The Time Masters
Page 18
The height reached, the limited fuel exhausted in one mighty, leap, the rocket would cast itself free of the object above it and tumble back to earth, spent. Compact radio controls built into it would steer the ungainly bulk skyward, would control the direction of flight by deflection vanes in the firing chamber, would trigger the release mechanism. No more was asked of the rocket.
The final five-minute signal had sounded and its echo lost among the hills; now a human voice issued tinnily from a buried bunker, counting off the remaining minutes. The microphones picked up the whirring, clicking sounds of the cameras as those robot eyes went into motion. A sighing wind fled across the baked desert. The minutes had gone and the voice counted seconds.
Kick-off!
Red-yellow-blue flaming fury scorched into the desert sands and the concrete bases were instantly blackened as the rocket vomited fire. A fiery miniature sandstorm arose at the base of the booster, obscuring sight, and then the whole area blossomed into flame. Steel arms of the propping crane fell away, leaving the object standing alone amidst fire and sand. It staggered and began a slow rise.
One hundred feet:
The unbeautiful, unpainted monster was going up, gaining speed with each thrust of fuel emitted from its belly. Tongues of fire continued to beat down on the ground, licking at the sand and the steel frames which had contained it. The robotic cameras climbed their vertical ladders, peering at it, and the microphones recorded a mushrooming thunder of deafening sound. The rocket wobbled, creating the false illusion of hesitation, and then zoomed starward as the inner controls arrested command.
One thousand feet:
Climbing steadily, climbing fast; the bellowing fire no longer reached the ground and the noise of its passage registered a fraction of a second late on the mechanical ears. The air around it and behind it boiled with heat but still the ugly rocket climbed, pushing its load into the sky. The desert beneath was still with a frightened silence.
Ten thousand feet:
Up, always up. The cameras strained at the top of their tracks and could do no more than scan the full sky, seeing the smoky trail left behind, seeing the pale moon lose its daily battle to the brightening dawn. The high, thin smoke trails wavered as they were caught in the moving air currents, wavered and lost all semblance of their original form. The last of the thunderous noises had come, been captured on the recording tapes, and were heard no more. Now a jet-fighter flew in high, wide circles overhead to observe the rocket’s ascent, flew madly but was always left behind.
Human eye and glass lens lost sight of the object.
Forty-five miles:
The exhaust tubes went suddenly quiet and dead as the fuel tank emptied. The eruption of fire, smoke and sound ceased as the rocket stopped its mad pounding. Its task was complete; tilting now to the east it continued to climb but its life was gone. Within its shell an electronic impulse reached out to trip a battery of relays and abruptly the dead hulk found itself alone in the sky. The massive soaring bullet seemed to come apart in the middle as the slim upper portion lifted itself from the useless husk, tore free and screamed away, ever climbing into the east.
Abandoned by the child it had carried so far, the dead rocket continued its futile trajectory into space, faltered, and then lazily turned to begin the long hard fall to earth. It was done, spent.
The slender, needlelike shaft it had carried was already fast vanishing into the rising sun.
Five hundred miles:
The great ship hurled itself through space on invisible wings, driven by mastered atomic power. Its long sleek lines were broken in innumerable places by glass eyes peering out, up, down, all around; the extended tubular nacelle jutting from its nose suggested a radio antenna. The ship barrelled a swathe through the colourless vacuum, tilting more and more to the eastward until its line of flight suggested a horizontal rather than a vertical climb. Silently, without flame or back-thrusting thunder it ripped into space.
Swiftly it travelled and still it continued to pile speed upon speed, as though rushing to meet the maximum demanded of it before its own fuel supply gave out and the drive motor failed. The initial thrust alone would keep it moving forever. The vessel plunged majestically through the airless sky.
One thousand-plus miles.
The ship had reached its assigned orbit and was already flattened out on a horizontal trajectory, already beginning its first historic trip around the earth.
It would hang there, continually circling the earth with terrific speed until eternity or until it was intercepted, looking, peering, searching the secretive world below, reporting all that it saw back to those bunkers beneath the New Mexican desert. Hodgkins’s ship was an orbital observation station, designed to circle the earth each two hours until the end of time. Some three minutes after blasting away from the desert sands it had reached its destination.
Time had already ended for Carolyn Hodgkins.
Wilson Tucker