He couldn't be sure that it was perfect—the spin of the ship and the agony of breathing made good control almost impossible. But it seemed to be steady.
There was nothing else he could do. He forced his way to the door, swaying at each step. The door seemed to resist his efforts, but it came open, and he got through it somehow. He even managed to close it.
There was no feeling of weight now. The big rocket was off, and they were drifting on at the speed they had built up. It would have to be sufficient.
He pushed himself down the shaft, floating to a landing beside Tod. The old man seemed to be in worse condition than he was, in spite of the time he'd spent in the control room, but one bushy eyebrow lifted weakly.
Jerry lay gasping, slowly getting some control of himself. The shaft was cooler, at least, than the rest of the ship, and the refrigerating unit in his suit began to work better. He leaned over and quickly explained what he had done.
Tod nodded weakly. "Good idea. Should have thought of it. Rear end's mosdy rocket tube—and that'll take the heat."
It was also thicker, Jerry knew, and it could hold back more of the solar radiation. The lining of the tube was meant to stand nearly impossible temperature.
They must be drawing away, he thought. The sun would try to hold them, but their speed would carry them on. Yet it would be too long before the ship could get far enough away for the heat to radiate away faster than it was being shoved at them by the sun.
The air in his suit seemed damp and sticky. He realized he was sweating faster than the water-removal unit could work.
His mind wandered. He began to think of all the cool breezes he had known, and then of the frozen surface of Europa, white with its covering of frozen air and deep-buried ice. He shouldn't have left it.
Daniel had gone into the fiery furnace. There were fakirs on Earth who still claimed they could walk across a bed of hot coals. The surface temperature of the sun is six thousand degrees Kelvin—a lot more than that Fahrenheit.
He swallowed a salt tablet from the little holder and took another drink from the tube near his hps. The water was hot, sickening. But it helped.
He leaned over and touched his helmet to Tod's. "Tod! Tod!"
The old man looked up slowly, reason coming back into his eyes. "Eh?"
"What about the fuel—will it stand this temperature?"
Tod made an effort to snap out of the semi-trance he was in. He puckered his face into a knot of concentration.
"Won't explode," he decided. "But it might boil over—I don't think it will, but it might. Then, if it hits a bit of tin or solder ..."
He shuddered, and slipped back into the pain and the dullness Jerry was fighting against. It was physical agony to breathe now. His suit felt like fire against his skin. He got to his feet carefully and pulled himself up the shaft a few feet. There he carefully balanced himself out away from everything and let go.
By squirming about he could manage to avoid contact with most of the suit. But nothing could help the thick heat of the air that seared his lungs and seemed to suck all the moisture from his throat and nostrils.
It couldn't get worse. But it continued to grow hotter. The suit couldn't begin to handle the extreme temperature now. Jerry moaned with each breath that sent his chest out against the hot fabric and plastic. But he had to breathe in short, gasping gulps at an ever quickening pace.
He knew that he was reaching his limit. Tod had already passed out, which was a blessing to the old man. Here was one of the places where youth had the advantages of endurance, but he knew it was a mixed blessing.
He knew he would soon faint. He looked down at the valve on his botde of air and saw that it was half-empty. With weak hands, he replaced it with the full one beside it. The effort brought him up against the shaft wall and forced his shoulder to touch the hot suit again. He screamed, but it pulled him together for a moment.
With his last bit of energy, he forced himself down beside Tod, and began the agonizing job of changing air botdes. There was no way of knowing how long they would remain unconscious, if they survived. He'd begun to doubt that there was much chance of that, but he had to be sure they wouldn't die by suffocating in their suits when the air ran out.
He lifted Tod up into die air, pulled the suit away from the old body, and held it steady until he could be sure no motion would throw it against a wall. Then he again pulled himself up to his former position and worked his clothing away from his body.
The ship was swimming faster now—turning around and around. Each breath was a surge of fire into his lungs. His eyes filled with red spots, while every cell of his body was crying in anguish. Slowly, the red spots went away.
The ship drifted on past the sun, and he drifted into unconsciousness that was still filled with flaming agony.
Chapter 15 Venus Calling Marsf
eat was still radiating from the walls, and the air in the suit was stifling when Jerry revived. He saw j by the valve on his tank that it was half-full, which meant that he had been unconscious for about three hours—probably less, since the rate of breathing had been faster.
His entire back must have touched against a wall, because it was burning worse than all the sunburns in the universe. Sunburn! It was exacdy that—sunburn in a place where walls of metal gave no real shade!
But he knew that the heat was falling at last, since he would never have revived otherwise. It meant that they were still in a ship that was capable of functioning. It had been a close call, but they'd gotten through.
Recket Jockey
He groaned as he reached for the shaft, clenched his teeth, and began climbing up in the weightlessness that still existed. He could never have made it against gravity. When he got the door open, he found that there was little difference between the shaft and the control room now; the room was in the shadow of the ship's tail, and the walls were beginning to lose heat.
He left the door open, and studied his position as best he could in the tele-panels. There was no way of being sure of how he stood, however, while the ship continued to spin. He began the difficult job of trying to pull it out.
Either he was lucky, or he had learned while getting it into the spin. It took less than ten minutes to bring it to a fixed position. Now he could find where they were.
He stopped to swallow another salt tablet, a mixed vitamin pill of heroic proportions, and a few of the chocolate tablets that could be brought to his mouth by toning his head. The water was tepid, but he drank a little. There was nothing he could do about the nausea and headache, or the feeling of a raging fever. They'd have to wait until the ship could cool further.
His position agreed with what it should, according to the clock, and he didn't bother to check it again. Minor corrections could be made later. Venus was in line, and he could set down there comfortably by using slightly less than two gees of deceleration.
He steered the ship around until its tail pointed toward the planet and adjusted the controls before cutting on the big rocket. The weight was less than he'd been used to for days now, but it seemed to crush him. He was so weak that he could barely stand against it.
Two hours later, the control room was cool enough for him to remove his suit. Hastily he applied unguents to his back and went down to bring Tod up. The old man was still unconscious, but breathing normally.
Jerry stripped him and covered his inflamed body with the unguent. It contained one of the Martian plant drugs, and usually could produce healing of a normal burn in a few hours. The cabins were still too hot, but the air flowing in was cooling them rapidly. Jerry waited a few minutes, and then put Tod on a hammock and crawled into another. He swallowed a drug that would kill the remaining pain and make him sleep.
Tod woke him. The old man had recovered remarkably during the few hours. He looked smaller and more shriveled, but he seemed to be in almost his normal condition.
Jerry took a long breath of the cool, sweet air, let it out reluctantly, and began dressing. The bur
ns were almost entirely gone, and most of his other symptoms were going. Tod waited for him to go up to the control room and then went into the galley to collect plates of food.
"Bust cans all over. Galley looks like pigs lived in it. Whole ship's a mess. I've scraped up some of it. You'll have to eat toasted cheese and double-baked crackers. Everything else is ruined," Tod told him.
Jerry took the food gratefully. The cheese seemed to have gone through odd changes in its can, but it was edible. He downed a glass of water first. They still had enough of that to last, at least. The condenser had drawn it out of the air as it cooled.
He saw that the metal shields over the ports had been removed, and realized that Tod had been busy for hours already.
"Getting old," the engineer muttered. "Can't take it. Sorry I conked out on you, kid."
"Sorry I put you through it," Jerry answered.
They finished the food and went down, to begin cleaning up the mess in the ship. They couldn't do anything about the paint that was gone, or the supplies that were ruined, except to pile the junk into one of the storage rooms, out of the way. But they felt better as the Last Hope began to look like a space ship again.
They landed on Venus at seven a.m., Tuesday, the twenty-fourth. In spite of all the troubles, they were two hours closer to Dick's schedule than they had been when they left Ganymede. But they were still over a hundred hours behind, and there was very little chance to make it up now.
Jerry expected no trouble from the pleasant, friendly people of Venus, and he was right. They were too polite to ask questions about the condition of his ship, but they pitched in quiedy and began restocking it with smooth efficiency.
Venus was unlike any of the other inhabited worlds. Here the domes were used to protect the inhabitants from the atmosphere, instead of to keep air in. The world was only slightly smaller than Earth, and its atmosphere was a trifle deeper. Here, near the pole, it was warm, but not too hot—the dense clouds that covered the planet reflected enough heat to prevent the temperature rising too far, and the eighty-hour day was still short enough to keep a balance between the cold of its shadowy night and the heat of the day that was not too unpleasant.
The big trouble had been with the air. There was some oxygen and too much carbon dioxide, but only a few traces of water. The dense clouds had actually been thin upper veils, appearing so dense only because the violent winds and churning atmosphere had kept them in violent motion and completely spread out. On the ground, those same winds had whipped the surface into a dust bowl, and eroding, stinging hurricanes of dust-filled air were constantly blowing.
But now the air was improving. The water and oxygen had apparently once been common, but a strange life-form of a weird crystalline nature not completely understood had managed to trap most of them. Men had found that the desert plants from Earth could be grown on the harsh, dry soil, and the plants had flourished far beyond the pioneer dreams. They were rapidly breaking die carbon dioxide down to oxygen.
They also proved capable of breaking up the crystalline forms, and liberating the oxygen and water in them. Biologists had determined that it was a soil bacterium brought with the plants that did that, but it didn't matter. In another hundred years, Venus had hopes of having an atmosphere as wholesome as that of Earth. Even now, it could be breathed for short times, with the help of a little extra oxygen.
The pioneers had flourished here, and grown pleasantly soft, something like the Spaniards of old California. Their houses, under the domes, were gems of form and color, and their soft voices were a welcome contrast to the buzz and rasp of the rest of the system.
Jerry found the Commission office open, and presented his papers. The agent looked up at him, smiling. "YouVe had a difficult time, young man. I can see that. It's a pity that you can't win. We were hoping you would, when our ship was wrecked among the asteroids."
"You mean Mars is sure of winning?" Jerry asked sharply.
The official bowed slightly. "Through no fault of yours. I believe you would still have an excellent chance, if it weren't for that unfortunate ruling. Mars, of course, brought it to the attention of the Commission."
"What ruling?"
The man frowned slightly.
"I'm so sorry—I thought you would have heard. The ruling states that all the men on board a racing ship at the beginning of a race must be present on the same ship at the end of that race. Unfortunately, of course, your brother is on Mars!"
He held out one of the thick books of rules which no pilot could hope to know in full, pointing out the section. Jerry read it over quickly, and turned to the index. He ran down several cross references quickly, before handing it back.
"So that's why the Martians were so willing to take care of Dick!" he said bitterly.
The official shook his head gently. "No, give them credit where it is due. They are as humane as you or we. They have fought a tremendous fight against a difficult world and have succeeded beyond what anyone could believe; now they continue to fight equally hard, and with equally little sense of anything but victory, even though they have won their planet. But they do not offer their hospitality in their hospitals for anything but mercy. It's a pity so much of the old hostility between you and them still exists."
It was all very pretty, but it had nothing to do with the race. Jerry went back to an earlier statement. "You say you think we could still win—does that mean that Mars isn't much ahead of us in time?"
"A few hours, I believe. We have only the rough returns on their course, but I believe I can say you would stand some chance if your brother were still with you." The agent's face was filled with genuine regret.
Dick was on Mars, though—and Mars was a long way away. There wouldn't be time to pick him up and get back to Earth. Jerry checked back over his ideas. He wanted no repetition of his foolishness on Ganymede.
"The rule doesn't say that all the men have to be on the ship during the whole race, does it?" he asked, to be sure.
The official shot him a sharp glance, and picked up the book, thumbing through it quickly. He smiled slightly, and then frowned. "No—apparently it was overlooked in revising the book this time. Or perhaps it was intended that a sick man could be dropped at a suitable planet and picked up later. That is entirely possible. You're quite correct—if you could remove your brother from Mars to your ship and still reach Earth before the ship from Mars, you would be the winner—unless, of course, there is another ship in the lead that I know nothing about."
Jerry sat down, reaching for the star maps that lay on one of the desks. The official went to a closet and came back carrying a calculator similar to the one with which the boy was familiar, and another more elaborate machine. Jerry took the simple one with a brief word of thanks.
He checked his distances and locations of the planets, and began feeding in the information. It would mean a long trip, and he was sure it wouldn't work. But he had to depend on facts, and not on his own beliefs.
He stared at the figures that came out. It would take over sixty hours to Mars, and at least four there for fuel and to pick up Dick. Then Mars was farther from Earth now than at the start of the race. Another fifty-two hours. At the very least, a hundred and sixteen hours, instead of the forty-eight hours that would be required to reach Earth directly from Venus. That was a difference of nearly three days!
"It won't work, of course," the official said regretfully. "I'd considered it myself, though I didn't have the exact thrust you felt it was safe to use."
Jerry looked at the figures, trying to find something wrong, but he knew they were right. He seized on another idea. "But I was a replacement for Dick—I took his place as pilot. The Last Hope operates with only two men aboard normally."
"Not a chance," the agent told him firmly, though still in a gentle tone of voice. "Your brother served as part of the crew to Mars, and then took off for Jupiter, before you put back. The plea wouldn't work."
Jerry hadn't counted on it. He'd known how weak it was w
hen he mentioned the idea, but it had given him time to think. "Does it matter how Dick gets off Mars, provided he's on the Last Hope when we land on Earth?"
"There's nothing in the rules which says you can't move him by black magic, even, if you like," the man answered. Then his face took on a startled expression.
There was nothing lazy about him as he jumped back to his desk and reached for an elaborate radio set there. "Give me through to interplanet, on top priority, and then seal the beam to me," he ordered.
A few seconds later the set buzzed. "They're relaying directly from here," he explained, as he picked up the microphone again. "Venus calling Mars! Venus calling Mars! Venus calling Mars!"
He dropped the receiver, and they waited while the waves traveled out at 186,000 miles a second across the long distance to Mars. The answer took still more time to come back.
"Mars acknowledging. Go ahead, Venus!"
"Give me a list of all ships which will leave Eros within the next twenty-four hours, and particularly of all ships of Earth registery, together with their normal operating times for the trip to Earth or to Venus!"
Again the wait was a long one, while Jerry hung over the edge of the desk. On the major planets, the representative of the Commission was obviously a person who could work miracles.
The official smiled at him. "I'm not being partial, young man. As an accredited racer, you have the right to appeal to me for all the help you wish, so long as it does not operate to the exclusion of the rights of others, or does not violate any rule in that book. I suspect you haven't been making the fullest use of that right, but it's a pleasure to be of help to you."
The list began coming in eventually. Only one Earth ship was leaving—the Chicago Queen, with a listed acceleration to halfway of slighdy over one gravity. The official asked and got a connection to her skipper, Captain Miles, and turned the microphone over to Jerry.
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