by Jerry
“She hit and bounced a couple of times, and then, easy-like, toppled slowly over on one side. I had strapped myself on the couch, of course, and the fall wasn’t bad. It was something like being in the top of a sawed tree when she slowly goes down. If you’re fastened good and keep your head you can ride it down and not run much chance of being hurt. I’ll admit you need a little luck, too, but I guess I had it.
“When I came to and opened the hatch I had a twenty-foot drop to the ground. That’s when I broke an arm—the only really bad part of the trip.”
“But surely somebody would have seen you? Why, just the retarder jets——”
Beck shrugged. “Why should anybody see it? To begin with, it was the middle of the night. The jets? Say, don’t you read the papers? People are seeing great balls of fire and everything else in the sky these days, but smart people know they’re hallucinations, don’t they? And that’s official—if you don’t think so, ask the Air Force, if you can find anybody in it that will go so far as give you a simple answer to a simple question.”
His scorn was so devastating that I simply didn’t have an answer to that one.
“When morning came I saw that I’d landed in a kind of marsh, and that in three directions it didn’t seem to have any end. I didn’t have any trouble myself, but because of the still-great weight of the ship she had already sunk almost half out of sight in the semiliquid muck. Me, I started walking. I still had both legs and one good arm, but before long the fever started to bum in me. Yet I kept telling myself that it couldn’t be too far to someplace or somebody. How would you have felt, Mac? I’d just made a little round trip of about a half million miles, how could I quit on a little jaunt of maybe twenty, thirty miles?
“I guess the fever hit me harder than I thought at the time. First I was walking, then riding in some kind of cart, then in a truck and finally on a train.
‘’When I came out of that shock I was in a Red military hospital in Odessa. They treated me all right. The hell in Europe was at least on its way to the great intermission, and the general mood at the time was that the honeymoon atmosphere should prevail. The Reds figured I had survived from some plane crash. That was the only answer that made any sense to them. When I told them anything different they thought I was psycho, so I quit telling them anything different. It was the same way when I eventually made it back to Frankfort, by way of Vienna and Italy. You ever tangle with Army red tape? I finally gave up and let them answer their own questions and fill in the forms. At that time there were thousands of GI’s scattered all over Europe, and eventually all the Army wanted to do was get something plausible down on the official record and forget the whole thing.
’’The ship? Oh, yes. I eventually got hold of some big-scale maps, at the New York Public Library, and figured we must have landed somewhere in those Godforsaken marshes around the mouths of the Danube. It works out.”
’’Funny,” I said, “there was never any public report of such a thing being found. I mean that such a find would have been a big story.”
’’Would you, or anybody, necessarily have heard of it? Do you think the Reds would have advertised for the owner if they did find it? That area I’m talking about is in the very lonesomest part of Rumania.”
“I see what you mean,” I admitted. “Beck, will you answer me one question, no matter how silly it sounds? What’s your profession? I mean, what do you do for a living?”
He appeared a bit startled at the apparently irrelevant question, but he said, “Me? I’m a designer cutter in a ladies’ garment factory—brassieres, as a matter of fact.”
I wanted to laugh out loud at the utter absurdity of the whole thing. I didn’t, but Beck interpreted the look on my face.
He grinned. “Yeah, I know—but somebody has to do it, and under the union setup it’s a good living.”
“Man,” I said fervently, “even at that you ought to be a godsend to those people out at White Sands. If you only had something tangible——”
Beck’s short laugh was a compound of bitterness, scorn and sarcasm. “I tried, I told you. But as far as the brass is concerned I’m just nuts. But you spoke of something tangible. Listen, you’re the only person who has ever listened to the whole story and then acted like he might believe part of it, so I’ll show you something.”
He brought forth a soiled envelope and handed me the single sheet of coarse notepaper it contained. “I only got this two weeks ago. It was handed to me by a greasy-collared little guy on the subway platform at Fiftieth Street. At first I thought it was some kind of advertising gimmick and almost threw it away. Then when I looked for the guy he was gone in the mob. I never saw him before—or since.”
I looked at the initials and said, “H—the man Hegel you spoke of?”
“Yes, Kurt Hegel. It couldn’t be anybody else.”
Herr Reck: At long last I take this chance to congratulate you most fervently on being the first man to venture into interstellar space and return safely. You may think that this accomplishment in itself, in the circumstances m which it was undertaken, was of no great moment. But I must assure you that the very fact of your survival has been of almost inestimable value to science. I also assure you that one day the whole world will award you the acclaim you so greatly merit. In the meantime, thanks largely to you. the work goes forward rapidly—at a place midway between East and West. More than this I cannot say. Auf Wiedersehen. K.H.
As I handed back the note I caught sight of Helen coming down the curving walk. I said, “Excuse me just a second, Beck,” and got to my feet so Helen would be sure to see me.
When I turned around Martin Beck was gone. THE END
THE DAY THE ROCKET BLEW UP
George Harry Stine
This is what happened to the spaceship Athena. and the men aboard her, 400 miles over New Mexico.
OH, no, Tim! Not again! Not so soon!” Tim Withers hung up the phone and turned slowly to face his wife. He scratched his ear and nodded.” Looks that way. honey.”
“But why does it have to be you this time? You got hack only two days ago!” Teresa was on the verge of tears.
“The Apollo turned up with a hum servo, so they down-checked her. The Zeus just got in and can’t go until they check her. We’re on stand-by, so we go.” He got up and started for the bedroom.” I’d better gel dressed, sweetheart. The rest of the crew is already out at the Sands checking the ship.”
Teresa didn’t say anything. Instead, she melted down into the Much and started to cry softly.
When Tim appeared in the bedroom door again, fastening his coveralls, he saw both Ted and Thad standing in the living room. Ted looked from his mother to his dad. “Going go again, dad?”
Tim nodded. “Emergency, son.”
Thad, the younger boy. broke in, “Aw, dad, you’ve only been home a couple days. We never get to see you any more.”
Squatting on his haunches before his young son, Tim laid a hand on his shoulder. “I know, buster, but the other rocket had something wrong with it, and your dad’s ship has to go instead. Someday when you guys are flying them, there’ll be more rockets. But right now, there’s only a few of them, that’s why I’ve been away so much. They need a lot of stuff up there on that satellite, and we’ve got to get if to them if they’re going to stay alive. Understand?”
“Sure.”
Ted broke in, “Will you bring us something this time, huh?”
Tim grinned. “Like what?”
“Take a can of vacuum.”
“Well, I will if I can find something to put it in.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
“By the Space Rangers’ Oath?”
“By the Space Rangers’ Oath.”
“Swell! The guys at school are always saying that if my dad is such a hot rocket pilot and goes so many places, why doesn’t he ever bring us something?”
Tim clapped him on the back. “I’ll bring you something. But you don’t get it unless you’re both g
ood boys and mind your mom. No more riding your bikes on the parkway; get it?”
Both boys nodded.
Teresa was still huddled up on the couch. Feeling rather helpless, Tim went over and sat down beside her. “Don’t cry, honey. I’ll be back in a day or so; then I’ll see what I can do about getting a week off. How’s that?”
Teresa just sniffed.
“Don’t be mad, sweetheart.”
“I—I’m not mad—at you. It’s just that we get to see so little of you any more,” Teresa gulped. “The boys are growing up, and they want their father around to take them places and be with them. And I want him around too.”
He thought a moment before he answered. “I’d like it that way too. But when Operations crooks their finger at you, you go.”
“They’re driving you too hard!” Teresa burst out. I know it! I can tell when you come hack with that look on your face and your shoulders drooping. They can’t keep it up! If you’d argue with them, maybe they’d ease off on your schedule.”
“That’s easy to say. sweet, hut what can you do when there are only four ships and four trained crews?”
“They’re training morel They must be! Surely they can’t expect to go on with only four ships. If you’d speak to them, they might do something about hurrying it all up. If you thought anything at all of your family, you’d yell long and loud. How long do you think you can keep this up without something—happening? What do you think your chances are? How do you think we feel about it every time we see you go out that door? If nothing’s done about it soon, you’re going to have to quit, Tim.”
“Quit!”
“Quit. Don’t you see what’s happening to your family? Don’t you care what happens to them?”
Tim sighed. It was the same old thing they’d been over a dozen times before. He knew it would be fruitless to try to reason further. Teresa had now reached the point, as she always did, where her anxiety was seeking release in the form of argumentative temper. So he merely lifted her chin in his hand and kissed her gently. “I care very much about what happens to my family.”
“You don’t show it!”
“I’ll try harder, hut I’ve got. to be going now, honey. We’ll sit down and talk this all out when I get back.”
He didn’t feel very good about it. as he wound the car through the Las Cruces’ morning traffic. He knew very well what his chances were. Not very good. Insurance rates were indicative of that. Rocket-flight crews were paid sky-high wages; insurance cut a lot out. of those wages.
Maybe he should quit and go to work on one of the transoceanic rocket lines. The salary would be less; it wouldn’t be as dangerous; he’d spend more time at home; but the insurance rates would still be the same. Rockets, both the transoceanic and space varieties, were still not as reliable as they should be.
As he got on the freeway and headed east toward San Agustine Pass through the Organ Mountains, he tried to figure his chances again. Rockets had come a long way since they first started firing them in the Tularosa Basin at White Sands. New techniques, new materials and new discoveries had enabled the noisy beasts to climb up to orbit with enough cargo to establish a space station, but it was tricky business. Unlike the early days of aircraft, rocketry faced a tremendous problem in reliability. Early airplanes were idiotically simple mechanisms compared to the early rockets. In a rocket, several thousand items had to work correctly and at the proper time in order for t he rocket to work at all. A rocket was a system of systems, the entire vessel being totally dependent on one of many small pneumatic pilot valves, electronic transistors, servos, and the like.
The chances for a manned, earth-returnable rocket vehicle in the early days of 1960 were about one out of a hundred for success. Rocket men were mightily pleased when a rocket performed at all. Now, they had licked a few problems. The chances were much better. It was one out of two. And it should have been lower, but they had been very, very lucky.
The entire satellite program hinged on the slim thread of control. Rigid and ceaseless control. Thorough and seemingly senseless inspection. Each returning ship was subjected to a near-complete disassembly. In the reassembly, every critical part was replaced. It was an expensive proposition, but the only one which would insure any degree of success for any flight. If was a maintenance program which made those of the commercial air lines a mere sight inspection in comparison.
Tim had had minor mishaps. They were to be expected, and were nothing serious. He only hoped he could manage to work his way out alive when something serious did happen. Space travel was still a long way from the picture painted by the enthusiasts: the smiling flight crew nonchalantly boarding their great ship of space, nodding to the passengers as they went forward, and casually blasting off for the far corners of the Solar System.
At the Operations Building, he weighed in with his jump bag, picked up his mass-distribution forms, and checked with the computer department for his trajectory data. He found his crew out at the launching area. Jack Allard, his copilot, was busy figuring star angles for matching trajectories with the space station.
“Good morning, Jackson. Think the beast will get off the ground?” Tim asked as he took the seat next to the copilot at the tong sloping desk.
“It looks that way. The ground crews worked on her all night. The rest of the gang is out checking her over right now. It’s been a rush job, and the boys don’t trust it any more than I do.”
“I don’t like it either,” Tim remarked. He took the mass-distribution sheets out and started to check them. “If anything’s wrong, I hope we catch it. It would give me the greatest of pleasure to cancel out.”
The spaceship Athena was mirror-bright in the morning sunlight as Tim and Jack went up the hoist to board her. She was as much a departure from the spaceships visualized twenty years ago as a transcontinental air liner was from the nineteenth-century concept of an airplane. Catalyst fuels had eliminated the need for bulky steps; four booster units were all that were needed to help her get under way. Her needle nose and sharply swept delta wings permitted re-entry velocities at high Mach numbers in her landing glide. She was a conglomeration of impossible gadgets which would seem at first glance to be completely unworkable. In their static condition, they were; in operation with other units, they formed a system which bootstrapped itself to a level of operation which was self-sustaining as well as controllable.
“Has everything checked out O.K.?” Tim asked for the hundredth time.
“Take it easy, Tim,” Jack cautioned as they went up the ladder to the control deck. “The boys would be screaming by now if something wasn’t up to snuff.”
“I don’t like these crash-priority overhauls.”
“It isn’t worrying me.”
“It’s my job to do the worrying. I just don’t want this teakettle to blow when I start punching buttons.” Tim stowed his jump bag and slid into his couch. “I’m a little on edge this morning anyway.”
“Family?”
“Yeah. A little misunderstanding.”
Jack crawled into his couch, remarking, “All goes to prove my theory: flight crews should never marry. Women have no appreciation of space flight.”
“Check list?”
“Right here.”
“O.K., shoot.”
“Spaceship Athena, five minutes to zero! Five minutes to zero!”
Tim thumbed his mike button and replied, “Roger, White Sands Control. Athena by for your count-down.” He reached for a button labeled Intercom. “All hands, minus five minutes. All stations report.”
“I’m here,” Jack replied casually. “Board green. All astrogational gear secure and ready for first, trajectory fix.”
“Communications secure and ready,” came Charlie Berne’s voice from the deck above.
Reuben Alvarez’s voice came through, touched with just a bit of Spanish accent, “Detection ready. Beacons hot. I have our radar contact with the satellite.”
“Power officer ready,” Mel Johnson reported
from below. “Power plant ready and standing by.”
“O.K., gang, all boards to FLY. Final circuit checks. Report when ready,” Tim snapped, then started checking out the guidance system.
“Two minutes to zero!” came the call from Control. “The area and range are clear. You may fire, Athena.”
“Athena ready,” Tim reported as he strapped himself in. His indicator board showed red and green lights in the proper places.
It’s becoming routine now, Tim thought. All the motions and actions are becoming automatic. Another five trios and this will be a milk run. The boys are realty good. He wished, however, that the ship was as dependable as the crew.
Routine: the tension welling up within him as the count-down progressed.
Routine: the flipping of switches in a precise and timed order.
Routine: the changing of the light patterns on the board.
Routine: the feeling at minus one minute that you ought to hold and check everything over again.
Routine: the wish at minus thirty seconds that you’d taken up ornithology instead of rocketry.
The count-down droned through the ceiling speaker and their headphones, “Nineteen . . . eighteen . . . seventeen . . . sixteen. . . .”
She was ready. She would go. The electronic bruin of the autopilot took over as Tim flipped the switch.
“Ten!”
The main jet caught with a belch, its vibration shaking the ship.
“Four!”
The motor was burning properly. The green light came on. Mel hit the main-stage switch.