The cruisers, powered by nuclear converters, did not use the liquid rocket fuel, but nuclear converters were far too large and complex to permit their installation in the EDSs. Each cruiser carried four EDSs, and when a call for aid was received, the nearest cruiser would drop into normal space long enough to launch an EDS with the needed supplies or personnel, then vanish again as it continued on its course. Small and collapsible, they occupied little room in the hold of the cruiser made of light metal and plastics, they were driven by a small rocket drive that consumed relatively little fuel. Some method of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency occurred on a world not scheduled for a visit had been needed, and the Emergency Dispatch Ships had been the answer. ![]() The cruisers carried the colonists to their new worlds and made periodic visits, running on tight schedules, but they could not stop and turn aside to visit colonies scheduled to be visited at another time such a delay would destroy their schedule and produce a confusion and uncertainty that would wreck the complex interdependence between old Earth and the new worlds of the frontier. They were not available in such numbers that small colonies could possess them. ![]() The huge hyperspace cruisers were the product of the combined genius and effort of Earth and were long and expensive in the building. Galactic expansion had followed the development of the hyperspace drive, and as men scattered wide across the frontier, there had come the problem of contact with the isolated first colonies and exploration parties. It was a law not of men’s choosing but made imperative by the circumstances of the space frontier. It was the law, and there could be no appeal. It was the law, stated very bluntly and definitely in grim Paragraph L, Section 8, of Interstellar Regulations: “Any stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be jettisoned immediately following discovery.” There could be no alternative-but it required a few moments of conditioning for even an EDS pilot to prepare himself to walk across the room and coldly, deliberately, take the life of a man he had yet to meet. He was an EDS pilot, inured to the sight of death, long since accustomed to it and to viewing the dying of another man with an objective lack of emotion, and he had no choice in what he must do. He leaned back in the pilot’s chair and drew a deep, slow breath, considering what he would have to do. It could be but one kind of a body-a living, human body. There was something in the supply closet across the room, it was saying, some kind of a body that radiated heat. ![]() It had been on zero when the little ship was launched from the Stardust now, an hour later, it had crept up. The control room was empty but for himself there was no sound other than the murmur of the drives-but the white hand had moved. There was nothing to indicate the fact but the white hand of the tiny gauge on the board before him. Series: The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide. ![]()
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