"Right," Kevin acknowledged absently. He studied taped data moving in by radio facsimile from the mammoth1 electronic computer on Earth.
"Our orbit's true," he said with satisfaction and wiped a sweaty palm on his trousers. "Get the time check, Bert." Beeps from the Naval2 Observatory3 synchronized4 with the space station chronometer5.
"Alert Kramer."
"He's leaving the airlock now," Bert said. From the intercom, Morrow listened to periodic reports from crew members as McKelvie and Gordon progressed in their tour.
"Mr. Morrow?"
"Right."
"Boot 'em out," Kevin said crisply. "Blastoff in 15 minutes."
Kevin looked up with a puzzled frown, but turned back to watch Kramer creeping along a mooring8 line to the moon ship. A group of tugmen helped the space-suited figure into the rocket, dogged shut the hatch and cleared back to the station rim10.
"Station to Kramer," on the radio, "are you ready?"
"All set," came the steady voice, "give me the word."
"All right. Five minutes." Kevin turned to the intercom. "Release safety lines."
In the weightlessness of space the cables retained their normal rigid11 line from the rim of the station to the rocket. They had been under no strain. Their shape would not change until they were reeled in.
"Two minutes," Morrow warned. Tension grew as Anderson began the slow second count. The hatch opened. McKelvie and Gordon entered the control room. No one noticed it.
"Five ... four ... three ... two ... one ..."
A gout of white fire jabbed from the stern of the rocket. Slowly the ship moved forward.
Morrow watched tensely, hands gripping a safety rail.
Then his face froze in a mask of disbelief and horror.
He fell sprawling13 as the space station lurched heavily, tipped upward like a giant platter under the inexorable pull of the moon rocket.
Kevin scrambled14 back to the viewport, the shriek15 of tortured metal in his ears. Horror-stricken, he saw the taut16 cables that had failed to release. Then a huge section of nylon, aluminum17 and rubber ripped out of the station wall, was visible a second in the rocket glare, and vanished.
Escaping air whistled through the crippled structure. Pressure dropped alarmingly before the series of automatic airlocks clattered18 reassuringly19 shut.
Kevin's hand was bleeding. He staggered with the frightening new motion of the space station. Gordon and the senator had collapsed20 against a bulkhead. McKelvie's pale face twisted with fear and amazement21. Blood streaked22 down the pink curve of his forehead.
Individual station reports trickled23 through the intercom. Miraculously24, the bulk of the station had escaped damage.
"Line chamber's gone," Adams reported. "Other bulkheads holding, but something must have jammed the line machines. They ripped right out."
"Get repair crews in to patch leaks," Morrow shouted. He turned frantically25 to the radio. "Station to Moonbeam. Kramer! Are you all right?"
"Kramer, here. What the hell happened? Something gave me a terrific yaw, but the gyro pulled me back on course. Fuel consumption high. Otherwise I'm okay."
"You ripped out part of the station," Kevin yelled. "You're towing extra mass. Release the safety lines if you can."
Another disaster halted a new try to reach him.
With a howling rumble28, the massive gyroscope case in the bulkhead split open. The heavy wheel, spinning at 20,000 revolutions per minute, slowly and majestically29 crawled out of its gimbals; the gyroscope that stabilized30 the entire structure remained in its plane of revolution, but ripped out of its moorings when the station was forcibly tilted31.
Spinning like a giant top, the gyro walked slowly across the deck. McKelvie and Gordon scrambled out of its way.
"It'll go through!" Bert shouted. Kevin leaped to a chest of emergency patches.
The wheel ripped through the magnesium32 shell like a knife in soft cheese. A gaping33 rent opened to the raw emptiness of space, but Morrow was there with the patch. Before decompression could explode the four creatures of blood and bone, the patch slapped in place, sealed by the remaining air pressure.
Trembling violently, Kevin staggered to a chair and collapsed. Silence rang in his ears. Anderson gripped the edge of a table to keep from falling. Kevin turned slowly to McKelvie and Gordon.
"Come here," he said tonelessly.
"I said come here!"
The two men obeyed. The commander's voice held a new edge of steel.
"You were the last to leave the line control room," he said. "Did you touch that machinery?"
Gordon's face was the color of paste. His mouth worked like a suffocating36 fish. McKelvie recovered his bluster34.
"I'm a United States senator," he stuttered, "I'll not be threatened...."
"I'm not threatening you," Kevin said, "but if you fouled that machinery to assure your prediction about the rocket, I'll see that you hang. Do you realize that gyroscope was the only control we had over the motion of this space station? Whatever it does now is the result of the moon rocket's pull. We may not live to see that rocket again."
As though verifying Morrow's words, the lights dimmed momentarily and returned to normal brilliance37. A frightened voice came from the squawkbox.
"Hey, chief! This is power control. We've lost the sun!"
Anderson looked out the port, studied the slowly wheeling stars.
And the power mirrors were on only one face of the space station, mirrors that collected the sun's radiation and converted it to power. Now they were collecting nothing but the twinkling of the stars.
The vital light would return as the station continued its new, awkward rotation39, but would the intermittent40 exposure be sufficient to sustain power?
"Shut down everything but emergency equipment," Morrow directed. "When we get back on the sun, soak every bit of juice you can into those batteries." He turned to Gordon and McKelvie. "Won't it be interesting if we freeze to death, or suffocate41 when the air machines stop?"
"We've got a lot of work to do, Bert," he said crisply. "See if you can get White Sands."
"It's over the horizon, I'll try South Africa." Anderson worked with the voice radio but static obliterated43 reception. "Here comes a Morse transmission," he said at last. Morrow read slowly as tape fed out of the translator:
The first impulse was to dash to the viewport and peer out. But that would be no help in determining position.
"Radar, Bert," he whispered. Anderson verniered in the scope, measuring true distance to Earth's surface. He read the figure, swore violently, and readjusted the instrument.
"It can't be," he muttered at last. "This says we're 865 miles out."
"365 miles outside our orbit?" Morrow said calmly. "I was afraid of that. That tug9 from the Moonbeam not only cart-wheeled us, it yanked us out." He snatched a sheet of graph paper out of a desk drawer and penciled a point.
"Give me a reading every 10 seconds."
Points began to connect in a curve.
And the curve was something new.
"Get Jones from astronomy," Kevin said at last. "He can help us plot and maybe predict."
When the astronomer46 arrived minutes later, the space station was 1700 miles above the Earth, still shearing47 into space on an ascending48 curve.
"Get a quick look at this, Jones," Kevin spoke49 rapidly. "See if you can tell where it will be two hours from now."
The astronomer studied the curve intently as it continued to grow under Kevin's pencil.
"It may be an outward spiral," he said haltingly, "or it could be a ... parabola."
"No!" Bert protested. "That would throw us into space. We couldn't—"
"We couldn't get back," Kevin finished grimly. "There'd better be an alternative."
"It could be an ellipse," Jones said.
"It must be an ellipse," Bert said eagerly. "The Moonbeam couldn't have given us 7000 mph velocity50."
Abruptly the lights went out.
The radar scope faded from green to black. Morrow swore a string of violent oaths, realizing in the same instant that anger was useless when the power mirrors lost the sun.
He bellowed51 into the intercom, but the speaker was dead. Already Bert was racing52 down the tube to the power compartment53. Minutes later, the intercom dial flickered54 red. Morrow yelled again.
"You've got to keep power to this radar set for the next half-hour. Everything else can stop, even the air machines, but we've got to find out where we're going."
The space station turned again. Power resumed and Kevin picked up the plot.
"We're 6000 miles out!" he breathed.
"But it's flattening55," Jones cried. "The curve's flattening!" Bert loped back into the control room. Jones snatched the pencil from his superior.
"Here," he said quickly, "I can see it now. Here's the curve. It's an ellipse all right."
"All right," Morrow said. "That crisis is past. The next question is where are we when we come back on nadir57. Bert, tell the crew what's going on. Jones, you can help me. We've got to pick up White Sands and get a fuel rocket up here to push."
"Good Lord, look at that!" Jones breathed. He stared out the port. The Earth, a dazzling huge globe filling most of the heavens, swam slowly past the plastic window. It was the first time they had been able to see more than a convex segment of oceans and continents. Kevin looked, soberly, and turned to the radio.
The power did not fail in the next crazy rotation of the station.
Jones had taken over the radar plot. At last his pencil reached a peak and the curve started down. The station had reached the limit of its wild plunge59 into space.
"Good," Kevin muttered. "See if you can extrapolate that curve and get us an approximation where we'll cut in over the other side." The astronomer figured rapidly and abstractedly.
"May I remind you young man," McKelvie's voice boomed, "you have a United States senator aboard. If anything happens—"
"If anything happens, it happens to all of us," Kevin answered coldly. "When you're ready to tell me what did happen, I'm ready to listen."
Silence.
"White Sands, this is Station I. Come in please."
Kevin tried to keep his voice calm, but the lives of 90 men rode on it, on his ability to project his words through the crazy hash of static lacing this part of space from the multitude of radio stars. A power rocket with extra fuel was the only instrument that could return the space station to its normal orbit.
That rocket must come from White Sands.
White Sands did not answer.
He tried again, turned as an exclamation60 of dismay burst from the astronomer. Morrow bent61 to look at the plotting board.
Jones had sketched62 a circle of the Earth, placing it in the heart of the ellipse the space station was drawing around it.
From 9600 miles out, the line curved down and down, and down....
But it did not meet the point where the station had departed from its orbit 500 miles above Earth's surface.
The line came down and around to kiss the Earth—almost.
"I hope it's wrong," Jones said huskily. "If I'm right, we'll come in 87 miles above the surface."
"It can't!" Morrow shouted in frustration63. "We'll hit stratosphere. It'll burn us—just long enough so we'll feel the agony before we die."
Jones rechecked his figures and shook his head. The line was still the same. Each 10 seconds it was supported by a new radar range. The astronomer's lightning fingers worked out a new problem.
"We have about 75 minutes to do something about it," he said. "We'll be over the Atlantic or England when it happens."
"Station I, this is...."
The beautiful, wonderful voice burst loud and clear from the radio and then vanished in a blurb64 of static.
"Oh God!" Kevin breathed. It was a prayer.
"We hear you," he shouted, procedure gone with the desperate need to communicate with home. "Come in White Sands. Please come in!"
"... your plot. Altiac computer ... your orbit ... rocket on standby ... as you pass."
"Yes!" Kevin shouted, gripping the short wave set with white fingers, trying to project his words into the microphone, across the dwindling66 thousands of miles of space. "Yes. Send the rocket!"
"Can they do it?" Jones asked. "The rocket, I mean."
"I don't know," Kevin said. "They're all pre-set, mass produced now, and fuel is adjusted to come into the old orbit. They can be rigged, I think, if there's enough time."
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1
mammoth
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| n.长毛象；adj.长毛象似的，巨大的 | |
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naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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observatory
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| n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台 | |
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synchronized
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| 同步的 | |
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chronometer
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| n.精密的计时器 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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8
mooring
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| n.停泊处；系泊用具，系船具；下锚v.停泊，系泊（船只）(moor的现在分词) | |
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tug
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| v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船 | |
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10
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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12
fouled
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| v.使污秽( foul的过去式和过去分词 )；弄脏；击球出界；（通常用废物）弄脏 | |
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13
sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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14
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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15
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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16
taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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17
aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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clattered
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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19
reassuringly
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| ad.安心，可靠 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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22
streaked
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| adj.有条斑纹的，不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 )；使布满条纹 | |
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23
trickled
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| v.滴( trickle的过去式和过去分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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24
miraculously
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| ad.奇迹般地 | |
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frantically
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| ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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26
agonizing
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| adj.痛苦难忍的；使人苦恼的v.使极度痛苦；折磨(agonize的ing形式) | |
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27
garbled
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| adj.（指信息）混乱的，引起误解的v.对（事实）歪曲，对（文章等）断章取义，窜改( garble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28
rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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majestically
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| 雄伟地； 庄重地； 威严地； 崇高地 | |
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stabilized
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| v.（使）稳定， （使）稳固( stabilize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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31
tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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magnesium
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| n.镁 | |
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33
gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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34
bluster
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| v.猛刮；怒冲冲的说；n.吓唬，怒号；狂风声 | |
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35
blustered
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| v.外强中干的威吓( bluster的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮；（风）呼啸；狂吹 | |
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suffocating
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| a.使人窒息的 | |
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brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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38
flopping
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| n.贬调v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的现在分词 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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39
rotation
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| n.旋转；循环，轮流 | |
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intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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41
suffocate
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| vt.使窒息，使缺氧，阻碍；vi.窒息，窒息而亡，阻碍发展 | |
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42
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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43
obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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44
radar
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| n.雷达，无线电探测器 | |
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trajectory
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| n.弹道，轨道 | |
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astronomer
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| n.天文学家 | |
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47
shearing
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| n.剪羊毛，剪取的羊毛v.剪羊毛( shear的现在分词 )；切断；剪切 | |
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48
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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49
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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50
velocity
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| n.速度，速率 | |
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51
bellowed
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| v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的过去式和过去分词 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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52
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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53
compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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54
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
flattening
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| n. 修平 动词flatten的现在分词 | |
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56
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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57
nadir
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| n.最低点，无底 | |
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58
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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59
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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60
exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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61
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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62
sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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63
frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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64
blurb
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| n.简介，短评 | |
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65
blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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66
dwindling
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| adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 ) | |
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