Operation: Outer Space Part 15

"You don't get it! We're lost! We can't check our speed without knowing where we are and how far we've come! We can't find out what the s.h.i.+p will do when we can't find out what it's done! Don't you see?"

Cochrane said patiently:

"I know! But we're in touch with Luna through the Dabney field that got us here! It transmitted radiation before, faster than light. It's transmitting voice and pictures now. Now we set up a television show which pays for our astrogation and lets the world sit in on the prettier aspects of our travels. Hm.... How long before you can sit down on a planet, after you have all the navigational aids of--say--the four best observatories on Earth to help you? I'll arrange for a sponsor--."

He went happily down the stairs again. This was a spiral stair, and he zestfully spun around it as he went to the next deck below. At the bottom he called up to Babs:

"Babs! Get Bell and Alicia Keith and come along to take dictation! I'm going to need some legal witnesses for the biggest deal in the history of advertising, made at several times the speed of light!"

And he went zestfully to the communicator to set it up.

And time pa.s.sed. Data arrived, which at once solved Jones' and the pilot's problem of where they were and how far they had come--it was, actually, 178.3 light-years--and they spent an hour making further tests and getting further determinations, and then they got a destination.

They stopped in s.p.a.ce to extrude from the airlock a small package which expanded into a forty-foot plastic balloon with a minute atomic battery attached to it. The plastic was an electric conductor. It was a field-plate of the Dabney field. It took over the field from Earth and maintained it. It provided a second field for the s.h.i.+p to maintain. The s.h.i.+p, then, could move at any angle from the balloon. The Dabney field stretched 178.3 light-years through emptiness to the balloon, and then at any desired direction to the s.h.i.+p.

The s.h.i.+p's rockets thrust again--and the booster-circuit came into play.

There were maneuverings. A second balloon was put out in s.p.a.ce.

At 8:30 Central U. S. Time, on a period relinquished by other advertisers--bought out--a new program went on the air. It was a half-hour show, sponsored by the Intercity Credit Corporation--"Buy on Credit Guaranteed"--with ten straight minutes of commercials interjected in four sections. It was the highest-priced show ever put on the air. It showed the interior of the s.h.i.+p's control-rooms, with occasional brief switches to authoritative persons on Earth for comment on what was relayed from the far-off skies.

The first broadcast ensured the success of the program beyond possible dispute. It started with curt conversation between Jones and the pilot, Al--Jones loathed this part of it, but Al turned out to be something of a ham--on the problems of approaching a new solar system. Cut to computers back on Earth. Back to the control-room of the stars.h.i.+p.

Pictures of the local sun, and comments on its differentness from the sun that had nourished the human race since time began.

Then the cameras--Bell worked them--panned down through the s.h.i.+p's blister-ports. There was a planet below. The s.h.i.+p descended toward it.

It swelled visibly as the s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p approached. Cochrane stood out of camera-range and acted as director as well as producer of the opus. He used even Johnny Simms as an offstage voice repeating stern commands. It was corny. There was no doubt about it. It had a large content of ham.

But it happened to be authentic. The s.h.i.+p had reached another planet, with vast ice-caps and what appeared to be no more than a twenty-degree-wide equatorial belt where there was less than complete glaciation. The rockets roared and boomed as the s.h.i.+p let down into the cloud-layers.

Television audiences back on Earth viewed the new planet nearly as soon as did those in the s.h.i.+p. The time-lag was roughly three seconds for a distance of 203.7 light-years.

The surface of the planet was wild and dramatic beyond belief. There were valleys where vegetation grew luxuriantly. There were ranges of snow-clad mountains interpenetrating the equatorial strip, and there were ma.s.ses of white which, as the s.h.i.+p descended, could be identified as glaciers moving down toward the vegetation.

But as the s.h.i.+p sank lower and lower--and the sound of its rockets became thunderous because of the atmosphere around it--a new feature took over the central position in one's concept of what the planet was actually like.

The planet was volcanic. There were smoking cones everywhere--in the snow-fields, among the ice-caps, in between the glaciers, and even among the tumbled areas whose greenness proved that here was an environment which might be perilous, but where life should thrive abundantly.

The s.h.i.+p continued to descend toward a great forest near a terminal moraine.

CHAPTER SIX

Jamison declaimed, wearing a throat-mike as Bell zestfully panned his camera and the s.h.i.+p swung down. It was an impressive broadcast. The rockets roared. With the coming of air about the s.h.i.+p, they no longer made a mere rumbling. They created a tumult which was like the growl of thunder if one were in the midst of the thunder-cloud. It was a numbing noise. It was almost a paralyzing noise. But Jamison talked with professional smoothness.

"This planet," he orated, while pictures from Bell's camera went direct to the transmitter below, "this planet is the first world other than Earth on which a human s.h.i.+p has landed. It is paradoxic that before men have walked on Mars' red iron-oxide plains and breathed its thin cold air, or fought for life in the formaldehyde gales of Venus, that they should look upon a world which welcomes them from illimitable remoteness. Here we descend, and all mankind can watch our descent upon a world whose vegetation is green; whose glaciers prove that there is air and water in plenty, whose very smoking volcanoes a.s.sure us of its close kins.h.i.+p to Earth!"

He lifted the mike away from his throat and framed words with his lips.

"_Am I still on?_" Cochrane nodded. Cochrane wore headphones carrying what the communicator carried, as this broadcast went through an angled Dabney field relay system back to Lunar City and then to Earth. He spoke close to Jamison's ear.

"Go ahead! If your voice fades, it will be the best possible sign-off.

Suspense. Good television!"

Jamison let the throat-mike back against his skin. The roaring of the rockets would affect it only as his throat vibrated from the sound. It would register, even so.

"I see," said Jamison above the rocket-thunder, "forests of giant trees like the sequoias of Mother Earth. I see rus.h.i.+ng rivers, foaming along their rocky beds, taking their rise in glaciers. We are still too high to look for living creatures, but we descend swiftly. Now we are level with the highest of the mountains. Now we descend below their smoking tops. Under us there is a vast valley, miles wide, leagues long. Here a city could be built. Over it looms a gigantic mountain-spur, capped with green. One would expect a castle to be built there."

He raised his eyebrows at Cochrane. They were well in atmosphere, now, and it had been an obvious defect--condition--necessity of the Dabney field that both of its plates should be in a vacuum. One was certainly in air now. But Cochrane made that gesture which in television production-practice informs the actors that time to cutting is measured in tens of seconds, and he held up two fingers. Twenty seconds.

"We gaze, and you gaze with us," said Jamison, "upon a world that future generations will come to know as home--the site of the first human colony among the stars!"

Cochrane began to beat time. Ten, nine, eight--.

"We are about to land," Jamison declaimed. "We do not know what we shall find--What's that?" He paused dramatically. "A living creature?--A living creature sighted down below! We sign off now--from the stars!"

The ending had been perfectly timed. Allowing for a three-second interval for the broadcast to reach the moon, and just about two more for it to be relayed to Earth, his final word, "Stars!" had been uttered at the precise instant to allow a four-minute commercial by Intercity Credit, in the United States, by Citroen in Europe, by Fabricanos Unidos in South and Central America, and Near East Oil along the Mediterranean.

At the end of that four minutes it would be time for station identification and a time-signal, and the divers eight-second flashes before other programs came on the air.

The rockets roared and thundered. The s.h.i.+p went down and down. Jamison said:

"I thought we'd be cut off when we hit air!"

"That's what Jones thought," Cochrane a.s.sured him. He bellowed above the outside tumult, "Bell! See anything alive down below?"

Bell shook his head. He stayed at the camera aimed out a blister-port, storing up film-tape for later use. There was the feel of gravitation, now. Actually, it was the fact that the s.h.i.+p slowed swiftly in its descent.

Cochrane went to a port. The s.h.i.+p continued its descent.

"Living creature? Where?"

Jamison shrugged. He had used it as a sign-off line. An extrapolation from the fact that there was vegetation below. He looked somehow distastefully out the port at a swiftly rising green ground below. He was a city man. He had literally never before seen what looked like habitable territory of such vast extent, with no houses on it. In a valley easily ten miles long and two wide, there was not a square inch of concrete or of gla.s.s. There was not a man made object in view. The sky was blue and there were clouds, but to Jamison the sight of vegetation implied rooftops. There ought to be parapets where roofs ended to let light down to windows and streets below. He had never before seen gra.s.s save on elevated recreation-areas, nor bushes not arranged as landscaping, and certainly not trees other than the domesticated growths which can grow on the tops of buildings. To Jamison this was desolation. On the moon, absence of structures was understandable. There was no air. But here there should be a city!

The s.h.i.+p swayed a little as the rockets swung their blasts to balance the descending ma.s.s. The intended Mars-s.h.i.+p slowed, and slowed, and hovered--and there was terrifying smoke and flame suddenly all about--and then there was a distinct crunching impact. The rockets continued to burn, their ferocity diminished. They slackened again. And yet again. They were reduced to a mere faint murmur.

There was a remarkable immobility of everything. It was the result of gravity. Earth-value gravity, or very near it. There was a distinct pressure of one's feet against the floor, and a feeling of heaviness to one's body which was very different from Lunar City, and more different still from free flight in emptiness.

Nothing but swirling ma.s.ses of smoke could be seen out the ports. They had landed in a forest, of sorts, and the rocket-blasts had burned away everything underneath, down to solid soil. In a circle forty yards about the s.h.i.+p the ground was a ma.s.s of smoking, steaming ash. Beyond that flames licked hungrily, creating more dense vapor. Beyond that still there was only coiling smoke.

Cochrane's headphones yielded Babs' voice, almost wailing:

"_Mr. Cochrane! We must have landed! I want to see!_"

Cochrane pressed the hand-mike b.u.t.ton.

"Are we still hooked up to Lunar City?" he demanded. "We can't be, but are we?"

"_We are_," said Babs' voice mutinously. "_The broadcast went through all right. They want to talk to you. Everybody wants to talk to you!_"