A space-dock is a squat and monstrous cylinder, into whose hollow top the lowermost one-third of a spaceship’s bulk fits as snugly as does a baseball into the “pocket” of a veteran fielder’s long-seasoned glove. And the tremendous distances between those docks minimize the apparent size, both of the structures themselves and of the vessels surmounting them. Thus, from a distance, the Chicago looked little enough, and harmless enough; but as the bug flashed under the overhanging bulk and the driver braked savagely to a stop at one of the dock’s entrances, Samms could scarcely keep from flinching. That featureless, gray, smoothly curving wall of alloy steel loomed so incredibly high above them—extended so terrifyingly far outward beyond its visible means of support! It must be on the very verge of crashing!
Samms stared deliberately at the mass of metal towering above him, then smiled—not without effort—at his companion.
“You’d think, Alex, that a man would get over being afraid that a ship was going to fall on him, but I haven’t—yet.”
“No, and you probably never will. I never have, and I’m one of the old hands. Some claim not to mind it—but not in front of a lie detector. That’s why they had to make the passenger docks bigger than the liners—too many passengers fainted and had to be carried aboard on stretchers—or cancelled passage entirely. However, scaring hell out of them on the ground had one big advantage; they felt so safe inside that they didn’t get the collywobbles so bad when they went free.”
“Well, I’ve got over that, anyway. Goodbye, Alex; and thanks.”
Samms entered the dock, shot smoothly upward, followed an escorting officer to the captain’s own cabin, and settled himself into a cushioned chair facing an ultra-wave view-plate. A face appeared upon his communicator screen and spoke.
“Winfield to First Lensman Samms—you will be ready to blast off at twenty one hundred?”
“Samms to Captain Winfield,” the Lensman replied. “I will be ready.”
Sirens yelled briefly; a noise which Samms knew was purely a formality. Clearance had been issued; Station PiXNY was filling the air with warnings. Personnel and material close enough to the Chicago’s dock to be affected by the blast were under cover and safe.
The blast went on; the plate showed, instead of a view of the space-field, a blaze of blue-white light. The warship was inertialess, it is true; but so terrific were the forces released that incandescent gases, furiously driven, washed the dock and everything for hundreds of yards around it.
The plate cleared. Through the lower, denser layers of atmosphere the Chicago bored in seconds; then, as the air grew thinner and thinner, she rushed upward faster and faster. The terrain below became concave … then convex. Being completely without inertia, the ship’s velocity was at every instant that at which the friction of the medium through which she blasted her way equaled precisely the force of her driving thrust.
Wherefore, out in open space, the Earth a fast-shrinking tiny ball and Sol himself growing smaller, paler, and weaker at a startling rate, the Chicago’s speed attained an almost constant value; a value starkly impossible for the human mind to grasp.
V
For hours Virgil Samms sat motionless, staring almost unseeing into his plate. It was not that the view was not worth seeing—the wonder of space, the ever-changing, constantly-shifting panorama of incredibly brilliant although dimensionless points of light, against that wondrous background of mist-besprinkled black velvet, is a thing that never fails to awe even the most seasoned observer—but he had a tremendous load on his mind. He had to solve an apparently insoluble problem. How … how … how could he do what he had to do?
Finally, knowing that the time of landing was approaching, he got up, unfolded his fans, and swam lightly through the air of the cabin to a hand-line, along which he drew himself into the control room. He could have made the trip in that room, of course, if he had so chosen; but, knowing that officers of space do not really like to have strangers in that sanctum, he did not intrude until it was necessary.
Captain Winfield was already strapped down at his master conning plate. Pilots, navigators, and computers worked busily at their respective tasks.
“I was just going to call you, First Lensman.” Winfield waved a hand in the general direction of a chair near his own. “Take the Lieutenant-Captain’s station, please.” Then, after a few minutes: “Go inert, Mr. White.”
“Attention, all personnel,” Lieutenant-Captain White spoke conversationally into a microphone. “Prepare for inert maneuvering, Class Three. Off.”
A bank of tiny red lights upon a panel turned green practically as one. White cut the Bergenholm, whereupon Virgil Samms’ mass changed instantly from a weight of zero to one of five hundred and twenty five pounds—ships of war then had no space to waste upon such non-essentials as artificial gravity. Although he was braced for the change and cushioned against it, the Lensman’s breath whooshed! out sharply; but, being intensely interested in what was going on, he swallowed convulsively a couple of times, gasped a few deep breaths, and fought his way back up to normalcy.
The Chief Pilot was now at work, with all the virtuoso’s skill of his rank and grade; one of the hallmarks of which is to make difficult tasks look easy. He played trills and runs and arpeggios—at times veritable glissades—upon keyboards and pedals, directing with micrometric precision the tremendous forces of the superdreadnaught to the task of matching the intrinsic velocity of New York Spaceport at the time of his departure to the I.V. of the surface of the planet so far below.
Samms stared into his plate; first at the incredibly tiny apparent size of that incredibly hot sun, and then at the barren-looking world toward which they were dropping at such terrific speed.
“It
