with them entirely. Modern ships, however, have only enough of them to take care of the largest number of persons ever to be carried by the vessel."

"Has the Arcturus more than she needs?"

"I'll say she has, and more of everything else, except room for pay-load."

"I've heard them talking about junking her. I think it's a shame."

"So do I, in a way—you see, I helped design her and her sister-ship, the Sirius, which Brandon and Westfall are using as a floating laboratory. But times change, and the inefficient must go. She's a good old tub, but she was built when everybody was afraid of space, and we had to put every safety factor into her that we could think of. As a result, she is four times as heavy as she should be, and that takes a lot of extra power. Her skin is too thick. She has too many batteries of accumulators, too many life-boats, too many bulkheads and air-breaks, too many and too much of everything. She is so built that if she should break up out in space, nobody would die if they lived through the shock—there are so many bulkheads, air-breaks, and life-boats that no matter how many pieces she broke up into, the survivors would find themselves in something able to navigate. That excessive construction is no longer necessary. Modern ships carry ten times the pay-load on one-quarter of the power that this old battle-wagon uses. Even though she's only four years old, she's a relic of the days when we used to slam through on the ecliptic route, right through all the meteoric stuff that is always there—trusting to heavy armor to ward off anything too small for the observers and detectors to locate. Now, with the observatories and check-stations out in space, fairly light armor is sufficient, as we route ourselves well away from the ecliptic and so miss all the heavy stuff. So, badly as I hate to see her go there, the old tub is bound for the junk-yard."

A few more flights of stairs brought them to the upper band of dirigible projectors, which encircled the hull outside the passengers' quarters, some sixty feet below the prow. They were heavy, search-light-like affairs mounted upon massive universal bearings, free to turn in any direction, and each having its converter nestling inside its prodigious field of force. Stevens explained that these projectors were used in turning the vessel and in dodging meteorites when necessary, and they went on through another almost invisible door into a hall and took an elevator down to the main corridor.