by Earl
“Quite some crowd here,” the announcer was saying. “At least a million! You can hear the roar of their combined cheering. And why not? This is the start of a courageous attempt at the most gruelling and hazardous run of the spaceways. LacKay first did it thirty years ago, taking ninety-eight days, with numerous stopovers for repairs. Ships have improved greatly since then. Three years ago, Stevenson set the present record of eleven days and two hours. He had to maintain an average speed of one-tenth the velocity of light! Can this boy Howe beat him?”
“You bet he can!” Royce Howe informed the announcer. “We Howes are born record-crackers. We—”
AS though this were a cue, the commentator continued:
“Perry Howe comes from a family whose tradition, more or less, has been to hang up speed and endurance records. Back in nineteen-forty, before interplanetary travel, Howard Howe, with four companions, spanned the world in an airplane in ninety-one hours—a then remarkable feat. He later did it solo in eighty-five hours. His son, twenty-two years later, broke all nonrefueling records by pushing his strato-ship around the earth in forty hours.
“Jules Verne, the famous author of the nineteenth century, started all this with his imaginative work, ‘Around the World In Eighty Days.’ It is singularly appropriate for Perry Howe to have named his ship the Jules Verne Express, although he is going around a greater world, and in much less time than Verne’s estimate!
“To get back to the Howes; it was in the next generation, with the advent of space travel, that a Howe established a ten-year record for the run to Mars, broken eventually by his own son. A later Howe made the first round-trip to Saturn and back, solo, in less than three days of continuous spacing. The late father of the present Perry Howe made the Pluto run in sixty hours as soon as a refueling outpost was set up there. He lost his life in a later attempt to break his own record.”
Royce Howe, sat stiffly, listening and blinking a little. The hard-bitten men behind him were silent as the radio-voice said:
“His eldest son, Royce Howe, made the standing record of fifty-five hours for the Pluto run, two years ago. He drove his ship so relentlessly that it exploded when it landed on Earth. Royce Howe escaped with his life by a miracle.”
The outpost men looked at him with new respect. The quiet, unassuming young man hadn’t said a word about that, and the outpost men hadn’t thought to connect his name with the fame that was rightfully his.
The announcer went on:
“But in all their daring exploits, no Howe has picked a more dangerous run than the flight around the Solar System. Each planet must be visited, however they are situated relatively in their orbits. Tremendous speeds must be built up in those long stretches between the planets. It is a test of engine and man to hold up under the strain. Dozens of spacemen have tried this run and failed. Several of them were never heard of again, lost somewhere out in the vast ocean of space!”
“My brother will make it, though,” said Royce Howe confidently, as if to counteract the chill of those words. “He’s the best little pilot this side of Sirius!”
The announcer’s voice lifted.
“And now—here comes Perry Howe out of the drome! He is walking to his ship. With him are the mayor of New York and the usual retinue of officials. Howe’s stride is springy. He seems to radiate a lot of confidence that he’ll come back with another trophy for the Howe tradition!”
The iconoscopic eye back at the Earth space port swung to follow the group advancing toward the ship. Royce Howe, on Pluto, stuck his eager face so close to the television screen that he almost blocked off vision for his companions, but they did not complain. He stared at the televised moving figure of his brother. Unconsciously, he waved.
Perry Howe had the lean, wiry body common to space flyers, the strong and nervous hands that seemed ready at an instant’s notice to dart toward vital controls, though he was as yet on solid ground. They got that way after a while—became bundles of triggered reflexes. Space-ship wrangling, at speeds far greater than neural currents through the human body, was not for deliberate souls. In his half-squinted eyes was tigerish readiness, and a steely stare that seemed to take in unmeasured horizons.
THE outpost men saw the similarity between the two brothers. Royce Howe, in front of them, was also lean and quick, and had that keen squint to his eyes. But he had more in his eyes—a certain haunted stare that seemed to come from the depths of his soul.
Royce Howe waved again to the image of his brother.
“Go to it, Perry!” he whispered. “Get in that speed-hull and show ’em how to burn up space! Give ’em something to talk about. Another Howe—another record! That’s the way it’s been with us for generations. You won’t let us down, kid; I know you won’t!”
He turned to the others. “I wish I could be down there for a minute, to give him a pep-talk. It always helps, in things like this. I—”
“How come you’re not making the run,” asked one of the outpost men bluntly. “Your brother doesn’t look more than twenty. Pretty stiff grind for a boy.”
A quick flush burned into Royce Howe’s face. But not of anger. It was something deeper. He didn’t speak for a moment. His flush drained and left his thin face pale. He spoke with an effort, finally.
“I haven’t taken a ship into space in two years,” he said in a low voice. “That accident, you see—” He clicked his teeth together suddenly and turned back to the screen, biting his lips.
The outpost men looked at one another significantly. They had heard of such things before. A grounded pilot who had lost his nerve. The accident had given him a mental hazard that he couldn’t overcome. Not his fault, exactly. More to be pitied than scorned. They saw by the quiver of his shoulders that he felt what they were thinking. Tough, on a young fellow like that—and a Howe!
Royce Howe suddenly took hold of himself and turned to the men again.
“But don’t worry about my brother being too young,” he said. “That kid’s plenty space-wise, and a born ship wrangler. He’ll come through!”
A new announcer spoke. The television scene switched to a close-up of the ship’s hatchway. “We will now hear a few words from Perry Howe in person. Mr. Howe, will you—”
“Hello, everyone,” cut in Perry Howe’s voice hurriedly, as his preoccupied face loomed in the screen. “I hope to break the record, that’s about all I have to say. Hope you’re listening, Roy, up on Pluto. I’ll see you there soon!”
In the screen, Perry Howe waved once from the hatch-lock, then banged it shut. The ship dwindled in the scene as the portable iconoscope was wheeled back rapidly. Soon the picture showed only the lone ship as a tiny torpedo in the wide expanse of the cleared port.
The roar of the crowd died away to a murmur.
“The zero-moment is close,” said the announcer. “The start is being made precisely on schedule. The planets do not wait for any man in their orbital movements. The engine has just revved to higher speed. You can hear its rumble now. And”—his voice cracked—“there she goes!”
Whatever else the announcer said was drowned out in the stupendous roar of the departing ship. The Jules Verne Express taxied down the greased runway on its retractable skids, then lifted as its undertubes spurted volcanically. In ten seconds it had vanished in the blue of earth skies.
“DUCK, kid!” murmured Royce Howe on Pluto, four billion miles from that momentous take-off.
He turned to the others. “Well, he’s Off!”
“He was off six hours ago,” said the laconic outpost commander, Pete Perl. “It takes radio waves that long to get here to Pluto from Earth.”
“Yes, I know,” nodded Howe. “In fact, he’s already fueled at the Moon, passed Venus, and is on his way to Mercury. But we’ll have to follow the Earth reports till he gets out our way, where we’ll catch up with him.”
“By the way,” continued Perl, “I never could understand just how a man could hit all the planets. You have to go one way to Venus and Mercury, and th
en the other way to find Mars. And then when you get past the Asteroids, the big planets can be almost anywhere. How in blazes can your brother stop off at all of them without spending the rest of his life traveling? And he wants to do it in ten days!”
Royce Howe laughed a little. Few people knew the details of space navigation among heavenly bodies that changed relative position with every second of passing time.
“It’s a matter of course-plotting,” he explained. “By traveling along tangents to orbits, you take the shortest possible route between two planets, though they may be pretty far from conjunction. Planning a round-trip in the entire Solar System is quite a thing.
In fact, there are times when it’s impossible—the planets are too scattered. During those times, you don’t try record-runs. But during other periods, the planets line up in a way. Then your round-trip isn’t so much. Three years ago, Stevenson was able to plot a route that totaled only about fifteen billion miles.”
He grinned at their stares.
“That isn’t so much, for a nine-planet hop. My brother, though, will have to go nearer sixteen billion miles, because Pluto here is a little further now from Neptune. It’s between the major planets that you get your biggest jumps. His course will be a sort of widening, clockwise spiral.”
All the men crowded around as Royce expertly drew a plan of the Solar System on a sheet of note-paper.
“Look,” he resumed, when done. “From the Moon, he goes almost tangent to Venus’ orbit, in toward the sun, and hits Venus a quarter of the way around. Then to Mercury’s orbit, again in a tangent. Actually, he is now almost on the other side of the sun from Earth. He then strikes directly out to Mars’ orbit, in almost the same line as his flight from Earth. After the stop at Mars, he turns clockwise a few degrees, and hits Ceres. That’s part of the rules, you know, to make a stop at one of the Asteroid fueling stations.
“From then on, he jumps to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in regular order, as they all happen to be further along, in a clockwise direction, in their orbits. Out here’s where most of his time will be taken up. The stretch from Earth to Jupiter, stopping at five planets, will take only about twenty-two hours. To take in the other four planets, will take over two hundred hours—almost ten times as much distance to cover. When he gets here to Pluto, he’ll have the longest single hop left—from this planet to Earth, about four billion miles.”
“It he gets here!” said one of the men pointedly. Jed Alcher, a big and loud-voiced bully among the men, took particular delight in making others squirm. “You heard what the announcer said about space pilots getting lost, trying this run. If your brother’s no luckier than they were, he might crack up out in space, too!”
ALCHER looked around proudly as though he had said something witty. Royce Howe’s face flushed. He glared at the man.
“Why, you—” he grated.
He tried to lunge at him, but Commander Perl blocked him.
“Take it easy, Mister,” he said calmly. “We know how you feel about it.” Royce Howe relaxed. “Sorry,” he muttered.
The commander whirled to face his men. “Listen, fellows, Howe is under pretty much of a strain and will be until his brother gets here. So pipe down with those cracks!”
“Hell, I didn’t say anything wrong,” protested Jed Alcher. “Danger’s danger.” He was looking at Howe as he went on boastfully: “And if you think you space flyers are the only ones with guts, what about us? Two or three times a year one of us goes out digging—and never comes back! We—”
“Shut up!” roared Commander Perl, as the men looked at one another uneasily at having this almost tabooed subject brought up. “Okay, men—get going. Rest period’s over. There’s plenty of radamite to be dug up.”
CHAPTER II
Cosmic-Ray Burns
WHEN the men had clumped out of the large triple-lock, Perl turned to Royce Howe.
“Don’t mind them,” he half apologized. “They’re rough and tough and like to ride a guy at times. But they’ve got courage. It takes courage to be on Pluto, digging out in the frozen wastes.” He sighed, with a certain gaunt look in his eyes, then went on. “This stopover for your brother must be pretty important, for you to be here. You’ve been here two weeks, since the last supply ship came. You could have just sent the fuel, and we’d have taken care of the refueling.”
Royce Howe nodded. “Yes, but I wanted to help him all I could. When he gets here, he’ll be pretty fagged, with the biggest stretch of all still ahead of him. A little pep-talk from me may help a lot. Especially if he’s close to the record and needs some encouragement to give all he’s got for the home stretch.”
The commander’s frost-bitten face broke in a grin. “That record business seems to mean a lot to you boys.”
“More than all the dollar-a-gram radamite ore you would dig in ten years!” A half hour after the take-off from Earth, the radio took up the thread again, from the giant Lunar space drome.
“Perry Howe just arrived here, smiling and energetic. He helped our men load fuel aboard, too impatient to just stand around. As is customary on all Earth-elsewhere record hops, Howe is taking on his full fuel load here. He came from Earth with barely enough to get here, saving the drag on a full fuel-cargo in Earth’s greater gravitation.” There was no television from the Moon, But Royce Howe could picture his tall young brother dragging tins of reserve fuel to the rear hold.
“That’s the spirit, Perry!” he murmured. “But don’t tire yourself out.”
“There went the last tin,” said the IBS announcer. “Howe jumps into his lock and closes it in one movement. You can tell that boy is in a hurry! There go the rockets—the ship darts forward like an arrow—it rises—it’s gone! The Jules Verne Express is on it’s way to Venus, the first leg of the stupendous journey around the Solar System. Good luck, Perry Howe!”
“Amen!” breathed Royce Howe on Pluto.
“I’m not much up on space navigation,” observed Commander Perl, “but why should it take him a half hour to get to the Moon? If he can get up to 1/10 the speed of light, as Stevenson did, the Moon hop shouldn’t take more than a few seconds!”
“It’s a matter of acceleration,” informed Royce Howe. “Acceleration takes time, especially to build up to fractional light-speeds. You need room, because you have to have the same amount of time and space for deceleration. The Moon distance is so short that you can’t begin to Build up speed. It’ll be the same with the hops to all the inner planets—Venus, Mercury and Mars. Perry won’t be able really to open up until he heads out Ceres way.”
He continued thoughtfully.
“And that’s where the record will be broken, if at all. It depends on how much a man can stand in the way of acceleration and deceleration, and how good his engine is. The inertialess field within the ship, of course, can cut sixty gravities of acceleration to six, but even nine hundreds pounds of acceleration-weight for several hours is no fun.
“Nine to ten is about the limit the human body can stand. After Ceres, on the long stretches between the major planets, it’s mostly a matter of building, as quickly as possible, to top speed—which is limited by fuel consumption—and then ‘coasting’ for millions of miles before decelerating. And Perry has a billion miles to make up out there! It’ll be a tough grind.”
TWO hours later, the IBS piped in Perry’s Howe’s first direct communication, space static conditions permitting.
“Howe reporting, Jules Verne Express,” came the thin, ghostly words from the void, to thrill millions of listeners. “Everything fine. Engine working smoothly. I’m half-way to Venus, starting deceleration. My cosmic-ray shield worked loose during acceleration, from vibration, but I bolted it down. All else okay. Signing off.” Four hours later, Venus reported. “Perry Howe’s Jules Verne Express was just sighted at the Dryland Space Port. He did not stop for fuel or repairs of any kind. In accordance with rules, he rocketed through atmosphere at less than five hundred miles an hour within two miles of the s
urface.”
Royce Howe explained to Commander Perl.
“He won’t have to stop for fuel till he gets to Mars, because the hops are so short. An official visitation to a planet on a record spacing is five hundred-two, as the announcer explained.
But his time, I’m afraid—” He frowned, looking at the clock.
“Here’s the official check-up on his time!” rang out the radio-voice. “Perry Howe has negotiated his first forty million miles, from Earth to Venus, in two hundred and forty-six minutes. This is seventeen minutes behind Stevenson’s time for the same lap, though Stevenson went an additional two million miles. Howe will have to do better than this if he expects to break any records!”
Royce Howe grunted.
“I thought so,” he muttered. “Seventeen minutes behind! Come on, Perry, what’s the matter? I wonder if that ray shield delayed him—”
The announcer’s voice broke in excitedly.
“A report just came in from a ham radio-operator at the outskirts of this city. He sighted Howe’s ship. It was only a mile up, and going rather slowly. Through binoculars, he watched and saw something drop from the ship, in several large pieces, into a bare field. He investigated and found they were the broken parts of Howe’s cosmic-ray shield.
“Howe spoke of the shield working loose during acceleration. Evidently it was damaged and worked loose again completely, as sometimes happens, so that he had to toss it out. Howe hasn’t reported as yet if he’s going to give up the run. Evidently he isn’t. But it’s a dangerous thing to go on. He has no protection at all now from the cosmic rays!”
Royce Howe jumped up and began pacing with his hands clenched behind him.
“Something always has to happen, no matter how carefully you plan!” he said bitterly. “His cosmic-ray shield, of all things!”
Commander Perl asked, “Is it really dangerous without that?”
Howe nodded.
“On any planet with even the thinnest of atmospheres, the cosmic-rays are pretty well absorbed. But out in space, they’re terrific. All space ships have, inside the hull, a layer of lead stuffed with neutrons that stop the rays. But to eliminate weight, spacers on record-runs don’t have the hull-wall layer. They simply have a small shell of the lead around their pilot seat, and stay inside of it as much as they can.”
