The Past Through Tomorrow (35 page)

“I’ll have to. But I sure wish I had Weinstein here.”

Kelly left to see about his passengers; Jake got to work. He checked his situation by astronomical observation and by radar. Radar gave him all three factors quickly but with limited accuracy. Sights taken of Sun, Moon, and Earth gave him position, but told nothing of course and speed, at that time—nor could he afford to wait to take a second group of sights for the purpose.

Dead reckoning gave him an estimated situation, by adding Weinstein’s predictions to the calculated effect of young Schacht’s meddling. This checked fairly well with the radar and visual observations, but still he had no notion of whether or not he could get back in the groove and reach his destination; it was now necessary to calculate what it would take and whether or not the remaining fuel would be enough to brake his speed and match orbits.

In space, it does no good to reach your journey’s end if you flash on past at miles per second, or even crawling along at a few hundred miles per hour. To catch an egg on a plate—don’t bump!

He started doggedly to work to compute how to do it using the least fuel, but his little Marchant electronic calculator was no match for the tons of IBM computer at Supra-New York, nor was he Weinstein. Three hours later he had an answer of sorts. He called Kelly. “Captain? You can start by jettisoning Schacht & Son.”

“I’d like to. No way out, Jake?”

“I can’t promise to get your ship in safely without dumping. Better dump now, before we blast. It’s cheaper.”

Kelly hesitated; he would as cheerfully lose a leg. “Give me time to pick out what to dump.”

“Okay.” Pemberton returned sadly to his figures, hoping to find a saving mistake, then thought better of it. He called the radio room. “Get me Weinstein at Supra-New York.”

“Out of normal range.”

“I know that. This is the Pilot. Safety priority—urgent. Get a tight beam on them and nurse it.”

“Uh…aye aye, sir. I’ll try.”

Weinstein was doubtful. “Cripes, Jake, I can’t pilot you.”

“Dammit, you can work problems for me!”

“What good is seven-place accuracy with bum data?”

“Sure, sure. But you know what instruments I’ve got; you know about how well I can handle them. Get me a better answer.”

“I’ll try.” Weinstein called back four hours later. “Jake? Here’s the dope: You planned to blast back to match your predicted speed, then made side corrections for position. Orthodox but uneconomical. Instead I had Mabel solve for it as one maneuver.”

“Good!”

“Not so fast. It saves fuel but not enough. You can’t possibly get back in your old groove and then match Terminal without dumping.”

Pemberton let it sink in, then said, “I’ll tell Kelly.”

“Wait a minute, Jake. Try this. Start from scratch.”

“Huh?”

“Treat it as a brand-new problem. Forget about the orbit on your tape. With your present course, speed, and position, compute the cheapest orbit to match with Terminal’s. Pick a new groove.”

Pemberton felt foolish. “I never thought of that.”

“Of course not. With the ship’s little one-lung calculator it’d take you three weeks to solve it. You set to record?”

“Sure.”

“Here’s your data.” Weinstein started calling it off.

When they had checked it, Jake said, “That’ll get me there?”

“Maybe.
If
the data you gave me is up to your limit of accuracy;
if
you can follow instructions as exactly as a robot,
if
you can blast off and make contact so precisely that you don’t need side corrections, then you might squeeze home. Maybe. Good luck, anyhow.” The wavering reception muffled their goodbyes.

Jake signaled Kelly. “Don’t jettison, Captain. Have your passengers strap down. Stand by to blast. Minus fourteen minutes.”

“Very well, Pilot.”

The new departure made and checked, he again had time to spare. He took out his unfinished letter, read it, then tore it up.

“Dearest Phyllis,” he started again, “I’ve been doing some hard thinking this trip and have decided that I’ve just been stubborn. What am I doing way out here? I like my home. I like to see my wife.

“Why should I risk my neck and your peace of mind to herd junk through the sky? Why hang around a telephone waiting to chaperon fatheads to the Moon—numbskulls who couldn’t pilot a rowboat and should have stayed at home in the first place?

“Money, of course. I’ve been afraid to risk a change. I won’t find another job that will pay half as well, but, if you are game, I’ll ground myself and we’ll start over. All my love,

“Jake”

He put it away and went to sleep, to dream that an entire troop of Junior Rocketeers had been quartered in his control room.

The close-up view of the Moon is second only to the spaceside view of the Earth as a tourist attraction; nevertheless Pemberton insisted that all passengers strap down during the swing around to Terminal. With precious little fuel for the matching maneuver, he refused to hobble his movements to please sightseers.

Around the bulge of the Moon, Terminal came into sight—by radar only, for the ship was tail foremost. After each short braking blast Pemberton caught a new radar fix, then compared his approach with a curve he had plotted from Weinstein’s figures—with one eye on the time, another on the ’scope, a third on the plot, and a fourth on his fuel gages.

“Well, Jake?” Kelly fretted. “Do we make it?”

“How should I know? You be ready to dump.” They had agreed on liquid oxygen as the cargo to dump, since it could be let boil out through the outer valves, without handling.

“Don’t say it, Jake.”

“Damn it—I won’t if I don’t have to.” He was fingering his controls again; the blast chopped off his words. When it stopped, the radio maneuvering circuit was calling him.

“
Flying Dutchman
, Pilot speaking,” Jake shouted back.

“Terminal Control—Supro reports you short on fuel.”

“Right.”

“Don’t approach. Match speeds outside us. We’ll send a transfer ship to refuel you and pick up passengers.”

“I think I can make it.”

“Don’t try it. Wait for refueling.”

“Quit telling me how to pilot my ship!” Pemberton switched off the circuit, then stared at the board, whistling morosely. Kelly filled in the words in his mind: “
Casey said to the fireman, ‘Boy, you better jump, cause two locomotives are agoing to bump!’
”

“You going in the slip anyhow, Jake?”

“Mmm—no, blast it. I can’t take a chance of caving in the side of Terminal, not with passengers aboard. But I’m not going to match speeds fifty miles outside and wait for a piggyback.”

He aimed for a near miss just outside Terminal’s orbit, conning by instinct, for Weinstein’s figures meant nothing by now. His aim was good; he did not have to waste his hoarded fuel on last minute side corrections to keep from hitting Terminal. When at last he was sure of sliding safely on past if unchecked, he braked once more. Then, as he started to cut off the power, the jets coughed, sputtered, and quit.

The
Flying Dutchman
floated in space, five hundred yards outside Terminal, speeds matched.

Jake switched on the radio. “Terminal—stand by for my line. I’ll warp her in.”

He had filed his report, showered, and was headed for the post office to radiostat his letter, when the bullhorn summoned him to the Commodore-Pilot’s office. Oh, oh, he told himself, Schacht has kicked the Brass—I wonder just how much stock that bliffy owns? And there’s that other matter—getting snotty with Control.

He reported stiffly. “First Pilot Pemberton, sir.”

Commodore Soames looked up. “Pemberton—oh, yes. You hold two ratings, space-to-space and airless-landing.”

Let’s not stall around, Jake told himself. Aloud he said, “I have no excuses for anything this last trip. If the Commodore does not approve the way I run my control room, he may have my resignation.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I,, well—don’t you have a passenger complaint on me?”

“Oh, that!” Soames brushed it aside. “Yes, he’s been here. But I have Kelly’s report, too—and your chief jetman’s, and a special from Supra-New York. That was crack piloting, Pemberton.”

“You mean there’s no beef from the Company?”

“When have I failed to back up my pilots? You were perfectly right; I would have stuffed him out the air lock. Let’s get down to business: You’re on the space-to-space board, but I want to send a special to Luna City. Will you take it, as a favor to me?”

Pemberton hesitated; Soames went on, “That oxygen you saved is for the Cosmic Research Project. They blew the seals on the north tunnel and lost tons of the stuff. The work is stopped—about $130,000 a day in overhead, wages, and penalties. The
Gremlin
is here, but no pilot until the
Moonbat
gets in—except you. Well?”

“But I—look, Commodore, you can’t risk people’s necks on a jet landing of mine. I’m rusty; I need a refresher and a check-out.”

“No passengers, no crew, no captain—your neck alone.”

“I’ll take her.”

Twenty-eight minutes later, with the ugly, powerful hull of the
Gremlin
around him, he blasted away. One strong shove to kill her orbital speed and let her fall toward the Moon, then no more worries until it came time to “ride ’er down on her tail”.

He felt good—until he hauled out two letters, the one he had failed to send, and one from Phyllis, delivered at Terminal.

The letter from Phyllis was affectionate—and superficial. She did not mention his sudden departure; she ignored his profession completely. The letter was a model of correctness, but it worried him.

He tore up both letters and started another. It said, in part: “—never said so outright, but you resent my job.

“I have to work to support us. You’ve got a job, too. It’s an old, old job that women have been doing a long time—crossing the plains in covered wagons, waiting for ships to come back from China, or waiting around a mine head after an explosion—kiss him goodbye with a smile, take care of him at home.

“You married a spaceman, so part of your job is to accept my job cheerfully. I think you can do it, when you realize it. I hope so, for the way things have been going won’t do for either of us.

Believe me, I love you.
Jake”

He brooded on it until time to bend the ship down for his approach. From twenty miles altitude down to one mile he let the robot brake her, then shifted to manual while still falling slowly. A perfect airless-landing would be the reverse of the take-off of a war rocket-free fall, then one long blast of the jets, ending with the ship stopped dead as she touches the ground. In practice a pilot must feel his way down, not too slowly; a ship could burn all the fuel this side of Venus fighting gravity too long.

Forty seconds later, falling a little more than 140 miles per hour, he picked up in his periscopes the thousand-foot static towers. At 300 feet he blasted five gravities for more than a second, cut it, and caught her with a one-sixth gravity, Moon-normal blast. Slowly he eased this off, feeling happy.

The
Gremlin
hovered, her bright jet splashing the soil of the Moon, then settled with dignity to land without a jar.

The ground crew took over; a sealed runabout jeeped Pemberton to the tunnel entrance. Inside Luna City, he found himself paged before he finished filing his report. When he took the call, Soames smiled at him from the viewplate. “I saw that landing from the field pick-up, Pemberton. You don’t need a refresher course.”

Jake blushed. “Thank you, sir.”

“Unless you are dead set on space-to-space, I can use you on the regular Luna City run. Quarters here or Luna City? Want it?”

He heard himself saying, “Luna City. I’ll take it.”

He tore up his third letter as he walked into Luna City post office. At the telephone desk he spoke to a blonde in a blue moonsuit. “Get me Mrs. Jake Pemberton, Suburb six-four-oh-three, Dodge City, Kansas, please.” She looked him over. “You pilots sure spend money.”

“Sometimes phone calls are cheap. Hurry it, will you?”

Phyllis was trying to phrase the letter she felt she should have written before. It was easier to say in writing that she was not complaining of loneliness nor lack of fun, but that she could not stand the strain of worrying about his safety. But then she found herself quite unable to state the logical conclusion. Was she prepared to face giving him up entirely if he would not give up space? She truly did not know…the phone call was a welcome interruption.

The viewplate stayed blank. “Long distance,” came a thin voice. “Luna City calling.”

Fear jerked at her heart. “Phyllis Pemberton speaking.”

An interminable delay—she knew it took nearly three seconds’ for radio waves to make the Earth-Moon round trip, but she did not remember it and it would not have reassured her. All she could see was a broken home, herself a widow, and Jake, beloved Jake, dead in space.

“Mrs. Jake Pemberton?”

“Yes, yes! Go ahead.” Another wait—had she sent him away in a bad temper, reckless, his judgment affected? Had he died out there, remembering only that she fussed at him for leaving her to go to work? Had she failed him when he needed her? She knew that her Jake could not be tied to apron strings; men—grown-up men, not mammas’ boys—had to break away from mother’s apron strings. Then why had she tried to tie him to hers?—she had known better; her own mother had warned her not to try it.

She prayed.

Then another voice, one that weakened her knees with relief: “That you, honey?”

“Yes, darling, yes! What are you doing on the Moon?”

“It’s a long story. At a dollar a second it will keep. What I want to know is—are you willing to come to Luna City?”

It was Jake’s turn to suffer from the inevitable lag in reply. He wondered if Phyllis were stalling, unable to make up her mind. At last he heard her say, “Of course, darling. When do I leave?”

“When—say, don’t you even want to know
why
?”

She started to say that it did not matter, then said, “Yes, tell me.” The lag was still present but neither of them cared. He told her the news, then added, “Run over to the Springs and get Olga Pierce to straighten out the red tape for you. Need my help to pack?”