The boy said nothing, neither did he look at him.
These kids, these damn kids! How had he gotten up here, with a rocket under his hand and a cargo of minors to be responsible for? He was a laboratory scientist, not a superman. If it had been Ross, if Ross were a pilot — even where he now was, he shivered at the recollection of Ross’s hair-raising driving. Art was about as bad. Morrie was worse.
He knew he would never be a hot pilot — not by twenty years. These kids, with their casual ignorance, with their hot rod rigs, it was for them; piloting was their kind of a job. They were too young and too ignorant to care and their reflexes were not hobbled by second thoughts. He remembered Ross’s words: “I’ll go to the moon if I have to walk!”
“Land her, Morrie.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
The boy never looked, at him. He flipped her up on her tail, then let her drop slowly by easing off on the tail jet. Purely by the seat of his pants, by some inner calculation- for Cargraves could see nothing through the port but stars, and neither could the boy -he flipped her over again, cutting the tail jet as he did so.
The ground was close to them and coming up fast.
He kicked her once with the belly jets, placing them thereby over a smooth stretch of land, and started taking her down with quick blasts of the nose jets, while sneaking a look between blasts.
When he had her down so close that Cargraves was sure that he was going to land her on her nose, crushing in the port and killing them, he gave her one more blast which made her rise a trifle, kicked her level and brought her down on the belly jets, almost horizontal, and so close to the ground that Cargraves could see it ahead of them, out the port.
Glancing casually out the port, Morrie gave one last squirt with the belly jets and let her settle. They grated heavily and were stopped. The Galileo sat on the face of the moon.
“Landed, sir. Time: Oh-eight-three-four.”
Cargraves drew in a breath. “A beautiful, beautiful landing, Morrie.”
“Thanks, Captain.”
Chapter 12: THE BARE BONES
Ross and Art were already out of their straps and talking loudly about getting out the space suits when Cargraves climbed shakily out of his chair — and then nearly fell. The lowered gravitation, one-sixth earth-normal, fooled him. He was used to weightlessness by now, and to the chest-binding pressure of high acceleration; the pseudo-normal weight of a one-g drive was no trouble, and maneuvering while strapped down was no worse than stunting in an airplane.
This was different and required a little getting used to, he decided. It reminded him a little of walking on rubber, or the curiously light-footed feeling one got after removing snow shoes or heavy boots.
Morrie remained at his post for a few moments longer to complete and sign his log. He hesitated over the space in the log sheet marked ‘position’. They had taught him in school to enter here the latitude and longitude of the port of arrival — but what were the latitude and longitude of this spot?
The moon had its north and south poles just as definitely as the earth, which gave any spot a definite latitude, nor was longitude uncertain once a zero meridian was selected. That had been done; Tycho was to be the Greenwich of the moon.
But his navigation tables were tables for the earth.
The problem could be solved; he knew that. By spherical trigonometry the solutions of celestial triangles on which all navigation was based could be converted to the special conditions of Luna, but it would require tedious calculation, not at all like the precalculated short cuts used by all pilots in the age of aircraft and rocket. He would have to go back to the Marc St. Hilaire method, obsolete for twenty years, after converting laboriously each piece of data from earth reference terms to moon reference terms.
Well, he could do it later, he decided, and get Cargraves to check him. The face of the moon called him.