The Space Opera Megapack: 20 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Tales

by John W. Campbell

  “We’ll leave Earth by centrifugal force, for I can make much better speed in the atmosphere where there is plenty of power to draw on; outside I must depend solely on sunlight. We’ll circle the Earth, forming an orbit just within the atmosphere, at five miles a second. We’ll gradually increase the speed to about ten miles a second, at which point the ship would normally fly off into space under its own centrifugal force. With the power units we’ll prevent its release until the proper moment. When we release it, it will be entirely free of Earth, and no more work will be needed to overcome Earth’s pull.”

  The planning continued with exasperating slowness. The details of the work were complex, for all the machines were totally new. Several weeks passed before even the power units could be ordered and the first work on the ship started. After that orders for materials left the office daily. Still, it was late in November before the last order was sent out.

  Now they must begin work on other phases of the expedition—food supplies and the standard parts of the equipment.

  In the interval Arcot had decided to make a special ventilated suit for use on Venus. This was to make use of a small molecular motion director apparatus to cool the air, and blow it through the suit. The apparatus consisted of a small compressed air-driven generator and a power tube bank that could be carried on the back.

  “Arcot,” Wade said when he saw the apparatus completed and the testing machine ready, “I’ve just noticed how similar this is to the portable invisibility apparatus I developed as the Pirate. I wonder if it might not be handy at times to be invisible—we could incorporate that with a slight change. It wouldn’t add more than five pounds, and those tubes you are using I’m sure are easily strong enough to carry the extra load.”

  “Great idea, Wade,” said Arcot. “It might be very useful if we met hostile natives. The disappearance stunt might make us gods or something to primitive beings. And now that you mention it, I think we can install the apparatus in the ship. It will require almost no power, and might save our lives some time.”

  The work went forward steadily at the great Transcontinental Shops where the space ship was being built. Its construction was being kept as much of a secret as possible, for Arcot feared the interference of the crowds that would be sure to collect if the facts were known, and since the shops directly joined the airfield, it meant that there would be helicopters buzzing about the Transatlantic and Transcontinental planes.

  The work to be done required the most careful manipulation and workmanship, for one defect could mean death. They calculated six weeks for the trip, and in the time before they could reach either planet, much might happen to a crippled ship.

  To the men who were making the trip, the waiting seemed most exasperating, and they spent the days before they could begin the installation of the electrical apparatus in purchasing the necessary standard equipment; the standard coils, tubes, condensers, the canned food supplies, clothes, everything that they could imagine as of possible utility. They were making the ship with a great deal of empty storage space, for Arcot hoped the trip would be a financial success, particularly supplying much-needed metals. Many vital elements were already excessively scarce, and no satisfactory substitutes had been found.

  On the outward trip some of this space would be filled with the many things they would consume en route. In addition they were carrying a great many spare parts, spare tubes, spare power units, spare condensers—a thousand and one odd parts. Arcot intended that they should be able to make an entire new power switchboard and motion director unit if anything should go wrong, and he certainly had all the apparatus.

  At last came the day when the final connection had been soldered, and the last joint welded. The atomic hydrogen tanks were full, and under the ship’s own power the oxygen tanks were filled and the batteries charged. They were ready for a test flight!

  The great ship rested on the floor of the shed now, awaiting the start.

  “Oh fellows—come here a minute!” Arcot called to the other members of the party. “I want to show you something.”

  The three walked quickly to the bow where Arcot stood, and following the line of his vision, looked in wonder to see that everything was right. They watched curiously as he drew from his coat a large glass bottle, tightly sealed.

  “What’s that for?” asked Wade curiously.

  “We’re about to start on the first cruise, and I’ve been wondering if it isn’t time we gave the ship a name.”

  “Great—I’d been thinking of that too—what are we going to name her?”

  “Well,” said Arcot, “I had been thinking of Alexander—he longed for other worlds to conquer!”

  “Not bad,” Morey commented. “I have been thinking of naming it too—I guess we all have—but I was thinking of Santa Maria—the first ship to discover the New World.”

  “I was think more of its home,” said Wade. “How about calling it Terrestrian?”

  “Well—it’s your turn, Fuller—you designed it. What do you suggest for your masterpiece?” asked Arcot.

  “I was thinking also of its home—the home it will never leave. I like to think that we might find people on Venus, and I would like to have a name on it that might be translatable into more friendly and less foreign terms—why not call it Solarite?”

  “Solarite—a member of the solar system—it will be that, always. It will be a world unto itself when it makes its trips—it will take up an orbit about the sun—a true member of the solar system. I like it!” Arcot turned to the others. “How about it?” It was agreed upon unanimously.

  “But I’m still curious about that glass bottle, so carefully sealed.” Morey commented with a puzzled smile. “What’s in it? Some kind of gas?”

  “Wrong—no gas—practically nothing at all, in fact. What more appropriate for christening a space ship than a bottle of hard vacuum?

  “We can’t have a pretty girl christen this ship, that’s sure. A flying bachelor’s apartment christened by a mere woman? Never! We will have the foreman of the works here do that. Since we can’t have the ship slide down the ways or anything, we will get inside and move it when he smashes the bottle. But in the meantime, let’s have a symbol set in contrasting metal on the bow. We can have a blazing sun, with nine planets circling it, the Earth indicated conspicuously; and below it the word SOLARITE.”

  III

  It was shortly after noon when the newly christened Solarite left on its first trip into space. The sun was a great ball of fire low in the west when they returned, dropping plummet-like from the depths of space, the rush of the air about the hull, a long scream that mounted from a half-heard sound in the outer limits of the Earth’s atmosphere, to a roar of tortured air as the ship dropped swiftly to the field and shot into the hangar. Instantly the crew darted to the side of the great cylinder as the door of the ship opened.

  Fuller appeared in the opening, and at the first glimpse of his face, the hangar crew knew something was wrong. “Hey, Jackson,” Fuller called, “get the field doctor—Arcot had a little accident out there in space!” In moments the man designated returned with the doctor, leading him swiftly down the long metal corridor of the Solarite to Arcot’s room aboard.

  There was a mean-looking cut in Arcot’s scalp, but a quick, sure examination by the doctor revealed that there appeared to be no serious injury. He had been knocked unconscious by the blow that made the cut, and he had not yet recovered his senses.

  “How did this happen?” asked the doctor as he bathed the cut and deftly bandaged it.

  Morey explained: “There’s a device aboard whose job it is to get us out of the way of stray meteors, and it works automatically. Arcot and I were just changing places at the controls. While neither of us was strapped into our seats, a meteor came within range and the rocket tubes shot the car out of the way. We both went tumbling head over heels and Arcot landed on his ear. I was luckier, and was able to break my fall with my hands, but it was a mean fall—at our speed we had abo
ut double weight, so, though it was only about seven feet, we might as well have fallen fourteen. We took turns piloting the ship, and Arcot was about to bring us back when that shock just about shook us all over the ship. We will have to make some changes. It does its job—but we need warning enough to grab hold.”

  The doctor was through now, and he began to revive his patient. In a moment he stirred and raised his hand to feel the sore spot. In ten minutes he was conversing with his friends, apparently none the worse except for a very severe headache. The doctor gave him a mild opiate, and sent him to bed to sleep off the effects of the blow.

  With the ship fully equipped, tested and checked in every possible way, the time for leaving was set for the following Saturday, three days off. Great supplies of stores had to be carried aboard in the meantime. Care had to be exercised in this work, lest the cargo slip free under varying acceleration of the Solarite, and batter itself to bits, or even wreck some vital part of the ship. At noon on the day chosen, the first ship ever to leave the bounds of the Earth’s gravity was ready to start!

  Gently the heavily laden Solarite rose from the hangar floor, and slowly floated out into the bright sunshine of the early February day. Beside it rode the little ship that Arcot had first built, piloted by the father of the inventor. With him rode the elder Morey and a dozen newsmen. The little ship was badly crowded now as they rose slowly, high into the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere. The sky about them was growing dark—they were going into space!

  At last they reached the absolute ceiling of the smaller ship, and it hung there while the Solarite went a few miles higher; then slowly, but ever faster and faster they were plunging ahead, gathering speed.

  They watched the radio speedometer creep up—1-2-3-4-5-6—steadily it rose as the acceleration pressed them hard against the back of the seats—8-9—still it rose as the hum of the generator became a low snarl—10-11-12—they were rocketing at twelve miles a second, the tenuous air about the ship shrieking in a thin scream of protest as it parted on the streamlined bow.

  Slowly the speed rose—reached fifteen miles a second. The sun’s pull became steadily more powerful; they were falling toward the fiery sphere, away from the Earth. A microphone recessed in the outer wall brought them the fading whisper of air from outside. Arcot shouted a sudden warning:

  “Hold on—we’re going to lose all weight—out into space!”

  There was a click, and the angry snarl of the overworked generator died in an instant as the thudding relays cut it out of the circuit. Simultaneously the air scoop which had carried air to the generator switched off, transferring to solar heat as a source of power. They seemed to be falling with terrific and ever-increasing speed. They looked down—saw the Earth shrinking visibly as they shot away at more than five miles a second; they were traveling fifteen miles a second ahead and five a second straight up.

  The men watched with intensest interest as the heavens opened up before them—they could see stars now a scant degree from the sun itself, for no air diffused its blinding glory. The heat of the rays seemed to burn them; there was a prickling pleasantness to it now, as they looked at the mighty sea of flame through smoked glasses. The vast arms of the corona reached out like the tentacles of some fiery octopus through thousands of miles of space—huge arms of flaming gas that writhed out as though to reach and drag back the whirling planets to the parent body. All about the mighty sphere, stretching far into space, a wan glow seemed to ebb and flow, a kaleidoscope of swiftly changing color. It was the zodiacal light, an aurora borealis on a scale inconceivable!

  Arcot worked rapidly with the controls, the absence of weight that gave that continued sense of an unending fall, aiding him and his assistants in their rapid setting of the controls.

  At last the work was done and the ship flashed on its way under the control of the instruments that would guide it across all the millions of miles of space and land it on Venus with unerring certainty. The photoelectric telescopic eye watched the planet constantly, keeping the ship surely and accurately on the course that would get them to the distant planet in the shortest possible time.

  Work thereafter became routine requiring a minimum of effort, and the men could rest and use their time to observe the beauties of the skies as no man had ever seen them during all the billions of years of time that this solar system has existed. The lack of atmosphere made it possible to use a power of magnification that no terrestrial telescope may use. The blurred outlines produced by the shifting air prohibits magnifications of more than a few hundred diameters, but here in space they could use the greatest power of their telescope. With it they could look at Mars and see it more clearly than any other man had ever seen it, despite the fact that it was now over two hundred million miles away.

  But though they spent much time taking photographs of the planets and of the moon, and in making spectrum analyses of the sun, time passed very slowly. Day after day they saw measured on the clocks, but they stayed awake, finding they needed little sleep, for they wasted no physical energy. Their weightlessness eliminated fatigue. However, they determined that during the twelve hours before reaching Venus they must be thoroughly alert, so they tried to sleep in pairs. Arcot and Morey were the first to seek slumber—but Morpheus seemed to be a mundane god, for he did not reward them. At last it became necessary for them to take a mild opiate, for their muscles refused to permit their tired brains to sleep. It was twelve hours later when they awoke, to relieve Wade and Fuller.

  They spent most of the twelve hours of their routine watch in playing games of chess. There was little to be done. The silver globe before them seemed unchanging, for they were still so far away it seemed little larger than the moon does when seen from Earth.

  But at last it was time for the effects of the mild drug to wear off, and for Wade and Fuller to awaken from their sleep.

  “Morey—I’ve an idea!” There was an expression of perfect innocence on Arcot’s face—but a twinkle of humor in his eyes. “I wonder if it might not be interesting to observe the reactions of a man waking suddenly from sleep to find himself alone in space?” He stared thoughtfully at the control that would make the ship perfectly transparent, perfectly invisible.

  “I wonder if it would?” said Morey grasping Arcot’s idea.“What do you say we try it?” Arcot turned the little switch—and where there had been the ship, it was no more—it was gone!

  Fuller stirred uneasily in his bed, tightly strapped as he was. The effects of the drug were wearing off. Sleepily he yawned—stretched, and blindly, his heavy eyes still closed, released the straps that held him in bed. Yawning widely he opened his eyes—with a sudden start sat upright—then, with an excellent imitation of an Indian on the warpath, he leaped from his bed, and started to run wildly across the floor. His eyes were raised to the place where the ceiling should have been—he called lustily in alarm—then suddenly he was flying up—and crashed heavily against the invisible ceiling! His face was a picture of utter astonishment as he fell lightly to the floor—then slowly it changed, and took on a chagrined smile—he understood!

  He spun around as loud cries suddenly resounded from Wade’s room across the hall—then there was a dull thud, as he too, forgetting the weightlessness, jumped and hit the ceiling. Then the cries were gone, like the snuffing of a candle. From the control room there rose loud laughter—and a moment later they felt more normal, as they again saw the four strong walls about them.

  Wade sighed heavily and shook his head.

  They were approaching the planet visibly now. In the twelve hours that had passed they had covered a million miles, for now they were falling toward the planet under its attraction. It glowed before them now in wonderous splendour, a mighty disc of molten silver.

  For the last twenty-four hours they had been reducing their speed relative to Venus, to insure their forming an orbit about the planet, rather than shoot around it and back into space. Their velocity had been over a hundred miles a second part of the w
ay, but now it had been reduced to ten. The gravity of the planet was urging them forward at ever increasing speed, and their problem became more acute moment by moment.

  “We’ll never make it on the power units alone, out here in space,” said Arcot seriously. “We’ll just shoot around the planet. I’ll tell you how we can do it, though. We’ll circle around it, entering its atmosphere on the daylight side, and shoot into the upper limits of its atmosphere. There the power units can find some heat to work on, and we can really slow down. But we’ll have to use the rocket tubes to get the acceleration we’ll need to drive the ship into the air.”

  There was a sudden clanging of a bell, and everyone dived for a hold, and held on tightly. An instant later there was a terrific wrench as the rocket jets threw the plane out of the way of a meteor.

  “We’re getting near a planet. This is the third meteor we’ve met since we were more than a million miles from Earth. Venus and Earth and all the planets act like giant vacuum cleaners of space, pulling into themselves all the space debris and meteors within millions of miles by their gravitational attraction.”

  Swiftly the planet expanded below them—growing vaster with each passing moment. It had changed from a disc to a globe, and now, as the molten silver of its surface seemed swiftly clouding, it turned grey; then they saw its true appearance, a vast field of rolling, billowing clouds!

  The Solarite was shooting around the planet now at ten miles a second, far more than enough to carry them away from the planet again, out into space once more if their speed was not checked.

  “Hold on everybody,” Arcot called. “We’re going to turn toward the planet now!” He depressed a small lever—there was a sudden shock, and all the space about them seemed to burst into huge, deep-red atomic hydrogen flames.

  The Solarite reeled under the sudden pressure, but the heavy gyroscopic stabilizers caught it, held it, and the ship remained on an even keel. Then suddenly there came to the ears of the men a long drawn whine, faint—almost inaudible—and the ship began slowing down. The Solarite had entered the atmosphere of Venus—the first man-made machine to thus penetrate the air of another world!