The Scarlet Lake Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story
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CHAPTER V
Project Pegasus
Dr. Gerald Gould, known to the staff as "Gee-Gee," looked more like ahigh school football coach than a scientist. His blond hair was croppedshort, and his face was boyish except for a beautifully waxedmilitary-style mustache. His speech was a remarkable combination ofslang and rocket jargon.
He asked, "Do you know vector analysis?"
Rick shook his head. "No, sir."
"Hmmm. Well, boy-oh, we'll plant you with the electronic cooks in thespaghetti department. It says in your job application that you've hadplenty of experience in circuit wiring. Roger?"
"Yes, sir." Rick understood that he was to join the technicians in thewiring department. His eyes kept wandering into the huge shed thathoused the project on which he was to work. He identified rocketsections, and pretty big ones at that. The rocket was not assembled, butapparently it would tower several stories into the air when assembly wascomplete. One thing puzzled, him, however. One section obviously hadwings. They couldn't be anything else, even though they were tiny andthin as knives. He hadn't heard anything about rockets with wings.
Dr. Gould saw that he was staring with interest at the activity in theshed and grinned sympathetically. "Ever see a big rocket before?"
"Only in pictures," Rick replied.
"Well, you'll see plenty of them before we're through here."
Rick hesitated. "Sir, is it okay to ask what this is all about?"
"Sure it's okay. We have three projects underway at present. In the shedon the left is Orion, which is a two-stage rocket for deep penetrationinto the exosphere. It's about ready to shoot. In the shed on the rightis Cetus, a sounding rocket for ionospheric measurements."
Dr. Gould paused. "If you don't get me, speak up and I'll scoop you theanswers. Roger so far?"
Rick nodded. "I'm with you." He understood from the scientist'sexplanation that Orion was to travel far into the exosphere, actuallybeyond the atmosphere, while Cetus was a smaller, single-stage rocketfor research in the ionosphere, the ionized layer of atmosphere justbeyond the stratosphere. The projects, he realized, were named forconstellations.
"In this shed we have Pegasus."
"Pegasus was a winged horse," Rick commented, "And aren't those airfoilson that rocket section near the back of the shed? Is that theconnection?"
Dr. Gould chuckled. "Sharp-oh! Those are indeed airfoils. Wings forPegasus. Now make with the reason, if you can."
Rick pondered. He knew rockets achieved stability through fins, orsteerable motors, and that wings were no help. Furthermore, there wasn'tenough air for wings to be of use beyond the atmosphere where the bigrockets traveled. He could see no reason for wings, and said so.
"You're not looking far enough ahead," Dr. Gould said severely. "Put onyour spaceman's helmet. Connect up and think. You're on Space PlatformNumber One and you want to come home to Terra. What are the wings for?"
Light dawned. Rick's chin dropped on his chest and stayed there. Finallyhe gasped, "You mean the wings are to turn the upper section into aglider in order to land it again?"
Dr. Gould put a hand on his shoulder and nodded gravely. "Ole Gee-Gee ispleased with you. You have demonstrated something between the earsbesides strawberry Jello. You have just described the objective ofProject Pegasus. We intend to shoot the beast into space and bring thetop stage home again by drone control."
The scientist grew serious. "It's not an easy thing, young Brant. No onehas yet succeeded in getting a big rocket down in one piece. If we cando it, we'll be one step through the biggest barrier to manned spaceflight.
"You will work on wiring in the drone control section. Just rememberthat every touch of your soldering iron is critical. Take no chances atall; everything must be perfect. Do your job and do it well, and somedayyou'll be able to say that you made the big horse's wings work when itreally counted. Now come on, and I'll introduce you to Dick Earle andyou can get started."
Dick Earle turned out to be a bigger and darker copy of Gee-Gee. He hadthe same crew cut and mustache, but his hair was jet black.
Rick also met Dr. Carleton Bond, a tall, slender man of advanced yearswho was a consultant on drone controls, and Frank Miller, a studious,rather curt young man who was an electronics design engineer.
He began to make some order out of the organization. Gee-Gee Gould waselectronics chief for all three projects. Dick Earle was electronicschief for Pegasus, under Gould, and there were also electronics chiefsfor Orion and Cetus. Similarly, the projects had air-frame departments,propulsion departments, instrumentation departments, and administrativedepartments.
Each project also had a technical director, who was a sort ofco-ordinator, trouble shooter, and general expert. The technicaldirectors reported to Dr. John Gordon, on loan from Spindrift, who hadthe title of Senior Project Engineer.
Later, Rick explained it to Scotty. "Each project has its own staff, butthere's a top staff that is responsible for all projects. I'm making alittle sense out of it, but people keep showing up that I can't fit intothe organization."
"They're probably support people," Scotty explained. "Seems the base isdivided into two groups; the scientific gang and the support gang. I'min support, in the vehicle maintenance section. Lomac runs the wholesupport group. Besides transportation, there's the tracking andmonitoring gang--that's what Big Mac and Pancho are in--the machine-shopgang, and all the housekeeping facilities like the fire department, thesecurity force, housing and feeding, and so on."
The boys' roommates turned out to be a security officer named HankLeeming and one of the janitors, an elderly man of Mexican descent namedMaximilian Rodriguez.
On the second day of work Rick met another interesting character,although a nonhuman one, and got an additional duty imposed on him.
He was at work installing a tiny servomotor in the drone control unitwhen something landed on his head and gripped his hair firmly.Instinctively he started to swing at it, but Dr. Bond's voice stoppedhim in time.
"Easy, Rick! He won't hurt you."
Rick reached up carefully and his hands met fur. He lifted the littlecreature down and stared at it, his lips slowly parting in a grin. Itwas a tiny monkey no larger than a squirrel, with soft brown fur andtufted ears. The little animal pulled free, jumped onto Rick's shoulderand kissed him ecstatically, making happy chirrupy noises.
"What on earth is a monkey doing here?"
Dr. Bond smiled. "Prince Machiavelli is more than a monkey," he replied."Actually, he is a true marmoset of the genus _Callithrix_. He is also agenuine spacemonk."
"A what?"
The elderly scientist smiled. "Spacemonk. The simian equivalent ofspaceman. The Prince has been into space twice now. Fortunately, thenose section was parachuted down intact both times, so he survived.Other spacemonks have been less fortunate. He will be our surrogate forProject Pegasus."
Rick stared at the little creature with increased interest. The marmosetwas to substitute, then, for human occupants of the big rocket. His lifewould depend on their ability to get the winged nose section down in onepiece. He stroked the tiny spacemonk gently, and got a contented seriesof chirps in response.
Dick Earle walked in and smiled as the monkey snuggled down happily inRick's cupped hands. "Looks as if you've made a friend, Rick. Good. Inaddition to your other duties you can take over as the monk's keeper. Hewon't be any trouble. Sometimes I think he has better manners than someof the staff." Earle turned and walked out again.
Rick stared after him. "What was that last crack about?"
Dr. Bond smiled. "Dick has his problems. I won't gossip, but you'll soonsee what I mean."
The elderly consultant's prediction came true in short order. The nextday, Rick ran headlong into an unwarranted and particularly nastydressing down at the hands of Frank Miller. Rick, annoyed with himselffor having done a rather poor job of connecting up the servomotor, wasbusily ripping it out when Miller came over to see what he was doing.Without waiting for an explanation, the design e
ngineer launched into atirade. Rick's face slowly reddened and his temper grew frayed. It wasso completely unjust that he was on the verge of swinging at theengineer when Dick Earle walked in.
Earle asked crisply, "What's this all about?"
Miller turned on him. "You're supposed to be in charge here, but you letsloppy work like this go on! What good does it do for me to designcircuits if--"
Earle cut him off. "Shut up, Frank. Rick, what's your story?"
Rick clenched his hands. "I installed this servo, and didn't do a cleanjob of it. It was pretty sloppy. So I pulled it out to do it over again.I won't settle for anything less than perfect work. But he came alongand jumped on me without letting me explain what I was doing."
Earle nodded. "All right. Go ahead with your work. Frank, you are notthis boy's supervisor. Let him alone."
Miller glared at the electronics chief, then turned on his heel andstalked out of the shop. Earle watched him go, his pleasant face sober."I'm sorry, Rick. Frank is like that, and I don't know why. I suspect hehas troubles of some sort and takes it out on us. Try to overlook it,because he's an extremely competent engineer. We'd have great troublereplacing him."
Rick nodded. "Yes, sir."
The work progressed smoothly. Rick finished the part he was working onand was assigned another. He met other members of the project, includingPhil Sherman and Charlie Kassick who, like himself, were technicians atwork on wiring and assembly. He met Cliff Damon, chief of theinstrumentation section, who showed him the intricate devices used totrack the big rockets and to record just about everything that went oninside them.
It was pleasant and exciting, and only the incident with Frank Millermarred the contentment Rick felt at being a part of Pegasus. Then, nearthe end of his first week on the job, Miller dropped in and watched Rickat work for a moment. The boy tensed, but said nothing beyond a civilgood morning.
Miller cleared his throat. "Brant, I want to apologize."
Rick looked up in surprise.
"I'm known as a crank, and I guess I deserve the reputation. But justbecause I feel rotten doesn't mean I have to take it out on you. I'msorry."
Rick looked at the engineer thoughtfully. Miller was apparently sincere."That's all right," he said. "Why do you feel rotten, if you don't mindmy asking?"
"Ulcers. The doctor says the only way to cure them is to get out of thisbusiness, and go into something with less stress and strain. But Ican't. I've been a rocketeer ever since I graduated from college, and Ican't leave. So if I snap at you, please forget it."
Rick nodded. "I'll play it that way if you say so."
"Thanks." Miller turned and walked out.
The design engineer was polite enough after that, and Rick discountedthe few times when he appeared too curt. So, with pleasant workingconditions all around, the work fell into an exciting routine. The dayspassed and the drone control began to shape up as a complete unit.Meanwhile, other sections of the big rocket were readied, and the firsttwo stages, now completely assembled, were loaded on their specialtrucks and taken to the firing area.
In the next shed, Orion was almost ready. The rocket stages were truckedto the firing pad assigned to the project and the staff vanished fromnext door. They had moved their base of operation to the blockhouse andthe pad. Time for the Orion shoot was only two days off.
Rick saw little of Scotty. His pal was at work in the vehiclemaintenance shed, and making friends of his own. The two met only atnight, usually at bedtime, because the entire base was working overtime.
The work was so absorbing that Rick actually forgot for long periods thereason for his presence on the base. To be sure, he heard much about themysterious Earthman, but it was all a rehash of the earlier sabotageattempts, mixed with pretty wild speculation. Scotty reported that amongthe mechanics, machinists, and housekeeping staffs, the Earthman wasregarded with considerable fear and superstition.
Then, with shattering impact, the Earthman returned from the realm oflegend to stark reality!