The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 03

by Anthology

  Boothia Peninsula was a barren spot far up in the Arctic Zone on Canada's frozen eastern coast. On it was constructed the world's major space port--a lonely outpost from which rockets departed for the equally lonely Moon bases. Burl had read about it and had looked forward to seeing it, but realized that the flight of the Magellan marked still another change in the fast-altering history of the conquest of space.

  The hour passed quickly. The little valley was cleared of visitors. The crew was called to take-off posts--Lockhart at the controls, Clyde and Oberfield at the charts, Detmar watching the energy output. The rest of the crew had been strapped into their bunks. By special request, Burl was observing in the control room, seated in a half-reclining position like the others, in a well-padded chair, strapped tight.

  Haines had remarked as he had supervised the strapping-in, "Nobody knows whether this is going to be necessary. But we're taking no chances." He'd gone to his quarters and done the same thing.

  Lockhart watched the registering of the dials in front of him, waiting for the load to build up. There was a muffled whine from overhead as the generators built up current. Detmar called out a cryptic number every few seconds and the colonel checked it. The two astronomers were idle, watching their viewers. They'd made their calculations long before.

  "Time," called out the colonel, pressing a button. A gong rang throughout the quarters. He moved a lever slowly.

  Burl waited for the surge of pressure he had read always occurred at take-off. But there was no such pressure. He lay back in his seat, gripping the arms. Gradually he became aware of a curious sensation. He seemed to be getting lightheaded, and to tingle with unexpected energy. He felt an impulse to giggle, and he kicked up his foot to find it surprisingly agile. About him the others were stirring in their seats as if caught by the same impulses.

  Now he felt loose against his bonds and he became a little dizzy. There was a pounding in his head as blood surged within him. His heart began to beat heavily.

  "We're losing weight," muttered Clyde from his chair, and Burl knew the ship was tensing to take off.

  The great generators were beginning to push against Earth's gravity and, as their force moved upward to match Earth's, the weight of everything in their sway decreased accordingly. Lockhart's first move was simply that--to reduce the pull of Earth to zero.

  In a few moments that point was accomplished. A state of weightlessness was obtained within the Magellan. Those watching outside from bunkers in the surrounding mountains saw the huge teardrop shiver and begin to rise slowly above its cradle of girders. It floated gently upward, moving slowly off as the force of Earth's centrifugal drive began to manifest itself against the metal bubble's great mass.

  Everyone on the crew had experienced zero gravity, either in the same tests Burl had undergone or on actual satellite flights, and thus far, no one was too uncomfortable. The entire structure of the ship quivered, and Burl realized that the inner sphere which housed their air space was hanging free on its gymbals.

  Lockhart rang a second gong, then turned a new control. The pitch of the generators, faintly audible to them, changed, took on a new keening. The ship seemed suddenly to jump as if something had grasped it. The feeling of weightlessness vanished momentarily, then there was a moment of dizziness and a sudden sensation of being upside down.

  For a shocking instant, Burl felt himself hanging head downward from a floor which had surprisingly turned into a ceiling. He opened his mouth to shout, for he thought he was about to plunge onto the hard metal of the ceiling which now hung below him so precipitously.

  Then there was a whirling sensation, a sideways twisting that swung him about against the straps. As it came, the room seemed to shift. The curved base of the control room, which had been so suddenly a floor, became in a moment a wall, lopsided and eerie. Then it shifted again, and, startlingly, Burl sagged back into his cushioned seat as the hemispherical room again resumed its normal aspect.

  Lockhart bent over the controls, cautiously moving a lever bit by bit. Clyde was bent over his viewer, calling out slight corrections.

  Now, at last, Burl felt the pressure he had expected. His weight grew steadily greater, back to normal, then increased. He found himself concentrating on his breathing, forcing his lungs up against the increasing weight of his ribs.

  "Hold up," his buzzing eardrums heard someone say--possibly Oberfield. "We don't need to accelerate more than one g. Take it easy."

  The weight lessened instantly. Then the pressure was off. Everything seemed normal. Lockhart sat back and began to unloosen his straps. The others followed suit.

  In one viewer, Burl glimpsed the black of outer space, and in another, the wide grayish-green bowl of the Earth spreading out below. In a third he saw the blazing disc of the Sun.

  "Did everything go all right?" he asked quietly of Clyde.

  The redhead looked up at him and smiled. "Better than we might have expected for a first flight," he said.

  "We're latching on to the Sun's grip now. We're falling toward the Sun; not just falling, but pulling ourselves faster toward it, so that we can keep up a normal gravity pressure. We're soon going to be going faster than any rocket has ever gone. The living-space sphere rotated itself as soon as we started that. That's what made everything seem upside down that time and why everything has come back to normal."

  Burl nodded. "But that means that in relation to Earth we are ourselves upside down right now!"

  "Of course," said Clyde. "But in space, everything is strictly relative. We are no longer on Earth. We are a separate body in space, falling through space toward the Sun."

  "Why the Sun?" asked Burl. "I thought our first objective was to be the planet Venus?"

  "It was too hard to get a fix on Venus from so near the Earth. Instead, we latched on to the Sun to pull us inward. When we are near to Venus' orbit, we'll reverse and pull in on Venus," was the astronomer's answer.

  "Isn't that rather risky?" asked Burl, remembering some of the quick briefings he had been given. "That's a departure from your plans."

  Lockhart looked up quickly. "Yes, you're right," he admitted. "But on a trip like this we've got to learn to improvise and do it fast. We made that decision at take-off."

  For an instant Burl felt a chill. He realized then what all the other men on the ship had known all along--that in this flight they were all amateurs, that everything they did was to be improvisation in one way or another, that they must always run the risk of a terrible mistake.

  Had latching on to the Sun been the first such error?

  Chapter 6.

  Sunward Ho!

  Gradually the ship settled down to routine. There was, as Burl discovered, nothing very much to do for most of the crew on such a space flight. The course was charted in advance, a pattern laid out that would carry the ship falling toward its objective--falling in a narrow curving orbit. A certain amount of time would pass during which the ship would traverse a specific section of this plotted route at a certain rate of speed or acceleration.

  Then, at a specified moment, the speed would be checked, the attraction of the Sun reversed, and the ship would attempt to brake itself and to halt its fall toward the great Sun. At such a time as its fall came to a stop, it should, if the calculations had been correct, be crossing the orbit of the planet Venus in the same place and at about the same moment that Venus itself would be. In that way, the ship would arrive at the planet.

  Now all these calculations had been made, and once made, set into motion on the control panels of the ship. The interval of many days between actually left little to do, except for making astronomical observations, checking on the performance of the stellarators, setting a watch against the damage caused by meteors and micro-meteors, and following the ordinary procedures of meals and sleep periods. The men set up an Earth-time schedule of twenty-four hours, divided the crew into three eight-hour shifts, and conducted themselves accordingly.

  Burl did not find time weighing on his h
ands. Despite the limited space available to the ten men, there was always something to learn, and something to think about.

  When Russell Clyde was off duty, he spent much time with Burl at the wide-screen viewers that showed the black depths of interplanetary space surrounding them. The Earth dwindled to a brilliant green disc, while ahead of them the narrow crescent of approaching Venus could be seen growing gradually. Ruddy Mars was sharp but tiny, a point of russet beyond the green of Earth. And the stars--never had Burl seen so many stars--a firmament ablaze with brilliant little points of light--the millions of suns of the galaxy and the galaxies beyond ours.

  On the other side, the side toward which they fell, the Sun was a blinding sphere of white light, its huge coronal flames wavering fearfully around its orb.

  Seen to one side, surprisingly close to the Sun, was a tiny half-moon. "That's Mercury," said Russ, pointing it out. "The smallest planet and the closest to the Sun. After we leave Venus, we'll have to visit it. We know there's a Sun-tap station there--and because it's so close to the Sun--its orbit ranges between twenty-eight million miles and under forty-four million miles--the station must be a most important and large one."

  Burl gazed at the point of light that was the innermost planet. "Those Sun-tap stations ... The more I think about it, the more I wonder what we're up against. It seems to me that it ought to be easy for the kind of people who can build such things to catch us and stop us. In fact, I wonder why they haven't already gone after us for stopping the one on Earth?"

  Russ whistled softly between his teeth. "We've some ideas about that. The military boys worked on it. You know you can figure out a lot of things from just a few bits of evidence. We have such evidence from what happened to you on Earth. You ought to speak to Haines about it."

  Burl turned away from the viewer. "Let's find him now. I don't think he's very busy. He said something about catching up on his reading this period."

  Russ nodded, and the two of them got up from their seat. With a wave to Oberfield and Caton on duty at the controls, the two climbed down the ladder that led into the middle part of the living space. They looked into Haines's quarters but he wasn't there. So they went down the next hatchway into the lower section.

  Haines and Ferrati were sitting at a table in the cooking quarters, drinking coffee. The two men, both heavy and muscular, used to the open spaces and the feel of the winds, were taking the enforced confinement in the cramped and artificially oxygenated space of the ship with ill ease. For them, it was like a stretch in jail.

  They greeted the two younger men jovially and invited them to a seat. While Russ poured a cup of coffee for himself, Burl opened the subject of how much the expedition had worked out about the enemy.

  Haines's pale blue eyes gleamed. "You can know an awful lot about an enemy if you know what he didn't do as well as what he did do. If you figure out what you yourself should have done under the same circumstances, and know he didn't do, why, that gives you some valuable hints as to his deficiencies. As we see it, we've got a fighting chance of spoiling his game. Certainly of spoiling it long enough to allow Earth several more years to get a fleet of ships like this into operation and give him plenty of trouble."

  Suddenly Burl felt more cheerful. At the back of his mind there had been a carefully concealed point of cold terror--he remembered the clean efficiency of the Sun-tap station, the evidence of a science far beyond that of Earth. He pressed the point. "Just what do we really know?"

  Haines leaned back and rubbed his hands together. "There were several things that gave their weaknesses away. When we put it all together, we decided that the enemy represents some sort of limited advanced force or scouting group of a civilization still too far away to count in the immediate future. We decided that the enemy isn't too aware of our present abilities--that his intelligence service is poor as far as modern Earth is concerned. We figure he won't be able to act with any speed to repair the damages we make."

  "Tell them how we worked that out," said Ferrati, who had begun to grow again the short black beard that Burl remembered he had worn on his famous expeditions.

  "Well," said Haines, drawing the word out to build up suspense, "did you know that the station in the Andes, the one you cracked open, was built at least thirty years ago? And never put into operation in all that time?"

  Burl was surprised. "Why ... I hadn't thought of it--but it could have been. That valley was so isolated and deserted, probably nobody would ever have spotted it.

  "Right," Haines added, "and our investigation team studied the remains, the foundations, the layout, and we're sure it's been there at least three decades. That's one clue.

  "The second clue was the relative flimsiness of the walls. The builders hadn't expected us to be able to blow them up. They were some sort of quick construction--a plastic, strong, but not able to hold up against blasting powder, let alone real heavy bombs or A-bombs.

  "Now why was that? And the third clue, why didn't they have a repair system available, or at least some sort of automatic antiaircraft defense?"

  Burl looked at Ferrati. The latter was watching him shrewdly to see if he could figure it out.

  "The builders didn't expect an air attack," said Burl slowly, "because of the air disturbances. They did not know we would have a Moon base that could spot their location. Hence they figured that our civilization would remain as it was thirty years ago. We wouldn't have been able to spot the location at that time, because it required outer-space observation. It might have taken us several years of tramping around to locate it."

  "And the lack of a strong permanent construction? After all, a concrete and steel-enforced embankment, which any military force on Earth could have put there, would have balked your dynamite attack," probed Haines.

  "That means they didn't have the time or the means to make such a construction. They must have had a single ship with the kind of equipment that could lay out a quick base in the shortest time!" said Burl.

  "Right!" snapped Haines. "The Sun-tap must have been built by a relatively small team, which probably came in a single explorer ship. The ship was equipped with automatic factory machinery that could turn out an adequate base for an uninhabited planet, an airless moon, and so on--but they didn't have the stuff for a fortified base--and they didn't have the manpower to build it."

  "Another indication of that is the thirty-year delay," added Ferrati. "Obviously, they arrived in this solar system from somewhere outside it. We figure that way because otherwise they would have been prepared to do the job on all the planets in the same trip and start operations at once. They must have made some observations of this solar system from a point in space at least as far away as another star. That means not less than four and a half light-years away--Proxima Centauri being the nearest star after our Sun, and four and a half light-years from us. Their observations were imperfect. They found more planets and problems than they had supposed. So they had to make a second trip to get enough supplies to finish their Sun-tap base constructions. It took them thirty years between the first stations and the ones that completed the job.

  "And that, too, suggests that only one ship was originally involved here. Of course, maybe they came back with more the second time, but it still looks as if the main force hasn't arrived. And won't, until after the Sun novas."

  "Then that means," said Burl quickly, "that we are still dealing with just a small and isolated group?"

  "Maybe," said Haines. "Just what constitutes a small group may be hard to say. I rather think they'd have brought the engineers and at least an advance working party of settlers with them the second trip in. But they are still short of available ships--they're still not aware of what we may be going to do."

  "Why is that?" asked Burl.

  Haines looked thoughtful. "This is conjecture. But if they planted any spies among our Earth people, there's been no contact, because otherwise they'd have known we could track and crack their base as soon as it started. This means that they still
haven't had scouting ships to spare for checking up on what they did the first time. No checkup means no spare personnel to do the checking. They just assumed that we hadn't caught on, and started operations by remote control as they had originally planned."

  "And that also may mean that these people are hard up," said Ferrati. "Wherever they came from, their civilization has been great, but it's gone to seed. They plan to seize another solar system, start over again, and they haven't the manpower to do an adequate job--and they haven't the abundance of material needed to set up simple check and guard stations, such as any major Earth nation would have the sense to do."

  "Why, that means we've got a fighting chance to lick 'em," said Burl joyfully. "I kept thinking we'd run into more than we could cope with."

  "We've got a fighting chance, all right," said Haines. "We may be able to rip up their Sun-tap layouts, but what if we meet the main explorer ship itself? Anybody who can cross interstellar space and warp the power of the Sun, can probably outshoot, outrun, and outfight us. Let's hope we don't meet them until we've done our work."

  On this note the little discussion broke up as the gong rang for the next watch.

  It made sense to Burl. If the Magellan could just operate fast enough, keep on the jump, they'd save the day. But--and he realized that nobody had mentioned it aloud--it also followed that the enemy--however small its group--was still in the solar system somewhere and would certainly be starting to take action very soon now.

  The time came when the ship was to start slowing, to prepare itself for the meeting with Venus. Burl saw the hour and minute approach and watched Lockhart take the controls and set the new readings. The steady hum of the generators--a vibration that had become a constant feature of the ship--altered, and for everyone it was a relief. Their minds had become attuned to the steady pitch. One didn't realize how annoying a nuisance it was until it stopped. As the stellar generators let down on the drag on the Sun, the gravity within the ship lessened. In a few moments there was a condition of zero, and those who had forgotten to strap themselves down found that they were floating about in the air, most of them giddy.