Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Nevertheless, we took off after the third bird, and found it glistening in bright sunlight without the help of the searchlight. I thought that was a good omen. But from there on nothing seemed to work right.

  We had been aloft about thirty-six hours, and fatigue was setting in. I was clumsy on the steering and had quite a time making contact.

  The repair went according to Hoyle, but after I had put the spin back on the bird I found that I had no more steering fuel. I hung about ten or fifteen feet from Telstar Three and maybe eighty feet from Nelly, drifting slowly from both.

  "Sid!"

  "Roger, Mike."

  "This one will have to make it with the girdle on."

  "Can't you get it off?"

  "I can't get back to it. Steering fuel gone."

  "Oh, no!"

  "No sweat, Sid. It occludes a small share of the solar generators, but not enough to hurt anything."

  "That's not what I meant," he said quietly into my ear. "Nelly's out of steering fuel, too. I can't pick you up!"

  I gulped on that one.

  "Canaveral Control!" I heard him call.

  "Cut that out," I said. "They can't help. Shut up and let me think."

  But he didn't, and I couldn't. I had no fuel with which to move. Sid had only the retros and stern rockets, no good for swinging or turning. I was out of touching range of the bird, and couldn't shove against it to build up a little drift. Just as Sylvia said, it's not like swimming back to shore.

  There was a lot of excited chatter in my earphones, in which I did not participate. Nobody made any sense, and Sid shut the thing down.

  "Mike!"

  "Yeah." Disgusted.

  "Whatever you dope out, make it quick. You don't have all the air in the world." Sid warned me.

  "How much?"

  "Ten minutes or so."

  "All right," I said. "It ought to be enough. Keep your eye on me. You may have to reach out an arm or leg for me to grab as I go by."

  "How are you going to move?"

  "I've got a lifesaver," I said.

  * * * * *

  I writhed and squirmed and made every use of the law of conservation of angular momentum until I had my back to Nelly. Then I wound up and threw my fancy screwdriver as hard as I could heave it away from me. I didn't get the zip on it I would have liked, but because it was sort of like a throwing stick, I got a little more on it than you might expect, maybe fifty or sixty feet a second. And the thing weighed about four pounds, with its fancy ratchet and torque clutch. Since in my suit I weighed just about a hundred times as much, I started toward Nelly at just one-one-hundredth of the velocity I had imparted to the screwdriver. In a couple minutes I was drifting pretty close, but tumbling. I had forgotten that part.

  Throwing the screwdriver had given my body the correct vector and some velocity, but I had set up quite a tumbling moment, since I had thrown from the shoulder and not from my center of gravity.

  I chucked a couple lighter tools away to correct my drift, and Sid snagged me as I drifted by the hatch.

  "Come to Papa," he said, and drew me inside. We didn't horse around congratulating ourselves. My air tanks were no longer hissing, and we made a quick swap.

  Sid let me dog down the hatch while he figured position. He used the iron compass method, just taking a close look at Earth, which was more or less dead ahead of us. That was a good place for it, because we had no steering fuel.

  The re-entry was a mess, from Sid's point of view. We came in at a weird angle and heated up to beat hell before there was enough atmosphere for our rudder to swing us around straight. He bounced us off twice after that as we slowed down, but the creak of heating metal was all about us each time we dropped in. He cussed me plenty all the way.

  The trick, of course, was to slow down to the point where he could spiral us down to Muroc Dry Lake. Nelly was a sort of glider. Her performance at about Mach 10 and two hundred thousand feet was quite respectable, but the lower and slower we went, the more she flew like the proverbial kitchen sink. Sid only had one bright spot: Our big fuel supply gave him plenty of rocket and retro when he wanted it, and allowed him to get us back over Muroc.

  I can't say he made the landing look easy, because he didn't. It looked like plain hell to me, for we scorched in at something over four hundred miles an hour.

  When Nelly screeched to a stop, we just sat there. There was none of this romantic business about snapping open face plates and exchanging witty remarks. Bubble helmets don't have face plates, and besides, I didn't have anything I wanted to say to Sid. I was as tired of him as he was of me. I was just plain tired, if you want to know the truth.

  They didn't let us alone, of course. While the crash trucks were still kicking up a dust trail tearing out to get us, there were guys on the radio with those cool voices, and Sid was tiredly saying "Roger," to all their questions. And we didn't do any moving about. You'd be surprised how weighing four hundred pounds makes you willing to wait for the crane to lift you from your seat. All at once I almost wanted to be back in space again, where I didn't weigh anything at all. Almost.

  * * * * *

  They flew us back to Canaveral for the de-briefing, both asleep. The whole mob was there to greet us, Paul Cleary, Fred Stone, and even Sylvia. They met us at the plane and Sylvia was the first to grab me as I came down the steps.

  "Mike!" she squealed. "Are you all right?"

  "Better now," I said, kind of untangling from her. "How did you manage this?" I looked up. "Hi, Paul," I said to his sleepy old grin, and knew how.

  "Dinner tonight?" she insisted.

  "I don't know," I said, looking over at Paul. "I think there's a de-briefing or something before they turn me loose."

  "Don't be silly," Sylvia said. "It's not as if you were an astronaut or something."

  I was back on the ground, all right.

  Well, there was sort of a de-briefing. Cleary and Stone got me alone for a moment in somebody's office.

  "Well, Mike," Paul said, "that was a great performance. What was the trouble up there?"

  I laughed at both of them. "Go jump in the lake," I said. "I'm out of the middle."

  "What do you mean, Mike?" Doc Stone asked, holding his young-man's pipe at arm's length.

  "It wasn't design--because the solenoid worked. And it wasn't installation. It was materials." I told them about the no-good insulation.

  "Lucky it's only used in a couple points," Paul said, scowling. "I guess any other point where it broke up wasn't as critical in dimension and no short resulted."

  "Not yet," I grinned. "It may. And I couldn't care less."

  "You're a big winner, then, Mike," Paul grinned. "Fred and I have kind of made up anyway, and you're in solid with Sylvia."

  "Not with that noise," I said. "No dame was worth that ride. Let Sid have her."

  * * *

  Contents

  SHIPWRECK IN THE SKY

  by Eando Binder

  There is a warm feeling about welcoming back into the pages of a science fiction magazine the work of a writer who is a legend in the genre. So, here's Binder and a neatly wrapped-up package of a folktale of the future.

  The flight into space that made Pilot-Capt. Dan Barstow famous.

  The flight was listed at GHQ as Project Songbird. It was sponsored by the Space Medicine Labs of the U.S. Air Force. And its pilot was Captain Dan Barstow.

  A hand-picked man, Dan Barstow, chosen for the AF's most important project of the year because he and his VX-3 had already broken all previous records set by hordes of V-2s, Navy Aerobees and anything else that flew the skyways.

  Dan Barstow, first man to cross the sea of air and sight open, unlimited space. Pioneer flight to infinity. He grinned and hummed to himself as he settled down for the long jaunt. Too busy to be either thrilled or scared he considered the thirty-seven instruments he'd have to read, the twice that many records to keep, and the miles of camera film to run. He had been hand-picked and thoroughly conditioned to tak
e it all without more than a ten percent increase in his pulse rate. So he worked as matter-of-factly as if he were down in the Gs Centrifuge of the Space Medicine Labs where he had been schooled for this trip for months.

  He kept up a running fire of oral reports through his helmet radio, down to Rough Rock and his CO. "All Roger, sir ... temperature falling fast but this rubberoid space suit keeps me cozy, no chills ... Doc Blaine will be happy to hear that! Weightless sensations pretty queer and I feel upside-down as much as rightside-up, but no bad effects.... Taking shots of the sun's corona now with color film ... huh? Oh, yes, sir, it's beautiful all right, now that you mention it. But, hell, sir, who's got the time for aesthetics now?... Oops, that was a close one! Tenth meteor whizzing past. Makes me think of flak back on those Berlin bombing runs."

  Dan couldn't help wincing when the meteors peppered down past. The "flak" of space. Below he could see the meteors flare up brightly as they hit the atmosphere. Most of those near his position were small, none bigger than a baseball, and Dan took comfort in the fact that his rocket was small too, in the immensity around him. A direct hit would be sheer bad luck, but the good old law of averages was on his side.

  "Yes, Colonel, this tin can I'm riding is holding together okay," Dan continued to Rough Rock. If he paused even a second in his reports a top-sergeant's yell from the Colonel's throat came back for him to keep talking. Every bit of information he could transmit to them was a vital revelation in this USAF-Alpha exploration of open space beyond Earth's air cushion, with ceiling unlimited to infinity.

  "Cosmic rays, sir? Sure, the reading shot up double on the Geiger ... huh? Naw, I don't feel a thing ... like Doc Baird suspected, we invented a lot of Old Wives' Tales in advance, before going into space. I feel fine, so you can put down cosmic ray intensity as a Boogey Man.... What's that? Yeah, yeah, sir, the stars shine without winking up here. What else?... Space is inky black--no deep purples or queer more-than-blacks like some jetted-up writers dreamed up--just plain old ordinary dead black. Earth, sir?... Well, it does look dish-shaped from up here, concave.... Sure, I can see all the way to Europe and--say! Here's something unexpected. I can see that hurricane off the coast of Florida.... You said it, sir! Once we install permanent space stations up here it will be easy to spot typhoons, volcano eruptions, tidal waves, earthquakes, what have you, the moment they start. If you ask me, with a good telescope you could even spot forest fires the minute they broke out, not to mention a sneak bombing on a target city--uh, sorry, sir, I forgot."

  Dan broke off and almost retched as his stomach turned a flip-flop to end all flip-flops. The VX-3 had reached the peak of its trajectory at over 1000 miles altitude and now turned down, lazily at first. He gulped oxygen from the emergency tube at his lips and felt better.

  "Turning back on schedule, Rough Rock. Peak altitude 1037 miles. Everything fine, no danger. This was all a cinch.... HEY! Wait.... Something not in the books has popped up ... stand by!"

  Dan had felt the rocket swing a bit, strangely, as if gripped by a strong force. Instead of falling directly down toward Earth with a slight pitch, it slanted sideways and spun on its long axis. And then Dan saw what it was....

  Beneath, intercepting his trajectory, coming around fast over the curvature of Earth, was a tiny black worldlet, 998 miles above Earth. It might be an enormous meteor, but Dan felt he was right the first time. For it wasn't falling like a meteor but swinging parallel to Earth's surface on even keel.

  He stared at the unexpected discovery, as amazed as if it were a fire-breathing dragon out of legend. For it was, actually, he realized in swift, stunned comprehension, more amazing than any legend.

  Dan kept his voice calm. "Hello, Rough Rock.... Listen ... nobody expected this ... hold your hat, sir, and sit down. I've discovered a second moon of Earth!... Uhhuh, you heard me right! a second moon! Tie that, will you?... Sure, it's tiny, less than a mile in diameter I'd say. Dead black in color. Guess that's why telescopes never spotted it. Tiny and black, blends into the black backdrop of space. It has terrific speed. And that little maverick's gravitational field caught my rocket.... Of course it can't yank me away from Earth gravity, but the trouble is--yipe! my rocket and that moonlet may be in for a mutual collision course...."

  Dan's trained eye suddenly saw that grim possibility. Barreling around Earth in a narrow orbit with a speed of something near or over 12,000 miles an hour the tiny new moon had, since his ascent, charged directly into his downward free fall. It was a chance in a thousand for a direct hit, except for one added factor--the moonlet exerted enough gravity pull out of its many-million ton bulk to warp the rocket into its path. And the thousand-to-one odds were thus wiped out, becoming even money.

  "Nip and tuck," reported Dan, answering the excited pleadings and questions from Rough Rock. "It won't be a head-on crash. I may even miss entirely.... Oh, Lord! Not with that spire of rock sticking up from it.... I'm going to hit that ..."

  Dan had heard an atomic bomb blast once and it sounded like a string of them set off at once as the rocket smashed into the rocky prominence. The rock splintered. The rocket splintered. But Dan was not there to be splintered likewise. He had jammed down a button, at the critical moment, and the rocket's emergency escape-hatch had ejected him a split-second before the violent impact.

  But Dan blacked out, receiving some of the concussion of the exploding rocket. When his eyes snapped open he was floating like a feather in open, airless space. His rubberoid space suit, living up to its rigid tests, had inflated to its elastic limit. But it held and within its automatic units began feeding him oxygen, heat and radio-power. He had a chance, now, because he had been ejected cleanly from the rocket, without damage to the protective suit.

  The stars wheeled dizzily around him. Dan finally saw the reason why. He was not just floating as a free agent in space. He was circling the black moonlet, at perhaps a thousand yards from its pitted surface.

  "Hello, Rough Rock," he called. "Still alive and kicking, sir. Only now, of all crazy-mad things, I'm a moon of this moon! The collision must have knocked me clear out of my down-to-Earth orbit.... I must have been ejected in the same direction as the moonlet's course, in its gravity field.... I don't know. Let an electronic brain figure it out some time.... Anyway, now I'm being dragged along in the orbit of the moonlet--how about that? Yes, sir, I'm circling down closer and closer to the moonlet.... No, don't worry, sir. It was a weak gravity pull, only a fraction of an Earth-g. So I'm drifting down gently as a cloud.... Stand by for my landing on Earth's second moon!"

  The bloated figure in the bulging space suit circled the black stony surface several more times, in a narrowing spiral, and finally landed with a soft skidding bump that didn't even jar Dan's teeth. He bounced several times from a diminishing height of fifty-odd feet in grotesque slow-motion before he finally came to a stop.

  He sat still for a moment, adjusting to the fantastic fact of being shipwrecked on an unchartered moonlet, crowding down his pulse rate which might be over ten percent normal now.

  "Okay, Rough Rock, I hear you.... You're telling me, sir?... Obviously, I'm marooned here. No rocket to leave with. No way to get back to terra firma ... what? If you'll pardon my saying so, sir, that's a silly question.... Of course I'm scared! Scared green. Sorry about the rocket, sir, losing it for you.... Me, sir? Thank you, sir. But stop apologizing, will you? I know you haven't got any duplicates of the VX-3 ready, no rescue rocket...."

  Dan listened a moment longer then broke in roughly. "Oh, for Pete's sake, will you stop crying over me, sir? So I get mine here. I might have gotten it over Berlin, too. Forget it--sir."

  Dan grinned suddenly. "Look, what have I got to kick about? I'll go out in a flash of glory--at least one headline will put it that way--and I'll get credit in the history books as the man who discovered that Earth has two moons! What more could I ask, really?"

  Dan blushed at the reply from Rough Rock. "Will you lay off please, Colonel? How else should a man take it? I'm still sca
red silly inside. But, look, I've really got something to report now. This little runt moon makes tracks around Earth in probably two hours minus. If I remember my Spacenautics right I'm already looking down over the Grand Canyon, heading west. I'm going to get a pretty terrific bird's-eye view of the whole world in two more hours, which is just about how much oxygen I've got left.... Lucky, eh?"

  Dan looked down, watching in fascination the majestic wheeling of the Earth below him. His little moonlet did not rotate, or rather it rotated once for each revolution around Earth, as the Moon did, keeping one face earthward, giving him an uninterrupted view. The Sierras on Earth hove into clear view and the broad Pacific. There would follow Hawaii, then Japan, Asia, Europe.... No, he saw he was slanting southwest. It would be across the equator, past Australia, perhaps near the South Pole, then up around over the top of the world past Greenland, following that great circle around the globe. In any case, his was the speediest trip around the world ever made by man!

  "Before we're out of mutual range, Rough Rock, I'm going to explore this new moon. Me and Columbus! Stand by for reports."

  Dan did his walking in huge leaps that propelled him fifty feet at a step with slight effort, due to the extremely feeble gravity of the tiny body. What did he weigh here? Probably no more than an ounce or two.

  "Nothing much to report, Colonel. It's a dead, airless pip-squeak planetoid, just a big mile-thick rock, probably. No life, no vegetation, no people, no nothing. Guess you might call me the Man in the Second Moon--and the joke's on me! Well, one and three-quarter hours of oxygen left, by the gauge, or 105 minutes--sounds like more that way.... What's that, sir? Your voice is getting faint. Any last requests from me? Well, one favor maybe. Pick up my body some day with another rocket.... Yeah, it'll stay preserved up here in this deep-freeze of space.... Thanks, sir.... Can't hear you much now. Going out of range. Give Betty my fondest. You know, the blonde.... Well, sir--goodbye now."