When Larry Gibson returned to the ancient and seedy-looking _Sky Maid_
after a breakfast at a nearby restaurant, he paused to look at the work
in progress outside her hull. It was like nothing that he had ever
seen before. A network of interlacing wires was being bolted to the
outside of the ship's cigar-shaped hull, so that they formed a sort of
screen with the strands some two inches apart. Other men were busy at
caulking rivets and repacking insulation. This last was routine stuff
in connection with any attempt to recondition an old vessel for travel
in the thin, chill regions of the strathosphere--but he was completely
puzzled by the painstaking labor of fastening those criss-crossing
wires in place.
He found Ripon still in the vessel's dusty control room. Much of the
equipment had been ripped out when the ship was first condemned. The
missing articles had been hastily replaced with second-hand equipment
which was often of a slightly different pattern from the original, so
that the whole room had a makeshift appearance. The lean scientist
looked up from the clouds of blue and vile-smelling smoke that swirled
upward from his pipe.
"Well, young feller!" he boomed in his deep voice that could easily
carry above the dull roar of rocket motors. "How do you feel now? Ready
to go to work?"
"Listen!" Larry said. He had intended to be sharp and sarcastic, but he
was grinning in spite of himself. It was hard to stay angry with anyone
as irresponsibly cheerful as Crispin Gillingwater Ripon. "Seriously!
You couldn't take the best rocket-ship on Earth to the Moon, let
alone this old derelict. Not if you want to come back alive. It's
been proven that, by the time you reach the velocity of escape to get
away from the Earth's attraction, you have a speed too great for our
present knowledge of rocket-ship technique to brake in time to prevent
disaster...."
"_How_ has that been proven?" Ripon interrupted, jerking the pipe from
between his teeth and pointing the smoking stem at Larry as though it
were the barrel of a ray-gun.
"Why--by the two attempts that have been made! You know the story.
Two hundred years ago, at the time we had the last war on Earth, that
group of defeated outlaws stole the giant transport _Mercury_ and
started for the Moon and vanished. Then, it was only thirty years ago
that Professor Lester Staunton made his attempt in the rocket cruiser
_Orestes_, and he vanished."
"You're like all the rest," Ripon grumbled. "Always jumping to
conclusions based on a few scraps of evidence. No man on Earth really
knows how a rocket-ship would behave in interplanetary travel, because
it hasn't yet been done. There is a great mass of unproven theories
that are generally accepted as true--but those are not facts. It was
once generally accepted that the Earth was flat. However--I have a new
method of propulsion for this ship, by means of the amplification of
magnetic currents, and I expect to supplement the rockets with that new
equipment."
"I think you're crazy," Larry said, "but I'll go along with you anyway."
"Now you show the proper spirit, even if not good sense," Ripon said
cheerfully.
It was after midnight that night before the _Sky Maid_ was ready to
go. The crew were at launching stations, and the ship's old-fashioned
Diesels were rumbling as they were warmed up. Larry was standing under
the dome of duralite glass that covered the upper observation platform
when Colton came up to stand beside him.
"Well--we'll be off in a few minutes!" the swarthy second officer said.
"Wonder if we'll ever come back."
"Lord knows!" Colton shrugged, and his dark eyes were somber. "The
police of half a dozen countries are looking for me anyway. I've had my
fingers crossed the whole time we've been refitting this craft."
"Why tell me all this?" Larry asked. Colton shrugged again, and his
smile was half a sneer.
"Your own reputation isn't much better, Gibson. I figure that if this
trip works out it may give us both a chance to square ourselves, and if
it doesn't we're not much worse off than we are now."
"You may have something there," Larry admitted.
Then Ripon shouted a command, and the helicopters started to spin. Only
a handful of loafers watched the _Sky Maid_ take off. A few waved.
Others tapped their heads derisively. Man's third attempt to navigate
the 239,000 empty miles to the Moon had begun!
* * * * *
The old ship's rickety helicopters and creaking Diesels could hardly
lift her high enough to reach the level required by law before the
rockets could be started. High clouds veiled the stars, but the many
lights of New York were still visible below them when Ripon at last
cut in the rocket motors. The _Sky Maid_ shivered all along her length
as their blasting roar began, and then she started to shoot upward at
a steep angle. Her whole fabric creaked and groaned, and Larry Gibson
shook his head dubiously. A few air-leaks would be all they would need
to make their situation utterly hopeless.
The drive of the rockets carried them into the belt of clouds. For a
few seconds the glass ports were veiled by gray mist. Then they were
above the clouds and zooming upward in the cold light of the Moon. The
crew were released from their launching stations as the ship settled
down to a smooth routine, and Larry took over the watch. A minute
later he was alone in the darkened control room with the dim glow of
the varied instrument panels to keep him company. Already the air was
starting to thin out, so he closed the ports and turned on the vessel's
air-conditioning system. The atmosphere took on the faintly chemical
odor characteristic of travel in a sealed ship in the high places.
From somewhere nearby Larry could hear a deep voice lifted in song, a
voice that rose above the pulsating throb of the rockets. The words
were familiar:
"There's only a few of us left,
And we never were worth a damn,
But I'll follow my vagrant star...."
Larry wondered if Ripon was hitting the bottle again. They were in a
bad spot if he was, for certainly no one else on board understood the
new equipment that Ripon had installed to solve the difficulties that
had blocked previous attempts at interplanetary travel.
In Larry's mind there was a steadily strengthening conviction that this
whole expedition was destined to failure from the start. It was too
makeshift. Too poorly organized and planned, too lightly financed.
Ill-manned and poorly equipped, led by a drunken genius on a rickety
ship that wasn't really fit to navigate at all, they were probably
sailing to their doom somewhere in the cold reaches of outer space. If
they reached the Moon at all, it would likely be as a twisted wreck
dropped on the cold slope of one of that body's barren craters. Larry
shrugged. He had made his decision, and he did not regret it.
And then, leaning beside one of the control room's glass ports while he
kept an eye on the slowly climbing needle of the speed indicator, Larry
suddenly realized that he had found the peace of mind he had so long
been seeking. The clouds were a silvery ocean far below, the Moon was a
glowing disc ahead. The _Sky Maid_ snored onward through the night with
her rockets pounding. He was again back where he belonged, standing a
watch in a vessel's control room. Nothing else seemed to matter very
much at the moment.
Ripon came out into the control room a little later, a faded uniform
cap pushed to the back of his graying head and his empty pipe clenched
in his teeth.
"It's tough not to smoke," he rumbled glumly, "but I don't want to
put a strain on our none too good air-conditioning equipment. How are
things going?"
"Not so well," Larry said, "The rockets aren't balanced, and we have
a drift to starboard. Three micro-units in every fifteen minutes. I
have to keep cutting down the port rocket tubes for short periods to
equalize it."
"How's the speed?"
"Not what it should be." Larry looked dubiously at the indicator
needle. "Even with as much rocket power as she's got, we've only built
our speed up to a thousand miles an hour even though the atmosphere
is greatly thinned. I don't think that we can build up the necessary
velocity, Chief. I'm afraid it just can't be done."
"Okay, friend Pinzon," Ripon said. Catching Larry's look of puzzled
surprise, the gaunt scientist smiled faintly. "There was once a man
named Columbus who thought he could sail the Atlantic, which had not
been done before. He was a bit of a faker and a bluff, that Genoese
adventurer, and there was more than a touch of the charlatan in him.
The Pinzon brothers who commanded the other two ships of his fleet
knew from the start that the voyage could never succeed. I'll admit
that Columbus didn't find just what he expected to find, but he did
cross the Atlantic!" Ripon laughed, and dropped a hand on Larry's
shoulder. "Hold her on to the course a while, my friend. We're not
licked quite so soon!"
V
Ripon was still staring out the control room window at the disc of the
Moon ahead of them. His voice came somberly as he spoke without turning
around.
"What's the speed now?"
"Eleven hundred. Velocity of escape is twenty-five hundred."
"Y'know, Larry, it seems one of Fate's little ironies that the only
hope of saving the people of Earth from the Gray Death lies with this
creaking ship and her polyglot crew! Oh--I have no illusions about the
forlornness of our hope! We have no right to get through. But I'm not
entirely a fool, and I have a few aces in my sleeves. I guess it's time
to try out my magnetron controls. Stand by to cut rocket motors!"
Ripon moved to several strange-looking control boxes that had been set
up at one side of the room. Instrument dials glowed into light as he
threw a switch, and there came a faint hum.
"These tubes are the Magnetron Oscillators," Ripon said. "These
switches control the magnetic converters. This other bank governs the
selectors."
"But I don't get the general principle," Larry said.
"It's simply a selective utilization of the lines of magnetic force
that fill outer space. This ship is naturally para-magnetic, so that
she is easily permeable by the lines of force. By charging the wires
outside the hull I can make all or part of the ship diamagnetic.
Furthermore, I can change its charge so that the lines will draw in
either direction."
"I know enough of the general principles of magnetism to understand
that," Larry said. "You can vary the direction of the effect, and
perhaps vary the dynes. But...."
"This indicator shows the hysteresis loop, the lag of magnetic
indication behind the magnetizing force at any particular time,"
Ripon continued. "The heart of my system is the group of selectors and
amplifiers set up in the compartments directly below us. With them I
can select the magnetic currents suited to our course, and amplify them
till they move the ship along with them just as the lines of magnetic
force move iron filings about a bar magnet. At least," he said with
a sudden flash of his reckless smile, "that's what I think I can do.
If not, we'll probably never be heard of again. You'd better hope I'm
right, young feller!"
Ripon's craggy profile with its jutting beard was silhouetted against
the moon as he bent over his dials and switches. Twice he checked them,
then he lifted one hand.
"Ready--cut rockets!" he snapped. Larry threw over the lever of the
engine room indicator, and the roar of the rockets abruptly ceased.
The sudden silence was strangely startling to ears that had become
accustomed to that steady pounding astern. Running feet sounded in the
passage as Colton came charging into the control room to find what had
gone wrong. For a moment Larry had a sensation of falling, and then
the _Sky Maid_ danced about like a leaf in a wind. He steadied himself
by clinging to a stanchion and anxiously watched Ripon. The gaunt
scientist was hunched above his control boards like a gnome, his hands
leaping from switch to dial and back again at furious speed.
Then the motion abruptly ceased. The _Sky Maid_ became steady as a
rock, with the bright disc of the Moon dead ahead through the forward
port. There was a faint singing sound from one of the control boxes,
but otherwise everything was so quiet and still that it seemed as
though the ship lay motionless in space. Then Larry looked at the speed
indicator, and saw the needle moving steadily upward. The _Sky Maid_
was shooting through the heavens at a speed faster than she had ever
traveled when she was new and in good condition!
* * * * *
"Gentlemen," said Ripon, solemnly shaking hands with both Larry and
Colton, "this is an historic moment! This is a prelude to that day when
interplanetary travel becomes as commonplace as are rocket ship flights
through the strathosphere nowadays! No longer will the name of Crispin
Gillingwater Ripon be a thing of scorn and derision. And just wait till
I get a chance to spit in the faces of some of those living fossils
back at the National University...."
"If the ship holds together!" Larry said. Ripon sighed.
"You _would_ bring that up, young feller. But maybe our luck will hold
good. At least this method of travel is less hard on an old craft than
the steady strain of a rocket blast. If the ship holds together, we'll
be on the Moon in forty-eight hours!"
Colton was grinning broadly as Ripon left the control room a minute
later. The second officer gave the points of his mustache an added
twist, and then rubbed his hands together.
"Looks like the old goat really came through with something after all,"
he said. Larry looked at him grimly. For all Ripon's eccentricities,
he was an able man in a great many things. It annoyed Larry to hear
somebody like Colton, a confessed thief and an indifferent officer,
speak of him in quite that tone of disrespect.
"Don't speak of Doc Ripon in that way when you're with me, Colton!" he
snapped. The other man's thin mouth twisted in a sneer.
"Trying to go high hat on me, Gibson? You're no better than I am."
"If we go into that I'm likely to throw you through the bulkhead,"
Larry said evenly. "So we'll just let it go that I have some gratitude
and respect for the man who picked me up out of the gutter--even if you
haven't. Now clear out of here till it's time for you to take over the
watch."
For two days and nights the _Sky Maid_ moved steadily forward on
her way. There was, of course, neither day nor night in the airless
emptiness of outer space, but they kept routine hours on board. The
whole atmosphere of the ship had brightened and changed since Ripon's
utilization of magnetic force had proven practical. Even the slovenly
crew went around with their shoulders straighter. The feeling of gloom
and failure had been succeeded by one of optimism. Now the talk was of
whether or not they would really get the desired radium salts on the
Moon, and of what reward they would all receive when they got back to
Earth. The watch off duty started a poker game based on notes against
the rewards they all expected to get.
Ahead of the _Sky Maid_, the Moon was now a vast disc that filled
half the sky when seen from the control room ports. The bigger peaks
and craters were visible to the naked eye now. Back in the after
observation room, the dwindling but still vast profile of Earth had
taken on a strange and unfamiliar appearance. It was a lonely feeling,
to be so far from that friendly planet. Larry wondered how things were
now going there, and what had caused the spread of the Gray Death in
the first place. Probably a virus brought in on a meteor from some
unknown and unhealthy planet.
The hope of mankind resting within her rusty hull, the _Sky Maid_
slogged onward. By Earthly standards she was moving at a terrific
speed, but compared with the velocity of heavenly bodies and the
vastness of interplanetary space she crawled slowly across a small
corner of the solar system.