Earthbound (Winston Science Fiction Book 1) (17 page)

“Then send me to someone who can.”

“No matter whom you saw, the answer would be the same.”

“Send me to someone.”

“Who? The Officer of Operations here at White Sands? It won’t do any good; but all right, Pete, I’ll give you a note to him. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The Officer of Operations was a white-haired old man, small and thin, with a gaunt face carved from granite and flat, yellow-brown eyes. He leaned his elbows on a big desk, made a bridge of his hands and peered over it while Pete related his story. When he spoke, his voice had a thin, rasping sound:

“No.”

“Just like that? No?”

“That’s right, No.”

“But sir —”

“I can sympathize with you, Mr. Hodges. But no.”

“Sir, I think it’s my right, since I got him into this in the first place —”

“Debatable. Can’t jeopardize the ship. Or you. Can’t disobey orders. No.”

“Whom can I see? I mean, I’d like to go above your head, sir.”

“Do that. Try anyone. See the President, it would not help.”

“If you could give me a memo to an officer above you, I’d be able to see him. Anyone —”

“No. Waste of time. His time, too. Good day, young man.”

The Officer of Operations thumbed rapidly through some papers on his desk, but did not look up again. He failed to stir when Pete shut the door behind him with a loud bang.

The Commander of Rocketry, Southwestern United States Division, was next. You did not merely walk in on the Commander of Rocketry. You saw a secretary who suggested another secretary who steered you to a junior liaison officer who shifted you to a public-relations officer who thought the whole thing might be bad for publicity — and then you tried all over again.

You returned to the first secretary who suggested another one, who gave you a lecture on how busy the Commander of Rocketry, Southwestern United States Division, was. All the while, with each hour that passed, you knew that Garr’s plight kept growing worse.

Radio reports reached Earth hourly. The story was packed with human interest — a Cadet on his first mission of any importance trapped on an asteroid derelict. The disabled ship had stopped its aimless wanderings. It had plowed into a dumbbell-shaped asteroid several hundred yards across. It had nosed into the thin, bar-like extension between two roughly circular chunks of rock. It would remain there until other asteroids streaking along through the void came and pulverized it. The two circular chunks of rock would offer some protection for a time, but eventually the inevitable would happen. No one in a position of any authority thought that Garr could survive the six necessary weeks, and it was even doubted that anyone could reach him
after
that time.

“I’d like to see the Commander of Rocketry.”

“You said that yesterday. And the day before.”

“Please, Miss. It’s important.”

“I know it’s important. It’s always important. But you’ll have to make an appointment like everyone else. I can get you through to his adjutant officer the latter part of next week. Shall I put you down? Name, please?”

“No. The latter part of next week will be too late. His adjutant won’t do any good.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Completely impersonal, but it was the thing to say.

After that, Pete gave it up as hopeless. He could not see the Commander of Rocketry, not in time. But actually, he knew it wouldn’t help if he did. He’d get the same answer as the Officer of Operations had given him, the same as Captain Saunders’, without the friendly touch.

No one understood —

“I’ve been meaning to talk with you, son,” Big Pete said that night. “You can’t go on like this, hardly sleeping, eating very little, seeing a lot of people and getting nowhere.”

“I can’t help it!”

“I know you can’t. I didn’t ask you to. You’re off on the wrong track, son, that’s all. You see all these stuffed shirts; they don’t help you. Why go on seeing them?”

“I agree with you. I’ve already decided that. But what can I do?”

“If you want to do something hard enough, you’ll do it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to push you into this. Space knows that your mother and I are happy enough just having you home with us again. But it looks as if you’ve made up your mind. Want some advice?”

“Yes.”

“‘Forget about the authorities, because in this matter they won’t help you.”

“But I —”

“I know, that confuses you. You learned the hard way that you
should
go to the authorities when you’re in trouble. Because you didn’t, you wound up in Antarctica, and you almost didn’t come back. But it works both ways, Pete. There are times when a man has to fend for himself, completely. When he knows he’s right, when everyone else seems pitted against him, but when he still knows, deep down inside, that he’s right — and when he’s thought about it a long time and still knows that, then he has to fend for himself.

“I’m not going to tell you what to do. I’m not even going to suggest that you do anything. I think I’d rather you didn’t. But that’s your choice, not mine. And before you do anything, remember this: the doctors don’t think your collarbone can take acceleration. They could be wrong; but more often than not they know what they’re talking about. Also, your brother died in the asteroids, son. He’d have been a Captain now, but the asteroids —”

Big Pete always choked up when he spoke of that, and it was only with an effort that he continued. “Anyway, all that is on the negative side of the ledger. But you want to do something about it. You won’t be able to live normally until you’ve tried to rescue Garr. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if you’re right or wrong, son. But I do know that if you have that feeling and if nothing can shake it from you, you’ll have to try.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing, only it got me no place.”

“And you still want to try?”

“Yes. Yes!”

“Then forget the authorities. Forget all about the red tape you’ll have to go through. We’re behind you, son, your mother and I, no matter what you decide to do. The rest is up to you — but I think you know you’ll have to hurry.”

Pete hardly slept that night. What was it his father had meant?

He could not go to the authorities, for they would be of no help. Then — what was the old expression? He must take the law into his own hands. But with everyone and everything against him, how could he get a ship?

Wherever he turned he was balked, but that did not matter. He must find a way. There had to be a way.

Every hour that passed was an hour more of danger for Garr. Every hour that passed made it more improbable that Garr could be reached in time. Pete thought of Garr out there in the immensity of space, helpless, gazing out at the bright, brittle pin points that were the stars and the brighter ones that were the asteroids all around him, and waiting for the one with his name on it to strike.

Garr —

After dinner, clouds scurried up from the west, and the rain beat dully on his window. For a long time Pete looked out into the sodden night. “Garr!” he cried and beat his fist impotently on the window sill.

He got up, dressed, walked outside into the wet night. He wore light clothing and the rain soaked through to his skin. He did not hurry, he had no place to go. For a long time he walked and presently he found himself back at the house again.

He opened the door quietly and went upstairs.

Garr couldn’t take a walk like that. Garr could just sit in the tight confines of his spaceship and wait for death.

Tomorrow he would do something. He did not know what, but he would do something.

Chapter 16 — Blast-Off!

In the morning, Captain Saunders seemed a little surprised to see him again. “Hello, Pete. Don’t tell me you’ve had some luck?”

Pete shook his head. “What do you think? No, I guess I’ve been batting my head against a brick wall but I’m going to take you up on what you said.”

“Eh? What did I say?”

“That I could have my old job back.”

“Ah-h! That’s a lot more sensible, Pete. We can always use a good orbiteer around the tower. When do you want to start?”

“Right now. This morning.”

“Man, you
are
in a hurry! But I stopped looking gift horses in the mouth a long time ago. Fact of the matter is, Pete, we sure can use you. Yes, and right now, today. Some eighty graduate Cadets are pulling in today and tomorrow. They’ll be taking two-seaters to the moon and back, and although those ships are small, there’ll be a lot of orbit-plotting to do. I planned on doing all of it myself, because your replacement has his hands full figuring out a liner orbit for the end of the week. Man, you can roll up your sleeves and get to work at once.”

“Good,” said Pete and hung his jacket in the closet.

“As you know, now,” Captain Saunders said, “we can forget all about sunrise and sunset blast-offs when a hop to the moon is involved. We still use an ellipse, sure; but instead of being in the sun, one of its focal points coincides with the center of the Earth. And that means one time of day is as good as any other. I plan to get twenty ships up today, twenty tomorrow. Half-hour shifts, ten hours a day. I hope you got plenty of sleep last night.”

“Enough,” Pete told him, although, in truth, he’d hardly been able to sleep at all. Toward morning he’d dozed fitfully, but it had already begun to grow light, and he’d risen restlessly from bed just after sunrise.

He felt a growing eagerness, however. One of those forty small ships could supply his answer. There wouldn’t be much more than enough fuel to reach the moon, true enough — and fuel capacity in those babies was strictly limited. But from the moon outward would be a different story, for, thanks to its lighter gravity, a spaceship could blast away from the moon with only a fraction of the fuel it used for Earth blast-off.

I’ve got to do this carefully
, Pete thought
. Logically.

1. I somehow get control of one of those ships.

2. I blast off for the moon with all the others.

3. I somehow refuel on the moon and blast outward for the asteroids.

4. I plot my own orbit as I go along, and I’m on my way.

Simple. One, two, three, four. just like that. Except that getting the ship would be a problem in itself, and refueling on the moon might be even more difficult. . . .

“. . . orbits,” Captain Saunders was saying.

“Huh? I’m sorry, sir. I — I didn’t hear you.”

“I said, we’ll be plotting economy-orbits. The less fuel employed, the better. Take a look outside, Pete.”

Pete strode to the window, peered through it. The forty trim ships stood waiting on the runway. They were small enough to use the old portable blasting tanks instead of the larger, permanent pits, and each small ship was housed in its tank, prow pointing straight up into the air. “I thought those tanks were obsolete,” Pete said.

“No, not obsolete. We rarely use them, but once in a while they come in handy. In the old days there was no such thing as a Spaceport, and also, the ships were much smaller, much like these two-man jobs outside. Thus, you could take off any place, provided you had a tank to suck in the heat and the radioactivity.

“But the tanks aren’t obsolete. We use them every time a large number of tiny ships blast off. You figure it out — using forty blasting pits would scatter these ships over miles of runway. This way they’re packed together and we can keep an eye on them. Anyway, what time have you got, Pete?”

“Oh-eight-hundred-and-five, sir.”

“Well, at oh-eight-and-thirty we’ll get started.”

Pete nodded, reached into a drawer for scratch paper, a pencil, a slide rule, and the
Manual of Lunar Orbits
. With these, he sat down and got to work.

After that, it became a nerve-wracking routine. Nerve-wracking because each ship that lifted skyward meant one less chance for Pete. However, now at least, he could do nothing about it. The ships soared away at half-hour intervals, and he only had time between flights to prepare the next orbit.

“Are you ready? Are you ready, 14B-11?”

Then the eager voice of a Cadet about to leave Earth for the first time: “Y-yes, sir!” The voice sounded flat over the radio, but that failed to hide the eagerness.

“It is now ten-twenty eight-seventeen. One minute and forty-three seconds to blast off.”

“Check, Sir!”

“One minute.”

“Check!”

“Thirty seconds.”

“Ch-check!”

“You’re away, 14B-11!” Then Pete would press the firing stud, watching the radioactive glow mount in one of the blasting tanks outside. Actually, for takeoff purposes, neither a tank nor a pit was necessary, provided you did not mind scorching the ground all around and spilling out a great deal of radioactive slag which could be dangerous.

In a moment, the little ship would rise slowly, gathering speed as it crept up into the sky. In a few seconds it would streak out of sight altogether, and Pete could imagine the two Cadets on their acceleration cots pressed down painfully under a force of more than five gravities. The speed of escape from Earth was in the neighborhood of seven and a half miles per second, and to attain that speed, acceleration had to be built up fast. The result was five gravities — and sometimes six — but the Cadets would hardly mind. They’d fight a few moments of terrible pain, yes; and they might even black out. But soon after that they would be in free-fall, coasting to the moon, and then they could unstrap themselves and look back at the great green globe of Earth looming up in the blackness behind them, and it would be worth it.

Another ship. And another.

Thirty left on the field. Time for a quick bite of lunch. And through the afternoon and early evening another ten. Twenty ships gone, twenty left. And still Pete had been able to do nothing —

“Good night, Pete.”

“Good night, Captain Saunders.”

“See you in the morning.”

“Yeah, in the morning. . . .”

Sunset of the following day. A crimson glow brightened the western horizon, touched fingers of flame to the low-hanging cumulus clouds, swollen and puffy. But it faded, and with it, Pete’s hope. . . .