“How so?” he demanded.
“Well, now take old X-80, waiting there for us now,” Roberts said. X-80 was the official name of the space-fringing ship they were about to test. “Although we’ve been told everything about her, and studied all the dope on how to handle her, until we get off the ground, we won’t really have ever actually known the dame. See what I mean?”
“I’m afraid you’re an incurable romanticist, Phil,” Hawkins told him. “But don’t forget the pickle we’ll find ourselves in if one of these flying blind dates ever lets us down.”
“What do you really think about this X-80 baby, Jim?”
Hawkins shrugged. “Looks like a dream ship on paper, Phil,” he answered. “And the loving care and attention the ship has had from our construction experts has resulted in a beautiful looking job. But you know as well as I do that there’s only one answer to the question about the ship’s ability to stand the gaff it was designed for.”
“Yeah,” Roberts answered soberly. “We’re that answer.”
Hawkins clapped him on the back. “Hey there, chum. Don’t grow sober. That’s my job, and if you’re sober, too, who’d ever cheer me up?” Phil Roberts grinned up at Hawkins. His sudden chuckle was infectious; and by the time the pair of test men had rounded the hangars they were both laughing hilariously, as if over some secret joke. But by the time they’d reached the crowd around the long, sleek, silver, winged bullet some fifty yards in front of the central hangar on the flying field, they appeared to be two brisk, efficient, unsmiling young men.
CHAPTER II
Out of Control
COLONEL MOLLISON had introduced the two young test flyers to the assembled civilian and military dignitaries, and they were now engaged in a last minute technical discussion with the test ship’s inventor, Baldwin.
“You’ll notice,” Baldwin was saying to Roberts and Hawkins, but for the hearing of the others as well, “that there’s not a great deal of difference between this ship and the very latest strata pursuit interceptors being turned out by the thousands every month. The shell of the X-80 has been additionally streamlined for the work expected of it, but a regular interceptor pursuit with strata capabilities for flight could be converted into a workable space fringe ship inside of an hour, if necessary, merely by replacing some parts and adding the basic changes incorporated into this test craft.”
The inventor paused and looked around the circle. A faint, wry grin came to his lips, and behind that grin was grim hope. “If this test is successful,” he added.
Colonel Mollison addressed one of the higher ranking military inspectors.
“You see, sir. That’s what we’re emphasizing. If this test is completed successfully, we won’t have to wait to turn numerous factories into production of similar ships. We’ll be able to produce more crude equivalents of the X-80 merely through revamping our regular strata interceptor ships. Think of the time that will save until we can get the actual models coming off the assembly lines!”
The military inspector nodded gravely.
“Excellent foresight, gentlemen,” he said. “And I can only join with the rest of you in hoping as fervently for the success of this test.”
Colonel Mollison turned to Jim Hawkins and Phil Roberts.
“Lieutenant Hawkins, Sergeant Roberts, I wish you both the very best of luck. And I feel that if the X-80 will conquer the space fringe tests at all, it most certainly will with you two men in her cabin. Happy landings, gentlemen.”
Hawkins and Roberts snapped their salutes crisply in answer.
Colonel Mollison extended his hand, first to Jim Hawkins, then to Roberts, giving them each a firm grip of farewell that said much more than words.
Hawkins was the first to the compartment door in the rear of the sleek silver bullet, but Roberts was right on his heels. Hawkins opened the door and stepped back solemnly to let his chubby companion enter ahead of him.
“Okay, fat boy,” he muttered tauntingly, “squeeze in.”
Phil Roberts’ expression remained as appropriately solemn as that of his companion. But under his breath he muttered an answer.
“Okay, Alfonse, pearls before swine, if you like.”
They slammed the hermetically tight compartment door behind them and marched up the narrow aisle to the control board and pilot section in the nose of the ship before either of the two said anything more.
Then it was Hawkins who spoke. He extended a gloved hand to his buddy as he did so, and his mouth was no longer laughing.
“Here’s wishing us a lot of luck, pal.” Phil Roberts took his friend’s hand gravely. But there was no mistaking the twinkle in his eyes.
“Here I’ve been testing ships with you for over four hundred flights,” Roberts said, “and all of a sudden, on the toughest we’ve ever faced, you have to give me the jitters by admitting you’ve gotten by on luck all along until now!”
“Why, you—” Lieutenant Jim Hawkins began. And then he grinned. “Be nice, or I’ll make you ride in the tail of this ship.”
Phil Roberts’ reply was cut off by the thunderous Jacket which started that instant in answer to his buddy’s swift opening of the take-off throttles.
FOR an instant the great silver bullet seemed to shake from the very thunder of the racket, and then, with a shivering shudder, the craft shot forward from its blocks, and beneath them the long white field runway fell behind in a white streak.
The nose of the ship, under Jim’s expert guidance, was tilting skyward so smoothly that the blue horizon seemed to fade into the green of the earth far below them in less than a few minutes.
Now the roar of the powerful combustion motors, which would carry them into the strata and as far as the first space fringes, had settled down to a steady, throbbing snarl. There was nothing but blue above and around them, now, the fleecy lower cloud formations having fallen away with the additional acceleration Jim was feeding expertly into the ship’s motors.
Jim jabbed his finger at the instrument panel altimeter and grinned happily at his companion.
Glancing down, Phil Roberts’ eyes bulged, and he turned an amazed expression to his buddy. His mouth opened and closed rapidly, his words being quite lost under the steady thrumming of their motors.
Jim grinned, and pointed to the inter-communications phones which each of them wore strapped to their chests. After a moment, they had both donned the headphones and chin cups for speaking.
“Think you could outshout all that horsepower?” Hawkins grinned.
Roberts flushed. “I forgot. But what I was saying, before it occurred to me that you couldn’t hear, concerned that altimeter. Is it telling the truth?”
“Sure thing. Truth and nothing but the truth, pal,” Hawkins answered.
“But all this height, in so darned little climbing time—” Roberts began in awed amazement.
“I told you this baby was a climber from the minute those throttles opened,” his companion broke in.
Roberts shook his head, as if still unwilling to believe this incredible phenomenon.
“Yeah, but I thought you were kidding.”
Hawkins’ expression became one of mock pain. He sighed.
“Sergeant Roberts, how often do I have to tell you that you will never live to see the day when I will tell an untruth. I, sir, have never said or done anything to mislead you.”
Phil Roberts snorted. “Yah! How about that double date you fixed for me in Scranton?”
Jim Hawkins looked blandly innocent.
“Scranton? Scranton? Were we ever in Scranton?”
“You know darned well we were. On our last furlough. And it was there that you fixed up that double date. A girl for each of us, remember?”
Jim Hawkins suddenly beamed recollection.
“Ahhh, yes,” he murmured. Scranton. That’s right. I did arrange tor you to have a date. I believe I was feeling sorry for you, then, and made all the arrangements.”
“All the arrangements!” Phil Roberts grunte
d bitterly. “Pah! You made all the arrangements, all right. You told me the girl you’d gotten as my date was a raving beauty. You said she looked like Ida Lupino.”
JIM HAWKINS, trying not to grin, nodded soberly.
“That’s right. And I wasn’t lying. I said there was a certain resemblance between Ida Lupino and the date I’d arranged for you.”
“Between my date and the wicked witch of Oz!” Roberts snorted. “But not between my date and Ida Lupino!”
“If you’ll remember,” Hawkins said, “all I told you was that there was a resemblance. I didn’t say your date looked exactly like Ida Lupino, I just said sort of like. If you leaped to the wrong conclusions and got too optimistic, it wasn’t any fault of mine.”
“The only resemblance between the two was that my date was a gal, and so is Ida Lupino,” Roberts said indignantly.
“Not at all,” Hawkins corrected him. “It goes farther. Your date had the same color hair as Ida Lupino. She was about the same height. She had two eyes and, to the best of my knowledge, all of her teeth. She had a nose, and ears, and—”
“Bah!” Roberts cut him off disgustedly. “If that’s your idea of a resemblance, you’ve certainly—”
It was Jim Hawkins who cut in this time. His voice sharp, commanding. “Time for first radio check, Sergeant. Snap to it. Give them the instrument readings on each of our check dials. You’ll just have time to jot them down and send them through at the checktime they set.”
“Right!” Roberts snapped. He brought forth his check tabs and began a swift recording of the test instruments on the panels. There was silence for perhaps two minutes during this examination. Then, as his companion, straightened up from his inspection of the test gauges, Hawkins added: “Give ’em in reading sequence. And add that we’re still climbing clean. No trouble as yet. Insulators slipping off ice formations like a hot knife through butter.”
“Right!” Roberts saluted, and clambered from his seat beside Hawkins. He went back into the narrow cabin aisle, turned off to slide in behind his radio instruments, compactly boxed into a side compartment.
Hawkins, at the controls of the ship, heard his companion’s voice coming through a moment later.
“X-80, calling in. X-80, calling experimental field reception. Coming in with check data, first sequence.”
There was a minute of silence, broken only by occasional static splutters, then the voice from the experimental field’s radio post flooded in. Hawkins smiled in satisfaction and snapped off his receiving apparatus . . .
IT WAS several hours later when Phil Roberts, returning to the pilots’ compartment to slide into the seat beside his buddy, after having made his third check report to the field station, noticed that Hawkins’ expression was now noticeably strained.
“Ease up a little, Jim,” Roberts said quietly.
Hawkins turned, smiling briefly. “Sure, chum. We’re just beginning to hit the first atmospheric conditions which will eventually tell the tale. From now on in, the X-80 is going to hit hurdle after hurdle. I always get a little uneasy just before the real storms.”
Roberts nodded. “If there aren’t butterflies in my stomach, then I’m crazy,” he admitted. “Lord, Jim, I know how you feel. But it’s been smooth going so far.”
“Right,” Hawkins said briefly. “So far.”
“How soon will it be before we begin relying on inventor Baldwin’s brainchild solely?” Roberts asked.
Jim Hawkins glanced briefly at the altitude gauges, then at the chronometer panel.
“Not long, pal,” he declared. “In just a little while Baldwin’s rocket propulsion tubes will be in the thick of their toughest test.”
Roberts fell silent, sighing and settling back in his seat. Jim Hawkins, however, didn’t relax a muscle. The strain returned to his lean young features, and he squinted worriedly as if trying to pierce the heavy vapors of the atmospheric fog blankets everywhere around the heaven-hurtling craft.
He turned his attention frowningly to the insulator gauges. They were flickering just a trifle now, the first uncertainty yet shown on their surface. That meant ice formations were taking hold for the first time—even though but minutely.
Roberts noticed his companion’s glance.
“Definitely skating weather outside, eh?” he observed quietly.
Hawkins nodded. “Looks like. We’d better stop breathing this ready-made ozone inside the cabin, and take to the gulp tanks for a spell.”
Roberts nodded, and the two adjusted their oxygen breathing masks, tubing them to the prepared tanks below the instrument panels.
Now communication between the two was limited to gestures, due to the necessity for conserving oxygen and energy. An hour passed, followed by another. And at last Jim Hawkins turned to his companion and raised his hand in a brief signal.
With a gesture that was lightning swift and excellently timed, the young lieutenant leaned forward, pushing hard on the motor throttle with his right hand, and simultaneously opening wide the rocket throttle with the other.
FOR an instant, as the thrumming motor was cut off in a coughing choke, the nose of the climbing silver bullet seemed to lose speed. And then, in the next fraction of a second, the full fury of the rocket propulsion tubes blasted thunderously to life and the acceleration of the ship climbed to double its previous rate.
Hawkins turned from the instrument control panel to Roberts. The other had put both hands over his masked face in a gesture which was obviously significant in view of the fact that he’d crossed fingers on each hand.
Now Hawkins thumped his pal on the back. Roberts took his hands away from his masked face and uncrossed his fingers. Hawkins touched his own mask, to indicate a temporary respite from the gulp tanks. Gratefully, Roberts followed his buddy’s lead and removed his oxygen mask.
The expression on his companion’s face, suddenly revealed by the removal of the mask, was enough to send Jim Hawkins into a brief spasm of laughter.
Roberts’ face had been sheet white, and was only now regaining color.
“Look who was bucking up my morale, not so long ago!” Hawkins laughed.
Phil Roberts’ cheeks were a ruddy pink. He grinned, abashed.
“I don’t mind admitting guilty to that charge, chum,” he confessed. “You at least had something to occupy your hands and your mind when we made that perilous power switch. All I was able to do was sit and watch!”
Jim Hawkins’ laughter had subsided. But he still grinned.
“Well, anyway, Sergeant, we made it. Now you can go on living, if you like. Look at our acceleration gauges, brother, if you want to see speed recorded. We’re hitting toward the space fringes, and no denying it now. Radio another check and all new info to the field station. This is something to send back and cackle over!”
Minutes later, now using wireless key, Phil Roberts was pounding out the last check readings to the experimental field’s station, and Jim Hawkins, at the controls of the hurtling silver bullet, had lost much of the strained tension that had been evident before in his expression. For along with entering into the first space fringes, the switch from motor to rocket propulsion power had been one of the toughest hurdles Hawkins and Roberts had figured on facing. The slightest error in making the switch could have resulted in either of two tragedies—a loss of climbing speed and an almost certainly fatal spin, or an injudicious sudden combination rocket and motor-power mix which would have put such strain on the X-80 as to rip it asunder in mid-flight.
But that was past, behind them, now. And Phil Roberts, as he came back from his radio compartment to slide into the seat beside his companion, was grinning cockily, almost triumphantly.
“The rest of our fears are little ones, chum,” Roberts grinned. “We’ll take ’em in stride—just as if we were hitting along at forty thousand feet instead of Lord knows how many miles.” Jim Hawkins favored his companion with an understanding grin. But his brows furrowed ever so slightly, and he said “Don’t count your chick—�
� Hawkins, glancing casually at the instrument direction panels as he spoke, chopped off his sentence, unfinished, with an oath.
ROBERTS, startled, glanced down at the directional instruments also.
“What in the—” he began.
“That’s what I want to know, and quick!” Hawkins snapped. “Unless those directional gauges have gone haywire due to the increasingly thin atmospher—”
“We’re sliding off our charted course line at the rate of, no—we couldn’t be!” Phil Roberts cut in excitedly.
Jim Hawkins looked up tensely. “Those gauges are sound,” he said. “They’re telling the truth. We’re being sucked up, and off of our course at a velocity that is positively unbelievable!”
“But to where?” Roberts demanded. “And how can we hit back on our course line?”
Jim Hawkins shook his head after a brief, futile effort to pull the craft forcibly away from the sucking stream. “I don’t have any idea, pal,” he muttered tightly. “But you’d better pick a destination you’d like, and pray for that to be it!”
Roberts was climbing out from behind the instrument panels, his features a taut mask.
“I’ll get to the key,” he declared, “and send out the glad tidings to the field station. Maybe Baldwin, this ship’s daddy, can give us a tip on pulling her out of this mess!”
Moments later, Phil looked up and shouted the additionally grim information to Jim.
“We’re walled in by the slip stream. Not a chance of a spark getting out. We might as well be talking to one another. It’s a sure bet we’re not going to talk to the gang back on the ground until we’re free of this upsweeping whatchm’callit!”
“I think I know what to call it!” Hawkins answered tightly. “It’s a slip stream, all right, and it’s dragging us hell bent toward the Heaviside layer. Every second brings us closer to that instant when this ship’ll be spinning like a—”
Jim Hawkins’ sentence was cut short by the very circumstance he was about to warn against. The X-80 went into a sudden convulsive whirling spin, throwing both Hawkins and his companion heavily to the floor of the cabin and pinning them there like flies through gravitational force.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 163