Lester del Rey: Marooned on Mars

But Chuck had seen all that before. He shoved through the men who were guiding the machines at a safe distance from the opened atomic engine, and headed toward the canteen. In his clothes and mask, he looked like any of the others, and no one paid any attention to him. It was a welcome change after the publicity he had received when he had passed his tests.

Inside the pressurized dining hall, Chuck found the little rocket pilot busily consuming coffee and watching the counterman make more. Jeff Foldingchair stood less than five feet tall, but his deep-tanned face and blue-black hair fitted his claim to being a full-blooded Cherokee Indian.

The man had been on the second trip to reach the Moon, twenty-five years before, and he was still one of the best rocket pilots in the business.

His black eyes met Chuck’s in the mirror behind the counter. He didn’t look around, but his white teeth flashed in a sudden smile. “Pull up, kid, and have a coffee. Sure is good to drink real Java after that concentrate stuff on the Moon. We’ve got ten minutes before we blast off… um-m, congratulations. Everybody in Moon City’s proud enough of you to bust!”

“Banana cream pie,” Chuck ordered, dropping beside Jeff. On the Moon there was food enough, and plenty of fresh vegetables from the tank gardens; but this would be his last taste of the luxuries for a long time. “I’m lucky you’re here, Jeff. I thought I’d have to take one of those slow ships back—and nine hours beats four days any time!”

Jeff shook his head, motioning for more coffee. “No hick to it, kid. Governor Braithwaite sent me down to pick you up. The tools I’m hauling back were just an excuse; they could have waited. Chuck, you never saw such a celebration…”

He stopped as a uniformed attendant came through the tunnel that led to the. main offices. The man motioned to the pilot, and Jeff got up with a shrug and followed him out.

Chuck smiled to himself as he attacked the pie. He could imagine the celebration in Moon City when they heard he had passed. No real nation could ever be more intensely patriotic than the little Lunar colony. It didn’t matter that he’d been born in the United States and had only been there four years; nationalities didn’t matter there—a year was enough to make a real Moon citizen. Esperanto, the artificial language which had been used at first to avoid the confusion of many languages, was now the normal language, even in the homes; nobody asked about a man’s birthplace—it was enough that he was now living on the Moon.

There was even some talk of independence in the full

tare, though everyone was well enough satisfied with Governor Braithwaite. He’d been appointed by the United Nations, which controlled the whole Moon, but he was as much of a Lunar citizen now as anyone else who lived there.

The Mars Expedition, of course, was being run by the United States under special charter from the UN to use the Moon, and the Governor had no real authority over it. Yet his general popularity had led to a quick acceptance of his request for one crew member to be from the Moon;

and nobody had questioned his choice of Chuck for the position. He’d exceeded his authority in sending the speedy little rocket for Chuck, but the ‘boy knew nobody would protest.

Jeff came back, interrupting Chuck’s reflections. The sharp planes of the pilot’s face showed worry, though he grinned at Chuck. “Meteorites out in space—they may change the course to Mars a bit,” he reported; the worry was in his voice too. “Eat up, Chuck, we’re about ready to make the big jump.”

“Dangerous meteorites?” Chuck asked. Most of the bits of rock and metal in space called meteorites were tiny things, but they traveled so rapidly that they could easily damage a ship.

Jeff shrugged, “Hard to say. Um-m, I’ve been thinking, though. Maybe this business of going off to Mars now is all darned foolishness.-Ten years from now, it’ll be routine; maybe you’d be smarter to stick with your family, let some other fool go chasing after new planets.”

“Jeff!” Chuck dropped his fork onto the half-finished pie and swung around. “What’s up? Is something wrong with my permit to go?”

Jeff shook his head and banded over the radargram. “They’ve Just decided to move the take-off to Mars ahead two days. Forget it, I guess I’m just nursing a grouch today. Let’s get going.”

Chuck knew better than to try to pump the man. He got up and put his mask on again. But the worry persisted. There was no reason for Jeff to start advising against his going, unless there was a good chance he couldn’t go. The pilot had been one of the men to recommend Chuck to I the Governor. Yet the radargram had said only what Jeff had indicated. Either there was another ‘gram, or he missed the obvious.

On the field, the shields had been put back over the rocket ship’s atomic engine, making it safe to climb the ladder to the control room. Those shields had been developed slowly over the last quarter-century until they were nearly perfect. Half an inch of such shielding was better than fifty feet of solid concrete in holding back dangerous radiation. Without them, atomic-powered rockets would have been too dangerous to use. The old chemical rockets had needed a hundred tons of fuel to get two or three tons to the moon. Now the little six-ton rocket was powered by a mere two tons of liquid in her tanks.

Chuck followed Jeff up the ladder and into the tiny air lock, waiting while Jeff locked the outer door. They went through the inner one, which Jeff also locked, and up through a small hatch into the pilot’s quarters. The pilot went through the routine of checking the valves which controlled their air supply. Then he dropped onto a soft sponge mattress on the floor and began fastening himself down with web straps.

Chuck did the same. Lying down, the human body could take more acceleration pressure than in any other position, and all take-offs were made while they were stretched out at right angles to the direction of flight. All the control buttons and levers were set into the mattress directly under the pilot’s hands.

On a panel overhead, needles told what was going on in the ship; a big chronometer measured out the passing seconds. “Ten seconds,” Jeff announced.

Chuck forced himself to go limp on the foam rubber. Jeff nodded tautly and pressed a single button.

The big rocket jet behind let out a sudden bellowing roar that rose to a screech and faded out a few seconds later, as they passed the speed of sound. The floor seemed to come up and slap at Chuck’s back. Under the pressure of four gravities of acceleration, his weight seemed-four times that on Earth. His chest labored under the effort of breathing, and the blood roared in his ears, trying to run back from the front of his body. His eyes pressed against their sockets, and everything blurred. Even Jeff was gasping, in spite of his long experience.

They were adding 128 feet to their speed each second—going from zero to a full five thousand miles per hour is one minute, and adding the same amount to their speed with every minute that passed. They were already beyond Earth’s atmosphere, and still the rocket exhaust thundered out behind.

If there had been heavy air around them, its resistance would have heated the ship to the melting point and wasted most of the thrust of the rocket. That was why the ships still took off from the highest possible point on Earth, where the air was thinnest.

Mercifully, the pressure lasted only a few minutes. Jeff’s fingers tripped the switches, and the rocket-jet ceased. The ship had gained more than the seven-miles-a-second speed needed to carry them away from Earth and it would coast the rest of the way. Earth’s gravity still pulled at them weakly, but since it pulled against the ship-exactly as strongly as it did against the two men, there was no feeling of-weight or pressure against the ship’s floor.