Rocket Jockey

by Philip St John

  Jerry had the advantage of two years of the best possible schooling, on top of his years in space. Where many of the others would have their courses charted in advance at some observatory, he could figure his own. If they lost time anywhere, it would throw them off completely. He meant to take advantage of any such breaks.

  It took up his time until Thursday changed to Friday. He rechecked his last calculations, and nodded with satisfaction. He'd clipped five hours off the time his first rough figures allowed—and still left time enough for refueling and normal delays.

  He put it aside and glanced again at the clock. Two-thirty, Friday morning, not yet two days out from Mars, but at least farther than they had been when he'd turned back before. In another few hours, he'd turn over and start braking down.

  Suddenly he lurched in the seat. The ship seemed to go weightless, and then to pick up more weight than ever. It ran on smoothly for a few minutes, and then bucked again. This time the bucking became regular.

  He glanced at the radar screens, but there was no sign of any meteorite which might have cut on the automatic course-changing mechanism. That should have given an alarm, anyhow.

  He grabbed for the phone, buzzing for Tod. The little engineer's voice came back sharply. "Don't know what, Jerry. But it's down here. Better shut her off. Those blamed Martians! Bet they did something while we got loaded!"

  Jerry cut off the blast, letting the ship coast on at its present speed of slightly less than seven million miles an hour. Without the drive, he was completely weightless. His body tried to bounce out of the chair, thrown by the rebound of the cushions, but he caught himself in time.

  He felt his hair suddenly stand on end and wave about as he moved. With no weight to hold it down, it soon separated into a fuzz all about his head. His clothes ballooned out. For a second, his stomach seemed to turn over. But he'd been weightless before, and he knew it was only temporary.

  He pulled himself up carefully, drifted to the central shaft, and threw himself down it, using one hand on the rail to guide him. At the bottom, he doubled over in mid-air and landed on his feet, checking the rebound by grabbing the rail more firmly.

  Tod was moving around busily, seemingly as happy without weight as a bird in the air. He might almost have been one. He moved from place to place by pushing against anything convenient and floating toward his goal, widr unfailing good aim.

  Now he was busily prying open a section of the tube, using long tools to handle the hot stuff. He felt in with probes and metal mirrors that had filters built into them to bring the glaring, white-hot metal down to visible level. The mirrors would work until they grew too warm, but he was careful to expose them as little as possible before withdrawing them.

  "Well?" Jerry asked.

  Tod nodded. "It's here, all right. Must have been something in the fuel. The jet's clogged, and it's cutting off the fuel feed. Got a big hunk of slag grown up over it. We'll have to scrape it off."

  He probed in again, his eyes glittering as he inspected the damage. "Too far to reach from here. I told you the Martians weren't as milk-and-honey as they acted. Now, see? We gotta go outside."

  Jerry shivered. Nothing worried a spaceman more than having to leave his ship and move about outside to repair it. The space suits were a big improvement over those of the old days. They were fairly light, and they carried enough air for about six to eight hours, and were able to keep the wearer comfortable under almost any conditions of heat or cold. But the old stories of slipping off and going sailing off into nowhere, to drift until death came of asphyxiation, were still too common.

  "Nothing else we can do, Tod?**

  "Nope—unless you want to soup up the radio and send out an SOS for a space tug to come and take you back."

  "How long?" Jerry asked. Even without the danger of going outside, it would mean a loss of time. They'd continue drifting at their present speed, but there would be no way to increase it—and each minute counted.

  Tod shrugged, and began gathering his tools together. Jerry went up to the control room, to make sure everything was cut off. He shut off the automatic meteor detector; men had been killed for forgetting that, when the detector located a rock in space and cut on the steering tubes for a few seconds.

  In space, with no air to drag back on one, speed meant nothing. To a man walking on a ship going millions of miles an hour, the ship seemed to be standing still, because both man and ship had the same speed. But any change in speed would throw him off.

  If a meteorite came along, it would be too bad. But those were rare. Jerry had automatically set the course to rise well above the plane of the ecliptic—the flat plane of the planets around the sun; there were millions of bits of rock in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but by going upward a million miles or so, they avoided all those. And except in the belt, accidents from such things were too rare to worry about.

  He began climbing into his space suit, adjusting it to fit him. He checked the air. The old automatic habits of a meteor miner came back to him without requiring thought, and Tod nodded approval. There was no radio installed in the suits, and no way they could talk, except by touching helmets together, or each touching helmets to the ship, which would then carry the sound.

  Jerry had been on some of the smaller asteroids, little hunks of rock only a few hundred feet across, and didn't mind that. But when the locks of the ship opened, and he went out to see nothing at all near by except the ship, it was different. He hesitated, automatically feeling that he was falling into a bottomless cavern. He closed his eyes and swayed dizzily.

  It lasted only a few seconds, before shame at himself overcame the feeling. But the helmet of Tod clicked against him. "It's all right, lad," the engineer said with surprising softness. "We all feel it. I don't cotton to the idea myself. Well, out we go."

  The old man reached out for one of the small handgrips with which the ship was covered and pulled himself out of the lock. Jerry hesitated again, and then followed his action. They moved toward the rear of the ship a few feet, stopping to clamp the rope around their waists to a new handhold every half-dozen grips they traveled. It was slow work, but it paid to be safe. Without the rope, a single careless movement could throw them off into space. With the big rocket off until it could be cleaned, it would be impossible to rescue any man who drifted away.

  They came to the big tube, finally. There Tod began clamping a series of short ropes to handholds in such a way that he would have a limited amount of movement, but wouldn't bounce away from the ship every time he used a tool. Jerry studied his example and did the same.

  Here they could have used elastic ropes, but such things were useless in space; the absolute cold would slowly make them stiff and brittle. Even the silicone fabric ropes they used were safe for only a few hours, and their suits were usable for longer only because heat was supplied from inside.

  Tod began unscrewing a big plug in the tube. He bent sideways to touch helmets with Jerry as he did so. "One advantage of using an old meteor mining ship, lad. They expect accidents on these things, and they fix it so we can get to the trouble. On those pretty little racing jobs, we'd be sunk. Darn that plugl"

  The heat of the tube had made the plug swell just a bit differently from the tube, and it was stuck. Tod sprayed a jet of liquid oxygen from his suit on it. There was no sound of a hiss, but the plug turned with their next effort. They worked it out, until they could see the big hunk of slag that covered the nozzle of the tube.

  "Hard as diamond, almost, I bet," Tod grumbled.

  He was right. The heat had fused out the softer elements, leaving only something that might have been carborundum. They began picking at it with the long-handled tools, trying to chip it away. It was somewhat brittle, fortunately. A well-placed blow could knock off a chunk of it.

  But it was slow, tedious work, and it would get worse as they began to reach the nozzle itself. There, they'd have to be careful not to cause damage to the functioning of the tube.

&nb
sp; Jerry sweated inside the suit, while the tiny round spot that was the sun blazed through empty space at him, glaring through the filters of his helmet. He was wondering whether it had been the Martians again. He couldn't believe it; they'd seemed too genuinely concerned. And yet, all the evidence of previous races indicated they would try any treachery to win. It wasn't a sport to them, but a grim struggle to build up their trade, and they didn't care how they won, so long as they did win.

  Maybe Earth had played unfair, once, he decided. Or maybe some of Earth's ships still would. And how would the Martians be received on Earth, if they stopped there for refueling. He'd seen bitter hatred in the eyes of Earthmen whenever the Martians made a move. Maybe the whole trouble was one that could be cured only by making commerce so easy that there would be no bitter struggle for survival, and everyone could afford to be friends. His father's fuel, with its tremendous power and low heat production, might be a partial answer.

  The bell in his suit clanged, reminding him that he'd better renew his ropes and change to fresh oxygen tanks before his air ran low. He tapped Tod on the shoulder, and the older man nodded.

  Again they threaded their way back, being even more careful this time, since their ropes might be more brittle than they should be.

  This time, they brought files and rasps with them, since the slag was getting close to the nozzle. The worst of the hatred of being out in raw space was over now. But Jerry had too much respect for the emptiness around him to be careless.

  He fastened down again, and began working with Tod, using a long hammer to knock off what he could. The slag was more brittle now that the tube was cooling, and they could get closer. But it was also harder than it had been when hot.

  Slow bit by slow bit, the scrapers chewed it away, and the files began to smooth it down. It didn't have to be too smooth, but it had to be free of all traces of the slag to prevent another clump from forming.

  "How hot is it?" Jerry asked, at last.

  Tod considered, and shook his head. "Nope, you can't get inside it. Room enough and cool enough now —but there isn't a handhold in there, or on the tube. Can't build them into the lining."

  He reached out wildly as Jerry slipped out of the clamps, and floated free on a single rope. Jerry brought up with a weak jerk at the end of the rope and reached down with the long pick he'd been holding. His stomach heaved violently, but he couldn't close his eyes. He caught the edge of the tube and pulled himself down. Then he touched his helmet to the metal, and waited until Tod bent over.

  Sound traveled easily through the metal. "You blamed young idiot!" But there was admiration in Tod's tones as well as anger,and Jerry needed that encouragement.

  "Let out the rope, Tod," he ordered. "I'll need slack enough to climb back."

  He felt the rope slacken carefully. Then, using the pick against one wall of the tube and his feet against the other, he began moving slowly back. It was easier than he expected, as long as he took it slowly. There was no weight to bother him, and the surface of the tube was slightly rough.

  At the nozzle, he waited while Tod threw a rope through the hole where the plug had been, and fastened himself down. Now it was comparatively easy to chip off the slag, since his hands could guide the tools easily, and get effective leverage on the hammer. He began smoothing it down, scraping the inside of the nozzle. Luckily, the force of the fuel had cleaned that—or the fuel had dissolved the slag, before it could grow to any size.

  Getting out was simply a matter of giving himself a faint push that carried him beyond the tube, and then letting Tod reel him in on the rope around his waist. But after he was drawn down beside the engineer, he stood swaying for long minutes before he could make the trip back into the ship.

  If the rope had been too weakened, or if he'd given himself too much speed out of the tube . . .

  He let the thought drop, and began following Tod back. The engineer's few words of praise were mixed with descriptions of what a fool he was, but he felt more like a man and a captain.

  Inside, he glanced at the clock, and gasped. They had spent eleven hours out there, getting the nozzle cleaned. The jinx that was following the Last Hope was working overtime. Now all his carefully prepared course was useless.

  CkttptCr & Dead Mans Orbit

  erry cut on the blast, carefully at first. It felt right I —there was no roughness, and the ship answered

  U

  smoothly, the fuel feed gauge and the pressure indicator going up together as they should. He moved the control up to the full two gees, and sent it a trifle higher.

  "Okay, Tod," he decided. "We re on our way again."

  The engineer nodded, packed a new wad of Venus gum into his mouth, and slid down the rail, unzipping the space suit with one hand while he held on with the other. Jerry began unfastening his own suit.

  The radio buzzed sharply.

  He threw a startled glance at it, jerked out of the suit, and moved to the control seat. "Earth ship Last Hope. Come in!"

  Almost instantly, the answer came back. "Venus ship Dawn Maid, Carlson speaking. You're Blaine?"

  "Jerry Blaine. Where are you?"

  "Just out of your radar range, apparently. Our radar is a little stronger, it seems, and we spotted you. It seemed like a good chance to say hello. We're heading back from Jupiter, but your jets seem to point toward the big fellow. Right?"

  Jerry admitted it, with a sinking sensation. The Venus ship had proved fast on the way to the Moon, but hardly that fast. "How'd you do it?"

  A laugh came over the phones. "We didn't hit Mars —we went straight on, and we're bound back for Mars now. But from the way you're heading, you shouldn't worry. What are you carrying? Three gees? You must be, if you're going to brake down to Jupiter, judging speed and distance! I thought at first you might be a tail-ender, days behind, but now I guess you must have hit inward to Mercury and our planet first, eh?"

  He must have heard Jerry's sudden startled gasp. His soft voice stopped quickly, and a touch of worry crept into it. "You're not in trouble, are you?"

  "No trouble," Jerry assured him quickly. "Just realized it's time to change my course. I've got to turn over! Look, I'm going to have to cut off, but you've been a big help."

  "Okay, Blaine. We get lonely too. Lots of luck, and may you beat Mars. Dawn Maid signing off."

  "Luck to you. Last Hope off," Jerry acknowledged mechanically.

  He tossed the phones back and grabbed for his instruments. Jupiter was too large in the plate now, and the instruments confirmed what he should have known all along. They'd been drifting for eleven hours-enough to bring them over seventy million miles closer to Jupiter. They were well beyond their normal turnover point. The Venusan's comment about the speed he'd need had made him realize it for the first time, but they were already too close to the giant planet for them to decelerate in the time they had at two gees!

  He blamed himself for being a fool, though he knew it had been caused by the fatigue of the long hours of hard labor outside. Even without the pull of acceleration, it had left every muscle in his body aching, and numbed the awareness that pilots developed only after years of experience; he'd been a fool, nevertheless. It was his job to consider everything.

  His fingers were stiff on the calculator. He didn't try to get completely accurate results, but only to rough in a new course.

  With it finished, he reached for the phone and called Tod. "Tod, any chance of stepping up the power from here to Jupiter?"

  "A feather, lad." The engineer sounded almost pleased about something, and Jerry felt a bit less ashamed of himself as he realized that the old man hadn't thought of the trouble, either. "Don't they sing pretty now? Every strut in the old ship knows she's back on the beam!"

  "Could she take two and a quarter?"

  Tod seemed to consider it, and Jerry could almost see the shake of his head as he answered. "Wouldn't try it—she might, but if there's even a trace of that clinker left, she'll foul up when the heat starts building up o
n us."

  Jerry groaned to himself. With the thrust he was feeding in now, the ship would be able to stop eventually—but that would be an hour beyond Jupiter. Then he'd have to swing about and start chasing the moons. And it would bring them into the worst possible position.

  He'd already started the reversal, and now he corrected it, until they were pointing back toward the big planet. He eased the control up a trifle, holding it just above two gees. He should have cut off power and reversed at once, he knew—but he'd messed things up again.

  All he could do now was to figure his course more carefully. He might have made a mistake—and even a small mistake could make for trouble of worse nature, or leave him worrying about a trouble that wasn't serious after all.

  Tod's hand fell on his shoulder. "Best get to bed, Jerry. Nothing you can do now, and it ain't wise to try any figuring while you're all worn out. Til take over."

  Jerry started to protest, but he knew there was sense in the old man's words. He slid out of the seat, and dragged himself to the rail, and down to his hammock.

  There was something—something he'd read in a book once. If he could only remember it, it might still get them out of the mess.

  He tried to recall it, but his brain was too tired, and sleep hit him almost at once.

  Tod had coffee waiting for him when he came back into the control room, hours later. The old man was worn out, too, but he sprang up quickly, trying to cover it up. "Young idiot! Thought I heard you down there. Why didn't you sleep a full ten hours when you could?"

  "Because an old idiot up here didn't have sense enough to admit he needed sleep, too," Jerry told him, grinning. It was the right note to strike. The engineer suddenly chuckled gruffly, and went down the rail, muttering something about young fools who woke themselves up, but still grinning.