Rocket Ship Galileo

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “None, on both counts. The buzzards didn’t leave enough to identify. Doesn’t make sense. There was nothing to steal in there; it was before your stuff came.”

  “Oh, it’s here!”

  “Yep. You’ll find the crates stacked out in the open. He wasn’t a desert man,” the Ranger went on. “You could tell by his shoes. Must ’a’ come by car, but there was no car around. Doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t seem to,” Ross agreed, “but he’s dead, so that ends it.”

  “Correct. Here are your keys. Oh, yes—” He put his hand back in his pocket. “Almost forgot. Telegram for you.”

  “For us? Oh, thanks!”

  “Better put up a mail box out at the highway,” Buchanan suggested. “This reached you by happenstance.”

  “We’ll do that,” Ross agreed absently, as he tore open the envelope.

  “So long.” Buchanan kicked his motor into life.

  “So long, and thanks again.”

  “For Heaven’s sake, what does it say?,” Art demanded.

  “Read it:”

  PASSED FINAL TESTS TODAY. LEAVING SATURDAY. PLEASE PROVIDE BRASS BAND, DANCING GIRLS, AND TWO FATTED CALVES—ONE RARE, ONE MEDIUM. (signed) DOC AND MORRIE.

  Ross grinned. “Imagine that! Old Morrie a rocket pilot! I’ll bet his hat doesn’t fit him now.”

  “I’ll bet it doesn’t. Darn! We all should have taken the course.”

  “Relax, relax. Don’t be small about it—we’d have wasted half the summer.” Ross dismissed the matter.

  Art himself did not understand his own jealousy. Deep inside, it was jealousy of the fact that Morrie had been able to go to Spaatz Field in the company of Art’s idolized uncle, rather than the purpose of the trip. All the boys had had dual-control airplane instruction; Morrie had gone on and gotten a private license. Under the rules—out of date, in Art’s opinion—an airplane pilot could take a shortened course for rocket pilot. Doctor Cargraves held a slightly dusty aircraft license some fifteen years old. He had been planning to qualify for rocket operation; when he found that Morrie was eligible it was natural to include him.

  This had left Ross and Art to carry out numerous chores for the enterprise, then to make their own way to New Mexico to open up the camp.

  The warning to follow the power line had been necessary; the boys found the desert inside pock-marked by high explosive and criss-crossed with tracks, one as good as another, carved years before by truck and tank and mobile carrier. The cabin itself they found to be inside a one-strand corral a quarter of a mile wide and over a mile long. Several hundred yards beyond the corral and stretching away for miles toward the horizon was an expanse which looked like a green, rippling lake—the glassy crater of the atom bomb test of 1951, the UN’s Doomsday Bomb.

  Neither the cabin nor the piled-up freight could hold their attention until they had looked at it. Ross drove the car to the far side of the enclosure and they stared.

  Art gave a low respectful whistle. “How would you like to have been under that?” Ross inquired in a hushed voice.

  “Not any place in the same county—or the next county. How would you like to be in a city when one of those things goes off?”

  Ross shook his head. “I want to zig when it zags. Art, they better never have to drop another one, except in practice. If they ever start lobbing those things around, it ’ud be the end of civilization.”

  “They won’t,” Art assured him. “What d’you think the UN police is for? Wars are out. Everybody knows that.”

  “You know it and I know it. But I wonder if everybody knows it?”

  “It’ll be just too bad if they don’t.”

  “Yeah—too bad for us.”

  Art climbed out of the car. “I wonder if we can get down to it?”

  “Well, don’t try. We’ll find out later.”

  “There can’t be any duds in the crater or anywhere in the area—not after that.”

  “Don’t forget our friend that the buzzards ate. Duds that weren’t exposed to the direct blast might not go off. This bomb was set off about five miles up.”

  “Huh? I thought—”

  “You were thinking about the test down in Chihuahua. That was a ground job. Come on. We got work to do.” He trod on the starter.

  The cabin was pre-fab, moved in after the atom bomb test to house the radioactivity observers. It had not been used since and looked it. “Whew! What a mess,” Art remarked. “We should have brought a tent.”

  “It’ll be all right when we get it fixed up. Did you see kerosene in that stuff outside?”

  “Two drums of it.”

  “Okay. I’ll see if I can make this stove work. I could use some lunch.” The cabin was suitable, although dirty. It had a drilled well; the water was good, although it had a strange taste. There were six rough bunks needing only bedding rolls. The kitchen was the end of the room, the dining room a large pine table, but there were shelves, hooks on the walls, windows, a tight roof overhead. The stove worked well, even though it was smelly; Ross produced scrambled eggs, coffee, bread and butter, German-fried potatoes, and a bakery apple pie with only minor burns and mishaps.

  It took all day to clean the cabin, unload the car, and uncrate what they needed at once. By the time they finished supper, prepared this time by Art, they were glad to crawl into their sacks. Ross was snoring gently before Art closed his eyes. Between Ross’s snores and the mournful howls of distant coyotes Art was considering putting plugs in his ears, when the morning sun woke him up.

  “Get up, Ross!”

  “Huh? What? Wassamatter?”

  “Show a leg. We’re burning daylight.”

  “I’m tired,” Ross answered as he snuggled back into the bedding. “I think I’ll have breakfast in bed.”

  “You and your six brothers. Up you come—today we pour the foundation for the shop.”

  “That’s right.” Ross crawled regretfully out of bed. “Wonderful weather—I think I’ll take a sun bath.”

  “I think you’ll get breakfast, while I mark out the job.”

  “Okay, Simon Legree.”

  The machine shop was a sheet metal and stringer affair, to be assembled. They mixed the cement with the sandy soil of the desert, which gave them a concrete good enough for a temporary building. It was necessary to uncrate the power tools and measure them before the fastening bolts could be imbedded in the concrete. Ross watched as Art placed the last bolt. “You sure we got ’em all?”

  “Sure. Grinder, mill, lathe—” He ticked them off. “Drill press, both saws—” They had the basic tools needed for almost any work. Then they placed bolts for the structure itself, matching the holes in the metal sills to the bolts as they set them in the wet concrete. By nightfall they had sections of the building laid out, each opposite its place, ready for assembly.

  “Do you think the power line will carry the load?” Art said anxiously, as they knocked off.

  Ross shrugged. “We won’t be running all the tools at once. Quit worrying, or we’ll never get to the moon. We’ve got to wash dishes before we can get supper.”

  By Saturday the tools had been hooked up and tested, and Art had rewound one of the motors. The small mountain of gear had been stowed and the cabin was clean and reasonably orderly. They discovered in unpacking cases that several had been broken open, but nothing seemed to have been hurt. Ross was inclined to dismiss the matter, but Art was worried. His precious radio and electronic equipment had been gotten at.

  “Quit fretting,” Ross advised him. “Tell Doc about it when he comes. The stuff was insured.”

  “It was insured in transit,” Art pointed out. “By the way, when do you think they will get here?”

  “I can’t say,” Ross answered. “If they come by train, it might be Tuesday or later. If they fly to Albuquerque and take the bus, it might be tomorrow—what was that?” He glanced up.

  “Where?” asked Art.

  “There. Over there, to your left. Rocket.”<
br />
  “So it is! It must be a military job; we’re off the commercial routes. Hey, he’s turned on his nose jets!”

  “He’s going to land. He’s going to land here!”

  “You don’t suppose?”

  “I don’t know. I thought—there he comes! It can’t—” His words were smothered when the thunderous, express-train roar reached them, as the rocket decelerated. Before the braking jets had been applied, it was traveling ahead of its own din, and had been, for them, as silent as thought. The pilot put it down smoothly not more than five hundred yards from them, with a last blast of the nose and belly jets which killed it neatly.

  They began to run.

  As they panted up to the sleek, gray sides of the craft, the door forward of the stub wings opened and a tall figure jumped down, followed at once by a smaller man.

  “Doc! Morrie!”

  “Hi, sports!” Cargraves yelled. “Well, we made it. Is lunch ready?”

  Morrie was holding himself straight, almost popping with repressed emotion. “I made the landing,” he announced.

  “You did?” Art seemed incredulous.

  “Sure. Why not? I got my license. Want to see it?”

  “‘Hot Pilot Abrams,’ it says here,” Ross alleged, as they examined the document. “But why didn’t you put some glide on it? You practically set her down on her jets.”

  “Oh, I was practicing for the moon landing.”

  “You were, huh? Well, Doc makes the moon landing or I guarantee I don’t go.”

  Cargraves interrupted the kidding. “Take it easy. Neither one of us will try an airless landing.”

  Morrie looked startled. Ross said, “Then who—”

  “Art will make the moon landing.”

  Art gulped and said, “Who? Me?”

  “In a way. It will have to be a radar landing; we can’t risk a crack-up on anything as hard as an all jet landing when there is no way to walk home. Art will have to modify the circuits to let the robot-pilot do it. But Morrie will be the stand-by,” he went on, seeing the look on Morrie’s face. “Morrie’s reaction time is better than mine. I’m getting old. Now how about lunch? I want to change clothes and get to work.”

  Morrie was dressed in a pilot’s coverall, but Cargraves was wearing his best business suit. Art looked him over. “How come the zoot suit, Uncle? You don’t look like you expected to come by rocket. For that matter, I thought the ship was going to be ferried out?”

  “Change in plans. I came straight from Washington to the field and Morrie took off as soon as I arrived. The ship was ready, so we brought it out ourselves, and saved about five hundred bucks in ferry pilot charges.”

  “Everything on the beam in Washington?” Ross asked anxiously.

  “Yes, with the help of the association’s legal department. Got some papers for each of you to sign. Let’s not stand here beating our gums. Ross, you and I start on the shield right away. After we eat.”

  “Good enough.”

  Ross and the doctor spent three days on the hard, dirty task of tearing out the fuel system to the tail jets. The nose and belly jets, used only in maneuvering and landing, were left unchanged. These operated on aniline-and-nitric fuel; Cargraves wanted them left as they were, to get around one disadvantage of atomic propulsion—the relative difficulty in turning the power off and on when needed.

  As they worked, they brought each other up to date. Ross told him about the man who had tangled with a dud land mine. Cargraves paid little attention until Ross told him about the crates that had been opened. Cargraves laid down his tools and wiped sweat from his face. “I want the details on that,” he stated.

  “What’s the matter, Doc? Nothing was hurt.”

  “You figure the dead man had been breaking into the stuff?”

  “Well, I thought so until I remembered that the Ranger had said flatly that this bozo was already buzzard meat before our stuff arrived.”

  Cargraves looked worried and stood up. “Where to, Doc?”

  “You go ahead with the job,” the scientist answered absently. “I’ve got to see Art.” Ross started to speak, thought better of it, and went back to work.

  “Art,” Cargraves started in, “what are you and Morrie doing now?”

  “Why, we’re going over his astrogation instruments. I’m tracing out the circuits on the acceleration integrator. The gyro on it seems to be off center, by the way.”

  “It has to be. Take a look in the operation manual. But never mind that. Could you rig an electric-eye circuit around this place?”

  “I could if I had the gear.”

  “Never mind what you might do ‘if’—what can you do with the stuff you’ve got?”

  “Wait a minute, Uncle Don,” the younger partner protested. “Tell me what you want to do—I’ll tell you if I can wangle it.”

  “Sorry. I want a prowler circuit around the ship and cabin. Can you do it?”

  Art scratched his ear. “Let me see. I’d need photo-electric cells and an ultraviolet light. The rest I can piece together. I’ve got two light meters in my photo kit; I could rig them for the cells, but I don’t know about UV light. If we had a sun lamp, I could filter it. How about an arc? I could jimmy up an arc.”

  Cargraves shook his head. “Too uncertain. You’d have to stay up all night nursing it. What else can you do?”

  “Mmmm… Well, we could use thermocouples maybe. Then I could use an ordinary floodlight and filter it down to infra-red.”

  “How long would it take? Whatever you do, it’s got to be finished by dark, even if it’s only charging the top wire of the fence.”

  “Then I’d better do just that,” Art agreed, “if that—Say!”

  “Say what?”

  “Instead of giving the fence a real charge and depending on shocking anybody that touches it, I’ll just push a volt or two through it and hook it back in through an audio circuit with plenty of gain. I can rig it so that if anybody touches the fence it will howl like a dog. How’s that?”

  “That’s better. I want an alarm right now. Get hold of Morrie and both of you work on it.” Cargraves went back to his work, but his mind was not on it. The misgivings which he had felt at the time of the mystery of the missing ‘blunt instrument’ were returning. Now more mysteries—his orderly mind disliked mysteries.

  He started to leave the rocket about an hour later to see how Art was making out. His route led him through the hold into the pilot compartment. There he found Morrie. His eyebrows went up. “Hi, sport,” he said. “I thought you were helping Art.”

  Morrie looked sheepish. “Oh, that!” he said. “Well, he did say something about it. But I was busy.” He indicated the computer, its cover off.

  “Did he tell you I wanted you to help him?”

  “Well, yes—but he didn’t need my help. He can do that sort of work just as well alone.”

  Cargraves sat down. “Morrie,” he said slowly, “I think we had better have a talk. Have you stopped to think who is going to be second-in-command of this expedition?”

  Morrie did not answer. Cargraves went on. “It has to be you, of course. You’re the other pilot. If anything happens to me the other two will have to obey you. You realize that?”

  “Art won’t like that.” Morrie’s voice was a mutter.

  “Not as things stand now. Art’s got his nose out of joint. You can’t blame him—he was disappointed that he didn’t get to take pilot training, too.”

  “But that wasn’t my fault.”

  “No, but you’ve got to fix it. You’ve got to behave so that, if the time comes, they’ll want to take your orders. This trip is no picnic. There will be times when our lives may depend on instant obedience. I put it to you bluntly, Morrie—if I had had a choice I would have picked Ross for my second-in-command—he’s less flighty than you are. But you’re it, and you’ve got to live up to it. Otherwise we don’t take off.”

  “Oh, we’ve got to take off! We can’t give up now!”

  “We’l
l make it. The trouble is, Morrie,” he went on, “American boys are brought up loose and easy. That’s fine. I like it that way. But there comes a time when loose and easy isn’t enough, when you have to be willing to obey, and do it wholeheartedly and without argument. See what I’m driving at?”

  “You mean you want me to get on back to the shop and help Art.”

  “Correct.” He swung the boy around and faced him toward the door, slapped him on the back and said, “Now git!”

  Morrie “got.” He paused at the door and flung back over his shoulder, “Don’t worry about me, Doc. I can straighten out and fly right.”

  “Roger!” Cargraves decided to have a talk with Art later.

  DANGER IN THE DESERT

  • 6 •

  THE SPACE SUITS WERE delivered the next day, causing another break in the work, to Cargraves’ annoyance. However, the boys were so excited over this evidence that they were actually preparing to walk on the face of the moon that he decided to let them get used to the suits.

  The suits were modified pressurized stratosphere suits, as developed for the air forces. They looked like diving suits, but were less clumsy. The helmets were “goldfish bowls” of Plexiglas, laminated with soft polyvinyl-butyral plastic to make them nearly shatter-proof. There were no heating arrangements. Contrary to popular belief, vacuum of outer space has no temperature; it is neither hot nor cold. Man standing on the airless moon would gain or lose heat only by radiation, or by direct contact with the surface of the moon. As the moon was believed to vary from extreme sub-zero to temperatures hotter than boiling water, Cargraves had ordered thick soles of asbestos for the shoes of the suits and similar pads for the seats of the pants of each suit, so that they could sit down occasionally without burning or freezing. Overgloves of the same material completed the insulation against contact. The suits were so well insulated, as well as air-tight, that body heat more than replaced losses through radiation. Cargraves would have preferred thermostatic control, but such refinements could be left to the pioneers and colonists who would follow after.

  Each suit had a connection for an oxygen bottle much larger and heavier than the jump bottle of an aviator, a bottle much too heavy to carry on earth but not too heavy for the surface of the moon, where weight is only one-sixth that found on earth.