Jeff Sutton (5 page)

Prochaska
spoke matter-of-factly into his Hp mike, "Fifty miles."

Crag marveled at his control
...
his calm. No, he didn't have to worry about
the Chief. The little runt had it Crag tried to grin. The effort was a pain.

The Aztec gave a lurch, altering the
direction of forces on their bodies again as a servo control kicked the ship
into the long shallow spiral of escape. It moved upward and more easterly, its
nose slanted toward the stars, seeking its new course. Crag became momentarily
dizzy.
Hi«
vision blurred

the
instrument panel became a kaleidoscope of
dancing, merging patterns. Then it was past, all except the three g force
nailing him to the seat

He spoke into the
communicator.
"How we doing?"

"Fine,
Commander, just fine," Cotch rasped. "The toughest part's over."

Over like hell, Crag thought
A
one-way rocket to the moon and he tells me the toughest
part's over. Lord, I should work in a drugstore!

"Seventy-five
miles and two hundred miles east," the Chief intoned. Crag made a visual
instrument check. Everything looked okay. No red lights. Just greens.
Wonderful greens that meant everything
was
hunky-dory.
He liked green. He wanted to see how Larkwell and Nagel were making out but
couldn't turn his head. It's rougher on them, he thought
They
can't see the instruments, can't hear the small voice from Alpine. They just
have to sit and take it. Sit and feel the unearthly pressures and weights and
hope everything's okay.

"Ninety-six
miles . . . speed 3.1 miles per second," Pro-chaska chanted a short while
later.

It's
as easy as that, Crag thought. Years and years of planning and training; then
you just step in and go. Not that they were there yet. He remembered the rockets
that had burned . . . exploded . . . the drifting hulks that still orbited
around the earth. No, it wasn't over yet
Not
by a long
shot.

The
quiet came again. The earth, seen through the side port, seemed tremendously
far away. It was a study in greens and yellow-browns and whitish ragged areas
where the eye was blocked by cloud formations. Straight out the sky was black,
starry. Prochaska reached up and swung the glare shield over the forward port
The
sun, looked at even indirectly, was a blinding orb,
intolerable to the unprotected eye.
Night above . . . day
below.
A sun that blazed without breaking the ebon
skies.
Strange, Crag mused. He had been prepared for this, prepared by
long hours of instruction. But now, confronted with a day that was night, he
could only wonder. For a moment he felt small, insignificant, and wondered at
brazen man. Who dared come here? I dared, he thought. A feeling of pride grew
within him. I dared. The stars are mine.

Stage three was easy by comparison. It began
with
th
(
L muted roar of thrust chambers almost behind
them, a
boS^
spectrum almost solely confined to the
interior of the rocfcdb Outside there was no longer sufficient air molecules
to
convey even a whisper of sound.
Nor was there a
pressure build-up.
The stage three
engine
was
designed for extremely low thrust extended over a correspondingly longer time.
It would drive them through the escape spiral—an orbital path around the earth
during which time they would slowly increase both altitude and speed.

Crag's
body felt light; not total weightlessness, but extremely light.
His-instruments told him they were breaching the exosphere, where molecular
matter had almost ceased
to
exist.
The atoms of the exosphere were lonely, uncrowded, isolated particles. It was
the top of the air ocean where, heretofore, only monkeys, dogs and smaller
test
nnfmala
ha^ gone. It was the realm of Sputniks . . .
Explorers .
.
Vanguards—all the test
rockets which had made the Aztec possible.
They still sped their silent
orbits, borne on the space tides of velocity; eternal tombs of dogs and
monkeys.
And after monkey—man.

The communicator gave a burp. A voice came
through the static
.-
Drone Able was aloft
It
had blasted off from its blasting pad at Burning Sands just moments
after the Aztec. Frochaska bent over the radarscope and fiddled with some
knobs. The tube glowed and dimmed,
then
it
was there—a tiny pip.

Alpine came in with more data. They watched
its course. Somewhere far below them and hundreds of miles to the west human
minds were guiding the drone by telemeter control, vectoring it through space
to meet the Aztec. It
was,
Crag thought, applied
mathematics. He marveled at the science which enabled them to do it. One moment
the drone was just a pip on the scope, climbing up from the sere earth, riding
a firestream to the skies; the next it was tons of metal scorching through
space, cutting into their flight path—a giant screaming up from its cradle
..

It
was Prochaska's turn to sweat. The job of taking it over was his. He bent over
his instruments, ears tuned to the communicator fingers nervous on the drone
controls. The drone hurtled toward them at a frightening speed.

Crag
kept his fingers on the steering controls just in case, his mind following the
Chiefs hands. They began moving more certainly. Frochaska tossed his head
impatiendy, bending lower over the instrument console. Crag strained against
his harnessing to see out of the side port
The
drone
was visible now, a silver shaft growing larger with appalling rapidity. A thin
skein of vapor trailed from its trail, fluffing into nothingness.

If
angle of closure remains constant, you're
.on
collision course.
The words from the Flying Safety Manual popped into his mind. He studied
the drone.

Angle of closure was
constant!

Crag
hesitated. Even a touch on the steering rockets could be bad.
Very bad.
The slightest change in course at then-present
speed would impose tremendous g forces on then-bodies, perhaps greater than
they could stand. He looked at the Chief and licked his lips. The man was
intent on his instruments, seemingly lost to the world. His fingers had ceased
all random movement. Every motion had precise meaning. He was hooked onto Drone
Abie's steering rockets now, manipulating the controls with extreme precision.
He was a concert pianist playing the strident music of space, an overture
written in metal and
flamjng
gas. Tiny corrections
occurred in the Drone's flight path.

"Cot
her lined up," Frochaska announced without moving his eyes from the scope.
He gradually narrowed the distance between the rockets until they were hurtling
through space on parallel courses scant miles apart He gave a final check and
looked at Crag. They simultaneously emitted big sighs.

"Had
me
worried for a moment," Crag confessed.

"Me, too."
The Chief looked out of the side port
"Man
,
it looks like a battle wagon."
                                                                   
-

Crag
squinted through the port. Drone Able was a silver bullet in space, a twin of
the Aztec except in color.
A drone with view ports.
He
smiled thoughtfully. Every exterior of the drone had been planned to make it
appear like a manned vehicle.
Gotch,
was the architect
of that bit of deception, he thought. The Colonel hadn't missed a bet

He
looked at the earth. It was a behemoth in space; a huge curved surface falling
away in all directions; a mosaic of grays punctuated by swaths of blue-green
tints and splotches of white where fleecy clouds rode the top of the
troposphere. His momentary elation vanished, replaced by an odd depression. The
world was far away, retreating into the cosmic mists. The aftermath, he thought
A chill r^esentiment crept into his mind—a premonition of impending disasftc

CHAPTER 4

The communicator
came to life with data on Pickering
The
satelloid was moving higher, faster than the Aztec,
riding the rim of the ezosphere where the atmosphere is indistinguishable from
absolute space. Crag felt thankful he hadn't been tabbed for the job. The
satelloid was
a.
fragile
thing compared to the Aztec—a moth compared to a hawk. It was a relative handful
of light metals and delicate electronic components, yet it moved at frightful
speeds over the course the armchair astronauts had dubbed "Sputnik
Avenue." It was a piloted vehicle, a mite with small stubby wings to enable
it to glide through the air ocean to safe sanctuary after orbiting the earth.
Pickering would be crouched in its scant belly, a space hardly larger than his
body, cramped in a pressure suit that made movement all but impossible. His
smallest misjudgment would spell instant death. Crag marveled at Pickering's
audacity. Clearly he had the roughest mission. While he thought about it, he
kept one part of his mind centered on the communicator absorbing the data on
the sateDoid's position and speed.

The
Northern tip of Africa came up fast. The Dark Continent of history seen from
the borders of space was a yellow-green splotch hemmed by blue. The satelloid
was still beyond the Aztec's radar range but a data link analog painted in the
relationship between the two space vehicles. The instrument's automatic grid
measured the distance between them in hundreds of miles. Pickering, aloft
before them, had fled into the east and already was beginning to overtake them
from the west The ships were seen on the analog as two pips, two mites aloft in
the air ocean. Crag marveled at the satelloid's tremendous speed. It was a ray
of metal flashing along the fringes of space* a rapier coming out of the west.

The
Middle East passed under them, receding, a mass of yellow-green and occasional
smoke-blue splotches. The earth was a giant curvature, not yet an orb, passing
into the shadow of night. It was a night of fantastic shortness, broken by daylight
over the Pacific. The ocean was an incredible blue, blue-black he decided. The
harsh sound of the communicator came to life. Someone wanted a confab with
Crag.
A private confab.
Frochaska wrinkled his brow
questioningly. Crag switched to his ear insert phone and acknowledged.

"A moment,"
a
voice said. He waited.

"Commander,
we've bad news for you." It was Gotch's voice, a rasp coming over a great
distance.

"The
S-two reports a rocket being tracked by radar. ComSoPac's picked it up. It's on
intercept course."

Crag's
thoughts raced. The S-two was the satelloid's code name.
"Any
idea what kind?"

"Probably a sub-launched missile—riding a beam right to you.
Or the drone," he added. He was silent
for a second "Well, we sort of expected this might happen, Commander. It's
a tough complication."

A
helluva lot of good that does, Crag thought
What
next?
Another set of pilots, more mdoctrinarJon, new rockets, another zero hour.
Gotch would win the moon if he had to use the whole Air Force. He said,
"Well it's been
a
nice trip,
so
far."

"Get Frochaska on the scope."

"He's
on and . . .
hold
it." The Chief was making
motions toward the scope. "No, it's the satelloid. He's—"

Gotch broke in with more data. Then ft was
there.

"He's got it" Crag announced. Gotch
was
silent' He watched the analog. AH three pips
were visible. The satelloid was still above them, rushing in, fast. The
interceptor was lower to the northwest cutting into their path. He thought it
was the Drone Able story all over again. Only this time it wasn't a supply
rocket
It
was a
warhead,
a
situation they couldn't control.