Tales of the Flying Mountains (25 page)

“Space contamination,” West said. “Weren't you listening?”

“Yeah, but I didn't get it. Eight hundred long tons of gas aren't going to make any dent in all that hard vacuum.”

“The devil they aren't. You'd still need instruments to detect the difference, but—well, let's figure it out.” West extracted paper, pencil, and a slide rule from a workbench drawer. “At a distance of ten thousand kilometers from sea level, Earth has an angular diameter of, um, call it forty-three and a half degrees. Adding in the surrounding volume of space that concerns us, we can say about fifty-seven and a half. If we jettison, nearly all the gas will arrive there; the molecules have an Earthward component of velocity. Between the upper atmosphere limit and, say, a twenty-five-hundred mile radius from the surface, the concentration of matter will go from about ten molecules per cubic centimeter, if I remember the figure rightly, to … good Lord, I have trouble believing this myself! Over fifteen thousand per cc!”

“And so? That's not going to cause any friction worth mentioning.”

“We'd actually do better to let the ship blow up,” West mumbled, still bent over his work. “In that case the gas will scatter every which way, and maybe only two percent or so will come near Earth. That's still intolerable, though.”

“Hell, it'll dissipate again.”

“Not for months, I'll bet. Remember the trapping effect of a planetary magnetic field. But even a few hours of that kind of contamination means the biggest economic disaster since the Nucleus failed.”

“How come?”

“The equipment in orbit, man! There're a couple of hundred assorted devices near Earth these days. Photocells, for instance, directly exposed to space. Monitoring instruments. How d'you think solar meteorologists get their data? One of the primary sources is a set of ultra-clean metal surfaces with characteristic responses to various radiations—automatic spectrometers sending continuous information to the computers Earthside on the relative output of UV, X-rays, the whole band of solar emission. What do you imagine bombardment by so many metallic-complex molecules, and adsorption, are going to do to the work function of these metals? How about the weather satellites, with their electronic insides open to space, shielded against ions but not against vacuum? Or any cybernet constructed along those lines, controlling some such elaborate apparatus as a radio relay or a Mössbauer clock—or even a manned station.” West slapped the bulkhead so hard that it rang. “Bailey said the loss would be ten billion dollars. But I don't believe he was counting in the indirect effects. He probably hasn't the nerve!”

Golescu put down his coffee cup with great care and jammed hands into pockets. A muscle jumped at the corner of his jaw. “I get you,” he said.

West discovered that his appetite was gone.
You know
, it occurred to him,
the economic repercussions might even be such that my own government will have to put a surtax on everyone who has any money left, simply to feed the unemployed. Margaret could lose that house yet
.

“Remembered an errand,” he said thickly. “I'll be back later to fetch this tray.” He left fast, stumbling at first.

You don't scramble into a full suit of space armor, no matter what the hurry. You wriggle and grunt your way in. Helping Storrs secure a knee joint, Golescu remarked, “And to think, when I was a kid, I figured it would've been real romantic being one of King Arthur's knights.”

“Shut up and keep going,” Storrs answered.

Maybe I am, though, in a way
, Golescu's mind continued.
Or at least it's a line to feed the ladies. That dragon outside is fixing to spew some mighty hot fire
.

The intercom speaker in the locker room resounded with West's voice from the bridge: “
Merlin
calling International Space Control Central. Come in, Central.”

The reply was abrupt. “International Space Control Central acknowledging call from
Merlin
. Stand by for relay from Earthside office.”

“So they finally woke Bailey up from his nice nap,” Storrs said.

“Nah.” Golescu finished assisting and went back to clamping his own boots. “He finally came out of conference. Formulation of policy directive in re Cigars, Standard Officers' Issue of and Correct Angle in Mouth of.”

“Relax, you chaps,” West said. “You ought to know how hard it is to raise a spaceship of some given type on short notice.”

“You mean they don't keep Rescue Service craft in orbit, with full crews?” Golescu asked, astonished.

“Oh, they do that much,” Storrs admitted grudgingly. “But——”

“Bailey here,” said the speaker. “That you,
Merlin?
”

“No, just us chickens,” Golescu muttered.

“West speaking, now in command,” said the Englishman. “We're near rendezvous with one hundred twenty-eight. I haven't picked up anything else on the radar. You do have tugs here, don't you?”

This close to Earth, there was no time lag that human senses could register. “I'm sorry, no,” Bailey said. It was hard to tell whether his tone was curt or merely defensive. “Unfeasible.”

“What?” Storrs cried. Golescu watched the shallow face turn quite bloodless. His own heart skipped a beat or two. He got violently busy with his armor. Above the clatter of metal, he heard West:

“But the Rescue Serivce has tugs.”

“I know,” Bailey said. “Believe me, Captain West, this decision was not arrived at lightly. The unfortunate fact is, as I told you before, every ship that could tow your load on a cable at a high enough acceleration to give us any chance is out on maneuvers. You must be aware that a standard rescue tug does not use cables and is not built for them. Just like your own vessel. A cable would add a great deal of dead weight, for no purpose when it is so easy to clamp on directly with a gyrogravitic grapnel. Nor do the tugs have more power than your type. It isn't necessary, in any foreseeable situation. A disabled ship need only be gotten into a stable orbit to wait for a repair crew. This merely happens to be so improbable a situation that it could not be foreseen.”

“But three or four to help us——”

“How will you attach more than one hauler by geegee to a load as small in volume as this? If we had a ship available, so big it could take the container aboard, there would be no problem. Its radiation screen would protect the cargo. But we don't. The Navy transports are gone. So is the
Lunar Queen.
” Bailey's voice turned cold. “With the asterites taking over so much interplanetary shipping, and with so much terrestrial bottom destroyed during the war, those are the only such craft left to us.”

Silence extended itself. Golescu could imagine West, alone before the pilot board, his sad eyes resting on the stars and unreachable Earth, methodically trying to think his way out of the trap.

“Build a frame around the gasbag, you Oedipal clot-brain!” Storrs snarled.

“Sam, please,” West begged. To Bailey: “Forgive us. We are rather overwrought here, you understand. Er … what about it, though? A skeleton of girders around the bag, giving a large effective surface to which several tugs could grapple.”

“How long would it take to build?” the man on the ground countered. “You know how ticklish and specialized a job construction in orbit is. The sun would flare hours before any such project could be finished.” Something like eagerness came into his speech. “The Rescue Service is prepared to take you aboard one of its own units. You need only detach the sail and other excess mass, hook onto the cargo section, and operate your ship by remote control from ours. Quite safe.”

“'Fraid not,” West said. “Herdships don't include equipment for unforeseeable cases, either. All we could do by remote control is turn the Emetts on and off. Which is insufficient. A ship coupled to an outside mass makes a highly unstable system. We'll need a pilot on deck, to correct every time it starts hunting.”

He sighed. “Bring your ship around, though. Only one of us has to be aboard.”

Storrs's face had gone from white to red. “Why one of
us?
” he shouted. “It's your problem, Earthling!”

There was a thump that might have been Bailey's fist striking his desk. “Yours, sir, yours,” he threw back. “Read the Interplanetary Navigation Treaty, or your own franchise. Beltline sent that cargo here, and until delivery has been made, Beltline is responsible for the consequences. If someone has to risk a ship and, yes, a life, why should it be this Earth you despise so loudly?”

“Gentlemen—” West expostulated.

Bailey's tone smoothed over. “I agree. This is no time for recriminations. Do understand that our decision was a hard one. I sympathize with your feelings. We shall all pray for you. And don't forget, if the, um, the outcome is unfortunate, my own position will be seriously jeopardized.”

Storrs swallowed something and clanged his faceplate shut.

“Very well, then,” West said tiredly. “We'll proceed as best we can. Dispatch that ship of yours. Maintain contact with us. Let us know if you come up with any better ideas.”

“Certainly. Good luck,
Merlin.
”

“Roger and out, Earth.”

Golescu's earplugs registered Storrs's suit radio: “I don't want that bastard's good wishes.”

“Me, I'll take every scrap of luck that's offered me,” Golescu said. “I'm not proud.” To the intercom: “How long till rendezvous, Ed?”

“About ten minutes,” West answered. “Better run off your suit checks fast.”

“A checked suit … in space?” Golescu closed his own faceplate.

By the time he and Storrs had verified that everything was in order and had clumped their way to the airlock, deceleration was ended. They stood unspeaking while the chamber exhausted for them. The outer door opened a cup that brimmed with stars.

Golescu touched the controls of his geegee unit and went forth. Suddenly he was no longer encased in clumsiness, he flitted free as an Earth-dweller can be only in dreams.
Merlin
dwindled to a toy torpedo. Blackness surrounded him, lit by twelve thousand visible suns.

He did not look at his own sun. It could have struck him blind before it struck him dead. And Luna was occulted from here. But Earth lay enormous to one side, a dark ball with one dazzling thin edge and a rim of refracted light. There was not much poetry in his makeup, but he found it hard to remove his gaze from the planet.

Storrs's broadcast voice sounded in his receiver. “We're clear, Ed. Stay where you are till we finish.”

“Right-o,” said West. “Your velocity relative to target is …” He reeled off the figures.

There was scant need. As Golescu swung about, the sailship, which had been at his back, loomed like another Earth.

He had snapped down his glare filter. The stars vanished; he could now have stared Sol in the eye. The disk of the sail reflected with nearly the same brilliance. Protected, he saw it as a great white moon, growing as he sped across the few kilometers between. The suit radar controlled a series of beeps to inform him of vectors and distance. It made a dry, crickety music for his flight. Not exactly the Ride of the Valkyries, he thought—scarier. He found himself whistling soundlessly, the words running defiant through his head.

Chuck Lindbergh was a transporteer, he was, he was
.

Chuck Lindbergh was a transporteer, he was, he was
.

His lonesome song was in the news:

The Spirit of St. Louis Blues
.

Bravo, bravo, hurrah for the transporteers!

“Hey, Ed,” Storrs called. As an afterthought: “You, too, Andy.”

“Yes?” West replied.

“I've been considering. The way this job has developed, it's most likely an impossible one.”

“We must try.”

“Sure, sure, sure. But listen. It won't do us any good to watch telescopically for the commencement of that flare. The highest energy protons don't travel at much under the speed of light. And there's that whopping probable error in the time prediction. One hour in advance, let's cast off, and to hell with those precious satellites.”

“Sorry, old chap, no.
Merlin's
going to stay coupled and hauling till the end of the run … or her. I'll pilot. We can dispense with the engine watch. You and Andy wait aboard the rescue ship.”

“Stow that,” Golescu said. “What kind of guts do you think we have?”

“You're both young men,” West said dully.

“And you're a married man. And I got a reputation to keep up.”

“Ease off on the heroics, you two,” Storrs said. “If it comes to that, maybe we can cut cards. Meanwhile, every meter we can drag that canned stink spaceward will help some, I suppose—so let's get on with it.”

The sail now nearly bisected the sky. Seven kilometers wide, the foam-filled members that stiffened it marching across the field of view like Brobdingnagian spokes with its slow rotation, that disk massed close to a hundred tons. And yet it was ghostly thin, a micron's breadth of tough aluminized plastic, the spin as necessary as the ribs to keep it from collapsing backward under the torque at its edge.

For while the pressure of sunlight in Earth's neighborhood is only some eighty microdynes per square centimeter, this adds up unbelievably when dimensions stretch into kilometers. The sunjammers were slow, their shortest passages measured in months, but that vast steady wind never ended for them; it weakened as they drove starward but so did solar gravity, and in exact proportion. They cost money to build, out in free space, yet far less than a powered ship; for they required no engines, no crews, simply a metal coating sputtered onto a sheet of carbon compounds, a configuration of sensors and automata, and a means to signal their whereabouts and their occasional needs. Those needs rarely amounted to more than repair of some mechanical malfunction. Otherwise little happened on the long, blind voyages. Micrometeoroids eroded the sails, which must eventually be replaced; cosmic rays sleeted through the carrier sections, unheeded by unalive cargoes.…