by Various
"Cripes--put that damn shiv away, Tif!" Art snapped. "Or lose it someplace!"
Ramos, who was a part-time mechanic at the same garage where Tiflin worked, couldn't help taunting. "Yeah--smoking, too. Oh-oh. Using up precious oxygen. Better quit, pal. Can't do much of that Out There."
This was a wrong moment to rib Tiflin. He was in an instant flare. But he ground out the cigarette at once, bitterly. "What do you care what I do, Mex?" he snarled. "And as for you two Hunky Kuzaks--you oversized bulldozers--how about weight limits for blastoff? Damn--I don't care how big you are!"
In mounting rage, he was about to lash out with his fists, even at the two watchful football men. But then he looked surprised. With a terrible effort, he bottled up even his furious words.
The Bunch was a sort of family. Members of families may love each other, but it doesn't have to happen. For a second it was as if Ramos had Tiflin spitted on some barb of his taunting smile--aimed at Tiflin's most vulnerable point.
Ramos clicked his tongue. What he was certainly going to remark was that people who couldn't pass the emotional stability tests, just couldn't get a space-fitness card. But Ramos wasn't unkind. He checked himself in time. "No sweat, Tif," he muttered.
"Hey, Gimp--are you going to sit in that Archie all night?" Joe Kuzak, the easy-going twin, boomed genially. "How about the rest of us?"
"Yeah--how about that, Gimp?" Dave Lester put in, trying to sound as brash and bold as the others, instead of just bookish.
Two-and-Two Baines, still looking perplexed, spoke in a hoarse voice that sounded like sorrow. "What I wanna know is just how far this fifty buck price gets us. Guess we have enough dough left in the treasury to buy us each an Archer Five, huh, Paul?"
Paul Hendricks rubbed his bald head and grinned in a way that attempted to prove him a disinterested sideliner. "Ask Frank," he said. "He's your historian-secretary and treasurer."
Frank Nelsen came out of his attitude of observation enough to warn, "That much we've got, if we want as many as twelve Archies. And a little better than a thousand dollars more, left over from the prize money."
They had won twenty-five hundred dollars during the summer for building a working model of a sun-powered ionic drive motor--the kind useful for deep-space propulsion, but far too weak in thrust to be any good, starting from the ground. The contest had been sponsored by--of all outfits--a big food chain, Trans-Columbia. But this wasn't so strange. Everybody was interested in, or affected by, interplanetary travel, now.
On a workbench, standing amid a litter of metal chips and scraps of color-coded wire, was the Bunch's second ionic, full-size this time, and almost finished. On crossed arms it mounted four parabolic mirrors; its ion guide was on a universal joint. Out There, in orbit or beyond, and in full, spatial sunlight, its jetting ions would deliver ten pounds of continuous thrust.
"A thousand bucks--that's nowhere near enough," Two-and-Two mourned further. "Doggone, why can't we get blasted up off the Earth--that costs the most, all by itself--just in our Archies? They've got those little ionic drives on their shoulders, to get around with, after we're in orbit. Lots of asteroid hoppers live and ride only in their space suits. Why do they make us get all that other expensive equipment? Space bubbs, full-size ionics, lots of fancy instruments!"
"'Cause it isn't legal, otherwise," Mitch Storey pointed out. "'Cause new men are green--it isn't safe for them, otherwise--the Extra-Terrestrial Commission thinks. Got to have all the gear to get clearance. Travelling light isn't even legal in the Belt. You know that."
"Maybe we'll win us another prize," Ramos laughed, touching the crinkly substance of their first bubb, hanging like a deflated balloon over the ceiling pole.
Tiflin sneered. "Oh, sure, you dumb Mex. Too many other Bunches, now. Too much competition. Like companies starting up on the Moon not hiring ordinary help on Earth and shipping them out, anymore--saying contract guys don't stick. Nuts--it's because enough slobs save them the expense by showing up on their own... Or like most all of us trying to get into the Space Force. The Real Elite--sure. Only 25,000 in the Force, when there are over 200,000,000 people in the country to draw from. Just one guy from Jarviston--Harv Diamond--ever made it. Choosy? We can get old waiting for them to review our submitted personal data, only to have a chance to take their lousy tests!"
Joe Kuzak grinned. "So down with 'em--down with the worthy old U.S.S.F.! We're on our own--to Serenitatis Base on the Moon, to the Belt, Pallastown, and farther!"
Ramos still hovered near Eileen Sands. "What do you say, Sweetie?" he asked. "You haven't hardly made a comment."
Eileen remained tough and withdrawn. "I'm just listening while you smart male characters figure out everything," she snapped. "Why don't you become a listener, too, for a change, and go help Gimp out of that Archer?"
Ramos bowed elegantly, and obeyed the latter half of her suggestion.
"I have a premonition--a hunch," little Lester offered, trying to sound firm. "Our request for a grant from the Extra-Terrestrial Development Board will succeed. Because we will be as valuable as anybody, Out There. Then we will have money enough to buy the materials to make most of our equipment."
Joe Kuzak, the gentler twin, answered him. "You're right about one thing, Les. We'll wind up building most of our own stuff--with our own mitts...!"
Some noisy conversation about who should try the Archer next, was interrupted when the antique customer's bell over the street door of the store, jangled. There was a scrape of shoe soles, as the two previously absent members of the Bunch, Jig Hollins and Charlie Reynolds, arriving together by chance, came into the shop.
Jig (Hilton) Hollins was a mechanic out at the airport. He was lean, cocky, twenty-four, with a stiff bristle of blond hair. Like Charlie Reynolds, he added up what had just been happening, here, at a glance. Both were older than the others. They had regular jobs. Their educations were completed, except for evening supplementary courses.
"Well, the men have arrived," Jig announced.
Maybe Charlie Reynolds' faint frown took exception to this remark. He was the only one in a suit, grey and tasteful, with a subdued flash to match the kind of car he drove. Few held this against him, nor the fact that he usually spent himself broke, nor the further fact that J. John Reynolds, tight-fisted president of the Jarviston First National Bank, was his grandfather. Charlie was an engineer at the new nuclear powerhouse, just out of town. Charlie was what is generally known as a Good Guy. He was brash and sure--maybe too sure. He had a slight swagger, balanced by a certain benignancy. He was automatically the leader of the Bunch, held most likely to succeed in their aims.
"Hi, gang," he breezed. "Otto is bringing beer, Pepsi and sandwiches from his joint across the street. Special day--so it's on me. Time to relax--maybe unsnarl. Any new problems?"
"Still plenty of old ones," Frank Nelsen commented laconically.
"Has anybody suddenly decided to back out?" Charlie chuckled. "It's tiresome for me always to be asking that." He looked around, meeting carefully easy grins and grim expressions. "Nope--I guess we're all shaggy folk, bent on high and wild living, so far. So you know the only answer we can have."
"Umhmm, Charlie," Art Kuzak, the tough, business-like twin, gruffed. "We can get the Archers, now. I think Frank has our various sizes noted down. Let everybody sign up that wants an Archie. Better hurry, though--there'll be a run on them now that they're being almost given away... List all the other stuff we need--with approximate purchase price, or cost of construction materials, attached. Sure--we'll be way short of funds. But we can start with the items we can make, ourselves, now. The point is not to lose time. New restrictions may turn up, and give us trouble, if we do. We'll have to ride our luck for a break."
"Hell--you know the lists are ready, Art," Frank Nelsen pointed out. "A bubb for everybody--or the stuff to make it. Full-scale ionic drives, air-restorers and moisture-reclaimers, likewise. Some of the navigation instruments we'll almost have to buy. Dehydrated food, flasks of o
xygen and water, and blastoff drums to contain our gear, are all relatively simple. Worst, of course, is the blastoff price, from one of the spaceports. Who could be rich enough to have a ground-to-orbit nuclear rocket of his own? Fifteen hundred bucks--a subsidized rate at that--just to lift a man and a thousand pounds of equipment into orbit. Five thousand dollars, minimum per person, is what we're going to need, altogether."
Gimp Hines, who always acted as if he expected to get off the Earth, too, had yielded his position inside the Archer to Tiflin, and had hobbled close.
"The cost scares a guy who has to go to school, too, so he can pass the tests," he said. "Well, don't worry, Frank. A thousand dollars buys a lot of stellene for bubbs. And we can scratch up a few bucks of our own. I can find a hundred, myself, saved from my TV repair work, and my novelties business. Charlie, here, ought to be able to contribute a thousand. Same for you, Hollins. That'll buy parts and materials for some ionic motors, too."
"Oh, certainly, Gimp," Hollins growled.
But Charlie Reynolds grinned. "I can kick in that much, if I hold down a while," he said. "Maybe more, later. What we've got to have, however, is a loan. We can't expect a grant from the Board. Sure they want more people helping to develop resources in space, but they're swamped with requests. Let's not sweat, though. With a little time, I'll swing something... Hey, everybody! Proposition! I move that whoever wants an Archer put his name down for Frank. I further move that we have him order us a supply of stellene, and basic materials for at least three more ionic motors. I also suggest that everybody donate as much cash as he can, no matter how little, and as much time as possible for making equipment. With luck, and if we get our applications for space-fitness tests mailed to Minneapolis within a week, at least some of us should get off Earth by next June. Now, shall we sign for the whole deal?"
Art Kuzak hunched his shoulders and displayed white teeth happily. "I'm a pushover," he said. "Here I come. I like to see things roll."
"Likewise," said his brother, Joe. Their signatures were both small, in contrast to their size.
Ramos, fully clad in the Archer, clowned his way forward to write his name with great flourishes, his ball point clutched in a space glove.
Tiflin made a fierce, nervous scrawl.
Mitch Storey wrote patiently, in big, square letters.
Gimp chewed his lip, and signed, "Walter Hines," in a beautiful, austere script, with a touch as fine as a master scientist's. "I'll go along as far as they let me," he muttered.
"I think it will be the same--in my case," David Lester stammered. He shook so much that his signature was only a quavering line.
"For laughs," Eileen Sands said, and wrote daintily.
Two-and-Two Baines gulped, sighed, and made a jagged scribble, like the trail of a rocket gone nuts.
Jig Hollins wrote in swooping, arrogant circles, that came, perhaps, from his extra jobs as an advertising sky writer with an airplane.
Frank Nelsen was next, and Charlie Reynolds was last. Theirs were the most indistinctive signatures in the lot. Just ordinary writing.
"So here we all are, on a piece of paper--pledged to victory or death," Reynolds laughed. "Anyhow, we're out of a rut."
Nelsen figured that that was the thing about Charlie Reynolds. Some might not like him, entirely. But he could get the Bunch unsnarled and in motion.
Old Paul Hendricks had come back from waiting on some casual customers in the store.
"Want to sign, too, Paul?" Reynolds chuckled.
"Nope--that would make thirteen," Paul answered, his eyes twinkling. "I'll watch and listen--and maybe tell you if I think you're off beam."
"Here comes Otto with the beer and sandwiches," Ramos burst out.
They all crowded around heavy Otto Kramer and his basket--all except Frank Nelsen and Paul Hendricks, and Eileen Sands who made the ancient typewriter click in the little office-enclosure, as she typed up the order list that Nelsen would mail out with a bank draft in the morning.
Nelsen had a powerful urge to talk to the old man who was his long-time friend, and who had said little all during the session, though he knew more about space travel than any of them--as much as anybody can know without ever having been off the Earth.
"Hey, Paul," Frank called in a low tone, leaning his elbows across a workbench.
"Yeah?"
"Nothing," Frank Nelsen answered with a lopsided smile.
But he felt that that was the right word, when your thoughts and feelings became too huge and complicated for you to express with any ease.
Grandeur, poetry, music--for instance, the haunting popular song, Fire Streak, about the burial of a spaceman--at orbital speed--in the atmosphere of his native planet. And fragments of history, such as covered wagons. All sorts of subjects, ideas and pictures were swirling inside his head. Wanting to sample everything in the solar system... Home versus the distance, and the fierce urge to build a wild history of his own... Gentleness and lust to be fulfilled, sometime. There would be a girl... And there were second thoughts to twist your guts and make you wonder if all your savage drives were foolish. But there was a duty to be equal to your era--helping to give dangerously crowded humanity on Earth more room, dispersal, a chance for race survival, if some unimaginable violence were turned loose...
He thought of the names of places Out There. Serenitatis Base--Serene--on the Moon. Lusty, fantastic Pallastown, on the Golden Asteroid, Pallas... He remembered his parents, killed in a car wreck just outside of Jarviston, four Christmases ago. Some present!... But there was one small benefit--he was left free to go where he wanted, without any family complications, like other guys might have. Poor Dave Lester. How was it that his mother allowed him to be with the Bunch at all? How did he work it? Or was she the one that was right?...
Paul Hendricks had leaned his elbows on the workbench, too. "Sure--nothing--Frank," he said, and his watery eyes were bland.
The old codger understood. Neither of them said anything for a minute, while the rest of the Bunch, except Eileen who was still typing, guzzled Pepsi and beer, and wolfed hotdogs. There was lots of courage-lifting noise and laughter.
Ramos said something, and Jig Hollins answered him back. "Think there'll be any girls in grass skirts out in the Asteroid Belt, Mex?"
"Oh, they'll arrive," Ramos assured him.
Nelsen didn't listen anymore. His and Paul's attention had wandered to the largest color photo thumbtacked to the wall, above the TV set, and the shelf of dog-eared technical books. It showed a fragile, pearly ring, almost diaphanous, hanging tilted against spatial blackness and pinpoint stars. Its hub was a cylindrical spindle, with radial guys of fine, stainless steel wire. It was like the earliest ideas about a space station, yet it was also different. To many--Frank Nelsen and Paul Hendricks certainly included--such devices had as much beauty as a yacht under full sail had ever had for anybody.
Old Paul smirked with pleasure. "It's a shame, ain't it, Frank--calling a pretty thing like that a 'bubb'--it's an ugly word. Or even a 'space bubble.' Technical talk gets kind of cheap."
"I don't mind," Frank Nelsen answered. "Our first one, here, could look just as nice--inflated, and riding free against the stars."
He touched the crinkly material, draped across its wooden support.
"It will," the old man promised. "Funny--not so long ago people thought that space ships would have to be really rigid--all metal. So how did they turn out? Made of stellene, mostly--an improved form of polyethylene--almost the same stuff as a weather balloon."
"A few millimeters thick, light, perfectly flexible when deflated," Nelsen added. "Cut out and cement your bubb together in any shape you choose. Fold it up firmly, like a parachute--it makes a small package that can be carried up into orbit in a blastoff rocket with the best efficiency. There, attached flasks of breathable atmosphere fill it out in a minute. Eight pounds pressure makes it fairly solid in a vacuum. So, behold--you've got breathing and living room, inside. There's nylon cording for increased stre
ngth--as in an automobile tire--though not nearly as much. There's a silicone gum between the thin double layers, to seal possible meteor punctures. A darkening lead-salt impregnation in the otherwise transparent stellene cuts radiation entry below the danger level, and filters the glare and the hard ultra-violet out of the sunshine. So there you are, all set up."
"Rig your hub and guy wires," old Paul carried on, cheerfully. "Attach your sun-powered ionic drive, set up your air-restorer, spin your vehicle for centrifuge-gravity, and you're ready to move--out of orbit."
They laughed, because getting into space wasn't as easy as they made it sound. The bubbs, one of the basic inventions that made interplanetary travel possible, were, for all their almost vagabondish simplicity, still a concession in lightness and compactness for atmospheric transit, to that first and greatest problem--breaking the terrific initial grip of Earth's gravity from the ground upward, and gaining stable orbital speed. Only a tremendously costly rocket, with a thrust greater than its own weight when fully loaded, could do that. Buying a blastoff passage had to be expensive.
"Figuring, scrounging, counting our pennies, risking our necks," Nelsen chuckled. "And maybe, even if we make it, we'll be just a third-rate group, lost in the crowd that's following the explorers... Just the same, I wish you could plan to go, too, Paul."
"Don't rub it in, kid. But I figure on kicking in a couple of thousand bucks, soon, to help you characters along."
Nelsen felt an embarrassed lift of hope.
"You shouldn't, Paul," he advised. "We've overrun and taken possession of your shop--almost your store, too. You've waived any profit, whenever we've bought anything. That's enough favors."
"My dough, my pleasure... Let's each get one of Reynolds' beers and hotdogs, if any are left..."
Later, when all the others had gone, except Gimp Hines, they uncovered the Archer, which everyone else had tried. Paul got into it, first. Then Nelsen took his turn, sitting as if within an inclosed vault, hearing the gurgle of bubbles passing through the green, almost living fluid of the air-restorer capsule. Chlorophane, like the chlorophyl of green plants, could break up exhaled carbon dioxide, freeing the oxygen for re-breathing. But it was synthetic, far more efficient, and it could use much stronger sunlight as an energy source. Like chlorophyl, too, it produced edible starches and sugars that could be imbibed, mixed with water, through a tube inside the Archer's helmet.
