Haney's mouth opened, and closed, and opened again. "Rocket flames," he
gasped, "pushed back--wind--splash on hull--may melt--lighten
weight--hundred to one against----"
The odds were worse than that. The ship couldn't land because its
momentum was too great for the landing rockets to cancel out. If it had
weighed five tons instead of twenty, landing might have been possible.
Haney was saying that if the ship were to be lowered into air while
rushing irresistibly sternward despite its rockets, that the rocket
flames might be splashed out by the wind. Instead of streaking astern in
a lance-like shape, they might be pushed out like a rocket blast when it
hits the earth in a guided missile take-off. Such a blast spreads out
flat in all directions. Here the rocket flames might be spread by wind
until they played upon the hull of the ship. If they did, they might
melt it as they melted their own steel cases in firing. And
three-fourths or more of the hull might be torn loose from the cabin bow
section. So much was unlikely, but it was possible.
The impossible odds were that the four could survive even if the cabin
were detached. They were decelerating at three gravities now. If part of
the ship burned or melted or was torn away, the rocket thrust might
speed the cabin up to almost any figure. And there is a limit to the
number of gravities a man can take, even in an acceleration chair.
Nevertheless, that was what Haney proposed. They were due to be killed
anyhow. Joe tried it.
He dived into atmosphere. At 60 miles altitude a thin wailing seemed to
develop without reason. At 40 miles, the ship had lost more than two
miles per second of its speed since the landing-rockets were ignited,
and there was a shuddering in all its fabric--though because of the loss
of speed it was not as bad as the atmosphere-graze. At 30 it began to
shake and tremble. At 25 miles high there was as horrible a vibration
and as deadly a deceleration as at the air-graze. At 12 miles above the
surface of the Earth the hull temperature indicators showed the hind
part of the hull at red heat. The ship happened to be traveling backward
at several times the speed of sound, and air could not move away from
before it. It was compressed to white heat at the entering surface, and
the metal plating went to bright red heat at that point. But the hull
just aft of the rocket mouths was hotter still. There the splashing
rocket flames bathed it in intolerable incandescence. Hull plates,
braces and beams glared white----
The tip of the tail caved in. The ship's empty cargo space was
instantly filled with air at intolerable pressure and heat.
The hull exploded outward where the rocket flames played. There was a
monstrous, incredible jerking of the cabin that remained. That fraction
of the ship received the full force of the rocket thrust. They could
decelerate it at a rate of fifteen gravities or more.
They did.
Joe lost consciousness as instantly and as peacefully as if he had been
hit on the jaw.
An unknown but brief time later, he found himself listening with a
peculiar astonishment. The rockets had burned out. They had lasted only
seconds after the separation of the ship into two fragments. Radars on
the ground are authority for this. Those few seconds were extremely
important. The cabin lost an additional half-mile per second of
velocity, which was enough to make the difference between the cabin
heating up too, and the cabin being not quite destroyed.
The cabin remnant was heavy, of course, but it was an irregular object,
some twenty feet across. It was below orbital velocity, and
wind-resistance slowed it. Even so, it traveled 47 miles to the east in
falling the last 10 miles to Earth. It hit a hillside and dug itself a
70-foot crater in the ground.
But there was nobody in it, then. A little over a month before, it had
seemed to Joe that ejection seats were the most useless of all possible
pieces of equipment to have in a space ship. He'd been as much mistaken
as anybody could be. With an ejection seat, a jet pilot can be shot out
of a plane traveling over Mach one, and live to tell about it. This
crumpling cabin fell fast, but Joe stuffed Mike in an ejection seat and
shot him out. He and the Chief dragged Haney to a seat, and then the
Chief shoved Joe off--and the four of them, one by one, were flung out
into a screaming stream of air. But the ribbon-parachutes did not burst.
They nearly broke the necks of their passengers, but they let them down
almost gently.
And it was quite preposterous, but all four landed intact. Mike, being
lightest and first to be ejected, came down by himself in a fury because
he'd been treated with special favor. The Chief and Joe landed almost
together. After a long time, Joe staggered out of his space suit and
harness and tried to help the Chief, and they held each other up as they
stumbled off together in search of Haney.
When they found him he was sleeping heavily, exhausted, in a canebrake.
He hadn't even bothered to disengage his parachute harness or take off
his suit.
6
A good deal of that landing remained confused in Joe's mind. While it
was going on he was much too busy to be absorbing impressions. When he
landed, he was as completely exhausted as anybody wants to be. It was
only during the next day that he even tried to sort out his
recollections.
Then he woke up suddenly, with a muffled roaring going on all about him.
He blinked his eyes open and listened. Presently he realized what the
noise was, and wondered that he hadn't realized before. It was the
roaring of the motors of a multi-engined plane. He knew, without
remembering the details at the moment, that he and the other three were
on a plane bound across the Pacific for America. He was in a bunk--and
he felt extraordinarily heavy. He tried to move, and it was an enormous
effort to move his arm. He struggled to turn over, and found straps
holding his body down.
He fumbled at them. They had readily releasable clasps, and he loosened
them easily. After a bit he struggled to sit upright. He was horribly
heavy or horribly weak. He couldn't tell which. And each separate muscle
in his whole body ached. Twinges of pain accompanied every movement. He
sat up, swaying a little with the slow movements of the plane, and
gradually, things came back.
The landing in the ribbon-chute. They'd come down somewhere on the west
coast of India, not too far from the sea. He remembered crashing into
the edge of a thin jungle and finding the Chief, and the two of them
searching out Haney and stumbling to open ground. After laying out a
signal for air searchers, they went off into worn-out slumber while they
waited.
He remembered that there'd been a patrol of American destroyers in the
Arabian Sea, as everywhere under the orbit of the Platform. Their radar
had reported the destruction of one space ship and the frantic diving of
the other, its division into two parts, and then the tiny objects, which
flew out from the smaller cabin section, which had descended as only
ejection-seat parachutes could possibly have done. Two destroyers
steamed onward underneath those drifting specks, to pick them up when
they should come down. But the other nearby destroyers had other
business in hand.
The two trailing destroyers reached Goa harbor within hours of the
landing of the four from space. A helicopter found the first three of
them within hours after that. They were twenty miles inland and thirty
south from Goa. Mike wasn't located until the next day. He'd been shot
out of the ship's cabin earlier and higher; he was lighter, and he'd
floated farther.
But things--satisfying things--had happened in the interval. Sitting
almost dizzily on the bunk in the swiftly roaring plane while blood
began sluggishly to flow through his body, Joe remembered the gleeful,
unofficial news passed around on the destroyers. They waited for Mike to
be brought in. But they rejoiced vengefully.
The report was quite true, but it never reached the newspapers. Nobody
would ever admit it, but the rockets aimed at the returning space ships
had been spotted by Navy radar as they went up from the Arabian Sea. And
the ships of the radar patrol couldn't do anything about the rockets,
but they could and did converge savagely upon the places from which they
had been launched. Planes sped out to spot and bomb. Destroyers arrived.
Somewhere there was a navy department that could write off two modern
submarines with rocket-launching equipment, last heard from west of
India. American naval men would profess bland ignorance of any such
event, but there were acres of dead fish floating on the ocean where
depth-bombs had hunted down and killed two shapes much too big to be
fish, which didn't float when they were killed and which would never
report back how they'd destroyed two space ships. There'd be seagulls
feasting over that area, and there'd be vague tales about the happening
in the bazaars of Hadhramaut. But nobody would ever admit knowing
anything for certain.
But Joe knew. He got to his feet, wobbling a little bit in the soaring
plane. He ached everywhere. His muscles protested the strain of holding
him erect. He held fast, summoning strength. Before his little ship
broke up he'd been shaken intolerably, and his body had weighed half a
ton. Where his safety-belt had held him, his body was one wide bruise.
There'd been that killing acceleration when the ship split in two. The
others--except Mike--were in as bad a case or worse. Haney and the Chief
were like men who'd been rolled down Mount Everest in a barrel. All of
them had slept for fourteen hours straight before they even woke up for
food. Even now, Joe didn't remember boarding this plane or getting into
the bunk. He'd probably been carried in.
Joe stood up, doggedly, until enough strength came to him to justify his
sitting down again. He began to dress. It was astonishing how many
places about his body were sore to the touch. It was startling how heavy
his arms and legs felt, and how much of an effort even sitting erect
was. But he began to remember Mike's adventure, and managed to grin
feebly. It was the only thing worth a smile in all the things that had
happened.
Because Mike's landing had been quite unlike the others. Joe and the
Chief landed near the edge of a jungle. Haney landed in a canebrake. But
Mike came floating down from the sky, swaying splendidly, into the
estate of a minor godling.
He was relatively unharmed by the shaking-up he'd had. The strength of
muscles depends on their cross-section, but their weight depends on
their volume. The strength of a man depends on the square of his size,
but his weight on the cube. So Mike had taken the deceleration and the
murderous vibration almost in his stride. He floated longer and landed
more gently than the rest.
Joe grinned painfully at the memory of Mike's tale. He'd come on board
the rescue destroyer in a towering, explosive rage. When his
ribbon-parachute let him down out of the sky, it deposited him gently on
ploughed fields not far from a small and primitive Hindu village. He'd
been seen to descend from the heavens. He was a midget--not as other
men--and he was dressed in a space suit with glittering metal harness.
The pagan villagers greeted him with rapture.
When the searching-party found Mike, they were just in time to prevent a
massacre--by Mike. Adoring natives had seized upon him, conveyed him in
high state to a red mud temple, seemingly tried to suffocate him with
evidences of their pride and joy at his arrival, and dark-skinned
maidens were trying hopefully to win his approval of their dancing. But
the rescue-party found him with a club in his hand and blood in his eye,
setting out furiously to change the tone of his reception.
Joe still didn't know all the details, but he tried to concentrate on
what he did know as he put his uniform on again. He didn't want to think
how little it meant, now. The silver space ship badge didn't mean a
thing, any more. There weren't any more space ships. The Platform wasn't
a ship, but a satellite. There'd never been but two ships. Both had
ceased to exist.
Joe walked painfully forward in the huge, roaring plane. The motors made
a constant, humming thunder in his ears. It was not easy to walk. He
held on to handholds as he moved. But he progressed past the bunk space.
And there was Mike, sitting at a table and stuffing himself with good
honest food. There was a glass port beside him, and Joe caught a glimpse
of illimitable distances filled with cloud and sky and sea.
Mike nodded. He didn't offer to help Joe walk. That wouldn't have been
practical. He waited until Joe sank into a seat opposite.
"Good sleep?" asked Mike.
"I guess so," said Joe. He added ruefully, "It hurts to nod, and I think
it would hurt worse to shake my head. What's the matter with me, Mike? I
didn't get banged up in the landing!"
"You got banged up before you landed," said Mike. "Worse than that, you
spent better than six weeks out of gravity, where in an average day you
took less actual exercise than a guy in bed with two broken legs!"
Joe eased himself back into his chair. He felt about 600 years old.
Somebody poked a head into view and withdrew it. Joe lifted his arm and
regarded it.
"Weighty! I guess you're right, Mike."
"I know I'm right!" said Mike. "If you spent six weeks in bed you'd
expect to feel wobbly when you tried to walk. Up on the Platform you
didn't even use energy to stand up! We didn't realize it, but we were
living like invalids! We'll get our strength back, but next time we'll
take measures. Huh! Take a trip to Mars in free fall, and by the time a
guy got there his muscles'd be so flabby he couldn't stand up in
half-gravity! Something's got to be done about that, Joe!"
Joe said sombrely, "Something's got to be done about space ships before
that comes up again!"
Somebody appeared with a tray. There was food on it. Smoking hot food.
Joe looked at it and knew that his appetite, anyhow, was back to Earth
normal.
"Thanks!" he mumbled appreciatively, and attacked the food.
Mike drank his coffee. Then he said, "Joe, do you know anything about
powder metallurgy?"
Joe shrugged. It hurt. "Powder metallurgy? Yes, I've seen it used, at my
father's plant. They've made small precision parts with it. Why?"
"D'you know if anybody ever made a weld with it?" asked Mike.
Joe chewed. Then he said:
"I think so. Yes. At the plant they did. They had trouble getting the
surfaces properly cleaned for welding. But they managed it. Why?"
"One more question," said Mike tensely. "How much Portland cement is
used to make a cubic yard of concrete?"
"I wouldn't know," admitted Joe. "Why? What's all this about?"
"Haney and the Chief. Those two big apes have been kidding me--as long
as they could stay awake--for what happened to me when I landed. Those
infernal savages--" Mike seethed. "They got my clothes off and they had
me smeared all over with butter and forty-'leven necklaces around my
neck and flowers in my hair! They thought I was some kind of heathen
god! Hanuman, somebody told me. The Hindu monkey-god!" He raged. "And
those two big apes think it's funny! Joe, I never knew I _knew_ all the
words for the cussings I gave those heathen before our fellas found me!
And Haney and the Chief will drive me crazy if I can't slap 'em down!
Powder metallurgy does the trick, from what you told me. That's okay,
then."
He stood up and stalked toward the front of the plane. Joe roused
himself with an effort. He turned to look about him. Haney lay slumped
in a reclining chair, on the other side of the plane cabin. His eyes
were closed. The Chief lay limply in another chair. He smiled faintly at
Joe, but he didn't try to talk. He was too tired. The return to normal
gravity bothered him, as it did Joe.
Joe looked out the window. In neat, geometric spacing on either side of
the transport there were fighter jets. There was another flight above
and farther away. Joe saw, suddenly, a peeling-off of planes from the
farther formation. They dived down through the clouds. He never knew
what they went to look for or what they found. He went groggily back to
his bunk in a strange and embarrassing weakness.
He woke when the plane landed. He didn't know where it might be. It was,
he knew, an island. He could see the wide, sun-baked white of the
runways. He could see sea-birds in clouds over at the edge. The plane
trundled and lurched slowly to a stop. A service-truck came growling
up, and somebody led cables from it up into the engines. Somebody
watched dials, and waved a hand.
There was silence. There was stillness. Joe heard voices and footsteps.
Presently he heard the dull booming of surf.
The plane seemed to wait for a very long time. Then there was a faint,
faint distant whine of jets, and a plane came from the east. It was
first a dot and then a vague shape, and then an infinitely graceful dark
object which swooped down and landed at the other end of the strip. It
came taxiing up alongside the transport ship and stopped.
An officer in uniform climbed out, waved his hand, and walked over to
the transport. He climbed up the ladder and the pilot and co-pilot
followed him. They took their places. The door closed. One by one, the
jets chugged, then roared to life.
The officer talked to the pilot and co-pilot for a moment. He came down
the aisle toward Joe. Mike the midget regarded him suspiciously.
The plane stirred. The newly arrived officer said pleasantly, "The Navy
Department's sent me out here, Kenmore, to be briefed on what you know
and to do a little briefing in turn."
The transport plane turned clumsily and began to taxi down the runway.
It jolted and bumped over the tarmac, then lifted, and Joe saw that the
island was nearly all airfield. There were a few small buildings and
distance-dwarfed hangars. Beyond the field proper there was a ring of
white surf. That was all. The rest was ocean.
"I haven't much briefing to do," admitted Joe.
Then he looked at the briefcase the other man opened. It had sheets and
sheets of paper in it--hundreds, it seemed. They were filled with
questions. He'd be called on to find answers for most of them, and to
admit he didn't know the answers to the rest. When he was through with
this questioning, every possible useful fact he knew would be on file
for future use. And now he wrily recognized that this was part payment
for the efficiency and speed with which the Navy had trailed them on
their landing, and for the use of a transport plane to take them back to
the United States.
"I'll try to answer what I can," he said cautiously. "But what're you to
brief me about?"
"That you're not back on Earth yet," said the officer curtly, pulling
out the first sheaf of questions. "Officially you haven't even started
back. Ostensibly you're still on the Platform."
Joe blinked at him.
"If your return were known," continued the lieutenant, "the public would
want to make heroes of you. First space travelers, and so on. They'd
want you on television--all of you--telling about your adventures and
your return. Inevitably, what happened to your ship would leak out. And
if the public knew you'd been waylaid and shot down there'd be demands
that the government take violent action to avenge the attack. It'd be
something like the tumult over the sinking of the _Maine_, or the
_Lusitania_--or even Pearl Harbor. It's much better for your return to
be a secret for now."
Joe said wrily: "I don't think any of us want to be ridden around to
have ticker-tape dumped on us. That part's all right. I'm sure the
others will agree."
"Good! One more difficulty. We had two space ships. Now we have none.
Our most likely enemies haven't only been building rockets, they've got
a space fleet coming along. Intelligence just found out they're nearly
ready for trial trips. They've been yelling to high heaven that we were
building a space fleet to conquer the world. We weren't. They were. And
it looks very much as if they may have beaten us."
The lieutenant got out the dreary mass of papers, intended to call for
every conscious or unconscious observation Joe might have made in space.
It was the equivalent of the interviews extracted from fliers after a
bombing raid, and it was necessary, but Joe was very tired.