The Ranger Boys in Space

by Hal Clement

  It did, somewhat later.

  However, whatever this place might be, it was a long walk from the Mountains of Light. He might as well get back up a few miles and find them; they were what he was interested in, and anyway he could probably see more from a mountain top when he did get there. He walked back to the ship—at least, the moon's gravity made walking in the space suit a lot easier than it had been on Earth—and climbed the rungs up to the air lock. The door controls worked normally and he entered without trouble, but that was more than could be said for the drive.

  Tumble had closed his master switches and turned up half a gravity of acceleration without strapping himself into his seat, and at first he thought that there must be some safety control that no one had told him about which kept the motor from working if the pilot were not safetied at his post. However, fastening his straps made no difference. The motor refused to work.

  He unstrapped, rechecked his suit, and went outside to look things over, but he could see nothing wrong with the drive unit from there. Back inside, he looked helplessly at the panel of switches, knobs, and indicators, and wondered what to do. He was not an engineer, and even if he had been able to get the covers off the panels, the sight of the wiring inside would not have helped him. He did not know whether it was a general power failure, or....

  But wait a minute. His lights, at least the ones on the instrument panel, still worked. So did the cabin ones, as he found by experiment. The failure could not be general, then; perhaps his side jets—the tiny thrust units used normally for turning the rocket so that its main engine pointed in the right direction—might be working. He tried one, without stopping to think.

  It worked, and that was a trifle unfortunate, for Tumble had not considered what would happen if it did. He should have tested two at a time, with the two pointing in opposite directions. As it was, the thrust of the single unit was quite enough to start the tall cylinder of the Tumbiesauce—which was not too well balanced anyway, since Tumble had forgotten to extend its props before landing—tipping gently over.

  The boy was a shade slow in realizing what was happening, since his eyes were on his control panel and he had just spent a good many days learning not to believe his sense of balance. He was halfway over when he •started the opposite steering jet; since the ground was not quite level and the Tumbiesauce had already rolled a short distance barrel-fashion, that unit was not pointing in the right direction to straighten the ship up again. It slewed violently sideways, landed in a horizontal position with a clang of metal on rock, and rolled over twice before stopping. Tumble had not been strapped in, and it was luck and his space suit which saved him from a good collection of broken bones.

  Since the Tumbiesauce was lying with her air lock underneath, the boy had to do a bit of maneuvering before anything at all could be accomplished. By standing on the inner door of the lock, he could reach the control panel easily enough and give a brief jolt of power to another side jet; then he had to move fast to save himself from another fall, since there was no way to strap himself in that position. Eventually he had the rocket lying with its air lock on the side, however, and was free to consider his next move.

  He could never handle the side jets well enough to stand the ship up again; he knew that. He would not dare use the main drive even if it worked, since it would simply send the ship skidding along the surface of the moon to tear open against the first projection of rock it might hit. Much as he disliked the thought, it looked as though he would have to call for help.

  Unfortunately for this idea, the radio did not work either. Since the small rockets were meant for work principally in space, no particular attempt had been made to streamline them; and the transmitting antennae projected from their sides. The rolling of the Tumble-sauce had of course broken these off. The receiver was working, but no signals were coming through. Tumble 'listened for a long time to make sure of that.

  There was an excellent reason for the lack of messages. The station was at the moment over the south pole of the earth, and below the horizon from Tumble's part of the moon. Its course took it from there to the far side of the earth, and by the time it reappeared at the north no message would have done any good.

  Tumble could think of only one more idea. He realized that Bowen and the others knew of his interest in the Mountains of Light. Undoubtedly the other small rockets would come in search of him, and that was the logical place for them to search. He had better be there when they arrived.

  He removed his helmet and ate as much as he could hold of the food he had stowed on board the rocket. There would be no way to eat it later; that was one provision which had not been made in the space suits. He took a good drink of water, though the suit did recondense what he breathed out; then he took a last look at the control room, climbed awkwardly out the air lock, and prepared for his long walk.

  It now was necessary to decide which of the several elevations which he thought must be mountain groups at the horizon was the one he wanted. He had lost his direction completely during the landing, and was not astronomer enough to regain it from the direction of the sun and the earth. The stars might work, but he could not see them, and the sun might be days in setting, if it ever did.

  Then he remembered that with no air, it should be possible to see the stars anyway if he got the glare of the sun and the surrounding rocks out of his eyes. He backed against the hull of the rocket, folded his arms between his face and the sunlit hills in front of him, and looked directly up.

  The stars were clear enough; there were just too many of them. Whatever minute traces of atmosphere the moon might have meant nothing as far as cutting off starlight went. It took a long time to recognize any of the few constellations he knew among all the extra points of light, but at last he picked out the Big Dipper, and from that was able to find the North Star.

  That satisfied him. The Mountains of Eternal Light lie close to the north pole of the moon—so close that the sun never sets there, as Tumble well knew. That meant that if he reached the north pole, the mountains would have to be above the horizon, and should be easy to recognize. He was sure he could not be very far from the pole.

  The North Star was very high above the horizon, so it was a little difficult to use it to decide which way was north; but after several checks, the boy felt he had picked the spot on the horizon that was most nearly under it.

  For just a moment longer he hesitated. He looked sorrowfully at the Tumblesauce, for he had grown fond of the little rocket; then he faced resolutely in the direction he had chosen, and started to walk.

  17

  OPERATION SICK BAY

  BOWEN did not wait for Tumble to report himself in trouble before getting into action. As far as the man was concerned, the young idiot was already in trouble, and the possibility that he might get out of it by himself was not worth considering for a moment.

  Although there was no question that something had to be done, there was less agreement about what it should be. The Ranger brothers were all for starting after the Tumblesauce in their own rockets. Bowen had a hard time convincing them that they were not much more likely to keep out of trouble than Tumble himself —they simply weren't adequately trained. If anything, Tumble was the best pilot of the lot, according to the instructors.

  "But, Uncle Jim, you're not worried about Tumble's piloting abilities; you said it was his general knowledge of what to expect, and his navigation. Pete, at least, is way ahead of Tumble in both those points, even if Dart and I aren't."

  "I know, but none of you is good enough to risk that far from the station. Besides, what could you do? That young idiot will certainly try to land on the moon, and he'll do it before you could possibly get there. Probably there won't be enough left of him or his rocket to see from above, and there are too many holes in the moon's surface already to be able to tell where he hit that way."

  "But we have to look. We can't just forget him."

  "Of course. But before you look, we can do two things: we c
an get you some practice in simulated gravity landings, so that at least your necks won't be broken if you have to go down to pick up his pieces, and we can start a search for the kid with the telescope."

  Peter jerked upright in his seat, and several of the other listeners looked a trifle surprised.

  "But—you couldn't possibly see either him or his rocket in any telescope in the world at this distance, to say nothing of the little thing we have in the station here."

  Bowen nodded slowly—and grimly.

  "You're quite right. We can't possibly spot him from here. We can't coordinate a search by you boys very effectively from here. Nevertheless, we're going to search." He looked around at the group of men seated in the big assembly room. "Does anyone feel that we don't have to do our absolute best to find that kid? Does anyone feel that it's not our fault he's out there? Sure, I know we didn't ask him to steal that rocket, but we taught him to use it; we gave him the idea that he was better than any of us, and that none of us had any right giving him instructions. My boys here know the difference between brains, or common sense, or whatever you want to call it, and the ability to float around in free fall without having your stomach tied in knots, but that kid is younger than they are, and I don't think he's had as much chance to learn to use his head as they did. He knows he can stand space better than we can; to him, that means the same as saying that he's a better spaceman than we are. We might have gotten the difference across to him if he'd been around long enough—and if he lives through this, which I don't expect him to, maybe it will teach him something. But can anyone here say it isn't up to us to find him if he's findable?"

  There was silence for several seconds; then one of the men in the back cleared his throat. Bowen looked as though he would have used a gun had there been one around. "Yes, Mr. Polcek?"

  "I just wanted to remark, Dr. Bowen, that you're quite right, but that there's another reason than plain duty for searching. I rather like the little pest." There was a general hum of agreement, and Bowen's expression relaxed.

  "You'd better command during the shift, Dr. Bowen," Wetzel added. "You can coordinate our emergency pilots better."

  "Good enough. In that case, the only question is the program. It will obviously be necessary to train at least one, and preferably all three, of these boys to make at least the preliminary maneuvers of this station "

  "What?" asked Bart, who had not seen quite all that was behind the last few words of the men.

  "Quite simple, Bart. The station will have to get out of this orbit, into another which will take it to the moon, and from that into another around the moon so arranged that we can search as thoroughly as possible with the telescope. To change orbits, we will have to stop the spin; it is very doubtful that any of us will be able to hold out without weight long enough to get a new orbit set up. We will try, of course, but I imagine that before it's done we will all have had to use the pills, and you boys will have to finish up the course corrections and get the station spinning again."

  "I—I see. But—can't you take the pills first and let us do the whole job? Then you'd be all right when you woke up; the way you suggest, some of you may be in bad shape for weeks."

  "True enough. The reason is time. We could train you to do the whole job, but to be absolutely sure would take days. This way we can take the chance of a shorter training, and the longer we last to do the job ourselves the less you'll have to worry about forgetting something. We'll write out directions, or course, but it isn't always possible to read such things fast enough—you've found that out already, I expect."

  "That's true. All right, what are we waiting for?"

  "Nothing. Come on." Bowen rose and started toward the main control room of the station, followed by the boys, the four pilots now on board, and the ballisticians, who had also been acting as instructors to the boys during their training.

  "The maneuver shouldn't take too long," Uncle Jim went on. "Stopping the spin without damaging any equipment will take about two minutes, and to swing the station so that its main drive is pointed right will take between two and three minutes with the tiny steering motors we have. That's about five minutes, and that's the critical time; if we can last through it, we're all right. After we're lined up we can put on one gravity of acceleration and be comfortable.

  "Stopping the spin won't take any skill, but lining up right will; we'll have to do a bit of calculating to find just what the right line is, and then just what steering motors to use to put the station on it. That last will depend on just where Motor Number One is when we stop spinning, and the directions may have to be a bit general for that reason. That, primarily, is why it would take so long to train you boys to do the job, and why it would be best if one of the regular pilots could last long enough for it."

  For a few moments, the boys had had glowing pictures of commanding the huge station while all the grown men slept through its maneuvers; but Uncle Jim's outline of the problem took a good deal of the attractiveness from the picture. The brothers were just barely able to see what the problem was, and it came close to scaring them. Peter saw very clearly, and came that much closer to being scared. No one hoped more fervently than he that the pilot would be able to keep control of himself through the time of changing weight.

  The next few hours were busy. Again and again Bowen and the pilots went over the controls with the boys; again and again the observers and astronomers checked their calculations as to the time when spin would have to come off the station, what its new heading should be, and how to get pointed that way. Actually, the entire problem could have been set up on automatic controls, as the flight of the Polaris had been —if only the station had been equipped with them. It had never been intended to leave its original orbit, however, and it was fortunate for everyone concerned that the plan of dismantling its main motors and taking them back to Niagara had not yet been carried out.

  The hours passed while the station swung across the Antarctic Continent, northward over the darkened Pacific, and into the eight-thousand-mile-wide column of space where the earth hid the moon from view. Some of the observers had been attempting to catch a glimpse of the Tumbiesauce, foolish as they knew such a hope to be; now they stopped, along with the radio operators who had been listening for messages from the missing rocket. They did not relax, however, for there was still plenty to be done. The people who were not needed, or who could not help in the coming maneuver, went to their quarters, made sure everything loose there was fastened down, and improvised sheets or blankets into harnesses which would keep them in their bunks while weight was gone—and when it came back in a new direction. Some of them may have planned to stay awake at first to see whether they could take it this time, but none of them really expected to be able to.

  Similar precautions were taken all through the inhabited part of the station. In the control room, the seats were already designed so that a man sitting in one could reach his controls, whichever direction happened to be down, but a good deal of movable material had gathered there during the weeks the station had been spinning. Once spin ceased and the station began accelerating toward the moon, all that stuff would fall to the new floor —and might hit a man or a control switch on the way. Everything had to be checked; time and again the boys thought the job had been done when someone pointed out another item to be removed or fastened. Peter decided that when he got back to Earth he could make money betting his friends that they couldn't go into an ordinary kitchen and list in one hour all the articles which would move if the house were suddenly turned on its side. He felt like an expert himself, by now.

  The moon appeared again, seen across the wastes of the Arctic, but no sign or signal of Tumble registered on telescope or radio. Room after room was now being reported ready for maneuvers, and gradually the earth's gravity swung the big metal drum of the station into a line as close as it would get to that needed for the long flight.

  The answers had come from the calculators, had been checked, and had agreed with each ot
her. The crew, except for the boys, Bowen, and the pilots, were fastened in their bunks ready to take their sedatives when the signal came.

  In the control room, Bowen and the two pilots were strapped in their chairs, with one of the boys standing behind each of them. The boys themselves had firm grips on some of the numerous hand straps attached at various places on walls and furniture, and like the men were watching the outside view screen which had been set on Earth. The edge of the planet was fixed on the crossed lines of the screen, and a star was approaching it slowly. The edge was hard to locate definitely because of the blurring caused by the atmosphere, but a photocell had been rigged to sound an alarm when the atmosphere cut down the star's light by fifty percent. From then on, all actions would follow a strict schedule. Actually, the program was being controlled by time, and had already been set up; the photocell observation was simply a final check that the station was still in its regular orbit.

  Tension mounted as the star approached the line; the hands of the boys tightened against the chair backs and those of the pilots strayed constantly nearer their switches. A clock set in the wall was also the object of frequent glances; its second hand should reach the quarter-minute at the same moment the alarm sounded.

  Actually, the alarm was five seconds late, but the pilots had seen that its error could not be great and had not waited for it. Skilled hands flashed from switch to switch, the boy's eyes following their motions closely, and everyone in the room felt the queer, sideward lurch as the station's spin began to slow. For several seconds "down" seemed merely to shift a few degrees to one side, so that walls and floor appeared to be on a noticeable slant; then weight began to decrease enough to be felt. The boys tightened their handholds, but no longer let the falling sensation bother them; the pilots seemed too busy to notice it, at least for the moment. Bowen, however, tensed visibly in his seat. Bart, behind him, could guess what was going on in his mind as weight grew steadily less and the seeming fall grew faster and faster. The man's hands tightened on the arms of his seat, and by sheer effort of will he kept his attention on the clock and the maneuver checklist.