Read Earthbound (Winston Science Fiction Book 1) Online

Authors: Milton Lesser

Tags: #Winston Juveniles, #Science Fiction

Earthbound (Winston Science Fiction Book 1) (21 page)

BOOK: Earthbound (Winston Science Fiction Book 1)
9.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

An hour later, his heart pounding furiously, his body bathed in sweat, he saw the dumb-bell-shaped asteroid. Or, looking at it another way, it formed a sort of figure eight, with two quarter-mile slabs of rock connected by a narrow neck. And, he knew, resting in that neck was Garr’s ship —

He cut rockets, circled the asteroid. . . .

He saw the ship. Garr!

Broken and battered, it hardly resembled a spaceship. The hull had a dozen large holes in it, and the remainder was twisted and bent into fantastic shapes. Paint had flaked off, quartzite was strewn about the narrow neck of the asteroid.

And then, his hands trembling, Pete flicked his radio switch. “Garr! Garr, can you see me?”

“You bet! Holy space, Pete — I can’t believe it. You got here. You. . .”

“Never mind. Listen, here’s what I want you to do. Umm-min, first I’d better ask a question. Your airlock is shot, you said, but can you get through it?”

If Garr were trapped inside the ship with no way of getting out . . . .

“You don’t sound so good, Petey boy, Rough, huh?”

“Yeah. I’ll tell you later. Answer me!”

“Sure. Sure, I think I can get through it. Why?”

“Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll attach a magnet —”

“Where will you get a magnet?”

“Will you let me talk? I’ll take the magnetic plate off one of my spacesuit boots and use that. Anyway, it’ll be on the end of a long coil of rope, and I’m going to throw that rope out to you. The magnet should grasp your hull and hold it. Then you make like Tarzan and climb that rope. I’ll be waiting here for you.”

Again Garr’s voice: “You bet.” But maybe reaction had set in. Garr sounded plenty scared.

Pete cut the connection, climbed into his spacesuit once more, after removing the magnetic plate from one of the boots. He found the coil of rope, tied it securely to the magnet. Then he opened the inner airlock door, stood in the tiny corridor which separated him from the depths of space. In another moment, the inner door had snapped shut, and the outer one slid back. Pete edged his way cautiously forward. He wore one magnetized boot, not two, and a wrong move might send him hurtling out into space. . . .

Space was full of stars and very beautiful, but he had eyes only for the asteroid just below him and for the broken ruin of Garr’s spaceship. In his left hand he gripped one end of his coil of rope, swinging the other end — with its magnet — over his head. Then he let it go.

It seemed to float out into space. Slowly, so slowly. And then he realized that it had fallen short. He tugged it back in, hand over hand, to try again. Again it fell short.

Weight did not matter in space. With the slightest weight at all, the rope should reach, if it were long enough. He tried once more; thought he could see Garr waiting at the broken lock of the other ship.

Short!

It was not easy to see for a certainty, but Pete thought the rear of his ship was several feet closer. Several feet, that’s all it would take — but it could have been miles

Carefully Pete recoiled his rope and stepped outside. With only one foot magnetized, he had to move at a snail’s pace over the hull of his ship. One quick motion might hurl him off into space and then there would be no return. He drove the thought from his mind.

Steady, steady. Mustn’t become nervous . . . mustn’t even think about it. . . .

He reached the back of his ship, reached the beginning of the rocket tubes themselves. And then he hurled his rope. It fell short by no more than five feet!

But that was enough. Garr could jump for it, all right — but if he missed he would be adrift in space and he would get no second chance. There had to be another way, a safer way for Garr. Surely a few feet would not be the margin between life and death —

There was another way! He needed five feet, just five feet more — and he was six feet tall....

Slowly, he removed the magnet from his other boot, holding his hand close to the hull. He felt something drawing him toward it until his hand clattered against it firmly. He was weightless in space and the magnet could hold him there by one hand, unless a sudden motion jarred him loose.

He kicked out with his feet, felt them leave the hull, floating out into space. He had tied the rope to one of his legs, and he kicked out with it carefully. He had played football at the Academy and had been an accurate punter, but now he had to be perfect. He could feel a gentle pressure on his leg as the rope uncoiled out into space easily, with no gravity to hold it back. He wanted to turn and watch it, but he knew that any motion might jar him loose.

He felt something in his leg, a sudden jolt, as if the other magnet had caught and held the hull of Garr’s ship. It could have been his imagination; he could do nothing except wait. Mostly, it was the silence which got him. By one hand he held himself to the magnet which in turn gripped the hull of the ship. All around him, space looked on, cold, implacable, silent, bleak, for all its myriads of unblinking stars.

He could only wait —

Something tugged at his foot — and again!

Vaguely, he could feel the magnet moving under his fingers, sliding along the hull. Sliding. . . .

The motion in his leg became rhythmic, up and down, up and down. That had to be Garr on the rope; it could be nothing else.

Waiting became a torment. The motion had belonged to him always, and always would continue. Up and down. Up and down.

Then, something else. .A new sensation. Rhythmic no longer, but jerky, irregular. He could not bear the suspense. He whirled and looked.

Garr was there!

Garr, holding his leg with one gauntleted band, the coil of rope wrapped around his other arm while he fastened its magnet to one of Pete’s boots. He could see Garr’s face through the fish-bowl helmet. He could see Garr smile weakly. Pete kicked back toward the ship, felt his foot land and hold. Then he was sliding along toward the airlock, and Garr was with him.

They went inside. They closed the lock behind them. They took off their spacesuits and their helmets. They looked at each other.

Finally Garr said, “It’s about time you got here!”

It was a long while before they stopped laughing and pounding each other on the back.

 

A day in late autumn. The sun shining down brightly, despite a chill in the air telling of winter’s coming. The trees were losing their last withered leaves to a brisk wind from the north.

The auditorium at the Cadet Academy was crowded and all eyes were on Marshal Mahoney as he spoke in clear, strident tones.

“Mankind is a cocky breed,” he was saying. “We pushed back the barriers of space and accepted the challenge. It is new and much of it is still unknown, but because certain individuals among us can, at certain times in their lives, assume an unheralded initiative, space is ours!

“It is the job of this Academy to turn out men like that, but in the final analysis, it is up to the men themselves. For, out there in the wild unknown, orders must often be ignored. Each spaceman is on his mettle, and on each depends the hopes and dreams of men.

“In general terms, that sums up the story of Peter Hodges. It is a wonderful story, and we all know it. I will not repeat it now. I am quite sure that Pete has a lot of other things he would like to be doing!

“Instead, I am going to turn this platform over to someone you all know — to Peter Hodges, Sr.”

More applause. Big Pete strode briskly down the aisle in his old uniform, in the uniform that had been with him on Mars and out among the Jovian moons. He reached the platform and in steady hands took from Marshal Mahoney the bright rocket emblem. Pete stood up very tall and very straight as his father pinned the rockets to his tunic.

Marshal Mahoney cleared his throat. “Spaceman Hodges,” he said “you have some special talents, I hear. I’m referring to the way you can plot orbits in your head without resorting to reams of paper work. I have a hunch that talent will be needed when our first expedition starts out for Saturn and its moons.”

He shook hands quite solemnly with Pete, and then, from somewhere back in the great hall, the Graduate Cadets were singing. It was too loud and it was a little off key, but it did not matter.

 

“We’ll thunder off to Io,

Out in the Jovian Moons.

We’ll feast our eyes and seek the skies

And plunder Martian ruins!

 

“Ho! for the void and far away!

We’ll chase the stars and race old Mars

And maybe land one day —

Ho-ho Ho! for the void and far away!”

 

Glossary

 

Acceleration:
refers to a change in speed or direction of travel. Any change will produce acceleration, but tremendous speed in a straight line will not. It’s only when you change the direction or increase the speed that the pressure of acceleration is felt. When speed is decreased, it is felt again, but this time it is called
deceleration
.

Airlock:
entering or leaving a spaceship in deep space, you can’t simply walk through a door, for there is neither air nor pressure outside, and both air and pressure would escape from the ship if you did. Instead, you use an
airlock
, a device consisting of two doors with a small tunnel in between. Upon leaving the ship, the inner door is shut before the outer one is opened, and the reverse is true upon entering. That way, air and pressure are sealed within the ship.

Artifacts:
products or tools of human workmanship, particularly of primitive crafts.

Asteroid:
One of thousands of “miniature planets” revolving about the sun, primarily between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroids vary in size from chunks of rock or metal several feet across to small worlds several hundred miles in diameter. They are also called
planetoids
.

Astrogator:
an
astrogator
is to space travel what a navigator is to air or sea travel. In other words, he directs the ship upon its course.

Blast-off:
that moment at the beginning of a spaceship’s flight when it has built up sufficient power to leave the ground. Blasting pits are a likely development to prevent the escape of lethal radioactive exhaust.

Dome-city:
a city built on an airless world or a world with a nonbreathable atmosphere, too little or too much pressure, temperatures too high or too low. A hemisphere of tough, transparent plastic covers the city, maintaining earth-normal conditions within it. Entrance must be through an airlock.

Jovian Moons;
satellites of the fifth planet, Jupiter. There are four large ones — two of which are bigger than the planet Mercury (Ganymede and Callisto) and two comparable in size to our own moon. Seven others are very small.

Meteor:
a speck of spatial debris, varying in size from dust-grain diameters to chunks of rock and/or metal several yards across. Many billions of them hurtle through space in the solar system, and it is estimated that a hundred million fall into the Earth’s atmosphere every day, but virtually all of these are destroyed by the heat generated by their rapid passage through the air. Meteors don’t follow regular orbits as the asteroids do, and generally they are much smaller.

Nebulae:
vast clouds of gas hanging in space. They are extremely remote, extremely tenuous, and some of them shine by reflected starlight.

Orbit:
the path a planet follows around the sun is its orbit. All planetary orbits are
elliptical
, which means they are slightly elongated circles. Similarly, the path of a spaceship in flight from one planet to another is an orbit — and, again,
elliptical orbits
are employed because they are the most economical.

Solidograms:
full-color pictures which, using the theory of polarization of light, appear to be perfectly three-dimensional. Today, a stereoscopic viewer gives roughly the same effect.

 

 

If you enjoyed this book, look for others like it at Thunderchild Publishing:
http://www.ourworlds.net/thunderchild/

 

BOOK: Earthbound (Winston Science Fiction Book 1)
9.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Acrobaddict by Putignano, Joe
Across the Bridge by Mavis Gallant
Aching to Submit by Natasha Knight
Iona Portal by Robert David MacNeil
Miss Ryder's Memoirs by Laura Matthews
The Hemingway Thief by Shaun Harris
Tending to Grace by Kimberly Newton Fusco