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Ebook has 203 lines and 9780 words, and 5 pages

Release date: October 6, 2023

Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1957

Beyond Our Control

Illustrated by RICHARD KLUGA

The big building stood out at night, even among the other towering spires of Manhattan. The bright, glowing symbol on its roof attracted the attention of anyone who looked up at the night sky of New York; and from the coast of Connecticut, across Long Island Sound, the huge ball was easily visible as a shining dot of light.

The symbol--as a symbol--resembled the well-known symbol of an atom. It consisted of a central globe surrounded by a swarm of swiftly-moving points of light that circled the glowing sphere endlessly. It represented the Earth itself and the robot-operated artificial satellites that whirled around it. It was the trademark of Circum-Global Communications.

But it was more than just a symbol; it was also the antenna for the powerful transmitters that kept constant contact with the satellite relay stations which, in turn, re-broadcast the TV impulses to all parts of the globe.

Inside the CGC Building, completely filling the upper twenty floors, were the sections of the vast electronic brain that computed and integrated the orbits of the small artificial moons and kept the communication beams linked to them. And below the brain, occupying another four floors, were the control and monitoring rooms, in which the TV communications of a world were selected and programmed.

His image and his voice, picked up by the camera and mike, were transmitted by cable to the beam broadcaster in the old capital of Pretoria. From there, it was broadcast generally all over South Africa; at the same time, it was relayed by tight beam to Satellite Nine, which happened to be in the sky over that part of the Earth at that time.

Satellite Nine, in turn, relayed it to all the other satellites in line of sight. Satellite Two, over the eastern seaboard of North America, picked it up and automatically relayed it to the big antenna on top of New York's Circum-Global Communications Building.

There it was de-hashed and cleaned up. The static noise which it had picked up in its double flight through the ionosphere was removed; the periods of fading were strengthened, and the whole communication was smoothed out and patched up.

From the CGC Building, it was re-broadcast over the United States. A man in Bismarck, North Dakota, looked at the three-dimensional, full-color image of the President of South Africa, listened to his clear, carefully-modulated words, and said: "Serves 'em right, by George!"

Besides the world-wide television news and entertainment networks, CGC also handled person-to-person communication through its subsidiary, Intercontinental Visiphone. If the man in Bismarck had wanted to call the President of the Union of South Africa, his visiphone message would have gone out in almost exactly the same way, and the two men could have talked person-to-person, face to face.

From all over the world, programs and communications were picked up by the satellites and relayed to the CGC Building, where they were sorted and sent out again.

The man in charge of the technical end of the whole operation was a short, stocky, graying man named MacIlheny.

James Fitzpatrick MacIlheny, Operational Vice-President of Circum-Global Communications, was one of those dynamic men who can allow their subordinates to call them by a nickname and still retain their respect. His wife called him "Jim"; his personal friends called him "Fitz"; and his subordinates called him "Mac." He knew his own job, and the job of every man under him; if one of the men slipped up, he heard about it in short order, but, on the other hand, if the work was well done, he heard about that in short order, too. MacIlheny was as free with his pats on the back as he was with the boot a little lower down. As a result, his men respected him and he respected them.

MacIlheny liked his work, so he was quite often found in his office or in the monitoring rooms long after his prescribed quitting time. On the evening of 25 March 1978, he had stayed overtime nearly four hours to watch the installation of a new computer unit. As a matter of cold fact, since the day was Saturday, he needn't have been in the office at all, but--well, a new computer isn't put in every day, and MacIlheny liked computer work.

It was exactly 1903 hours when the PA system clicked on and an operator's voice said: "Is Mr. MacIlheny still in the building, please? Mr. MacIlheny, please call Satellite Beam Control."

MacIlheny stood up from the squatting position he had been in, handed a flashlight to one of the technicians standing nearby, and said: "Hold this, Harry; I'll be back in a minute."

The installation crew went on with their work while MacIlheny went over to a wall phone. He picked it up and punched the code number for Beam Control.

"This is MacIlheny," he said when the recog signal came.

"Mac? This is Blake. Can you come down right away? We've lost Number Four!"

"What happened?"

"Don't know. She was nearly overhead, going along fine, when we lost contact all of a sudden. One minute she was there, the next minute she was gone. We've lost the beam, and--just a second!" There was a pause at the other end, then Blake said: "We just got a report from some of the ground stations within range. Satellite Number Four has quit broadcasting altogether--there's no signal from her at all!"

"I'll be right down," MacIlheny snapped. He hung up the phone and headed for the elevator.

It wasn't good. Number Four, like the other satellites, was in a nearly circular orbit high above the atmosphere of Earth. She should follow a mathematically predictable course, subject only to slight variations from the pull of the other satellites and the pull of the moon, plus the small perturbations caused by the changing terrain of the Earth beneath her. She'd have to be badly off course to be out of range of Beam Control.

The elevator dropped MacIlheny down from the computer level to the monitor and control level. The men at the monitor screens didn't look up from their work as MacIlheny passed, but there was a feeling of tension in the air. The monitors knew what had happened.

To the man in Bismarck, North Dakota, or the housewife in Tampa, Florida, the disappearance of the satellite meant nothing more than a slight irritation. If the program they were watching happened to be one that was shunted through Number Four, their screen had simply gone dark for a moment. Then, with apologies for "technical difficulties beyond our control," another program had been switched into the channel.

For the businessman in San Francisco and the government official in New York, the situation was worse. Important intercontinental conferences were cut off in mid-sentence, and vital orders were left hanging in the air.

For seven transcontinental stratoliners, the situation was almost tragic. The superfast, rocket-driven, robot-controlled ships, speeding their way through the lower ozonosphere, fifteen miles above the surface of the Earth, were suddenly without the homing beams they depended upon to guide them safely to their destinations. Their beam-detection instruments went into a search pattern while alarm bells shattered the quiet within. Passengers in the lounges and in the cocktail rooms looked suddenly wide-eyed.

On one of the ships, there was a near panic when one fool screamed: "We're going to crash! Get parachutes!"

Not until the flight captain caught the hysterical passenger on the chin with a hard right uppercut and explained that everything was in good order did the passengers quiet down. He didn't worry them by explaining that there were no parachutes aboard; at eighty thousand feet of altitude and a velocity of over forty miles per minute, a parachute would be worse than useless.

Each of the stratoliners had to be taken over by the flight captain and eased down manually.

MacIlheny had a pretty good idea of what was going on all over the United States, and he didn't like it. He pushed open the door of the Beam Control Section and strode in. Blake met him halfway across the room.

"Nothing yet, as far as contact goes," he said. "We've heard from the spotter station in Topeka; they missed it at the same time we did--1702 hours, two seconds."

MacIlheny glanced at the chronometer on the wall. The satellite had been missing for nearly four minutes now.

"Get the Long Island Observatory; tell 'em to keep an eye peeled for Number Four. It ought to be out of Earth's shadow," MacIlheny ordered. "And start a sweep search with the radar. Cover the whole area. Get a prediction from the Orbit Division; find the cone of greatest probability and search it carefully. Unless the damned thing just blew up, it's got to be up there somewhere!"

"I've already called Orbits," Blake said. "I'll get Long Island on the line." He headed for the phone.

MacIlheny went over to one of the control boards and looked over the instruments. He swept his eyes across them, reading them as a group, in the same way an ordinary man reads a sentence. Satellite Number Four had vanished, as far as the Beam Controls were concerned. Data from the electronic brain indicated that the acceleration of the satellite had been something terrific, but whether it had slowed down or speeded up was something the brain couldn't tell yet.

A thin, sandy-haired man at a nearby board said: "What do you think, Mac?"

"There's only one thing could have done it, Jackson," MacIlheny said. "A meteor."

"That's what we figured. It must have been a doozie!"

"Yeah. But which direction did it hit from? If it hit from the side, Number Four will be twisted around; its new orbit will be at an angle to the old one. If it overtook the satellite from behind, the additional velocity will lift it into a newer, higher orbit. If it was hit from the front, it'll be slowed down, and it may hit the atmosphere."

"Right," MacIlheny agreed. "And meteors just don't travel that fast in that direction."

"No--no, they don't."

MacIlheny felt a sense of frustration. The satellite was gone, vanished he knew not whither. It had disappeared into some limbo which, at the moment, was beyond his reach. Until it was located, either visually or by radar, it might as well not exist.

There was actually nothing further he could do until it was found; he couldn't find it himself.

"What's our next contact?" he asked.

"Satellite Number Eight. It'll be coming over the horizon in--" Jackson glanced at the chronometer. "--in eight minutes, twenty-seven seconds. We'll just have to hold on till then, I suppose."

MacIlheny thought about the stratoplanes he knew were up there. "Yeah," he said tightly. "Yeah. Just wait."

Four minutes came and went, while MacIlheny and the others smoked cigarettes and tried to maintain a certain amount of calm as they waited.

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