Where I Wasn't Going Part 1

Where I Wasn't Going.

by Walt Richmond and Leigh Richmond.

_I studied and worked and learned my trade I had the life of an earthman made; But I met a s.p.a.ceman and got way-laid-- I went where I wasn't going!_

THE s.p.a.cEMAN'S LAMENT

Making his way from square to square of the big rope hairnet that served as guidelines on the outer surface of the big wheel, Mike Blackhawk completed his inspection of the gold-plated plastic hull, with its alternate dark and s.h.i.+ny squares.

He had scanned every foot of the curved surface in this first inspection, familiarizing himself completely with that which other men had constructed from his drawings, and which he would now take over in the capacity of chief engineer.

Mike attached his safety line to a guideline leading to the south polar lock and kicked off, satisfied that the lab was ready for the job of turning on the spin with which he would begin his three months tour of duty aboard.

The laws of radiation exposure set the three-month deadline to service aboard the lab, and he had timed his own tour aboard to start as the s.h.i.+p reached completion, and the delicate job of turning her was ready to begin.

U.N. s.p.a.ce Lab One was man's largest project to date in s.p.a.ce. It might not be tremendous in size by earth standards of construction, but the two hundred thirty-two foot wheel represented sixty-four million pounds of very careful engineering and a.s.sembly that had been raised from Earth's surface to this thirty-six-hour orbit.

Many crews had come and gone in the eighteen months since the first payload had arrived at this...o...b..t--but now the first of the scientists for whom the lab was built were aboard; and the pick of the crews selected for the construction job had been shuttled up for the final testing and spin-out.

Far off to Mike's left and slightly below him a flicker of flame caught his eye, and he realized without even looking down that the retro-rockets of the shuttle on which he had arrived were slowly putting it out of orbit and tipping it over the edge of the long gravitic well back to Earth. It would be two weeks before it returned.

Nearing the lock he grasped the cable with one hand, slowing himself, turned with the skill of an acrobat, and landed catlike, feet first, on the stat-magnetic walk around the lock.

He had gone over, minutely, the inside of the satellite before coming to its surface. Now there was only one more inspection job before he turned on the spin.

Around this south polar hub-lock, which would rotate with the wheel, was the stationary anchor ring on which rode free both the stat-walk and the anchor tubes for the smaller satellites that served as distant components of the mother s.h.i.+p.

Kept rigid by air pressure, any deviation corrected by pressure tanks in the stationary ring, the tubes served both to keep the smaller bodies from drifting too close to s.p.a.ce Lab One, and prevented their drifting off.

The anchor tubes were just over one foot in diameter, weighing less than five ounces to the yard--gray plastic and fiber, air-rigid fingers pointing away into s.p.a.ce--but they could take over two thousand pounds of compression or tension, far more than needed for their job, which was to cancel out the light drift motion caused by crews kicking in or out, or activities aboard. Uncanceled, these motions might otherwise have caused the baby satellites to come nudging against the s.p.a.ce lab; or to scatter to the stars.

There had been talk of making them larger, so that they might also provide pa.s.sageway for personnel without the necessity for suiting up; but as yet this had not been done. Perhaps later they would become the forerunners of s.p.a.ce corridors in the growing complex that would inevitably develop around such a center of man's activities as this laboratory in its thirty-six hour orbit.

At the far end of the longest anchor tube, ten miles away and barely visible from here, was located the uns.h.i.+elded, remote-controlled power pile that supplied the necessary energy for the operation of the wheel. Later, it was hoped, experimental research now in progress would make this ma.s.sive device unnecessary. Solar energy would make an ideal replacement; but as yet the research was not complete, and solar energy had not yet been successfully harnessed for the high power requirements of the Lab.

Inside this anchor tube ran the thick coaxial cable that fed three-phase electric power from the atomic pile to the s.h.i.+p.

At the far end of the second anchor tube, five miles off in s.p.a.ce, was Project Hot Rod, the latest in the long series of experiments by which man was attempting to convert the sun's radiant energy to useful power.

At the end of the third anchor tube, and comparatively near the s.h.i.+p, was the dump--a conglomeration of equipment, used and unused booster rocket cases, oddments of all sorts, some to be installed aboard the wheel, others to be used as building components of other projects; and some oddments of materials that no one could have given a logical reason for keeping at all except that they "might be useful"--all held loosely together by short guidelines to an anchor ring at the tube's end.

Carefully, Mike checked the servo-motor that would maintain the stationary position of the ring with clocklike precision against the drag of bearing friction and the spin of the hub on which it was mounted; then briefly looked over the network of tubes before entering the air lock.

Inside, he stripped off the heavy, complicated armor of an articulated s.p.a.cesuit, with its springs designed to compensate for the Bourdon tube effect of internal air pressure against the vacuum of s.p.a.ce, appearing in the comfortable shorts, T-s.h.i.+rt, and light, knit moccasins with their thin, plastic soles, that were standard wear for all personnel.

He was ready to roll the wheel.

Feeling as elated as a schoolboy, Mike dove down the central axial tube of the hub, past the pa.s.senger entrances from the rim, the entrances to the bridge and the gymnasium-s.h.i.+eld area, to the engineering quarters just below the other pa.s.senger entrances from the rim, and the observatory that occupied the north polar section of the hub.

The engineering quarters, like all the quarters of the hub, were thirty-two feet in diameter. Ignoring the ladder up the flat wall, Mike pushed out of the port in the central axis tunnel and dropped to the circular floor beside the power console.

Strapping himself down in the console seat, he flipped the switch that would connect him with Systems Control Officer Bessandra Khamar at the console of the s.h.i.+p's big computer, acronymically known as Sad Cow.

"Aiee-yiee, Bessie! It's me, Chief Blackhawk!" he said irreverently into the mike. "Ready to swing this buffalo!"

Bessie's mike gave its preliminary hum of power, and he could almost feel her seeking out the words with which to reprimand him. Then, instead, she laughed.

"_Varyjat!_ Mike, haven't you learned yet how to talk over an intercom? Blasting a girl's eardrums at this early hour. It's no way to maintain beautiful relations.h.i.+ps and harmony. I'm still waiting for my second cup of coffee," she added.

"Wait an hour, and this cup of coffee you shall have in a cup instead of a baby bottle," Mike told her cheerfully. "s.p.a.ce One's checked out ready to roll. Want to tell our preoccupied slipstick and test-tube boys in the rim before we roll her, or just wait and see what happens? They shouldn't get too badly scrambled at one-half RPM--that's about .009 gee on the rim-deck--and I sort of like surprises!"

"No, you don't" Bessie said severely. "No, you don't. They need an alert, and I need to finish the programming on Sad Cow to be sure this thing doesn't wobble enough to shake us all apart. Even at a half RPM, your seams might not hold with a real wobble, and I don't like the idea of falling into a vacuum bottle as big as the one out there without a suit."

"How much time do you need?"

"On my mark, make it T minus thirty minutes. That ought to do it.

O.K., here we go." There was a brief pause, then Bessie's voice came formally over the all-stations annunciator system.

"Now hear this. Now hear this. All personnel. On my mark it is T minus thirty minutes to spin-out check. According to program, acceleration will begin at zero, and the rim is expected to reach .009 gee at one-half revolutions per minute in the first sixty seconds of operation. We will hold that spin until balance is complete, when the spin will slowly be raised to two revolutions per minute, giving .15 gee on the rim deck.

"All loose components and materials should be secured. All personnel are advised to suit up, strap down and hang on. We hope we won't shake anybody too much. Mark and counting."

Almost immediately on the announcement came another voice over the com line. "Hold, hold, hold. We've got eighteen hundred pounds of milling equipment going down Number Two shaft to the machine shop, and we can't get it mounted in less than twenty minutes. Repeat, hold the countdown."

"The man who dreamed up the countdown was a Brain," Bessie could hear Mike muttering over his open intercom, "but the man who thought up the hold was a pure genius."

"Holding the countdown." It was Bessie's official voice. "It is T minus thirty and holding. Why are you goons moving that stuff ahead of schedule and without notifying balance control? What do you think this is, a rock-bound coast? Think we're settled in to bedrock like New York City? I should have known," she muttered, forgetting to flip the switch off, "my horoscope said this would be a shaky sort of day."

Chad Clark glanced up from his position at the communications console across the bridge from Bessie, to where her s.h.i.+ny black hair, cut short, framed the pert Eurasian features of the girl that seemed to be hanging from the ceiling above him.

"Is it really legal," he asked, "using such a tremendously complicated chunk of equipment as the Sacred Cow for casting horrible scopes?

What's mine today, Bessie? Make it a good one, and I won't report you to U.N. Budget Control!"

"Offhand, I'd say today was your day to be cautious, quiet and respectful to your betters, namely me. However," she added in a conciliatory tone, "since you put it on a Budget Control basis, I'll ask the Cow to give you a real, mathematicked-out, planets and houses properly aligned, reading.

"Hey, Perk!" Her finger flipped the observatory com line switch. "Have you got the planets lined up in your scopes yet? Where are they? The Sacred Cow wants to know if they're all where they ought to be."

Out in the observatory, designed to swing free on the north polar axis of the big wheel, Dr. P. E. R. Kimball, PhD, FRAS, gave a startled glance at the intercom speaker.

"I did not realize that you would wish additional observational data before the swing began. I am just getting my equipment lined up, in preparation for the beginnings of the swing, and will be unable to give you figures of any accuracy for some hours yet. Any reading I could give you now would be accurate only to within two minutes of arc--relatively valueless." The voice was cheerful, but very precise.