Marooned on Mars

by Lester Del Rey

  Steele grinned at him. “Chuck, this is just like radar work. You can follow specs and get something that does well enough most of the time. But I saw the men who installed these panels. In the shop, they’d tested right on the button. Here, they drifted off. The installation took a long time—because they had to go over everything and rework it. Those panels interact; one of them throws another just a little off.”

  Chuck groaned. But the engineer was right When he tested the whole assembly on his meters, he found that it would take days more to regulate its action to the correct degree of accuracy.

  Next time, on later panels, he wouldn’t worry so much about exact behavior of the individual parts. He’d have to take care of that after the assembly was fixed, anyway.

  More long days went by on the next of the three panels that had been injured; this was only partially hurt. The third one, which did the final job of taking the forces of all seven rocket tubes, calculating their differences, deciding how much that would tilt the ship, and making automatic corrections, would be the real headache.

  They were still working on the second panel, making the final adjustments, when Dick Steele came up to announce that the gyroscopes were re-installed. Chuck took time off to join the others in looking over the repair.

  It looked as good as the original. Dick had managed to melt down the broken sapphire bearing and re-shape it. Some of the supports were crudely welded, but that would not interfere with the operation. “How’ll it operate?” Vance asked. “Better than I hoped. I’ve had to handwind one of the motors, and rebalance it, but it should be good for longer than we’ll need it, coming and going. The only trouble is that you’ll have to run them a little more gently—they can’t start, stop, and reverse as smoothly. It won’t matter—unless you’re having trouble holding the ship steady when they should be compensating.”

  Chuck frowned. He was tired, and the strain of the responsibility on his shoulders was beginning to tell on him. “Does that mean I’ve got to do perfect work on the control panels?”

  “Just about,” Steele agreed. “If anything, you’ll have to do better than the men who installed the stuff in the first place.”

  Chuck looked at Lew, who shrugged.

  “I’ll do the best I can,” he promised. “But if I’ve got to make that good a job of it, you’ll have to turn off the master panel and cut off the control motors. I’ve got to find how much they interact and how they throw things off so that I’ll know how much to correct.”

  Rothman started to protest, the lines of worry deepening on his face. But Steele cut him off. “The boy’s right,” he told Vance. “It’s the only way I can see. Good sound engineering practice.”

  “But if we run into more meteorites…” Rothman pointed out. “We need some control.”

  The pilot mulled it over while they moved back to the living quarters. Then he shrugged. “Okay, Chuck, I guess Vance and I will have to give in. If you have to do it, you have to do it. Go ahead.”

  The captain agreed. Power was cut from the panel after Chuck and Lew had worked out a system that would take the smallest amount of time. The control room was already a mess of tools and wires, but Vance and Rothman filed in, somber about having the ship lifeless for even an hour. The pilot dropped into the radar seat and began working it unhappily, while Vance sat watching. He seemed unconcerned, and made no protest as the switches went down. He had inserted a small microphone under his helmet seals, and was relaying information on their progress down to the rest of the nervous crew. Chuck could imagine that his version of it was honest, but that it sounded much more reassuring than the captain really felt.

  They were half-finished with their tests when the helmet radio snapped with Rothman’s voice. “Pips on the radar. Meteorites!”

  “How much time?” Vance asked.

  “A few minutes.”

  It was too little; the panel could not be put. back into operation in less than half an hour. Chuck moved up to the radar controls, and readjusted them to give more precise information.

  “I think we’ll miss them all,” he decided, but he couldn’t feel certain of it. Scanning such tiny particles at any distance beyond a few miles—a fraction of a second away—was difficult at best.

  Vance looked, and went back to his seat, seeming unconcerned. “It must be the front of the swarm the observatory first spotted—they had to guess at its size from the few big ones they could photograph. I’ve been expecting them, but I thought they’d be farther on. Well, we’ll soon know.”

  Chuck again tried to make a compensation for the spin of the ship that would give finer accuracy, but he could do little to improve his first setting. Lew watched for a second, and then turned back to testing the panels they were working on. Chuck offered to help, but Vance motioned him back. “I know enough for this. Chuck. Stick to the screens. At least, you can tell us in time to say a short prayer before we get it, maybe.”

  The pips on the screen were brighter now. Rothman was busily figuring. The worry was back on his face, but his hands were steady in the gloves he wore—which was more than Chuck could say for his own. He was honestly afraid, and didn’t care who knew it. Rothman and Vance seemed incapable of feeling fear.

  “Well miss them, I think,” the pilot announced. “It looks as if well just clear them. Another minute will tell”

  Something sang against the hull of the ship as he finished. Chuck puzzled over that; no sound could carry without air. Then he realized the crew below must have tuned in their suit-radios; he was hearing the sounds they heard.

  It was like the splintering of ice in a metal bucket. Vance grunted. ‘Turn it up. Ginger,” he ordered. An intake of surprised breath answered, and the sound increased in volume.

  “Just dust—too small to pierce the hull, I guess,” Vance

  decided.

  It disappeared then. They listened tensely for it, but there was no return. It might have been the microscopic fragments of some meteorite which had collided with something and was still following the old orbit. But whatever it was, it was gone.

  The pips on the screen brightened still more, but they were out of the center now. Then they moved away and left no trail. Rothman leaned back, sighing. “They passed behind us. If we don’t find more of them, we’re okay. What’s the range on this screen. Chuck? About twenty-five hundred miles?”

  It was close enough, and Chuck nodded. “Unless you hit a big one with the beam.”

  “A couple of minutes of our flight I’ll hold this, Chuck. Go on back to your work. If I see a pip, I’ll yell.”

  Chuck and Lew worked on, measuring and comparing with the notes on the specifications. It was slow, tedious work. They were on the last few minutes of it when a surprised grunt came from Rothman.

  “What’s up, Nat?” Vance asked quietly.

  “I don’t know—I’m getting something like television snow on this thing. I don’t know whether I’m seeing meteorites or not.”

  Chuck looked down at the soldering gun Lew was using, and grinned. He hit it with his foot and saw the switch snap back from where it had stuck. ‘That cure it?”

  Rothman grinned back suddenly, and nodded. “Down with theory. Miles. Give me a kid whose father brought him up on engineering. No meteorites.”

  “And no more reason to keep this off,” Lew reported. “We’re finished.”

  With a relieved sigh, Vance threw the switches back to the fully on position. Now, if they had to, the ship could try dodging the impact of a meteorite again.

  Rothman picked up the mass of readings they had, as Chuck stared at them. He reached for his calculator, and motioned the two boys to follow him down to the crew quarters, where they could work more comfortably. This was theoretical material, and here Lew and Rothman together could do more in a few minutes than Chuck would have been able to accomplish in hours.

  Chuck realized that the meteorite collision had done some good. They were all beginning to work together as a team, each doing what he c
ould do best without thinking about it; and each now knew what he should leave to someone else.

  That was something no theoretical preparation could give them. He began to feel more optimistic than he had for weeks. Somehow, this was a crew that would get itself out of almost any trouble.

  He listened to Rothman and Lew working over the books on theory and the results they had obtained. Then he went to his hammock to sleep. It would have seemed like shirking to him before he stowed away; now he knew that it was just good sense to get ready for the work that must come while others who could do this work better carried on.

  As he was falling asleep, he suddenly realized that his father had spent years trying to teach him the lesson be had learned here so quickly. He smiled a little—and then scowled to himself in the darkness. It was a fine time to get homesick!

  CHAPTER 7

  Mars Ahead

  Traveling from one planet to another seems like a simple thing, if the ship has power enough to make the trip. In the old days, most people had figured out that all one had to know was where Mars would be, and then head directly for it with all rockets firing. After all, the orbits of the planets were well enough known, and it wouldn’t be hard to aim the ship.

  Actually, it took a lot of high-powered mathematics to make a good approximation of the course needed. The direct trip could be made, but it would take an incredible amount of force. And even with atomic energy, no rocket would have any excess power.

  Goddard figured out the best orbits early in the twentieth century, when the only rockets in existence were mere toys. He discovered that the most economical orbit could be found by drawing the orbit of Earth, 93,000,000 miles from the. Sun, and the orbit of Mars, which was 128,000,00 miles from the Sun at its closest point; then, if another cycle is drawn which Just touches both orbits, it will be the ideal orbit for a rocket flight between the two planets.

  Chuck stood in the control room of the Eros, resting his hands and studying the chart of their flight with all its markings for days and speeds. Lew was doubled into the ruined control panel, pulling out the mass of bent and fused parts, but the chart was the only thing of any interest to Chuck in the place.

  “Stop muttering,” Lew told him. “Either read the stuff aloud, or keep quiet. You’re reminding me of how much I’ve forgotten of the schooling I had whenever you mumble a figure and I can’t remember it”

  Chuck grinned, and began trying to make sense of it over the radio.

  It wasn’t a simple path. It left Earth on one side of the Sun and went all the way around to the other side before it met the orbit of Mars. Even at the speeds they were traveling, it would take 237 days, from start to finish.

  Even then, it was possible only when Earth and Mars were in exactly the right place—which happened over periods that were years apart.

  Earth traveled around the Sun at more than eighteen miles a second, and the ship’s acceleration had boosted its-speed to better than twenty-five miles a second. Now they were fighting against the pull of the Sun, which reached out, trying to drag them inward, forcing them to lose speed until they would arrive at Mars’ orbit with only fifteen miles a second left; but that was as it should be, since Mars only traveled in its orbit at that speed. “Simple enough, Lew?”

  “If you discount the pull of Mars,” Vance commented, as he entered the control room through the lock they had installed. “You make it sound as if we simply drift down and touch without any more work. Don’t forget that we’ll start falling for Mars as soon as we come near, and we’ll have to land with the rockets, unless we want to ‘be smashed flat or burned up in her atmosphere. That’s why you’d better get those controls fixed.”

  Chuck nodded, and took his turn with the wires as Lew came out for a rest. Being a pilot on interplanetary ships began to sound like a worse dose of mathematics than being an engineer.

  They were already more than half the way. Now they would begin heading closer and closer to Mars. Already the Sun, as seen through the filters, had shrunk enough to be noticeably smaller.

  He pulled a fused box out of the ruins and studied it carefully, comparing it to the diagrams. In the drawings, it was shown as a dotted box around two bars that didn’t quite touch—the symbol for a shielded condenser. But this was obviously a lot more complicated than that.

  Chuck picked up the small welding torch and began stripping off the twisted, half-melted shielding. Inside was the wreck of a maze of wires, resistors, condensers, and something that might have been crystal rectifiers once. He motioned to Lew. “Make anything of this?”

  “Not much. I’ve been studying that ‘condenser,’ and wondering how it worked. Doesn’t seem to make sense. Give me. those specs.”

  They went over them together, trying to figure it out. Beside the box was a number, as there was beside each part. Lew went back for a book of parts, trying to find it. It wasn’t mentioned!

  “Nice,” he said bitterly. “They must have put a new circuit in just before the specs were printed—so some engineer drew that in, expecting to key it later. And it got passed over. What is it—some pulsing circuit do you think?”

  “Must be. Looks as if it takes the pulses from the motors and chop the tops off them—but it must do more than that.”

  “Put it aside,” Chuck suggested. “We can go over it later. You’re strong on theory—you’ll have to figure what went into it, unless we have a part among the spares that isn’t listed in the book.”

  Vance picked the box up and turned it over. “How important is this?”

  Lew shrugged. “I don’t know, but I suspect it’s the main trick in getting smooth controls. We’re playing this by feel, more or less; control is mostly electronic, but it has some twists I don’t know about.”

  Vance put in a call for Steele, but the engineer shook his head as he looked at the box. He picked up the diagrams and began studying them.

  There was a cloud on his usually handsome face as he returned the box and drawings. “It’s important—I can tell that much. But it’s some new development I don’t know a thing about. Shall I put the others to work taking inventory?”

  Vance nodded tersely, and Steele went out, still scowling. Inventory of stocks went on while Lew and Chuck dug farther into the control panel, and began putting it back together, leaving space for the box. Eventually the last piece had been inspected. There was no spare on board.

  The time was getting short. They were beginning to draw near to Mars. The planet now ahead of them was just visible on the radar screen, when it was set for the longest range—where it took a planetary mass to affect it.

  Chuck worked on testing the panel, while Lew, Rothman, and Steele pored over the diagrams, trying to figure out exactly what the theory behind it was. They had already put in calls to Earth, but the specifications there were obviously different since they failed to show the box at all; the mix-up on the diagrams had obviously been a complete one. Apparently some engineer had come up with a new development, wired it into the circuit, and marked it hastily into the drawings. He’d failed to report his changes, and when the panel passed its tests, it had been installed without any record that it was nonstandard.

  Earth was trying to track down the singularly modest inventor. They reported finally that they had found who it was—but the man had been killed in an auto accident the day he finished the panel!

  It accounted for the trouble with the drawings, but it didn’t help any. Chuck could only suggest that they try to find his working notes and see if they contained any information.

  Another week passed before the answer came. The notes had been found and decoded. They were incomplete, and the engineers there had no model to work from, but the general theories had been discovered. They read them off to the Eros, spelling each word in triplicate to make sure nothing was lost.

  More days went by while Lew, Chuck and Steele pored over the information and the ruined box, redeveloping the dead engineer’s theories, and trying to see how to apply them.<
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  Finally they began work on the actual construction, and none of them looked happy. Chuck knew that half of their work was founded on guesses, but he was too exhausted to worry about it. He took the parts that he needed and began assembling them.

  “It all depends—” he answered Vance’s questions. ‘There’s a tricky coil here, and we can only hope we’ve figured out how it was wired from what we found of the original. And we don’t know the size of the two condensers. We’re just making the best guesses we can. If it works at all, we may be able to tune it up properly, and we may not. With enough time, I suppose we could get it working as well as the original—maybe better.”

  Vance nodded and left them alone. When he came back, the box was installed, and they were frantically adjusting things in it, trying to get a response from it. The needles on their test equipment stood unmoving at zero.

  Chuck lay awake a long time that night. He was sure that the box should work. Of course, he was a little weaker on theory than Lew—but he’d been boning up from the technical books in the microfilm library. He was beginning to feel like a machine, with no human emotions left.

  It had seemed romantic, back on the Moon, to get into a ship and sail off to Mars,-the first human beings to visit another planet. He’d even dreamed about finding life there—maybe even intelligent life. Before he ever thought he had a chance to go on the expedition, he’d become involved with the puzzle of how men could communicate with other intelligent races, and had spent the best part of a summer vacation in studying all that had been written on it.

  But that seemed flat now. His muscles ached from straining over the delicate workmanship. His back was weary with tension”, and his mind wanted to go around in a continual circle. Sometimes he felt older than any man on the ship—and then he realized that the others were feeling the same.

  When he did fall asleep, it was only for an hour. Then some bit of a dream woke him up. Something about his father…