“The much greater distance wherein the far stronger terrestrial gravity rules, represents the hillside itself, where the boulders, joined together by lengths of cable, are free to roll downward, realizing their potential energy of superior elevation in the form of motion, power and distance covered...”
Again Lonnie Hamlin paused as if to get his breath. He took a long swig from the glass at his elbow. Jody and I looked at each other.
“Tell us the rest, Hamlin,” I urged.
“Visualize it like this,” he said. “A small rocket is fired Earthward from the moon, dragging a long cable. A while after it passes beyond the field of dominance of Lunar gravity and begins to fall toward Terra some object—say a small freight-carrying glider—is attached to the cable at the point where it is still being paid out from the moon.
“As in the case of the boulders rolling down the hill this glider is pulled upward from the Moon’s surface by the weight of the rocket, now in the grip of the stronger terrestrial gravity and falling toward the Earth.
“When in turn the glider has passed firmly into the field of dominance of Terra’s attraction a second freight-glider is hooked to the cable unwinding from the Moon. Its leap toward the Earth is powered by the energy of Earthward fall of both the rocket and the first glider!
“So the process goes on in a chain, more gliders, clamped to the cable, being drawn from the Moon by those already falling toward Earth! The pull on the cable becomes steadily stronger as more and more gliders pass into the zone where terrestrial gravity rules.
“In this tug of war with its satellite Terra has two vast advantages—a six-to-one more powerful attraction and, just as important, a far longer grip! Of all the gliders strung out at intervals from Moon to Earth terrestrial gravity would be dominating all but the first few! So its pull on the cable would increase until the lead-rocket reached Terra. Then it would remain approximately steady.
“But you don’t have to picture the process as consisting of just a single line of gliders on a cable. There are other wrinkles to my idea!”
“Jeez!” Jody marveled. There was sweat on his forehead.
My thoughts were whirling. Some of them were rather sheepish. I looked at Lonnie Hamlin, the young wizard, whose eyes were casting about tensely for a means to make his explanations clear to us boneheads. I took a big swallow of liquor from my glass. Then I took a scrap of paper and a pencil from my pocket. “Here,” I said to Sonny. “Drawin’ a diagram might help.”
He made a circle to represent the Earth. And a lesser circle at a little distance, to stand for the Moon.
“Luna keeps the same face toward Terra always—right?” he said, his voice vibrating with excitement. “Okay—then we could have a fixed send-off station for freight and passengers at about the center of the Moon’s Earthward hemisphere. Let this big pulley that I mount here represent it.”
From one side of the pulley he drew a line. “This is the cable going Earthward from the Moon,” he said. “All along its length I put these darts—the loaded freight-gliders. This cross-line, close to the Moon, indicates the boundary between space dominated by Lunar gravity and that ruled by Terrestrial gravity. I just told you all of this.
“But what happens when the rocket-borne cable’s end and the gliders reach the outer fringe of Earth’s atmosphere?” he went on. “As for the gliders, they just unhook from the cable and glide to a landing with their wings. But does the cable have to trail down to Earth’s surface?
“Obviously, since the Earth rotates quite rapidly on its axis and doesn’t keep the same side always turned toward the Moon, there couldn’t be a fixed freight and passenger station on the Terrestrial surface, as on Luna. No, the cable needn’t touch Earth’s crust at all! Let it just contact the upper atmosphere, dangling from the Moon and held out straight by Terra’s attraction!
“And here’s where the big additional wrinkle of the whole idea comes in! As the cable-laying lead-rocket approaches Earth, let it brake speed. Then, a few score miles short of contact, let it make a hairpin turn and trace a parallel path back to the Lunar station and the big pulley on the Moon, drawing the cable around the curve and on its new course after it! Like this...”
HAMLIN sketched in the line. He rushed on triumphantly. “When the rocket gets back to the Moon let a simple splice be made around the pulley-wheel—between the lunar end of the cable and the end brought back by the rocket. Thus....” The pencil moved swiftly. “And what do we have then, boys? You tell me.”
“An endless conveyor-cable!” Jody burst out.
“Perfectly correct, Mr. Klosky,” Sonny Boy said as if he were patting Jody on the back. “But I haven’t shown you all of the possibilities of my idea even yet! Consider the excess power generated on the loaded, Earthbound side of the cable.
“Some of it can be salvaged! It is obvious that, by weight and volume, most Earth-Moon traffic is Earthbound, consisting of metals from the Lunar mines. Only machinery, food, minor freight and passengers go out to the Moon. These supplies and people can have a fuel-less ride in a few loaded gliders among the lightweight empty ones, being returned to the Moon on the part of the cable that is being drawn back to the Lunar station by the weight of Earthbound products moving in the opposite direction!”
Lon Hamlin finished at last the outline of his invention. He looked tired and triumphant. “Well, fellas—what do you think of my idea?” he demanded.
I felt tired as from some exhausting experience too. “It’s wonderful, Mr. Hamlin.” I replied, feeling honest.
Jody’s face was almost sad. “Funny, ain’t it?” he commented. “Most truly great ideas are simple. For years they used very complicated reciprocating engines on planes, before they figured out the much simpler and faster jet. And this thing of Mr. Hamlin’s—it’s as uncomplicated as an old-fashioned dumbwaiter! But it sure oughtta work.
“Why, the evenly distributed weight and tension all along that cable-line ought to tend to equalize speeds too—so that none of those gliders would ever go too fast or too slow for safety! There’d be no problem of acceleration or deceleration as in rocket ships. Funny too that nobody ever put this idea across before—though people so often think on the same track. But I guess it does take a stroke of genius.
“And think of all the poor guys who died in the wrecks of dangerous spaceships—and of all the money that was wasted building and operating them. While all the time here was this simpler cheaper better idea, just waiting for somebody to think of it! That don’t seem fair.”
Jody sounded lugubrious. He looked at me. I looked at him. Certain mental flashes of understanding passed between us. We’d been sidekicks for a long time. And we were both all of thirty-two. We looked at Lonnie Hamlin and we both saw a different kind of guy from ourselves—cocky, very young, full of drive and intelligence.
Maybe a little too snooty, green in some ways, probably jealous of the magnificent sweep of his idea—we couldn’t have reached any equal understanding with him. But the way things stacked up we sort of had to go along with him and his invention. We had to keep him under our protection more than ever, now. Yeah—because we liked him. Finally Jody asked Hamlin, “You want our help, hunh?”
“If you can help, yes,” he replied.
“Then that’s settled,” Jody told him. “Have you done any experimenting yet on your scheme?”
“That’s what I’m on the Moon to accomplish,” Hamlin snapped back.
“And it’ll take money—quite a lot of it,” Jody reminded him. “Equipment is expensive.”
For a second Sonny Boy looked wary again. But Jody’s statement had been reasonable. “On Earth I formed a company and sold stock,” Hamlin said proudly. “Quietly—so that no big company would try to scoop me on my scheme. To little people—to interested friends—and of course to members of my family. I’ve a letter of credit for fifty-thousand dollars. More in cash.”
So he was a salesman of great talent too! What a guy he would have been, selling stock f
or a phony project and then scramming! But this money was for his Great Idea. He was utterly sincere and earnest about it. The money was little people’s money—and his family’s. His mom’s—maybe his grandpa’s and his grandma’s.
Such thoughts turned the evil cupidity in me to a sour ache of guilt. Still, I couldn’t help but think—more than fifty-thousand bucks! But I informed myself that I’d keep my fingers as clean as I could, even if it gave me a nervous breakdown.
“All I’m interested in now are small-scale tests,” Sonny Boy was saying. “We’ll need a lot of strong, fine-gauge wire to take the place of the cable in a full-scale conveyer setup. I brought a little atomic rocket along with me from Earth. Also some dart-shaped weights.”
Jody and I exchanged slow knowing grins of communication again. Yeah, it’s a shame how sometimes you have to use subterfuges to do the right thing by certain people. “I know where we can get a huge amount of the wire we need, for nothing, practically,” I said.
“That’s right, Mr. Hamlin,” Jody affirmed. “Leave the problem of supply and equipment in Shorty’s hands.”
“Of course we’ll need a Lunar traveler-tractor—and a few other things,” I remarked.
Sonny Boy heaved a great sigh of relief as if, with Jody and me around, all his troubles were over. Maybe the liquor had helped but all his suspicion and distaste for me seemed to have vanished.
“Great fellas, you old-timers, with the dust of the airless Moon grimed into your hides!” he said, romanticizing us. “One might be led to doubt you but you’ve sure got helpful human qualities.”
AFTER all Sonny Boy was a great kid. Jody and I felt pretty good ourselves. Among other things the hills and woods of Missouri seemed practically within reach. We called for Rosa to bring more drinks. By the way Lonnie Hamlin’s face shone you could almost imagine him wearing a wreath of glory. You could almost hear the blare of trumpets and the clash of cymbals. And I could understand.
Outside of the illuminated airdome of Luna City it was still Lunar night—about two Earth-days left out of a total of fourteen. It was best not to start out on our venture till dawn—but those forty-eight hours gave us the time needed for preparations.
I got Sonny Boy a fairly good secondhand traveler-tractor at a very reasonable price. I had to get rid of him for a while to do it, so that local folks, always quick to spot an easy mark, wouldn’t think it was for him. All he had to do was supply the money. What he actually did was give me a fifteen-thousand-dollar carte blanche to buy equipment. And that made everything quite to my liking.
Jody—the spurious Irvin Klosky—went along with me when I bought a second-hand mobile-type oxygen-and-water plant and the storage cylinders and tanks to go with it. Maybe with this purchase we slipped just a little from the path of honesty—and this bothered me, some. Also we didn’t buy much wire. But we could get a real bargain in wire at a certain place outside of Luna City.
Anyway I felt then that we did right. As for the reasons behind our actions—well, maybe old-timers get in a rut. Maybe they’re narrow and limited and lack the splendid daring of concept and execution that is characteristic of youth. They just plod, even in their gambling. And that can be a mistake.
Lonnie Hamlin, we found, was spending most of his time at the Dead Rocket, talking to Rosa Minton or just staring at her. She was so pretty and the way he looked at her made a pretty picture. It gave us a warm feeling around our hearts. Though naturally we worried some that, for instance, she might tell him that Jody wasn’t Irv Klosky. But though some Lunar colonials have their faults they have a code. They never squeal on one of their number.
It was strange when once Rosa cornered me and said, her cynical little smile going soft around the edges, “Shorty—he’s dumb and he’s brilliant and he’s self-centered. Maybe he needs knocking down some to make a man of him. But he’s earnest and good. Take it easy with him, will you?”
There was something pleading and sweet in the way she looked at me. It bothered my conscience some even when I replied, “Sure, Rosa honey—naturally. You know me—Jake Short.”
In the first blaze of dawn Jody and Hamlin and I rode out of an airlock of Luna City in the sealed, air-conditioned cab of the traveler-tractor. Out across the ancient lava plains toward the center of the Earthward hemisphere of the Moon. Around us everywhere was that damnable bleak death-filled and occasionally fascinating Lunar landscape, with its mountain ranges and crater walls lying low against the star-specked sky of space.
By his expression Lonnie Hamlin was clearly on the road to high adventure and eternal fame. He was even singing love-songs under his breath. His small atomic rocket was fastened to the top of our oxygen-and-water plant on the covered trailer behind the tractor. He only glanced to see what was in the trailer itself. I guess he thought it was full of wire because I’d left our one roll exposed.
We weren’t exactly alone in our exodus from Luna City. Lots of other traveler-tractors and plenty of guys on foot and in space-suits, many with mountainous packs on their backs, were traveling the same trail. They were the optimists, the real chance-takers—going out to the Holridge uranium strike to dig, to stake their claims.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s money in that kind of business if your lucky. Jody and I had made plenty of it in our time. It just happened, though, that lately we’d become more interested in the sure business dollar earned from a sale of vital commodities to the hopeful. That way they take all the chances.
The place we were headed for was in the same direction as the Holridge strike. Only it was twenty miles farther—a total of about three hundred from Luna City. But just about the former distance from our goal our tractor broke down. That’s the trouble with secondhand equipment—it’s not dependable.
While Jody proceeded languidly to inspect the damage to our vehicle I wandered afield to hunt for what I knew isn’t generally too hard to find. Technically the Moon is waterless and airless. But minerals, oxygen and water are reasonably plentiful.
For instance there’s ordinary alum. Put it on a hot stove and it sizzles as the water in the crystallization boils away. And if all else is absent in a particular region there’s still bound to be a certain amount of low-valence ferrous oxide in lava rock—enough to provide a source of oxygen at least.
Ferric oxide—rust—which contains more oxygen, is practically non-existent on the Moon. But in an oxygen-and-water plant adjusted for that kind of job the ferrous oxide serves quite well. Such plants are atom-powered and when necessary can split any compound into its component elements.
What I did find was a lode of gypsum rock, which was almost ideal for our purposes. It contains water, which is released, by simple heating, as steam. This, of course, can be condensed and collected just by cooling. And water is a fine source of oxygen too—being more than half oxygen by weight.
Without much trouble we were able to move our lame traveler-tractor and the plant to the lode. Right away, of course, Sonny Boy got a little worried and annoyed and scared. “Say—what’s going on here?” he demanded.
I was very patient with him. “Look, Mr. Hamlin,” I said gently, “we can’t go far the way our tractor is. You can see that for yourself. But why hurry or worry? We’ve got lots of time.
“As it happens, Jody—I mean Mr. Klosky, whose nickname is Jody—and I, have come prepared to set up a business which we are very familiar with. It’s nice and lucrative and on the level and you’re in on it as our backer. So just take it easy, will you, like a good fella?”
Well, it hurt me to watch his face turn kind of grey inside the transparent helmet of his spacesuit—we were all wearing those contraptions now, of course. In his eyes I saw disillusionment, fury, despair and dumb surprise. He looked as if he thought he was going to be murdered out here on the terrible Lunar plain at any moment.
“You stupid hardened Moon-tramp!” he yelled at me by helmet radio. “I might have known by your ugly faces that you’d never be intelligent enough or farsighted enough—ei
ther of you—to be really useful in putting across my Great Idea! I was a fool!”
Nobody can say truly that, though I’m not perfect, Jake Short would deny any person the privilege of blowing his top when he feels so inclined. So I just shrugged and let Sonny Boy rave.
All of a sudden he reached for the blaster that he’d been carrying at his waist. “Gone!” he croaked. “The blaster’s gone!”
“Maybe you lost it, pal,” I suggested mildly. “Anyway, what do you want it for? You don’t need it.”
This quiet logic didn’t soothe him any. He was ready to tear me limb from limb right then and there. I had to wrestle with him and throw him down hard on the lava a few times to quiet him.
At last he sort of lapsed into a dazed hopelessness, which I was not happy to see. But I didn’t care to expend more of my energy, trying to cheer him up by talking to him about the plodding unhurried philosophy of ten-year Lunar colonials like Jody and me.
“Unhook his helmet radio so that he can’t start hollering for help to passing claim-stakers and then let’s get busy with what we gotta do,” Jody growled.
That was what we did. We set up the digger which fed gypsum to our oxygen-and-water plant, and started everything going. Soon we had commodities to sell—and a straggling but steady line of customers. Once Sonny tried to talk by signs to a customer, shaking the guy’s shoulders and scowling to get attention.
But Jody said, “Don’t mind the kid, friend. He has the usual trouble of some newcomers—homesickness. And temporary Lunar insanity. He’ll be okay.”
Lonnie Hamlin was passive after that.
Out away from Luna City, in the real wilderness, water sells for twenty or thirty bucks a liter. And it isn’t a holdup price either, considering that a claim-staker has a chance—although a very slender one—of finding a fortune in rich ore in a few Earth-days’ time.
Theirs is not a game for me any more—but for that kind of gambling fast outlay is the expected thing, accepted cheerfully. Oxygen by weight is twice as expensive as water. A man has to drink water and he can’t carry too much of it with him, even on the Moon with its low gravity.
Hell Stuff For Planet X Page 27
