Short Stories by Robert A. Heinlein Vol 1 Part 9

Twenty minutes later he cut' in and heard: '- of course not, Daddy. Oh, a teensy bit scared when the ship fell. But people take care of me, always have.'

'Betsy?'

'Yes, sir?'

'Be ready to tell us again.'

'Now!' She added, 'That's a bullfrog G, three octaves down.'

'This note?'

'That's right.'

'Get that on the grid and tell the General to get his ships up! That cuts it to a square ten miles on a side! Now, Betsy - we know almost where you are. We are going to focus still closer. Want to go inside and cool off?'

'I'm not too hot. Just sweaty.'

Forty minutes later the General's voice rang out: 'They've spotted the ship! They see her waving!'

s.p.a.cE JOCKEY.

JUST AS THEY WERE LEAVING the telephone called his name. "Don't answer it," she pleaded. "We'll miss the curtain."

"Who is it?" he called out. The viewplate lighted; he recognized Olga Pierce, and behind her the Colorado Springs office of Trans-Lunar Transit.

"Calling Mr. Pemberton. Calling-Oh, it's you, Jake. You're on. Flight 27, Supra-New York to s.p.a.ce Terminal. I'll have a copter pick you up in twenty minutes."

"How come?" he protested. "I'm fourth down on the call board."

"You were fourth down. Now you are standby pilot to Hicks-and he just got a psycho down-check."

"Hicks got psychoed? That's silly!"

"Happens to the best, chum. Be ready. "Bye now."

His wife was twisting sixteen dollars worth of lace handkerchief to a shapeless ma.s.s. "Jake, this is ridiculous. For three months I haven't seen enough of you to know what you look like."

"Sorry, kid. Take Helen to the show."

"Oh, Jake, I don't care about the show; I wanted to get you where they couldn't reach you for once."

"They would have called me at the theater."

"Oh, no! I wiped out the record you'd left."

"Phyllis! Are you trying to get me fired?"

"Don't look at me that way." She waited, hoping that he would speak, regretting the side issue, and wondering how to tell him that her own fretfulness was caused, not by disappointment, but by gnawing worry for his safety every time he went out into s.p.a.ce.

She went on desperately, "You don't have to take this flight, darling; you've been on Earth less than the time limit. Please, Jake!"

He was peeling off his tux. "I've told you a thousand times: a pilot doesn't get a regular run by playing s.p.a.ce-lawyer with the rule book. Wiping out my follow-up message-why did you do it, Phyllis? Trying to ground me?"

"No, darling, but I thought just this once-"

"When they offer me a flight I take it." He walked stiffly out of the room.

He came back ten minutes later, dressed for s.p.a.ce and apparently in good humor; he was whistling: "-the caller called Casey at half past four; he kissed his-" He broke off when he saw her face, and set his mouth. "Where's my coverall?"

"I'll get it. Let me fix you something to eat."

'You know I can't take high acceleration on a full stomach. And why lose thirty bucks to lift another pound?"

Dressed as he was, in shorts, singlet, sandals, and pocket belt, he was already good for about minus-fifty pounds in weight bonus; she started to tell him the weight penalty on a sandwich and -a cup of coffee did not matter to them, but it was just one more possible cause for misunderstanding.

Neither of them said much until the taxicab clumped on the roof. He kissed her goodbye and told her not to come outside. She obeyed-until she heard the helicopter take off. Then she climbed to the roof and watched it out of sight.

The traveling-public gripes at the lack of direct Earth-to-Moon service, but it takes three types of rocket ships and two s.p.a.ce-station changes to make a fiddling quarter-million-mile jump for a good reason: Money.

The Commerce Commission has set the charges for the present three-stage lift from here to the Moon at thirty dollars a pound. Would direct service be cheaper? A ship designed to blast off from Earth, make an airless landing on the Moon, return and make an atmosphere landing, would be so cluttered up with heavy special equipment used only once in the trip that it could not show a profit at a thousand dollars a pound! Imagine combining a ferry boat, a subway train, and an express elevator. So Trans-Lunar uses rockets braced for catapulting, and winged for landing on return to Earth to make the terrific lift from Earth to our satellite station Supra-New York. The long middle lap, from there to where s.p.a.ce Terminal circles the Moon, calls for comfort-but no landing gear. The Flying Dutchman and the Philip Nolan never land; they were even a.s.sembled in s.p.a.ce, and they resemble winged rockets like the Skysprite and the Firefly as little as a Pullman train resembles a parachute.

The Moonbat and the Gremlin are good only for the jump from s.p.a.ce Terminal down to Luna . . . no wings, coc.o.o.n-like acceleration-and-crash hammocks, fractional controls on their enormous jets.

The change-over points would not have to be more than air-conditioned tanks. Of course s.p.a.ce Terminal is quite a city, what with the Mars and Venus traffic, but even today Supra-New York is still rather primitive, hardly more than a fueling point and a restaurant-waiting room. It has only been the past five years that it has even been equipped to offer the comfort of one-gravity centrifuge service to pa.s.sengers with queasy stomachs.

Pemberton weighed in at the s.p.a.ceport office, then hurried over to where the Skysprite stood cradled in the catapult. He shucked off his coverall, shivered as he handed it to the gateman, and ducked inside. He went to his acceleration hammock and went to sleep; the lift to Supra-New York was not his worry-his job was deep s.p.a.ce.

He woke at the surge of the catapult and the nerve-tingling rush up the face of Pikes Peak. When the Skysprite went into free flight, flung straight up above the Peak, Pemberton held his breath; if the rocket jets failed to fire, the ground-to-s.p.a.ce pilot must try to wrestle her into a glide and bring her down, on her wings.

The rockets roared on time; Jake went back to sleep.

When the Skysprite locked in with Supra-New York, Pemberton went to the station's stellar navigation room. He was pleased to find Shorty Weinstein, the computer, on duty. Jake trusted Shorty's computations-a good thing when your ship, your pa.s.sengers, and your own skin depend thereon. Pemberton had to be a better than average mathematician himself in order to be a pilot; his own limited talent made him appreciate the genius of those who computed the orbits.

"Hot Pilot Pemberton, the Scourge of the s.p.a.ceways - Hi!" Weinstein handed him a sheet of paper.

Jake looked at it, then looked amazed. "Hey, Shorty- you've made a mistake."

"Huh? Impossible. Mabel can't make mistakes." Weinstein gestured at the giant astrogation computer filling the far wall.

"You made a mistake. You gave me an easy fix - 'Vega, Antares, Regulus.' You make things easy for the pilot and your guild'll chuck you out." Weinstein looked sheepish but pleased. "I see I don't blast off for seventeen hours. I could have taken the morning freight." Jake's thoughts went back to Phyllis.

"UN canceled the morning trip."

"Oh-" Jake shut up, for he knew Weinstein knew as little as he did. Perhaps the flight would have pa.s.sed too close to an A-bomb rocket, circling the globe like a policeman. The General Staff of the Security Council did not give out information about the top secrets guarding the peace of the planet. Pemberton shrugged. "Well, if I'm asleep, call me three hours minus."

"Right. Your tape will be ready."

While he slept, the Flying Dutchman nosed gently into her slip, sealed her airlocks to the Station, discharged pa.s.sengers and freight from Luna City. When he woke, her holds were filling, her fuel replenished, and pa.s.sengers boarding. He stopped by the post office radio desk, looking for a letter from Phyllis. Finding none, he told himself that she would have sent it to Terminal. He went on into the restaurant, bought the facsimile Herald-Tribune, and settled down grimly to enjoy the comics and his breakfast.