“Let me know the minute you learn anything.”
“You can count on that, skipper!”
Bud had dinner with the Swifts that evening. Afterward, Sandy played some records and danced with the young space pilot. Tom prowled restlessly about the house and finally dropped into his father’s den.
The two Toms chatted a while, discussing the day’s bewildering events.
Then, noticing his son’s dejection, Mr. Swift suggested: “Perhaps you need a change. How about a trip to the moon to try out your new two-way radio?”
Tom brightened at once. “Dad, that’s a swell idea! And while I’m out in space there’s something else I can test-the ‘constant one-G system’ we were talking about the other day!”
MOON JAUNT 95
“What’s that?” asked Bud, who had just entered the study with Sandy in search of Tom.
“A way to get where you’re going in space as fast as possible,” Tom replied, “without ever taking too much shock from G force.”
“But you never do feel many G’s aboard the Challenger/’ Sandy said, curling up on a couch. “At least not so much as on a rocket ship.”
“That’s true,” Tom agreed, “because there’s no sudden shock from blast-off.
But we still accelerate pretty fast with our repulsion rays and then coast on our momentum.”
The “constant one-G system,” Tom explained, would avoid completely any burst of acceleration. Instead, the ship would accelerate smoothly and easily at the rate of only one G, keeping this up for six thousand seconds. Then it would decelerate, or slow down, at the same rate for another six thousand seconds-at the end of which time the ship would be standing still on the moon.
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