“I’ll buy that”
Work was soon begun on the huge steel shell in the independent steel plant under the direct supervision of MacDougall by men who had been in his employ for years. While it was being built, Seaton and Crane went ahead with the construction of the original spaceship. Practically all of their time, however, was spent in perfecting the many essential things that were to go into the real Skylark.
Thus they did not know that to the flawed members there were being attached faulty plates by imperfect welding. Nor could they have detected the poor workmanship by any ordinary inspection, for it was being done by a picked crew of experts—picked by Perkins. To make things even, Steel did not know that the many peculiar instruments installed by Seaton and Crane were not exactly what they should have been.
In due course “The Cripple”—a name which Seaton soon shortened to “Old Crip”—was finished. The foreman overheard a conversation between Crane and Seaton in which it was decided not to start for a couple of weeks, as they had to work out some kind of a book of navigation tables. Prescott reported that Steel was still sitting on its hands, waiting for the first flight. Word came from MacDougall that the Skylark was ready. Crane and Seaton went somewhere in the helicopter “to make a few final tests”.
A few nights later a huge ball landed on Crane Field. It moved lightly, easily, betraying its thousands of tons of weight only by the hole it made in the hard-beaten ground. Seaton and Crane sprang out.
Dorothy and her father were waiting. Seaton caught her up and kissed her vigorously. Then, a look of sheerest triumph on his face, he extended a hand to Vaneman.
“She flies! How she flies! We’ve been around the moon!”
“What?” Dorothy was shocked. “Without even telling me? Why, I’d’ve been scared pea-green if I’d known!”
“That was why,” Seaton assured her. “Now you won’t have to worry next time we take off.”
“I will so,” she protested; but Seaton was listening to Vaneman.
“. . . it take?”
“Not quite an hour. We could have done it in much less time.” Crane’s voice was calm, his face quiet; but to those who knew him so well, every feature showed emotion.
Both inventors were at the summit, moved more than either could have told by their achievement, by the success of the flyer upon which they had worked so long.
Shiro broke the tension by bowing until his head almost touched the floor. “Sirs and lady, I impel myself to state this to be wonder extreme. If permitting I shall delightful luxuriate in preparation suitable refreshment.”
Permission granted, he trotted away and the engineers invited the visitors to inspect their new craft.
Although Dorothy knew what to expect, from plans and drawings and from her own knowledge of “Old Crip,” she caught her breath as she looked about the brilliantly lighted interior of the great sky-rover.
It was a spherical shell of hardened steel of great thickness, some forty feet in diameter. Its true shape was not readily apparent from inside, as it was divided into levels and compartments by decks and walls. In its center was a spherical structure of girders and beams. Inside this structure was a similar one which, on smooth but immensely strong universal bearings, was free to revolve in any direction. This inner sphere was filled with machinery surrounding a shining copper cylinder.
Six tremendous fabricated columns radiated outward; branching in maximum-strength design out into the hull. The floor was heavily upholstered and was not solid; the same was true of the dozen or more seats built in various places. There were two instrument boards, upon which tiny lights flashed and plate glass, plastic, and metal gleamed.
Both Vanemans began to ask questions and Seaton showed them the principal features of the novel vessel. Crane accompanied them in silence, enjoying their pleasure, glorying in the mighty ship of space.
Seaton called attention to the great size and strength of one of the lateral supporting columns, then led them over to the vertical column that pierced the floor. Enormous as the lateral was, it appeared puny beside this monster of fabricated steel. Seaton explained that the two verticals had to be much stronger than the four laterals, as the center of gravity of the ship had been placed lower than its geometrical center, so that the apparent motion of the vessel would always be upward. Resting one hand caressingly upon the huge member, he explained exultantly that it was the ultimately last word in strength, made of the strongest known high-tensile, heat-treated, special-alloy steel.
“But why go to such an extreme?” the lawyer asked. “It looks as though it could support a bridge.”
“It could. It’ll have to, if we ever really cut loose with the power. Have you got any idea of how fast this thing can fly?”
“I have heard you talk of approaching the velocity of light, but that’s a little overdrawn, isn’t it?”
“Not a bit. If it wasn’t for Einstein and his famous theory we could develop an acceleration twice as great as one light-velocity. As it is, we’re going to see how close we can crowd it—and it’ll be close, believe me. Out in space, that is. In air we’ll be limited to three or four times sound, in spite of all we could do in the line of heat-exchangers and refrigeration.”
“But, from what I read about jets, ten gravities for ten minutes can be fatal.”
“That’s right. But these floors are special, and those seats are infinitely more so. That was one of our hardest jobs; designing supporting surfaces to hold a man safe through forces that would ordinarily flatten him out into a thin layer of goo.”
“I see. How are you going to steer? And how about stable reference planes to steer by? Or are you merely going to head for Mars or Venus or Neptune or Aldebaran, as the case may be?”
“That wouldn’t be so good. We thought for a while we’d have to, but Mart licked it. The power plant is entirely separate from the ship, inside that inner sphere, about which the outer sphere and the ship itself are free to revolve. Even if the ship rolls or pitches, the bar stays right where it is pointed. Those six big jackets cover gyroscopes, which keep the outer sphere in exactly the same position—”
“Relative to what?” Vaneman asked. “It seems to have moved since we came in. . . . Yes, if you look closely, you can see it move.”
“Naturally. Um . . . m. Never thought of it from that angle just that its orientation isn’t affected by either the ship or the power plant. If you want to pin me down, though, it’s oriented solidly to the three dimensions of the steel plant at the time MacDougall got the gyroscopes up to holding speed. Since that doesn’t mean much here and now, I’d say, as an approximation, that it is locked to the fixed stars. Or, rather, to the effective mass of the galaxy as a whole. . . .”
“Please, Dick,” Dorothy interrupted. “Enough of the jargon. Show us the important things—kitchen, bedrooms, bath.”
Seaton did so, explaining in detail some of the many differences between living on earth and in a small, necessarily self-sufficient worldlet out in airless, lightless, heatless space.
“Oh, I’m just wild to go out with you, Dick. When will you take me?”
“Very soon, Dottie. Just as soon as we’re sure we’ve got all the bugs ironed out. You’ll be our first passenger, so help me.”
“How do you see out? How about air and water? How do you keep warm, or cool, as the case may be?” Vaneman fired the questions as though he were cross-examining a witness. “No, excuse me; you’ve already mentioned the heaters and refrigerators.”
“The pilots see outside, the whole sphere of vision, by means of special instruments, something like periscopes but vastly different—electronic. Passengers can see out by uncovering windows—they’re made of fused quartz. We carry air—oxygen, nitrogen, helium, and argon—in tanks, although we won’t need much new air because of our purifiers and recovery units. We also have oxygen-generating apparatus aboard, for emergencies.
“We carry water enough to last us three months—or indefinitely if necessary, as we can recover all waste water as chemically pure H2O. Anything else?”
“You’d better give up, dad,” Dorothy advised, laughing. “It’s perfectly safe for me to go along!”
“It seems to be. But it’s getting pretty well along toward morning, Dorothy, and if any of us are to get any sleep at all tonight you and I should go home.”
“That’s so, and I’m the one who has been screaming at Dick about going to bed every night at eleven. I’ll go powder my nose—I’ll be right back.”
Vaneman said, after Dorothy had gone, “You mentioned ‘bugs’ only in a very light and passing way.”