The great red sun was just breaking over the desert horizon when Crag
got his last good look at earth. Its rays slanted upward, shadows fled
from the sage; the obsidian sky with its strewn diamonds became slate
gray and, in moments, a pale washed blue. Daybreak over the desert
became a thunder of light. Tiny ants had removed the last of the metal
framework encompassing the rocket. Other ants were visible making last
minute cheeks.
He returned his attention to the space cabin. Despite long months of
training in the cabin simulator--an exact replica of the Aztec
quarters--he was appalled at the lack of outside vision. One narrow
rectangular quartz window above the control panel, a circular port on
each side bulkhead and one on the floor--he had to look between his
knees to see through it when seated at the controls--provided the sole
visual access to the outside world. A single large radarscope, a radar
altimeter and other electronic equipment provided analogs of the outside
world; the reconstruction of the exterior environment painted on the
scopes by electromagnetic impulses.
The cabin was little more than a long flat-floored cylinder with most
of the instrumentation in the nose section. With the rocket in launch
position, what normally was the rear wall formed the floor. The seats
had been swiveled out to operational position.
Now they were seated, strapped down, waiting. It was, Crag thought, like
sitting in a large automobile which had been balanced on its rear
bumper. During launch and climb their backs would be horizontal to the
earth's surface.
He was thankful they were not required to wear their heavy pressure
suits until well into the moon's gravisphere. Normally pressure suits
and helmets were the order of the day. He was used to stratospheric
flight where heavy pressure suits and helmets were standard equipment;
gear to protect the fragile human form until the lower oxygen-rich
regions of the air ocean could be reached in event of trouble. But the
Aztec was an all-or-nothing affair. There were no escape provisions, no
ejection seats, for ejection would be impossible at the rocket's speeds
during its critical climb through the atmosphere. Either everything went
according to the book or ... or else, he concluded grimly. But it had
one good aspect. Aside from the heavy safety harnessing, he would be
free of the intolerably clumsy suit until moonfall. If anything went
wrong, well ...
He bit the thought off, feeling the tension building inside him. He had
never considered himself the hero type. He had prided himself that his
ability to handle hot planes was a reflection of his competence rather
than courage. Courage, to him, meant capable performance in the face of
fear. He had never known fear in any type of aircraft, hence never
before had courage been a requisite of his job. It was that simple to
him. His thorough knowledge of the Aztec's theoretical flight
characteristics had given him extreme confidence, thus the feeling of
tension was distracting. He held his hand out. It seemed steady enough.
Prochaska caught the gesture and said, "I'm a little shaky myself."
Crag grinned. "They tell me the first thousand miles are the hardest."
"Amen. After that I won't worry."
The countdown had begun. Crag looked out the side port. Tiny figures
were withdrawing from the base of the rocket. The engine of a fuel truck
sounded faintly, then died away. Everything seemed unhurried, routine.
He found himself admiring the men who went so matter-of-factly about the
job of hurling a rocket into the gulfs between planets. Once, during his
indoctrination, he had watched a Thor firing ... had seen the missile
climb into the sky, building up to orbital speed. Its launchers had been
the same sort of men--unhurried, methodical, checking the minutiae that
went into such an effort. Only this time there was a difference. The
missile contained men.
Off to one side he saw the launch crew moving into an instrumented
dugout. Colonel Gotch would be there, puffing on his pipe, his face
expressionless, watching the work of many years come to ... what?
He looked around the cabin for the hundredth time. Larkwell and Nagel
were strapped in their seats, backs horizontal to the floor, looking up
at him. The tremendous forces of acceleration applied at right angles to
the spine--transverse g--was far more tolerable than in any other
position. Or so the space medicine men said. He hoped they were right,
that in this position the body could withstand the hell ahead. He gave a
last look at the two men behind him. Larkwell wore an owlish expression.
His teeth were clamped tight, cording his jaws. Nagel's face was intent,
its lines rigid. It gave Crag the odd impression of an alabaster
sculpture. Prochaska, who occupied the seat next to him facing the
control panels, was testing his safety belts.
Crag gave him a quick sidelong glance. Prochaska's job was in many
respects as difficult as his own. Perhaps more so. The sallow-faced
electronics chief bore the responsibility of monitoring the
drones--shepherding, first Drone Able, then its sisters to
follow--across the vacuum gulfs and, finally, into Arzachel, a pinpoint
cavity in the rocky wastelands of the moon. In addition, he was charged
with monitoring, repairing and installing all the communication and
electronic equipment, no small job in itself. Yes, a lot depended on the
almost fragile man sitting alongside him. He looked at his own
harnessing, testing its fit.
Colonel Gotch came on the communicator. "Pickering's in orbit," he said
briefly. "No details yet."
Crag sighed in relief. Somehow Pickering's success augured well for
their own attempt. He gave a last check of the communication gear. The
main speaker was set just above the instrument panel, between him and
Prochaska. In addition, both he and the Chief--the title he had
conferred on Prochaska as his special assistant--were supplied with
insert earphones and lip microphones for use during high noise
spectrums, or when privacy was desired. Crag, as Commander, could limit
all communications to his own personal headgear by merely flipping a
switch. Gotch had been the architect of that one. He was a man who liked
private lines.
"Five minutes to zero, Commander."
Commander! Crag liked that. He struggled against his harnessing to
glance back over his shoulder. Nagel's body, scrunched deep into his
bucket seat, seemed pitifully thin under the heavy harnessing. His face
was bloodless, taut. Crag momentarily wondered what strange course of
events had brought him to the rocket. He didn't look like Crag's picture
of a spaceman. Not at all. But then, none of them looked like supermen.
Still, courage wasn't a matter of looks, he told himself. It was a
matter of action.
He swiveled his head around farther. Larkwell reclined next to Nagel
with eyes closed. Only the fast rise and fall of his chest told of his
inner tensions--that and the hawk-like grip of his fingers around the
arm rests. Worried, Crag thought. But we're all worried. He cast a
sidelong glance at Prochaska. The man's face held enormous calm. He
reached over and picked up the console mike, then sat for what seemed an
eternity before the countdown reached minus one minute. He plugged in
his ear-insert microphone.
"Thirty seconds...." The voice over the speaker boomed. Prochaska
suddenly became busy checking his instruments. Jittery despite his
seeming calm, Crag thought.
"Twenty seconds...." He caught himself checking his controls, as if he
could gain some last moment's knowledge from the banks of levers and
dials and knobs.
"Ten ... nine ... eight...." He experimentally pulled at his harnessing,
feeling somewhat hypnotized by the magic of the numbers coming over the
communicator.
"Three ... two...."
Crag said, "Ready on one."
He punched a button. A muted roar drifted up from the stem. He listened
for a moment. Satisfied, he moved the cut-in switch. The roar increased,
becoming almost deafening in the cabin despite its soundproofing. He
tested the radio and steering rockets and gave a last sidelong glance at
Prochaska. The Chief winked. The act made him feel better. I should be
nervous, he thought, or just plain damned scared. But things were
happening too fast. He adjusted his lip mike and reached for the
controls, studying his hand as he did so. Still steady. He stirred the
controls a bit and the roar became hellish. He chewed his lip and took a
deep breath, exhaling slowly.
He said, "Off to the moon."
Prochaska nodded. Crag moved the controls. The cabin seemed to bob,
wobble, vibrate. A high hum came from somewhere. He glanced downward
through the side port. The Aztec seemed to be hanging in mid-air just
above the desert floor. Off to one side he could see the concrete
controls dugout. The tiny figures had vanished.
He thought: _Gotch is sweating it out now_. In the past rockets had
burned on the pad ... blown up in mid-air ... plunged off course and had
to be destroyed. The idea brought his head up with a snap. Was there a
safety officer down there with a finger on a button ... prepared to
destroy the Aztec if it wavered in flight?
He cut the thought off and moved the main power switch, bringing the
control full over. The ship bucked, and the desert dropped away with a
suddenness that brought a siege of nausea. He tightened his stomach
muscles like the space medicine doctors had instructed.
The first moment was bad. There was unbelievable thunder, a fraction of
a second when his brain seemed to blank, a quick surge of fear. Up ...
up. The Aztec's rate of acceleration climbed sharply. At a prescribed
point in time the nose of the rocket moved slightly toward the east. It
climbed at an impossibly steep slant, rushing up from the earth. Crag
swept his eyes over the banks of instruments, noted the positions of the
controls, tried to follow what the faint voice in his earphone was
telling him. Dials with wavering needles ... knobs with blurry
numerals ... a cacophony of noise, light and movement--all this and
more was crowded into seconds.
The rocket hurtled upward, driven by the tidal kinetic energy generated
by the combustion of high velocity exhaust, born in an inferno of
thousands of degrees. Behind him giant thrust chambers hungrily consumed
the volatile fuel, spewing the high-pressure gases forth at more than
nine thousand miles per hour. The crushing increased, driving him
against the back of his seat. His heart began laboring ... became a
sledge hammer inside his chest wall.
He lost all sense of motion. Only the almost unendurable weight crushing
his body downward mattered. He managed a glimpse of the desert through
the side port. It lay far below, its salient details erased. The roar of
the giant motors became muted. There was a singing in his ears, a high
whine he didn't like.
The Aztec began to tilt, falling off to the right.
He cast a quick glance at the engine instruments. A red light blinked.
Number three was delivering slightly less thrust than the others.
Somewhere in the complex of machinery a mechanical sensing device
reacted. Engines one and two were throttled back and the rocket
straightened. A second device shifted the mix on engine three, bringing
thrust into balance. All three engines resumed full power.
"Twenty-five thousand feet," Prochaska chattered. His voice was tinny
over the small insert earphone provided for communications, especially
for those first few hellish moments when the whole universe seemed
collapsed into one huge noise spectrum. Noise and pressure.
"Forty-five thousand...."
They were moving up fast now--three g, four g, five g. Crag's body
weight was equal to 680 pounds. The dense reaches of the
troposphere--the weather belt where storms are born--dropped below them.
They hurtled through the rarefied, bitterly cold and utterly calm
stratosphere.
"Eighty thousand feet...."
Crag struggled to move his body. His hand was leaden on the controls, as
if all life had been choked from it. A hot metal ball filled his chest.
He couldn't breathe. Panic ... until he remembered to breathe at the top
of his lungs.
At eighteen miles a gale of wind drove west. Rudders on the Aztec
compensated, she leaned slightly into the blast, negating its drift. The
winds ceased ... rudders shifted ... the rocket slanted skyward.
Faster ... faster.
Prochaska called off altitudes almost continuously, the chattering gone
from his voice. Crag was still struggling against the pinning weight
when it decreased, vanished. The firestream from the tail pipe gave a
burst of smoke and died. _Brennschluss_--burnout.
The Aztec hurtled toward the cosmic-ray laden ionosphere, driven only by
the inertial forces generated in the now silent thrust chambers. The
hard components of cosmic rays--fast mesons, high energy protons and
neutrons--would rip through the ship. _If dogs and monkeys can take it,
so can man._ That's what Gotch had said. He hoped Gotch was right.
Somewhere, now, the first stage would fall away. It would follow them,
at ever greater distances, until finally its trajectory would send it
plunging homeward.
"Cut in." Prochaska's voice was a loud boom in the silence. A strident
voice from the communicator was trying to tell them they were right on
the button. Crag moved a second switch. The resultant acceleration drove
him against the back of his seat, violently expelling the air from his
lungs. He fought against the increasing gravities, conscious of pressure
and noise in his ears; pressure and noise mixed with fragments of voice.
His lips pulled tight against his teeth. The thudding was his heart. He
tightened his stomach muscles, trying to ease the weight on his chest. A
mighty hand was gripped around his lungs, squeezing out the air. But it
wasn't as bad as the first time. They were piercing the thermosphere
where the outside temperature gradient would zoom upward toward the
2,000 degree mark.
Prochaska spoke matter-of-factly into his lip 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. His 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," Gotch 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," Prochaska 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 the muted roar of
thrust chambers almost behind them, a noise spectrum almost solely
confined to the interior of the rocket. 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 animals had
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. Prochaska 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 Chief's hands. They began moving more certainly. Prochaska
tossed his head impatiently, 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 their present speed would impose
tremendous g forces on their 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 Able'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 flaming gas. Tiny corrections
occurred in the Drone's flight path.
"Got her lined up," Prochaska 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 presentiment crept
into his mind--a premonition of impending disaster.