Operation: Outer Space Part 11

But there were other griefs. The useless s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p hulk had to be emptied of the mining-tools stored in it. This was done by men working in s.p.a.ce-suits. Occupational rules required them to exert not more than one-fourth of the effort they would have done if working for themselves.

When the s.h.i.+p was empty, air was released in it, and immediately froze to air-snow. So radiant heaters had to be installed and powered to warm up the hull to where an atmosphere could exist in it. Its generators had to be thawed from the metal-ice stage of brittleness and warmed to where they could be run without breaking themselves to bits.

But there were good breaks, too. Presently a former moons.h.i.+p-pilot--grounded to an administrative job on Luna--on his own free time checked over the s.h.i.+p. Jones arranged it. With rocket-motors of adamite--the stuff discovered by pure accident in a steel-mill back on Earth--the propelling apparatus checked out. The fuel-pumps had been taken over in fullness of design from fire-engine pumps on Earth. They were all right. The air-regenerating apparatus had been developed from the aeriating culture-tanks in which antibiotics were grown on Earth. It needed only reseeding with algae--microscopic plants which when supplied with ultraviolet light fed avidly on carbon dioxide and yielded oxygen.

The s.h.i.+p was a rather involved combination of essentially simple devices. It could be put back into such workability as it had once possessed with practically no trouble.

It was.

Jones moved into it, with ma.s.ses of apparatus from the laboratory in the Lunar Apennines. He labored lovingly, fanatically. Like most spectacular discoveries, the Dabney field was basically simple. It was almost idiotically uncomplicated. In theory it was a condition of the s.p.a.ce just outside one surface of a sheet of metal. It was like that conduction-layer on the wires of a cross-country power-cable, when electricity is transmitted in the form of high-frequency alterations and travels on the skins of many strands of metal, because high-frequency current simply does not flow inside of wires, but only on their surfaces. The Dabney field formed on the surface--or infinitesimally beyond it--of a metal sheet in which eddy-currents were induced in such-and-such a varying fas.h.i.+on. That was all there was to it.

So Jones made the exterior forward surface of the abandoned s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p into a generator of the Dabney field. It was not only simple, it was too simple! Having made the bow of the s.h.i.+p into a Dabney field plate, he immediately arranged that he could, at will, make the rear of the s.h.i.+p into another Dabney field plate. The two plates, turned on together, amounted to something that could be contemplated with startled awe, but Jones planned to start off, at least, in a manner exactly like the distress-torp test. The job of wiring up for faster-than-light travel, however, was not much more difficult than wiring a bungalow, when one knew how it should be done.

Two freight-rockets came in, picked up by radar and guided to landings by remote control. The Lunar City beam receiver picked up music aimed up from Earth and duly relayed it to the dust-heaps which were the buildings of the city. The colonists and moon-tourists became familiar with forty-two new tunes dealing with prospective travel to the stars.

One work of genius tied in a just-released film-tape drama t.i.tled "_Child of Hate_" to the Lunar operation, and charmed listeners saw and heard the latest youthful tenor gently plead, "_Child of Hate, Come to the Stars and Love._" The publicity department responsible for the masterpiece considered itself not far from genius, too.

There was confusion thrice and four and five times confounded. Cochrane came in to dispute furiously with Holden whether it was better to have a psychopathic personality on the s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p or to have a legal battle in the courts. Cochrane won. Jones arrived, belligerent, to do battle for technical devices which would cost money.

"Look!" said Cochrane hara.s.sedly. "I'm not trying to boss you! Don't come to me for authority! If you can make that s.h.i.+p take off I'll be in it, and my neck will be in as much danger as yours. You buy what will keep my neck as safe as possible, along with yours. I'm busy raising money and fighting off crackpots and dodging lawsuits and getting supplies! I've got a job that needs three men anyhow. All I'm hoping is that you get ready to take off before I start cutting out paperdolls.

When can we leave?"

"We?" said Jones suspiciously. "You're going?"

"If you think I'll stay behind and face what'll happen if this business flops," Cochrane told him, "you're crazy! There are too many people on Earth already. There's no room for a man who tried something big and failed! If this flops I'd rather be a frozen corpse with a happy smile on my face--I understand that in s.p.a.ce one freezes--than somebody living on a.s.sisted survival status on Earth!"

"Oh," said Jones, mollified. "How many people are to go?"

"Ask Bill Holden," Cochrane told him. "Remember, if you need something, get it. I'll try to pay for it. If we come back with picture-tapes of outer s.p.a.ce--even if we only circ.u.mnavigate Mars!--we'll have money enough to pay for anything!"

Jones regarded Cochrane with something almost like warmth.

"I like this way of doing business," he said.

"It's not business!" protested Cochrane. "This is getting something done! By the way. Have you picked out a destination for us to aim at?"

When Jones shook his head, Cochrane said hara.s.sedly; "Better get one picked out. But when we make out our sail-off papers, for destination we'll say, 'To the stars.' A nice line for the news broadcasts. Oh, yes.

Tell Bill Holden to try to find us a skipper. An astrogator. Somebody who can tell us how to get back if we get anywhere we need to get back from. Is there such a person?"

"I've got him," said Jones. "He checked the s.h.i.+p for me. Former moon-rocket pilot. He's here in Lunar City. Thanks!"

He shook hands with Cochrane before he left. Which for Jones was an expression of overwhelming emotion. Cochrane turned back to his desk.

"Let's see ... That arrangement for cachets on stamps and covers to be taken along and postmarked Outer s.p.a.ce. Put in a stipulation for extra payment in case we touch on planets and invent postmarks for them ..."

He worked on, while Babs took notes. Presently he was dictating. And as he talked, frowning, he took a fountain-pen from his pocket and absently worked the refill-handle. It made ink exude from the pen-point. On the moon, the surface tension of the ink was exactly the same as on earth, but the gravity was five-sixths less. So a drop of ink of really impressive size could be formed before the moon's weak gravity made it fall.

Dictating as he worked the pen, Cochrane achieved a pear-shaped ma.s.s of ink which was quite the size of a large grape before it fell into his waste-basket. It was the largest he'd made to date. It fell--slow-motion--and splashed--violently--as he regarded it with harried satisfaction.

More time pa.s.sed. A moon-rocket arrived from Earth. There were new tourists under the thousand-foot plastic dome. Out by the former Mars-s.h.i.+p Jones made experiments with small plastic balloons coated with a conducting varnish. In a vacuum, a cubic inch of air at Earth-pressure will expand to make many cubic feet of near-vacuum. If a balloon can sustain an internal pressure of one ounce to the square foot, a thimbleful of air will inflate a sizeable globe to that pressure. Jones was arranging tiny Dabney field robot-generators with tiny atomic batteries to power them. Each such balloon would be a Dabney field "plate" when cast adrift in emptiness, and its little battery would keep it in operation for twenty years or more.

Baggage came up from Earth for Johnny Simms. It was mostly elephant-guns and ammunition for them. Johnny, as the heir to innumerable millions back on earth, had had a happy life, but hardly one to give him a practical view of things. To him, star-travel meant landing on such exotic planets as the fictioneers had been writing about for a hundred years or so. He really looked upon the venture into s.p.a.ce as a combined big-game expedition and escape from Lunar City. And he did look forward, too, to freedom from his family's legal representative and the constant reminder of ethical and moral values which Johnny preferred happily to ignore.

Film-tape came up, and cameras to use it in. Every imaginable item an expedition to s.p.a.ce could use or even might use, was thrust upon s.p.a.ceways, Inc. Manufacturers yearned to have their products used in connection with the hottest news story in decades. There was a steady trailing of moon-jeeps from the airlocks of Lunar City to the s.h.i.+p.

The time of lunar sunset arrived--503:30 o'clock, half-past five hundred and three hours. Time was measured from midnight to midnight, astronomical fas.h.i.+on. The great, blazing sun whose streamer prominences, even, were too bright to be looked at with the naked eye--the sun neared and reached the horizon. There was no change in the star-studded sky.

There were no sunset colorings. The incandescent brightness on the mountains was not lessened in the least. Only the direction of the stark black shadows s.h.i.+fted.

The glaring sun descended. Its motion was almost infinitely slow. Its disk was of the order of half a degree of arc, and it took a full hour to be fully obscured. And then there was at first no difference in the look of things save that the _Mare Imbrium_--the solidified, arid Sea of Showers--was as dark as the shadows in the mountains.

They still gleamed brightly. For a very long time the white-hot suns.h.i.+ne glowed on their flanks. The brightness rose and rose, and blackness followed it. At long last only the topmost peaks of the Apennines blazed luridly against a background of stars whose light seemed feeble by comparison.

Then it was night indeed. But the Earth shone forth, a half-globe of seas and clouds and continents, vast and nostalgic in the sky. And now Earths.h.i.+ne fell upon the moon. It was many times brighter than moonlight ever was upon the Earth. Even at lunar sunset the Earthlight was sixteen times brighter. At midnight, when the Earth was full, it would be bright enough for any activity. Actually, the human beings on Luna were nearly nocturnal in their habits, because it was easier to run moon-jeeps in frigidity and keep men and machines warm enough for functioning, than it was to protect them against the more-than-boiling heat of midday on the moon.

So the activity about the salvaged s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p increased. There were electric lights blazing in the demi-twilight, to guide freight vehicles with their loads. The tourist-jeeps went and returned and went and returned. The last s.h.i.+pload of travelers from Earth wanted to see the s.p.a.ce-craft about which all the world was talking.

Even Cochrane presently became curious. There came a time when all the paper-work connected with what had happened was done with, and conditional contracts drawn up on everything that could be foreseen. It was time for something new to happen.

Cochrane said dubiously:

"Babs, have you seen the s.h.i.+p?"

She shook her head.

"I think we'd better go take a look at it," said Cochrane. "Do you know, I've been acting like a d.a.m.ned business man! I've only been out of Lunar City three times. Once to the laboratory to talk, once to test a signal-rocket across the crater, and once when the distress-torp went off. I haven't even seen the nightclub here in the City!"

"You should," said Babs matter-of-factly. "I went once, with Doctor Holden. The dancing was marvelous!"

"Bill Holden, eh?" said Cochrane. He found himself annoyed. "Took you to the nightclub; but not to see the s.h.i.+p!"

"The s.h.i.+p's farther," explained Babs. "I could always be found at the nightclub if you needed me. I went when you were asleep."

"d.a.m.n!" said Cochrane. "Hm ... You ought to get a bonus. What would you rather have, Babs, a bonus in cash or s.p.a.ceways stock?"

"I've got some stock," said Babs. "Mr. Bell--the writer, you know--got in a poker game. He was cleaned out. So I gave him all the money I had--I told you I cleared out my savings-account before we came up, I think--for half his shares."

"Either you got very badly stuck," Cochrane told her cynically, "or else you'll be so rich you won't speak to me."

"Oh, no!" said Babs warmly. "Never!"

Cochrane yawned.

"Let's get out and take a look at the s.h.i.+p. Maybe I can stow cargo or something, now there's no more paper-work."

Babs said with an odd calm:

"Mr. Jones wanted you out there today--in an hour, he said. I promised you'd go. I meant to mention it in time."

Cochrane did not notice her tone. He was dead-tired, as only a man can be who has driven himself at top speed for days on end over a business deal. Business deals are stimulating only in their major aspects. Most of the details are niggling, tedious, routine, and boring--and very often bear-trapped. Cochrane had done, with only Babs' help, an amount of mental labor that in the offices of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe would have been divided among two vice-presidents, six lawyers, and at least twelve account executives. The work, therefore, would actually have been done by not less than twenty secretaries. But Babs and Cochrane had done it all.

In the moon-jeep on the way to the s.h.i.+p he felt that heavy, exhausted sense of relaxation which is not pleasurable at all. Babs annoyed him a little, too. She was late getting to the airlock, and seemed breathless when she arrived.