Earthbound (Winston Science Fiction Book 1)

by Milton Lesser

  He opened the door quietly and went upstairs.

  Garr couldn’t take a walk like that. Garr could just sit in the tight confines of his spaceship and wait for death.

  Tomorrow he would do something. He did not know what, but he would do something.

  Chapter 16 — Blast-Off!

  In the morning, Captain Saunders seemed a little surprised to see him again. “Hello, Pete. Don’t tell me you’ve had some luck?”

  Pete shook his head. “What do you think? No, I guess I’ve been batting my head against a brick wall but I’m going to take you up on what you said.”

  “Eh? What did I say?”

  “That I could have my old job back.”

  “Ah-h! That’s a lot more sensible, Pete. We can always use a good orbiteer around the tower. When do you want to start?”

  “Right now. This morning.”

  “Man, you are in a hurry! But I stopped looking gift horses in the mouth a long time ago. Fact of the matter is, Pete, we sure can use you. Yes, and right now, today. Some eighty graduate Cadets are pulling in today and tomorrow. They’ll be taking two-seaters to the moon and back, and although those ships are small, there’ll be a lot of orbit-plotting to do. I planned on doing all of it myself, because your replacement has his hands full figuring out a liner orbit for the end of the week. Man, you can roll up your sleeves and get to work at once.”

  “Good,” said Pete and hung his jacket in the closet.

  “As you know, now,” Captain Saunders said, “we can forget all about sunrise and sunset blast-offs when a hop to the moon is involved. We still use an ellipse, sure; but instead of being in the sun, one of its focal points coincides with the center of the Earth. And that means one time of day is as good as any other. I plan to get twenty ships up today, twenty tomorrow. Half-hour shifts, ten hours a day. I hope you got plenty of sleep last night.”

  “Enough,” Pete told him, although, in truth, he’d hardly been able to sleep at all. Toward morning he’d dozed fitfully, but it had already begun to grow light, and he’d risen restlessly from bed just after sunrise.

  He felt a growing eagerness, however. One of those forty small ships could supply his answer. There wouldn’t be much more than enough fuel to reach the moon, true enough — and fuel capacity in those babies was strictly limited. But from the moon outward would be a different story, for, thanks to its lighter gravity, a spaceship could blast away from the moon with only a fraction of the fuel it used for Earth blast-off.

  I’ve got to do this carefully, Pete thought. Logically.

  1. I somehow get control of one of those ships.

  2. I blast off for the moon with all the others.

  3. I somehow refuel on the moon and blast outward for the asteroids.

  4. I plot my own orbit as I go along, and I’m on my way.

  Simple. One, two, three, four. just like that. Except that getting the ship would be a problem in itself, and refueling on the moon might be even more difficult. . . .

  “. . . orbits,” Captain Saunders was saying.

  “Huh? I’m sorry, sir. I — I didn’t hear you.”

  “I said, we’ll be plotting economy-orbits. The less fuel employed, the better. Take a look outside, Pete.”

  Pete strode to the window, peered through it. The forty trim ships stood waiting on the runway. They were small enough to use the old portable blasting tanks instead of the larger, permanent pits, and each small ship was housed in its tank, prow pointing straight up into the air. “I thought those tanks were obsolete,” Pete said.

  “No, not obsolete. We rarely use them, but once in a while they come in handy. In the old days there was no such thing as a Spaceport, and also, the ships were much smaller, much like these two-man jobs outside. Thus, you could take off any place, provided you had a tank to suck in the heat and the radioactivity.

  “But the tanks aren’t obsolete. We use them every time a large number of tiny ships blast off. You figure it out — using forty blasting pits would scatter these ships over miles of runway. This way they’re packed together and we can keep an eye on them. Anyway, what time have you got, Pete?”

  “Oh-eight-hundred-and-five, sir.”

  “Well, at oh-eight-and-thirty we’ll get started.”

  Pete nodded, reached into a drawer for scratch paper, a pencil, a slide rule, and the Manual of Lunar Orbits. With these, he sat down and got to work.

  After that, it became a nerve-wracking routine. Nerve-wracking because each ship that lifted skyward meant one less chance for Pete. However, now at least, he could do nothing about it. The ships soared away at half-hour intervals, and he only had time between flights to prepare the next orbit.

  “Are you ready? Are you ready, 14B-11?”

  Then the eager voice of a Cadet about to leave Earth for the first time: “Y-yes, sir!” The voice sounded flat over the radio, but that failed to hide the eagerness.

  “It is now ten-twenty eight-seventeen. One minute and forty-three seconds to blast off.”

  “Check, Sir!”

  “One minute.”

  “Check!”

  “Thirty seconds.”

  “Ch-check!”

  “You’re away, 14B-11!” Then Pete would press the firing stud, watching the radioactive glow mount in one of the blasting tanks outside. Actually, for takeoff purposes, neither a tank nor a pit was necessary, provided you did not mind scorching the ground all around and spilling out a great deal of radioactive slag which could be dangerous.

  In a moment, the little ship would rise slowly, gathering speed as it crept up into the sky. In a few seconds it would streak out of sight altogether, and Pete could imagine the two Cadets on their acceleration cots pressed down painfully under a force of more than five gravities. The speed of escape from Earth was in the neighborhood of seven and a half miles per second, and to attain that speed, acceleration had to be built up fast. The result was five gravities — and sometimes six — but the Cadets would hardly mind. They’d fight a few moments of terrible pain, yes; and they might even black out. But soon after that they would be in free-fall, coasting to the moon, and then they could unstrap themselves and look back at the great green globe of Earth looming up in the blackness behind them, and it would be worth it.

  Another ship. And another.

  Thirty left on the field. Time for a quick bite of lunch. And through the afternoon and early evening another ten. Twenty ships gone, twenty left. And still Pete had been able to do nothing —

  “Good night, Pete.”

  “Good night, Captain Saunders.”

  “See you in the morning.”

  “Yeah, in the morning. . . .”

  Sunset of the following day. A crimson glow brightened the western horizon, touched fingers of flame to the low-hanging cumulus clouds, swollen and puffy. But it faded, and with it, Pete’s hope. . . .

  Thirty-seven ships gone, only three remaining. He plotted the thirty-eighth orbit rapidly, had the ship all set to go a full fifteen minutes before blast-off time. It had to be now or never, for he realized he might not finish either of the remaining orbits so quickly.

  That morning he had scrawled a quick note for Big Pete, had left it where his father would find it.

  Pop: I’ve taken your advice. At least, I think I have. If all goes the way I plan it, I should be on my way by the time you read this. I think you know I had to go. And I know no matter how much I say don’t worry you’ll worry anyway — but don’t! I remember all my training; I haven’t forgotten a thing. I’m going to get Garr and I won’t come back without him. That doesn’t mean I won’t come back — it means I’ll come back with Garr.

  Pete.

  Now, in the tower, with fifteen minutes in which to act:

  “Captain Saunders?”

  “Yes, Pete?”

  “I’ve finished the next orbit. You can handle this baby yourself from here, can’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Swell. Would you mind if I went outside and str
etched my legs?”

  “No, not at all. Go ahead, Pete. Probably you can use it, the way you’ve been bent over that desk all day. Why don’t you hop down and say good-by to the boys in that ship; it will be the 7C-28.”

  “I might do that,” Pete said. “I sure might.”

  He took the stairs two at a time, found himself outside with thirteen minutes remaining. The nose of the 7C-28 protruded from its blasting tank and Pete could see two figures climbing the metal rungs of the ladder on the side of the tank.

  “ Hello!” he called.

  The figures paused, looked down at him. “What do you want?”

  “You still have a few minutes. Why don’t you come down and talk a little? I’m the guy in the tower who plotted your orbit.”

  One of the Cadets nodded, and in a moment they stood at Pete’s side. “Say! I know you; you’re Peter Hodges.”

  Pete nodded.

  “We graduated a quarter after you did — that is, after you were supposed to. I recognized you from your picture in the papers. It’s all over the place, the way you captured those pirates. Me, I’m Mike Donaldson. This is Harry Chambers.”

  “Hi, Mike. Harry.” He shook hands with both of them.

  Harry said, “Hey, I hope that was a good orbit you made. This is our first trip!”

  “I know it,” Pete told him. “And don’t worry about the orbit.”

  Dusk had settled on the spacefield now, the last twilight afterglow was flickering faintly in the west. Seven minutes. . . .

  “I didn’t really capture those pirates,” Pete said, trying to make talk. It was meaningless chatter, and he could feel the blood pounding wildly in his temples.

  “No?”

  “Uh-uh. Heck, I was lucky to get away from them, but that’s a long story.”

  “Sorry we have no time for it,” the Cadet named Mike told him. “But there’s less than seven minutes —”

  “Six minutes!” Harry cried excitedly. “So long, Hodges. Nice meeting you. Let’s go, Mike.”

  “You’re not going any place,” Pete said quietly. Pete knew he could not fight with both of them.

  Even assuming he could win, there were less than six minutes to blast off. Still, he had to prevent the Cadets from boarding their ship, and he had to board it in their stead. Which meant he had to surprise one of them, and do a thorough job of it —

  He lashed out suddenly with his right fist, putting the full force of his body behind it, catching Harry Chambers squarely on the jaw. The Cadet was too surprised even to cry out. He stumbled back against the side of the tank, slid slowly to the ground and wound up flat on his back. He did not move.

  “Hey!” Mike Donaldson protested. “Hey!”

  And then the two were grappling. Pete fought with a blind fury; Garr’s life might depend on the outcome. But the Cadet was angry. Bewildered, too, for the attack upon his comrade had been, as far as he could see, utterly unprovoked. Pete could imagine what he was thinking: here, on the eve of departure, some lunatic comes and . . .

  They were down on the ground in the gathering darkness, rolling over and over, and now the Cadet was on top, pounding Pete’s head against the concrete. Pete’s vision swam. He thrashed about wildly, kicked up and over with his legs, flung the Cadet away.

  Pete was on him in a moment. He could give no quarter. He did not like the idea at all, but he was not going to stop until the Cadet was unconscious. Anything short of that, and his last hope of reaching Garr would be gone.

  He struck with his right hand, his left — his right again. The Cadet cried for him to stop. He almost did. He couldn’t beat the Cadet into senselessness.

  Couldn’t he? He had to!

  Finally, it was over. Shaking, Pete stood up and ran to the ladder. In a few seconds he had reached the top, had swung over from the tank wall to the airlock of the ship, had run inside.

  He heard Captain Saunders’ anxious voice over the radio. “7C-28, don’t you hear me? Seven-C —”

  “I hear you!” Pete called, panting. “Go ahead!” He strapped himself down on one of the acceleration-cots.

  “One minute and fifty-three seconds to blast off!”

  Pete had locked the door behind him. Thoughts chased each other rapidly through his head. If the Cadets regained consciousness, they might figure that the door was locked. They might run to the tower and try to stop him from that end.

  “One minute and five!”

  “All set, sir.”

  “Say! Don’t I know you? Your voice is familiar —”

  “I doubt it,” Pete said hastily, trying to pitch his voice on a higher key. “I came into White Sands only yesterday.”

  “Well, I don’t know. . . . Fifty seconds.” Then, Captain Saunders’ voice came through much lower, as if he were turning away from his transmitter and talking to someone else in the tower. “Who are you?

  “What? Is that so? Let me see your papers. Yes, yes, you do belong on the 7C-28. I don’t understand —”

  Pete’s heart did a mad flip-flop inside his chest. One or both of the Cadets had revived, and had stumbled up into the tower.

  “Thirty seconds, 7C-28, but there seems to be some trouble.”

  “Thirty seconds, Captain Saunders,” Pete called back clearly in his own voice.

  “Yes, and — you know me, eh? Wait a minute!”

  “Wait nothing, sir.”

  “Twenty seconds —” Then, muffled: “Yes, I know your papers indicate you should be on that ship, but it seems to have an occupant. How do I know he doesn’t belong there? If he doesn’t blast off on schedule, we’ll have to compute a new orbit. The moon doesn’t hang out in space waiting for you. What? So we’ll have an investigation. . . .” And louder: “Five seconds!”

  “Ready.”

  “Four, three, two, one — good luck, Pete!”

  He knows, Pete thought. He knows!

  And then everything but agony was blotted from his mind. A loud roar swept in through his ears, grabbed his brain and held it. Something clutched at his stomach, too, constricting it. A giant hand slammed him back against the cot, driving all the breath from his lungs. He could almost feel his face twisting. . . .

  It seemed interminable, the pain. Endless, and it grew worse. . . .

  And then, incredibly, it was over. He hung suspended, his body pushing gently against the straps that held him. He was in free-flight, coasting out toward the moon.

  He was in space!

  Chapter 17 — Luna

  It was as if all his life had been leading to this moment. Gray and green and streaked with brown, the Earth hung off in space behind him, beautiful beyond description, beautiful beyond all the tridimensional pictures he had seen at the Academy.

  Ahead, the bleak speckled vault of space. Far away and off to the right he could see the cold white face of the moon. The path of his ellipse would not be completed; instead, it would meet the moon while the moon swung on its timeless journey around Earth. Then he must turn the ship around and use his rocket-tubes as brakes.

  But all that was so much technical detail.

  He was in space!

  Yes, all his life he had waited for this moment. His years of hope and dreaming and yearning, his glorious existence at the Academy. Even the bitter disappointment, that too had prepared him for this. Perhaps it had taken some of the stardust from his eyes, but even then he should have known that some day he would reach space.

  Acceleration had proven the doctors wrong: he had not felt the slightest twinge of pain in his mended collarbone. It was healed, fully healed — and, well, wasn’t it better this way? If the whole thing had never happened, he might be out there in the derelict ship with Garr, and then there would have been no one to rescue them.

  As he looked through the port at the shoreless sea of emptiness crowding in all around him, Pete wondered. As a boy he had heard tales of the spacemen, of his father and others, and it was said that once a man went to space, space alone was his home and all else was alien. Th
at might explain why the retired space-captains, old men at twenty-six, spent much of their time watching the proud liners roar up toward the sky. These liners were going to space, they were going back home, and in their hearts the spacemen were going with them. All this Pete wondered, and more. He could not help feeling a secret triumph deep inside of him. The odds had been all against it, but now he was in space.

  His joy did not last, for how could he feel triumphant when the hardest part of his task lay far ahead of him through the void? How could he be elated when Garr waited helplessly in a derelict ship, not suspecting for a moment that help was on the way? And, Pete wondered, would he be able to do anything about it when the time came?

  The Patrol had decided that it could not be done — Garr could not be reached for another six weeks. The Patrol knew. The Patrol did not make mistakes. What they neglected to say, however, was this: in six weeks it would be too late. If they did reach Section 17 in six weeks, a twisted, broken mass of metal would wait for them. . . .

  Pete checked his fuel tanks, saw that more than enough remained to bring him safely to Luna. And, despite the situation, he tried his Earthlubber legs at free-flight. You couldn’t merely walk from place to place within the ship, not in free-flight, not when gravity registered exactly zero, for that meant that your weight, in relation to your environment, was also zero. Gingerly, Pete stuck his left foot out ahead of him. It never even touched the floor!

  He began to float. He could feel his right foot rising too, and soon he was off the floor altogether. It was not as if he had taken a forceful leap; no, it was not like that at all. Instead, it was as if he had been underwater and had kicked up gently toward the surface.

  He floated in the air of the ship. Not fast, but not slowly, either; and he did not stop until he bumped against the far wall, where, using the hand-supports placed at intervals for that purpose, he lowered himself to the floor. After that, he was careful. When he moved, he used the handgrips. When he wanted to remain motionless, he either strapped himself to his bunk or to the pilot chair. Soon he came to accept that situation, and before long he was too busy at the controls to worry about it, anyway.