Chapter 3 Space

It was worse than he ever imagined it could be. Far worse. At first he wanted to scream. He tried to open his mouth, but his jaw muscles didn’t seem to be working. He wondered about this, and he tried to lift his hand to touch his jaw, but something was holding his arm down tight against the foam-rubber cushion.

And then the force of acceleration got to work in earnest.

It pressed down on his body like a giant, mail-covered hand, pushing against his chest with suffocating force. He felt his back sink into the foam rubber, and there was a helpless feeling to the slow, sinking movement that made him want to cry out in panic. The only couch he could see from his position was Jack’s. He saw Jack’s body sinking into the cushion, and then Jack’s mouth popped open in an expression of sheer, raw pain. Sudden fear knifed its way up Ted’s spine as he anticipated the same ripping anguish Jack seemed to be experiencing.

The pain didn’t come. In its place, he felt the tremendous force clawing at the skin on his face, stretching it tight against his skull, pulling his lips back over his teeth, twisting his features into a horrible mask.

He sank deeper and deeper into the foam rubber, the roar of the rockets echoing in his ears. He tried to focus the picture in the radar screen overhead, wondering why it had suddenly become so blurred. Behind the screen, the metal overhead seemed to tilt at a crazy angle, and the cabin seemed to be growing darker. Ted’s mind felt fuzzy, and he wanted to shake his head in an effort to clear the dizziness that was invading his skull. But there were tight metal bands holding his head to the couch, it seemed: formidable bands of steel that forbade movement of any kind.

The blackness struck swiftly, without warning. It seemed to grow in the center of his skull, starting as a small dot and bursting into complete blackness in the space of a heartbeat.

He didn’t fight it.

He allowed it to claim his mind and his body completely as he drifted off into complacent nothingness.

It was quiet.

There was no longer the screaming wail of the jets, no longer the trembling fury of the bulkheads vibrating to the pound of the engines.

He blinked his eyes and stared up at the overhead. Tentatively, like a blind man testing his next step, Ted moved the fingers on his right hand, then the hand itself, then his arm. Across the aisle, Jack was unbuckling his safety belt and sitting up. Ted sat up, too, waved his arm, and weakly said, “Hi.”

Jack grunted, swung his legs over the side of the couch, and pushed against the cushion with his arms.

Slowly, easily, like a balloon drifting over roof tops, he floated across the cabin.

For a moment, Ted forgot all his Academy learning, and his eyes opened wide in honest surprise. He almost said, “Hey, you’re floating!” He realized then that the jets had probably been inactive for a long while now, and as a result, everything in the ship was weightless.

Jack cruised closer, an expression of pain still on his features, as if it had somehow been etched there when the ship started accelerating. Ted unbuckled his belt, anxious to experience the sensation of weightlessness.

“You’d better take it easy at first,” Jack warned. “Most lubbers shove off so hard they crack a few ribs against the bulkheads.”

Ted put his palm against the cushion and gave a small push. He floated off the couch, a delighted smile on his face.

“It feels funny,” he said.

Jack nodded solicitously.

“How do I get down?” Ted wanted to know.

“Down where?” Jack asked. “You’re in space, my friend. No ups or downs here, remember?”

Ted felt a slow flush seep onto his face. Jack seemed to have acquired the knack of making him feel small and foolish, and he wondered whether Jack had changed since he left the Academy, or whether he’d always been that way.

“Everybody up and kicking?” a voice asked.

Ted looked down to see Captain Merola swinging his legs over the side of the couch. The other members of the crew were beginning to stir now, and from Ted’s floating vantage point, he got his first good look at them.

Dr. Gehardt sat up abruptly in the second couch on the port side. He was small and fragile-looking, with a partially bald head saved from complete nakedness by a white fringe circling the back of his skull and continuing up around his ears. Something like the rings around Saturn, Ted thought. The geologist’s nose was short, a stub that perched like a button between intense brown eyes that opened wide now and stared around the cabin.

“The engines?” he asked. “Is there something wrong?”

Merola glanced up, holding tight to the cushion of his couch. “How do you mean, Doc.”

Dr. Gehardt assumed a listening pose, his head cocked to one side. “There is no sound,” he said at last. He shrugged as if to excuse his unfamiliarity with the workings of a rocket ship.

“Nothing to worry about,” Merola assured him. “We’re just in free fall.”

“Fall? Does that mean...?” Dr. Gehardt’s brow wrinkled.

Merola smiled. “I guess it’s not such a good term, Doc, in that it implies a downward motion — which isn’t the case at all. We’re still traveling up from Earth. ‘Free fall’ simply means that our rockets have been turned off.”

“If I may expose my own stupidity...” another voice put in. Ted, floating close to the overhead looked down to see Dr. Phelps, the ship’s physician, swing upright on his couch. The doctor was a thin man with an angular face and a wide, expressive mouth. He looked strangely out of his element in the baggy coveralls worn by the entire crew.

“Glad to have you with us,” Merola said, grinning.

The doctor nodded. “Thank you. May I ask some questions?”

“Sure. Fire away.”

“Well, have we already dropped the first two stages of the rocket?”

Lieutenant Dan Forbes shoved himself off his couch and drifted dangerously close to the radar screen. “Let me answer that one, George,” he said.

Forbes was tall, with a long-limbed body amply padded with muscles that filled out his coveralls. His blond hair was cut close to his scalp, topping the browned, rugged planes of his face like a tight-fitting skullcap. He cocked one blond eyebrow over a gray eye now and said, “Well, Captain, may I?”

“Sure,” Merola said. “Go ahead.”

“We dropped the first two stages quite a while back, Dr. Phelps,” Forbes said. “How high are we now, George?”

Merola glanced over his shoulder at the instrument panel. “Seventy-five miles.”

Forbes nodded. “We dropped the first stage at — check me on these figures, George — a height of 24.9 miles.” He looked at Merola. “That right?”

“Go on,” Merola said.

“When we were 39.8 miles high, we cut off the second stage,” Forbes said. “The third stage, the one we’re in now, kept blasting until we’d reached a height of 63.5 miles.”

“63.3 miles,” Merola corrected.

“63.3 miles,” Forbes amended. “Then we ended our power flight and entered free fall.”

Dr. Gehardt moved to make himself comfortable on the couch, and then opened his mouth in surprise as he began to drift across the cabin. He reached for the cushion and pulled himself back, a pleased smile on his mouth. “This dropping of the stages,” he said, gripping the sides of the couch, “isn’t it dangerous? I mean, when they fall.”

“That’s one of the reasons we blasted off from Johnston Island,” Merola put in. “Both stages fell over water, you see.”

“I remember now,” Dr. Gehardt said, nodding. “You mentioned something about a wire-mesh parachute on each stage.”

“That’s right, Doc,” Merola said. “Those ring-shaped ribbon parachutes carry the stages safely to the water. They’re probably being picked up right now by Navy ships.”

“And they will be used again, of course,” Dr. Phelps said, his voice rising slightly to make his statement a question.

“Yes, of course,” Forbes said.

Merola suddenly clapped one palm against the other. “And that ends the lecture for today. Now if you gentlemen will silently float down this way, I’ll give you some size fourteens that will keep you glued to the deck.”

“Shoes?” Dr. Phelps asked.

Merola bent, lifting the lid on a foot locker. “Well, in a manner of speaking.” He lifted an object that looked very much like a metal sandal, fully two inches thick, with canvas straps dangling loose over the arch. “This is magnetized,” Merola explained. “One on each foot, and you can stop being eagles.”

Ted poked his forefinger against the overhead and began to drift toward the deck immediately. Merola handed him a pair of sandals, and he quickly strapped them to the heavy soles of his boots. He stood upright, his feet firmly rooted to the deck now.

“I think I liked floating up there better,” he said, grinning.

“The shoes have advantages,” Forbes told him. “You can climb up the side of the bulkheads with these. Makes you feel just like a fly.”

“Who wants to feel like a fly?” Jack asked.

His voice surprised Ted, who suddenly realized Jack had been unnaturally quiet ever since blastoff.

“Well, you might as well get used to them anyway,” Merola said, his brown eyes flashing. “It won’t matter on this short hop, but you might get tired of floating around when we’re on our way to the Moon.”

Dr. Phelps finished strapping on his sandals and stood up, the coveralls bagging loosely on his wiry frame. “That’s much better,” he said, staring down at his feet. “I’ve always been one to stand on my own two feet.”

Dr. Gehardt chuckled at this and stood up alongside Dr. Phelps, testing the sandals like a new pair of tennis shoes.

“I feel like a robot,” he announced.

“Wait until we put you in a space suit,” Merola said.

“Will we be wearing suits?” Dr. Gehardt asked. “That is, I know we’ll have to wear them on the Moon. But the Station...”

“The Station itself has its own oxygen supply and pressure control,” Merola said, “but we’ll need suits to get there from the ship.”

“I see.” Dr. Gehardt lifted his feet clumsily and clumped across the cabin. “Will we be there soon?” he asked.

“The entire trip takes fifty-six minutes.”

Dr. Gehardt moved over to the wide plexiglass viewport that swung in a semicircle across the waist of the cabin. Outside, like scattered diamonds on a jeweler’s velvet, the stars blinked at the rapidly moving ship. “This is an experience,” he said, his voice strangely solemn. “To be up among the stars.” He shook his head in silent wonder.

“We’re going a lot higher than this,” Jack put in.

The doctor turned away from the viewport and sighed deeply, almost as if Jack had broken his mood. “Yes, yes,” he agreed. “We will go much higher.” He glanced once more at the stars and added, “Man will always go much higher. This is our destiny.”

A strange silence seemed to shoulder its way into the cabin. Merola passed a hand over his upper lip and looked out through the viewport. Forbes shuffled his feet uncomfortably, and Ted leaned against the bulkhead, his eyes fastened to the glittering array in the sky outside.

It was Dr. Phelps who broke the silence.

“How fast would you say we’re going now?” he asked.

“Oh, close to 18,000 miles an hour,” Merola answered.

Dr. Phelps nodded knowingly. “That’s just what I figured. And there’s something I do not understand.”

“Here we go again,” Forbes said.

“If you prefer I didn’t ask questions,” the doctor started innocently. “I will...”

“Dan’s only kidding, Doc,” Merola said. “Fire away.”

Dr. Phelps nodded and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up into his scrawny neck. “If the Station is only 1,075 miles above the Earth, why will it take us all of fifty-six minutes to get there? You said we are traveling at a speed of 18,000 miles an hour. That’s approximately a thousand miles every three and a half minutes. If we can travel a thousand miles in such a short time, why do we need the extra fifty-three minutes? In fifty-six minutes, we should have traveled...”

“The Straight Line Fallacy,” Ted said quickly.

Dr. Phelps turned, his face curious. “What was that?”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Ted said. “Perhaps Captain Merola would...”

“No, go ahead,” Merola said. “I’m curious to hear what they teach you Academy Joes.”

“If you don’t mind,” Forbes interrupted, “I’m going down belowdecks to see if we’ve still got our engines with us.” He duck-waddled across the cabin on his metal sandals, stopping beside the hatch in the deck. He gave the wheel a sharp twist to the left, swung the cover open, and started down the ladder to the deck below.

“What about this... Straight Line Fallacy, did you call it?” Dr. Phelps asked.

“Yes,” Ted said. “That’s what we called it at the Academy.”

Jack sighed deeply, turned his back on the group and walked heavily to the viewport. He stood looking out at the stars, his arms folded across his chest.

“You see,” Ted continued, “most people assume that a rocket simply travels in a straight line from the Earth to its destination. That isn’t the case at all. Actually, only the first few minutes of flight are straight up. After that, the rocket is tilted into an egg-shaped orbit that gradually widens the distance from Earth.”

“Yes, go on,” Dr. Phelps said.

Ted grinned good-naturedly. “I thought that would explain it,” he confessed. He scratched his head. “Now, let’s see.”

“Will some actual figures help?” Merola asked.

“Well, yes. Yes, I think so.”

“We have to realize first that we are doing two things at the same time,” Merola said. “We are pushing forward at so many miles a minute, and we are also climbing upward. Forward and up at the same time. Have you got that?”

“Yes,” Dr. Phelps said.

“The rest is simple then,” Ted put in. “For each mile forward we go, we are also getting higher from the surface of the Earth. But because we are not going straight up, we will not necessarily have attained a height of ten miles when we have covered a distance of ten miles.”

“Here are the actual figures,” Merola continued. “When we’ve traveled an actual distance of 31.1 miles, we will have only reached a height of 24.9 miles. This difference between height reached and distance covered widens as the rocket continues in its orbit. For example, when we’ve covered 332 miles, our height is only 39.8 miles. When we’ve traveled 705 miles, we’d still be only 63.3 miles above the surface of the Earth.”

Ted nodded his head enthusiastically. “You can see, then, that in order to reach the comparatively low height of 1,075 miles, we’d have to travel a very great distance. In fact, we’ll have traveled more than halfway around the globe from the blastoff site before we reach the Space Station.” He paused for a moment and said, “It would be simple if we could just shoot straight up. We can’t, though.”

Dr. Gehardt nodded. “Halfway around the globe. And the circumference of the Earth is about 25,000 miles.”

“Well, a lot of other things enter into the figuring,” Ted said, “but that’ll give you a rough idea, anyway.”

Dr. Phelps still looked doubtful. “There would still seem to be a great many miles unaccounted for. After all, in fifty-six minutes...”

“Oh,” Ted exclaimed, brightening. “The Constant Speed Fallacy.”

Jack suddenly turned from the viewport, and his face did not help to disguise the disgust in his voice. “Another Academy catch phrase,” he said.

Ted felt suddenly embarrassed. Perhaps he’d said too much. Perhaps they thought he was showing off. He bit his lower lip and stared down at his shoes.

“I enjoy these catch phrases,” Merola said. “Let’s hear it, Ted.”

Ted shrugged. “I’ve talked too much already, sir.”

“Nonsense,” Dr. Gehardt said. “I find this most informative.”

“Well,” Ted said hesitantly.

“Come, come,” Dr. Phelps insisted.

“Well, we just called it The Constant Speed Fallacy at the Academy. I don’t know what you’d really call it. It just assumes that the rocket is always traveling at its top speed of 18,468 miles an hour. This isn’t so.” He stroked his jaw, searching for a comparison. “If you can imagine the rocket as a bullet fired from a rifle,” he said suddenly, “it might help. The bullet’s speed is greatest several seconds from the muzzle of the gun. The bullet travels in an orbit, just like the rocket, with an apogee and...”

“A what?” Dr. Phelps asked.

Ted smiled. “The apogee is simply the peak of the orbit, the point where the rocket — or the bullet — begins to turn back toward the ground. Our apogee will be at the Space Station.”

“I see. We will then be in the Space Station’s orbit.”

“That’s right. We’ll be another satellite, then. Like the Moon.” Ted paused and scratched his head. “Where was I?”

“You said the bullet’s speed was greatest...”

“Yes, several seconds from the gun muzzle. It reaches zero when the bullet is at the apogee — or peak — of its orbit, and it will again pick up as the bullet falls to the ground. The same is true of our rocket. We reached top speed at a height of 63.3 miles, and that’s when we cut off our power.”

“I’m beginning to understand,” Dr. Phelps said, “although it’s much more difficult than my first appendectomy.”

“We’re now in the process of losing speed,” Ted said. “Actually, we’re just coasting up to the Station, and we’re being slowed by the Earth’s gravitational pull.”

A new idea struck Dr. Gehardt. “Why, what will happen when we reach... our apogee, is it? Will we then fall back to Earth — like the bullet?”

“We would,” Merola said, “except for the fact that we start blasting again for fifteen seconds when we fall to a speed of 14,770 miles an hour. That fifteen seconds of power will bring our speed up to 15,800 miles an hour, and that’ll be the speed necessary for keeping us in the Space Station’s orbit.”

Dr. Gehardt nodded and looked at Ted again. He opened his eyes appreciatively and said, “They certainly train you well at the Academy.”

Merola grinned. “That’s why Jack is going along on the Moon trip. We’ll make good use of an Academy man.”

Ted smiled. “I wish you could make use of two Academy men,” he said.

Jack suddenly whirled from the viewport. “You’ll find plenty to keep you busy at the Space Station,” he snapped.

“Sure,” Merola said, slapping Ted on the shoulder. “Besides, there’ll be other trips to the Moon. Maybe you’ll be on the next one.”

“That would be swell,” Ted agreed, “but please don’t misunderstand me. I’d give anything to be going to the Moon with you fellows, but I’m perfectly happy with the year I’ll have at the Station.”

“That’s the boy,” Merola said. “There’s no sense in...”

Forbes suddenly stamped his way up the ladder, pulling himself up onto the deck and swinging the hatch shut behind him.

“Everything ticking?” Merola asked.

Forbes twisted the wheel tight, then lifted his blond head and grinned broadly. “Fine, just fine. Shouldn’t give us any trouble at all when we start blasting again.”

Merola glanced at his watch hastily. “And that won’t be too long now,” he said.

“You know,” Dr. Phelps intruded suddenly, “I still don’t understand that discrepancy.”

In less than a half-hour, they were flat on their backs again, fighting the tenacious power of acceleration.

It was a short ordeal to bear, though, much shorter than the initial blastoff period had been.

And in just fifteen seconds, they were at the Space Station.

None of the men spoke as they clambered into their bulky, rubberized nylon space suits. Using the buddy system, they paired off and fastened the toggles on their partners’ helmets. Ted, for one, was grateful for the darkened face plate of the helmet. He knew its real purpose was to ward off the powerful ultraviolet rays of the Sun, but at the moment it served to conceal the mixed emotions that were passing over his features.

Like a parade of overstuffed elephants, the men solemnly drifted to the air lock, sealing the inner door behind them. They waited inside the lock until the green light flashed, signifying that the pressure inside the lock was now equal to that outside. Merola floated clumsily to a button set in the bulkhead, and stabbed at it with his forefinger.

Noiselessly, the outer door of the air lock snapped open.

One by one, they stepped off into space. The sky spread around them like a deep black cloak scattered with dazzling sequins.

“Well,” Merola’s voice came over the speaker in Ted’s helmet, “this is the first stop, men.”

Ted knew it was his last stop — for the time being, anyway. But the Moon trip no longer seemed important to him. Five men were going to the Moon, and he’d have loved to be one of them. He wasn’t, though, and he was content to spend his year on the Station as if he’d never heard of the Moon trip.

A flurry of red and yellow caught his eye, and he turned his head within the metal confines of the helmet.

In the distance, like an enormous automobile tire hub, the Space Station hung against the sky. Fastened to it with slender cables, glistening in the light of the stars, stood the Moon rocket.

He pin-pointed the source of the red and yellow flash then. Two space taxis had been launched from the Station, and they sped toward the waiting men now, their jets burning into the night behind them.

“Welcoming committee,” Forbes said, his voice strangely distorted over the radio.

Ted gulped hard and watched the approaching taxis.