They worked hard, these men in secret places, their aim and object the conquest of space. Obstacles were many, not the least among them being a shortage of financial backing. But at last a day came when a guided projectile was launched on its journey into space. Only then did the worst snag of all become apparent...
Release date:
October 27, 2016
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
122
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Far below the silent shape of the helicopter spread the wastes of yellow and grey, sand and rock, as far as the eye could reach in the moonlit mystery of night. Michael Curtis, piloting the craft, stared down, his mind going back to other times when he had flown over this inhospitable land of the North African Desert. Not for the first time he decided that his passenger must be crazy to contemplate putting into action the plan outlined when the charter was arranged. But it wasn’t for him to argue the ethics of the case. If a person was willing to pay the agreed fee he would fly them to the moon and back—if there had been any way of doing it, which at present there was not. In the past few years tremendous advances had been made in air travel. Before very long, so the scientists promised, space travel would be well within the bounds of possibility. There were still snags to be overcome, naturally, but it was no longer a wild dream. Concrete plans had long ago been formed for the establishment of artificial satellites beyond the Earth. Chief among the snags was the usual shortage of financial backing—and the endless search for a better system of propulsion than that provided by atomic rocket motors of the more conventional design. How near that was remained to be seen. The host of rumours had been circulating constantly for quite a while.
But Curtis was chiefly concerned at the moment with the more mundane problems of finding what he wanted and doing what had to be done to earn his charter fee.
“You’re sure that map reference was right?” he said.
The passenger, a dimly seen shape beside him, gave an impatient grunt.
“I don’t usually get my facts wrong. If I did I’d be hunting a job.”
Curtis hid a smile. “You wouldn’t have to look very far,” he said. “Okay, the place must be pretty well below us now. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” There was a slight, barely concealed tension in the word. Then: “Are you positive this is the place? For heaven’s sake don’t put me down miles from anywhere.”
Curtis chuckled amiably. “I don’t usually get my navigation wrong,” he chided. “I can’t see anything in the way of buildings down there, but this is the spot you wanted.”
“All right, I’m not arguing; I’m trusting you. There wouldn’t be anything much to see in any case. You’d better fly a mile to the west and put me down there.”
Curtis nodded. “All this seems very illegal to me.”
“It is, but not maliciously aimed, I promise you.”
The helicopter drifted silently across the sky as Curtis wheeled it at right angles and gave a burst of the almost completely silent engines for forward flight. There were aspects about this charter job that he doubted, but he did not somehow think his passenger was a dangerous foreign agent hiding behind the cloak of news-reporting. If he had been suspicious he might have changed his tactics, but as it was he went ahead with the routine.
Fifteen minutes later the helicopter settled quietly on a moon-lit stretch of level sand that lay behind a low chest of hillocks screening it from the unobtrusive target area over which it had hovered so recently.
“There you are,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but if it’s criminal look out for trouble. If it’s anything amusing, good luck. I still think you’re crazy, but that’s your affair.”
His eyes met a grave gaze of surprising innocence.
“Thank you. It is my affair. You’ve nothing to worry about. Goodbye.”
“Very prim and proper,” he grinned as he closed the cabin door and leant his elbow on the edge of the open window. “Goodbye and … good luck.”
A moment later the aircraft lifted gracefully, hovered for a few seconds, then turned and winged north to the coast of the Mediterranean.
It left behind it the solitary dark figure of its passenger, very much alone, very lonely and not entirely at ease. Then the figure, after staring up at the sky where the friendly silhouette of the plane had been but a minute before, seemed to straighten its shoulders before starting off over the sandy ground. The smallness of Man seemed to be strangely exaggerated by the sight of that one insignificant figure plodding along where the feet of men rarely trod.
Dawn came to the desert in a blaze of colour. A cool wind stirred the eternal dust and sent it drifting over the sandy hummocks in steam-like wisps of movement. To the north, between the helicopter’s landing place and the coast, sprawled the ugly collection of workshops, fuel dumps and hangars of the Rocket Research Station. It began to show signs of life with the coming of day. Many were the stories circulating about what went on there, but in fact this was a period of stagnation in the fortunes of the men who staffed it and kept up a show of labour.
The critical things, the latest developments and newest lines of research, were being carried on to the south—at the unmarked place, a secret, unmapped spot in the waste of the desert, near to where the mystery plane had landed during the night.
It was here, in carefully camouflaged buildings and in rabbit-warren places below ground level, that vital events were taking shape.
But progress, as in all such work, was beset by constant mental worry, petty irritations, shortages of this and that, and the eternal shadow of threatened failure with its train of attendant despondency. In this present case failure would mean a complete shut-down of the work in progress, for the allied governments backing the station had set a strict maximum on development outlay.
Perhaps it was partly for this reason that Doctor Gibbons woke early, more harassed than usual and with a worse headache than he could remember having had for a considerable time. He had not slept well, and even his fitful slumber had been broken by nightmarish dreams centred on the slender pencil that would soon be rocketing skyward on what was to be the most vital of all test flights ever staged from this stronghold of secrecy and technical development. In his overwrought imagination he saw all manner of dreadful things happening to it once it left the ground, and the fact that it was their last but one chance to gain definite proof of advancement in design on the particular project on which he and his staff were engaged was enough to turn his hair grey. It just had to be successful, that was all there was to it. With only one more such vessel available for tests, and no further funds for development work without concrete results, so much depended on today’s effort here on the blazing hot wastes of the desert.
Small wonder then that Gibbons could not face food at breakfast, but contented himself with consuming quantities of coffee as black and strong as possible.
Cathcart and Vine, his two close associates and co-workers on the project, watched him in silent doubt when the three of them gathered in the dining room of the cool, air-conditioned living quarters below ground.
Gibbons glanced up with a surly word of greeting, his temper, never too good, worse than usual. The other two exchanged a significant glance and sat down with as little commotion as possible. They knew their leader too well to mis-read the signs. They could also understand his present reactions to strain, for both experienced the same in only slightly lesser degrees. That this was a crucial period for them and their work was an accepted fact, but unlike Gibbons they were fortified by the optimism of being younger men, their minds more resilient and their hopes more firmly planted.
“Cheer up, sir,” said Cathcart presently. “All the things you’re worrying about may not happen, you know.”
Gibbons, a tall, stoop-shouldered giant with an untidy mop of greying hair, scowled. His pale blue eyes fixed on Cathcart with a baleful expression.
“You sound too disgustingly cheerful,” he said curtly. “Perhaps you don’t realise the gravity of our work today. If it fails …” He didn’t finish.
“There’s no reason why it should fail, Doctor,” put in Vine, coming to the rescue.
Gibbons gestured briefly. “There are millions of reasons why it should!” he snapped. “And there’s only one more chance after this if we’re going to prove the worth of the new propulsion unit and get more backing to develop it.”
Both men nodded sympathetically, knowing the facts well.
“We’ll manage all right,” said Cathcart grimly. “You worry too much, sir. By nightfall we’ll all be working like beavers checking the recorded data against our own pet theories when the rocket homes and gives us the gen.”
Vine said: “You’ll wonder why you let yourself worry when today’s over, Doctor. We’ll get results—the kind we want.”
Gibbons sniffed. “No doubt you have a feeling in your bones, eh? I wish I had; I wish I could share your sanguine optimism, Vine. As it is …”
“Oh, hell!” grunted Cathcart impatiently. “Snap out of it, can’t you?”
Gibbons began to redden angrily, then suddenly grinned. “There’s something in what you say,” he admitted. “You’re a brash young man, Cathcart, but I’ll overlook it.”
Cathcart looked uncomfortable, finished his coffee with suspicious haste and took his leave of the table.
“Conference on last minute details in half an hour,” Gibbons called after him. “Just a run through things, nothing more.”
“I’ll be there.”
Gibbons grunted. “And you, Vine …?”
“Few things to look to in the communications room first, then I’ll be with you, Doctor.” He, too, went away, leaving Gibbons on his own, to brood, to hope, to struggle against the host of doubts and misgivings that assailed him. The lines on which they had worked in recent months were so revolutionary, wholly untested except on paper, that there could be no surety of success, yet success was a vital thing. Without it future progress must inevitably be delayed due to official shortsightedness in withholding funds. Gibbons suppressed a shudder of dread at the weight of responsibility resting on the day’s forthcoming events.
He was still brooding on the strictures placed upon him by officialdom when Vine reappeared and coughed quietly.
Gibbons glanced up, prepared to blast anyone breaking in on his reverie. At sight of Vine, however, he forced a smile.
Vine said: “Nothing much, Doctor. I thought you ought to know that an unidentified aircraft of the helicopter variety spent a short time messing about in the vicinity during the night.”
“Hmm … Probably some damnfool pilot lost his way. Nothing else?”
Vine hesitated. “Er—no, sir, nothing.” Then: “I wish you wouldn’t worry so much,” he burst out. “We’re all in this thing together. It means as much to us as it does to you. We know the position and all that depends on the test.”
Gibbons smiled cheerfully, running a hand through his unruly mop of hair. “Good of you to let me know,” he said awkwardly. “I appreciate your concern, my boy. As a matter of fact, I’m probably just as sure of success as you are. It’s just that this propulsion unit is the child of my own inspiration. I’ve got such a personal interest in it that failure would mean a terrible blow to my pride.”
The younger man nodded understandingly. “And to ours,” he said. He wondered what that plane had been doing hovering in the night sky above the secret station. It could have been a pilot lost, of course, but he wondered. However, there was no point in creating further trouble for the harassed doctor. There was plenty to worry about as it was.
The three of them conferred behind locked doors in a closely guarded bungalow block on the surface near the sunken launching bed used for the rockets. Outside, the heat of day was rapidly increasing, causing the armed sentry on duty to drowse in the growing stupor of monotony that marked his task. He could see no reason for a guard anyway, and only force of habit compelled him to maintain a semblance of watchfulness. There were no other persons visible in the vicinity, and he knew quite well that although this was a day scheduled for great events among the big-heads who ran the show there were not likely to be many outward signs. He was not even aware what form the foreshadowed “events” were going to take, but they didn’t interest him a great deal. So he dozed unobtrusively in what little shade there was to be had. And because his eyes were partially closed he failed to see the purposefully moving figure that passed to the back end of the building and disappeared from sight.
“This is the day we’ve all been waiting for,” Gibbons was saying. “You and the technicians and the men who do the hard graft of construction. A lot depends on what happens in a few hours from now.” He broke off and squared his shoulders for a moment or two before stooping back to his normal posture. “The entire conception of the new drive system on the ship that’s being tested today was no more than a formless dream a few months ago. I still feel it in my bones that we’re on to the ultimate answer to break-away velocity without the bulk of the older type three stage rocket units. All our rivals are working on them still; good luck to them! We’ve something far and away better and more efficient here—if it works as we hope.”
Vine lit a cigarette and squinted through the haze of blue smoke.
“It will,” he said fi. . .
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