The Secret of the Ninth Planet Part 5

Lockhart nodded. "We're just about set. Denning here can take a quick trip home tomorrow, and we'll be ready the day after."

Burl looked about him quickly. One day, two days, maybe a third--and then, the plunge into the unknown. Detmar reached upward and drew down a metal ladder hanging in the curved ceiling of the chamber. "I'm going to take a look in the engine room," he said. "Want to come along?" he asked Burl.

Before the young man could say yes, Lockhart shook his head. "No, I don't want him to. I don't want anyone going up there who doesn't have to. That stuff is s.h.i.+elded, but you can never be sure."

Burl was disappointed, for he had wanted to see the nuclear generators.

But Detmar shook his head, smiled, and pushed aside a round trap door in the ceiling. Burl could see that it connected with a similar door a foot higher. Detmar pushed it open and ascended into the forbidden sphere of the Zeta-rings. Burl got a glimpse of subdued, bluish light, and then the trap door shut after the engineer.

Later as they drove out through the valley, Burl looked back at the huge s.h.i.+p, and now, instead of appearing like an overhanging metal waterfall, he saw it as a wide-nosed bullet, aiming at the sky, surging against its bonds--a bullet for humanity's sake.

Chapter 5. _Up the Rope of s.p.a.ce_

Burl's visit home was a curious interlude. Actually, he had been away only a few weeks, since the summer vacation had begun, yet this single day had an air about it different from that of any other homecoming. He found himself continually looking at things in a more inquisitive, more thoughtful manner.

That which had been commonplace was suddenly something valuable, a sight to be treasured. For he had realized, as he sat in the fast plane transporting him home, that the Earth was itself a planet among planets, and that this might possibly prove to be his last visit to the town where he had been born. He had pondered, as he had gazed out of the s.h.i.+p's windows, just what it could mean to depart from this world and travel among the uncharted reaches of empty and hostile s.p.a.ce ... to set foot upon planets where no human foot had ever touched and to meet unguessable perils.

So his home, his mother, his friends, the street on which he lived, took on a novel air. He studied them while enjoying a quiet day at home. He watched the cars in the street, so amusingly compact and small, each designed in the fleeting style of the year. The cars of a dozen years ago had been designed for length and size, but the trend had been the opposite for a decade now. The cars grew smaller and their lines weirder as the manufacturers strove to compete.

What other planet could boast of such simultaneously astonis.h.i.+ng ingenuity and wondrous tomfoolery?

He looked at the people going about their business, the other boys of his age intent on their summer jobs and summer fun, and wondered if he would ever be able to join them again without the cares of a world on his shoulders?

People were unaware of the crisis that hung over the solar system. There had been news of the dimming of the Sun, but the meaning behind it had been carefully screened, and the expedition was a top secret. It availed the world nothing to panic about this matter. Now the odd weather quirks had been forgotten, and the main subjects on people's tongues were the baseball scores and the latest telemovies.

When Burl kissed his mother and father good-by, it was with a sense that he was also kissing good-by to his youth, and entering upon a new period of the most desperate responsibility.

This mood lingered with him back at the base, although his companions of the trip to come seemingly did not share it. On the last day, quarters had been a.s.signed in the _Magellan_, and the men moved their belongings to their tight bunks in the heart of the s.h.i.+p. Clyde had his way, and he and Burl shared a double-decker chamber.

There was a hustle and bustle in the valley. The supplies seemed unending, and Burl wondered why the variety. "For once, we've got lifting power to spare," was Russ's comment. "n.o.body knows what we're going to need on the various planets, so Lockhart is simply piling aboard everything he can think of. You'd be amazed at the s.p.a.ce we have for storage. And Caton says that the more we stick in there, the better the s.h.i.+elding is against the radiation belt surrounding Earth--and probably the other planets as well."

"I thought we were already well protected," said Burl. "With the atomic generators, we had to be s.h.i.+elded anyway. Haven't we lead lining all around our inner sphere quarters?"

Russell Clyde nodded. "Oh, sure, but the more the merrier."

He and Burl were already in their quarters, stowing their clothes. "We leave in an hour," said Burl. "Are we going to the launching base at Boothia, where the manned rockets go up?"

Clyde shook his head. "Lockhart talked it over with us yesterday, and we decided to take off from right here." By "us," Burl knew the operational group was meant, which consisted of the colonel, the two astronomers, Caton as head of the engineering section, and Haines, "To tell the truth, n.o.body knows how easily this s.h.i.+p will handle. We're s.h.i.+elded well enough so that a short pa.s.sage through the radiation belt three hundred miles up and for the next fifteen hundred miles shouldn't have any effect on us at all. The rockets, which can't be s.h.i.+elded because of the weight limitations, have to go up at Boothia because there, at the North Magnetic Pole, there's a hole in the radiation."

Boothia Peninsula was a barren spot far up in the Arctic Zone on Canada's frozen eastern coast. On it was constructed the world's major s.p.a.ce port--a lonely outpost from which rockets departed for the equally lonely Moon bases. Burl had read about it and had looked forward to seeing it, but realized that the flight of the _Magellan_ marked still another change in the fast-altering history of the conquest of s.p.a.ce.

The hour pa.s.sed quickly. The little valley was cleared of visitors. The crew was called to take-off posts--Lockhart at the controls, Clyde and Oberfield at the charts, Detmar watching the energy output. The rest of the crew had been strapped into their bunks. By special request, Burl was observing in the control room, seated in a half-reclining position like the others, in a well-padded chair, strapped tight.

Haines had remarked as he had supervised the strapping-in, "n.o.body knows whether this is going to be necessary. But we're taking no chances."

He'd gone to his quarters and done the same thing.

Lockhart watched the registering of the dials in front of him, waiting for the load to build up. There was a m.u.f.fled whine from overhead as the generators built up current. Detmar called out a cryptic number every few seconds and the colonel checked it. The two astronomers were idle, watching their viewers. They'd made their calculations long before.

"Time," called out the colonel, pressing a b.u.t.ton. A gong rang throughout the quarters. He moved a lever slowly.

Burl waited for the surge of pressure he had read always occurred at take-off. But there was no such pressure. He lay back in his seat, gripping the arms. Gradually he became aware of a curious sensation. He seemed to be getting lightheaded, and to tingle with unexpected energy.

He felt an impulse to giggle, and he kicked up his foot to find it surprisingly agile. About him the others were stirring in their seats as if caught by the same impulses.

Now he felt loose against his bonds and he became a little dizzy. There was a pounding in his head as blood surged within him. His heart began to beat heavily.

"We're losing weight," muttered Clyde from his chair, and Burl knew the s.h.i.+p was tensing to take off.

The great generators were beginning to push against Earth's gravity and, as their force moved upward to match Earth's, the weight of everything in their sway decreased accordingly. Lockhart's first move was simply that--to reduce the pull of Earth to zero.

In a few moments that point was accomplished. A state of weightlessness was obtained within the _Magellan_. Those watching outside from bunkers in the surrounding mountains saw the huge teardrop s.h.i.+ver and begin to rise slowly above its cradle of girders. It floated gently upward, moving slowly off as the force of Earth's centrifugal drive began to manifest itself against the metal bubble's great ma.s.s.

Everyone on the crew had experienced zero gravity, either in the same tests Burl had undergone or on actual satellite flights, and thus far, no one was too uncomfortable. The entire structure of the s.h.i.+p quivered, and Burl realized that the inner sphere which housed their air s.p.a.ce was hanging free on its gymbals.

Lockhart rang a second gong, then turned a new control. The pitch of the generators, faintly audible to them, changed, took on a new keening. The s.h.i.+p seemed suddenly to jump as if something had grasped it. The feeling of weightlessness vanished momentarily, then there was a moment of dizziness and a sudden sensation of being upside down.

For a shocking instant, Burl felt himself hanging head downward from a floor which had surprisingly turned into a ceiling. He opened his mouth to shout, for he thought he was about to plunge onto the hard metal of the ceiling which now hung below him so precipitously.

Then there was a whirling sensation, a sideways twisting that swung him about against the straps. As it came, the room seemed to s.h.i.+ft. The curved base of the control room, which had been so suddenly a floor, became in a moment a wall, lopsided and eerie. Then it s.h.i.+fted again, and, startlingly, Burl sagged back into his cus.h.i.+oned seat as the hemispherical room again resumed its normal aspect.

Lockhart bent over the controls, cautiously moving a lever bit by bit.

Clyde was bent over his viewer, calling out slight corrections.

Now, at last, Burl felt the pressure he had expected. His weight grew steadily greater, back to normal, then increased. He found himself concentrating on his breathing, forcing his lungs up against the increasing weight of his ribs.

"Hold up," his buzzing eardrums heard someone say--possibly Oberfield.

"We don't need to accelerate more than one g. Take it easy."

The weight lessened instantly. Then the pressure was off. Everything seemed normal. Lockhart sat back and began to unloosen his straps. The others followed suit.

In one viewer, Burl glimpsed the black of outer s.p.a.ce, and in another, the wide grayish-green bowl of the Earth spreading out below. In a third he saw the blazing disc of the Sun.

"Did everything go all right?" he asked quietly of Clyde.

The redhead looked up at him and smiled. "Better than we might have expected for a first flight," he said.

"We're latching on to the Sun's grip now. We're falling toward the Sun; not just falling, but pulling ourselves faster toward it, so that we can keep up a normal gravity pressure. We're soon going to be going faster than any rocket has ever gone. The living-s.p.a.ce sphere rotated itself as soon as we started that. That's what made everything seem upside down that time and why everything has come back to normal."

Burl nodded. "But that means that in relation to Earth we are ourselves upside down right now!"

"Of course," said Clyde. "But in s.p.a.ce, everything is strictly relative.

We are no longer on Earth. We are a separate body in s.p.a.ce, falling through s.p.a.ce toward the Sun."

"Why the Sun?" asked Burl. "I thought our first objective was to be the planet Venus?"

"It was too hard to get a fix on Venus from so near the Earth. Instead, we latched on to the Sun to pull us inward. When we are near to Venus'