“One part of the force will be used to drive the ship, as the wind does a sailboat. The other part will be used as a keel, although of course it won’t look anything like the keel on a sailboat.”
Whipping out a pencil and a scrap of paper, he hastily sketched a side and front view of his proposed design. It showed an egg-shaped fuselage suspended inside a ringlike frame running completely around the top and bottom of the ship.
“You mean this ring will be the keel?” Bud asked, more puzzled than ever.
A DANGEROUS RENDEZVOUS 1ST
“Yes and no,” Tom replied. “Actually the keel is an invisible one. But I suppose we’ll refer to the ring as the keel. Spaced at intervals all around it will be a number of cosmic-radiation emitters. They’ll be like cosmic-ray jets.”
“They look like the holes in a circular lawn sprinkler,” Bud joked.
“Okay, pal,” Tom said. “In flight these radiation emitters will produce an invisible keel of force.”
The pilot, he went on, would be able to swivel the ring with its emitters in any direction, on pivoted bearings. Thus he would have a counter-force with which to oppose the cosmic “wind” pressure. Tom explained that this would enable the pilot to “tack” or steer anywhere in space, rather than just drift “downwind” as the space kite had done.
Bud was bug-eyed at the possibilities. “Terrific, professor!” he exclaimed. “A spaceship of limitless range that costs nothing to runl How soon can we take off?”
“Relax. The ship’s not even built yet,” Tom replied, laughing. “Or named, for that matter. Got any ideas?”
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