"Latent Image" by WESLEY LONG Illustrated by Orban [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] John McBride stood on the roof garden of Satan's Hotel, looking across the River Styx at Sharon. To his left, the River Styx emptied into the Sulphur Sea, and in the evening sky to his right, the dancing flames lighted the cloud banks over Mephisto, where the uranium smelters worked on a nonstop plan. John McBride was in Hell. But Hell is a city on Pluto, where the planners had a free hand because no intelligent life had ever scarred the planet until man came with his machinery and his luxury and his seeking for metal. Uranium had been found in plenty on Pluto, and so man had created a livable planet from the coldest, most forbidding planet in the System. John McBride was in Hell, on Pluto, but his mind was dwelling in a little cube that rotated about a mythical spot halfway between Sol and Pluto; one of the many stations that created the space warp that focused Sol on Pluto with an angle of incidence equal to the incidence of Sol on Terra. Enid McBride was back there in that minute station, and John McBride wanted to be with her. But Dr. Caldwell, the resident doctor of the Plutonian Lens, said: "John, if you've got to go to Pluto, that's O.K. But you can't take Enid with you. That's strictly out, with a capital 'O,' get me?" "I suppose--" "I've been doctoring for many years, John. It's safe for you to run off for a week or so, but don't move Enid. Your kid won't be born for a month, yet, but if you subject her to the 4- or 5-G you need to get from here to Pluto, you'll have--not only the baby, but as nasty a mess as you've ever seen! Take it from me, fella, 4-G is worse than a fall if you keep it up for hours. No dice!" "O.K.," said John, unhappily. "She'll be all right?" "Sure," said Caldwell. "Besides, all you can do now is to sit around, bite your fingernails, and ask foolish questions. If I had my way, you'd be away when the youngster is born, that'd save you from a lot of useless worry." "That isn't fair." "I know you feel that way. Enid does too. But it is still sort of futile. You want the right to worry; go ahead and worry. After all, there are enough people around the Lens that know you are worrying. She'll be all right, I tell you!" "You'll let me know if anything turns up?" "That's a promise, John." So John McBride was standing on a roof garden in Hell, thinking how appropriate it was. He was in Hell, all right. Hell was a nice place to be, warm, pleasant, and happily balanced. But it was no place to be when your wife is nineteen hundred million miles away. Ah, well, another week of this and he would be racing homeward.