Art liked it. Morrie objected that it should be Moonstruck. But Ross had another idea. “Starstruck was a good enough name for our model rockets, but we want something with a little more — oh, I don’t know; dignity, I guess-for the moon ship.”
“The Pioneer?”
“Corny.”
“The Thor — for the way she’s powered.”
“Good, but not enough.”
“Let’s call it Einstein.”
“I see why you want to name it for Doctor Einstein,” Cargraves put in, “but maybe I’ve got another name that will symbolize the same thing to you. How about the Galileo?”
There was no dissension; the members of the Galileo Club again were unanimous. The man who had first seen and described the mountains of the moon, the man whose very name had come to stand for steadfast insistence on scientific freedom and the freely inquiring mind — his name was music to them.
Cargraves wondered whether or not their own names would be remembered after more than three centuries. With luck, with lots of luck — Columbus had not been forgotten. If the luck ran out, well, a rocket crash was a fast clean death.
The luck appeared to be running out, and with nothing as gallant and spectacular as a doomed and flaming rocket. Cargraves sweated in a phone booth until after five o’clock, East Coast time, and then another hour until it was past five in Chicago as well before he admitted that dynamometers of the size he needed were not to be had on short notice.
He blamed himself for having slipped up, while neglecting to credit himself with having planned to obtain the instruments from the Denver firm for reasons of economy; he had expected to get them second-hand. But blaming himself comforted him.
Morrie noted his long face as he climbed into the heavily loaded little car. “No soap, eh?”
“No soap. Let’s get back to camp.”
They sped along the desert road in worried silence for several minutes. Finally Morrie spoke up. “How about this, Doc? Make a captive run on the ground with the same yoke and frame you planned to use, but without dynamometers.”
“What good would that do? I have to know what the thrust is.”
“I’m getting to that. We put a man inside. He watches the accelerometer — the pendulum accelerometer of course; not the distance-integrating one. It reads in g’s. Figure the number of gravities against the gross weight of the ship at the time and you come out with your thrust in pounds.”
Cargraves hesitated. The boy’s mistake was so obvious and yet so easy to make that he wished to point it out without hurting his pride. “It’s a clever plan, except that I would want to use remote control — there’s always the chance that a new type of atomic-fission power plant will blow up. But that’s not the hitch; if the ship is anchored to the ground, it won’t be accelerating no matter how much thrust is developed.”
“Oh!” said Morrie. “Hmm. I sure laid an egg on that one, Doc.”
“Natural mistake.”
After another five miles Morrie spoke again. “I’ve got it, Doc. The Galileo has to be free to move to show thrust on the accelerometer. Right? Okay, I’ll test-fly it. Hold it, hold it,” he went on quickly, “I know exactly what you are going to say: you won’t let any one take a risk if you can help it. The ship might blow up, or it might crash. Okay, so it might. But it’s my job. I’m not essential to the trip; you are. You have to have Ross as flight engineer; you have to have Art for the radar and radio; you don’t have to have a second pilot. I’m elected.”
Cargraves tried to make his voice sound offhand. “Morrie, your analysis does your heart credit, but not your head. Even if what you said is true, the last part doesn’t quite add up. I may be essential, if the trip is made. But if the test flight goes wrong, if the power pile blows, or if the ship won’t handle and crashes, then there won’t be any trip and I’m not essential.”
Morrie grinned. “You’re sharp as a tack, Doc.”