Hazel’s voice came out of the horn.’ “The wages of sin are death”.’
‘Look who’s talking! No more unauthorised chatter over the intercom. That’s an order.’
‘Aye aye, Captain.’
He started to leave; his wife stopped him. ‘I want you to take this, dear.’ She held out a capsule.
‘I don’t need it.’
‘Take it.’
‘Yes, Doctor darling.’ He swallowed it, made a face, and went up to the control room. As he climbed into his couch he said, ‘Call tower for clearance.’
‘Aye aye, sir. Rolling Stone, Luna City registry, to Tower — request clearance to lift according to approved plan.’
‘Tower to Rolling Stone — you are cleared to lift!’
‘Rolling Stone to Tower — roger!’ Castor answered. Captain Stone looked over his board. All green, except one red light from power room which would not wink green until he told his mother to unlock the safety on the cadmium damper plates. He adjusted the microvernier on his tracking indicator, satisfied himself that the auto-pilot was tracking to perfection as Castor had reported. ‘All stations, report in succession — power room !’
‘She’s sizzling, Skipper!’ came back Hazel’s reply.
‘Passengers!’
‘We’re ready, Roger.’
‘Co-pilot!’
‘Clear and green, sir! Check off completed. Five minutes.’
‘Strap down and report!’
‘Power gang strapped.’ — ‘We’re strapped, dear.’ — ‘Strapped, sir, all stations.’
‘Power room, unlock for lift.’
The last red light on his board winked green as Hazel reported, ‘Power board unlocked, Skipper. Ready to blast.’
Another voice followed hers, more softly: ‘Now I lay me down to sleep —’
‘Shut up, Meade!’ Roger Stone snapped. ‘Co-pilot, commence the count!’
Castor started singsonging: ‘Minus two minutes ten… minus two minutes… minus one minute fifty… minus one minute forty -‘
Roger Stone felt his blood begin to pound and wished heartily that he had had the sense to come home early, even if the party had been in his honor.
‘Minus one minute!… minus fifty-five… minus fifty —’
He braced his right hand with his forefinger over the manual firing key, ready to blast if the auto-pilot should fail — then quickly took it away. This was no military vessel! If it failed to fire, the thing to do was to cancel — not risk his wife and kids with imperfect machinery. After all, he held only a private license — ‘Minus thiry-five… half minute!’
His head felt worse. Why leave a warm apartment to bounce around in a tin covered wagon?
‘Twenty-eight, twenty-sev’n, twenty-six —’
Well, if anything went wrong, at least there wouldn’t be any little orphans left around. The whole Stone family was here, root and branch. The Rolling Stones —
‘Nineteen… eighteen… seventeen —’
He didn’t fancy going back and meeting all those people who had just come out to say good-by — telling them, ‘It’s like this: we swung and we missed —’
‘Twelve! Eleven! and ten! and nine!’
He again placed his forefinger over the manual button, ready to stab.
‘And five!
‘And four!
‘And three!
‘And two!
‘And — ‘ Castor’s chant was blanked out by the blazing ‘white noise’ of the jet; the Rolling Stone cast herself into the void.
VI — BALLISTICS AND BUSTER
Blasting off from Luna is not the terrifying and oppressive experience that a lift from Earth is. The Moon’s field is so weak, her gravity well so shallow, that a boost of one-g would suffice — just enough to produce Earth-normal weight.
Captain Stone chose to use two gravities, both to save time and to save fuel by getting quickly away from Luna — ‘quickly’ because any reactive mass spent simply to hold a spaceship up against the pull of a planet is an ‘overhead’ cost; it does nothing toward getting one where one wants to go. Furthermore, while the Rolling Stone would operate at low thrust she could do so only by being very wasteful of reactive mass, i.e., by not letting the atomic pile heat the hydrogen hot enough to produce a really efficient jet speed.
So he caused the Stone to boost at two gravities for slightly over two minutes. Two gravities — a mere nothing! The pressure felt by a wrestler pinned to the mat by the body of his opponent — the acceleration experienced by a child in a school-yard swing — hardly more than the push resulting from standing up very suddenly.