* * * * *
Making his way from square to square of the big rope hairnet that
served as guidelines on the outer surface of the big wheel, Mike
Blackhawk completed his inspection of the gold-plated plastic hull,
with its alternate dark and shiny squares.
He had scanned every foot of the curved surface in this first
inspection, familiarizing himself completely with that which other men
had constructed from his drawings, and which he would now take over
in the capacity of chief engineer.
Mike attached his safety line to a guideline leading to the south
polar lock and kicked off, satisfied that the lab was ready for the
job of turning on the spin with which he would begin his three months
tour of duty aboard.
The laws of radiation exposure set the three-month deadline to service
aboard the lab, and he had timed his own tour aboard to start as the
ship reached completion, and the delicate job of turning her was ready
to begin.
U.N. Space Lab One was man's largest project to date in space. It
might not be tremendous in size by earth standards of construction,
but the two hundred thirty-two foot wheel represented sixty-four
million pounds of very careful engineering and assembly that had been
raised from Earth's surface to this thirty-six-hour orbit.
Many crews had come and gone in the eighteen months since the first
payload had arrived at this orbit--but now the first of the scientists
for whom the lab was built were aboard; and the pick of the crews
selected for the construction job had been shuttled up for the final
testing and spin-out.
Far off to Mike's left and slightly below him a flicker of flame
caught his eye, and he realized without even looking down that the
retro-rockets of the shuttle on which he had arrived were slowly
putting it out of orbit and tipping it over the edge of the long
gravitic well back to Earth. It would be two weeks before it returned.
Nearing the lock he grasped the cable with one hand, slowing himself,
turned with the skill of an acrobat, and landed catlike, feet first,
on the stat-magnetic walk around the lock.
He had gone over, minutely, the inside of the satellite before coming
to its surface. Now there was only one more inspection job before he
turned on the spin.
Around this south polar hub-lock, which would rotate with the wheel,
was the stationary anchor ring on which rode free both the stat-walk
and the anchor tubes for the smaller satellites that served as distant
components of the mother ship.
Kept rigid by air pressure, any deviation corrected by pressure tanks
in the stationary ring, the tubes served both to keep the smaller
bodies from drifting too close to Space Lab One, and prevented their
drifting off.
The anchor tubes were just over one foot in diameter, weighing less
than five ounces to the yard--gray plastic and fiber, air-rigid
fingers pointing away into space--but they could take over two
thousand pounds of compression or tension, far more than needed for
their job, which was to cancel out the light drift motion caused by
crews kicking in or out, or activities aboard. Uncanceled, these
motions might otherwise have caused the baby satellites to come
nudging against the space lab; or to scatter to the stars.
There had been talk of making them larger, so that they might also
provide passageway for personnel without the necessity for suiting up;
but as yet this had not been done. Perhaps later they would become
the forerunners of space corridors in the growing complex that would
inevitably develop around such a center of man's activities as this
laboratory in its thirty-six hour orbit.
At the far end of the longest anchor tube, ten miles away and barely
visible from here, was located the unshielded, remote-controlled power
pile that supplied the necessary energy for the operation of the
wheel. Later, it was hoped, experimental research now in progress
would make this massive device unnecessary. Solar energy would make an
ideal replacement; but as yet the research was not complete, and solar
energy had not yet been successfully harnessed for the high power
requirements of the Lab.
Inside this anchor tube ran the thick coaxial cable that fed
three-phase electric power from the atomic pile to the ship.
At the far end of the second anchor tube, five miles off in space, was
Project Hot Rod, the latest in the long series of experiments by which
man was attempting to convert the sun's radiant energy to useful
power.
At the end of the third anchor tube, and comparatively near the ship,
was the dump--a conglomeration of equipment, used and unused booster
rocket cases, oddments of all sorts, some to be installed aboard the
wheel, others to be used as building components of other projects; and
some oddments of materials that no one could have given a logical
reason for keeping at all except that they "might be useful"--all held
loosely together by short guidelines to an anchor ring at the tube's
end.
* * * * *
Carefully, Mike checked the servo-motor that would maintain the
stationary position of the ring with clocklike precision against the
drag of bearing friction and the spin of the hub on which it was
mounted; then briefly looked over the network of tubes before entering
the air lock.
Inside, he stripped off the heavy, complicated armor of an articulated
spacesuit, with its springs designed to compensate for the Bourdon
tube effect of internal air pressure against the vacuum of space,
appearing in the comfortable shorts, T-shirt, and light, knit
moccasins with their thin, plastic soles, that were standard wear for
all personnel.
He was ready to roll the wheel.
Feeling as elated as a schoolboy, Mike dove down the central axial
tube of the hub, past the passenger entrances from the rim, the
entrances to the bridge and the gymnasium-shield area, to the
engineering quarters just below the other passenger entrances from the
rim, and the observatory that occupied the north polar section of the
hub.
The engineering quarters, like all the quarters of the hub, were
thirty-two feet in diameter. Ignoring the ladder up the flat wall,
Mike pushed out of the port in the central axis tunnel and dropped to
the circular floor beside the power console.
Strapping himself down in the console seat, he flipped the switch
that would connect him with Systems Control Officer Bessandra Khamar
at the console of the ship's big computer, acronymically known as Sad
Cow.
"Aiee-yiee, Bessie! It's me, Chief Blackhawk!" he said irreverently
into the mike. "Ready to swing this buffalo!"
Bessie's mike gave its preliminary hum of power, and he could almost
feel her seeking out the words with which to reprimand him. Then,
instead, she laughed.
"_Varyjat!_ Mike, haven't you learned yet how to talk over an
intercom? Blasting a girl's eardrums at this early hour. It's no way
to maintain beautiful relationships and harmony. I'm still waiting for
my second cup of coffee," she added.
"Wait an hour, and this cup of coffee you shall have in a cup instead of a
baby bottle," Mike told her cheerfully. "Space One's checked out ready to
roll. Want to tell our preoccupied slipstick and test-tube boys in the rim
before we roll her, or just wait and see what happens? They shouldn't get
too badly scrambled at one-half RPM--that's about .009 gee on the
rim-deck--and I sort of like surprises!"
"No, you don't" Bessie said severely. "No, you don't. They need an
alert, and I need to finish the programming on Sad Cow to be sure this
thing doesn't wobble enough to shake us all apart. Even at a half RPM,
your seams might not hold with a real wobble, and I don't like the
idea of falling into a vacuum bottle as big as the one out there
without a suit."
"How much time do you need?"
"On my mark, make it T minus thirty minutes. That ought to do it.
O.K., here we go." There was a brief pause, then Bessie's voice came
formally over the all-stations annunciator system.
"Now hear this. Now hear this. All personnel. On my mark it is T minus
thirty minutes to spin-out check. According to program, acceleration
will begin at zero, and the rim is expected to reach .009 gee at
one-half revolutions per minute in the first sixty seconds of
operation. We will hold that spin until balance is complete, when the
spin will slowly be raised to two revolutions per minute, giving .15
gee on the rim deck.
"All loose components and materials should be secured. All personnel
are advised to suit up, strap down and hang on. We hope we won't shake
anybody too much. Mark and counting."
Almost immediately on the announcement came another voice over the com
line. "Hold, hold, hold. We've got eighteen hundred pounds of milling
equipment going down Number Two shaft to the machine shop, and we
can't get it mounted in less than twenty minutes. Repeat, hold the
countdown."
"The man who dreamed up the countdown was a Brain," Bessie could hear
Mike muttering over his open intercom, "but the man who thought up the
hold was a pure genius."
"Holding the countdown." It was Bessie's official voice. "It is T
minus thirty and holding. Why are you goons moving that stuff ahead
of schedule and without notifying balance control? What do you think
this is, a rock-bound coast? Think we're settled in to bedrock like
New York City? I should have known," she muttered, forgetting to flip
the switch off, "my horoscope said this would be a shaky sort of day."
Chad Clark glanced up from his position at the communications console
across the bridge from Bessie, to where her shiny black hair, cut
short, framed the pert Eurasian features of the girl that seemed to be
hanging from the ceiling above him.
"Is it really legal," he asked, "using such a tremendously complicated
chunk of equipment as the Sacred Cow for casting horrible scopes?
What's mine today, Bessie? Make it a good one, and I won't report you
to U.N. Budget Control!"
"Offhand, I'd say today was your day to be cautious, quiet and
respectful to your betters, namely me. However," she added in a
conciliatory tone, "since you put it on a Budget Control basis, I'll
ask the Cow to give you a real, mathematicked-out, planets and houses
properly aligned, reading.
"Hey, Perk!" Her finger flipped the observatory com line switch. "Have
you got the planets lined up in your scopes yet? Where are they? The
Sacred Cow wants to know if they're all where they ought to be."
Out in the observatory, designed to swing free on the north polar axis
of the big wheel, Dr. P. E. R. Kimball, PhD, FRAS, gave a startled
glance at the intercom speaker.
"I did not realize that you would wish additional observational data
before the swing began. I am just getting my equipment lined up, in
preparation for the beginnings of the swing, and will be unable to
give you figures of any accuracy for some hours yet. Any reading I
could give you now would be accurate only to within two minutes of
arc--relatively valueless." The voice was cheerful, but very precise.
"Anything within half an hour of arc right now would be O.K." Bessie's
voice hid a grin.
"In that case, the astronomical almanac data in the computer's memory
should be more than sufficiently precise for your needs." There was a
dry chuckle. "Horoscopes again?"
* * * * *
As Bessie turned back to the control side of her console, she saw a
hand reach past her to pick up a pad of paper and pencil from the
console desk. She glanced around to find Mike leaning over her
shoulder, and grinned at him as she began extracting figures from the
computer's innards for a "plus or minus thirty seconds of arc"
accuracy.
Mike sketched rapidly as she worked, and she turned as she heard him
mutter a disgusted curse.
"These are angular readings from our present position," he said in an
annoyed tone. "Get the Cow to rework them into a solar pattern."
"Yes, sir, Chief Blackhawk, sir. What did you think I was doing?"
"You're getting them into the proper houses for a horoscope. I want a
solar pattern. Now tell that Sacred Cow that you ride herd on to give
me a polar display pattern on one of the peepholes up there," he said,
glancing at the thirty-six video screens above the console on which
the computer could display practically any information that might be
desired, including telescopic views, computational diagrams, or even
the habitats of the fish swimming in the outer rim channels.
The display appeared in seconds on the main screen, and Mike growled
as he saw it.
"Have the Cow advance that pattern two days," he said furiously. Then,
as the new pattern emerged, "I should have known it. It looks like
we're being set up for a solar flare. Right when we're getting
rolling. It might be a while, though. Plenty of time to check out a
few gee swings. But best you rehearse your slipstick jockeys in
emergency procedures."
"A flare, Mike? Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm not sure. But those planets sure make the conditions
ripe. Look." And he held his pencil across the screen as a straight
line dividing the pattern neatly through the center.
"Look at the first six orbits, Jupiter's right on the line. And
Mercury won't be leaving until Jupe crosses that line." The "line"
that Mike had indicated with his pencil across the screen would have,
in the first display shown all but one of the first six planets
already on the same side of the sun and in the new display, two days
later, it showed all six of the planets bunched in the 180 deg. arc with
Earth only a few degrees from the center of that arc.
"Hadn't thought to check before," he said, "but that's about as
predictable as anything the planets can tell you. We can expect a
flare, and probably a dilly."
"Why, Mike? If a solar flare were due, U.N. Labs wouldn't have
scheduled us this way. What makes you so sure that means there's a
solar flare coming? I thought they weren't predictable?"
"It's fairly new research--but fairly old superstition," Mike said.
"You play with horoscopes--but my people have been watching the stars
and predicting for many moons. I remember what they used to say around
the old tribal fires.
"When the planets line up on one side of the sun, you get trouble from
man and beast and nature. We weren't worried about radio propagation
in those days, but we were worried about seasons, and how we felt, and
when the buffalo would be restless.
"More recently some of the radio propagation analysts have been
worrying about the magnetic storms that blank out communications on
Earth occasionally when old Sol opens up with a broadside of protons.
Surely plays hell with communications equipment.
"Yep, there's a flare coming. Whether it's caused by gravitational
pull, when you get the planets to one side of Sol; or whether it's
magnetism--I just don't know."
"Shucks," she said, "we had a five-planet line-up in 1961; and nothing
happened; nothing at all. The seers--come to think of it, some of them
were Indians, but from India," she added, "not Amerinds--the seers all
predicted major catastrophes and the end of the world and all kinds of
things, and nothing happened."
"Bessie," Mike's voice was serious. "I remember 1961 as well as you
do. You had several factors that were different then--but you had
solar flares then. Quite spectacular ones. You just weren't out here,
where they make a difference of life or death.
"Don't let anybody hold us too long getting this station lined up and
counted down and tested out. Because we've got things building up out
there, and we may get that flare, and it may not be two days coming,"
he finished.
With that the Amerind sprang catlike to a hand-hold on the edge of the
central tunnel and vanished back towards the engineering station, from
which he would control the test-spin of the big wheel.
* * * * *
Bessandra Khamar, educated in Moscow, traced her ancestry back to one
of the Buryat tribes of southern Siberia, a location that had become
eventually, through the vast vagaries of history, known as the Buryat
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
She was of a proud, clannish people, with Mongolian ancestry and a
Buddhist background which had not been too deeply scarred by the
political pressures from Western Russia. Rebellious of nature, and of
a race of people where women fought beside their men in case of
necessity, she had first left her tribal area to seek education in the
more advanced western provinces with a vague idea of returning to
spread--not western ideologies amongst her people--but perhaps some of
their know-how. This she had found to be a long and involved process;
and more and more, with an increase of education, she had grown away
from her people, the idea of return moving ever backwards and
floundering under the impact of education.
She had been an able student, though independent and quite
argumentative, with a mind and will of her own that caused a shaking
of heads amongst her fellow students.
Having sought knowledge in what, to her, were the western provinces of
her own country, she had delved not only into the knowledge of things
scientific, but into the wheres and whyfores of the political
situations that made a delineation between the peoples of Russia and
the other peoples of the world.
Somehow she had been accepted as part of a trade mission to South
America, and with that first trip out of her own country her horizons
had broadened. Carefully she had nurtured that which pleased others in
such a way that she had been recommended to other, similar tasks. And
eventually she had gone to the U.N. on an extended tour of duty. It
was here for the first time that she had heard of the recruitment of a
staff for the new U.N. Space Lab project, and here she had made a
basic decision: To seek a career, not in her own country or back among
the peoples of her own clan, but in the U.N. itself, where she could
better satisfy the urge to know more of all people.
[Illustration]
She had, of course, been educated in a time of change. As a child she
had attended compulsory civilian survival classes, as had nearly every
person in the vast complex of the Soviet Union. She had learned about
atomic weapons; and that other peoples for unknown reasons as far as
she could determine, might declare her very safety and life forfeit to
causes she did not understand.
Later, as she had made her way westward seeking reasons and causes for
these possible disasters, and more knowledge in general, her country
had undergone what amounted to a revolutionary change. Not only her
country, but the entire world had moved during her lifetime from an
armed camp or set of camps with divided interests and the ability for
total annihilation, towards a seeking of common goals--towards a
seeking of common understandings.
The catastrophe that had threatened to engulf the entire world and
claim the final conquest had occurred while she was a very junior
student in Moscow, when the two major nations that were leaders--or
had thought themselves to be leaders, so far as atomic weaponry and
such were concerned--had stood almost side by side in horror, and
attempted to halt the conflagration that had been sparked by a single
bomb landed on the mainland of China by Formosa.
While Russia and the United States had stood forth in the U.N. and
renounced any use of atomic weapons, the short and bitter struggle
which reached its termination in a mere five days had brought the
world staggering to the ultimate brink of atomic war, as the Formosan
Chinese made their final bid for control of mainland China.
The flare of atomic conflict had been brief and horrible. Where the
bombs had come from had been the subject of acrimonious accusations on
the floor of the U.N. The United States had forsworn knowledge, and
for a time no one had been able to say from whence they had come.
Later, shipping records had proven their source in the Belgian Congo
as raw material, secretly prepared and assembled on Formosa itself,
and it became obvious to the entire world that an atomic weapon was
not something that could be hidden in secrecy from the desires of
desperate men.
* * * * *
The Chinese mainland had responded with nuclear weapons of its own;
weapons they, too, had not been known to possess, but had possessed.
That the rest of the world had not been sucked into the holocaust was
a credit to the statesmen of both sides. That disarmament was agreed
to by all nations was a matter of days only from the parallel but
unilateral decisions of both Russia and the United States, that
disarmament must be accomplished while there was yet time.
Under the political pressures backed by the human horror of all
nations, the nuclear disarmament act of the U.N. had given to the U.N.
the power of inspection of any country or any manufacturing complex
anywhere in the world; inspection privileges that overrode national
boundaries and considerations of national integrity, and a police
force to back this up--a police force comprised of men from every
nation, the U.N. Security Corps.
The United Nations, from a weak but hopeful beginning, had now stepped
forth in its own right as an effective world government. There was no
political unity at a lower echelon amongst the states or
sub-governments of the world. To each its own problems. To each its
own ideologies. To each, help according to its needs from the various
bureaus of the U.N. And from each the necessary taxes for the support
of the world organization.
In Russia the ideology of Marx-Lenin was still present. And in other
countries other ideologies were freely supported. But the world could
no longer afford an outright conflict of ideologies, and U.N. Security
was charged not only with the seeking out and destruction of possible
hoards of atomic weapons, but also with the seeking out and muzzling
of those who expressed an ideology at all costs, even the cost of the
final suicide of war, to their neighbors.
No hard and fast rules could be drawn to distinguish between a casual
remark made in another country as to one's preference for one's own
country, and an active subversion design to subvert another country to
one's own ideology. But nevertheless, the activity of subversion had
become an illegal act under the meaning of "security." And individual
governments had recalled agents from their neighboring countries--not
only agents, but simple tourists as well. For the stigma of having an
agent arrested in another country and brought to trial at the U.N. was
a stigma that no government felt it could afford.
Over the world settled a pall. The one place outside of one's own
country, where one's ideology could be spoken of with impunity, was
within the halls of the U.N. Assembly itself, under the aegis of
diplomatic immunity. Here the ideologies could rant and rave against
each other, seeking a rendering of a final decision in men's age-old
arguments; but elsewhere such discussions were _verboten_, and subject
to swift, stiff penalties.
There were some who thought quietly to themselves that perhaps in the
reaction to horror they had voted too much power to a small group of
men known as Security, but there were others, weary of the insecurity
of world power-politics, who felt that Security was a blessing, and
would for all time protect all men in the freedom of their own
beliefs. The pressures had been great, and the pendulum of political
weight had swung far in an opposite direction. In fact, man had
achieved that which he would deny--in a reach for freedom, he had made
the first turn in the coil that would bind him--in the coil that would
bind the mass of the many to the will of the very few.
* * * * *
In school in Moscow, these things touched Bessandra's life only
remotely. The concepts, the talk, the propaganda from Radio Moscow,
these she heard, but they were not her main interests.
Her main interests were two--one, the fascination which the giant
computer at Moscow University held for her; and two, the students
around her. People, she had noted, had behavior patterns very similar
to the complex computer; not as individual units, though as individual
units they could also be as surprisingly obtuse as the literal-minded
reaction of the computer; but in statistical numbers they had an even
greater tendency to act as the computer did.
The information fed them and their reactions to it had a logic all its
own; not a logic of logic, but a logic of reaction. And the reaction
could be controlled, she noted, in the same self-corrective manner
that was applied to logic in the interior of the computer--the
feedback system.
It was obvious that with a statistical group of people, the net result
of action could be effectively channeled by one person in an obscure
position acting as a feedback mechanism to the group, and with
selective properties applied to the feedback.
At one point she had quietly, and for no other reason than to test
this point to her own satisfaction, sat back and created a riot of the
women students at the University, without once appearing either as the
cause or the head or leader in the revolt. The revolt in itself had
been absolutely senseless, but the result had been achieved with
surprisingly little effort on the part of one individual.
Computers and people had from that day become her tools, whenever she
decided to bend them to her will.
Even earlier in her career, she had managed to put her rebellious
nature under strict control, never appearing to be a cause in herself;
never appearing as a leader among the students; merely a quiet student
intent upon the gain of knowledge and oblivious to her surroundings.
Later as she realized her abilities, she had sought council with
herself and her Buddhist ancestry, to determine what use her knowledge
should serve. And to her there was but one answer: Men were easily
enslaved by their own shortcomings; but men who were free produced
more desirable results; and if she were to use their shortcomings at
all, it must be to bend them in the path of freedom that she might be
surrounded by higher achievements rather than sheeplike activities
which she found to be repugnant.
Gradually she had achieved skill in the manipulation of people; always
towards the single self-interest of creating a better and more
pleasant world in which she herself could live.
* * * * *
In rim sector A-9, Dr. Claude Lavalle was having his troubles. Free
fall conditions that were merely inconvenient to him were proving
near-disastrous to the animals in the cages around him.
Many and various were the difficulties that he had had with animals
during his career, but never before such trifles that built _peu a
peu_--into mountains.
Claude Lavalle had originally planned to leave his stock of animals,
which contained sets of a great many of the species of the small
animals of Earth, on their own gravity-bound planet until well after
the spin supplied pseudo-gravity to the ship; but the schedule of the
shuttles' loads had proved such as to make possible the trip either
far in the future, or to put him aboard on this trip, with spin only a
few hours away.
The cages, with their loads of guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters and
other live animals to be used in the sacrificial rites of biochemical
research were, to put it mildly, a mess. Provision had been made for
feeding and watering the animals under free-fall conditions, but
keeping them sanitary was proving a near-impossible task; and though
the cages were sealed to confine the inevitable upset away from the
remainder of the lab, it was good to hear that the problem was nearly
over as the news of the imminent countdown came over the loud-speaker.
Meantime, Dr. Claude Lavalle was having his difficulties, and he
wished fervently that his assistants could have been sent up on the
shuttle with him.
* * * * *
In rim-sector A-10, the FARM (Fluid Agricultural Recirculating Method
control lab, according to the U.N. acronym), Dr. Millie Williams, her
satiny brown skin contrasting to her white T-shirt and shorts, was
also having her troubles.
The trays of plants, in their beds of sponge plastic and hydroponic
materials, were all sealed against free-fall conditions, but should be
oriented properly for the pseudo-gravity as the great wheel was given
its rotational spin.
The vats of plankton and algae concentrates were not so important as
to orientation, but should be fed into their rim-river homes as soon
as possible, although this could not be done until the rim spin was
well under control.
The trays, the plants, the plankton, the algae--even a large
proportion of the equipment in the lab, were all new, experimental
projects, designed to check various features of the food and air
cycles that would later be necessary if men were to send their ships
soaring out through the system.
The primary purpose of Lab One was a check of the various survival
systems and space ecology programs necessary to equip the future
explorations under actual space conditions. Her job on the FARM would
be very important to the future feeding and air restoration of
spacemen; but more important, the efficient utilization of the wheel
itself, since success in shipboard purification of air and production
of food would free the shuttle to bring up other types of mass.
At present, the ship's personnel were existing almost entirely on
tanked air, but within two weeks one of the three air-restoration
projects on the satellite--either hers, in which hydroponic plants and
algae were the basic purifiers; or projects in the chem and physics
labs--would have to be already functioning in the job, or extra
shuttles would have to be devoted to air transportation until they
were ready.
The provision of good fresh vegetables and fresh, springlike air would
almost certainly be up to her department. The other two labs, Dr.
Carmencita Schorlemmer in chemistry, and Dr. Chi Tung in physics, were
both working on the air-restoration problem by different
means--electro-chemistry in the one case; gas dialysis membranes in
the other.
The work of the physics labs was operating on the differential ability
of various gas molecules to "leak" through plastic membranes under
pressure, causing separation of the various molecular constituents of
the atmosphere; shunting carbon dioxide off in one direction, and
returning oxygen and the inert nitrogen and other gases back to the
surrounding atmosphere.
This latter method had proved highly satisfactory back on Earth, where
it was separating out fissionable materials in large quantities and
high purities from closely similar isotopes; and would now be tested
for efficiency versus weight in some of the new problems being
encountered in space.
A fourth method, direct chemical absorption by soda lime, had been
discarded early in the program, although it was still used in
spacesuit air cleaners, and for the duration of the canned air program
under which they were now operating.
The lab was like that--no problem has a single solution. And it was
the lab's job to evaluate as many solutions as possible so that the
best, under different conditions, might be proved and ready for use in
later programs.
* * * * *
Paul Chernov, ordinary spaceman--which meant that he had only a little
more specialized training than the average college graduate--was
working in the dump, surrounded by much of the equipment that remained
to be placed aboard Space Lab One, and trying to identify the
particular object he sought.
Looking down almost directly over the eastern bulge of the African
coast, he sighted what was probably the ECM lathe he was after, and
kicked towards it, simultaneously pulling his pistol-gripped Rate of
Approach Indicator from the socket in his suit.
The RAI gun, he sometimes felt, was the real reason he'd become a
spaceman in these tame days. Even if he couldn't be a space pirate, it
gave him the feel.
Humming to himself, he aimed the search beam from the tiny
gallium-arsenide laser crystal that was the heart of the gun at the
bulky object, and read off the dial at the back of the "barrel" the
two meter/second approach velocity and the twenty-eight meter
distance.
He could as easily have set the RAI gun to read his velocity and
distance in centimeters or kilometers, and it would have read as well
his rate of retreat, if that had been the factor.
Paul's RAI gun might be, to others, a highly refined, vastly superior
great-grandson of the older radar that had required much more in the
way of equipment than the tiny bulk of this device, but to him, alone
in his spacesuit, the galaxy spread around him, it was the weapon with
which he had conquered the stars.
In the distance, off beyond the wheel in a trailing orbit, the huge
spherical shape of Project Hot Rod glowed its characteristic
green--another application of the laser principle, but this one
macroscopic in comparison to the tiny laser rate-of-approach gun.
Happily, Paul burst into song.
_"There's a sky-trail leading from here to there
And another yonder showing;
But I've a yen for gravity--
This is where I wasn't going!"_
From the other side of the dump, Tombu's voice bellowed into his ears
over the intercom. "If you're going to audition for the stars, cut
down the volume!"
Paul grinned and reached for the volume control.
"O.K., M'Numba, 's m'numba!--I'm a space-yodler from way out. Heave a
line over this way and let's get this ECM lathe aboard."
Tombu's "last name" M'Numba had delighted Paul from the moment he'd
heard the story of its origin. By the customs of his own country,
Tombu had only a single name. However, when he had first enrolled as a
student in England there had been a lack of comprehension between him
and the rather flustered registrar and, when he had muttered something
about "my number," the registrar had misunderstood and put him down as
M'Numba. Tombu had let it stand.
Paul Chernov, fine-boned, blond, with an ancestral background of the
Polish aristocracy, and his side-kick, Tombu, black, muscular giant
from the Congo, were one of the strangest combinations of this
international space lab crew. Yet it was perhaps even stranger that
the delicate-looking blond youth was a top machinist, a trade that he
had plied throughout his student days in order to economically support
an insatiable thirst for knowledge. A trade that had led him to this
newest center of man's search for knowledge.
But perhaps the combination was not so strange, for Tombu, also, was
of the aristocracy--an aristocracy that could perhaps be measured in
terms of years extending far behind the comparable times for any
European aristocracy.
Tombu was Swahili, a minor king of a minor country which had never
been recognized by the white man when he invaded Africa and set up his
vast protectorates that took no account of the peoples and their
tribal traditions; protectorates that lumped together many hundreds of
individual nations and tribes into something the white man looking at
maps could label "Congo."
Tombu himself, educated in the white man's schools to the white man's
ways, and probing ever deeper into the white man's knowledge, was only
vaguely aware of his ancestral origin. He counted his kingdom in
negative terms, terms that were no longer applicable in a modern
world. Where national boundaries everywhere were melting further and
further into disuse, it would seem to his mind foolish to lay claim to
a kingship that had been nonexistent for more than one hundred years
over a people that had been scattered to the four winds and ground
together with other peoples in the Belgian Congo protectorate.
Odd the combination might be; but together the two machinists worked
well, with a mutual respect for each other's abilities and a mutual
understanding that is rare to find among members of different races.
Quickly they lashed and anchored the crate containing the lathe and
hauled it in towards the main south lock of the big wheel.
* * * * *
These were not the only activities in and around the wheel, or other
places in space. Man already had a toehold in space, and that toehold
was gradually growing into a real beachhead. Swarms of satellites in
their short, fast orbits down close to Earth had been performing their
tasks for many years. Astronauts had come and gone, testing, checking,
probing however briefly; bravely clawing their way up the sides of the
long gravitic well that separated Earth from space.
The moon project that had originally been forecast for immediate
accomplishment had met with delay. As yet there was no base on the
moon, though men had been there, and this was bound to occur.
But the lab was not here so much as a stepping stone to the moon as it
was to provide information for the future manned trips out towards
Mars and the asteroids; and in towards Venus and the sun.
Besides research, the big wheel would provide living quarters for men
building other projects; would provide a permanent central for the
network of communications beams that was gradually encompassing man's
world and would eventually spread to the other planets as well.
Cooperating with this master communications central, other satellites,
automatic so far, occupied the same orbit, leading and lagging by one
hundred twenty degrees.
A twenty-four hour orbit would have been more advantageous from the
point of view of communications, except for the interference that
would have been occasioned by the vast flood of electrons encircling
Earth in the outer Van Allen belt. These electrons, trapped by Earth's
magnetic field from the solar wind of charged particles escaping the
sun, unfortunately occupied the twenty-four hour orbit, and, as their
orbit expanded and contracted under the influence of the shifting
magnetic field and solar flares, could produce tremendous havoc even
in automatic equipment, so that it had been deemed economically
impractical to set up the originally-postulated three satellites in
stationary twenty-four orbits as communications terminals.
As the next best choice, the thirty-six-hour orbit had been selected.
It gave a slow rate of angular displacement, since the satellite
itself moved ten degrees an hour, while Earth moved 15 deg., for a
differential rate of only five degrees an hour, making fairly easy
tracking for the various Earth terminals of the communications net;
and making possible a leisurely view of more than ninety per cent of
Earth's surface every seventy-two hours.
The other two power and communications stations which led and lagged
Space Lab One by 120 deg. each, would combine to command a complete view
of Earth, lacking only a circle within the arctic regions, so that
they could provide power and communications for the entire world--a
fact which had been the political carrot which had united Earth in the
effort to create the labs with their combined technologies.
The danger of such powerful instruments as Hot Rod, concentrating
megawatt beams of solar energy for relay to earth, and which could
also be one of man's greatest weapons if it fell into unscrupulous
hands, had been carefully played down, and also carefully countered in
the screening by the Security Forces of U.N. of the personnel board.
* * * * *
T minus three and counting.
On the zero signal Mike in the engineer's quarters would change the
now idly-bubbling air jets in the rim-rivers over to the
fully-directional drive jets necessary to spin the fluid in
counter-rotation through the rim tanks.
The suiting-up and strapping down were probably unnecessary, Mike
thought, but in space you don't take chances.
"T minus two and counting." Bessie's voice rang over the com circuit
in officially clipped clarity.
From the physics lab came a rather oddly pitched echo. "Allee allee in
free fallee! Hold it, please, as Confusion would say! Paul forgot to
secure the electrolite for the ECM equipment. Can't have these
five-gallon bottles bouncing around!"
"And we can't have you bouncing around either, Dr. Chi Tung. Get that
soup under wraps quick. How much time do you need?" came the captain's
voice from his console angled over Bessie's head.
Clark's voice could be heard murmuring into his Earth-contact phone.
"T minus two. Holding."
Less than two minutes later, Dr. Chi released the hold by announcing
briefly, "Machine shop and physics department secure."
"T minus two and counting...."
"T minus one and counting...." Bessie continued officially. "Fifty,
forty, thirty, twenty...."
The faint whine of high-speed centrifugal compressors could be heard
through the ship.
"Ten...." The jets that had previously bubbled almost inaudibly took
on the sound of a percolating coffee pot.
"... Four, three, two, one, mark."
The bubbling became a hiss that settled into a soft susurrus of
background noise, as the jets forced air through the river of water in
the circular tanks of the rim.
The water began to move. By reaction, the wheel took up a slow,
circular motion in the opposite direction.
Then, gently, the wheel shook itself and settled into a complacently
off-center motion that placed Bessie somewhere near the actual center
of rotation.
"We're out of balance, Mr. Blackhawk," said the captain, one hand on
the intercom switch.
"Bessie, ask the Cow what's off balance." It was Mike's voice from
engineering control. "Thought we had this thing trued up like a
watch."
But the computer had already taken over, and was controlling the flow
of water to the hydrostatic balance tank system, rapidly orienting the
axis of spin against the true axis of the wheel.
The wobble became a wiggle; the wiggle became the slightest of sways;
and under the computer's gentle ministrations, the sways disappeared
and Space Lab One rolled true.
Slowly Mike inched the jet power up, and the speed and "gravity" of
the rim rose--from 0.009 to 0.039 to the pre-scheduled 0.15 of a
gravity--two RPM--at which she would remain until a thorough test
schedule over several days had been accomplished. Later tests would
put the rim through check-out tests to as high as 1.59 gee, but
"normal" operation had been fixed at two RPM.
In the background, the susurrus of the air jets rose slightly to the
soft lullaby-sound that the wheel would always sing as she rolled.
* * * * *
New, experimental, her full complement of six hundred scientists and
service personnel so far represented by only one hundred sixty-three
aboard, the big wheel that was Space Lab One rotated majestically at
her hydrodynamically controlled two revolutions per minute.
She gave nearly half her mass to the water that spun her--huge rivers
of water, pumped through the walls of the wheel's rim, forming a
six-foot barrier between the laboratories within the rim and the
cosmic and solar radiations of outer space.
Arguments on Earth had raged for months over the necessities--or lack
of them--for the huge mass of water aboard, but the fluid mass served
many purposes better than anything else could serve those purposes.
As a radiation shield, it provided sufficient safety against cosmic
radiations of space and from solar radiations, except for solar flare
conditions, to provide a margin of safety for the crew over the three
months in which they would do their jobs before being rotated back to
Earth for the fifteen-month recovery period.
The margin was nearly enough for permanent duty--and there were those
who claimed it was sufficient--but the claim had not been
substantiated, and the three months maximum for tour was mandatory.
Originally, shielding had not been considered of vital importance, but
experience had proven the necessity. The first construction personnel
had been driven back to Earth after two weeks, dosimeters in the red.
The third crew didn't make it. All five died of radiation exposure
from a solar flare. An original two weeks' limit was raised as more
shielding arrived--three weeks, four, five--now the shadowy edge of
the theoretic ninety-day recovery rate from radiation damage and the
ninety days required to get the maximum safe dosage overlapped--but
safety procedures still dictated that a red dosimeter meant a quick
return to Earth whether the rate of recovery overlapped or not.
[Illustration]
The question was still open whether more shielding would be brought up
to make the overlap certain, or whether it would be best to maintain a
personnel rotation policy indefinitely. Some factions on Earth seemed
determined that rotation must remain not only a procedural but an
actual requirement--their voices spoke plainly through the directives
and edicts of U.N. Budget Control--but from what source behind this
bureaucratic smokescreen it would have been difficult to say.
As a heat sink, the water provided stability of temperature that would
have been difficult to achieve without it. Bathed in the tenuous solar
atmosphere that extends well beyond the orbit of Earth, and with a
temperature over 100,000 C, maintenance of a livable temperature on
board the big wheel was not the straight-forward balancing of
radiation intercepted/radiation outgoing that had been originally
anticipated by early writers on the subject.
True, the percentage of energy received by convection was small
compared to that received by radiation; but it was also wildly
variable.
As a biological cultural medium, the hydraulic system provided a basis
for both air restoration and food supplies. When the proper balance of
plankton and algae was achieved, the air jets that gave the ship its
spin would also purify the ship's air, giving it back in a natural
manner the oxygen it was now fed from tanks.
As a method of controlling and changing the rate of rotation of the
wheel, the rivers of water had already proven themselves; and as a
method of static balancing to compensate for off-center weights,
masses of it could be stopped and held in counterbalance tanks around
the rim, thus assuring that the observatory, in its stationary
position on the hub, would not suddenly take up an oscillatory pattern
of motion as the balance within the wheel was shifted either by moving
equipment or personnel.
* * * * *
In effect, the entire ship operated against a zero-M-I calculation
which could be handled effectively only by the computer. The moment of
inertia of the ship must be constantly calculated against the moment
of inertia of the hydraulic mass flowing in the rim. And the
individual counterbalance tanks must constantly shift their load
according to the motions of the crew and their masses of equipment
that were constantly being shifted during installation. For already
the observatory was hard at work, and its time must not be stolen by
inappropriate wobbles of the hub.
A continuously operating feedback monitor system was capable of
maintaining accuracy to better than .01% both in the mass inertial
field of centrifugal force affecting the rim; and in overall balance
that might otherwise cause wobbles in the hub.
While such fine control would not be necessary to the individual
comfort of the personnel aboard, it was very necessary to the accuracy
of scientific observation, one major purpose of the lab; and even so,
many of the experimenters would require continuous monitor observation
from the computer to correct their observations against her
instantaneous error curve.
The mass of water in the rim formed a shell six feet through,
surrounding the laboratories and living quarters--walls, floor and
ceiling--since its first function was that of radiation shielding.
But the bulk of this water was not a single unit. It was divided into
separate streams, twenty in number, in each of which various
biological reactions could be set up.
While a few of the rivers were in a nearly chemically pure state, most
of them were already filling with the plankton and algae that would
form the base of the major ecological experiments, some with fresh
water as their medium, others using sea water, complete with its
normal micro-organisms supplemented from the tanks of concentrate
that Dr. Millie Williams had brought aboard. One or two of the rivers
were operating on different cycles to convert human waste to usable
forms so that it might reenter the cycles of food and air.
Several of the rivers were operating to provide fish and other marine
delicacies as part of the experiment to determine the best way of
converting algae to food in a palatable form.
Within, the rivers were lighted fluorescently--an apparent anomaly
that was due to the fact that the problems of shielding marine life
from direct sunlight in such a shallow medium had not yet been worked
out; while the opaque plastic that walled the laboratories within the
rivers was a concession to their strength, since the clear plastic
that would have provided aquarium walls for the lab and complete
inspection for a constant and overall check of the ecological
experiments had been overruled by U.N. Budget Control. Portholes at
various spots made the seaquariums visible from any part of the rim,
but in Dr. Millie's laboratory alone were the large panels of clear
plastic that gave a real view into the rivers.
This ecological maze of rivers and eddies and balance tanks; of air
jets and current and micro-life; of spin-rate-control and shielding,
were all keyed to servo-regulated interdependence that for this
self-contained world replaced the stability achieved in larger
ecologies through survival mechanisms.
* * * * *
Within the maze, existing by it and contributing to it, were the
laboratories concerned with other things, but surrounded by the waters
that had made life's beginnings possible on Earth, and the continuance
of life possible in space. Man might some day live in space almost
totally without water, but for now they had brought a bit of the
mother waters with them.
Sitting in complacent control of these overall complexities that must
be met with automatic accuracy was the Starrett Analogue/Digital
Computer, Optical Wave type 44-63, irreverently referred to by the
acronymically-minded as Sad Cow, though more frequently as the Sacred
Cow, or simply Cow.
Most of the computer's intricate circuits were hidden behind the
bulkhead in a large compartment between the control center and the
south polar lock; but it was from this console in the control center
that her operation was keyed.
From this position, every function of the wheel was ordered.
This was the bridge.
Spaced equally around its thirty-two-foot ring-shaped floor were the
computer's console where Bessie presided; the com center in charge of
Communications Officer Clark; and the command console where Captain
Naylor Andersen, commanding officer of Space Lab One had his formal,
though seldom-occupied post.
At the moment, Nails Andersen was present, black cigar clamped firmly
between his teeth; hamlike Norwegian hands maneuvering a pencil, he
was making illegible notes on a scrap of paper--illegible to others
because they were in his own form of shorthand that he had worked out
over the years as he tried to make penciled notes as fast as his
racing mind worked out their details.
Whether Nails were politician or scientist would be hard to say.
Certainly his rise through the ranks of U.N. Bureaus had been rapid;
certainly in this rise he had been political, with the new brand of
politics that men were learning--world, rather than national politics.
Certainly, also, he was a scientist; and certainly he had used his
political abilities on the behalf of science, pushing and slashing at
red-tape barriers.
Nails was more than most responsible for the very existence of U.N.
Space Lab One, and Project Hot Rod besides. He was also a sponsor of
many other projects, both those that had been done and those that were
yet to be done.
The justification of a space project in these times was difficult
indeed; for no longer could nations claim military superiority as a
main reason for pushing forward across the barriers of the inner
marches of space; for spending billions in taxes in experimental
research. For a project to achieve reality now, it must have benefits,
visible benefit, for the majority of mankind. It must have a _raison
d'etre_ that had nothing of a military flavor. And occasionally Nails
had been hard put to explain why, to people who did not understand; to
explain his feeling that men must expand or die; that from a crowded
planet there could be only one frontier, and that an expansion outward
into space.
Of course there were, Nails admitted to himself, other frontiers. The
huge basin of the Amazon had been by-passed and ignored by man, and
quite possibly would be in the future as well. The oceans, covering
seventy-five per cent of Earth's surfaces also presented a challenge
to man, and the possibility of a new frontier of conquest.
But these did not present the limitless frontier for expansion offered
by space. Men must look upon them as only temporary challenges, and
cherish them as remaining problems, never to be solved for fear of a
loss of the problem itself.
Yet space was different. Here man's explorations could touch upon
infinities that were beyond comprehension, into that limitless void
man could plunge ever outward for thousands of generations without
ever reaching a final goal or solving a last problem. Here was a
frontier worthy of any man, against which the excess energies of a
warrior spirit might be expended without harm to their fellows.
To open a crack in this frontier was Nails' supreme goal, because,
once opened, men need never fight again amongst themselves for lack of
a place to go or a thing to do.
* * * * *
Space Lab One had been in spin for two days.
On Earth, TV viewers no longer demanded twenty-four hours of Lab
newscasts, and were returning to their normal cycles of Meet the
Press, the Doctor's Dilemma, and the Lives of Lucy, and other juicier
items of the imagination that, now that their lab was a functioning
reality, seemed far more exciting than the pictures of the
interminably spinning wheel and the interviews with scientists aboard
that had filled their screens during the spin-out trial period.
On the wheel itself, life was settling into a pattern, with comments
about being able to stand upright becoming old hat.
In rim sector A-9, Dr. Claude Lavalle's birds and beasts had adapted
themselves to the light gravity; and their biological mentor had
evolved feeding, watering, and cleaning methods that were rapidly
becoming efficient.
Next door, Dr. Millie Williams' FARM had survived the "take-off" and
the plants, grateful for their new, although partial gravity, were now
stretching themselves towards the overhead fluorescents in a rather
fantastic attempt to imitate the early growing stages of Jack's famous
beanstalk.
In the machine shop, Paul Chernov carefully inspected the alignment of
the numeric controlled laser microbeam milling and boring machine,
brought it to a focus on a work piece, and pressed an activation
switch that started the last pattern of tiny capillary holes in the
quartz on which he was working. In moments the pattern was completed.
Gently removing the work piece from its mounting, he turned to the
open double bulkhead that served as an air lock in emergencies and
that separated his shop from the physics lab beyond, where Dr. Y. Chi
Tung, popularly known as Ishie, was busy over a haywire rig, Chief
Engineer Mike Blackhawk and Tombu beside him.
Reverently, Dr. Chi took the part from Paul's hands. "A thousand
ancestral blessings," he said. "Confusion say the last piece is the
most honored for its ability to complete the gadget, and this is it.
"Of course," he added, "Confusion didn't say whether it would work or
not."
"What does the gadget do?" asked Paul.
"Um-m-m. As the European counterpart of Confusion, Dr. Heisenberg
might have explained it, this is a device to confuse confusion by
aligning certainties and creating uncertainties in the protons of this
innocent block of plastic." The round, saffron-hued Chinese face
looked at Paul solemnly.
"As the good Dr. Heisenberg stated, there is a principle of confusion
or uncertainty as to the exact whereabouts of things on the atomic
level, which cannot be rendered more exact due to disturbance caused
by the investigation of its whereabouts. My humble attempt is to
secure a sufficiently statistical sample of aligned protons to obtain
data on the distortion of the electron orbits caused by an external
electrostatic field, thus rendering my own uncertainties more
susceptible of analysis in a statistical manner."
Suddenly he grinned. "It's a take-off," he said, "from the original
experiments in magnetic resonance back in '46.
"The fields generated in these coils are strong enough to process all
the protons so that their axis of spin is brought into alignment. At
this point, the plastic could be thought of as representing a few
billion tiny gyroscopes all lined up together.
"Matter of fact," he said in an aside, "if you want a better
explanation of that effect, you might look up the maintenance manual
on the proton gyroscopes that Sad Cow uses. Or the manuals for the
M.R. analyzer in the chem lab. Or the magnetometer we use to keep a
check on Earth's magnetic field.
"So far, about the same thing.
"What I'm trying to do is place radio frequency fields and
electrostatic fields in conjunction with the D.C. magnetic field, so
as to check out the effect of stretching the electron orbits of the
hydrogen atoms in predictable patterns.
"I picked this place for it, because it was as far away from Earth's
field as I could get. And Mike, when I get ready to test this thing,
I'm going to pray to my ancestors and also ask you to turn off as many
magnetic gadgets as you safely can."
Mike was squatting on his heels by the haywire rig, built into what
looked suspiciously like a chassis extracted from one of the standard
control consoles of the communication department.
Reaching gingerly in through the haywire mass of cables surrounding
the central components, he pointed to one of the coils and exclaimed
in the tones of a Sherlock Holmes, "Ah-ha, my dear Watson! I have just
located the final clue to my missing magnaswedge. I suppose you know
the duty cycle on those coils is only about 0.01?"
"Not after I finished with them!" Ishie grinned unrepentant. "Besides,
I don't want to squash anything in the field. I just want a nice,
steady field of a reasonable magnitude. As Confusion would say, he who
squashes small object may unbalance great powers."
* * * * *
While he talked, Ishie had been busy inserting the carefully machined
piece of quartz plate that Chernov had brought, into a conglomeration
of glassware that looked like a refugee from the chem lab, and flipped
a switch that caused a glowing coil inside a pyrex boiler to heat a
small quantity of water, which must escape through the carefully
machined capillary holes in the plate he had just installed. Each jet
would pass through two grids, and on towards a condenser arrangement
from which the water would be recirculated into the boiler by a small
pump which was already beginning to churkle to itself.
"O.K.," Mike said. "I dig the magnetic resonance part. And how you're
using the stolen coils. But what's this gadget?" and he pointed to the
maze of glass and glass tubing.
"Oh. Permit me to introduce Dr. Ishie's adaptation of a French
invention of some years previous, which permits the development of
high voltages by the application of heat to the evaporation of a fluid
medium such as water--of which we have plenty aboard and you won't
miss the little that I requisitioned--causing these molecules to
separate and pass at high speed through these various grids, providing
electrostatic potentials in their passage which can be added quite
fantastically to produce the necessary D.C. field which...."
As he spoke, Mike's finger moved nearer a knob-headed bolt that seemed
to be one of the two holding the glass device to its mounting board,
and an inch and a half spark spat forth and interrupted the
dissertation with a loud "Yipe!"
"Confusion say," Ishie continued as Mike stuck his finger in his
mouth, "he who point finger of suspicion should be careful of lurking
dragons!
"Anyhow, that's what it does. There are two thousand separate little
grids, each fed by its capillary jet, and each grid provides about
ninety volts."
Tombu took the opportunity to inquire, "Have you got that RF
field-phase generator under control yet?" He pointed to still another
section of the chassis.
"Oh, yes." The physicist nodded. "See, I have provided a feedback
circuit to co-ordinate the pick-up signal with the three-phase RF
output. The control must be precise. Can't have it skipping around or
we don't get a good alignment."
There was a gurgling churkle from the innocent-looking maze as the
"borrowed" aerator pump from the FARM supplies began returning the
condensate back to the boiler.
* * * * *
Major Steve Elbertson stood on the magnetic stat-walk of the south
polar loading lock, gazing along the anchor tube to Project Hot Rod
five miles away.
"There are no experts in the ability to maneuver properly in free
fall," he told himself, quieting his dissatisfaction with his own
self-conscious efforts at maintaining the military dignity of the
United Nations Security Forces in a medium in which a man inevitably
lost the stances that to him connotated that dignity.
Awkwardly, he attached the ten-pound electric device affectionately
known to spacemen as the scuttlebug, to the flat ribbon-cable that
would both power and guide him to Hot Rod.
As the wheels of the scuttlebug clipped over the ribbon-cable, one
above and two below, and made contact with the two electrically
conductive surfaces, he saw the warning light change from green to
red, indicating that the ribbon was now in use, and that no one else
should use it until he had arrived at the far end.
Seeing that the safety light was now in his favor, he swung his legs
over the seat--a T-bar at the bottom of the rod which swung down from
the drive mechanism--grasped the rod, and pulled the starting trigger.
The accelerative force of one gee, the maximum of which the scuttlebug
was capable, provided quite a jolt, but settled down very quickly to
almost zero as he picked up speed and reached the maximum of one
hundred twenty miles per hour.
A very undignified method of travel, he thought. Yet for all that, the
scuttlebugs were light and efficient, and reduced transit time between
outlying projects and the big wheel to a very reasonable time,
compared to that which it would take for a man to jump the distance
under his own power--and, he thought, without wasting the precious
mass that rockets would have required.
The low voltage power supplied by the two flat sides of the ribbon was
insufficient to have provided lethal contact, even if the person were
there without the insulation of a spacesuit around him, a very
unlikely occurrence. Furthermore, the structure of the cable, with the
flat, flexible insulation between its two conductive surfaces, made it
practically impossible to short it out; and the flanged wheels of the
scuttlebug clipped over it in such a fashion that, once locked, it was
thought to be impossible that they could lose their grip without being
unlocked.
As Steve gained speed along the ribbon, "his" Project Hot Rod was in
view before him--appearing to be a half moon which looked larger than
the real moon in the background behind it; and seeming to stand in the
vastness of space at a distance from the far end of the long anchor
tube, a narrow band of bright green glowing near its terminator line.
From the rounded half of the moon, extending sunward, four bright,
narrow traceries seemed to outline a nose that ended in a pale,
globular tracery at its tip, pointing to the sun.
The narrow traceries were in actuality four anchor tubes, similar to
the one beside which he rode; and mounted in their tip was the
directing mirror that would aim Hot Rod's beam of energy.
* * * * *