The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  "We'll take whatever they hand us," Rip assured him, "and pretend we like it fine." He gestured at the other Planeteers. "Tell me about the men, Koa."

  "They're a fine bunch, sir. I handpicked them myself. The one with the white hair is Corporal Nels Pederson, from Sweden. I served with him at Marsport, and he's a real tough spacewalker in a fight. The other corporal is Paulo Santos. He's from the Philippines, and the best snapper-boat gunner you ever saw."

  He pointed out the six privates. Kemp and Dowst were Americans. Bradshaw was an Englishman, Trudeau a Frenchman, Dominico an Italian, and Nunez a Brazilian.

  Rip liked their looks. They were as relaxed as acceleration would allow, but you got the impression that they would leap into action in a microsecond if the word were given. He couldn't imagine what kind of assignment was waiting, but he was satisfied with his Planeteers. They looked capable of anything.

  He made himself as comfortable as possible and encouraged Koa to talk about his service in the Special Order Squadrons. Koa had plenty to tell, and he talked interestingly. Rip learned that the tall Hawaiian had been to every planet in the system, had fought the Venusians on the central desert, and had mined nuclite with SOS One on Mercury. He also found that Koa was one of the seventeen pure-blooded Hawaiians left. During the three hours that acceleration kept them from moving around the ship, Rip got a new view of space and of service with the SOS--it was the view of a Planeteer who had spent years around the Solar System.

  "I'm glad they assigned you to me," Rip told Koa frankly. "This is my first job, and I'll be pretty green, no matter what it is. I'll depend on you for a lot of things."

  To his surprise, Koa thrust out his hand. "Shake, Lieutenant." His grin showed strong white teeth. "You're the first junior officer I ever met who admitted he didn't know everything about everything. You can depend on me, sir. I won't steer you into any meteor swarms."

  Koa had half turned to shake hands. Suddenly he spun on around, banging his head against the deck. Rip felt a surge of relaxing muscles that had been braced against acceleration. At the same time, silence flooded in on them. Rip murmured "Brennschluss," and the murmur was like a trumpet blast.

  The Scorpius had reached velocity, and the nuclear drive had cut out. From terrific acceleration, they had dropped to zero. The ship was making high speed, but velocity cannot be felt. For the moment the men were weightless.

  A nearby spaceman had heard Rip's comment. He spoke in an undertone to the man nearest. His voice was pitched low enough that Rip couldn't object officially, but loud and clear enough to be heard by everyone.

  "Get this, gang. The Planeteer officer knows what Brennschluss is. He doesn't look old enough to know which end his bubble goes on."

  Rip started to his feet, but Koa's hand on his arm restrained him. With a violent kick, the big sergeant major shot through the air. His line of flight took him past the spaceman, and somehow their arms got linked. The spaceman was jerked from his post, and the two came to a stop against the ceiling.

  Koa's voice echoed through the ship. "Sorry. I'm not used to no-weight. Didn't mean to grab you. Here, I'll help you back to your post."

  He whirled the helpless spaceman like a bag of feathers and slung him through the air. The force of the action only flattened Koa against the ceiling, but the hapless spaceman shot forward head first and landed with a clang against the bulkhead. He didn't hit hard enough to break any bones, but he would carry a bump on his head for a day or two.

  Koa's voice floated after him. "Great Cosmos! I sure am sorry, spaceman. I guess I don't know my own strength." He kicked away from the ceiling, landing accurately at Rip's side. He added in a hard voice all could hear, "They sure are a nice gang, these spacemen. They never say anything about Planeteers."

  No spaceman answered, but Koa's meaning was clear. No spaceman had better say anything about the Planeteers! Rip saw that the deputy commander and the safety officer had appeared not to notice the incident. Technically, there was no reason for an officer to take action. It had all been an "accident." He smiled. There was a lot he had to learn about dealing with spacemen, a lot Koa evidently knew very well indeed.

  Suddenly he began to feel weight. The ship was going into rotation. The feeling increased until he felt normally heavy again. There was no other sensation, even though the space cruiser was now spinning on its axis through space at unaltered speed. The centrifugal force produced by the spinning gave them an artificial gravity.

  Now that he thought about it, Brennschluss had come pretty early. The trip apparently was going to be a short one. Brennschluss--funny, he thought, how words stay on in a language, even after their original meaning is changed. Brennschluss was German for "burn out." It was rocket talk, and it meant the moment when all the fuel in a rocket burned out. It had come into common use because the English "burn out" could also mean that the engine itself had burned out. The German word meant only the one thing. Now, in nuclear drive ships, the same word was used for the moment when power was cut off.

  Words interested him. He started to mention it to Koa just as the telescreen lit up. An officer's face appeared. "Send that Planeteer officer to the commander," the face said. "Tell him to show an exhaust."

  Rip called instantly to the safety officer. "Where's his office?"

  The safety officer motioned to a spaceman. "Show him, Nelson."

  Rip followed the spaceman through a maze of passages, growing more weightless with each step. The closer to the center of the ship they went, the less he weighed. He was drawing himself along by plastic pull cords when they finally reached the door marked COMMANDER.

  The spaceman left without a word or a salute. Rip pushed the lock bar and pulled himself in by grabbing the door frame. He couldn't help thinking it was a rather undignified way to make an entrance.

  Seated in an acceleration chair, a safety belt across his middle, was Space Commander Kevin O'Brine, an Irishman out of Dublin. He was short, as compact as a deto-rocket, and obviously unfriendly. He had a mathematically square jaw, a lopsided nose, green eyes, and sandy hair. He spoke with a pronounced Irish brogue.

  Rip started to announce his name, rank, and the fact that he was reporting as ordered. Commander O'Brine brushed his words aside and stated flatly, "You're a Planeteer. I don't like Planeteers."

  Rip didn't know what to say, so he kept still. But sharp anger was rising inside of him.

  O'Brine went on. "Instructions say I'm to hand you your orders en route. They don't say when. I'll decide that. Until I do decide, I have a job for you and your men. Do you know anything about nuclear physics?"

  Rip's eyes narrowed. He said cautiously, "A little, sir."

  "I'll assume you know nothing. Foster, the designation SCN means Space Cruiser, Nuclear. This ship is powered by a nuclear reactor--in other words, an atomic pile. You've heard of one?"

  Rip controlled his voice, but his red hair stood on end with anger. O'Brine was being deliberately insulting. This was stuff any Planeteer recruit knew. "I've heard, sir."

  "Fine. It's more than I had expected. Well, Foster, a nuclear reactor produces heat. Great heat. We use that heat to turn a chemical called methane into its component parts. Methane is known as marsh gas, Foster. I wouldn't expect a Planeteer to know that. It is composed of carbon and hydrogen. When we pump it into the heat coils of the reactor, it breaks down and creates a gas that burns and drives us through space. But that isn't all it does."

  Rip had an idea what was coming, and he didn't like it. Nor did he like Commander O'Brine. It was not until much later that he learned that O'Brine had been on his way to Terra, to see his family for the first time in four years, when the cruiser's orders were changed. To the commander, whose assignments had been made necessary by the needs of the Special Order Squadrons, it was too much. So he took his disappointment out on the nearest Planeteer, who happened to be Rip.

  "The gases go through tubes," O'Brine went on. "A little nuclear material also leaks into the tubes. The tubes get
coated with carbon, Foster. They also get coated with nuclear fuel. We use thorium. Thorium is radioactive. I won't give you a lecture on radioactivity, Foster. But thorium mostly gives off the kind of radiation known as alpha particles. Alpha is not dangerous unless breathed or eaten. It won't go through clothes or skin. But when mixed with fine carbon, thorium alpha contamination makes a mess. It's a dirty mess, Foster--so dirty that I don't want my spacemen to fool with it.

  "I want you to take care of it instead--you and your men. The deputy commander will assign you to a squad room. Settle in, then draw equipment from the supply room and get going. When I want to talk to you again, I'll call for you. Now blast off, Lieutenant, and rake that radiation. Rake it clean."

  Rip forced a bright and friendly smile. "Yes, sir," he said sweetly. "We'll rake it so clean you can see your face in it, sir." He paused, then added politely. "If you don't mind looking at your face, sir--to see how clean the tubes are, I mean."

  Rip turned and got out of there.

  Koa was waiting in the passageway outside. Rip told him what had happened, mimicking O'Brine's Irish accent.

  The sergeant major shook his head sadly. "This is what I meant, Lieutenant. Cruisers don't clean their tubes more'n once in ten accelerations. The commander is just thinking up dirty work for us to do, like I said."

  "Never mind," Rip told him. "Let's find our squad room and get settled, then draw some protective clothing and equipment. We'll clean his tubes for him. Our turn will come later."

  He remembered the last thing Joe Barris had said, only a few hours before. Joe was right, he thought. To ourselves we're supermen, but to the spacemen we're just simps. Evidently O'Brine was the kind of space officer who ate Planeteers for breakfast.

  Rip thought of the way the commander had turned red with rage at that crack about his face, and he resolved, He may eat me for breakfast, but I'll be a very tough mouthful!

  CHAPTER THREE

  Capture and Drive!

  Commander O'Brine had not exaggerated. The residue of carbon and thorium on the blast tube walls was stubborn, dirty, and penetrating. It was caked on in a solid sheet, but when scraped, it broke up into fine powder.

  The Planeteers wore coveralls, gloves, and face masks with respirators, but that didn't prevent the stuff from sifting through onto their bodies. Rip, who directed the work and kept track of the radiation with a gamma-beta ion chamber and an alpha proportional counter, knew they would have to undergo personal decontamination.

  He took a reading on the ion chamber. Only a few milliroentgens of beta and gamma radiation. That was the dangerous kind, because both beta particles and gamma rays could penetrate clothing and skin. But the Planeteers wouldn't get enough of a dose to do any harm at all. The alpha count was high, but so long as they didn't breathe any of the dust, it was not dangerous.

  The Scorpius had six tubes. Rip divided the Planeteers into two squads, one under his direction and one under Koa's. Each tube took a couple of hours' hard work. Several times during the cleaning, the men would leave the tube and go into the main mixing chamber while the tube was blasted with live steam to throw the stuff they had scraped off out into space.

  Each squad was on its last tube when a spaceman arrived. He saluted Rip. "Sir, the safety officer says to secure the tubes."

  That could mean only one thing: deceleration. Rip rounded up his men. "We're finished. The safety officer passed the word to secure the tubes, which means we're going to decelerate." He smiled grimly. "You all know they gave us this job just out of pure love for the Planeteers. So remember it when you go through the control room to the decontamination chamber."

  The Planeteers nodded enthusiastically.

  Rip led the way from the mixing chamber, through the heavy safety door, and into the engine control room. His entrance was met with poorly concealed grins by the spacemen.

  Halfway across the room, Rip turned suddenly and bumped into Sergeant Major Koa. Koa fell to the deck, arms flailing for balance--but flailing against his protective clothing. The other Planeteers rushed to pick him up, and somehow all their hands beat against each other.

  The protective clothing was saturated with fine dust. It rose from them in a choking cloud and was picked up and dispersed by the ventilating system. It was contaminated dust. The automatic radiation safety equipment filled the ship with an earsplitting buzz of warning. Spacemen clapped emergency respirators to their faces and spoke unkindly of Rip's Planeteers in the saltiest space language possible.

  Rip and his men picked up Koa and continued the march to the decontamination room, grinning under their respirators at the consternation around them. There was no danger to the spacemen, since they had clapped on respirators the moment the warning sounded. But even a little contamination meant the whole ship had to be gone over with instruments, and the ventilating system would have to be cleaned.

  The deputy commander met Rip at the door of the radiation room. Above the respirator, his face looked furious.

  "Lieutenant," he bellowed, "haven't you any more sense than to bring contaminated clothing into the engine control room?"

  Rip was sorry the deputy commander couldn't see him grinning under his respirator. He said innocently, "No, sir, I haven't any more sense than that."

  The deputy grated, "I'll have you up before the Discipline Board for this."

  Rip was enjoying himself thoroughly. "I don't think so, sir. The regulations are very clear. They say, 'It is the responsibility of the safety officer to insure compliance with all safety regulations by both complete instructions to personnel and personal supervision.' Your safety officer didn't instruct us, and he didn't supervise us. You'd better run him up before the Board."

  The deputy commander made harsh sounds into his respirator. Rip had him, and he knew it. "He thought even a stupid Planeteer had sense enough to obey radiation safety rules," he yelled.

  "He was wrong," Rip said gently. Then, just to make himself perfectly clear, he added, "Commander O'Brine was within his rights when he made us rake radiation. But he forgot one thing. Planeteers know the regulations, too. Excuse me, sir. I have to get my men decontaminated."

  Inside the decontamination chamber, the Planeteers took off their masks and faced Rip with admiring grins. For a moment he grinned back, feeling pretty good. He had held his own with the spacemen, and he sensed that his men liked him.

  "All right," he said briskly. "Strip down and get into the showers."

  In a few moments they were all standing under the chemically treated water, washing off the contaminated dust. Rip paid special attention to his hair, because that was where the dust was most likely to stick. He had it well lathered when the water suddenly cut off. At the same moment, the cruiser shuddered slightly as control blasts stopped its spinning and left them all weightless. Rip saw instantly what had happened. He called, "All right, men. Down on the floor."

  The Planeteers instantly slid to the shower deck. In a few seconds the pressure of deceleration pushed at them.

  "I like spacemen," Rip said wryly. "They wait until just the right moment before they cut the water and decelerate. Now we're stuck in our birthday suits until we land--wherever that may be."

  Corporal Nels Pederson spoke up in a soft Stockholm accent. "Never mind, sir. We'll get back at them. We always do!"

  While the Scorpius decelerated and started maneuvering for a landing, Rip did some rapid calculations. He knew the acceleration and deceleration rates of cruisers of this class, measured in terms of time, and part of his daily routine on the space platform had been to examine the daily astroplot, which gave the positions of all planets and other large bodies within the solar system.

  There was only one possible destination: Mars.

  Rip's pulse quickened. He had always wanted to visit the red planet. Of course, he had seen all the films, audio-mags, and books concerning it, and he had tried to see the weekly spacecast. He had a good idea of what the planet was like, but reading or viewing was not like actually
landing and taking a look for himself.

  Of course, they would land at Marsport. It was the only landing area equipped to handle nuclear drive cruisers.

  The cruiser landed and deceleration cut to zero. At the same moment the water came on.

  Rip hurriedly finished cleaning up, dressed, then took his radiation instruments and carefully monitored his men as they came from the shower. Private Dowst had to go back for another try at getting his hair clean, but the rest were all right. Rip handed his instruments to Koa. "You monitor Dowst when he finishes. I want to see what's happening."

  He hurried from the chamber and made his way down the corridors toward the engine control room. There was a good possibility he might get a call from O'Brine, with instructions to take his men off the ship. He might finally learn what he was assigned to do!

  As he reached the engine control room, Commander O'Brine was giving instructions to his spacemen on the stowage of equipment that evidently was expected aboard. Rip felt a twinge of disappointment. If the Scorpius had landed to take on supplies of some kind, his assignment was probably not on Mars.