Atom Drive Part 2

He punched the general alarm b.u.t.ton viciously, and the raucous clangor of the bell sounded through the confines of the ship. One by one, the other crew members popped up to the control deck from below.

He turned the controls over to Qoqol.

"Take readings on that d.a.m.n tug," Jonner ordered. "I think our cable broke. T'an, let's go take a look."

When they got outside, they found about a foot of the one-inch cable still attached to the ship. The rest of it, drawn away by the tug before Jonner could cut acceleration, was out of sight.

"Can it be welded, T'an?"

"It can, but it'll take a while," replied the engineer slowly. "First, we'll have to reverse that tug and get the other end of that break."

"d.a.m.n, and the radio control's burned out. I tried to reverse it before I sounded the alarm. T'an, how fast can you get those controls repaired?"

"Great s.p.a.ce!" exclaimed T'an softly. "Without seeing it, I'd say at least two days, Jonner. Those controls are complicated as h.e.l.l."

They re-entered the ship. Qoqol was working at his diagrams, and Serj was looking over his shoulder. Jonner took a heat-gun quietly from the rack and pointed it at Serj.

"You'll get below, mister," he commanded grimly. "You'll be handcuffed to your bunk from here on out."

"Sir?... I don't understand," stammered Serj.

"Like h.e.l.l you don't. You cut that cable," Jonner accused.

Serj started to shrug, but he dropped his eyes.

"They paid me," he said in a low tone. "They paid me a thousand solars."

"What good would a thousand solars do you when you're dead, Serj ...

dead of suffocation and drifting forever in s.p.a.ce?"

Serj looked up in astonishment.

"Why, you can still reach Earth by radio, easy," he said. "It wouldn't take long for a rescue ship to reach us."

"Chemical rockets have their limitations," said Jonner coldly.

"And you don't realize what speed we've built up with steady acceleration. We'd head straight out of the system, and nothing could intercept us, if that tug had gotten too far before we noticed it was gone."

He jabbed the white-faced doctor with the muzzle of the heat-gun.

"Get below," he ordered. "I'll turn you over to s.p.a.ce Control at Mars."

When Serj had left the control deck, Jonner turned to the others. His face was grave.

"That tug picked up speed before I could shut off the engines, after the cable was cut," he said. "It's moving away from us slowly, and at a tangent. And solar gravity's acting on both bodies now. By the time we get those controls repaired, the drift may be such that we'll waste weeks maneuvering the tug back."

"I could jet out to the tug in a s.p.a.cesuit, before it gets too far away," said T'an thoughtfully. "But that wouldn't do any good. There's no way of controlling the engines, at the tug. It has to be done by radio."

"If we get out of this, remind me to recommend that atomic ships always carry a spare cable," said Jonner gloomily. "If we had one, we could splice them and hold the ship to the tug until the controls are repaired."

"Is cable in cargo strong enough, Jonner?" asked Qoqol.

"That's right!" exclaimed Jonner, brightening. "Most of our cargo's cable! That 4,000-ton spool we're hauling back there is 6,000 miles of cable to lay a television network between the Martian cities."

"Television cable?" repeated T'an doubtfully. "Will that be strong enough?"

"It's bound in flonite, that new fluorine compound. It's strong enough to tow this whole cargo at a couple of Gs. There's nothing aboard this ship that would cut off a length of it--a heat-gun at full power wouldn't even scorch it--but we can unwind enough of it, and block the spool. It'll hold the ship to the tug until the controls can be repaired, then we can reverse the tug and weld the cable."

"You mean the whole 6,000 miles of it's in one piece?" demanded T'an in astonishment.

"That's not so much. The cable-laying steamer _Dominia_ carried 3,000 miles in one piece to lay Atlantic cables in the early 20th century."

"But how'll we ever get 4,000 tons in one piece down to Mars?" asked T'an. "No G-boat can carry that load."

Jonner chuckled.

"Same way they got it up from Earth to the ship," he answered. "They attached one end of it to a G-boat and sent it up to orbit, then wound it up on a fast winch. Since the G-boat will be decelerating to Mars, the unwinding will have to be slowed or the cable would tangle itself all over Syrtis."

"Sounds like it's made to order," said T'an, grinning. "I'll get into my s.p.a.cesuit."

"You'll get to work on the radio controls," contradicted Jonner, getting up. "That's something I can't do, and I can get into a s.p.a.cesuit and haul a length of cable out to the tug. Qoqol can handle the winch."

Deveet, the Atom-Star Company's representative at Mars City, and Kruger of the s.p.a.ce Control Commission were waiting when the _Radiant Hope_'s G-boat dropped down from the Phobos station and came to rest in a wash of jets. They rode out to the G-boat together in a Commission groundcar.

Jonner emerged from the G-boat, following the handcuffed Serj.

"He's all yours," Jonner told Kruger, gesturing at Serj. "You have my radio reports on the cable-cutting, and I'll make my log available to you."

Kruger put his prisoner in the front seat of the groundcar beside him, and Jonner climbed in the back seat with Deveet.

"I brought the crates of dies for the groundcar factory down this time,"

Jonner told Deveet. "We'll bring down all the loose cargo before shooting the television cable down. While they're unloading the G-boat, I wish you'd get the tanks refilled with hydrazine and nitric acid.

I've got enough to get back up, but not enough for a round trip."

"What do you plan to do?" asked Deveet. He was a dark-skinned, long-faced man with a sardonic twist to his mouth.

"I've got to sign on a new ship's doctor to replace Serj. When the _Marsward_ comes in, Marscorp will have a dozen G-boats working round the clock to unload and reload her. With only one G-boat, we've got to make every hour count. We still have reaction ma.s.s to pick up on Phobos."

"Right," agreed Deveet. "You can take the return cargo up in one load, though. It's just twenty tons of Martian relics for the Solar Museum.

Mars-to-Earth cargos run light."

At the administration building, Jonner took his leave of Deveet and went up to the s.p.a.ce Control Commission's personnel office on the second floor. He was in luck. On the board as applying for a Mars-Earth run as ship's doctor-psychologist was one name: Lana Elden.

He looked up the name in the Mars City directory and dialed into the city from a nearby telephone booth. A woman's voice answered.

"Is Lana Elden there?" asked Jonner.