Mission to the Moon

by Lester Del Rey

  "Forget it," he told the boy. "Get into your suit and let's get going."

  There was no protest. Dan helped them on with their helmets. "I suppose you'll be piloting the ferry regularly, Jim, so we'll be seeing you," he said. "Maybe next trip we can really talk."

  Then Jim and Freddy were kicking off into space, and back to the ferry. It hadn't been the happy reunion Jim had pictured. But then, nothing was working out as he'd pictured it!

  Inside the ferry and out of their suits, Freddy made a beeline for the controls. His voice broke with excitement. "Jim, can I pilot going back? I've been using the taxi some—Terry lets me handle it. I'll be careful, if you'll let me try!"

  "Not this trip," Jim told him, pulling him back and half forcing him into the other seat. Then, at the boys expression, he relented a little. He'd had his own experiences at being alone with busy adults when his father had been a construction engineer. "Tell you what, Freddy. I've got some microfilms here. You study them first to learn how it's done, and then maybe I'll let you try some other trip."

  The boy nodded quickly, his fingers trembling as he took the viewer and the film Jim had selected. He made no further move toward the controls as Jim blasted off, cutting speed so that they would begin falling back toward the big station.

  It was an hour later when the boy whistled, and Jim looked over his shoulder at the little screen. Freddy had found a film that covered the theory of flight to the Moon, together with one of the standard orbits.

  For a minute, Jim considered asking Freddy about the trip. It was obviously something that was of paramount interest to the boy. Then he shrugged. Even if Freddy knew, it wasn't his place to pry out information Halpern and the authorities weren't ready to give.

  With nothing else to do, he sat staring through the control bubble while Freddy read on. The Earth was growing steadily, and now Jim could just make out the reflection of the station. In a little more than an hour they'd be back—back from the farthest in space that men had gotten, and what seemed to be the farthest they would ever go. He tried to adjust his thinking to the delay on the big jump. He knew that the original plans of Dr. von Braun on which this was still based had put the Moon trip ten years after the building of the station. But with new structural materials and what they had learned of space, it didn't have to wait now!

  Then a flash of light from the Earth below caught Jim's eye. Apparently, seeing must have been excellent on the part of the night side below him. The light rose upward, a tiny speck on the huge area, but clear enough to trace. It could only be the blast of a big first stage.

  Then he groaned as realization hit him. No rocket should be taking off from that section! And hasty figur

  ing of its orbit showed that it couldn't be headed for the station—but that it could very well be aimed at a spot 180° behind, which was the ideal spot for any attempt at building a Combine station!

  Bailey and Thorndyke must have been right! There was another station going up, where two wasn't just a crowd, but a threat to the whole world!

  Chapter 3 rna

  alpern was waiting in the taxi when Jim matched orbit with the station. Halpern took one look at his son and pulled the boy to the back of the taxi. Jim couldn't hear what was said, but he saw Freddy's face whiten. When they got out in the hub of the station, Dr. Perez was waiting to take the boy in tow for a medical checkup.

  Halpern sighed as they left and motioned Jim to follow him toward the simple office where he held command. It was near the outer section of the station, where the spin gave a comfortable but low imitation of gravity. "Any trouble with the boy?" he asked Jim.

  "Not with the boy," Jim answered. "Maybe you should let him train for piloting."

  "I probably will, someday. If he's able to take it." The older man sighed again, staring down at his desk.

  "I wish I had more time for him. This isn't the best place to bring him up, I guess. But it's no good for him down there, either . . . Umm, wait a minute. You said you didn't have trouble with him. Does that mean you had trouble with something else?"

  Jim had thought the colonel had missed his remark, but he was relieved at the opening it gave him. He told briefly what he had heard at the relay station and what he'd seen on the way back. Halpern had frowned slightly at first, but now he sat listening with a woodenly official lack of expression, making no comments until Jim had finished.

  His voice was carefully unexcited as he acknowledged the report. "I'll add it to our next message back, of course. And I appreciate your reporting it directly to me. Now I'll have to ask you not to discuss it with anyone else. With our relations with the Combine still somewhat strained, we can't have idle rumors going around. And ..."

  "That rocket trail wasn't idle rumor," Jim interrupted him hotly.

  The colonel nodded. "No, I didn't mean that. I assume you can recognize it accurately. But that doesn't mean anyone is trying to build another station. The Combine was experimenting with rocket ships before they tried that atomic-powered model, and they're probably working on liquid fuels again. That's normal enough. And at this distance you'll have to admit that you can't trace an orbit too well. You have no way of knowing it was making a trip to this height. Or have you?"

  "No, sir," Jim admitted. But he wasn't convinced, and he had the feeling that Halpern was no more convinced than he was. He'd run into the seemingly logical official method of covering up before. Obviously, Hal-pern had already known something was going on. Then he switched over to his other worry. "When do they really start work on the Moon ships, Colonel Halpern?"

  The older man sighed heavily. "You know as much as I do, Jim. It's supposed to be in civilian hands now."

  Terry Rodriguez was waiting as Jim came out of the colonel's office. The little man had stayed on at the station as head of the maintenance crew, as well as taking over the handling of the taxi. He never had much to say, and Jim was grateful for the fact as they headed toward the commissary to eat. After the first few words of general conversation, they ate in silence.

  Terry stood up first. "I've got to inspect something over at the doghouse," he said. The doghouse was the separate little bubble that housed the astronomical telescope and was following the station at a short distance. "If you want to sack in, you've got the same quarters, Jim. See you tomorrow?"

  Jim nodded and watched him leave. He stared about at the others eating, realizing that he hardly knew anyone here now. The scientists and military men had replaced the old construction crew, and he was practically a stranger here.

  Finally, he headed for the cubicle that was his home aboard. He dropped gratefully onto the elastic hammock that served as a bed. After the relaxation possible here, no bed could ever feel completely comfortable in the heavier gravity of Earth. He'd looked forward to a chance to sleep here again. But now his thoughts were too busy to let him take advantage of the opportunity.

  He'd been basing his whole thoughts of the future on the Moon trip. Without it, he had no real business in space. The pilots up from Earth had to be topnotch aviation men first, to handle the landing through the atmosphere, and Jim had only the school training in that. He had no scientific or military use. Of course, he might hang on to ferry supplies to the relay station for a while, but once it was finished, only occasional trips would be needed, and those could be handled by one of the regular pilots.

  The only place left would be back on Earth. Jonas would probably be willing to place him somewhere in Major Electric, and he had money enough from the fabulous salary of a spaceman to carry him. But he'd grown used to this type of life, and he didn't intend to be grounded unless nothing else was left! Besides, if the Combine were building a station, in spite of Hal-pern's careful doubts, Earth wouldn't be too pleasant a place for anyone to live!

  Jim finally drifted off to sleep, still bothered by the thoughts. He was in the middle of some vague nightmare of being tied up and unable to move when a hand on his shoulder awakened him. Even before he opened his eyes, he knew it was well bef
ore the time when he would normally have wakened.

  It was Halpern, and the colonel reached forward to shake his shoulder again. Then he saw that Jim was awake, and dropped down on the edge of the hammock. "Emergency, Jim," he said bitterly. "We seem to have a jinx, or something. Gantry and his copilot ran into trouble. A new passenger up went crazy when weight cut off, and they had quite a fracas before they could subdue him. The copilot's got a concussion, and Gantry wants you to replace him."

  Jim realized that Halpern was putting it as a request, rather than an order. It was indicated by the fact that the colonel had come himself, instead of sending an aide. But there was no question about his going. A chance to serve as copilot on the big ships was more than he'd been able to hope for; he'd had one brief try at it when they had rescued the Combine men, but that had been a special case.

  He was off the hammock and getting into his thin suit at once. Then he stopped, puzzled. "How come Gantry doesn't just wait until another copilot can be shipped up?"

  "He would, if he had to. But we've got a special shipment going back. More of the cancer serum. The first tests looked so good that Earth's screaming for more—and with all the trouble we've been having, we need all the good will and publicity we can get."

  It was reason enough. Up here where a whole laboratory could be evacuated to a nearly perfect vacuum at any desired low temperature, chemical reactions were possible that couldn't be done on Earth. It only took a few ounces of hormones or such serums as this for thousands of treatments. Jim had known they were working on something to cure cancer, but he hadn't realized there'd been any real progress yet.

  Halpern turned to leave. He looked tired—more so than Jim had seen him before—but he managed to smile. "Thanks again, Jim. And better rush it. Take-off's pretty near."

  Jim found Terry waiting with the taxi, and there was a hasty breakfast set up for him to eat while they moved out. Gantry was ready with the lock by the time they reached the rocket.

  Jim followed the big man back to the controls. He'd never gotten to know the pilot well—even Gantry's own copilot didn't seem too close to him. He was the exact opposite of most of the pilots. He was a big, heavily built man in a job where low weight was of the utmost importance; where the preference was given to young men, he was over forty. And there was nothing devil-may-care about him. He had been forced to fight for whatever he achieved, and he had lost all sense of fun, apparently. He'd made up his mind as a boy that he'd pilot the first rocket. Time had run out on him, but he hadn't quit. He must have been rejected a hundred times—but he'd made it.

  Jim headed for the copilot's seat, stepping aside to let Gantry take the pilot's position. But the man shook his head. "You have it backward, Stanley," he said evenly. "You're the pilot this trip. I sprained my wrist in the mixup." He dropped to the copilot's seat, passing over the course charts. "We're awaiting your orders, sir!"

  For a second, the universe seemed to reel under Jim. He had a pilot's license, of course, but—He was sure Halpern hadn't known. No sane man would assign him to such a job. An atmospheric landing! Yet Gantry was sane, and he had made the decision.

  Then Jim caught himself and began buckling himself down while he went over the calculations Gantry had prepared. "Thank you, Mr. Gantry," he said.

  Surprisingly, the big man smiled. "I'm named Ed, Jim. Glad to have you aboard." And then, as if explaining everything, he waved toward the station. "It took a man who knew what he wanted and how to do it to build that."

  Coming from Gantry, this was probably the highest type of compliment. But Jim had no time to appreciate it. The chronometer was nearing zero. He began calling the orders, as he'd heard Mark call them before. The hand of the chronometer moved on steadily. Then it hit the mark.

  Mercifully, the controls were the same as those on the ferry. Jim's hands moved out steadily to them, while the big automatic pilot went into operation. It had been designed to do a better job than men could do, but men had been designed to do the impossible. With enough experience, the pilots had found that they could shade the controls just enough to make up for variations in the blast before the automatic pilot was aware of them. Under Gantry's eyes, Jim hesitated, then began juggling the verniers. He'd managed the trick on his other flight, and it felt right this time.

  Gantry nodded when the blast cut off. "Very good, Jim. We'll leave it at that."

  The rocket began drifting back and down toward Earth. For fifty minutes, there was nothing more to be done. This time there wouldn't be even a turnover, since they'd hit the air nose first, to coast through the thin atmosphere on their wings and controls, using the friction as a brake to halt their speed.

  Jim was frantically digging through his mind for everything he could remember on such a maneuver. He'd had some practice in rocket-propelled high altitude planes at the school, and he'd seen Mark make the run. He also knew the theory. But by the time they hit, it would have to be done almost automatically, which meant he had to be ready with the answers beforehand.

  His hands were sweating slightly. It occurred to him that he could probably depend on Gantry in any real emergency; a sprained wrist was bad, but it could be used. Still, it was his responsibility now. He glanced back at the radarman and saw worry on the man's face. Then Gantry's eyes met his, and his look steadied him. If Gantry had any doubts, he wasn't showing them. He'd decided it all back at the station, and was sticking by the decision.

  Earth's pull was acting on them now, building their speed up to more than five miles a second. It would be enough to burn them to a cinder—as the original tiny satellites had burned on striking the air. The upper fringes of the atmosphere were drawing near. Jim began to brace himself.

  Abruptly Gantry grunted and pointed to the screen. "Combine rocket again," he said.

  There was a long rocket trail rising below them. At this distance, there could be no mistake. It was tilting from its vertical rise into the regular synergy curve of a ship heading out to an orbit. From Gantry's expression, it was a fairly familiar sight.

  There was no question now. The Combine was in space, and Halpern must have known it.

  Then the controls in Jim's hands began to show evidence that they were touching atmosphere.

  ChaptCr 4 N? a Billion Dollars

  I

  he descent through the atmosphere was the longest and hardest job for any of the rocket pilots, and they were at the beginning of the tough part now. The rocket was halfway around the world from where it had left the station, and fifty miles above the surface of Earth. Up there, the air was still incredibly thin, but at their speed, its friction had already begun to heat the hull.

  The trick was to find the right density of air to cut their speed. If they were going too deep, the friction would heat them beyond the point where even the tough skin of the ship could stand it. If they weren't deep enough, they would lose speed too slowly and might land somewhere in midocean.

  Jim kept his eyes on the pyrometers that showed the hull temperature, and on the chronometer. When he had a chance, he glanced at the other instruments,

  but the course was largely determined by time and temperature.

  The needles rose rapidly. They passed the thousand-degree mark and went on. But they were supposed to do that. At the critical point, the hull would be thirteen hundred degrees hot! The ship had been designed for that, and there were machines that cooled the inside, though they had to count on the insulation for the biggest job.

  Delicately, Jim maneuvered the stick that controlled their height. Inside, the temperature crept up slightly, but it felt even hotter than it was. He was remembering again the first tiny satellites men had sent out. At a much lower speed, they had finally dived back into the atmosphere and the friction of their fall had burned them to dust long before they struck the Earth.

  Here the automatic pilot was nearly useless. Gantry's eyes were riveted on him, Jim saw in a quick glance.

  "Too deep?" he asked harshly of the pilot.

 
; Gantry cleared his throat. "A touch, maybe. But you've got a little margin."

  It helped to be reassured of that. He'd almost forgotten that it wasn't something that took absolute perfection. Now he suddenly relaxed, and it began to come easier.

  They were speeding around the Earth at less than three miles a second now, and at a height of about thirty-five miles. The hull was still at red heat, but half the descent was over.

  Once they reached the speed of two miles a second it became easier. Now the temperature began to fall slowly, and they were dropping in a long flat glide that should take them to the field.

  From then on, the speed fell quickly, along with the temperature. They were soon at the normal cruising speed of a jet plane. Here Jim found himself the master of the ship. And then, curiously, as the speed fell, it grew harder again. He was tensing up because of the landing to be made.

  But that proved easier than he had expected. As the field came into view, the radarman was in contact with the ground, and there was no question of needing a clear lane. There was always a clear lane provided for one of the returning rockets. The big ship came down easily, more slowly than the jet jobs Jim had been forced to land before. Its gliding speed was less than seventy miles an hour.

  He felt the wheels touch, finally, and they were rolling down the long runway. He caught his breath and let it out in a deep sigh. He'd made it! Then they stopped, and Gantry was holding out the logbook for him to sign.

  The big man looked as if he'd been under strain, too, but he shrugged casually. "The first times are the hard ones. Now you can take your pilot's license out of the mothballs and hang it on the wall!"

  Out on the field Jim found a jeep waiting for him. Gantry would supervise the handling of the ship now, since no regular pilot would trust anyone else to do that. Jim's job was done, and he could give his nerves a chance to relax in a hotel room until the next takeoff took him back to the station.