True, the piloting radar had kept them in touch by radio, in a manner of speaking, during the early part of the journey, but they were now beyond the range of the type of equipment used for piloting. It bore little resemblance to the giant radars used to bounce signals against the moon. The quartz windows through which it operated would have been quite inadequate for the large antenna used to fling power from the earth to the moon.
Art got busy at once, while stating that he thought the chances of picking up anything were slim. “It would have to be beamed tight as a, as a, well — tight. And why would anybody be beaming stuff out this way?”
“At us, of course,” Ross offered.
“They can’t find us. Radar won’t pick up anything as small as this ship at this distance — too little mirror cross section.” Art spoke authoritatively. “Not the radars they’ve got so far. Maybe some day, if — hey!”
“What have you got?”
“Keep quiet!” Art stared ahead with that look of painful, unseeing concentration found only under a pair of earphones. He twiddled his dials carefully, then fumbled for pencil and paper. Writing, he found, was difficult without gravity to steady himself and his hand. But he scribbled.
“Get a load of this,” he whispered a few minutes later. He read:
RADIO PARIS CALLING ROCKET SHIP GALILEO
RADIO PARIS CALLING ROCKET SHIP GALILEO
RADIO PARIS CALLING ROCKET SHIP GALILEO
DOCTOR DONALD CARGRAVES ARTHUR MUELLER
MAURICE ABRAMS ROSS JENKINS GREETINGS YOUR
FLIGHT FOLLOWED UNTIL OH ONE ONE THREE
GREENWICH TIME SEPTEMBER TWENTYFIFTH
CONTACT LOST WILL CONTINUE TO CALL YOU ON
THIS BEAM AND FREQUENCY FOLLOWING PROB-
ABLE TRAJECTORY GOOD LUCK TO YOU RADIO
PARIS CALLING ROCKET SHIP GALILEO RADIO
PARIS-
“And then they repeat. It’s a recording.” His voice was shaky.
“Gosh!” Ross had no other comment.
“Well, boys, it looks like we’re celebrities.” Cargraves tried to make his words sound casual. Then he found that he was holding a piece of his pipe in each hand; he had broken it in two without knowing it. Shrugging, he let the pieces float away from him.
“But how did they find us?” persisted Art.
“The message shows it,” Morrie pointed out. “See that time? That’s the time we went into free fall. They followed the jet.”
“How? By telescope?”
“More likely,” Cargraves put in, “by anti-rocket radiation tracer.”
“Huh? But the UN patrol are the only ones with that sort of gear.”
Cargraves permitted himself a grin. “And why shouldn’t the UN be interested in us? See here, kid — can you squirt anything back at them?”
“I’ll sure try!”
Chapter 11: ONE ATOM WAR TOO MANY?
Art got busy at his task, but nothing came back which would tell him whether or not his attempts had been successful. The recording continued to come in whenever he listened for it, between attempts to send, for the next three and a half hours. Then it faded out — they were off the beam.
Nevertheless, it was the longest direct communication of record in human history.
The Galileo continued her climb up from the earth, toward that invisible boundary where the earth ceased to claim title and the lesser mass of the moon took charge. Up and up, out and farther out, rising in free flight, slowing from the still effective tug of the earth but still carried on by the speed she had attained under the drive of the jet, until at last the Galileo slipped quietly over the border and was in the moon’s back yard. From there on she accelerated slowly as she fell toward the silvery satellite.
They ate and slept and ate again. They stared at the receding earth. And they slept again.
While they slept, Joe the Robot stirred, consulted his cam, decided that he had had enough of this weightlessness, and started the jet. But first he straightened out the ship so that the jet faced toward the moon, breaking their fall, while the port stared back at earth.
The noise of the jet woke them up. Cargraves had had them strap themselves down in anticipation of weight. They unstrapped and climbed up to the control station. “Where’s the moon?” demanded Art.