"But I haven't told you the toughest part of it yet," Miss Eagen went
on inexorably. "A ship as massive as this, spinning on its long axis,
is a pretty fair gyroscope. It doesn't want to turn. Any force that
tries to make it turn is resisted at right angles to the force applied.
When that force is applied momentarily from jets, as they swing into
position and away again, the firing formulas get--well, complex. And
the ship's course and landing approach are completely new. Instead
of letting the ship fall to the Moon, turning over and approaching
tail-first with the main jets as brakes, Captain McHenry is going to
have to start the spin first and go almost the whole way nose-first.
He'll come up on the Moon obliquely, pass it, stop the spin, turn over
once to check the speed of the ship, and once again to put the tail
down when the Moon's gravity begins to draw us in. There'll be two
short periods of free-fall there, but they won't be long enough to
bother you much. And if we can do all that with the fuel we've got, it
will be a miracle. A miracle from the brain of Captain McHenry."
Marcia forced herself away from the bulkhead with a small whimper of
hurt and hatred--hatred of the stars, of this knowledgeable, inspired
girl, and--even more so--of herself. She darted toward the door.
Miss Eagen was beside her in an instant, a hard small hand on her arm.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to stop him. He can't take that chance with his ship, with
these people...."
"He will and he must. You surely know your husband."
"I know him as well as you do."
* * * * *
Miss Eagen's firm lips shut in a thin hard line. "Do as you like," she
whispered. "And while you're doing it--think about whom he's spinning
ship for." She took her hand from Marcia's arm.
Marcia twisted away and went into the corridor.
She found herself at the entrance to the pilot room. In one sweeping
glance she saw a curved, silver board. Before it a man sat tranquilly.
Nearer to her was Jack, hunched over the keyboard of a complex, compact
machine, like a harried bookkeeper on the last day of the month.
Her lips formed his name, but she was silent. She watched him, his
square, competent hands, his detached and distant face. Through the
forward view-plate she saw a harsh, jagged line, the very edge of the
Moon's disc. Next to it, and below, was the rear viewer, holding the
shimmering azure shape of Earth.
"_All Earth watches me when I work, but with your eyes._"
Jack had said that to her once, long ago, when he still loved her.
"... human damnfoolishness botching up the equations...." He had said
that once, too.
Miss Eagen was standing by the hospital door, watching her. When Marcia
turned away without speaking to Jack, Miss Eagen smiled and held out
her hand.
Marcia went to her and took the hand. They went into the hospital. Miss
Eagen didn't speak; she seemed to be waiting.
"Yes, I know who Jack's spinning the ship for," said Marcia.
Miss Eagen looked an unspoken question.
Marcia said, painfully, "He's like the Captain of the _Elsinore_. He's
risking his life for a--a stranger. A jaywalker. Not for me. Not even
for his baby."
"Does it hurt to know that?"
Marcia looked into the smooth, strong face and said with genuine
astonishment, "Hurt? Oh, no! It's so--so big!"
There was a sudden thunder. Over Miss Eagen's shoulder, through the
port, Marcia saw the stars begin to move. Miss Eagen followed her gaze.
"He's started the spin. You'll be all right now."
* * * * *
Marcia could never recall the rest of the details of the trip. There
was the outboard bulkhead that drew her like a magnet, increasingly,
until suddenly it wasn't an attracting wall, but normally and naturally
"down." Then a needle, and another one, and a long period of deep
drowsiness and unreality.
But through and through that drugged, relaxed period, Jack and the
stars, the Moon and Sue Eagen danced and wove. Words slipped in and out
of it like shreds of melody:
"A man comes to love the things he has to fight for." And Jack
fighting--for his ship, for the Moon, for the new-building traditions
of the great ones who would carry humanity out to the stars.
Sue Eagen was there, too, and the thing she shared with Jack. Of course
there was something between them--so big a thing that there was
nothing for her to fear in it.
Jack and Sue Eagen had always had it, and always would have; and now
Marcia had it too. And with understanding replacing fear, Marcia was
free to recall that Jack had worked with Sue Eagen--but it was Marcia
that he had loved and married.
* * * * *
There was a long time of blackness, and then a time of agony, when
she was falling, falling, and her lungs wanted to split, explode,
disintegrate, and someone kept saying, "Hold tight, Marcia; hold tight
to me," and she found Sue Eagen's cool strong hands in hers.
_Marcia. She called me Marcia._
More blackness, more pain--but not so much this time; and then a long,
deep sleep.
A curved ceiling, but a new curve, and soft rose instead of the
gunmetal-and-chrome of the ship. White sheets, a new feeling of "down"
that was unlike either Earth or the ship, a novel and exhilarating
buoyancy. And kneeling by the bed--
"Jack!"
"You're all right, honey."
She raised herself on her elbow and looked out through the unglazed
window at the ordered streets of the great Luna Dome. "The Moon....
Jack, you did it!"
He snapped his fingers. He looked like a high-school kid. "Nothin' to
it." She could see he was very proud. Very tired, too. He reached out
to touch her.
She drew back. "You don't have to be sweet to me," she said quietly. "I
understand how you must feel."
"Don't _have_ to?" He rose, bent over her, and slid his arms around
her. He put his face into the shadowed warmth between her hair and her
neck and said, "Listen, egghead, there's no absolute scale for courage.
We had a bad time, both of us. After it was over, and I had a chance
to think, I used it trying to look at things through your eyes. And
that way I found out that when you walked up that gangway, you did the
bravest thing I've ever known anyone to do. And you did it for me. It
doesn't matter what else happened. Sue told me a lot about you that I
didn't know, darling. You're ... real huge for your size. As for the
bad part of what happened--nothing like it can ever happen again, can
it?"
He hugged her. After a time he reached down and touched her swelling
waist. It was like a benediction. "He'll be born on the Moon," he
whispered, "and he'll have eyes the color of all Earth when it looks
out to the stars."
"_She'll_ be born on the Moon," corrected Marcia, "and her name will be
Sue, and ... and she'll be almost as good as her father."