by Earl
The diminutive scientist protested in sudden embarrassment, and poked the young pilot toward the ship. “Better get in, lad. Only ten minutes before take-off.”
WITHOUT a word, Jason crouched low to enter the vehicle by its small round entrance. A subdued roar came from the people below—the privileged members of the Interplanetary Society who were given the honor of being in the drome till the last minute.
“Jason, wait! Wave to them. You must; they expect it!”
The brawny pilot stepped clear for a moment and waved, then resumed his course, crawling gingerly through the hole with its swung-back door plate. Professor Ortmann peered in, feverishly excited, and watched Jason strap himself in his harness full length, lying on his stomach. In this position, his eyes peered directly through the only port of the craft. His five feet eleven just comfortably took up the total length of the miniature cabin, his shoe soles resting flat against the thick partition that sealed off the motor at the rear. In the appreciable space below his stomach—below the cushioned metal partition on which he lay—was the fuel tank. Just beyond his forehead, built into a slightly sunken, rounded space, was the pilot board, within easy reach of his hands. The oxygen tank and its attached air conditioner, and the small battery-operated heating unit, were both in the nose of the ship.
Jason snapped the last spring clip of his harness and then grinned out at the scientist. “All set, Orty. How many minutes yet?”
The professor glanced nervously at his wrist watch. “Seven minutes. But, Jason, are you sure now you have everything straight? Turn the air conditioner on just before you take off. Switch on the engine and idle it for a half minute. Then, when the release lever is thrown down below, pulling the blocks and letting the ship free, it will surge forward gently. As soon as you feel that—it’s your cue, so to speak—you push the A-lever one notch.”
The little man paused to gulp a breath and Jason finished: “Then I watch the green pilot light. When it flashes, I am near the end of the runway, and I must give her hell.”
“No, no!” screamed the professor. “You’ll kill yourself—crush your legs against the back wall! You must——”
“Yes, Orty, forgive me. I know; I must watch the velocimeter and keep under a certain limit. When I reach the stratosphere I watch the step-up dial and see that it reads thirty-two feet per second, or close to it. One gravity acceleration, in other words. Then, at fifteen miles, I can put on anything I can stand.”
“And be careful,” pleaded the professor, “especially while in the atmosphere. We were forced to substitute wings for a balancing gyroscope because a gyro is so heavy and troublesome. The wings are tested, as you know, for high velocity, but don’t take any unnecessary chances, Jason. Keep under the limits set by the technicians.”
“O. K.,” Jason agreed calmly. “But I’m thinking of the landing back here on earth more than the take-off. The wings aren’t tested for that.” He shrugged. “Just one of the chances I’m taking.
“Well, Orty, it’s au revoir—we hope. I’ll be back in twenty-two hours with more things to tell you than you can shake a stick at. I’m gonna look over little old Luna’s homely, smallpox face, and maybe see a few vacuum-breathing moon scamps running around.”
“Don’t joke, please,” said the professor solemnly. “It isn’t right, at this time. And Jason—most important of all—don’t forget to set your course by the stars; keep the nose of the ship pointing toward Antares. If you slip up on that, you’ll miss the moon’s orbit, and it will be impossible then to catch up with it.”
Jason nodded soberly. “I’ve had that drummed into me till I’m blue in the face. Space models, charts, lectures, illustrated course curves—it was sickening.”
“But necessary,” protested the little scientist. “You don’t realize what an immense amount of work and thought went into the plans which you know in a few words by heart. Without those meticulous details of the course, you would be lost, Jason.”
“I know,” grunted the pilot.
“And on the return,” continued the professor hurriedly, “you will hit earth’s orbit by setting the ship’s tail toward Pollux and Castor, the twin first magnitude stars in Gemini, orange and white respectively. And remember, take an orbit around the moon at less than 1.5 miles per second velocity; you will swing completely around without power. And, of course, you can’t land. You know that?”
Jason grinned. “And I can’t even say ‘Hello’ to the moon girls, can I, Orty?” He snapped on the pilot-board lights. The chronometer showed only three minutes left. “About time for the seal-up, professor, no?”
There was a scraping from the ladder at the side of the platform and three men appeared. “You’ll have to go down. Professor Ortmann,” said one. “We’ve got to seal the door now.”
With a mute wave—which Jason returned silently—the little scientist turned away from the vehicle and clambered, agile for his age, down the long stairway to the ground. The three mechanics followed soon after. They had closed the door and sealed it by twisting its inner rim, which was a fine-threaded draw screw, fitting it integrally to the hull.
“What were his last words? How did he look? Was he frightened? Do you think he’s nervy enough to carry it through?” These and a hundred similar questions assailed Professor Ortmann as he joined the group below. He attempted to answer, bravely, but choked on the first word. Sympathetically, several Interplanetary Society officials shooed the eager questioners away, and conducted the scientist to the drome’s exit. Others began leaving then, for the great neon warning signal had flashed in a blaze of scarlet; the drome must be cleared.
In the housing next to the open-air drome, Professor Ortmann and his immediate party stood themselves before a large window of quartz. Through it could be seen the platform and ship. It was a strange scene, lighted by a sinking sun. Just the large-nosed, white bullet ship, perched atop the strutted steel platform, cradled at one end of the long runway. A breathless hush came over the assemblage. Ten seconds to go!
Suddenly streaks of bluish vapor streamed from the rocket tubes of the space ship. The vehicle trembled like a greyhound at the leash. A half minute went by. Then, with a roar that shattered the air, the tiny craft darted away from the platform, belching long tongues of bluish-red flame backward. It was on its way Professor Ortmann’s knees trembled, and he sagged wearily into a chair.
JASON GARRARD heard the hissing scrape of the door seal; then that ceased and he was alone with his thoughts. Two minutes. His eyes involuntarily took in the scene through the tiny quartz window. Funny, he could not even see the moon, the very object he was heading for! Yet he knew—they had explained it so painstakingly—that when his ship had reached a distance of 240,000 miles from earth, the moon would be there waiting for him. If, of course, he carried out instructions to the last detail, and nothing went wrong.
“Quite a hop at that,” mused Jason half aloud in the utter sealed stillness of the ship. “And it oughta be a new kind of thrill. Just think, Jason, old boy, going out where there ain’t no air—nohow! And no heat. Just the stars and the moon, and coldness.”
The chronometer seemed to stare at him warningly. He watched the seconds tick by, slowly, painfully. Then, with a careful hand, he turned the motor switch. An even drumming came to him, as though from miles away, and he felt a tingling on the soles of his feet where they rested firmly against the back partition. The rhythm of the motor was a silk-smooth pur, vibrating gently through the hard metal walls. Then he snapped the switch marked “air.” Almost immediately a fresh draft of coed air washed across his face.
It took him almost unawares—the sudden surge forward. At last, his cue! With something of a heart throb, Iris hand firmly pulled the A-lever one notch. The motor roar increased its low rumble and the ship leaped ahead like a frightened deer. Jason looked through the port. The multiple rails of the runway, stretching interminably in a gradual rise, sped monotonously before him.
Then, when the termination, like a
tilted ski jump, loomed within his vision, the pilot glued his eyes to his panel of dials. Particularly he watched the little green globe—dark at the moment—in the center. Suddenly it flashed and Jason pulled the lever notch by notch then, steadily. He was free of the runway now, on his own!
The little ship trembled at first, rolled a little, then steadied to the smooth flight of an arrow. For minutes there was nothing to be done. A glance at the altimeter and Jason saw that the ship was climbing steadily. This part of it was just like his long years of liner piloting. But no liner had ever climbed so rapidly. He could almost feel the powerful little motor pitting its strength against gravity, and beating back the drag of that powerful force. Why not turn the nose straight up and——Jason thought of it; his hand itched to try it. But no go; the motor would burn itself out in five minutes. Gravity could not be directly opposed; one must sneak away from it. The little old law of inverse squares would take care of matters, Jason reflected comfortably. He felt great.
At the acceleration of gravity—thirty-two feet per second—it takes less than a half hour to reach a velocity neutralizing gravity. But Jason, of course, could not use such a tremendous speed while in the atmosphere. Air friction would then have melted the metal craft to a shapeless blob. Instead, he had to climb gradually into the heavens, at a velocity of sixty feet a second, with very much the same sort of maneuver used by transoceanic rocket liners. Since the runway had been set up facing west—in forethought, of course—Jason was motionless in relation to the stars, but streaking at almost a thousand miles an hour over earth’s surface.
However, at six miles, well in the thinning troposphere, Jason was able to multiply his velocity steadily. At eleven miles, reaching the stratosphere, he tacked on notch after notch, plunging like a sword of fire into the all-embracing heavens. Still almost horizontal to the ground far below, the intrepid adventurer applied three gravities’ acceleration. The roaring ship screamed through the tenuous atmosphere, striving to cut itself off from planetary gravitation.
In the next few minutes, many new impressions crowded upon the slightly dazed pilot. At twenty miles height, the sky became the familiar blue-black, crowded with stars, although the sun shone in full intensity. At twenty-five miles, the sun’s ethereally beautiful halo flushed out of the darkness; its thin ribbon of chromosphere, vivid-scarlet; its corona, delicate-pink and pulsating; and its prominences, brick-red and snaky. At thirty miles, the highest man had ever gone before, the legions of stars were reenforced by other legions. Of all colors, some huge like beacons, some tiny pin points, they threatened to fill the black celestial vault to overflowing.
When the velocimeter—an ingenious combination of altimeter and air-current gauge—registered 6.95 miles a second, Jason felt a giddiness. He was not alarmed. They had warned him that he might experience a new feeling at the moment of breaking away from earth’s gravity.
Then he began building his speed to 7.5 miles a second, still tangent to earth’s surface. There was no need to swing the ship “upward,” for now any direction was “up.”
True to the mathematicians’ predictions—providing he followed their directions to the letter—he found his ship pointing toward a great angry-red star—Antares, in Scorpio. Not exactly at it—a little to the right and below—but it would be a simple trick to correct the slight deviation. His fingers strayed to four plainly designated buttons beside the A-lever. They controlled four separate rocket tubes solely for the purpose of changing direction. He had but to press the buttons marked “left” and “above.”
With a roar that would have drowned out thunder in a denser medium, the dull-white ship plunged through the last rarefied fringes of earth’s air blanket. Jason heard but the faintest of buzzes from his rocket tubes, but he could feel the violence of their explosions vibrating through the sturdy walls. The worst was over; the motor had held up under the strain of snapping earth’s omnipotent drag. The rest would be easy. He would build to reach 7.5 miles a second, see that he was pointed directly for fiery Antares, and then “coast” to the moan. In nine hours he would be there.
Jason peered up from his instruments; Antares, like a hot coal, would be there at the tip of the ship’s nose. His eyes opened wide then, and he stared in utter amazement.
“WELL,” said Professor Ortmann, eying Jason somberly, “you landed safely enough. But you haven’t been to the moon; you’re back eighteen hours too soon.”
“Yes, Orty, eighteen hours too soon,” said Jason quietly.
“Tell me about it,” urged the scientist in a queerly hurried voice.
“Nothing much to tell; swung back at about ten thousand miles, put the ship in reverse and eased her gently—comparatively speaking—back to terra firma. As per instructions, I baled out in my parachute at two miles. And here I am, Orty.”
“But why didn’t you let the ship drop in one of the lakes, instead of letting it smash to pieces on the ground? You might have killed some one. Besides, we told you explicitly to do that; after all, you ruined millions of dollars’ worth of labor and material.”
Professor Ortmann’s voice was irritated. And more than that, a hidden rage trembled in every tone.
“Got a little flustered,” admitted the pilot evenly. “Had a bit of trouble opening the draw screw on the door. Got it open just in time to vamose and no sooner; couldn’t stop to play with the motor. Besides—well, never mind.”
The little scientist pressed one small hand in the other, cracking his knuckles. There was a long silence. “Did you lose your nerve, Jason?” asked the professor then, biting his lip.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Jason got mad. His face went red and he jerked out the words like piston strokes: “So, that’s what you think! That’s what everybody thinks! I could see it in their faces as they picked me up, drove me to the city. A quitter! A failure! An impostor finally revealed in his true color—yellow!
“Well, they missed their guess; but I wouldn’t tell them! No, I wouldn’t tell them the truth when they had no belief in their faces that I might have a reason for missing the goal. I shut up my mouth like a clam, and asked for you.”
Professor Ortmann touched the pilot’s arm. “And now that I’m here with you, tell me, Jason. I didn’t believe them when they told me you had come back a failure. I had to believe you were back, yes, but I refused to consider the suggestion that your premature return had been of your own volition.” The scientist’s eyes had become bright again; the shadow of distrust had left.
Jason’s blazing anger fled completely. “O. K., Orty, it’s all right; I understand. Listen, I meant to say a minute ago, that the ship, smashed or not, is useless.”
“Go on.”
“Because, Orty—because when a guy gets out there in space, there’s no way he can reach the moon, nor the planets, nor anything, except maybe the sun!”
The scientist looked perplexed. “But the instructions were clear, weren’t they? It was all figured out for you—head for Antares, easily distinguishable, right in the ecliptic; by the time you got there, at a certain rate of speed you——”
“Wait a minute, Orty,” interrupted Jason, lighting a cigarette and inhaling slowly. “That part of it was perfectly all right; with all the star maps they made me learn about, only a blind halfwit could have missed. Here’s how they put it to me: I should look for the big red first-magnitude star, Antares, among a cluster of dimmer white ones, out there where it’s always night. But the funny thing is, Orty, that it isn’t night out there! Space is white, not black, and the stars don’t show up in a white background, nohow!”
“Jason, you’re joking—you——”
“Joking, hell!” denied the pilot quietly. “I’m telling you what I saw. After a guy gets out about three hundred miles, the stars begin sprouting from the sky like popcorn. It keeps getting lighter then instead of darker—and don’t forget at six hundred miles, my course put the earth between me and the sun, so it wasn’t sunlight.”
“Wouldn�
�t make any difference,” put in Professor Ortmann. “Out in space, where there is no diffusion of light, it would be just as dark with or without the sun.”
“That’s what I heard,” nodded Jason. “Anyway, when I hit what must have been nearly pure vacuum at seven hundred miles, the sky was so bright it was like day. No, not like day, more like moonlight. I went on, though, thinking whatever it was, it would change and become black like it should.”
JASON puffed at his cigarette; Professor Ortmann watched him with dazed eyes.
“Well, Orty, it didn’t change and become night. It simply got lighter—the whole sky, you understand—and at a thousand miles I could hardly see the moon in all that brightness; and I should try to pick out Antares!”
Professor Ortmann nodded, a dawning light in his face.
“Well, I’m no quitter, and I kept on going, hoping all the time it was some—phenomenon—that would get over with. But it stayed, Orty. Blast it, it got me good and sore, I’m telling you. I went ten thousand miles before I turned back. All I could see then was an even layer of a kind of speckled white all over the whole damned sky! Something like dirty snow. The stars?—hell, they were as easy to pick out as a white rabbit in a ten-acre snow field!”
“And the moon?” queried the scientist in a queer voice.
“Oh, it was there, all right, way down below the nose of my ship. I could see it plain enough, its rim sort of dark against the white background. But you know, Orty, that I couldn’t just keep going and hoping to hit the right spot; Antares was just part of a general shimmer. And, of course, it would’ve been plain silly to head right for the moon. So I had to come back.”
Jason ended with a note of finality, pressing the cigarette stub into an ash tray.
“Yes, that’s all you could do,” agreed the scientist in a small voice. His whole manner seemed that of one crushed by some stupendous revelation. Then he looked sharply at the pilot.
