A searchlight on the distant control tower pointed at them; blinked red three times. Hazel turned to her son. ‘Thirty minutes, Captain.’
‘Right.’ He whistled into his microphone. ‘Silence, everyone! Please keep operational silence until you are underground. Thanks for coming, everybody. Good-by!’
‘ ‘Bye, Rog!’ ‘Good trip, folks!’ ‘Aloha!’ ‘Hurry back’
Their friends started filing down a ramp into one of the field tunnels; Mr Stone turned to his family. ‘Thirty minutes. Man the ship!’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Hazel started up the ladder with Pollux after her. She stopped suddenly, backed down and stepped on his fingers. ‘Out of my way, youngster!’ She jumped down and ran toward the group disappearing down the ramp. ‘Hey, Tom! Beasley! Wait! Half a mo—’
The mayor paused and turned around; she thrust a package into his hand. ‘Mail this stuff for me?’
‘Certainly. Hazel.’
‘That’s a good boy. ‘Bye!’
She came back to the ship; her son inquired, ‘What was the sudden crisis, Hazel?’
‘Six episodes. I stay up all night getting them ready… then I didn’t even notice I still had ’em until I had trouble climbing with one hand.’
‘Sure your head’s on tight?’
‘None of your lip, boy.’
‘Get in the ship.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Once they were all inboard the port’s weightmaster made his final check, reading the scales on the launching flat under each fin, adding them together. ‘Two and seven-tenths pounds under, Captain. Pretty close figuring.’ He fastened trim weights in that amount to the foot of the ladder. ‘Take it up.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Roger Stone hauled up the ladder, gathered in the trim weights, and closed the door of the air lock. He let himself into the ship proper, closed and dogged the inner door behind him, then stuck his head up into the control room. Castor was already in the co-pilot’s couch. ‘Time?’
‘Minus seventeen minutes, Captain.’
‘She tracking?’ He reached out and set the trim weights on a spindle at the central axis of the ship.
‘Pretty as could be.’ The main problem and the exact second of departure had been figured three weeks earlier; there is only one short period every twenty-six months when a ship may leave the Luna-Terra system for Mars by the most economical orbit. After trial weight had been taken the day before Captain Stone had figured his secondary problem, i.e., how much thrust for how long a period was required to put this particular ship into that orbit. It was the answer to this second problem which Castor was now tracking in the automatic pilot.
The first leg of the orbit would not be towards Mars but toward Earth, with a second critical period, as touchy as the take off, as they rounded Earth. Captain Stone frowned at the thought, then shrugged; that worry had to come later. ‘Keep her tracking. I’m going below.’
He went down into the power room, his eyes glancing here and there as he went. Even to a merchant skipper, to whom it is routine, the last few minutes before blast-off are worry making. Blast-off for a spaceship has a parachute-jump quality; once you jump it is usually too late to correct any oversights. Space skippers suffer nightmares about misplaced decimal points.
Hazel and Pollux occupied the couches of the chief and assistant. Stone stuck his head down without going down. ‘Power Room?’
‘She’ll be ready. I’m letting her warm slowly.’
Dr Stone, Meade, and Buster were riding out the lift in the bunkroom, for company; he stuck his head in. ‘Everybody okay?’
His wife looked up from her couch. ‘Certainly, dear. Lowell has had his injection.’ Buster was stretched out on his back, strapped down and sleeping. He alone had never experienced acceleration thrust and free falling; his mother had decided to drug him lest he be frightened.
Roger Stone looked at his least son. ‘I envy him.’
Meade sat up. ‘Head pretty bad, Daddy?’
‘I’ll live. But today I regard farewell parties as much overrated affairs, especially for the guest of honor.’
The horn over his head said in Castor’s voice, ‘Want me to boost her, Dad? I feel fine.’
‘Mind your own business, co-pilot. She still tracking?’
‘Tracking, sir. Eleven minutes.’