Мюррей Лейнстер - Space Tug

So, only thirty–six hours after the arrival of the second rocketship at the Platform, the two of them took off together to return to Earth. Joe's ship left the airlock first. Sanford was loaded in the cabin of the other ship as cargo. Lieutenant Commander Brown stayed out at the Platform to replace him.

Obviously, in order to get back to Earth they headed away from it in fleet formation. They pointed their rounded noses toward the Milky Way.

The upward course was an application of the principle that made the screen of tin cans and oddments remain about the Platform. Each of those small objects had had the Platform's own velocity and orbit. Thrown away from it, the centers of their orbits changed. In theory, the center of the Platform's orbit was the center of Earth. But the centers of the orbits of the thrown–away objects were pushed a few miles—twenty—fifty—a hundred—away from the center of Earth.

The returning space ships also had the orbit and speed of the Platform. They wanted to shift the centers of their orbits by very nearly 4,000 miles, so that at one point they would just barely graze Earth's atmosphere, lose some speed to it, and then bounce out to empty space again before they melted. Cooled off, they'd make another grazing bounce. After eight such bounces they'd stay in the air, and the stubby fins would give them a sort of gliding angle and controllability, while the landing rockets would let them down to solid ground. Or so it was hoped.

Meanwhile they headed out instead of in toward Earth. They went out on their steering–rockets only, using the liquid fuel that had not been needed for course correction on the way out. At 4,000 miles up, the force of gravity is just one–fourth of that at the Earth's surface. It still exists; it is merely canceled out in an orbit. The ships could move outward at less cost in fuel than they could move in.

So they went out and out on parallel courses, and the Platform dwindled behind them. Night flowed below until the hull of the artificial satellite shone brightly against a background of seeming sheer nothingness.

The twilight zone of Earth's shadow reached the Platform. It glowed redly, glowed crimson, glowed the deepest possible color that could be seen, and winked out. The ships climbed on, using their tiny steering rockets.

Nothing happened. The ships drew away from each other for safety. They were 50, then 60 miles apart. One glowed red and vanished in the shadow of the Earth. The other was extinguished in the same way. Then they went hurtling through the blackness of the night side of Earth. Microwaves from the ground played upon them—radar used by friend and foe alike—and the friendly radar guided tight–beam communicator waves to them with comforting assurance that their joint course and height and speed were exactly the calculated optimum. But they could not be seen at all.

When they appeared again they were still farther out from Earth than the Platform's orbit, but no farther from each other. And they were descending. The centers of their orbits had been displaced very, very far indeed.

Going out, naturally, the ships had lost angular speed as they gained in height. Descending, they gained in angular velocity as they lost height. They were not quite 30 miles apart as they sped with increasing, headlong speed and rushed toward the edge of the world's disk. When they were only 2,000 miles high, the Earth's surface under them moved much faster than it had on the way up. When they were only 1,000 miles high, the seas and continents seemed to flow past like a rushing river. At 500 miles, mountains and plains were just distinguishable as they raced past underneath. At 200 miles there was merely a churning, hurtling surface on which one could not focus one's eyes because of the speed of its movement.

They missed the solid surface of Earth by barely 40 miles. They were moving at a completely impossible speed. The energy of their position 4,000 miles high had been transformed into kinetic energy of motion. And at 40 miles there is something very close to a vacuum, compared to sea–level. But compared to true emptiness, and at the speed of meteors, the thin air had a violent effect.

A thin humming sound began. It grew louder. The substance of the ship was responding to the impact of the thin air upon it. The sound rose to a roar, to a bellow, to a thunderous tumult. The ship quivered and trembled. It shook. A violent vibration set up and grew more and more savage. The whole ship shook with a dreadful persistence, each vibration more monstrous, more straining, more ominous than before.

The four in the space ship cabin knew torture. Weight returned to them, weight more violent than the six gravities they had known for a bare fourteen seconds at take–off. But that, at least, had been smoothly applied. This was deceleration at a higher figure yet, and accompanied by the shaking of bodies which weighed seven times as much as ever before—and bodies, too, which for weeks past had been subject to no weight at all.

They endured. Nothing at all could be done. At so many miles per second no possible human action could be determined upon and attempted in time to have any effect upon the course of the ship. Joe could see out a quartzite port. The ground 40 miles below was merely a blur. There was a black sky overhead, which did not seem to stir. But cloud–masses rushed at express–train speed below him, and his body weighed more than half a ton, and the ship made the sound of innumerable thunders and shook, and shook and shook….

And then, when it seemed that it must fly utterly to pieces, the thunder diminished gradually to a bellow, and the bellow to a roar, and the roaring…. And the unthinkable weight oppressing him grew less.

The Earth was farther away and moving farther still. They were 100 miles high. They were 200 miles high….

There was no longer any sound at all, except their gaspings for breath. Their muscles had refused to lift their chests at all during the most brutal of the deceleration period.

Presently Joe croaked a question. He looked at the hull–temperature indicators. They were very, very high. He found that he was bruised where he had strapped himself in. The places where each strap had held his heavy body against the ship's vibrations were deeply black–and–blue.

The Chief said thickly: "Joe, somehow I don't think this is going to work. When do we hit again?"

"Three hours plus or minus something," said Joe, dry–throated. "We'll hear from the ground."

Mike said in a cracked voice: "Radar reports we went a little bit too low. They think we weren't tilted up far enough. We didn't bounce as soon as we should."

Joe unstrapped himself.

"How about the other ship?"

"It did better than we did," said Mike. "It's a good 200 miles ahead. Down at the Shed, they're recalculating for us. We'll have to land with six grazes instead of eight. We lost too much speed."

Joe went staggering, again weightless, to look out a port for the other ship. He should have known better. One does not spot an eighty–foot space ship with the naked eye when it is 200 miles away.

But he saw something, though for seconds he didn't know what it was.

Now the little ship was 300 miles high and still rising. Joe was dazed and battered by the vibration of the ship in the graze just past. The sister space ship hadn't lost speed so fast. It would be traveling faster. It would be leaving him farther behind every second. It was rising more sharply. It would rise higher.

Joe stared numbly out of a port, thinking confusedly that his hull would be dull red on its outer surface, though the heating had been so fast that the inner surfaces of the plating might still be cold. He saw the vast area which was the curve of the edge of the world. He saw the sunlight upon clouds below and glimpses of the surface of the Earth itself.