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"I started writing in the 1930's when I was eighteen years old. And deep inside me I'm still eighteen and it's still 1938."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Seetee Blinker | ||
| A marker of contraterrene matter (antimatter) asteroids, to aid in interplanetary navigation. |
If your standard matter ship encountered a seetee asteroid, annihilation would result!
| The seetee blinker was Drake's own invention, made many years ago. It was a necessary task of the Guard to mark the contraterrene bodies, whenever they were identified, so that ships and miners might avoid them - yet no man, or work of man, could touch them unconsumed...
The blinker was a spiderlike frame of meteoric iron, set to circle in a narrow planetary orbit about the body to be marked. The whirling arms carried mirrors of sodium foil, tilted to reflect the Sun's rays through colored filters in a sequence of warning flashes. The signals were listed, with data on the objects marked, in the "Ephemeris and Register". The oldest beacons had been spinning for nearly forty years, perfect machines, requiring neither fuel nor attention. |
| Technovelgy from Collision Orbit,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Astounding in 1942 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the space beacon from Troubled Star (1952) by George O. Smith and to the hyperspace beacon from The Repairman (1959) by Harry Harrison. Also, distinguish from the space-beacon (in the sense of a landing signal) from Exploration Team, a 1956 story by Murray Leinster.
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'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.'
'Detailed plans for the construction of the Gundstetter-Halone warp drive were flowing.'
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
