unpredictable. If this trick fuel fails to work, the whole thing will
go up maybe six miles and then drop. If the atomic stuff turns into a
bomb they'll hear the bang in Las Vegas. If it works as they expect,
it might go up several hundred miles, maybe even more. It could make
a better satellite rocket than the ones we've got up already. In fact
that's what they're hoping. They think they may be able to make this
the start of a real space-platform program--for once carrying a pay
load up worth the carrying. But who knows?"
The two climbed into a car and drove to where the concrete dugout was
located. Entering it they nodded to the communications men and other
engineers already gathered. The major took his place at the firing
panel. He looked at his timer, waited a few minutes. Gradually the
small talk ceased and a hush fell over the little guiding post. The
major reached for the firing button.
* * * * *
Back in the rocket, Robin opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed
when his head cleared from the grogginess of his deep sleep was a
slight hissing noise somewhere below him. The air felt different in his
little compartment. Somewhere a thin stream of oxygen was escaping into
the chamber.
He twisted around, felt about with his hands, located it. There was a
thin line of holes along the seam of the padding underneath him. Now
he heard other noises. Below him, a faint chattering, a scolding, the
sound of something scratching. He put his ear down near the hole from
where the air was issuing and listened.
Yes, he thought to himself, animals. Somebody put some animals in the
space just below me. Sounds like monkeys' chattering. Must be where the
air is coming from.
He had a headache. Bad air in here, he thought, and realized that had
it not been for the animals being placed below him, he might have
suffocated in that space. It was then that he fully realized what had
happened--that he'd fallen asleep.
The animals hadn't been there when he had first climbed in. So he must
have slept for several hours at least. He squirmed around, reflecting
on it, still not quite gathering his drugged wits together. That meant
that the men must have arrived and started work on this rocket again.
He thought this over, and a great uneasiness came over him. He strove
to remember something urgent, something he knew he had to bring back to
mind. Something about five o'clock and six o'clock.
Loading time, launching time. Yes! They were firing this rocket at
six! But what time was it now? How long had he slept? He looked at the
luminous dial of his watch but was chagrined to find it had run down
and he'd forgotten to wind it.
He glanced rapidly around his little space, wondering how he could find
out whether it was already day. Several glimpses of light hit his eyes.
He saw that in three or four places there were tiny glass openings no
larger than would admit a thick wire. He tried to look through one, but
all he could see was blue sky. It was morning then.
He strained his ears for outside noises, truck engines, men talking.
But there was not a sound from outside. Only the faint squeakings of
the animals below him. He twisted around again to face the little round
door.
It was padded on the inside, it had no handle there, nothing to get a
grip on. He scrabbled in the padding with his fingers, reached the rim,
and tried to push. There was no give. It was airtight, automatically
sealed.
He pushed against it, wondered what to do. He squirmed around against
the padding, lay back with his head against the cushioning on the
opposite side, his back resting on the floor padding, and put his feet
against the side of the little door. Thus braced he was all set to
shove the strength of his legs against the door in an effort to push it
outward.
He was about to do so when the rocket went off.
_4. Riding the Atoms_
Suddenly it felt as if a giant had placed his huge palm squarely on
Robin's chest and was pushing him down. As he tried to exert pressure
against the door, the counter pressure of the invisible hand increased.
For an instant Robin was thunderstruck. Had he suddenly become weak?
What was this?
His first emotion, that of amazement, changed in a split second to one
of terror at his newly discovered weakness, and again from that to
a feeling of stunned shock. There was no invisible hand! It was the
rocket itself moving!
Without thinking, Robin struggled to rise, but his muscles could not
obey him. In the first seconds the pressure on him was mild, he might
have been able to move if he'd given some extra effort. But by the time
his astonishment had worn off, the pressure had climbed beyond the
limitations of the cramped space and his young muscles.
The rocket had started slowly as these great towering constructions
do. The first blasts barely served to push it away from its launching
guides. It seemed to tremble in every plate as if precariously perched
upon the short, furious blast of yellow. Then the fiery tail lengthened
as the tall, thin metal body rose slowly, lifted like a thin white
pencil on the roaring cataract of burning gases.
Now it was its own length from the ground, now pushing up faster,
giving in split seconds the curious impression that it might topple
over at any instant. But the steady rise gained in speed, the rocket
pushed away from its burning tail ever faster, the fire turned from
yellow to blue, and within a few more blinks of the eye it was hurtling
into the sky, vanishing into a dot, and then was beyond sight.
To Robin it seemed again as if a giant hand were pressing down. He felt
it spreading over his body, felt himself being pushed relentlessly by
superior weight against the matting of the compartment floor. His head
was thrust down as if by a giant forefinger of this invisible monster
leaning over him. Now it seemed as if the giant, in maniacal malice,
was leaning his weight on his hand, pressing on Robin, trying to shove
him through the floor if possible.
He gasped for breath, could barely catch it against the growing
pressure on his chest. His eyes sank into their sockets and he tried to
close them but found the effort too much.
All about him there was a roaring sound, a humming and thrumming, and
now began a thin, piercing whistling, which was the air outside rushing
past. The whistle rapidly increased to an ear-splitting shriek, then
vanished, leaving eddies of unheard auditory vibrations. Robin tried
to close his mouth, which had been forced open by the prying finger of
pressure. He felt as if in another moment he must cave in, be squashed
flat. His brain reeled dizzily, then suddenly a merciful blackness fell
over him and he knew no more.
At that very moment, though he could no longer sense it, there was a
click, audible through the length of the vibrating column of metal,
and the first section snapped off. Its great fuel tanks, so full of
volatile gases an instant before, had emptied themselves in a fury of
chemical combustion. The automatic releases had loosened the whole
bottom half, the main fuel section, thrust it into space to fall and
shatter upon the desert miles below. At that same split second, another
series of relays touched off the second firing section.
The new firing tubes blasted into action. Of a design different from
those that preceded it, of a design new to the world of man, the
experimental jet burst forth. For an instant it seemed as if the
pressure had vanished in the rocket, for a split second the rocket
stopped accelerating as it waited for the new impact. Then like a blast
of lightning newly released from a storm, a shot of energy flashed
through the racing metal body. The giant hand came down on everything
within it with a firmness and power not sensed before.
There was a blast now emerging from the tail of the flying rocket
something like that of an atomic bomb, but not quite. It was not
an explosion, but an atomic reaction. It was a rocket flare of an
intensity and heat beyond all the potential of mere chemical reactions.
It was atomic fire, chained and harnessed to the tail of a rocket.
The thin white pencil, reduced in length, raced on into the dark
stratospheric sky.
* * * * *
Back at Red Sands there was intense excitement in the control dugout.
Major Bronck was racing around, anxiously yelling into telephones,
watching the checkers, trying to keep track of everything happening at
once.
At first the ascent had been neat and according to routine. The crew in
the dugout, the radar crew at the main camp, and the one co-operating
with them from White Sands itself were checking all right. Then in an
instant all three almost lost touch as their objective nearly swooped
out of range. The trackers fought to get it back in focus, and one by
one finally caught it again, farther and faster than they had planned
for.
"It's running wild!" was the way one startled crew chief told the
major. "Going up and out like crazy!"
The crew on the tracking telescopes racing around the desert were
calling in their story. Visually they had lost it completely. They had
gotten a nice set of telescopic photos of the first phase, then they
had failed to adjust quickly enough to the unexpected second phase. Now
they were sweeping the sky desperately hoping to pick it up again, but
without success.
Major Bronck called for a check on the last and surest guide. Among the
instruments loaded in the nose of the rocket was a radio tone-signal
sender. As a last resort, they should be able to pick up that signal
from the rocket itself, confirm the story they were getting from their
radar men. But the men at the radio listening posts reported no sound.
And when the major asked if they had had it in the first place, the men
admitted that they had not. There had never been any buzz on the ether
from the rocket at all!
At that moment, the main Red Sands camp got on the phone. A voice from
the commander's office wanted to know why the instruments had not been
loaded. It seems that the man responsible for them had just turned up
at camp. Jackson had reported his jacket stolen, his pass along with it.
Therefore the instruments for whose installation he had been charged
with were still reposing in the camp! There had been a series of
bungles, the major thought, as he tried to explain the situation.
Obviously the rocket had not been checked as it should have been.
Obviously whoever had calculated the course and power of the new fuels
had erred very considerably.
"But we've still got it on radar. Yes, sir. We'll hold it. We'll
definitely see where it comes down, sir."
The major listened, white-faced, to the commander's angry spluttering.
"Yes, I know, sir. Top-secret stuff. But even if it lands a thousand
miles away, we'll know, we'll spot it. Even if it managed to assume a
satellite orbit, we could keep track of it. It's still going straight
up. It might make an orbit. If it did, there'd be no chance of it
coming down intact for foreign examination. It would probably circle
the Earth a few times in a wild ellipse and then burn up in the
atmosphere. We won't lose it."
But lose it they did. The radars held it for two hours more, until
finally it was beyond even the limits of their extended capacities. It
was going up, up, and out, and even at the last there was no sign of it
slowing down enough to form an orbit.
When they finally checked it off as permanently lost, they knew they
had witnessed the dawn of a new era. This rocket had assumed and passed
the escape velocity. It was headed out into the trackless bounds of
outer space. It would never return to Earth.
There was even speculation that its last known course might intersect
the Moon's orbit. Opinion in Washington, after all the reports were
in, was divided on that. But, in spite of the bungling, the rocket had
proved a valuable point. From that day onward, rocketry in the United
States took a new tack.
Robin Carew was dreaming. He was falling down an elevator shaft,
falling swiftly floor after floor. Looking down at him from the space
at the top of the high shaft was a gigantic face, leering at him while
stretching a giant arm down the shaft trying to reach him.
In his dream he had the curious mixed-up feeling of wishing the giant
could catch him and stop his fall and at the same time being afraid
that the giant might be successful and crush him in his huge fingers.
He was falling, falling, and squirm as he might, the bottom of this
terrible shaft was nowhere in sight.
Robin thrashed around, trying to grab a cable, trying to catch one of
the innumerable doors as they rushed past. He banged his hand against
one, grabbed tight, jerked.
His eyes snapped open, his mind struggled to gain a grasp of where
he was. Nothing seemed to make sense. It was dark and he was bumping
around in a tiny, tight space. Yet somehow he couldn't get his feet
down, he still was falling. Suddenly he felt dizzy and then became
aware of the aches all over his body.
He stopped thrashing, let himself rest. He bumped against the tight
side again, took the opportunity to stretch his body out straight and
found he could not. He was touching both sides of the narrow space.
His eyes found the space not entirely dark. A faint trace of light
showed from a couple of spots somewhere in the dark enclosure. He
realized where he was. He remembered now the take-off, the pressure.
Why, he thought with a shock, the rocket went off. And I'm in it! We
must be falling back to the sands now. In a few minutes we'll crash and
that will be the end.
He waited awhile, expecting to be snuffed out at any instant. But
there was nothing. Just silence. And now a faint rustling sound where
something was stirring and squeaking below him. The animals, he
thought, are alive in the space below me.
Then it occurred to him that he was not falling back, but perhaps
falling away. His mind, which had been numbed from the pain and
pressure, began to reassemble what he knew about rockets. And
consciously the thought formed--the sensation of free fall is the same
as the sensation of weightlessness found in space rockets. He thought
he was falling, but was it not just as likely that instead he was
simply beyond gravity?
He felt himself over for broken spots, but somehow miraculously he had
not been damaged. His eyes burned and he supposed they were bloodshot.
A smear of stickiness around his face convinced him he'd suffered a
nosebleed. But otherwise he was sound. He patted the jacket he wore and
his hand encountered the cylindrical hardness of the flashlight he'd
borrowed from the supply truck. He took it out, snapped it on.
The little padded compartment was the same, the door still tightly
wedged. He turned the light carefully around it, saw that the
faint break in the total darkness before had come from two tiny
openings--glass insets. Probably, he thought, the openings for the
instruments, possibly the lens spots for cameras.
He switched off his flashlight, put an eye to an opening. The spot
of glass was thick but amazingly clear. He caught a glimpse of
blue-black sky and a jagged line of misty gray and white, beneath which
stretched the edge of a great brown-and-green bowl. He stared at it in
puzzlement, watching it as it swung slowly away.
He realized that the rocket had developed a slow spin, that his viewing
spot would gradually circle the region around him. And he realized that
the great brownish bowl was the Earth.
From the darkness of the sky he realized that he must already be high
in the stratosphere, possibly well beyond it. From the curvature of the
horizon, he must be far up, several hundred miles, he guessed. And he
could see that the curvature was increasing as he watched. The rocket
was still traveling upward, traveling at an immense rate of speed.
Its last rockets had blasted away and had left it with a heritage of
unparalleled speed.
Robin screwed up his eyes again, mentally calculated. He revised his
estimate of his height, doubled it, redoubled it. Why, he might be a
thousand miles up, two thousand, perhaps many times that! How fast was
he traveling?
He didn't know. He couldn't tell. He remembered the talk about
atomic fuels he had overheard. Could it be that the inventors had
miscalculated? Could it be that he was already in outer space, heading
for the void, never to return to Earth?
He screwed his eye again to the outlet. In the short time since he'd
first looked the sky had darkened. It was black, jet-black, and the
stars were fiery points of white. The Earth now seemed like a ball, a
vast ball whose fringes glowed with the pale mistiness of a sun-lit
blanket of air. But where he was there was no air. He was beyond any
atmosphere. No whistling of atmospheric friction was present in the
length of the silent rocket.
And then a blinding white glow poked a piercing beam through the tiny
eye-spot. It was the sun, unshielded, brilliant. In a moment the tiny
ray vanished as the rocket continued its slow turning, but Robin in
that instant had come to realize what had happened.
He was in outer space, beyond Earth, never to return. He was the first
man to reach that untracked void that bounded on all the stars and
suns of a universe. He was the first--but who would ever know? Who
could ever hear of him, whose helpless body, imprisoned in its shining
airtight shell, now seemed doomed to float unsuspected forever on the
cosmic tides of interplanetary space?
_5. Fall Without End_
For a moment Robin felt dizzy again, and the falling sensation wracked
him. It was the weightlessness, he knew. The sensation of being without
weight was the same as that of being in free fall. And he was operating
beyond the effects of gravity. Somehow the atomic rocket fuels had been
far greater or far more effective than the inventors had calculated. He
knew that they had never intended this rocket to be shot beyond Earth's
grip--for if they had, they would not have loaded it with the test
animals and they would not have placed a parachute-release arrangement
in the nose.
However, it now occurred to him he might be wrong about this. He had
seen the reference to the parachute on the loading chart, and he now
remembered lettering indicating parachute on the body of the rocket
just above the little entryway to the topmost cargo compartment. Still,
perhaps there was no parachute there.
He squirmed around again, trying to get used to the nauseating
sensation of free fall. He felt as if he had to exert conscious effort
to keep his stomach from turning inside out. He felt an impulse to
scream, to thrash his hands, and he had to remind himself that it was
an illusion.
For a while he just rested, floating in the little space, bumping
steadily against one wall or another, with barely inches to spare. The
tiny burning sunbeam pierced through again and vanished. Robin looked
through the peephole.
It was the dead black of outer space now, a black beyond conception,
black with nothing in it to reflect. And against it an inconceivable
array of brilliant points of light--the stars in numbers beyond any
seen through the blanket of atmosphere. White, with some yellows and
reds, and a few bluish ones here and there. The Earth moved again into
sight and it was distinctly smaller--though still an impressively
vast bowl--but beginning distinctly to resemble a monstrous globe
in bas-relief, breathtakingly impressive with its living face, its
shifting misty veil of air and water vapor.
Robin became aware that he was thirsty. Yes, and hungry too. He took
stock of his situation. He felt through his pockets, came up with one
of the candy bars he had taken. He hefted it thoughtfully. Should he
eat it now or save it?
That raised the question he had been unconsciously avoiding. Save it
for what?
If he was indeed heading for the boundless regions of space, then he
was a doomed man. If he ate now, it would mean that starvation would
come sooner. If he delayed, doled it to himself in small bits, it could
only prolong the agony awhile, but would not the result still be the
same?
There was the chance, the odd chance, that the rocket somehow might yet
return to Earth. It might describe a circle, an arc, finally begin to
fall back. If it did so, the parachute would operate and perhaps land
Robin in safety.
Somehow it didn't seem likely to Robin, yet that chance existed. If so,
it would have to return to Earth before a full starvation period could
result in death. Robin had read somewhere that one could go without
food for as much as thirty days, but without water for not more than
seven or eight. If the rocket were describing an arc or a parabola,
then it would surely start its return within less than that week's
leeway.
With this in mind, Robin unwrapped the candy bar and ate it. The second
one he would save as long as possible. But what about water?
The squeaking of the test animals broke in on his thoughts. Surely
they must have been supplied with some sort of food for their flight?
Robin switched himself around to face the floor and began to dig at
the padding there. He managed to loosen it, pull it to one side,
revealing the floor of the compartment. As he had hoped, it was not
a metal plate. His own chamber, the one for the instruments, was not
a section in itself but only part of a section paneled off by braced
plasterboard. And what was more there were already holes drilled
through it so that the air in both sections would be equalized.
This answered another question Robin had been trying to avoid. How was
it the air was remaining fresh now, though it had gone stale while he
was hiding? Apparently there was a small supply of oxygen operating
automatically in the animal section that seeped through into the upper
compartment too. Evidently once the rocket went into flight this
started to work and would continue for the originally calculated period.
Robin dug his fingers into the openings and pulled. Gradually the
plasterboard bent away and opened a space into the section below. He
looked down, using his flashlight.
There were two cages below, well padded. In one, two little brown
monkeys clung together floating just above the floor and looking
terrified. They chattered when they saw him, but remained tightly
locked in each other's arms. In the other, four small rabbits were
placidly nibbling bits of lettuce, although one rabbit was upside
down, another sideways on the side of the cage.
There were a couple of small boxes set in each cage, and Robin could
see that they dispensed food and water to the animals at presumably
regular intervals. Robin reached down next to the monkeys' cage and
started to work loose the small water holder there. He found it slid
out of place once he turned the holding bolt. As he drew the little
flask upward, one of the monkeys made an effort to nip his finger, but
he withdrew it in time.
The water flask drawn up into Robin's compartment made him feel better.
This would make his stay a little more comfortable for a while. He felt
sorry for the monkeys, who might go thirsty now, but he had a suspicion
that the two little beasts were probably too hysterically frightened to
eat or drink anyway. Robin wet his throat a little.
He looked back down, reached out, and investigated the food
compartment. Sure enough, there were several bananas in the monkeys'
food container. They would do also.
He glanced around the space below again. There were the oxygen tanks,
set up with a timer, one gently hissing away. There also was a small
heating unit with a thermostat that evidently kept the temperature in
the animal division at a level--and almost certainly was doing the same
for the whole section.
Robin grimaced to himself as he worked the padding back into place
on the floor. He might manage to be quite comfortable for a while
longer--a day or so more. While there's life, there's hope, he said to
himself. Better check the parachute question, too, while I'm at it.
He reversed himself in a neatly executed weightless somersault and
making what had once been his roof the floor, worked the padding out
there. But here he was thwarted, for he found the rounded metal side of
the section's nose. If there were a parachute, it obviously occupied
its own compartment at the very tip of the rocket's nose.