Journey Into Space

by Charles Chilton

  “Think they’ll do it, Doc?” he asked, seriously.

  “I guess so. But it’ll take them some time. Our real hope is you, Lemmy--you and the radio.”

  He didn’t reply to that but instead asked: “What made Mitch flare up like that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the thought that he might not get to the Moon after all, or maybe the cramped conditions and lack of gravity have something to do with it. Who can tell? Nobody has ever been in our circumstances before.”

  The radio was now almost reassembled. Lemmy was just putting the final screws into place when a thought occurred to me. “Was the recorder switched on during that row, Lemmy?”

  He paused for a moment. “Er--no, it wasn’t.”

  “Pity!”

  “Eh?”

  “I’d have liked to have kept a record of every word spoken during this trip.”

  “What for?”

  “All manner of things can be concluded from the way men act and what they say, and a record of our reactions might help other crews in the future. There must be some reason why two men, perfectly stable on Earth, should jump at each other’s throats less than twenty-four hours after leaving it. There was no need for it, Lemmy. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I’m not jumping at anybody’s throat, Doc. Neither are you.”

  “Not yet you aren’t, but watch it. There’s no knowing what might happen if you had nothing to do but sit and wait as Jet and Mitch were doing.”

  Lemmy grunted. “Fat chance of that.” After a few minutes he looked up from his work and said: “Do you think we should turn back, Doc?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “Unless you can get that radio working.”

  “That’s what I think, too. Jet was right. Mitch ought to have known better.”

  “Maybe. But that still doesn’t excuse Jet for losing his temper.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it does.” He looked over his shoulder at where Mitch and Jet were busy with their tables. “Can they hear what we’re saying?”

  “If they were listening they might. But at the moment they’re too busy to notice us.”

  “There,” said Lemmy as he turned the last screw home. “Now, Doc, we’ll try again.”

  “To raise Control?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think our chances are?”

  “I don’t know. Three times I’ve pulled this stuff to pieces and three times I’ve put it all together again. And each time she should have worked; but even the emergency circuits don’t function. I can’t understand it. It’s got me worried, Doc.”

  “Well, you can’t do more than your best.”

  “But it makes me feel I’m letting the ship down.”

  “You shouldn’t let it get you that way, Lemmy.”

  “Well, it does. Now, let’s switch on and see if we get any juice through her.”

  He pressed the switch and we both looked hopefully at the current indicators. They sprang to life. I almost shouted in my excitement. “It’s there.”

  Lemmy was even more excited than I. He laughed as he said: “Yeah--we made it.” Then he took control of himself and said: “No, wait, don’t let’s get too excited. We’re not through to home yet.”

  “Then give them a call, for goodness’ sake,” I said. “Try to raise them.”

  Lemmy switched on the microphone and slowly and deliberately chanted: “Hullo, Control. Rocketship Luna calling Control. If you love me and can hear me, let’s hear from you. Over.”

  Not a sound came from the loudspeaker.

  Lemmy made a gesture of disgust with his hands. “Not a peep,” he said. “They should be receiving us, Doc, there’s bags of aerial current. They should hear us on Mars with this equipment. Why, if . . .”

  He suddenly broke off to look up at the speaker, cock his head to one side and listen. Faintly, very faintly, from the gauze-covered circle came an odd sound.

  “Hey,” I said, “what’s that?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” he replied.

  The sound we were hearing could never be adequately described in words. It began as a high-pitched, almost musical note. As it descended, it increased in volume and on its loudest and lowest note it paused, reverberated like the pedal note of a mighty organ in a deep canyon, and then faded out. But before it disappeared a second note was heard. Like its predecessor, it swooped bass-wards like an imitation of an acrobatic aircraft or the rush of water over a fall.

  Then came a third note, a fourth, a fifth; more and more, too many to count, sliding down the whole range of audible frequencies, one just behind the other, each blending harmoniously with the next. A kaleidoscopic pattern of sound, swooping and descending with a slight lift at the end of each run, like the flight of a gull towards the sea.

  The overall noise grew louder and Lemmy seemed deeply moved by it. He began to tremble slightly. He licked his lips and, with his eyes wide open, said: “It gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?”

  “Haven’t you any idea what it is, Lemmy?”

  “It sounds like music. But music I never heard before.”

  It was like music--music of another age; mysterious, spine-chilling, unearthly. I put my ear close to the speaker. Somewhere within that surging, eerie symphony I thought I could detect, very faintly, a voice. “Can you hear a voice there?” I asked.

  “I dunno, Doc,” Lemmy was extremely agitated. “I can’t make it out.”

  By this time the sound filled the whole cabin. Jet and Mitch looked up from their work in surprise.

  “Is the radio working now?” asked Jet, coming over to where Lemmy and I were standing.

  “Can you get Control?” queried Mitch.

  “She’s working all right, and that should be Control you’re hearing, but it isn’t.”

  “Are you sure she’s on the right frequency, Lemmy?”

  “Why shouldn’t she be? Impossible for her to drift off, with all those crystal stabilisers in there.”

  The weird sound emanating from the amplifier had, until then, been loud, but almost as soon as Jet and Mitch reached us it began to fade. Just as Lemmy finished explaining about the crystals, there was a rapid upward surge of sound, culminating in a number of high-pitched, tremulous notes like the harmonics of a thousand violins playing in unison. Then silence.

  Lemmy was perspiring. “It’s gone. Packed in again.” He was so disappointed his eyes filled with tears.

  “Call them once more, Lemmy,” said Jet gently. “Give them one more try.”

  There was a break in Lemmy’s voice as, for at least the hundredth time, he switched on the microphone. “Hullo, .Earth. Hullo, Control. Rocketship Luna calling. Can you hear us? Come in please.” The last sentence he repeated in a tone of desperation. But less than two seconds later his expression changed to one of joy for from the radio came the clear, calm and familiar voice of Earth.

  “Hullo, Luna. Hearing you loud and clear. Strength 4.5.”

  “It’s them. We made it!” Lemmy was doing his best to hop from one foot to the other.

  Jet pushed him to one side and reached for the mike switch. “Hullo, Control. This is Morgan. Can you still hear us?”

  “Of course we can,” came back the reply. “We’ve been hearing you ever since take-off.”

  “Eh?” Lemmy stopped his dance. His mouth dropped open in surprise. “You mean you’ve been hearing us all the time?” he asked incredulously.

  “Except when you took the radio to pieces.” Mitch shot an enquiring glance in Lemmy’s direction. The voice of Control continued. “There must be something wrong with your receiving circuit.”

  Mitch was about to speak but before he could get a word out Lemmy, as though appealing to Earth for support, yelled into the microphone: “But I couldn’t find anything wrong-- nothing. All I did was take the works to pieces and put them back together again. They’re just the same now as when we took off. I can’t understand it. It doesn’t make sense.” He stepped back from the table with a defiant look on hi
s face.

  “Well, you’re certainly functioning OK now, Luna. Stand by for full details of your position and velocity.”

  Jet switched on the recorder. “Go ahead, Control. Standing by.”

  We listened anxiously as the coveted information was slowly and precisely given to us, every figure repeated three times. We were 142,000 miles from Earth and our speed had dropped to 42,000 mph. This was very nearly what it would have been if the firing and cutting off of the second motor had been carried out by Control as originally intended and not by us. We all felt very pleased with ourselves. We became cheerful again, made jokes--and went out of our way to be polite to one another.

  When Control’s long recitation of facts and figures had ended and the operator’s recorded voice had been played back to him for final check, our normal working routine went into action.

  Watches were divided into four hours per man. Jet took the first, Mitch the second, then me and finally, to enable him to get a long period of sleep without interruption, Lemmy. Leaving Jet at the control table, the rest of us retired to our bunks. The last thing of which I was aware was Jet replaying the log to himself via the reproduction earpiece and copying down the figures for comparison with the estimated flight schedule we had brought with us.

  Ten hours later we were having our first leisurely meal together. Lemmy, purely for the novelty of the experience, had taken his on the ceiling, his rations having been floated up to him by gentle pushes. From his lofty position he kept up an almost constant flow of small talk. “Push me up a banana, will you, Doc? Ta.”

  “Lemmy, do you always intend to take your meals upside down on the ceiling?” Jet asked him.

  “What difference does it make? It all goes down, or should I say ‘up’, just the same.”

  “But it looks so undignified.”

  “Great idea for cocktail parties though. Think of the room it saves.”

  “Anything more, Lemmy?” I asked.

  “No thanks, Doc. I’ve about eaten my fill.”

  “Then push your empties down and I’ll stow them away.”

  “How about a little after dinner music?” came the voice from above.

  “Oh, not that, Lemmy,” protested Mitch.

  “Got to do something to pass the time.”

  It had been agreed that each man could bring from Earth some purely personal object or objects weighing not more than one pound. I had brought my journal and, at every opportunity, filled its pages with details of our life within the confined space of the ship and our individual reactions to it. Both Jet and Mitch had brought a book apiece; Mitch, a technical treatise on atomic power and Jet, a well-worn copy of a fictional work.

  Lemmy had no literary aspirations. He had brought a mouth-organ and during his off-duty periods treated us to selections from his repertoire. Unfortunately it wasn’t very large; unfortunately, too, in our cramped quarters there was no escaping it. At the moment the cabin resounded to the echoes of Lemmy’s favourite item, “Knocked ‘em in the Old Kent Road.” He was also very adept at playing Hebrew dances.

  We resigned ourselves to suffer in silence. Even Mitch refrained from repeating his objection for, now that we were in radio contact with Earth again, Lemmy was the hero of the hour. But we had endured only a few bars of the old Cockney ballad when it was brought to an abrupt close by a sound like the sharp report of a heavy-bore rifle. It was followed, within a fraction of a second, by the shriek of the klaxon horn which told us we had been struck by a meteor.

  We had been drilled for this moment for months. Jet had his drinking straw to his lips, finishing the last of his cold tea. His immediate reaction was to ‘drop everything’--and he did. Down on Earth his bottle would have gone crashing to the floor. But not here. It remained where it was, poised in the air.

  “Emergency! Action stations!” Jet yelled.

  We needed no second bidding. In fact Mitch and I were up on our feet before he got the order out.

  “Blimey!” It was Lemmy. “Emergency, and me upside down on the ceiling.”

  “The space suits!” Jet shouted up at him.

  “Don’t panic,” he replied. “I’m on my way.”

  I half ran, half floated across to my control panel. There I checked the air pressure and found, to my great relief, that it was constant. At least the ship’s inner shell had not been holed. I announced the fact to Jet.

  “The meteor bumper must have worked,” yelled Mitch above the noise of the klaxon.

  “That we’ll see. Put your suits on anyway,” said Jet, taking his from Lemmy who was now handing them round. “Put on your helmets, too, but don’t fasten them.”

  I stayed at my post by the air pressure indicator, ready to press the siren should the needle begin to waver.

  Jet turned off the shrieking buzzer. Then Mitch, from his place at the engineering panel, announced: “Fuel tanks and motor seem to be intact. No damage there, according to the board.”

  “Good. Right, Lemmy. Call up base. Report this to Control immediately.”

  “Yes, Jet.”

  Fifteen minutes later we were still at our posts but none of the indicators gave us any sign that the ship had suffered any serious damage. An hour later vigilance was relaxed, but it was essential to know what damage, however slight, the ship had sustained. There was only one way to find out and that was to go outside and look.

  “Outside?” asked Lemmy. “Into--nothing?”

  “Only one of us needs to--I’ll go,” said Jet.

  “No, let me,” said Mitch.

  I tried to put my spoke in. “Oh no, Mitch, this is my job. If anything should go wrong, should the suits break down or anything unforeseen happen, you are of far more importance to the crew than I.”

  “Do you mean that whoever goes out there has a chance of not coming back again?” Lemmy swallowed.

  “It’s possible, Lemmy. It will be the first time any man has ever been out there--in true space. His life will depend principally on the efficiency of the suit he’s wearing. And as I designed these suits,” I turned to Jet, “it follows that I should be the one to put them to the test.” “You tested them on Earth, Doc, didn’t you?”

  “Of course, as far as I could. But this will be different, Jet--the real thing.”

  The fact was that, with the exception of Lemmy, we were all itching to go outside. Jet decided to draw lots for it, Lemmy included. Jet won.

  Still wearing our suits, but without helmets, we prepared to let him out of the cabin, into the airlock and through the main door.

  Air was first let into the lock to fill up the vacuum. It rushed in with a loud hiss that could be heard through the cabin floor. Next the hatchway was opened and, when it had reached full aperture, Jet descended the ladder into the small, airtight compartment below. He looked up at the three of us glancing down at him and grinned. “All right, Doc,” he said. “Close the hatch.”

  I closed her and Jet was lost to view. Lemmy had already turned on the ship’s intercom radio that would keep us in touch with Jet while he was outside. Soon we heard the rattle of his throat mike as he switched it on.

  “Over to intercom,” said his voice, now coming from the loudspeaker. “Fastening helmet.”

  “Hearing you loud and clear,” said Lemmy.

  “Helmet fastened. Exhaust the lock.”

  There was a click of relays and a long, sustained hiss of air as the airlock slowly emptied.

  “Suit now inflating,” came Jet’s voice.

  “Air pressure zero,” I announced.

  “Then open the door and turn me loose.” It opened, the electric motors filling the cabin with a deep, musical hum. When it ceased we heard, quite distinctly, an exclamation of surprise.

  “What is it, Jet--something wrong?” asked Mitch.

  “It’s more beautiful than I ever dreamed.”

  “What is?”

  “The stars. Millions upon millions of them.” His voice now took on a matter-of-fact tone. “Am now leaving door and
walking up side of ship. I’ll make a complete circuit.”

  “How’s the suit, Jet?” I asked him.

  “Fine, Doc, fine. More comfortable than I’d dared to hope. Now hitching safety line and walking towards nose.”

  I could imagine him out there, walking up the side of the ship like a fly up a wall. To him ‘down’ was towards his feet--whatever part of the ship he might be. If, by any mischance, his magnetic boots failed and he went drifting off into the void, his safety line would hold and enable him to pull himself back.

  “Any sign of where the meteor hit us?” It was Mitch.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Ask him if he can see the Earth,” prompted Lemmy.

  “Not now,” Mitch replied. “One thing at a time. Finding the point of impact is more important.”

  But Jet had already found it. The meteor had struck us near the ship’s nose. Apparently it must have been a very small one--minute--for only a tiny part of the steel outer casing had vaporised. We thanked our lucky stars it hadn’t been larger.

  We all now expected Jet to make his way back to the airlock and return to the cabin. But no. “You must come out here, all of you,” he said with bated breath. “This is something you’ve got to see.”

  “We can’t all go,” Mitch told him. “Somebody must stay to work the airlock.”

  In spite of my great desire to join Jet outside the ship, I volunteered to remain behind, asking, by way of compensation, that I should be the first to step down on the surface of the Moon. My request was granted. A few moments later Mitch and Lemmy were outside with Jet and I could hear their excited voices as they pointed out to one another the sights of the Universe.

  “Did you ever see so many stars? So many different colours, too. And so small and bright,” said Lemmy. “How fast are we going, Jet?”

  “About 2000 miles an hour.”

  “We don’t seem to be moving at all.”

  “Take a look at the Moon, Lemmy. Even from this distance you can see the mountains and craters on her.”

  “How far away is she now?”

  “At a rough guess I’d say about a hundred thousand miles.”

  “Oh. No distance at all. A fourpenny ‘bus ride.”