“Lemmy, televiewer--rear view.”
“Televiewer, rear view--on.”
The picture changed. The view was now directly below us. A bird’s-eye view of Luna City.
Twenty seconds.
Height, 6.8 miles. Now we could see the whole Horseshoe Range and a great deal of the country around it. Velocity, 4000 mph. The pressure began to tell. I could not move a limb, not a muscle. It was as though I were made of lead.
Lemmy began to groan.
Thirty seconds.
Height, 27.2 miles. Velocity, 6550. A great weight had settled on my chest. I found it difficult to breathe. Lemmy was screaming, whether with pain or with fear I had no means of knowing.
A few moments later we soared into the sunlight. It came streaming through the deeply-tinted, thick glass that was our only porthole, a brilliant spotlight on the cabin wall. We learned later from Control that the observatory staff, following our course with the telescope, saw us shoot into the sunlight. One moment we were invisible--all but the flaming exhaust--the next we were illuminated, lit up by the sun.
Eighty seconds.
Height, 76 miles. Velocity, 11,000 miles.
The pain in my limbs and chest was excruciating. I could not help but cry out. Then the acceleration stopped with a nauseating suddenness; the motor of the first stage had burnt itself out. Lemmy and I stopped yelling and silence fell upon the cabin. In the televiewer I could see the Earth--the pink earth of Australia with the dawn creeping across its surface; an ill-defined line that separated light from darkness. Luna City, now only a tiny spot set in what seemed to be a perfectly shaped horseshoe, lay in the half light.
“Tanks empty, booster paid out,” called Mitch. He sounded a little weary.
“Stand by to jettison booster,” replied Jet.
“Standing by.”
“Contact!”
There was a sharp muffled explosion as the huge booster was disconnected. Immediately the screen was blacked out by a close-up view of the useless stage as it began to fall behind. It receded slowly for, although the jettison action had slowed it down and speeded us up very slightly, it was, of course, still climbing at almost the same rate as ourselves. Then the steel mesh parachute automatically opened. Even in the thin air of the upper atmosphere in which we were now travelling, the parachute had a fairly powerful braking effect and the image of the empty, blunt-nosed hulk began to diminish rapidly.
The time to cut in the atomic motor and gain our final burst of speed was almost on us. Jet was already calling base. “Hullo, Control. Booster jettisoned. Standing by to cut in second motor. Awaiting your signal. Over.”
The seconds ticked by in silent expectation as I waited for Control to give the OK, but no sound came from my earpiece. Jet repeated his call. There was still no answer.
“My head-set is out of action,” he said. “Any of you get their reply?”
None of us had.
“Lemmy, any idea what might be wrong?”
“Receiver and transmitter working satisfactorily according to the indicators. I’ll try the g.p. speaker.”
That was dead too.
“Maybe the amplifying circuit’s packed in,” went on Lemmy. “Wouldn’t surprise me if the shock of the jettison smashed every valve in the ship.”
“We can’t wait much longer, Jet.” Mitch was impatient. “We’re losing momentum every second. Unless we take full advantage of our present speed we’ll never make it.”
“I’ll give them one more try. Unless they answer immediately, we’ll use our own judgment and fire the motor manually. Hullo, Control--Luna calling. Come in please.”
Silence. The booster was still behind us, gradually getting smaller, a black disc against the background of the glaring, pink Earth.
“Stand by, Mitch, we’ll give her a full burst. Whole of tank one.”
“Check.”
“Everybody battened down? The acceleration will be high. Things will be tough for a bit.” “Oh no,” groaned Lemmy.
“OK, Mitch?”
“OK.”
“Fire!”
There was a sound like the roar of a thousand heavy guns, a passing express train, a colossal waterfall and a clap of thunder. The ship trembled like a leaf, steadied herself and began at once to increase her velocity. We were no longer rising vertically but at an angle to our original line of flight, entering the set course, which if all went well, would carry us towards the exact spot where the Moon would be in less than five days from now.
If the pressure experienced during the first firing period had been unpleasant, this was ten times worse. All the sensations of heaviness and the great weight on the chest came quicker than before. I felt as though I were being pushed through the couch. The muscles of my thighs seemed to flatten outwards. The loose flesh on my face pressed down on to my cheek bones. It was as though a pair of powerful hands had been placed on each cheek and were trying to pull the flesh from my face towards my ears. My mouth stretched until it hurt. My tongue was too heavy to lift and saliva gathered in the back of my throat. Breathing was well nigh impossible. I began to yell, to moan and scream. It was the only way I could force the breath out of my lungs. They seemed to fill of their own accord, causing me to sing out in deep, sucking, involuntary sobs. Had I been able to do so, I would have kicked my legs, waved my arms in the struggle to breathe. I expected my lungs to collapse.
The agony lasted for a full two minutes. Then it ceased. The suddenness with which the motor cut out and the deep silence that followed set bells ringing in my ears. Mitch passed the back of his hand across his forehead. His face was ash coloured.
Gradually the ringing faded away and my hearing returned. I heard Lemmy speak--as from a distance.
“Is it over?”
“Yes, Lemmy. Feel OK?”
“Like I’ve been through a mangle.”
“Doc?”
“OK, I think.”
“Mitch?”
Mitch didn’t answer--not at first. He attempted to say something but was unable to speak. He was trying hard not to vomit. So was I.
“What’s up, Mitch?”
“I--feel--like--death.” He got the words out only with great effort.
“Lie still. Don’t move. We’ll all lie still for a few minutes.”
Presently I began to feel better. So did Lemmy. In fact he was almost objectionably cheerful. “Lemmy, if you feel fit enough, get up and get to work on that radio. We must re-establish contact with base as soon as possible.”
“Oh sure, Jet. Leave it to me.” He undid his safety straps, sat up in his bunk, took off and went drifting up to the ceiling. I’ve never seen such a look of horror and surprise on a man’s face as I did at that moment. Lemmy lay against the cabin roof, face down, his arms and legs spread out awkwardly.
“Jet--get me down. Help!”
“Serves you right for getting off your bed without your boots on. You should know better than that.”
“All I did was reach out for them and I shot straight up here.”
“You should have held on to your couch. The slightest movement is likely to send you drifting. It’s been drummed into you often enough.”
“Pull yourself down by the rail, Lemmy,” I called.
He did as I suggested. “Oh,” he said, “I feel just like a feather.”
None of us weighed as much. We were all weightless, as was everything in the ship, and would remain so until we landed.
“Is it going to be like this all the way to the Moon, Doc?”
“I’m afraid so, Lemmy. But you’ll get used to it. Now, gently--not too hard--you’ll hit the floor.”
He reached his bunk without incident and, hanging on to the side with one hand, pulled his boots from their stowage locker with the other. He secured himself with his safety strap and put on his metal-soled, magnetic boots. He was then ready to descend to the floor, which he did, negotiating the rungs of the ladder rather drunkenly. But once he touched the floor he was able to stand up and, with the clumsy steps of a robot, stagger across the cabin.
“What’s it like to walk, Lemmy?” I asked. I was feeling much better now and was putting on my own boots as I spoke.
“Like your feet are anchored but your head’s adrift.”
I stepped out of my bunk and stumbled across to Lemmy. It was a weird sensation, but after a few practice trips round the cabin Lemmy and I were walking almost normally. But there were a few things that took some getting used to. For example, if you held up your arm it had a tendency to stay up. It needed as much muscular power to get it down again as it needed to raise it. It would not drop back to a hanging position as it would on Earth.
“Try walking up the wall,” suggested Jet good humouredly.
“Huh?”
“Yes, come on, Doc,” said Lemmy. “You go one way, I’ll go the other. I’ll meet you by the pilot’s hatchway in the roof.”
Climbing up the wall was no more difficult than walking across the floor. I had picked a part free from control boards and ascended with ease. The cabin seemed to half turn over as I climbed. When I reached the ceiling it was to see Lemmy advancing towards me with a wide grin. “Doctor Matthews, I presume. Allow me to introduce myself. Lemmy Barnet, the human fly.”
We both grinned. We couldn’t help it. It was such a fantastic, enjoyable situation.
Oddly enough, although Lemmy and I were standing on the ceiling, we had absolutely no sensation of being upside down. But the cabin looked haywire. The ceiling was our floor, the floor the roof, and it was Jet on his bunk and Mitch lying on his who appeared to be the wrong way up. It was hard to believe that they would not come crashing down on us at any moment.
“Don’t hang about up there like that,” said Mitch suddenly. “I feel bad enough as it is. And what about that radio?”
“Yes, come on, Lemmy,” laughed Jet. “Cut out the fan and games--we’ve got work to do.”
Mitch’s stern comments brought us all back to our senses. We recrossed the ceiling and came ‘down’ the walls again to floor level.
I carried out my routine check of the control board under my care and, while Jet carried out his inspection for him, I went over to talk to Mitch. “How are you feeling?”
“Crook, Doc, very crook.”
“Well, the radar’s still working anyway.” Lemmy, over by the main control table, was talking to no one in particular.
Mitch was suffering from a bad attack of space sickness. He was the oldest member of the crew and it was no more than I expected. I told him to rest for a couple of hours, then he would feel more himself again. But Mitch had no intention of resting; in fact he became very argumentative. “How long is it going to take Lemmy to put that radio right?” he demanded.
“Give him a chance,” Jet replied. “He’s hardly started work on it yet.”
“And what if he doesn’t put it right?”
“Why shouldn’t he? He knows every valve, screw and condenser in the ship. Whatever the fault is, he’ll find it.”
“I wish I could think so. How do we know our height, speed or anything else unless we can contact base?”
“If it comes to it we can take some fixes on the sun and the planets.”
“Then I’d better get over to the astrodome and start.” He raised himself up in his bunk. Jet pushed him flat again.
“Oh no, Mitch. You stay where you are until Doc says you’re in a fit condition to get up. Now take it easy. In a few minutes Lemmy will be through to Control and everything will be all right. Give him a pill, Doc.”
As Jet turned away from Mitch to go over to where Lemmy was tinkering with the radio he gave me an enquiring raise of his eyebrows. Mitch had a little trouble swallowing his pills, but twenty minutes later he was asleep.
‘When he wakes again,’ I thought to myself, ‘he’ll find contact with base has been re-established and he’ll have a sweeter temper.’
I couldn’t have been more wrong--about the contact, or Mitch.
Many hours had passed. Mitch and I were trying to get some rest while Jet worked with Lemmy. It wasn’t easy to sleep, but we lay on our bunks, so far as it is possible to lie down under gravity-less conditions, and did our best. But after only a few minutes, Mitch called over to the two men at the control table and said: “How’s it going?”
Jet came over to us so that Lemmy wouldn’t hear his reply. “He’s still got half the radio equipment all over the table,” he said quietly.
“Isn’t he ever going to find the trouble? Two days he’s been at it now--and not a peep out of the darned radio.”
“Now take it easy, Mitch. He’s doing his best. He’s been working all this time with no sleep. He can’t do more than that.”
Mitch turned pale. His lips compressed and I noticed he was clenching his fists. “We should never have brought him.”
Only the slight edge of Jet’s voice betrayed that he was having difficulty in keeping his own feelings under control.
Mitch was beginning to shout now. “Why does he have to take so darned long? Doesn’t he know that every second is carrying us further away from the Earth--probably to our deaths?”
This was, of course, true--in part, at any rate. All this time, although the rocket was constantly losing velocity, we were coasting further and further from Earth and closer to the Moon. And for the last few hours, apart from our routine checks, there had been little any of us could do except be patient and hope that Lemmy would be able to put the radio right.
I glanced over at his stocky form bent over the radio panel. He worked in silence now. He had been bright enough when he started but as the tension in the cabin grew, Lemmy had become more and more reticent, working with grim desperation. I realised that he considered the failure of the radio to be his personal responsibility. He had, of course, supervised the designing of the equipment and helped install it but, although he had been working on it incessantly, he could find no fault with it.
Fortunately the radar and televiewers were still functioning satisfactorily, and every hour or so we turned on the viewer to look at the Earth, now no more than a large globe on the screen; a globe that was ever decreasing in size. When we took our first look, only two hours after take-off, the whole Australian continent filled the screen. But gradually, as we rose higher, it decreased in size and a greater area of the Earth came into view. Soon we could identify almost the whole of Asia and, six hours later as the globe turned on its axis, Africa was spread out before us.