Space Jockey
Space Jockey
JUST AS THEY WERE LEAVING the telephone called his name. “Don’t answer it,” she pleaded. “We’ll miss the curtain.”
“Who is it?” he called out. The viewplate lighted; he recognized Olga Pierce, and behind her the Colorado Springs office of Trans-Lunar Transit.
“Calling Mr. Pemberton. Calling-Oh, it’s you, Jake. You’re on. Flight 27, Supra-New York to Space Terminal. I’ll have a copter pick you up in twenty minutes.”
“How come?” he protested. “I’m fourth down on the call board.”
“You were fourth down. Now you are standby pilot to Hicks-and he just got a psycho down-check.”
“Hicks got psychoed? That’s silly!”
“Happens to the best, chum. Be ready. “Bye now.”
His wife was twisting sixteen dollars worth of lace handkerchief to a shapeless mass. “Jake, this is ridiculous. For three months I haven’t seen enough of you to know what you look like.”
“Sorry, kid. Take Helen to the show.”
“Oh, Jake, I don’t care about the show; I wanted to get you where they couldn’t reach you for once.”
“They would have called me at the theater.”
“Oh, no! I wiped out the record you’d left.”
“Phyllis! Are you trying to get me fired?”
“Don’t look at me that way.” She waited, hoping that he would speak, regretting the side issue, and wondering how to tell him that her own fretfulness was caused, not by disappointment, but by gnawing worry for his safety every time he went out into space.
She went on desperately, “You don’t have to take this flight, darling; you’ve been on Earth less than the time limit. Please, Jake!”
He was peeling off his tux. “I’ve told you a thousand times: a pilot doesn’t get a regular run by playing space-lawyer with the rule book. Wiping out my follow-up message-why did you do it, Phyllis? Trying to ground me?”
“No, darling, but I thought just this once-”
“When they offer me a flight I take it.” He walked stiffly out of the room.
He came back ten minutes later, dressed for space and apparently in good humor; he was whistling: “-the caller called Casey at half past four; he kissed his-” He broke off when he saw her face, and set his mouth. “Where’s my coverall?”
“I’ll get it. Let me fix you something to eat.”
‘You know I can’t take high acceleration on a full stomach. And why lose thirty bucks to lift another pound?”
Dressed as he was, in shorts, singlet, sandals, and pocket belt, he was already good for about minus-fifty pounds in weight bonus; she started to tell him the weight penalty on a sandwich and -a cup of coffee did not matter to them, but it was just one more possible cause for misunderstanding.
Neither of them said much until the taxicab clumped on the roof. He kissed her goodbye and told her not to come outside. She obeyed-until she heard the helicopter take off. Then she climbed to the roof and watched it out of sight.
The traveling-public gripes at the lack of direct Earth-to-Moon service, but it takes three types of rocket ships and two space-station changes to make a fiddling quarter-million-mile jump for a good reason: Money.
The Commerce Commission has set the charges for the present three-stage lift from here to the Moon at thirty dollars a pound. Would direct service be cheaper? A ship designed to blast off from Earth, make an airless landing on the Moon, return and make an atmosphere landing, would be so cluttered up with heavy special equipment used only once in the trip that it could not show a profit at a thousand dollars a pound! Imagine combining a ferry boat, a subway train, and an express elevator. So Trans-Lunar uses rockets braced for catapulting, and winged for landing on return to Earth to make the terrific lift from Earth to our satellite station Supra-New York. The long middle lap, from there to where Space Terminal circles the Moon, calls for comfort-but no landing gear. The Flying Dutchman and the Philip Nolan never land; they were even assembled in space, and they resemble winged rockets like the Skysprite and the Firefly as little as a Pullman train resembles a parachute.