Farmer in the Sky (5 page)

Fire burst out of her base, orange, and then blinding white. It splashed down into the ground baffles and curled back up through the ground vents. She lifted.

She hung there for a breath and you could see the hills shimmer through her jet. And she was gone.

Just like that—she was gone. She went up out of there like a scared bird, just a pencil of white fire in the sky, and was gone while we could still hear and feel the thunder of her jets inside the compartment.

My ears were ringing. I heard someone behind me say, “But I haven't had breakfast. The Captain will just have to wait. Tell him, Joseph.”

It was the woman who hadn't known that the
Mayflower
was a space-to-space ship. Her husband tried to hush her up, but he didn't have any luck. She called over the stewardess. I heard her answer, “But, madam, you can't speak to the Captain now. He's preparing for blast-off.”

Apparently that didn't make any difference. The stewardess finally got her quiet by solemnly promising that she could have breakfast after blast-off. I bent my ears at that and I decided to put in a bid for breakfast, too.

The
Icarus
took off twenty minutes later and then the speaker said, “All hands! Acceleration stations–prepare to blast off.” I went back to my couch and the stewardess made sure that we were all strapped down. She cautioned us not to unstrap until she said we could. She went down to the deck below.

I felt my ears pop and there was a soft sighing in the ship. I swallowed and kept swallowing. I knew what they were doing: blowing the natural air out and replacing it with the standard helium-oxygen mix at half sea-level pressure. But the woman—the same one—didn't like it. She said, “Joseph, my head aches. Joseph, I can't breathe. Do something!”

Then she clawed at her straps and sat up. Her husband sat up, too, and forced her back down.

The
Bifrost
tilted over a little and the speaker said, “Minus three minutes!”

After a long time it said, “Minus two minutes!”

And then “Minus one minutel” and another voice took up the count:

“Fifty-nine! Fifty-eight! Fifty-seven!”

My heart started to pound so hard I could hardly hear it. But it went on: “-thirty-five! Thirty-four! Thirty-three! Thirty-two! Thirty-one!
Half!
Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight!”

And it got to be:
“Ten!”

And “Nine!”

“Eight!

“Seven!

“And six!

“And five!

“And four!

“And three!

“And two—”

I never did hear them say “one” or “fire” or whatever they said. About then something fell on me and I thought I was licked. Once, exploring a cave with the fellows, a bank collapsed on me and I had to be dug out. It was like that—but nobody dug me out.

My chest hurt My ribs seemed about to break. I couldn't lift a finger. I gulped and couldn't get my breath.

I wasn't scared, not really, because I knew we would take off with a high g, but I was awfully uncomfortable. I managed to turn my head a little and saw that the sky was already purple. While I watched, it turned black and the stars came out, millions of stars. And yet the Sun was still streaming in through the port

The roar of the jets was unbelievable but the noise started to die out almost at once and soon you couldn't hear it at all. They say the old ships used to be noisy even after you passed the speed of sound; the
Bifrost
was not. It got as quiet as the inside of a bag of feathers.

There was nothing to do but lie there, stare out at that black sky, try to breathe, and try not to think about the weight sitting on you.

And then, so suddenly that it made your stomach turn flip-flops, you didn't weigh anything at all.

Let me tell you that the first time you fall is no fun. Sure, you get over it. If you didn't you would starve. Old space hands even get so they like it—weightlessness, I mean. They say that two hours of weightless sleep is equal to a full night on Earth. I got used to it, but I never got to like it.

The
Bifrost
had blasted for a little more than three minutes. It seemed lots longer because of the high acceleration; we had blasted at nearly six g. Then she was in free orbit for better than three hours and we fell the whole time, until the Captain started to maneuver to match orbits with the
Mayflower.

In other words we fell straight up for more than twenty thousand miles.

Put that way, it sounds silly. Everybody knows that things don't fall
up;
they fall
down.

Everybody knew the world was flat, too.

We fell up.

Like everybody, I had had the elements of space ballistics in grammar school physics, and goodness knows there have been enough stories about how you float around in a spaceship when it's in a free orbit. But, take it from me, you don't really believe it until you've tried it.

Take Mrs. Tarbutton—the woman who wanted breakfast. I suppose she went to school like everybody else. But she kept insisting that the Captain had to do something about it. What he could do I don't know; find her a small asteroid, maybe.

Not that I didn't sympathize with her—or with myself, I guess. Ever been in an earthquake? You know how everything you ever depended on suddenly goes back on you and
terra firma
isn't
firma
any longer? It's like that, only much worse. This is no place to review grammar school physics but when a spaceship is in a free trajectory, straight up or any direction, the ship and everything in it moves along together and you
fall,
endlessly—and your stomach darn near falls out of you.

That was the first thing I noticed. I was strapped down so that I didn't float away, but I felt weak and shaky and dizzy and as if I had been kicked in the stomach. Then my mouth filled with saliva and I gulped and I was awfully sorry I had eaten that chocolate.

But it didn't come up, not quite.

The only thing that saved me was no breakfast. Some of the others were not so lucky. I tried not to look at them. I had intended to unstrap as soon as we went free and go to a port so I could look at Earth, but I lost interest in that project entirely. I stayed strapped down, and concentrated on being miserable.

The stewardess came floating out the hatch from the next deck, shoved herself along with a toe, checked herself with a hand at the center stanchion, and hovered in the air in a swan dive, looking us over. It was very pretty to watch if I'd been in shape to appreciate it.

“Is everybody comfy?” she said cheerfully.

It was a silly remark but I suppose nurses get that way. Somebody groaned and a baby on the other side of the compartment started to cry. The stewardess moved over to Mrs. Tarbutton and said, “You may have breakfast now. What would you like? Scrambled eggs?”

I clamped my jaw and turned my head away, wishing she would shut up. Then I looked back. She had paid for that silly remark—and she had to clean it up.

When she was through with Mrs. Tarbutton I said, “Uh-oh, Miss—”

“Andrews.”

“Miss Andrews, could I change my mind about that drop-sick injection?”

“Righto, chum,” she agreed, smiling, and whipped out an injector from a little kit she had at her belt. She gave me the shot. It burned and for a moment I thought I was going to lose the chocolate after all. But then things quieted down and I was almost happy in a miserable sort of way.

She left me and gave shots to some others who had kidded themselves the same way I had. Mrs. Tarbutton she gave another sort of shot to knock her out entirely. One or two of the hardier souls unstrapped themselves and went to the ports; I decided I was well enough to try it.

It's not as easy as it looks, this swimming around in free fall. I undid the safety belts and sat up; that's all I meant to do. Then I was scrambling in the air, out of control, trying frantically to grasp at anything.

I turned over in the air and cracked the back of my head against the underside of the control room deck and saw stars, not the ones out the ports—some of my own. Then the deck with the couches on it was approaching me slowly.

I managed to grab a safety belt and came to anchor. The couch it belonged to was occupied by a little plump man. I said, “Excuse me.”

He said, “Don't mention it,” and turned his face away, looking as if he hated me. I couldn't stay there and I couldn't even get back to my own couch without grabbing handholds on other couches that were occupied, too, so I pushed off again, very gently this time, and managed to grab hold when I bumped against the other deck.

It had handholds and grab lines all over it. I didn't let go again, but pulled myself along, monkey fashion, to one of the ports.

And there I got my first view of Earth from space.

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't what I expected. There it was, looking just like it does in the geography books, or maybe more the way it does in the station announcements of Super-New-York TV station. And yet it was different. I guess I would say it was like the difference between being told about a good hard kick in the rear and actually being kicked.

Not a transcription. Alive.

For one thing it wasn't prettily centered in a television screen; it was shouldering into one side of the frame of the port, and the aft end of the ship cut a big chunk out of the Pacific Ocean. And it was moving, shrinking. While I hung there it shrunk to about half the size it was when I first got there and got rounder and rounder. Columbus was right.

From where I was it was turned sideways; the end of Siberia, then North America, and finally the north half of South America ran across from left to right. There were clouds over Canada and the eastern part of the rest of North America; they were the whitest white I ever saw—whiter than the north pole cap. Right opposite us was the reflection of the Sun on the ocean; it hurt my eyes. The rest of the ocean was almost purple where there weren't clouds.

It was so beautiful my throat ached and I wanted to reach out and touch it.

And back of it were stars, even brighter and bigger and more of them than the way they look from Little America.

Pretty soon there were more people crowding around, trying to see, and kids shoving and their mothers saying, “Now, now, darling!” and making silly remarks themselves. I gave up. I pulled myself back to my couch and put one belt around me so I wouldn't float away and thought about it. It makes you proud to know that you come from a big, fancy planet like that. I got to thinking that I hadn't seen all of it, not by a long sight, in spite of all the geography trips I had made and going to one Scout round-up in Switzerland and the time George and Anne and I went to Siam.

And now I wasn't going to see any more of it. It made me feel pretty solemn.

I looked up; there was a boy standing in front of me. He said, “What's the trouble, William, my boy? Dropsick?”

It was that twerp Jones. You could have knocked me out with a feather. If I had known he was going to emigrate, I would have thought twice about it.

I asked him where in the world he had come from.

“The same place you did, naturally. I asked you a question.”

I informed him that I was not dropsick and asked him whatever gave him that silly notion. He reached out and grabbed my arm and turned it so that the red spot the injection had made showed. He laughed and I jerked my arm away.

He laughed again and showed me his arm; it had a red spot on it, too. “Happens to the best of us,” he said. “Don't be shy about it.”

Then he said, “Come on. Let's look around the joint before they make us strap down again.”

I went along. He wasn't what I would pick for a buddy but he was a familiar face. We worked our way over to the hatch to the next deck. I started to go through but Jones stopped me. “Let's go into the control room,” he suggested.

“Huh? Oh, they wouldn't let us!”

“Is it a crime to try? Come on.” We went back the other way and through a short passage. It ended in a door that was marked: CONTROL ROOM-STAY OUT! Somebody had written under it:
This means you!!!
and somebody else had added:
Who? Me?

Jones tried it;
it was locked. There was a button beside it; he pushed it.

It opened and we found ourselves staring into the face of a man with two stripes on his collar. Behind him was an older man with four stripes on his; he called out, “Who is it, Sam? Tell 'em we're not in the market.”

The first man said, “What do you kids want?”

Jones said, “Please, sir, we're interested in astrogation. Could we have permission to visit the control room?”

I could see he was going to chuck us out and I had started to turn away when the older man called out, “Oh, shucks, Sam, bring 'em in!”

The younger fellow shrugged and said, “As you say, Skipper.”

We went in and the Captain said, “Grab on to something; don't float around. And don't touch anything, or I'll cut your ears off. Now who are you?”

We told him; he said, “Glad to know you, Hank–same to you, Bill. Welcome aboard.” Then he reached out and touched the sleeve of my uniform—it had come loose again. “Son, your underwear is showing.”

I blushed and told him how I happened to be wearing it. He laughed and said, “So you swindled us into lifting it anyway. That's rich—eh, Sam? Have a cup of coffee.”

They were eating sandwiches and drinking coffee— not from cups, of course, but from little plastic bags like they use for babies. The bags even had nipples on them. I said no, thanks. While the shot Miss Andrews gave me had made me feel better, it hadn't made me feel that much better. Hank Jones turned it down, too.

The control room didn't have a port in it of any sort. There was a big television screen forward on the bulkhead leading to the nose, but it wasn't turned on. I wondered what Mrs. Tarbutton would think if she knew that the Captain couldn't see where we were going and didn't seem to care.

I asked him about the ports. He said ports were strictly for tourists. “What would you do with a port if you had one?” he asked. “Stick your head out the window and look for road signs? We can see anything we need to see. Sam, heat up the video and show the kids.”