Read Ebook: Message from Venus by Winterbotham R R Russell Robert Mirando Michael Illustrator

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Ebook has 139 lines and 7538 words, and 3 pages

"Say, Paul, I've an idea!"

"Yeah? Spill it."

"Why couldn't we keep the ship in an orbit outside the earth's atmosphere until it is sighted by telescope?"

"There are two pretty good reasons for that," Paul Bonnet replied. "In the first place we'll be going too fast. If we tried to get into an orbit we'd sail right out again. To become a satellite of the earth--and I suppose that's what you're thinking of--we'd have to slow ourselves down to exactly the right speed necessary to overcome the earth's gravity. That would be hard to do with the instruments on this lifeboat, even if we had the fuel necessary to brake. In the second place, if we got close enough to the earth to be seen by a telescope, our orbital speed would be too fast for any 'scope to keep us in focus. We'd be mistaken on photographs for a meteor."

"I guess we're up against it, eh Paul?"

"I've been thinking," Captain Bonnet said.

"What's this, a joke?"

"There's one plan that might work--a suicide plan. But even that might be spoiled by an accident."

"If there's a chance we ought to take it."

"The message goes overboard first," the captain said. "After that we save ourselves. I've been studying the charts and I know just where we ought to land--that is in which hemisphere."

"Yeah? Which?"

"We're going to land somewhere in the Pacific."

"That's a nice thought. Who's going to pick up our message in the middle of the Pacific?"

"That's what gave me the idea of our suicide plan," Captain Bonnet said. "In order to drop the message over a city, we've got to float around the earth until we get near one...."

Captain Bonnet began to explain his idea. The ship was going to hit the earth's atmosphere at a terrific pace. The deceleration would be pretty stiff--might be fatal--unless it were done gradually, but spacemen had learned the trick of pancaking a flat-bottomed craft on top of the atmosphere, then diving; pancaking again, diving again, until the deceleration was accomplished.

This method of deceleration usually was accomplished with some use of rockets and it led to the old time spiral landing orbit. The atmosphere was the chief brake and the rockets were used to maneuver the craft into dives and pancakes. A first class cooling system was needed, of course, to carry off the heat of atmospheric friction, but the lifeboat was equipped with a cooling system and there was nothing to worry about from this source.

But the lifeboat had little fuel. Captain Bonnet, however, had flown airplanes. He knew that braking could be accomplished without fuel if the flat-bottomed ship were used as a plane. He planned to use airplane tactics to slow the ship down to a speed closely approximating the escape velocity of the earth--6.9 miles a second. This would enable the ship to soar over the earth until it was over a good sized city, where the message from Outpost 53 would be dropped.

"But if we land at that speed--and gravity will see to it we don't hit much slower--we'll be buried deep in the ground. Even if we hit the ocean, the deceleration will kill us--"

"Would it? There have been records of meteors striking the ground so lightly they did little more than raise a cloud of dust."

"We're not a meteor."

"We're practically a meteor and there's one chance in a million that we can duplicate what a meteor can do, Bill. It's our only chance."

"What do you want me to do?"

Rocket engineers in developing machines for space travel had found speed the foremost bugaboo. It was the speed a rocket had to attain to leave terrestrial gravity that balked engineers. There also was man's instinctive fear of going fast, in spite of the assurances of science that speed, in itself, was harmless. It was acceleration and deceleration that killed people.

One might travel seven miles a second indefinitely and suffer no ill effects, once he got going that rate of speed. However, one might die quickly while attaining it. Drugs enabled spacemen to withstand several gravities of acceleration or deceleration without fatal effects and there were a few of these pills aboard. But any speed change greater than nine or ten gravities would be dangerous under any conditions.

The craft neared the earth. Already the travelers could make out the dim outlines of the continental areas.

The gravity gauge registered the earth's pull strongly and Captain Bonnet calculated that they were nearing the outer limits of the atmosphere. He twisted a valve a fraction of a turn.

From a steering jet, a tiny needle of flame shot into the ether. From another jet, a second flame glowed for an instant. The space ship turned, wheeling the onrushing earth out of line with the lifeboat's prow. Now the huge, radiant ball peeked into the craft through the glass window in the floor, but the ship's direction of travel continued toward it as before.

Captain Bonnet shut off the valves, conserving every ounce of rocket fuel that remained in the tanks. Lieutenant Riley started the cooling mechanism and for an instant the craft became uncomfortably cold.

This discomfort lasted only a few minutes, however, for the craft soon began to strike the first atoms of the atmosphere and its sides began to glow with heat. The space ship was fast becoming a meteor flashing into the atmosphere of the earth.

There was a sudden jerk. Once more Bonnet twisted the valve, nosing the streamlined craft downward slightly to allow these atoms of air to strike the sides less forcefully. There was danger of a blackout if the deceleration were too fast.

The ship dived forward and Bonnet used more precious fuel to turn it broadside again. The craft slowed, this time not so violently.

The atoms of the atmosphere were audible now as whistling screams as the ship spiraled one thousand miles above the earth.

Captain Bonnet watched the air speed indicator. For a long time it stood at twenty miles a second--the highest speed it would register. Then it began to slow: nineteen, fifteen, twelve, nine, seven miles a second.

Instead of decreasing the speed further, he nosed the craft down. The speed increased slightly, and then, like an airplane in flight, he brought the craft slowly broadside by degrees. The effect of the slow turn was to catch the atoms on the flat bottom so that the downward rush was transformed into a horizontal rush. The craft was speeding in an orbit parallel to the surface of the earth. Captain Bonnet had brought the space ship out of a tail spin.

Instantly he shut off the fuel valves, leaving the remainder of the fuel available for the cooling apparatus.

Lieutenant Riley looked wide-eyed at the hemisphere beneath the craft.

"Well, we're here and we've less than a gallon of fuel," he said. "What next?"

"Unless there's an accident, we're going to land on an ounce or two," Captain Bonnet replied. "A meteor doesn't use any fuel, but it has accidents. That tiny bit of fuel is going to keep us from having an accident--I hope."

"That fuel is mighty potent," the lieutenant admitted. "It's the most powerful explosive known. But old Terra's gravity is a pretty big thing, too."

"For every action there must be a reaction," Captain Bonnet said. "Strangely, no one ever considered this principle in respect to coming down, as well as going up."

"Gravity is action and you're the reaction in that case," the lieutenant observed.

"Not exactly. The escape velocity of the earth is gravity in reverse--if we can twist our minds around to think of it that way. We manufacture the escape velocity with our rocket fuel and use it to neutralize gravity. An object going 6.9 miles a second goes far enough around the earth in a second that the earth's curvature doesn't catch up with it, so to speak."

"I hope you're sure of your reactions, although it doesn't make a lot of difference if we get this message down."

"I don't suppose you're very optimistic about it?" the lieutenant asked, hopefully.

"No," the captain admitted, "but we can try. You've seen airplanes land at speeds of one hundred miles an hour or more. That was their speed forward. Their speed downward was measured in feet per minute. That's our problem now. We've got to land like an airplane--make a deadstick landing without crashing."

"Oh we might be able to land, but the minute we touch, some of our forward speed is going to get us into trouble. Remember, an airplane has wheels."

Captain Bonnet pointed to a small globe painted with a map of the world. His finger touched a dot in the South Pacific near the Antarctic continent at 60 degrees south latitude and 120 degrees west longitude.

"That's Dougherty Island," he said. "Between that island and San Francisco are 6,300 miles of empty Pacific ocean. We're going to try to land near Dougherty Island at a speed so fast we'll barely touch the surface of the water. But as we touch the water, the frictional heat of the sides of our space ship will transform the water instantly into steam. The steam will cushion our ship against shock and decelerate us rapidly--but not too rapidly for endurance. The stop will be rough, but we can take it. We ought to be able to stop in 6,300 miles."

"Whew! A steam landing!"

Captain Bonnet kept his hands on the control, ready to use a few drops of precious fuel to keep the craft in its spiral parallel to the surface of the earth. The earth seemed to float upward slowly to meet the space ship.

The interior of the craft grew uncomfortably hot, but the cooling system worked.

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