Rockets in Ursa Major (5 page)

Colonel led the way down a short passage that went from the outside door to the middle of the ship. Here there was a lift that served the ship from top to bottom.

Colonel closed the gate and we moved leisurely upwards for a short distance.

`We'll drop your equipment off here,' he said, opening up the gate and moving into a largish room. This was obviously the communications part of the ship. There was a computer, and masses of electronic devices. `I'll leave your stuff here,' Colonel said, pointing to a cupboard labeled 'Radar'.

He came back to the lift, and we continued upwards. `What happens if the lift goes wrong?' I asked. `Oh, each floor has safety hatches so we can get from one to another without using the lift.'

The upward motion stopped and we walked into the main cabin. It was very simply laid out; one half of the circle had contoured bunks with a small table of instruments and monitor screen. The other half of the circle was covered by the main control panel. A movable chair was fixed near the centre of the panel, which I assumed was the Captain's.

`This way, Dick,' said Colonel, taking me by the arm. I went with him, over to a large cabinet. 'Here we have all the emergency equipment.' Inside were hanging space suits and helmets. Behind these were some space bikes and jet packs for propelling oneself around.

`This is your suit and propulsion pack,' said Colonel, showing me a single dull grey suit and black pack. The others, both suits and packs, were white.

'Am I likely to need it?' I asked, fingering the rubbery material of the suit.

`No, but it's a precautionary measure we take; remember you're in military hands now,' he said with a smile.

`What happens if there's a fire?' I said jokingly.

`You'll know about it. Bells ring and you grab your suit and get yourself plugged into the oxygen supply as fast as you can.'

I looked at a junction box in the control panel that was labeled 'Oxygen'.

`Otherwise you'll get gassed. The first whiff of smoke and the nearest hydrant starts operating.'

`Marvelous. So you don't do any live cooking?' I said, looking around while the crew went about their jobs taking no notice of my naпve questions. 'What are those?' I said, pointing at some metal discs high up in the ceiling.

`For getting at the armory. Torpedoes mainly, but there are some side arms and grenades,' Colonel said, as he checked some instruments on the control panel.

`Torpedo tubes. Are we carrying them?' I asked.

`Certainly,' came the reply.

`Five minutes to zero,' said one of the crew. Rhodes nodded in the man's direction, and then went over to the bunks.

`This is very simple,' Colonel said, starting to fasten me down on one of them with cross straps. The other crewmen came over and lay down on their bunks. I noticed that they only used one stomach strap instead of the three I was held down by.

`This button here alters the height of the head rest. This one turns you around, and this one raises or lowers your feet,' Colonel said, pushing the various buttons he was talking about. The bunk rode up and down like a horse on the run.

Colonel left me in approximately the same position as I'd started in, facing towards the control panel. He walked across to his chair and settled himself in. The chair in fact turned out to be a bunk, for the back rest folded flat, followed by the foot rest coming up level. 'You see, Dick, it's all very civilized,' he said, swinging himself round as a child would.

I pressed the head rest button curiously. Slowly my head came up so I could get a better look at the cabin.

`Two minutes to zero,' crackled a voice, which resounded round the metal walls. Suddenly I felt as though I couldn't breathe.

`It's all right, Dr Warboys. We've just changed over to our own oxygen supply,' said a voice near me. I nodded and wondered what I must have looked like to promote this piece of information.

`What do you do?' I said feebly.

`I'm the communications officer,' said the young man lying on the bunk next to me.

`Zero,' crackled the voice out of the intercom.

I felt as though I was rising in an ultra fast lift. Then suddenly as if someone was slowly flattening me with a giant press.

I must have blacked out, for the next thing I remember was everyone busily going about his duties.

`Whew, I'm glad that's over,' I said, unbelting myself.

`It's always like that the first trip. Be careful, you'll find walking a little strange,' Colonel said.

I swung my legs off the bunk and stood up. My legs just folded under me and I grabbed at the bunk.

`You all right?' Colonel said, beginning to get up from his chair.

I nodded and tried again. This time everything worked, although I reeled towards the control panel like a drunk.

`It may be a bit of a consolation to know that takeoff never gets much better however long you're in the game. Here, take a look at the Earth,' said Colonel putting a picture up on one of the monitors. From somewhere behind me I felt a chair pushed under my unsteady seat.

`Superb. The delicacy of colors,' I said after a long studied look. I felt as though I might never feel real ground under my feet again.

`Yes. Photographs never seem quite the same. Cloud, desert, pole-caps and oceans. You'll find it looks even better on the way home,' Colonel said with a twinkle in his eyes.

`I'll bet,' I said fervently. Colonel proceeded to flick some switches.

`Redscout calling Edelweiss. Redscout calling Edelweiss. Over,' said Colonel.

A moment later a Germanic voice came crackling back. `Edelweiss receiving you, over.'

`Edelweiss. Your instructions are as follows. Take the group at maximum speed to heliocentric longitude 217°, centi-astronomical units 92. I'll follow a day behind.

Over,' said Colonel.

`Edelweiss calling. Group to Helio 217. Cow 92. What's wrong, Redscout? Got a weak stomach? Over,' came the crackling reply.

`Stomach O.K. Job to do. Get on course. Roger,' said Colonel, flicking the switches back into position. 'I'll be accelerating at normal gravity, 1 gravity instead of the usual operational 1.5 gravities to give you the best conditions for working. But I'll be hooking the old bus inside Venus, so we're going to fry, in spite of the air conditioners. They aren't very good in these fast destroyers, I'm afraid. Everything has been cut down for the sake of speed.'

`Fine. Can I go and have a look at the works downstairs?' I asked, wondering what Colonel meant by frying.

`Certainly, you go ahead, and if you want me there's an intercom on the wall by the door. Otherwise the ship's yours at the moment.'

I went over to the lift. It shot down and upset my stomach yet again. I wondered whether it was really absolutely necessary to send me in the lift to the bottom of the shaft while under acceleration. The door opened and I was in the communications room. Life felt reasonably good now, or at least till I got the back off the radar control unit. Typical, I thought; although there was an instruction card, someone had done repairs ignoring the color coding used to distinguish parts.

A couple of hours later, or at least that's what it felt like, as my watch had suffered in take off, I was beginning to see where I was going and it didn't take me long to get the valve wired up. The bigger problem was going to be the tunable coupling unit for the aerial feed.

The lift doors opened and Colonel Rhodes came in. `How's it going?' he asked.

`Well, if your electronics engineers stuck to the proper color coding, life would be that much simpler,' I said.

`Sorry about that. I see you're sorting things out though. How are you finding it down here?'

`Hot, but I've been so busy I've not had much time to complain,' I said, suddenly realizing that I was sweating like a rainy day and there were wet patches on the floor.

I stood up easing my back into a more comfortable position. 'What's the time?'

`Earth time. Around 03.00 hours.'

`Grief! How long have I been down here?'

`About eight hours or so. How much longer do you think you'll be?'

`An hour or two. Strange that I don't feel very tired.' `You shouldn't feel tired, you had a nice long nap at lift off,' said Colonel with a smile.

`Now I've stopped work, I see what you mean about the heat. Do you feel it as much as I do?'

`I'm more used to putting up with it than you. Another few hours and we'll be over the worst. Better take a look at Venus. She's not very far away -- starboard.'

Colonel turned on the monitor. 'There it is. The devil planet. Cold as Nordic hell on the outside, hot as Mediterranean hell down at its surface.'

`So those are the famous dry-ice clouds?' I said.

`Yes,' said Colonel. 'When you get under them the light seems to come at you from all sides. Nothing seems right. Just great expanses of dusty desert, everything's unreal. Six months down there and you're as nutty as a March Hare.'

I gave an involuntary shiver and got back to work. `Message from Edelweiss, sir. Squadron nearing rendezvous,' came a voice from the intercom.

`Good, better contact Edelweiss. Tell him we're nearing rendezvous point,' said Colonel.

`I'll be ready soon,' I said, having found a place to cut in the tunable coupling unit.

`Good. Do you feel hungry?' asked Colonel as he got into the lift. I nodded and the doors closed.

I suppose it took me about an hour or so to fix the coupling unit. When all the bits and pieces had been tidied up, I wrote on the color chart:

'WORK THIS ONE OUT'.

`Finished?' Colonel inquired, as I emerged from the lift.

`I hope so. Where's this food you were talking about?' `Here,' he said, pointing to a couple of delicious looking blue and yellow tablets.

`What are they?'

`Steak and chips. Double rations?'

`How about liquid?' I said, swallowing the pills. A crewman handed me a container with a tube coining out from the top. I sucked and to my delight it really was hot sweet coffee.

`Do you think you'll be able to give me distance and speed?' Colonel asked.

`Certainly. But one thing bothers me. Not the equipment, but the way you military people do your sums. You ask me for radar detection out to Neptune. It seems strange to me how you can be sure that's really far enough. Any craft coming into our Solar System must begin deceleration at a distance far out beyond Neptune,' I said.

`Fair question. In fact almost a hundred times farther out. By the time a ship reaches Neptune we expect it to have checked speed to about three per cent of light,' said Colonel, looking at the monitor.

`So the additional deceleration as the ship comes in to Earth cuts the speed right down to nothing at all, I suppose?' I mused.

`That's right.'

`Then you must be working on the basis of a steady deceleration of about 1 gravity. If we were really up against something unusual, how can you be sure that the space crafts we might be dealing with can't manage a deceleration of 10 gravities?'

`What sort of creature could stand up to 10 gravities for weeks on end? They'd have to be very small creatures!' Colonel said rather cynically.

`You mean a rat might be able to stand up to a big deceleration, but a rat couldn't design a space ship.' `That's right.'

I found the radar aerial unit and turned everything on, so as to give it final adjustment.

`I'll admit it looks like a good argument. I only hope it turns out as good as it looks,' I said thoughtfully, helping myself to another sip of coffee, and watching the needles flickering and creeping up from zero.

`Edelweiss on the blower, sir. Says everyone is in position. He'd like a word with you,' said the communications officer.

`Fine,' said Colonel opening up the channel and putting it on the intercom by flicking a switch in front of him. `Redscout calling Edelweiss. Redscout calling Edelweiss, over.'

`Hey, Redscout. Who in hell's name have they got in Huntsman? Over.'

`I don't know. Over.'

`Better find out. Sounds crazy to me. Over and out.' `Get me Huntsman,' said Colonel.

`Yes, sir. Redscout calling Huntsman. Redscout calling Huntsman. Over.'

Not a sound. Colonel looked round at everyone. `Redscout calling Huntsman. Over,' went on the communications officer.

`Huntsman here. Tally ho! Excruciatin' speed. Over.'

`Carry on, Huntsman. Over and out.' Colonel flicked the switch and turned with an enormous smile on his face. 'How on earth did old Ganges get himself into this show?'

`I should imagine by his quite infallible recipe of cutting through red tape,' I said, laughing.

`Big flare on the Sun, sir,' said a voice from beside me. `Everyone into the protection compartment, don't waste time,' Rhodes yelled, dragging me with him.

Once the heavy door closed we looked like pilchards in a can.

`We're surrounded by thicker material here to give us protection from X-Rays. They're produced in the skin of the rocket, by the storm of high energy particles from the flare,' said Colonel.

Suddenly there was a terrifying banging and clattering.

`Lucky the spectrum cuts off pretty sharply. Otherwise this protection wouldn't be much use. Ever had a ship completely cooked by a really bad storm?' I asked.

`Charlie Odgers and his crew were badly burned in a big storm three years ago,' one of the crew piped up.

The dials on the wall were beginning to dance.

`Near sunspot maximum, things can be pretty dicey. Here it comes,' said Colonel, looking at the dials where the needles were beginning to bang up against the maximum stop. 'We'll just have to sweat it out for a few hours until the monitors go off.'

I must have gone off to sleep, as the next thing I knew was Colonel shaking me. The crew had left the compartment. I got up and moved into the main cabin.