Мюррей Лейнстер - Operation - Outer Space

"I'm relieved," acknowledged Cochrane. "I thought you were about to tell me that we couldn't lift off the moon, and I was going to ask how we got here."

Jones smiled patiently.

"What I'm telling you now is that we can shoot rocket–blasts out of the Dabney field we make with the stern of the ship! Landing, we keep our fuel and the ship with next to no mass, and we shoot it out to where it does have mass, and the effect is practically the same as if we were pushing against something solid! And so we started off with fuel for maybe five or six landings and take–offs against Earth gravity. But with this new trick, we've got fuel for a couple of hundred!"

"Ah!" said Cochrane mildly. "This is the first thing you've said that meant anything to me. Congratulations! What comes next?"

"I thought you'd be pleased," said Jones. "What I'm really telling you is that now we've got fuel enough to reach the Milky Way."

"Let's not," suggested Cochrane, "and say we did! You've got a new star picked out to travel to?"

Jones shrugged his shoulders. In him, the gesture indicated practically hysterical frustration. But he said:

"Yes. Twenty–one light–years. Back on Earth they're anxious for us to check on sol–type suns and Earth–type planets."

"For once," said Cochrane, "I am one with the great scientific minds. Let's go over."

He made his way to the circular stairway leading down to the main saloon. On his clumsy way across the saloon floor to the communicator, he felt the peculiar sensation of the booster–current, which should have been a sound, but wasn't. It was the sensation which had preceded the preposterous leap of the space–ship away from Luna, when in a heart–beat of time all stars looked like streaks of light, and the ship traveled nearly two light–centuries.

Sunshine blinked, and then shone again in the ports around the saloon walls. The second shining came from a different direction—as if somebody had switched off one exterior light and turned on another—and at a different angle to the floor.

Cochrane reached the communicator. He felt no weight. He strapped himself into the chair. He switched on the vision–phone which sent radiation along the field to a balloon two hundred odd light–years from Earth—that was the balloon near the glacier planet—and then switched to the field traveling to a second balloon then the last hundred seventy–odd light–years back to the moon, and then from Luna City down to Earth.

He put in his call. He got an emergency message that had been waiting for him. Seconds later he fought his way frantically through no–weight to the control–room again.

"Jamison! Bell!" he cried desperately. "We've got a broadcast due in twenty minutes! I lost track of time! We're sponsored on four continents and we damwell have to put on a show! What the devil! Why didn't somebody—"

Jamison said obviously from a blister–port where he swung a squat star–telescope from one object to another:

"Noo–o–o. That's a gas–giant. We'd be squashed if we landed there—though that big moon looks promising. I think we'd better try yonder."

"Okay," said Jones in a flat voice. "Center on the next one in, Al, and we'll toddle over."

Cochrane felt the ship swinging in emptiness. He knew because it seemed to turn while he felt that he stayed still.

"We've got a show to put on!" he raged. "We've got to fake something—."

Jamison looked aside from his telescope.

"Tell him, Bell," he said expansively.

"I wrote a script of sorts," said Bell apologetically. "The story–line's not so good—that's why I wanted a castaway narrative to put in it, though I wouldn't have had time, really. We spliced film and Jamison narrated it, and you can run it off. It's a kind of show. We ran it as a space–platform survey of the glacier–planet, basing it on pictures we took while we were in orbit around it. It's a sort of travelogue. Jamison did himself proud. Alicia can find the tape–can for you."

He went back to his cameras. Cochrane saw a monstrous globe swing past a control–room port. It was a featureless mass of clouds, save for striations across what must be its equator. It looked like the Lunar Observatory pictures of Jupiter, back in the Sun's family of planets.

It went past the port, and a moon swam into view. It was a very large moon. It had at least one ice–cap—and therefore an atmosphere—and there were mottlings of its surface which could hardly be anything but continents and seas.

"We've got to put a show on!" raged Cochrane. "And now!"

"It's all set," Bell assured him. "You can transmit it. I hope you like it!"

Cochrane sputtered. But there was nothing to do but transmit whatever Bell and Jamison had gotten ready. He swam with nightmarelike difficulty back to the communicator. He shouted frantically for Babs. She and Alicia came. Alicia found the film–tape, and Cochrane threaded it into the transmitter, and bitterly ran the first few feet. Babs smiled at him, and Alicia looked at him oddly. Evidently, Babs had confided the consequence of their casting–away. But Cochrane faced an emergency. He began to check timings with far–distant Earth.

When the ship approached a second planet, Cochrane saw nothing of it. He was furiously monitoring the broadcast of a show in which he'd had no hand at all. From his own, professional standpoint it was terrible. Jamison spouted interminably, so Cochrane considered. Al, the pilot, was actually interviewed by an offscreen voice! But the pictures from space were excellent. While the ship floated in orbit, waiting to descend to pick up Babs and Cochrane, Bell had hooked his camera to an amplifying telescope and he did have magnificent shots of dramatic terrain on the planet now twenty light–years behind.

Cochrane watched the show in a mingling of jealousy and relief. It was not as good as he would have done. But fortunately, Bell and Jamison had stuck fairly close to straight travelogue–stuff, and close–up shots of vegetation and animals had been interspersed with the remoter pictures with moderate competence, if without undue imagination. An audience which had not seen many shows of the kind would be thrilled. It even amounted to a valid change of pace. Anybody who watched this would at least want to see more and different pictures from the stars.

Halfway through, he heard the now–muffled noise of rockets. He knew the ship was descending through atmosphere by the steady sound, though he had not the faintest idea what was outside. He ground his teeth as—for timing—he received the commercial inserted in the film. The U. S. commercials served the purpose, of course. He could not watch the other pictures shown to residents of other than North America in the commercial portions of the show.

He was counting seconds to resume transmission when he felt the slight but distant impact which meant that the ship had touched ground. A very short time after, even the lessened, precautionary rocket–roar cut off.

Cochrane ground his teeth. The ship had landed on a planet he had not seen and in whose choice he had had no hand. He was humiliated. The other members of the ship's company looked out at scenes no other human eyes had ever beheld.

He regarded the final commercial, inserted into the broadcast for its American sponsor. It showed, purportedly, the true story of two girl friends, one blonde and one brunette, who were wall–flowers at all parties. They tried frantically to remedy the situation by the use of this toothpaste and that, and this deodorant and the other. In vain! But then they became the centers of all the festivities they attended, as soon as they began to wash their hair with Rayglo Shampoo.

Holden and Johnny Simms came clattering down from the control–room together. They looked excited. They plunged together toward the stair–well that would take them to the deck on which the airlock opened.