This startling dissertation was abruptly punctured by the arrival of a cruiser which slammed down smartly enough to knock out a couple of windowpanes.
From it stepped a splendid young captain who approached the waiting group and saluted the admiral.
“Captain Congreve, sir, reporting to relieve the exec. I— Oh, hello, Pettigrew!”
There was so much warmth in Congreve’s voice that Banning was startled.
“You know this man?” cried Banning.
“I certainly do. And I can recommend him to you heartily,” said Congreve. “Picked him myself after Universal Admiral Collingsby swore him in. He invented the billion-light-year fuel capsule. You’ve heard of him, haven’t you? Well, you must have: I see you’ve been on a mission already.”
“Yes, sir,” said Pettigrew. “I was sent off to get a quart of rudey rays.”
“A … a what?”
“And I got ’em,” said Pettigrew, pulling a flat jar from his sagging jacket. “Had quite a time and near got sizzled but they’re tame enough. I saturated sponge iron with them and the filings are all here. Kind of a funny way to carry the stuff but I guess you Navy guys know what you are doing.”
“Rudey rays?” said Banning.
“Thousand-year half-life,” said Pettigrew, “and completely harmless. Good brake fuel. Won’t destroy grass. By golly, Mr. Carpdyke, it was awful smart of you to figure these things out. They ain’t in any catalogue and I sure didn’t know they existed.”
Technicians passed the flask from hand to hand gingerly. The counters on their wrists sang power innocuous to man and sang it loud.
“That’s all I could get this trip. Nebula One, right slam bang center of the Universe,” said Pettigrew. “Well, there she is. If you’ll excuse me, I don’t look much like a naval officer and I better change my clothes.”
They stared after him as he went to quarters, the master-at-arms trotting after to break out his impounded gear.
There was a queer dazed look about Carpdyke. But Banning was not dazed. He fired some fast, smart questions at the technicians and when they had examined the fuel in the lab, they gave him some pretty positive answers.
Banning stood looking at Carpdyke, then, but not seeing him. Banning was seeing sixteen stars blazing on the side of a flagship and maybe not a whole year away after all.
“Sir,” stammered Carpdyke, “I’m sorry. It came out all right but I know I jeopardized equipment. He looked so young and green and I figured it would take a lot of roasting to make him an officer and I never intended he would actually get off the base—”
Captain Congreve looked mirthfully at Carpdyke, for the captain understood the situation now.
“Commander,” said Congreve, “I wouldn’t let this throw you. You see, the reason Collingsby swore that man in as an ensign and not as a lieutenant was because Pettigrew had something of a reputation in the Empire Mail.”
“A reputation?” said Carpdyke.
“Yes,” said Congreve, gently. “A reputation as a practical joker, Commander, and he’d been warned about you.”
“A pract … a practical—” began Carpdyke, feeling most ungodly faint at what this would do to his reputation everywhere.
“Carpdyke,” beamed Banning, clapping him on the shoulder in a most friendly, sixteen-star-blinded way, “supposing we all go over to the club and let you buy us a drink?”
240,000
Miles Straight Up
CHAPTER ONE
Left at the Post
THE party was wild. The night was gay. And the “Angel” was very, very drunk.
But who wouldn’t have got drunk on such an occasion? The Angel was about to head man’s first attempt to conquer space and within a few short hours he would be boring space to the moon, 240,000 miles straight up.
He had tried to stay sober but this, being without precedent in the Angel’s career, was entirely too great a strain. “Don’t dare take another grink … well … jush one more … hic!”
The Angel was First Lieutenant Cannon Gray of the United States Army Air Forces, Engineers. He was five feet two inches tall and he had golden curly hair and a face like a choir boy. Old ladies thought him wonderful and beautiful. His superiors, from the moment he had entered West Point, had found him just about the wickedest, hard-drinkingest, go-to-hell splinter of steel they’d ever tried to forge.
The Army, with a taste of opposites, called him Angel from the first, called it to his face, loved him and was hilarious over his escapades.
This was probably the first time in history that Angel had attempted to stay sober. But it was a wonderful party they were giving in his honor (two floors of the Waldorf plus the ballroom) and people kept insisting that he wouldn’t get another chance at a drink for months and maybe never and everyone was so pleasant that good resolutions were very hard to hold—especially for a dashing young officer who had never tried to make any before.
The occasion was gala and his hand was sore from being pumped by brass hats and newsmen and senators. For at zero four zero eight of the dawning, First Lieutenant Cannon Gray, USA, was taking off for the moon.
It was in all the papers.
Several times Colonel Anthony, a veritable old maid of a flight surgeon, had tried to pry his charge loose and steer him to bed and, while Angel seemed willing and looked blue eyed and agreeable, he always vanished before the hall was reached. Really, it was not Angel’s fault.
No less than nineteen frail, charming and truly startling young ladies, all professing undying passion and future faithfulness, had turned up one after the other and it was something of a task making each one unaware of the other eighteen and confirming in her belief in his lasting fidelity.
Such strains should not be placed upon young men about to fly 240,000 miles straight up. And it takes hours to say a proper goodbye. And it takes more hours to be respectful to brass. And it takes time, time, time to drink up all the toasts shoved at one. All in all it was a very exhausting evening.
Not until zero one zero six did Colonel Anthony manage to catch the collapsing Angel in such a way as to keep him. Wrapped in the massive grip of Colonel Anthony, Angel said, “Candrin four oh eigh … snore!”
The golden head dropped on the Colonel’s eagle and Angel slept.
Cruelly, it was no time at all before somebody was slapping Angel awake again, standing him on his feet, getting him into a uniform, wrapping him up in furs, weighing him down with equipment and generally tangling up a dark, dismal and thoroughly confused morning.
Angel was aware of a howling headache. Small scarlet fiends, especially commissioned by the Prince of Darkness for the purpose, played a gay chorus with red-hot hammers just behind Angel’s eyes. He was missing between his chin and his knees and his feet wandered off on various courses.
A flight major and two sergeants, undeniably capped with horns, danced in high anxiety around him and managed to touch him in all the places that hurt.
He was in horrible condition and no mistake.
And the watch on his wrist gleamed as hugely as a steeple clock and said, “Zero three fifty-one,” in an unnecessarily loud voice.
The corridor was at least half the distance to Mars and Angel kept hitting the walls. The casual chairs with which he collided all apologized profusely.
A potted palm fell on him and then became a general who, with idiotic pomposity said, “Fine morning, fine morning, Lieutenant. You look fit. Fit, sir. No clouds and a splendid full moon.”
He felt the call, one which generals too old for command can never resist, to give a young officer the benefit of a wealth of experience but, fortunately, his aide swiftly interposed.
The aide was brilliant wi
th the usual aide’s enthusiasm for paper glory and distaste for generals. Angel knew him well. The aide, in Angel’s day at the Point, had been an upperclassman, a noted grind, a shuddery bore and the darling of his seniors. He didn’t look any better to Angel this morning.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the aide sidewise to the general, “but we’ve just time to brief him as we ride down. Here, this way Lieutenant.” And, abetted by the usherlike habit peculiar to the breed of aides, he got Angel into the car.
“Now,” said the aide to Angel, who was hard put to stifle his groans and shivers at the unearthly hour, “you have been thoroughly briefed. But there must be a quick resumé unless you think you are thoroughly cognizant of your duties.”
Angel would have answered but the sound came out as a groan.
“Very well,” said the aide, just as though his were the really important job and Angel was just a sort of paperweight, very needful to aides but not at all important. “The staff is terribly interested in your surveys.
“You will confine yourself wholly to this one task. It has been thought wisest to entrust a topographer with this first mission because, after all, that’s the way things are done. We’ve insufficient reconnaissance to send up a main body.”
Angel would have added that he was a guinea pig. They didn’t even know if he could really get to the moon. But aides talk like that and lieutenants somehow let them.
“As soon as you have completed a survey of an elementary sort you will televise your maps, then send a complete set in a pilot rocket and return if you are able. But you are not to risk bringing the maps back personally.”
They were little enough sure he’d ever get there, much less get back.
“You will phone all data back to us. Our tests show that the wave can travel much further than that. Anything you may think important, beyond maps and perhaps geology, you are permitted to note and report.
“Under no circumstances are you to attempt to change any control settings in your ship. Everything is all prenavigated and proper setting will be phoned to you for your return.
“All instructions are here in this packet.”
Angel shoved the brown envelope into his jacket and felt twinges of pain as he did so.
“My boy,” said the general, getting a word in there somehow, “this is a glorious occasion. You have been chosen for your courage and loyalty and it is a great honor. A great honor, my boy. You will, I am sure, be a credit to your country.”
Angel didn’t mean it to be a groan but that is the way it came out. They had chosen him because he was the smallest man ever to enter West Point, his height having been waived because of the lump of tin—the Congressional Medal of Honor, no less—he had won as an enlisted man (under age) in the war.
They had needed a topographer who wouldn’t subtract from payload. Space travel was to begin with seeming to create a demand for a race of small men. But he didn’t tell the general this and they came to the end of the ride.
The aide expertly ushered Angel out into the bleak blackness of the takeoff field, where every officer and newspaperman who could wangle it was all buttoned up to the ears and massed about the whitish blob of the ship.
The flight surgeon took over, and protected Angel from the back swats and got him through to the ladder. The two smallish master sergeants—Whittaker and Boyd—were waiting at the top in the open door of the ship. Metal glinted beyond them in the lighted interior.
Whittaker was methodically chewing a huge wad of tobacco and Boyd was humming a bawdy tune as he stared up at the romantically round and glowing moon in the west. They were taking off away from it for reasons best known to the US Navy navigators who had set the course.
A commander was hurrying about, muttering sums, and he paused only long enough to glare at Angel. “Don’t touch those sets!” he growled, and rushed off to take station at the pushbutton which, when all was well, would fire the assist rockets under the carriage on the rails. These were keyed in with the ship’s rockets. The commander glared at his ticking standard chronometer.
The flight surgeon said, “Well, you’ve got a week to sober up, boy. You won’t like this takeoff.”
Angel gave him a green smile. It hadn’t been the champagne. It was the apricot cordial that Alice had brought him to take along. “I’ll be fine,” said Angel, managing a ghost of his lovely smile.
“Board!” shouted the commander.
Angel went up the ladder. Whittaker spat out his chaw and lent a hand. Boyd was standing by on the stage and, more to avert the necessity of having to see Angel’s poor navigation than from interest, turned a powerful navy night glass on the moon. Boyd was very fond of Angel in a cussing sort of way.
But Angel made it without help and had just turned to give the faces, white blurs there in the floodlights, a parting wave to the click of cameras when Boyd yelled.
“Oh, my aching aunt!”
There was so much amazed fear in that shout that everyone stared at Boyd and then turned to find what he saw. Angel found Boyd shoving the glasses at him.
“Look, Lieutenant!”
Angel hadn’t supposed himself able to see a thousand-dollar bill, much less the clear moon. And then he jumped as if he’d been clipped with a bullet.
The commander was howling at them to batten down but Angel stood and stared, glasses riveted to the lunar glory.
Those with sharper eyes could see it now. And a wail went up interspersed with awful silences. Even the testy commander turned to stare, looked back to the ship and then whipped about to snatch a quartermaster’s glass from his gunner. He took one look and froze in silence.
Every face was uplifted now, the field was stunned. For there on the moon in print which must have been a hundred miles high, done in lampblack, were the letters—
USSR
CHAPTER TWO
Takeoff
FOR some days Angel languished in bachelor officers’ quarters, all out of gear. He had been nerved up to a job and then it hadn’t come off. The frustration resulted in lack of any desire for animation of whatever kind.
It was the sort of feeling one gets when he says goodbye, goodbye, to all his friends at the curb and then, just as he starts off in the car, runs out of gas and has to call a garage.
His room was littered with newspapers which he had long since perused. The messboy brought stacks in every now and then until bed and furniture seemed to be constructed badly of newsprint.
His own personal tragedy was such that he hardly cared for the details. Instead of being the first man to fly to the moon he was again just a simple lieutenant with nothing more than his deserved reputation for angelic wickedness. It came very hard to him, poor chap.
But it came very hard to the world as well. For events had transpired which made any former event, including World War II, a petty incident.
The world had been conquered without firing any other shots than those needed to propel Russian forces to the moon. The head of the Russian state had promptly issued manifestos in no uncertain terms demanding that all armies and navies be scrapped everywhere and Russian troops admitted as garrisons to every world capital. Russia had plans.
One by one countries had begun to fly the hammer and sickle without ever seeing a single Red army star.
For it was obvious to everyone. Even statesmen. All Russia had to do was launch atom bombs from the moon at any offender to destroy him wholly.
The mystery of how Russia had solved the atom bomb and had so adroitly manufactured all the plutonium it could ever need was solved when a Russian scientist stated for the press that he had needed but one year and the Smyth report. Everybody began to qu
iet down, for at first there had been talk of traitors and selling the secret.
But now that it was at last obvious that there never had been any secret and that self-navigating missiles could be very easily launched from the moon at any Earth target and that, such was the gravity difference, it would be nearly impossible to bomb-saturate the moon from Earth, even the diehards could see they were whipped.
A demand on Washington had come from Russia for the entire US atom stockpile and Congress was debating right now, without much enthusiasm, a law to give it up.
It had been very striking the way the morale of the world had collapsed, seeing up there in the sky those giant letters, USSR. Communists in every land had begun to crawl out from under dubious cover and prepare welcomes for Russian troops (and the Russians had been bidding the foreign communists to crawl right back again).
To understate the matter, there was some little consternation in the nations and peoples of the world. And whatever labor thought about it they at least remembered that of all the civilized nations of Earth, Russia had been the only one after World War II to employ, use, exploit (and let die) slaves.
And then, just as surrender was being accomplished, the US Naval Intelligence working with the State Department had done some interception and unscrambling and decoding which again gave everyone pause. By great diligence and watchfulness they had managed to tap in on the Moscow-moon circuit to discover that all was not well.
Angel had been reading about the moon commander. The man was General Slavinsky and at first reading Angel had decided, with a bitterness not usually found in celestial sprites, that he hated the triply-damned intestines of General Slavinsky.
Slavinsky was known as the “Avenger of Stalingrad” and had been a very popular general in his own country. The Germans, however, had not liked him, jealous no doubt of the thorough sadism of the Russian.
When Slavinsky had not been winning battles he had been butchering prisoners and he had turned his men loose to loot in many a neutral town and conquered province. Slavinsky evidently had himself all mixed up with Genghis Khan, complete with pyramids of skulls.