The doctor glanced at Charlie’s father, back at the boy, let his eyes rest on Charlie’s lapel. “Star Scout, eh?”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“Going on to Eagle?”
“Well…I’m going to try, sir.”
“Good. Look, son. If I put your dog over on that shelf, in a couple of hours he’ll be sleeping normally and by tomorrow he won’t even know he was out. But if I take him back to the chill room and start him on the cycle — ” He shrugged. “Well, I’ve put eighty head of cattle under today. If forty percent are revived, it’s a good shipment. I do my best.”
Charlie looked grey. The surgeon looked at Mr. Vaughn, back at the boy. “Son, I know a man who’s looking for a dog for his kids. Say the word and you won’t have to worry about whether this pooch’s system will recover from a shock it was never intended to take.”
Mr. Vaughn said, “Well, son?”
Charlie stood mute, in an agony of indecision. At last Mr. Vaughn said-sharply, “Chuck, we’ve got just twenty minutes before we must check in with Emigration. Well? What’s your answer?”
Charlie did not seem to hear. Timidly. he put out one hand, barely touched the still form with the staring, unseeing eyes. Then he snatched his hand back and squeaked, “No! We’re going to Venus — both of us!” — turned and ran out of the room.
The veterinary spread his hands helplessly. “I tried.”
“I know you — did, Doctor,” Mr. Vaughn answered gravely. “Thank you.”
The Vaughns took the usual emigrant routing: winged shuttle rocket to the inner satellite station, ugly wingless ferry rocket to the outer station, transshipment there to the great globular cargo liner Hesperus. The jumps and changes took two days; they stayed in the deepspace ship for twenty-one tedious weeks, falling in half-elliptical orbit from Earth down to Venus. The time was fixed, an inescapable consequence of the law of gravity and the sizes and shapes of the two planetary orbits.
At first Charlie was terribly excited. The terrific highgravity boost to break away from Earth’s mighty grasp was as much of a shocker as he had hoped; six gravities is shocking, even to those used to it. When the shuttle rocket went into free fall a few minutes later, utter weightlessness was as distressing, confusing — and exciting — as he had hoped. It was so upsetting that he would have lost his lunch had he not been injected with anti-nausea drug.
Earth, seen from space, looked as it had looked in color-stereo pictures, but he found that the real thing is as vastly more satisfying as a hamburger.is better than a picture of one. In the outer satellite station, someone pointed out to him the famous Captain Nordhoff, just back from Pluto. Charlie recognized those stern, lined features, familiar from TV and news pictures, and realized with odd surprise that the hero was a man, like everyone else. He decided to be a spaceman and famous explorer himself.
S. S. Hesperus was a disappointment. It “blasted” away from the outer station with a gentle shove, onetenth gravity, instead of the soul-satisfying, bonegrinding, ear-shattering blast with which the shuttle had left Earth. Also, despite its enormous size, it was terribly crowded. After the Captain had his ship in orbit to intercept Venus five months later, he — placed spin on his ship to give his passengers artificial weight — which took from Charlie the pleasant neW feeling of weightlessness which he had come to enjoy.
He was bored silly in five days — and there were five months of it ahead. He shared a cramped room with his father and mother and slept in a hammock swung “nightly” (the ship used Greenwich time) between their bunks. Hammock in place, there was no room in the cubicle; even with it stowed, only one person could dress at a time. The only recreation space was the messrooms and they were always crowded. There was one view port in his part of the ship. At first it was popular, but after a few days even the kids didn’t bother, for the view was always the same: stars, and more stars.