Earthbound (Winston Science Fiction Book 1) (18 page)

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 stretched 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. That 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.

His speed was twenty-five miles a second. It could have been much more than that — the ship could probably make one hundred miles a second. Once in space there is nothing to impede acceleration and, within limits, the more fuel you employ the faster you travel. But such speed was not necessary for the lunar trip. At a distance of 241,000 miles, the moon was only a jaunt. He’d cover that distance in considerably less than three hours, and with blast-off and landing time included, it would be not much more than three hours and a half.

The dash from Luna to the asteroids would amount to something else, for there the distances would really be astronomical. But he’d worry about that later.

Less than two hours later, Pete sat down at the controls. The moon swelled in the foreport, a pale white globe with darker markings spotted over its stir-face. But he hardly saw it. Instead, he fired his lateral rockets once, and again once. The sudden acceleration gave him weight, and the concussions jarred him back against his cushioned chair. Then he
did
watch the moon, through pain-slitted eyes. It had to swing around behind him, relatively speaking; or, actually, he had to make a full one-hundred-eighty-degree turn.

A signal light flashed on and off overhead and a whistle went “beep-beep-beep!” — which meant the turn had been concluded. Smiling, Pete slammed home the entire bank of rocket studs. With his back facing the moon, he was pushed against the seat and squeezed. Bad, yes, but the blast-off had been far worse, fighting a gravity several times stronger than the moon’s.

And then Pete began to coast in over the scarred surface of Earth’s satellite. He could land at Luna Base, where all the other Cadet ships had gone — no! If he did he would not be able to explain how he came into possession of the ship, and more than likely they’d send him back to Earth on the first commuter-rocket.

Some five hundred miles east of Luna Base stood the gaunt, high ring-wall of Tycho crater. In its center, nestled in the crater mountains, the dome of Lunar Observatory gleamed brightly, a shining speck far below him. The astronomers used only a hundred-inch telescope at Lunar Observatory, but their observations were far more accurate because the moon had no atmosphere to interfere with vision. The lunar astronomers led a cloistered life. They kept a rocket and fuel for emergencies, but otherwise they remained pretty much to themselves, so an unexpected visitor might be able to glean some fuel from them.

Pete brought the ship down smoothly, not half a mile from the dome. He climbed into his spacesuit, adjusted the fish-bowl helmet over his head, activated the air-lock mechanism. In a few moments he stood outside, on the surface of the moon.

The horizon seemed impossibly close, the moon’s small diameter could account for that. Powdered pumice stirred soundlessly underfoot. Overhead, the harsh rays of the sun baked down during the lunar day, with no atmosphere to intervene. Temperatures might rise to two hundred degrees above zero, Fahrenheit, and more, only to sink far below zero during the long lunar night which would follow.