by Perry Rhodan
Once the launch had begun, however, any relaxation would be totally out of the question. Everything would follow in rapid succession. Then would begin the ultimate test, which would strain mind and body to the limits of endurance. Then would begin their torture in the narrow body of this roaring monster of molybdenum steel and synthetic fibers.
A gentle light haloed the four flat couches. Millions of pores in their foam rubber mattresses inhaled and exhaled like the alveoli of lungs. These were the last comforts for men who soon would have to endure horrendous stress.
Major Perry Rhodan, ace astronaut of the United States Space Force, opened his eyes. Instantly, almost without transition, his sleep became a state of acute wakefulness.
"You've treated me first?" he asked. It was less an inquiry than a statement. With delight Dr. Fleet observed the commander's ready reflexes. Without a doubt, Rhodan was "all there."
"Exactly as planned, young man," he confirmed softly.
Deliberately, breathing very deeply, the test pilot sat up. Someone removed the thin blanket that seemed itself to breathe. Rhodan wore a loose cut hospital gown that spared his resting body any constricting limitation.
"If I had gorgeous gams like you, Doc," said Rhodan with dry humor, "I might perhaps go along with this masquerade." There was a bright twinkle in his eyes. All the same, his lean and narrow face remained almost devoid of expression.
This mumbled curse upon the nonsense and bother of the "mummery" provoked the first grin on the lips of the men. Offering a catharsis of sorts, it had a magical effect in this somehow unreal situation.
The sound of hollow, stentorian breathing made Rhodan turn his head, Fascinated, he watched the waking-up exercises of his "problem-child," who, like him, had already circumvented the moon. It remained still a mystery to Perry Rhodan how this chubby faced giant, this paradox with the tender skin of a newborn baby and the dishpan hands of a care worn washerwoman, could squeeze into a narrow space capsule.
Captain Clark G. Fletcher, the crew's navigator, was a specialist in astronomy and mathematics, with a secondary interest in physics. He awoke with a display of noise worthy of a mammoth.
"Has my baby arrived yet?" Fletcher's voice roared at once. The imminent blast-off was obviously of far less concern to him. "How about it, Doc? What do you hear from my wife? Have you been looking after her?"
Dr. Fleet sighed in exasperation.
"Listen, son. You have at least another three months to wait. I can't help it if you believe your wife is an anatomical wonder. But if you ask me one more time—"
"It could have happened, couldn't it?" interrupted the giant with the boy's beardless face. "The index of variability for a mathematically unstable structure like the human organism is almost infinite in range. Why, all manner of— That means I'll just have to wait?"
With a wave of soft laughter, the third man on the team indicated that he too had awakened.
Lieutenant Eric Manoli, physician as well as geologist, was the least conspicuous man of the team. He was probably also the most relaxed and most emotionally stable.
He greeted them wordlessly. His glance flew to the clock. Of course, Dr. Manoli would observe the astronaut's most holy unwritten law, which stated clearly and concisely, "Thou shalt never discuss the blast-off, except when absolutely necessary. You have slept, that mind and body may rest undisturbed. Do not defeat the purpose by believing it necessary to occupy yourself immediately with the seriousness of the matter.
It was a simple formula that had proved highly effective.
"Everything all right, Eric?" inquired Rhodan. "I see by your enormous growth of beard that your whiskers have been awake all the time."
"I inherited it from my Italian ancestors," said Manoli, rubbing the black stubble that had appeared on his cheeks during the hibernation. Then he continued, "What is the matter with Reg? He sleeps the sleep of the dead, it seems."
Captain Fletcher swung around on the couch. His right hand landed with a loud slap on the well upholstered shoulders of the fourth crew member, a short, heavyset man obviously inclined toward a pot belly.
Those who knew Captain Reginald Bell would have likened him to an incredibly elastic rubber ball. His apparently plentiful adipose tissue would deceive the simple minded. Indeed, Bell had withstood the eighteen G's in the giant centrifuge far better than the short and sinewy Manoli.
"Idiot!" Bell hissed from among the foam rubber cushions. A broad expanse of face, densely populated by freckles peered out from under the covers. Squinting in Fletcher's direction were a pair of pale blue eyes almost devoid of color.
"I've been wide awake for the last hour," Bell insisted nonchalantly. "The sedative dose was, of course, too weak for a man of my caliber."
"Why, of course," agreed Rhodan, with a straight face. Reg seemed to wither under his gaze. "I admire your consideration. You must have been breathing less than Tutankhamen, just to keep from disturbing us."
"You'll get a medal for that," Fletcher piped up. Snorting and grunting, he rolled his weighty bulk off the flat couch. "But expectant fathers and other wretches have their turn first," he added with emphasis. "I'd still like to know, what real need there is for them to examine us again."
Fletcher suddenly fell silent. With some embarrassment, he looked across at the commander. He had almost broken the unspoken edict.
Rhodan, however, acted as though he had heard nothing. Yawning with studied indifference, he said, "Begin with the baby, Doc. Our circulatory systems should probably be in perfect working order, but please keep the neutralization shots handy anyway."
Perry Rhodan began to consider his own reactions. He too felt a gnawing unrest in the deepest reaches of his unconscious mind. The senseless chatter of the men was obviously a psychological gambit, a displacement activity to relieve their anxiety.
For heaven's sake, don't say a word about the blast-off! It was sure to overwhelm them soon enough, Rhodan was quite certain.
Riding on the roaring gas jets of a nuclear powered, chemical fueled rocket would very likely be indistinguishable from blasting off in an ordinary ship, at least where the subsequent moments of G pressure were concerned. Yet the real pressures would make themselves felt in those depths of the mind which were almost beyond one's control.
The men were afraid. Of course they were–no one had ever denied it. But these men could overcome their fear. That was all that mattered.
Rhodan made a keen but inconspicuous observation of his men. They all seemed well enough. Clark Fletcher was perhaps a bit too restless. He thought too often of the expected baby. If Perry Rhodan could have his way, they would leave Fletcher behind this time. But the team, so carefully coordinated, could not be dismembered. An unknown astronaut could not replace Fletcher successfully, for he would not be assimilated into their Gestalt.
Rhodan had therefore, with resignation, accepted the unavoidable. Otherwise, he could find no grounds for negative appraisal.
CHAPTER TWO
The contour couches were masterpieces of engineering. Hydro-pneumatically controlled, with autogyros that balanced out the slightest shift in weight, they could not have been more comfortable or luxurious.
When the first manned space capsule was designed, great emphasis had been placed on bedding down the astronauts in their couches while they were fully attired in weighty and cumbersome space suits. Then, as now, the men were forced by safety regulations to wear even the pressurized helmets with their transparent visors during blast-off.
Of course, small injuries sometimes occurred as the result of high G forces during acceleration. The most tragic instance had occurred when the first orbital space station was being constructed. An improperly fitted space helmet had caused a broken neck when a ship's acceleration had mounted up to 11.3 G's.
Perry Rhodan had never worn a spacesuit during blast off. This was his special privilege, which he had also extended to his crew. The technicians, however, still considered this unnecessarily risky. With the le
ast tear in the ship's outer shell, an explosive decompression and the consequent creation of a vacuum in the cabin were bound to result. They knew only too well how quickly blood could be brought to a boil under such conditions.
Yet Rhodan had harvested a run of good luck. His ships had never been struck by meteors or torn by engineering stresses while lifting off.
The four men were lying on their contour couches, dressed only in their tight blue uniforms. The spacesuits were hanging on hooks nearby, ready for use at a moment's notice. Rhodan had spared his team a most painful additional strain and certainly the unavoidable pressure sores and bruises.
The last series of control checks was being completed. Far below them, some eighty yards away, the technicians finally withdrew, satisfied with the durability of the stabilizer fins on the first stage.
Captain Bell, electronics technician and specialist in ion reaction engines, needed more time to take stock of his instruments than Rhodan would need in checking out the autopilot ignition and the remote control guidance system.
Fletcher and Manoli were seated behind the two main couches. For the moment, they had nothing to do. The cabin was necessarily very narrow and webbed with countless cables, rubber pipes and flush instrument panels. Everything had been custom built and made to specification. Below the command center were the small living quarters, with their own kitchenette and bath. More space could not be provided the astronauts. Both these rooms lay close beneath the nose cone of the rocket.
Under the cabin and recreation area there was the storeroom, its provisions stocked with utmost care. The men could not approach the remaining section of the rocket. Isolated in the next level were the tanks of liquid hydrogen. Then, pumps and additional pipelines crowded a chamber whose heavy steel alloy walls shielded them from radioactivity. This marked the end of the "safe" zone. Beyond it, there were only the high speed plutonium reactor, needed for the production of power, and the great cavern of the combustion chamber, with all its high pressure valves and thermo-pipe conduits and cooling systems. Here the hydrogen, now volatilized, was brought to expansion.
The minute hand of the chronometer leaped forward to the next number. It was 3:01. The blast-off was scheduled for exactly 3:02.
Rhodan turned his head. He did this with difficulty, now that the foam rubber cushions of his couch had swallowed him up. "Everything okay?" he inquired.
The crew answered with smiles. They were all listening now to the monotonous voice that announced the last minute of the countdown: "Zero minus sixty seconds." For a few moments, they lavished mental ridicule upon this eerie nasal litany. They had gone through this many times, and each time it bored them.
Now, however, even that had changed. It was a nightmare to know that the nuclear reactor was only yards beneath their feet.
"Eighteen… seventeen… sixteen… Fifteen…"
Rhodan pulled the microphone closer to his mouth.
"Final report. Stardust to center." His voice boomed over the loudspeakers. It could be heard everywhere in Nevada Fields, even in the isolated press bunkers.
"All A-okay on board. Next report to follow after ejection of first stage."
"… three… two… one… zero… Ignition… lift-off!"
Things were as they had been each time before. They found that the hull of a spaceship was, despite all efforts at soundproofing, like a sensitive echo chamber. Their ears rang, their whole bodies vibrating like violin strings.
White flickering tongues of flame devoured the darkness of night. With split second timing, the Stardust began to lift off. The slow, majestic ascent was followed by a sudden jolt and a frightening spectacle, as the third stage began to wobble to and fro. This was the single most dangerous moment during the blast-off of a large rocket. The autopilot struggled against the powerful engines to stabilize the ship, which bad barely started to ascend. The shouts and exclamations of the reporters were drowned out by the noise from this battle. It seemed like the end of the world. In sheer magnitude of uproar, only Hiroshima could have equaled this gigantic tumult. Not even within the soundproof bunker could men hear one another speak. Those not wearing acoustic earphones were sentenced, in this moment, to total deafness. Lips were moving, hands were fluttering, but not a word was understood. Every gesture told a tale of utmost worry and concern.
Then, at last, the Stardust began its flight. With the passing of these brief moments of unendurable stasis, the titan surged up suddenly, urgently, as if returning to its natural element.
Prodigious in its production of noise, the Stardust rose up into the blood hued sky of evening.
Moments later, the ship could he seen on camera as a fireball glowing white. Vertically, now in perfect balance, it roared skyward until only its flaming exhaust could be detected, and then as a weak pinpoint of light, which finally disappeared into a cloudless starry sky.
Only a few clicks could be heard over the intercom system. Pounder's face appeared on the video screens. He made the routine announcement. "The Stardust was launched at 3:02 A.M., Pacific Standard Time, according to plan. No irregularities were noted. Later, you will be able to overhear the astronauts reporting from space. The separation of stage one will follow shortly, when acceleration approaches 9.3 G's. According to our calculation, the Stardust will come within the range of the space station within three minutes. Afterward, you will once more be able to see the ship clearly and to follow the separation of the second stage. Now, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that no one is permitted to leave the Nevada Fields area until the Stardust has landed safely on the Moon. This time we are planning a surprise. That is all. Thank you, gentlemen."
General Pounder finished with a smile.
"Five seconds to first stage separation," the voice of a technician droned over the loudspeakers in the control room. "No deviation from course. Everything proceeding as planned. Two … one … contact."
The electronic autopilot computers switched over with incredible precision. No one moved: no one even lifted a finger. On one side of the room were the engineer's, with goggling eyes and nerves on edge, and on the other, in contrast, the newsmen waited with stoic composure.
From the loudspeakers, there issued the signal that acknowledged the completed separation. Now two separate blips were seen on the radar observation screen. Remote control took over the landing of the cast off section of the rocket, the booster stage.
The subsequent interval of recovery gave the crew of the Stardust eight seconds. The electronic brain was already preparing the procedure for the acceleration of the second stage.
Perry Rhodan's voice was calm but perhaps a bit choked. "Rhodan speaking. No deviation. Vibration within normal limits. Crew is ready for the ignition of stage two."
He did not have to say anything more. This was enough for the scientists and supervisors in the ground stations on Earth. The Stardust was racing through space.
Rhodan glanced quickly around the cabin. Reginald Bell was all right, and neither Fletcher nor Manoli seemed to have suffered from the 9.3 G's. Now it was time for the reactor to do its part in adding thrust to the second stage. Rhodan could feel the moisture in his palms. With senses as keen as an animal's, he waited; but be heard nothing out of the ordinary. For a few moments, all had become quiet.
A sudden jolt came next. This was accompanied by a howl that seemed to penetrate every single molecule of the ship and its crew. Once again, the broad hull of this vessel had become an echo chamber.
Immediately thereafter, the acceleration increased to eight G's. So far, no means had been devised to lessen the ordeal to follow.
Rhodan could feel the drugs working on his circulatory system. His body was still holding out against the stress, but breathing was an agony. Unable to move a muscle, he stared heavy-lidded at the video control panel suspended close above his head.
It seemed an eternity before the G pressures were reduced once more to the normal value of one gravity. It was a brief respite for the crew, a mom
entary interlude, lasting approximately seven seconds, which had been exactly calculated to take the best advantage of the efficiency of the power plant.
Rhodan croaked his customary "Everything okay!" into the microphone. His eyes responded to the bright symbols flashing by his face, but he no longer understood their meaning. Then came the second interval, for the further acceleration of stage two.
Three seconds later, they had exceeded escape velocity. Once the speed of twelve miles per second had been attained, the separation of the second stage followed so abruptly that the zero gravity it produced had the effect of a sledgehammer blow.
The men felt themselves pulled upward, and their bodies strained mightily against the broad straps of their contour couches.
For a few seconds, Rhodan lost consciousness. When he opened his eyes again, the red glow in front of his eyes had subsided. They were already well along in free flight, with speed undiminished. By that time, the Stardust had passed beyond the orbit of the space station and was drifting, as though suspended in a fluid media, some 2,000 miles above the surface of Earth.
Now they had a short time to recover. Theoretically, the present velocity of the ship would suffice to free them from the attraction of Earth's gravity. Theoretically, without any additional propulsion, they could travel to any point in the universe.
But the distance was great between theory and practice. Although they had overcome her gravitational pull, Earth insisted on making her presence known by restraining the flight of the spaceship.
Furthermore, it was not enough simply to continue straight through in this trajectory. One still had to perform a great many maneuvers for which data had not yet been computed in every detail. They would have to calculate and compensate for the smallest deviation from course.
