Beyond Our Control By RANDALL GARRETT Illustrated by RICHARD KLUGA _The "technical difficulties" on Satellite Four became a menace to the entire Earth!_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Infinity January 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] CHAPTER I 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. In Johannesburg, South Africa, the newly-elected President spoke in front of a TV camera. His dark, handsome face was coldly implacable as he said: "They wanted _apartheid_ when they were in power; we see no reason to believe they have changed their minds. They wanted _apartheid_--very well, they shall continue to have _apartheid_!" 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.