"Damn it!" the fat millionaire was thinking, "no state of war exists. Why should that Martian blast the patrol ship and tear away my broadcast antenna with a torp?"
The air was extremely rough. The yacht pitched and yawed, and with the pitching and yawing Charleston found his daughter Ginny at his side.
"Pater, what is wrong?" she queried in a post-deb voice.
"Just following another ship down which acts kind of peculiarly," explained the millionaire. "Wish I could report him to the Authority. Can't, though, a--er--meteor tore away the antenna!"
"Why are you swerving your course?" Unquestionably Ginny knew her rocketships.
"Winds are pretty bad. Seem to be coming full force from the southeast if you can trust the compass. Had to tack around to counteract their force." Charleston of course couldn't admit that his infrareds didn't allow for variable headwinds and compass deviations and therefor weren't as dependable as the Authority's beams.
"Why don't you switch onto the Authority frequency? The beam's on 65 megacycles in case you're interested."
Charleston harrrrumphed again but reached out to switch on the receiver.
Immediately he started receiving the steady hum of the on-course signal, broken at 30 second intervals by the keying of P V, identification signal of the base station. A minute later he heard the dash-dot signifying N, meaning that he was to the left (and in his case presumably to the north) of his course. Keying in the port jets he swung to the right and received the on-course signal again. He noticed with satisfaction that the destroyer had done likewise.
"Ginny," he admitted weakly, "this radio range business is quite _the_ business. Of course the Charleston infrareds--"
It was Charleston's turn to be squelched.
Suddenly the range signals were interrupted by the beam operator's voice:
"PV, Pali-Vanyi. Notice to all spacemen. Due to the unusually adverse weather conditions at surface, the north-south landing beams will be left on permanently until further notice. PV, Pali-Vanyi."
Ten minutes had passed since Ward had begun rotating the goniometer. Ten minutes and Charleston and the destroyer were fifty degrees off the true course. Almost south-south-west of the field now and gradually bearing more to the south.