The Ranger Boys in Space

by Hal Clement

  It took several minutes to reach the bottom, but when they arrived their troubles were over for the time being. Virtually the whole crew of the station was waiting at the elevator. They had seen the party cross from the Polaris, but had not known where they were after the inner door of the air lock had been opened. The station was not full of television equipment, not being a prison, and it had not been possible to talk to the newcomers on their suit radios since the metal walls cut off the radio waves. None of the satellite crew knew that four of the visitors were unconscious, since the boys had looked just as helpless as the men when they dived across from the rocket; and as the minutes passed with no one appearing and no elevator working, the crew began to fear that all the newcomers had succumbed to the effects of weightlessness in the upper levels. Plans were being suggested for rescue methods when the indicator showed that one of the elevators was moving.

  The men of the station were more than surprised to find that half the newcomers were young boys, but they did not waste time discussing the matter. A few words explained the condition of the grown men, who were immediately escorted to the infirmary. The drug they had taken did not take too long to wear off, and presently Bowen was giving the whole story—except for Tumble's peculiar status—to the assembled crew of the satellite.

  The men were dubious, for the most part. They had all tried their best to get used to the sensation of endless fall; they had ventured, singly and together, up to the higher levels of the station; but they had all failed, in spite of the firmest will power and strongest determination any of them could muster. A man simply can't ignore twenty-five to forty years of getting used to weight; most of them doubted that anyone could overcome even fifteen or sixteen years of it.

  They realized that the boys had done quite well during and just after the flight of the Polaris, but most of them had had similar spells when they thought they were getting accustomed to it. Always, sooner or later, their emotions had taken control away from their minds. They nodded grimly—and sympathetically—when the boys admitted their experience in the elevator.

  Nevertheless, no one suggested that the trial should not be made. Every man of them told of his own attempts in detail, in the hope that some idea which had failed for him might work for the younger people. Then they were given the freedom of the station, told to go where they liked, and try the low-weight levels whenever they wanted.

  They found that they weren't quite as eager to go back up there as they had expected to be, but none of them wanted to admit it, so they went. In fact, they spent most of the next several days on the higher decks. They learned for themselves some of the things the men had told them, but which they had not believed—that even when a person thought he had learned to take the "long fall," the sensations would suddenly come back and steal away his control. They began to understand why the men had all given up the task as hopeless, but they themselves kept on.

  The boys found that if they could keep their minds on some definite job, they could forget their sensations for a time. That was apparently why they had been able to do so well during the docking of the Polaris, and why they had suffered in the elevator with the end of the job in sight. They found that they could play children's games like hide-and-seek, or tag, or follow-the-leader, all the way from the edge of the station, where weight was normal, to the center and back again, but that the game had better end at normal weight. The let-down when one of the games was finished was almost sure to leave them all dizzy and helpless if it happened on a high deck.

  The men advised, time and again, that they give up, but each time the suggestion was made, something would come to the boys' minds. With Tumble, it was the thought of seeing his beloved planets; with Peter, a mixture of curiosity like Tumble's and sheer stubbornness—the idea was his, and he was not going to give it up this easily. None of them found the effects growing worse with time, as the men had; this fact encouraged them when everything else failed.

  So it went; gradually, in spite of what the men had predicted, some gains began to show. First an hour and then half a day and then a whole day passed without any of them succumbing to the terror of the long fall; finally Tumble performed an experiment which Bowen would have forbidden had he known about it in time. The boy went up to the center of the station late at night—they kept Niagara time on board—and deliberately went to sleep there.

  It was sleeping in free fall which had originally cost Bowen his sense of balance; that brief but frightful instant just after he woke up and before he could recognize what was happening had been no time to be weightless. It might have killed him—almost certainly would have if anything had been wrong with his heart. He did not know about Tumble's experiment until too late to stop it, and he himself did not sleep at all that night. When the redhead appeared in the "morning" not only in control of himself but refreshed, Bowen hardly knew what to think, but he knew what to do. He turned to the station chief, Dr. Wetzel.

  "Let's break out those scout rockets. I've seen enough." Wetzel looked thoughtful, eyeing Tumble, then Bowen, and then the other boys, who were waiting with an impatience that threatened to be as hard on their control as free fall.

  "All right," he said abruptly. "We can't be worse off than we are. I like the kids, but if you think they can get away with it........ "

  "We're controlling the rockets and can get them back before anything drastic happens. As far as I'm concerned, the main idea has proved good."

  The rockets were stowed in berths inside the station but located at the rim, since they had been designed partly as emergency craft. Even at the time the station had been built, there had been some worry about the effects of weightlessness. Wetzel led the way to one of these berths, and the party inspected the tiny craft inside.

  It was far smaller than the Polaris. It was about thirty-five feet long and eight in diameter; three of the boys recognized with pleasure the original of the mock-ups in which they had practiced at Niagara. About half its length was taken up with drive unit, fuel tanks, and control and living machinery; the rest was divided into a pilot compartment in the nose and an even more cramped sleeping and eating room behind. It could be operated by one person, but could carry several if they did not mind the crowding.

  "Are you going to send them out one at a time?" asked Wetzel.

  "You're equipped to handle more than that by radio, aren't you?" countered Bowen.

  "Certainly. We can control all ten, if you like; I thought you might prefer to concentrate on one at a time, that's all."

  "That might be a good idea, but with a separate controller on each one to keep the boys out of trouble we should be safe enough, and training will go much faster. We'll handle them all at once."

  "All right, we'll preflight four of them. I'll get the men on it right away." The commander turned to the boys. "These machines are all alike as far as I'm concerned, but maybe you have preferences. Pick out the ones you like, and we'll use those." Then he was gone, back toward the living quarters to find the technicians who would ready the little machines for space.

  "Wow!" Dart was beside himself with glee. "We're not only pilots, we have our own ships. Which one are you taking, Bart?" He was off down the line of berths, his brother close behind; even Peter, normally the soberest, was carried away by their enthusiasm. Only Tumble stayed behind, eying Bowen a trifle reproachfully.

  "You should have told him there'll only be three needed. It was white of you to keep quiet about my being a spy and an enemy, but he'll have to know soon, and it's too bad for him to waste time and trouble getting another ship ready. Maybe if I could say I was on your side—but I can't. I know now you were telling me the truth, but I can't go back on a friend until I've heard his side of the story." Bowen nodded slowly.

  "I thought that must be your trouble, when you didn't say anything after getting here.

  "That's all right, as far as I'm concerned. My business, Tumble, is to get ships and men out to the planets in any way that it can be managed. We have only
one idea at the moment how it can be; according to that idea, you are one of the most likely people to be able to do it. You got used to free fall quicker than the other boys, you are more skillful at maneuvering in that condition than they, you are faster in reaction than they are. The fact that I don't even know your last name doesn't matter. As far as I'm concerned, giving you rocket training will provide me with some facts I need to know; our personal problems don't count beside that. What I said earlier about your final decision still goes—you can hold off as long as you want, until you've picked up all the threads you need to make a decision. I respect you for standing up for a friend, even if I don't at the moment think much of the friend.

  "I need you, and mankind needs you, in space. So, as far as I'm concerned, you're a cadet rocket pilot, on the same footing as my nephews and Peter Ashburn. Run along and pick your ship, Tumble!"

  For a long moment the redhead stared at the man, with a more sober, searching expression than Bowen had ever seen on the face of man or boy. Then he smiled suddenly.

  "If you need it for the record, or the license, or something, sir, my last name's Tighe." Then he was off down the line of rockets.

  But Bowen noticed that Tumble Tighe stayed away from the other boys for a few minutes. Some things are harder on self-control than mere weightlessness.

  14

  TUMBLE LOSES PATIENCE

  TRAINING, even in rockets, means school, and Tumble had never felt very warmly toward schools of any description. Bowen and the scientists of the station found that out quickly enough, though no one was tactless enough to ask the boy for any details about his past life which might supply a reason for, this attitude. In any case, it was not an unusual one.

  Bart and Dart had never been noted for heading their classes, but they applied themselves here. Peter, of course, had no trouble, but even he preferred the actual flight training, which was carried out for an hour or so each day.

  "You know," remarked Tumble one day as they were checking their suits in readiness for a flight, "if it were just driving these little ships around day after day, flying in space wouldn't be worth the trouble. I thought it would be zooming around, like flying in a plane. When you're out there, though, you can't tell that you're moving at all!" "Sure, that's because............ "

  "Yeah, Bookworm, you know why, of course. You know everything. I know why, too; there's nothing to be going past, so you can't tell you're going. That's not the trouble; what bothers me is that we really aren't going anywhere. We just go out, and speed up, and slow down, and do circles, and.... "

  "And try to get back into the station," pointed out Dart. They all laughed at this; on the first flight, Tumble had insisted after an hour's practice that he could handle the ship well enough to get it back into its berth. The instructor had let him try. For fifteen minutes he had tried to "stop" the little machine beside the station, and when he finally succeeded realized that the berth was at the edge of the spinning drum, coming past him about once every twenty seconds. He had tried to hit the power just hard enough to match its speed as it passed, and of course had gone careening straight out into space while the open door he was trying to enter had whipped on around to the other side of the station. Tumble was no quitter, and he had kept trying until he had finally learned to follow the spin of the big structure. It had taken more than an hour, however, and now whenever Tumble seemed a little too sure of himself the other boys would bring up the subject of his first landing.

  "All right, kid all you want," he said this time, "but I bet you feel the same way I do."

  "Maybe I did," remarked Bart, "but I don't any more. I don't want to go anywhere in that ship until I know how it's going to behave. When we started I thought I did; I thought it would be like an airplane. I didn't know that pointing the nose in a different direction didn't do a thing about the way I was going, any more than you did. Right now, I expect that all the things we're learning out here where there's no weight won't help us a bit in flying the rockets close to the moon or a planet. I'm not going anywhere in that ship of mine until Dr. Wetzel and Uncle Jim and the pilots all say I know enough to try it."

  "All right, old snail. I'll be laughing at you from the highest peak in the Mountains of Light." Tumble slipped his helmet into place and sealed it to the neckpiece of his suit, cutting off any chance to answer him for the moment. That did not stop Bart from making a remark, anyway.

  "Just hope it isn't your headstone that's on that peak." Tumble would probably not have paid any attention even if he had heard. The others finished sealing their suits and got into their rockets for the flight. They were dropped through the hatches, one at a time, and the lesson commenced.

  To Peter, it was an interesting exercise in mathematics; to the brothers, it was about like any other piece of school work—something to be done, but not really enjoyed; to Tumble it was an almost unbearable bore. He had taken long enough, he felt, to learn that if he headed away from the station and used a certain amount of power for thirty seconds, then he had to turn around, use the same amount for a whole minute, head once more in the original direction and use yet another thirty seconds of the same power in order to get back to the station. Now they were trying to tell him that this wasn't exactly right, either; it made a difference which way he started. If he did the maneuver heading toward the earth, he wouldn't get quite all the way back; if he headed the other way, he wouldn't get all the way back either. As if this weren't confusing enough, no matter how carefully he aimed the ship, pointing back as exactly as he could along the way he had come, he never seemed to end very close to the station; it was always well to one side.

  "I think these smart alecks are doing something with the controls," he muttered to himself as the ship dropped from its cradle into the emptiness of space. "It's a nuisance having someone who can make the ship do what he wants by radio no matter what I do. I bet they're trying to make me think it's harder than it really is. I'm going to do something about that." Still grumbling, he pointed the nose of the little machine at a particular star, as the instructions of the teacher in the station came through the radio, and obediently cut in the amount of power required.

  He didn't finish the maneuver, however. He was used to seeing the earth, of course—above him or below him or beside him, according to whatever direction happened to be "down" at the moment. He had seen it as a big disc glowing in the sunlight, as a fuzzy-edged half moon, as a hazy crescent, and as a great circle of darkness cutting sun and stars from half the sky; but he had never seen it with a hole in it. The sight took his entire attention from the control exercise he was supposed to be doing, and he simply stared.

  His instructor's voice roused him at last.

  "Tumble! What's the matter? Why haven't you turned the ship over?"

  "I forgot," admitted the boy. "Look, can you see the earth? There's something funny—a big, black spot that looks almost like a hole. Usually you can't make out the marks on the surface very well, but this shows up clear as anything."

  "Hmph. I don't know. You make your turnover and start slowing down before you get so far away we can't talk, and I'll ask the astronomers while you're doing so."

  Tumble obeyed, though his eyes still kept straying to the peculiar sight in the sky beside him. In spite of the distraction, his control work was neat and precise; the instructor had no fault to find when he came back on the radio with the information Tumble had asked for.

  "It's an eclipse, the astronomers say. The black spot is the moon's shadow. The people under the place where the shadow hits are having an eclipse of the sun. The astronomers are furious because the station isn't going into the shadow, so they won't be able to do something or other they want to. They say someone should have figured all this out in advance and put the station in a path that would have carried it through the shadow cone. Scientists are funny people." The instructor was one of the pilots who had brought the station up originally.

  "I see," answered Tumble. He understood what eclipses were, a
nd needed no further explanation. "Well, I guess I kind of messed up that exercise, didn't I?"

  Before he answered, the instructor examined the recording equipment which had kept track of the little ship's control movements.

  "Well, forgetting the turnover when it was due could have killed you, of course, if you'd been heading for anything solid. Aside from that, you did a very good job indeed. These records are almost as smooth as though the ship had been on automatic control."

  This remark may have been a mistake, for when Tumble got back to the station he went straight to Bowen with it.

  "Look, Dr. Bowen. Why do we just keep flying in circles around here? We can handle those ships; Mr. Linn told me this morning that I was nearly as good as an automatic pilot."

  "You can't land with an automatic pilot, and they can't make up their minds what to do. Someone has to set them. Believe me, Tumble, you're no more anxious to start exploring than I am to let you go, but I want you to come back, too." The redhead knew when arguing was futile; he left the room, still unsatisfied.

  But these people did not know Tumble yet. He did not often settle down in deep thought, but when he did, action of some sort was likely to result. Bowen's refusal to recognize his skill as a pilot convinced him that the time for thought had arrived. He wandered into the now deserted section where the little rockets hung in their berths, and settled down for it.

  He glanced down the row of ships. There were ten of them there, six identified only by numbers, while the other four had carefully painted names. Bart's Outbound was nearest; his brother's was the Jabberwock, which seemed silly to the redhead. Even the bookworm had carefully painted Ion on the nose of his machine, and Tumble had christened his the Tumblesauce— so that, as he said, there would be no mistake as to whose she was.

  Just now the pilot of the Tumblesauce was not thinking of names, however. He knew his ship, or felt that he did; he could see no reason on Earth or off it why he couldn't take her anywhere in the solar system. Already he had been out on practice flights which had lasted longer than a flight to the moon would take. He had seen his mountains as well as anyone ever would through a telescope; but what did they look like close up? He didn't know, and never would if these cautious old fogies—even Pete—had their way. It was all very well to teach him how to use the rocket, but if they wouldn't let him do anything except drive it around in circles—how could they expect anyone to get anywhere that way?