While these preparations were being made, we went into the power station control room. This was a large pressurized cylinder on the rim of the great mirror, with windows giving a good view in all directions. It had been made habitable and the air-conditioning brought into service again by one of our technicians—for a suitable fee, of course. They had also had the job of swinging the mirror round until it faced the Sun once more. This had been done by fixing some rocket units to the rim and letting them fire for a few seconds at the calculated times. Quite a tricky business, and one that could only be done by experts.
We were rather surprised to find Commander Doyle in the sparsely furnished control room. For his part, he seemed a little embarrassed to meet us. I wondered why he was interested in earning some extra money, since he never went down to Earth to spend it.
While we were waiting for something to happen, he explained how the station had operated, and why the development of cheap and simple atomic generators had made it obsolete. From time to time I glanced out of the window to see how the cameramen were getting on. We had a radio tuned in to their circuit, and the Director's instructions came over it in a never-ending stream. I'm sure he wished he were back in a studio down on Earth, and was cursing whoever had thought of this crazy idea of shooting a film in space.
The great concave mirror was a really impressive sight from here on its rim. A few of the facets were missing and I could see the stars shining through, but apart from this it was quite intact—and, of course, completely untarnished. I felt like a fly crawling on the edge of a metal saucer. Strangely enough, although the entire bowl of the mirror was being flooded with sunlight, it seemed quite dark from where we were stationed. All the light it was collecting was going to a point about two hundred feet out in space. There were still some supporting girders reaching out to the focus point, where the heating coils had been—but now they simply ended in nothingness.
The great moment arrived at last. We saw the air-lock of the Orson Welles swing open, and Tex Duncan emerged. He had learned to handle his space-suit reasonably well—though I'm sure I could have done better if I'd had as much chance of practising.
The dummy was pulled away, the Director started giving his instructions, and the cameras began to follow Tex. There was extremely little for him to do in this scene except to make a few simple manoeuvres with his suit. He was, I gathered, supposed to be adrift in space after the destruction of his ship, and was trying to locate any other survivors. Needless to say Miss Lorelli would be among them, but she hadn't yet appeared on the scene. Tex had the stage—if you could call it that—all to himself.
The cameras continued shooting until the Earth was half full and some of the continents had become recognizable. There was no point in continuing then, for this would give the game away. The action was supposed to be taking place off one of the planets of Alpha Centauri, and it would never do if the audiences recognized New Guinea, India or the Gulf of Mexico. That would destroy the illusion with a bang.
There was nothing to do but wait for thirty minutes until Earth became a crescent again, and its tell-tale geography was hidden by mist or cloud. We heard the Director tell the camera crews to stop shooting and everyone relaxed. Tex announced over the radio, 'I'm lighting a cigarette—I've always wanted to smoke in a space-suit.' Somebody behind me muttered: 'Showing off again—serve him right if it makes him space-sick!'
There were a few more instructions to the camera crews, and then we heard Tex again.
'Another twenty minutes, did you say? Darned if I'll hang round all that time. I'm going over to look at that glorified shaving mirror.'
'That means us,' remarked Tim Benton in deep disgust.
'O.K.,' replied the Director, who probably knew better than to argue with Tex. 'But mind you're back in time.'
I was watching through the observation port and saw the faint mist from Tex's jets as he started towards us.
'He's going pretty fast,' someone remarked. 'I hope he can stop in time—we don't want any more holes in our nice mirror.'
Then everything seemed to happen at once. I heard Commander Doyle shouting: 'Tell that fool to stop! Tell him to brake for all he's worth! He's heading for the focus—it'll burn him to a cinder!'
It was several seconds before I understood what he meant. Then I remembered that all the light and heat collected by our great mirror was being poured into that tiny volume of space towards which Tex was blissfully floating. It was equal to the heat, someone had told me, of ten thousand electric fires—and it was concentrated into a beam only a few feet wide. Yet there was absolutely nothing visible to the eye, no way in which one could sense the danger until it was too late. Beyond the focus the beam spread out again, soon to become harmless. But where the heating coils had been, in that gap between the girders, it could melt any metal in seconds. And Tex had aimed himself straight at the gap. If he reached it, he would last about as long as a moth in an oxyacetylene flame…
Six
HOSPITAL IN SPACE
Someone was shouting over the radio, trying to send a warning to Tex. Even if it reached him in time, I wondered if he'd have sense enough to act correctly. It was just as likely that he'd panic and start spinning out of control, without altering his course at all.
The Commander must have realized this, for suddenly he shouted:
'Hold tight, everybody! I'm going to tip the mirror!'
I grabbed the nearest hand-hold. Commander Doyle, with a single jerk of those massive forearms, launched himself across to the temporary control panel that had been installed near the observation window. He glanced up at the approaching figure and did some rapid mental calculations. Then his fingers flashed out and played across the switches of the rocket firing panel.
Three hundred feet away, on the far side of the great mirror, I saw the first jets of flame stabbing against the stars. A shudder ran through the framework all round us: it was never meant to be swung so quickly as this. Even so, it seemed to turn very slowly. Then I saw that the Sun was moving off to one side—we were no longer aimed directly towards it, and the invisible cone of fire converging from our mirror was now opening out harmlessly into space. How near it passed to Tex we never knew, but he said later that there was one brief, blinding explosion of light that swept past him and left him blinded for minutes.
The controlling rockets burned themselves out, and with a gasp of relief I let go my hand-hold. Although the acceleration had been slight—there was not enough power in these small units to produce any really violent effects—it was more than the mirror had ever been designed to withstand, and some of the reflecting surfaces had torn adrift and were slowly spinning in space. So, for that matter, was the whole power station: it would take a long period of careful juggling with the jets to iron out the spin that Commander Doyle had given it. Sun, Earth and stars were slowly turning all about us and I had to close my eyes before I could get any sense of orientation.
When I opened them again, the Commander was busily talking to the Orson Welles, explaining just what had happened and saying exactly what he thought of Mr Duncan. That was the end of shooting for the day—and it was quite a while before anyone saw Tex again.
Soon after this episode, our visitors packed their things and went farther out into space—much to our disappointment. The fact that we were in darkness for half the time, while passing through the shadow of the Earth, was too big a handicap for efficient filming. Apparently they had never thought of this, and when we heard of them again they were ten thousand miles out, in a slightly tilted orbit that kept them in perpetual sunlight.
We were sorry to see them go, because they had provided much entertainment—and we'd been anxious to see the famous ray-guns in action. To everyone's surprise, the entire unit eventually got back to Earth safely. But we're still waiting for the film to appear…
It was the end, too, of Norman's hero-worship. The photo of Tex vanished from his locker and was never seen again.
In my prowling a
round, I'd now visited almost every part of the Station that wasn't strictly 'Out of Bounds'. The forbidden territory included the power-plant—which was radioactive anyway, so that nobody could go into it—the Stores Section, guarded by a fierce quartermaster, and the Main Control Room. This was one place I'd badly wanted to go to: it was the 'brain' of the Station, from which radio contact was maintained with all the ships in this section of space, and, of course, with Earth itself. Until everyone knew that I could be trusted not to make a nuisance of myself, there was little chance of me being allowed in here. But I was determined to manage it some day, and at last I got the opportunity.
One of the tasks of the junior apprentices was to take coffee and light refreshments to the Duty Officer in the middle of his watch. This always occurred when the Station was crossing the Greenwich Meridian: since it took exactly a hundred minutes for us to make one trip around the Earth, everything was based on this interval and our clocks were adjusted to give a local 'hour' of this length. After a while one got used to being able to judge the time simply by glancing at the Earth and seeing which continent was beneath.
The coffee, like all drinks, was carried in closed containers (nicknamed 'milk bottles') and had to be drunk by sucking through a plastic tube—since of course it wouldn't pour in the absence of gravity. The refreshments were taken up to the Control Room in a light frame with little holes for the various containers, and their arrival was always much appreciated by the staff on duty—except when they were dealing with some emergency and were too busy for anything else.
It took a lot of persuading before I got Tim Benton to put me down for this job. I pointed out that it relieved the other boys for more important work—to which he retorted that it was one of the few jobs they liked doing. But at last he gave in.
I'd been carefully briefed, and just as the Station was passing over the Gulf of Guinea I stood outside the Control Room and tinkled my little bell. (There were a lot of quaint customs like this aboard the Station.) The Duty Officer shouted 'Come in!' I steered my tray through the door, and then handed out the food and drinks. The last milk bottle reached its customer just as we were passing over the African coast.
They must have known I was coming, because no one seemed in the least surprised to see me. As I had to stay and collect the empties, there was plenty of opportunity of looking round the Control Room. It was spotlessly clean and tidy, dome-shaped, and with a wide glass panel running right round it. Besides the Duty Officer and his assistant, there were several radio operators at their instruments, and other men working on equipment I couldn't recognize. Dials and TV screens were everywhere, lights were flashing on and off—yet the whole place was quite silent. The men sitting at their little desks were wearing headphones and throat microphones so that two people could talk without disturbing the others. I was fascinating to watch these experts working swiftly at their tasks—directing ships thousands of miles away, talking to the other space-stations or to the Moon, checking the myriads of instruments on which our lives depended.
The Duty Officer sat at a huge glass-topped desk on which glowed a complicated pattern of coloured lights. It showed the Earth, the orbits of the other Stations and the courses of all the ships in our part of space. From time to time he would say something quietly, his lips scarcely moving, and I knew that some order was winging its way out to an approaching ship—telling it to hold off a little longer, or to prepare for contact.
I dared not hang around once I'd finished my job, but the next day I had a second chance and, because things were rather slack, one of the assistants was kind enough to show me round. He let me overhear some of the radio conversations, and explained the workings of the great display panel. The thing that impressed me most of all, however, was the shining metal cylinder, covered with controls and winking lights, which occupied the centre of the room.
'This,' said my guide proudly, 'is HAVOC.'
'What?' I asked.
'Short for Automatic Voyage Orbit Computer.'
I thought this over for a moment.
'What does the H stand for?'
'Everyone asks that. It doesn't stand for anything.' He turned to the operator.
'What's she set up for now?'
The man gave an answer that consisted chiefly of mathematics, but I did catch the word 'Venus'.
'Right: let's suppose we wanted to leave for Venus in—oh, four hours from now.' His hands flicked across a keyboard like that of an overgrown typewriter.
I expected HAVOC to whirr and click, but all that happened was that a few lights changed colour. Then, after about ten seconds, a buzzer sounded twice and a piece of tape slid out of a narrow slot. It was covered with closely printed figures.
'There you are—everything you want to know. Direction of firing, elements of orbit, time of flight, when to start braking. All you need now is a spaceship!'
I wondered just how many hundreds of calculations the electronic brain had carried out in. those few seconds. Space-travel was certainly a complicated affair—so complicated that it sometimes depressed me. Then I remembered that these men didn't seem any cleverer than I was: they were highly trained, that was all. If one worked hard enough, one could master anything.
My time on the Inner Station was now drawing to an end—though not in the way anyone had expected. I had slipped into the uneventful routine of life: it had been explained to me that nothing exciting ever happened up here and if I'd wanted thrills I should have stayed back on Earth. That was a little disappointing, and I'd hoped that something out-of-the-ordinary would take place while I was here—though I couldn't imagine what. As it turned out, my wish was soon to be fulfilled.
But before I come on to that, I see I'll have to say something about the other space-stations, which I've neglected so far.
Ours, only five hundred miles up, was the nearest to the Earth, but there were others doing equally important jobs at much greater distances. The farther out they were, the longer, of course, they took to make a complete revolution. Our 'day' was only a hundred minutes, but the outermost stations of all took twenty-four hours to complete their orbit—with curious results which I'll mention later.
The purpose of the Inner Station, as I've explained, was to act as a refuelling, repair and transfer point for spaceships, both outgoing and incoming. For this job, it was necessary to be as close to the Earth as possible. Much lower than five hundred miles would not have been safe—the last faint traces of air would have robbed the station of its speed and eventually brought it crashing down.
The Meteorological Stations, on the other hand, had to be a fair distance out so that they could 'see' as much of the Earth as possible. There were two of them, six thousand miles up, circling the world every six and a half hours. Like our Inner Station, they moved over the Equator. This meant that though they could see much farther north and south than we could, the polar regions were still out of sight or badly distorted. Hence the existence of the Polar Met. Station, which—unlike all the others—had an orbit passing over the Poles. Together, the three stations could get a practically continuous picture of the weather over the whole planet.
A good deal of astronomical work was also carried on in these stations, and some very large telescopes had been constructed here, floating in free orbit where their weight wouldn't matter.
Beyond the Met. Stations, fifteen thousand miles up, circled the biology labs and the famous Space Hospital. Here was carried out a great deal of research into zero-gravity conditions, and many diseases which were incurable on Earth could be treated. For example, the heart no longer had to work so hard to pump blood round the body, and so could be rested in a manner impossible on Earth.
Finally, twenty-two thousand miles out, were the three great Relay Stations. They took exactly a day to make one revolution—and therefore they appeared to be fixed for ever over the same spots on the Earth. Linked to each other by tight radio beams, they provided TV coverage over the whole planet. And not only TV, but all the long-di
stance radio and phone services passed through the Relay Chain, the building of which, at the close of the twentieth century, had completely revolutionized world communications.
One station, serving the Americas, was in Latitude 90° West. A second, in 30° East, covered Europe and Africa. The third, in 150° East, served the entire Pacific area. There was no spot on Earth where you could not pick up one or other of the Stations. And once you had trained your receiving equipment in the right direction, there was never any need to move it again. The Sun, Moon and planets might rise and set—but the three Relay Stations never moved from their fixed positions in the sky.
The different orbits were connected by a shuttle-service of small rockets which made trips at infrequent intervals. On the whole, there was little traffic between the various Stations—most of their business was done directly with Earth. At first I had hoped to visit some of our neighbours, but a few inquiries had made it quite obvious that I hadn't a chance. I was due to return home inside a week, and there was no spare passenger space available during that time. Even if there had been, it was pointed out to me, there were many more useful loads that could be carried…
I was in the Morning Star watching Ronnie Jordan put the finishing touches to a beautiful model spaceship, when the radio called. It was Tim Benton, on duty back at the Station. He sounded very excited.
'Is that Ron? Anyone else there—what, only Roy? Well, never mind—listen to this, it's very important.'
'Go ahead,' replied Ron. We were both considerably surprised, for we'd never heard Tim really excited before.
The Space Trilogy Page 8