Айзек Азимов - Before The Golden Age

“No,” said Mike, “I will not. Your odor is not of sanctity. It reminds me more of beer. You may fire when you are ready, Gridley!”

Jimmy glued his eyes to the firing chart, and his fingers to the first bank of buttons. Twenty seconds to go. Mike shivered a little, and tried to disguise the shiver with a yawn. He started counting seconds.

“Ten—nine—eight—seven—six—five—four—three—two—one—fire!”

There was a shattering, ground-transmitted roar. The Moon under their feet trembled, and through the ports, silhouetted against a hellish glare, they saw the construction scaffolding fall to the ground. The roaring increased. It was like a continuous explosion. Mike tore his handkerchief into bits, stuffed pieces into his ears, and did the same for Jimmy, who was too busy with the controls to do anything for himself.

The roar increased and the flares waxed to an absolutely unendurable brightness, and there was a feeling of acceleration, as though the floor beneath their feet were tilting. Mike covered the ports against the glare, and sat down again. He lighted two cigarettes, one of which he placed in Jimmy’s mouth.

The wall against which the rocket was moored had become the floor. The Moon was traveling faster than it had for millions of years, and was gradually drawing away from the Earth. They had no instruments with which to observe the latter, but Mike could imagine the growing tides, the tremblers, and the spectacle in the sky. “I hope they make movies from the Earth,” he remarked to nobody in particular. “I’d like to see them if we ever get out of this.”

He broke open some food and water, ate, and took the controls while Carter ate, and then, plugging his ears more thoroughly, lay down on an air mattress and went placidly to sleep, after setting an alarm to wake him, with an electric shock, after six hours. Any alarm depending on sound for its effect would be completely useless.

When he awoke and took the controls, the Earth was far behind, and the minus planet was a brilliant spot on the view plate, a little left of dead center. It was coming closer all the time. The roaring of the jets continued unabated. The whole hemisphere of the Moon “below” them, when he ventured to look, was one white glare, with the incandescent iron vapor shooting hundreds of miles into space.

August 12th, 3:28: The last watch was in progress. Jimmy was at the controls. Both of them were in their space suits, and the doors of the control-room air lock, which now appeared, because of the acceleration, to be below them, were wide open directly over the open, outer door of the air lock of the rocket, into which a rope dangled from a stanchion beside the control board.

The minus planet was visible through the port in the opposite wall—now the roof—filling most of the sky, and rapidly growing larger. The acceleration was still at maximum, as the greatest possible velocity at the time of the collision was not only desirable but necessary. The seconds sped, and yet dragged, as the minus planet grew.

3:30: Jimmy held up two fingers. Two minutes more! He waved Mike toward the air lock. The latter looked around the room to see if he had forgotten anything, and then slid “down” into the rocket’s air lock and grabbed the control that would free the moorings.

3:31: The minus planet was bigger—much bigger. It filled most of the sky. Mike gazed anxiously up at Jimmy.

3:32: Jimmy leaped from the controls and slid down into the air lock. He tossed out the rope as Mike released the moorings and slammed the outer door of the lock. There was the sudden baffling sensation of weightlessness, as all acceleration left the ship, which was now falling freely after the Moon, toward the intruder. There was a whoosh as they opened the inner door, not waiting for the pressure to equalize, and pulled themselves by the guide rails toward the control cabin. The gyroscopes were already turning over at full speed, and the rocket tubes had been warmed up.

3:34: Mike slammed himself into the control seat, swung the stick which controlled the motors turning the ship around the stabilizing gyroscopes, and, heading her out to one side of the impending collision, jammed on the maximum safe acceleration of five gravities. Jimmy had managed to reach a chair, and was attempting to pull off his space suit, but the acceleration forced his arms down by his sides, and almost pulled him through the seat of the chair. Mike shoved the acceleration up another notch, and switched on all the view plates.

4:45: The acceleration was still on at six gravities, but neither of the men were interested in it. Their eyes were glued to the view plate, which bore on the impending collision. It was a matter of seconds. Already the Moon was breaking up, and most of the rocket tubes had gone out. Then—

There was a blinding flash on the view plate, and it went black, burned out by the tremendous impact of the radiation. Mike cut the acceleration to zero, and fainted. But Jimmy didn’t know it. He was unconscious.

About an hour later they came to—bruised, battered, and burned by the radiation which had filtered through the supposedly ray-proof walls of the ship. They switched on an acceleration of half a gravity, so that they could navigate comfortably in the rocket, and swung her ninety degrees around the gyros, so that they could see the remains of the intruder through the side ports. The view plates were useless. There was a small, incandescent planetoid falling toward the Sun. Mike turned a spectrometer on it, gazed a minute, and then grinned all over his blistered face. “It looks like we’ve done it! There isn’t a damned bit of minus matter left on the thing. It glows like a normal hot body—like a young Sun about the size of Ceres.”

Jimmy tried to grin back, and couldn’t. His face hurt too much. “Right-oh! The Moon neutralized the last of it, with some left over. There’s nothing there now except neutrons and some white hot iron, silicon, and whatever else the Moon was made of. It’s terrifically heavy, and it’s hotter than the seven hinges of hell, but it’s nothing to fear. It will fall into the Sun in a month or so. But you look like the way I feel, and that’s like the latter end of a misspent life. You’d better strip. I’ll get the antiburn goo from the medicine chest, and we can butter ourselves up. Then, we can let the ship coast a while while we get some sleep. And finally, if there’s enough of her left to navigate, we can wend our way homeward. But sleep is what I want most right now--”

Two weeks later, two tanned and filthy astrophysicists stepped out of the air lock of a burned and blistered rocket onto the tarmac of the space port at Washington, stopped short, and gazed with horror at the galaxy of gold braid and blazing stuffed shirts that approached them. They glanced from side to side with the expression of hunted animals, and then, with the mien of early Christian martyrs, stepped forward to undergo the horrors of an official reception by the combined governments of the solar system.

By 1937, I had learned of anti-matter, and Clark’s story, which was the first ever to deal with it in science fiction, excited me tremendously. I felt he was talking my language as a burgeoning chemist and that other, more ordinary readers would not understand it as I did. (This was a good feeling.)

John Clark was, of course, a professional chemist himself [He worked on rocket fuels during the war and recently wrote an excellent book on the subject, Ignition! to which I wrote the introduction. We met in 1942 and have been good friends ever since. He wrote only one other story, “Space Blister,” which appeared in the August 1937 issue. Despite my periodic urgings, he has written no more fiction.] and a Ph.D. was appended to his name under the story. (E. E. Smith was also a Ph.D.)