Robert Heinlein - The Rolling Stones

Hazel and Pollux occupied the couches of the chief and assistant. Stone stuck his head down without going down. "Power Room?"

"She'll be ready. I'm letting her warm slowly."

Dr. Stone, Meade, and Buster were riding out the lift in the bunkroom, for company; he stuck his head in. "Everybody okay?"

His wife looked up from her couch. "Certainly, dear. Lowell has had his injection." Buster was stretched out on his back, strapped down and sleeping. He alone had never experienced acceleration thrust and free falling; his mother had decided to drug him lest he be frightened.

Roger Stone looked at his least son. "I envy him."

Meade sat up. "Head pretty bad, Daddy?"

"I'll live. But today I regard farewell parties as much overrated affairs, especially for the guest of honor. "

The horn over his head said in Castor's voice, "Want me to boost her, Dad? I feel fine."

"Mind your own business, co-pilot. She still tracking?"

"Tracking, sir. Eleven minutes."

Hazel's voice came out of the horn. " ‘The wages of sin are death'."

"Look who's talking! No more unauthorised chatter over the intercom. That's an order."

"Aye aye, Captain."

He started to leave; his wife stopped him. "I want you to take this, dear." She held out a capsule.

"I don't need it."

"Take it."

"Yes, Doctor darling." He swallowed it, made a face, and went up to the control room. As he climbed into his couch he said, "Call tower for clearance."

"Aye aye, sir. Rolling Stone, Luna City registry, to Tower - request clearance to lift according to approved plan."

" Tower to Rolling Stone - you are cleared to lift"

"Rolling Stone to Tower - roger!" Castor answered. Captain Stone looked over his board. All green, except one red light from power room which would not wink green until he told his mother to unlock the safety on the cadmium damper plates. He adjusted the microvernier on his tracking indicator, satisfied himself that the auto-pilot was tracking to perfection as Castor had reported. "All stations, report in succession -power room !"

"She's sizzling, Skipper!" came back Hazel's reply.

"Passengers!"

"We're ready, Roger."

"Co-pilot!"

"Clear and green, sir! Check off completed. Five minutes."

"Strap down and report!"

"Power gang strapped." - "We're strapped, dear." - "Strapped, sir all stations."

"Power room, unlock for lift."

The last red light on his board winked green as Hazel reported, "Power board unlocked, Skipper. Ready to blast."

Another voice followed hers, more softly: "Now I lay me down to sleep -"

"Shut up, Meade!" Roger Stone snapped. "Co-pilot, com­mence the count!"

Castor started singsonging: "Minus two minutes ten... minus two minutes... minus one minute fifty... minus one minute forty -"

Roger Stone felt his blood begin to pound and wished heartily that he had had the sense to come home early, even if the party had been in his honor.

"Minus one minute!... minus fifty-five... minus fifty -"

He braced his right hand with his forefinger over the manual firing key, ready to blast if the auto-pilot should fail - then quickly took it away. This was no military vessel! If it failed to fire, the thing to do was to cancel - not risk his wife and kids with imperfect machinery. After all, he held only a private license - "Minus thirty-five... half minute!"

His head felt worse. Why leave a warm apartment to bounce around in a tin covered wagon?

"Twenty- eight , twenty -sev'n, twenty- six -"

Well, if anything went wrong, at least there wouldn't be any little orphans left around. The whole Stone family was here, root and branch. The rolling Stones -

" Nineteen... eighteen... seventeen -,

He didn't fancy going back and meeting all those people who had just come out to say good-by - telling them, "It's like this: we swung and we missed -"

"Twelve! Eleven! and ten! and nine! "

He again placed his forefinger over the manual button, ready to stab.

"And five!

" And four!

" And three!

" And two!

" And – " Castor's chant was blanked out by the blazing 'white noise' of the jet; the Rolling Stone cast herself into the void.

Blasting off from Luna is not the terrifying and oppressive experience that a lift from Earth is. The Moon's field is so weak, her gravity well so shallow, that a boost of one-g would suffice - just enough to produce Earth-normal weight.

Captain Stone chose to use two gravities, both to save time and to save fuel by getting quickly away from Luna - "quickly' because any reactive mass spent simply to hold a spaceship up against the pull of a planet is an 'overhead' cost; it does nothing toward getting one where one wants to go. Furthermore, while the Rolling Stone would operate at low thrust she could do so only by being very wasteful of reactive mass, i.e., by not letting the atomic pile heat the hydrogen hot enough to produce a really efficient jet speed.

So he caused the Stone to boost at two gravities for slightly over two minutes. Two gravities - a mere nothing! The pres­sure felt by a wrestler pinned to the mat by the body of his opponent - the acceleration experienced by a child in a school-yard swing - hardly more than the push resulting from standing up very suddenly.

But the Stone family had been living on Luna; all the children had been born there - two gravities was twelve times what they were used to.

Roger's headache, which had quieted under the sedative his wife had prescribed for him, broke out again with renewed strength. His chest felt caved in; he fought for breath and he had to read and reread the accelerometer to convince himself that the ship had not run wild.

After checking over his board and assuring himself that all was going according to plan even if it did feel like a major catastrophe he turned his head heavily. "Cas? You all right?"

Castor gasped, "Sure Skipper... tracking to flight plan.

"Very well, sir." He turned his face to his inter-com link. "Edith -"

There was no answer. " Edith"

This time a strained voice replied, "Yes, dear."

" Are you alright?"

" Yes, dear. Meade and I... are all right. The baby is having a bad time."

He was about to call the power room when Castor reminded him of the passage of time. "Twenty seconds! Nineteen! Eighteen -"

He tumed his eyes to the brennschluss timer and poised his hand on the cut-off switch, ready to choke the jet if the autopilot s­hould fail. Across from him Castor covered him should he fail; below in the power room Hazel was doing the same thing, hand trembling over the cut-off.

As the timer flashed the last half second, as Castor shouted, " Brennschluss!", three hands slammed at three switches - but the autopilot had beaten them to it. The jet gasped as its liquid food was suddenly cut off from it; damper plates quenched the seeking neutrons in the atomic pile - and the Stone was in free orbit, falling toward Earth in a sudden, aching silence broken only by the whispering of the airconditioner.

Roger Stone reswallowed his stomach, "Power room!" he rasped. "Report!"

He could hear Hazel sighing heavily. "Okay, son," she said feebly, "but mind that top step - it's a dilly!"

"Cas, call the port. Get a doppler check."

"Aye aye, sir." Castor called the radar & doppler station at Leyport. The Rolling Stone had all the usual radar and piloting instruments but a spaceship cannot possibly carry equipment of the size and accuracy of those mounted as pilot aids at all ports and satellite stations. " Rolling Stone to Luna Pilot - come in, Luna Pilot." While he called he was warming up their own radar and doppler-radar, preparing to check the performance of their own instruments against the land-based standards. He did this without being told, it being a co-pilot's routine duty.