Tales of the Flying Mountains (27 page)

“Same reason you and Ed didn't, I guess,” Golescu said. “It's so crude and obvious, only a low wattage brain like mine 'ud see it. At least see it quick-like. I suppose somebody would've hit on it eventually.”

“That would have been too late.” Storrs's gaze traveled across the awesome blue plain that wheeled before him, curtaining off half the universe. “May be too late already. Hell's kettles, what a huge job!”

“Don't remind me. I got troubles of my own. Ready? Okay, let's stop rotation.”

Storrs opened the shield over the manual controls, made several adjustments, replaced the cover, and used the handle of a small crescent wrench to push a deeply recessed button. At once he leaped back, off the cylinder. Golescu went simultaneously.

They were none too soon. Gears meshed, flywheels began to spin, the motor and cargo sections took up the angular momentum which was being removed from the sail. At the same time, the disk was precessed to face the sun directly.

So great a mass could not be stopped fast. Storrs and Golescu flitted clear, out into the fierce light. Their thermostatic units began to labor, converting heat into electricity and storing it in the suit capacitors. That energy would be needed; the men were going to be at work for quite a spell.

“You know,” Storrs said, “you weren't right about saving everything. The sail will be lost.”

“So?” Golescu returned. “The kit is what matters. A couple of hundred thousand bucks' worth of caboodle is cheap for salvaging the rest.”

“If we do.”

“Talk about pessimists! Sam, I'm surprised you don't wear a belt and suspenders both ….At that, come to think of it, the pieces of sail ought to command fancy prices as souvenirs.”

West contacted them: “I'm having a bit of a tussle with Bailey. Let me cut you into the circuit.” A pause. “Here they are. You'll have to argue with them as well as me. Equal ranks.”

“Ridiculous arrangement,” Bailey said.

“Not in the least. Each of us has to be able to do any task that comes along. But let's not waste time. What precisely are your objections to our proposal?”

“Why, the whole concept is fantastic.”

“Look,” Storrs crackled, “this is our line of work, not yours. We know what's possible and what isn't.”

“Eight hours—less than that—to handle forty square kilometers of material?” Bailey protested.

“One micron thick,” West pointed out. “A hundred square meters masses only about half a kilo. It's not like building a frame for tugs to grapple. This job is elementary. Any spacehand with a geegee unit on his suit can do it.”

“But—no, you can't.”

“Not if you don't send us a swarm of men to help,” West admitted. “And soon.”

“If you think I'm going to authorize that kind of expense to the taxpayer, think again. I forbid this lunacy. You're hereby ordered to carry on with standard procedures.”

An inarticulate sound vibrated in Storrs's throat. Golescu said bad words. West spoke with complete calm:

“You can't forbid it, or issue any order except for us to do our best. Please read the texts you've been citing to me. If Beltline is responsible for this operation, Beltline's agents have to have authority to decide how it shall be carried out. And our decision is to go for broke, as I believe you Americans say. Without your cooperation, we are bound to fail. And what excuse will you offer then? I respectfully suggest, Mr. Bailey, that you get cracking.”

Stillness hummed, except for the noise of the crowding, flashing stars. Earth rolled tremendous against an ultimate dark. The sail began to bend at the edges as centrifugal force waned. Had it not faced the sun head on, it could have buckled into a hopeless tangle. As matters stood, when rotation ended it would approximate a section of a sphere.

Bailey's gulp gurgled in earplugs. “You win. I'll get several crews to you within a couple of hours, and meanwhile tell Captain Villegas to put his men under your direction. What equipment will be needed?”

“Torches, mainly,” West said. “Quickest way of slicing up that stuff. We have metal rods aboard, so I can construct a frame to hold the whole mess in position myself, rather fast. Your gang will also want …”

Golescu signaled Storrs to switch bands. “
Whew!
” he said. “That was a nasty minute. I didn't think old Ed had it in him.”

“Ed's a good fellow,” Storrs said. “Uh, we'll still only require one man aboard
Merlin
, but—”

“Hell with that bleat. We're in this together. I'm sticking with him when the time comes.”

“Right. Me too.”

It was necessary for the herdship to grapple and apply power, lest spin expose the bag to the radiation storm. Golescu should have been at the pilot board then, but he and Storrs were too exhausted. The work had been brutal. They sat in the saloon with untasted mugs of coffee, staring emptily at the bulkheads, while West rode the controls.

Outside, Lucifer ran free. Coughed from the sun, ions with energies in the millions of electron volts flooded all space. Down on Earth, tourists in the Antarctic lodges crowded into the observation domes to watch the winter sky come alive with vast flapping curtains of aurora. Elsewhere, men who had heard the news huddled near their 3V screens, waiting for word. Reception was poor. The nuclear generators of ships beyond the atmosphere poured power into screen fields, deflecting that murderous torrent from their hulls. The engineers' eyes never left the gauges.

Merlin
throbbed. Now and then, as she moved to keep the load at the end of her grapnel on an even keel, her members groaned with stress. That was the only token granted the men in the saloon. They dared not interrupt the pilot with questions.

“It's got to work,” Storrs said stupidly, for the dozenth time. He rubbed his chin. The bristles of beard made an audible scratching.

“Sure it will,” Golescu said. “My idea, wasn't it?” The cockiness had left his voice.

“Well,” Storrs said, “if it doesn't … if that cargo explodes … we'll never know.” He laid his fist on the table and regarded the knobby knuckles. “I'd like to know, though. How I'd laugh at those fat Earthlings.”

Golescu reached for his coffee. It had gone cold. “They aren't that bad. And if you've got to be such a hot-bottomed patriot, don't forget that trouble on Earth would affect the Republic. We need them, same as they need us.”

“Bull. I can show you economic statistics—damn and double damn! It isn't right! How many men's lives is it proper to risk, to save ten billion or so lousy dollars?”

“That dinero represents a lot more man-years than we three will rack up, even if I achieve my ambition to become a dirty old man.”

“Work years. Not deaths.”

“Scared?”

Storrs spat in the ashcatcher. “No. Tired and angry. This means one thing to Ed. Economic breakdown on Earth would hurt him directly. But you and me——”

“You didn't have to be aboard.”

“I sure did.”

“Oh, fork all those fancy moral issues,” Golescu said. “This is what we get paid for.”

“Hm-m-m … yeah ….Another half hour to go, by the clock, if the prediction is right. I hope Ed can stand the strain.”

“He'd better. That's the real chance we take. We knew right along the shield would be more than ample. Well, I saw him swallow a whole medicine chest full of antifatigue pills and psychodrugs.” Golescu stirred in his seat. “Feel like a game of rummy?”

“No.”

The sun's arrows rushed on through vacuum. Where they encountered
Merlin's
screen, they swerved, with a spiteful gout of X-radiation that her internal shielding drank up. Where they struck at the cargo section—

They hit a barrier of plastic and aluminum: the sail, cut into fifteen-meter squares that were layered within a welded framework. The shielding factor came to about fifty grams per square centimeter. Light metals and hydrogen-rich carbon compounds are highly effective stoppers of stripped small atoms like the hydrogen and helium ions which make up nearly the whole of flare emission. For example, 32.7 grams per square centimeter of aluminum will halt protons of 200 million electron volts. The recoil characteristics are such that secondary radiation is not a serious problem—at least, not to isonitrate, which is only touched off by a nucleus plowing into its giant molecule.

But the whole clumsy ensemble of shield, cargo section, and herdship must be kept facing directly into the blast. And gravitation kept trying to swing it into orbit, which brought gyroscopic forces into play. Control was exercised at the end of a long arm; the mass had considerable turning moment, nor was it perfectly balanced. Compensation could become overcompensation with gruesome ease.

“If we ride this one out,” Golescu said, “we really will get that bonus Ed was faunching for.”

“Uh-huh.” Storrs raised dark-rimmed eyes. “Andy, you're a good oscar and I hope we can ship out together again, but right now I've got some thinking to do. Keep quiet, huh?”

“Okay,” Golescu said. “Though thinking's the last thing I want to do.”

He prowled aft to have a look at the engine-room meters. Not that he could improve matters much if anything was going awry, in his present condition. Why had not one single man, out of the scores who divided the sail, volunteered to ride along and help? Earthlings, of course, had no great cause to love asterites. Golescu caught himself wondering if the revolution had really been justified—if anything ever was that raised such bitterness between men.
Now stow that! Break out the guitar and
—
no, it'd bother Ed. Sam too, I guess
.

I should'a taken a sleeping pill
—
uh-uh, none o' that, either
.

His bleared vision focused on the bank of indicators. Everything operating smoothly—good ship—wait a second! The external radiation count—

“Yi-yi-yip!” he screamed. “She's going down! The flare's dying!” And he did a war dance around the workshop and up the length of the corridor beyond.

Slowly, slowly, the storm faded. Until at last West said from the intercom, “It's over with. We're alive, boys.”

Storrs began to dance, too.

After a while West reported, “Earth called in. Congratulations and so forth. They'll send a tug at once for this cargo, and hold it in the moon's shadow while they unload. We're invited groundside for a celebration.” Wistfulness tinged his voice. “D'you think the company would mind if we accepted?”

“They better not,” Storrs said.

“We need a checkout anyway, after putting the ship to so much stress,” Golescu added. “And they'll have to compute a new orbit for the rest of our mission. We're bound to have a few days' layover.” Exhaustion dropped from him. “Fleshpots, here I come!”

He snatched up his guitar and bellowed forth:

Ol' Einstein was a transporteer, he was, he was
.

Ol' Einstein was a transporteer, he was, he was
.

His racing car used too much gas;

It shrank the time but it raised the mass
.

Bravo, bravo, hurrah for the transporteers!

Now he had a story to embroider for the girls in Pallas Town.

Interlude 6

Amspaugh, whose official position at the time provided him with many details that didn't get into the news, finishes the story.

“And the moral of it is?” Lindgren sounds a trifle sardonic.

“That there isn't any moral,” McVeagh says.

“Or else that there're as many different morals as persons who want to draw one,” I complain.

Dworczyk claps his hands down onto his knees. “This isn't helping us launch,” he says. “I repeat, our business is not to make some pompous ‘interpretation' and stuff it down the throats of the young. They'd regurgitate it anyway. We're simply choosing what facts, what actual events, every educated individual aboard this ship ought to know. Along with what aspects of political background, technology, economics, manners, morals, and so forth, at any given time, are worth remembering.”

“Of course,” Missy nods. “Our problem, though, is to find a basis on which to select what information should be included.”

“But it's so simple!” Dworczyk exclaims.

We regard him. He drops his eyes momentarily sheepish; then he stiffens in defiance. “Okay,” he says. “You want my specs. I'll give 'em to you. How's this for a broad outline of postwar history?”

He takes a few more seconds to arrange his words, then:

“In spite of everything, old grudges did tend to die, especially as prosperity grew and spread. The nations of Earth came to like the Republic, and many sold what asteroids they still had to its government. Their traffic with it was making them steadily more comfortable, as material resources flowed in from space. They didn't mind that per capita wealth was increasing faster—much faster—among the asterites. After all, the typical asterite worked a lot harder, often a lot more dangerously, than the typical citizen of a welfare state. Technological progress made it easier and easier to do things. The average Earthling took advantage of this opportunity to relax, to enjoy more leisure and security. The average asterite used the new capabilities to accomplish more. That made him richer yet; but from the Earthling's point of view, we weren't allowing ourselves a decent amount of time for enjoying that money.”

“Besides,” McVeagh comments, “Earthlings got—still get—vast satisfaction out of decrying the crudity and materialism of the space dwellers.”

“It's too bad so many of the younger generation in the Republic are taking the Earthside criticism seriously,” Amspaugh says.

“Oh, I don't know,” Lindgren replies. “The end result may be just to polish some of the rough edges off our people. That, for certain would be no bad thing. Anyway, it's not our problem aboard this ship.”