by Jerry
The ship shuddered as the motor went through transition to main-stage. The fuel Lopping lines fell free.
“And one . . . and zero!”
The motor smoothed into maximum-thrust operation just as the booster rockets fired. The Athena broke ground.
Tim felt the acceleration build up, then drop slightly as the boosters burned out and separated. The Athena was now driving skyward under the straining drive of her jet. He strained to hear the plus-time count-off in his headset over the thunder of the motor.
“Plus twenty . . .”
Something wasn’t right, however. He sensed it long before the call came from Control.
“Plus thirty. . . . Athena, you are not programming! You are failing to program! Your course is still vertical!”
Frantically, he got the stand-by autopilot into the circuit, but the panel lights indicated the situation hadn’t changed. They were not curving to the east.
“Athena, your course is still vertical! Cut it! Cut it!”
Tim checked the guidance system, trying to maneuver the ship to the horizontal before cut-off. He got no response.
“Mel! Cut-off! Cut-off! Dump propellants!” Tim shouted.
The acceleration ceased with suddenness.
“Cut-off!” the power officer announced. “Dumping propellants! Fires in operation!”
“All hands!” Tim went on. “We failed to program into trajectory! The motor gimbals are jammed! Stand by to abandon ship!”
He broke out sweating. Bailing out of an ascending spaceship is no way to live to a ripe old age. The chances of getting down alive are about one in a hundred.
“Propellants overboard,” Mel announced.
“Spaceship Athena, this is White Sands Control! We have the data on your—”
“Shut up!” Tim yelled at Jack, who was in turn yelling over the intercom.
The voice of White Sands Control suddenly boomed through the ceiling speaker, “. . . from radar data, your cut-off velocity was approximately 10,000 feet-per-second. You are in a vertical trajectory which will peak in the vicinity of 400 miles. Impact prediction, Las Cruces area. Can you blow the ship?”
Las Cruces! Tim did some rapid mental figuring. Given: vertical trajectory peaking at 400 miles with cut-off velocity of 10,000 feet-per-second. Vertical trajectory!
Coreolis effect: 20 miles west! Las Cruces!
It figured. There it was, as plain and reliable as the law of gravitation and the principles of ballistics. While the Athena was climbing to 400 miles and dropping back again, the earth was turning under her. Her vertical velocity vector was changing, but her horizontal vector remained constant. When she returned to the earth, she would not fall back on the launching site, but on a point twenty miles to the west on Las Cruces. It would do no good to blow the ship. The pieces would still fall in the area. Besides, there were no explosives aboard.
Tim swallowed hard. “All hands, abandon ship! Get out of this coffin! Move! The pods will give you some chance of getting down alive!”
Jack was floating out of his couch and toward the hatch to the lower deck when he noticed that Tim was still strapped to his couch. “Come on!”
“I’m slaying. Get out of here!”
“Like hell you are!”
“I said, get out! I’m going to try to use the control surfaces to pull this bucket east a little bit when she hits the atmosphere. I’ve got to keep it from splattering Cruces, but you’ve got the right to get out. Beat it!”
“Tim!”
“I said, get out!”
A minute Inter, he felt four concussions as the pressurized escape pods were ejected from the ship. They would offer a slim chance for the crew to get back down alive. He suddenly felt very much alone.
Alone, to ride her in to death and try to use the control surfaces on the gliding wings to divert the fall just a little before they burned off.
He gritted his teeth. So this was the way it felt to die! He knew there was absolutely no chance of getting out of the ship, once she started back in. She would turn white-hot when she slammed vertically into the atmosphere at 10,000 feet-per-second. Even if he managed to get into a pod and eject it, he could never survive the tremendous deceleration necessary to bring him gently to rest on the ground. Getting out and staying alive were both, completely and irrevocably, impossible.
“Spaceship Athena, this is White Sands. We count only four pods ejected. Is there still someone in the ship? Standing by for you——” The radio broke the silence.
Hands trembling, Tim reached for the mike button.” White Sands, this is Pilot Withers of the Athena. Yeah, I’m still with the ship.”
“What are you doing in there, man?”
“I’m riding her down. There’s a chance I can deflect my fall enough when I hit the atmosphere again that, I won’t hit Cruces. What’s the latest dope on my trajectory?”
“What? You’re riding? Trajectory? Wait one——” There was a pause. “Latest impact prediction, three hundred yards inside the eastern city limits. If you can deflect eastward at full control movement, Withers, you’ll clear the populated area by about two miles. Impact will then be on an uninhabited stretch of the Jornada del Muerto.”
The Jornada del Muerto, the stretch of barren desert mesa that ran northward along the east side of the Rio Grande Valley. To the ancient Spaniards who found this the only way for a wagon train to get north to Santa Fe, this stretch of wasteland was literally a “journey of death,” for there was no water for two hundred miles along it.
The Jornada del Muerto, covered with the rotting, sun-bleached bones of men, wagons, cattle and spaceships.
“I’ll do my best before the control surfaces burn off,” Tim replied.
“Good man. The computer here says you’ve got about seven minutes,” the voice from White Sands told him. “Uh . . . do you want us to try to get a chaplain to the mike?”
“What for?” Tim snapped. “I’m already a dead man!”
A dead man. I wonder what it feels like to be dead, he asked himself. And he broke out in a fit of trembling. He admitted to himself that he was scared, and wished he’d had them bring a chaplain to the mike. Right now he needed someone to tell him there was nothing to be afraid of, to reassure him that the end did not bring eternal darkness, to reaffirm there was something more to a man than just his material existence.
He caught a look out the port. The earth below was a great map spread out for him, the cloud hanks a gleaming white, the desert a streak of ruddy brown. As the ship slowly rolled, he saw the smear of white that marked the White Sands Monument, and the black smudge of the malpais lava beds. The mountain areas were dark blue-green, and the strip of greens and browns running through the desert he knew to be the Rio Grande Valley.
Somewhere in that strip of green below him was Las Cruces, his home, his family.
He visualized Las Cruces again, the little town nestled down by the Rio Grande; a sleepy little place that had suddenly been jolted out of its age-old heritage to become the rocket capital of the world. Yet, with the rockets thundering overhead, the Spanish-Americans still spoke in the musical tones of Spanish, dried chili peppers in the hot Bun on their roofs, tossed corn to the chickens scurrying about in the dust of their yards, and sat on their steps listening to the evening buzz of the cicadas. The cotton farmers still looked out over their broad green fields and inspected the annual crop which would ripen in a few months. The town stilt moved with the slow pace of its founders, the Spaniards and Mexicans. The crosses were still carried up Tortugas Hill every year. The cool irrigation ditches flowed with water in the warm noon sun, and children probably were playing along their banks. In the row after row of houses, the wives of the rocket men were just starting the noon meal, and his kids were coming home from school for lunch.
He saw his own home again with the cigarette bum on the living-room rug, the leaky connection on the air cooler, and the dripping kitchen faucet. He should have fixed that faucet last night! Things like t
hat threw Teresa for a total loss; poor woman, she just didn’t comprehend mechanical things.
The ship rolled to bring the stars into the port. He sighed and shrugged. Well, he would never reach them, but he’d helped pave the way. His sons would get out there to Luna and the planets. His sons would carry on.
He suddenly realized that there was no death, no end. His sons were part of him, and they would live on to breed that part of them that was himself on to infinity. Ho was going to make sure of that. He was giving up his life in order that they could.
Long after White Sands had announced he had reached peak and started down, he had grown calm at the realization that this was something he had to do. The lives of his family and 30,000 other people depended on him. He hoped a few people would look up to see his fiery end. It would be spectacular.
The Athena began to shudder. Air resistance had started to buffet the ship. Carefully he adjusted his control couch, strapped himself in a little tighter, and rubbed the sweat from his palms. It was already getting warm inside the ship, and he knew it would get warmer.
“Athena, this is White Sands. Good luck, Withers. If you can do it, you’ll save a lot of lives.”
“I’ll do it O.K.”
“The Secretary of Defense just called in. This is going to be the first occasion the Congressional Medal of Honor with the rocket cluster will be given for——”
“To hell with the medal! Just tell my wife and kids I was thinking of them! Now shut up! I’ve got to finish this job!”
Jornada del Muerto, get ready, he thought. Here comes another one. He hoped that his kids had enough sense to quit riding their bikes along the Rio Grande Parkway.
The kinetic energy of several tons of spaceship dropping 400 miles out of the sky is not easily transferred. At 10,000 feet-per-second, the atmosphere is as hard and as unyielding as solid granite. Nothing can be built which will withstand it.
The Athena came to pieces; slowly at first, then all at once. It looked as though someone had thrown a huge basketful of flaming confetti into the sky.
It doesn’t often rain on the Jornada del Muerto, but when it does, it comes down in torrents. It rained that afternoon on the Jornada del Muerto. It rained spaceship. A few small pieces of skin floated gently down over Las Cruces, gleaming and glinting as they caught the sunlight. The kids saw them; they chased them until they came down, then took them home for souvenirs. THE END
ALL CATS ARE GREY
Andre Norton
Under normal conditions a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one. But out in deep space the normal may be reversed—for humans at any rate.
STEENA OF THE SPACEWAYS—that sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar–Vedo spreads. I ought to know, I’ve tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Steena was no glamour babe. She was as colorless as a Lunar plant—even the hair netted down to her skull had a sort of grayish cast and I never saw her but once draped in anything but a shapeless and baggy gray space–all.
Steena was strictly background stuff and that is where she mostly spent her free hours—in the smelly smoky background corners of any stellar–port dive frequented by free spacers. If you really looked for her you could spot her—just sitting there listening to the talk—listening and remembering. She didn’t open her own mouth often. But when she did spacers had learned to listen. And the lucky few who heard her rare spoken words—these will never forget Steena.
She drifted from port to port. Being an expert operator on the big calculators she found jobs wherever she cared to stay for a time. And she came to be something like the master–minded machines she tended—smooth, gray, without much personality of her own.
But it was Steena who told Bub Nelson about the Jovan moon–rites—and her warning saved Bub’s life six months later. It was Steena who identified the piece of stone Keene Clark was passing around a table one night, rightly calling it unworked Slitite. That started a rush which made ten fortunes overnight for men who were down to their last jets. And, last of all, she cracked the case of the Empress of Mars.
All the boys who had profited by her queer store of knowledge and her photographic memory tried at one time or another to balance the scales. But she wouldn’t take so much as a cup of Canal water at their expense, let alone the credits they tried to push on her. Bub Nelson was the only one who got around her refusal. It was he who brought her Bat.
About a year after the Jovan affair he walked into the Free Fall one night and dumped Bat down on her table. Bat looked at Steena and growled. She looked calmly back at him and nodded once. From then on they traveled together—the thin gray woman and the big gray tom–cat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most spacers visit in their lifetimes. He developed a liking for Vernal juice, drank it neat and quick, right out of a glass. And he was always at home on any table where Steena elected to drop him.
This is really the story of Steena, Bat, Cliff Moran and the Empress of Mars, a story which is already a legend of the spaceways. And it’s a damn good story too. I ought to know, having framed the first version of it myself.
For I was there, right in the Rigel Royal, when it all began on the night that Cliff Moran blew in, looking lower than an antman’s belly and twice as nasty. He’d had a spell of luck foul enough to twist a man into a slug–snake and we all knew that there was an attachment out for his ship. Cliff had fought his way up from the back courts of Venaport. Lose his ship and he’d slip back there—to rot. He was at the snarling stage that night when he picked out a table for himself and set out to drink away his troubles.
However, just as the first bottle arrived, so did a visitor. Steena came out of her corner, Bat curled around her shoulders stole–wise, his favorite mode of travel. She crossed over and dropped down without invitation at Cliff’s side. That shook him out of his sulks. Because Steena never chose company when she could be alone. If one of the man–stones on Ganymede had come stumping in, it wouldn’t have made more of us look out of the corners of our eyes.
She stretched out one long–fingered hand and set aside the bottle he had ordered and said only one thing, “It’s about time for the Empress of Mars to appear again.”
Cliff scowled and bit his lip. He was tough, tough as jet lining—you have to be granite inside and out to struggle up from Venaport to a ship command. But we could guess what was running through his mind at that moment. The Empress of Mars was just about the biggest prize a spacer could aim for. But in the fifty years she had been following her queer derelict orbit through space many men had tried to bring her in—and none had succeeded.
A pleasure–ship carrying untold wealth, she had been mysteriously abandoned in space by passengers and crew, none of whom had ever been seen or heard of again. At intervals thereafter she had been sighted, even boarded. Those who ventured into her either vanished or returned swiftly without any believable explanation of what they had seen—wanting only to get away from her as quickly as possible. But the man who could bring her in—or even strip her clean in space—that man would win the jackpot.
“All right!” Cliff slammed his fist down on the table. “I’ll try even that!”
Steena looked at him, much as she must have looked at Bat the day Bub Nelson brought him to her, and nodded. That was all I saw. The rest of the story came to me in pieces, months later and in another port half the System away.
Cliff took off that night. He was afraid to risk waiting—with a writ out that could pull the ship from under him. And it wasn’t until he was in space that he discovered his passengers—Steena and Bat. We’ll never know what happened then. I’m betting that Steena made no explanation at all. She wouldn’t.
It was the first time she had decided to cash in on her own tip and she was there—that was all. Maybe that point weighed with Cliff, maybe he just didn’t care. Anyway the three were together when they sighted the Empress riding, her dead–lights gleaming, a ghost ship in night space.
&nbs
p; She must have been an eerie sight because her other lights were on too, in addition to the red warnings at her nose. She seemed alive, a Flying Dutchman of space. Cliff worked his ship skillfully alongside and had no trouble in snapping magnetic lines to her lock. Some minutes later the three of them passed into her. There was still air in her cabins and corridors. Air that bore a faint corrupt taint which set Bat to sniffing greedily and could be picked up even by the less sensitive human nostrils.
Cliff headed straight for the control cabin but Steena and Bat went prowling. Closed doors were a challenge to both of them and Steena opened each as she passed, taking a quick look at what lay within. The fifth door opened on a room which no woman could leave without further investigation.
I don’t know who had been housed there when the Empress left port on her last lengthy cruise. Anyone really curious can check back on the old photo–reg cards. But there was a lavish display of silks trailing out of two travel kits on the floor, a dressing table crowded with crystal and jeweled containers, along with other lures for the female which drew Steena in. She was standing in front of the dressing table when she glanced into the mirror—glanced into it and froze.
Over her right shoulder she could see the spider–silk cover on the bed. Right in the middle of that sheer, gossamer expanse was a sparkling heap of gems, the dumped contents of some jewel case. Bat had jumped to the foot of the bed and flattened out as cats will, watching those gems, watching them and—something else!
Steena put out her hand blindly and caught up the nearest bottle. As she unstoppered it she watched the mirrored bed. A gemmed bracelet rose from the pile, rose in the air and tinkled its siren song. It was as if an idle hand played . . . Bat spat almost noiselessly. But he did not retreat. Bat had not yet decided his course.
She put down the bottle. Then she did something which perhaps few of the men she had listened to through the years could have done. She moved without hurry or sign of disturbance on a tour about the room. And, although she approached the bed she did not touch the jewels. She could not force herself to that. It took her five minutes to play out her innocence and unconcern. Then it was Bat who decided the issue.
