Space Cadet (22 page)
Authors: Robert A Heinlein
“Mr. Peters and I will make out all right. Peters plays a very good hand of cribbage.”
Details from Operations were slight. The M.R.S.
Gary
had radioed for help claiming to be imperiled by a native uprising. She had given her position, then radio contact had been lost.
Yancey elected to use atmospheric braking in any case to save his reaction mass for future use—otherwise the
Aes Triplex
might have circled Venus until she could be succored. The ship’s company spent a crowded, tiring fifty-six hours shut up in the control room while the ship dipped to the clouds of Venus and out again, a bit deeper and bit slower on each round trip. The ship grew painfully hot and the time spent in free space on each lap was hardly enough to let her radiate what she picked up. Most of the ship was intolerably hot, for the control room and the “farm” were refrigerated at the expense of the other spaces. In space, there is no way to get rid of unwanted heat, permanently, except by radiation—and the kinetic energy difference between the original orbit and the circum-Venus orbit the Captain wanted had to be absorbed as heat, a piece at a time, then radiated into space.
But at the end of that time three hot, tired, but very excited, young men, with one a little older, were ready to climb into jeep no. 2.
Matt suddenly remembered something. “Oh, Doctor—Doctor Pickering!” The surgeon had spent a medically uneventful voyage writing a monograph entitled “Some Notes on Comparative Pathologies of the Inhabited Planets” and was now at loose ends. He had relieved Matt as “farmer.”
“Yes, Matt?”
“Those new tomato plants—they have to be cross-pollinated three days from now. You’ll do it for me? You won’t forget?”
“Can do!”
Captain Yancey guffawed. “Get your feet out of this furrows, Dodson. Forget the farm—we’ll look out for it. Now, gentlemen—” He looked around and caught their eyes. “Try to stay alive. I doubt very much if this mission warrants expending four Patrol officers.”
As they filed in Tex dug Matt in the ribs. “Did you hear that, kid—‘four Patrol officers.’”
“Yeah, but look what else he said.”
Thurlow tucked his orders in his pouch. They were simple: proceed to latitude north two degrees seven, longitude two hundred twelve degrees zero; locate the
Gary
and investigate reported native uprising. Keep the peace.
The lieutenant settled himself and looked around at his crew. “Hold your hats, boys. Here we go!”
With Thurlow at the controls and Matt in the co-pilot’s seat the jeep started down. It started with an orbital speed of better than four miles per second, the speed of the
Aes Triplex
in her tight circular orbit around the equator of Venus. The lieutenant’s purpose was to kill this speed exactly over his destination, then balance the jeep down on its tail. A jet landing was necessary, as the jeep had no wings.
He needed to do this precisely, with the least use of fuel. He was helped somewhat by riding “with the current” from west to east; the 940-mile-per-hour rotational speed of Venus at her equator was profit rather than loss. However, exact placement was another matter. A departure time was selected so that the entire descending curve would be on the day side of the planet in order to use the Sun as a reckoning point for placement in longitude; placement in latitude would have to depend on dead reckoning by careful choice of course.
The Sun is the only possible celestial body to use in air navigation at Venus, and even Sol is lost to the naked eye as soon as one is inside the planet-wide blanket of cloud. Matt “shot the Sun” by keeping one eye glued on the eyepiece of an infra-red adapter which had been fitted to the ship’s octant, and was enabled thereby to coach his skipper from a prepared flight plan. It had not been considered practical to cut a cam for the automatic robot; too little was known about the atmospheric conditions to be expected.
When Matt informed his pilot that they were about thirty miles up, by radar, and approaching the proper longitude, is given by the infrared image of the Sun, Thurlow brought the jeep down toward their target, ever lower and slower, and finally braked her with the jet to let her drop in a parabola distorted by air resistance.
They were enveloped in the ever-present Venerian clouds. The pilot’s port was utterly useless to them. Matt now started watching the surface under them, using an infrared-sensitive “cloud piercer.”
Thurlow watched his radar altimeter, checking it against the height-time plan for grounding.
“If we are going to dodge around any, it’s got to be now,” he said quietly to Matt. “What do you see?”
“Looks fairly smooth. Can’t tell much.”
Thurlow sneaked a look. “It’s not water, anyway—and it’s not forest. I guess we’ll chance it.”
Down they dropped, with Matt watching the ghostly infrared-produced picture narrowly at the end, ready to tell Thurlow to give her full power if it were a meadow.
Thurlow eased off his jet—and cut it. There was a bump as if they had fallen a couple of feet. They were down, landed on Venus.
“Whew!” said the pilot and wiped sweat from his forehead. “I don’t want to have to try that every day.”
“Nice landing, Skipper!” called out Oscar.
“Yea bo!” agreed Tex.
“Thanks, fellows. Well, let’s get the stilts down.” He punched a stud on the control board. Like most rockets built for jet landings, the jeep was fitted with three stabilizing jacks which came telescoping out of the craft’s sides and slanting downward. Hydraulic pressure forced them down until they touched something solid enough to hold them, whereupon the thrusting force was automatically cut off and they locked in place, propping the rocket on three sides, tripod fashion, and holding it erect.
Thurlow waited until three little green lights appeared under the stud controlling the stilts, then unclutched the jeep’s stabilizing gyros. The jeep held steady, he unstrapped. “All right, men. Let’s take a look. Matt and Tex, stay inside. Oscar, if you don’t mind my mentioning it, since it’s your home town, you should do the honors.”
“Right!” Oscar unstrapped and hurried to the lock. There was no need to check the air, since Venus is man-inhabited, and all of them, as members of the Patrol, had been immunized to the virulent Venerian fungi.
Thurlow crowded close behind him. Matt unstrapped and came down to sit by Tex in the passenger rest Oscar had left. The space around the lock was too limited in the little craft to make it worthwhile to do anything but wait.
Oscar stared out into the mist. “Well, how does it feel to be home?” asked Thurlow.
“Swell! What a beautiful, beautiful day!”
Thurlow smiled at Oscar’s back and said, “Let’s get the ladder down and see where we are.” The access door was more than fifty feet above the jeep’s fins, with no convenient loading elevator.
“Okay.” Oscar turned and squeezed past Thurlow. The jeep settled suddenly on the side away from the door, seemed to catch itself, then started to fall over with increasing speed.
“The gyros!” yelled Thurlow. “Matt, clutch the gyros!” He tried to scramble past Oscar; they fouled each other, then the two fell sprawling backwards as the jeep toppled over.
At the pilot’s yell Matt tried to comply—but he had been sprawled out, relaxing. He grabbed the sides of the rest, trying to force himself up and back to the control station, but the rest tilted backwards; he found himself “skinning the cat” out of it, and then was resting on the side of the craft, which was now horizontal.
Oscar and Thurlow were the first things he saw as he untangled himself. They were piled up on the inner wall of the ship, with Oscar mostly on top. Oscar started to get up—and stopped. “Eeeyowp!”
“You hurt, Oz?”
“My arm.”
“What’s the trouble?” This was Tex, who appeared from behind Matt, apparently untouched by the tumble.
Oscar helped himself up with his right arm, then tenderly felt his left forearm. “I don’t know. A sprain—or a break, maybe. Eeee—ah! It’s a break.”
“Are you sure?” Matt stepped forward. “Let me see it.”
“What’s the matter with the skipper?” asked Tex.
“Huh?” said Matt and Oscar together. Thurlow had not moved. Tex went to him and knelt over him.
“Looks like he’s knocked out cold.”
“Throw some water over him.”
“No, don’t do that. Do—” The craft settled again. Oscar looked startled and said, “I think we had better get out of here.”
“Huh? We can’t,” protested Matt. “We’ve got to bring Mr. Thurlow to.”
Oscar did not answer him but started climbing up toward the open lock, now ten feet over their heads, swearing in Venerian as he struggled painfully and awkwardly, using one hand, from strut to brace. “’S’matter with old Oz?” asked Tex. “Acts like he’s blown his top.”
“Let him go. We’ve got to take care of the skipper.” They knelt over Thurlow and gave him a quick, gentle examination. He seemed unhurt, but remained unconscious.; “Maybe he’s just had the breath knocked out of him,” suggested Matt. “His heart beat is strong and steady.”
“Look at this, Matt.” It was a lump on the back of the; lieutenant’s head. Matt felt it gently.
“Didn’t bash in his skull. He’s just had a wallop on his noggin. He’ll be all right—I think.”
“I wish Doc Pickering was here.”
“Yeah, and if fish had feet, they’d be mice. Quit worrying, Tex. Stop messing with him and give him a chance to come out of it naturally.”
Oscar stuck his head down into the open door. “Hey, you guys! Come up out of there—and fast!”
“What for?” asked Matt. “Anyhow, we can’t—we got to stay with the boss, and he’s still out cold.”
“Then carry him!”
“How? Piggyback?”
“Any way—but
do it!
The ship is sinking!”
Tex opened his mouth, closed it again, and dived toward a small locker. Matt yelled. “Tex—get a line!”
“What do you think I’m doing? Ice-skating?” Tex reappeared with a coil of thin, strong line used in warping the little craft in to her mother ship. “Easy now—lift him as I slip it under his chest.”
“We ought to make a proper sling. We might hurt him.”
“No time for that!” urged Oscar from above them. “Hurry!”
Matt swarmed up to the door with the end of the line while Tex was still fastening the loop under the armpits of the unconscious man. A quick look around was enough to confirm Oscar’s prediction; the jeep lay on her side with her fins barely touching solid ground. The nose was lower than the tail and sinking in thin, yellow mud. The mud stretched away into the mist, like a flat field, its surface carpeted with a greenish-yellow fungus except for a small space adjacent to the ship where the ship, in failing, had splashed a gap in the surface.
Matt had no time to take the scene in; the mud was almost up to the door. “Ready down there?”
“Ready. I’ll be right up.”
“Stay where you are and steady him. I think I can handle him.” Thurlow weighed one hundred forty pounds, Earth-side; his Venus weight was about one hundred and seventeen. Matt straddled the door and took a strain on the line.
“I can give you one hand, Matt,” Oscar said anxiously.
“Just stay out of my way.” With Matt pulling and Tex pushing and steadying from below, they got the limp lieutenant over the lip of the door and laid out on the rocket.
The craft lurched again as a tail fin slid off the bank. “Let’s get going, troops,” Matt urged. “Oz, can you get up on that bank by yourself?”
“Sure.”
“Then do so. Well leave the line on the skipper and chuck the end to you and you can hang onto it with your good hand. That way, if he goes in the mud, we can haul him out.”
“Quit talking and get busy.” Oscar trotted the length of the craft, taking the end of the line with him. He made it to the bank by stepping from a tail fin.
Matt and Tex had no trouble carrying Thurlow as far as the fins, but the last few feet, from fins to bank, were awkward. They had to work close to the jet tube, still sizzling hot, and balance themselves in a trough formed by a fin and the converging side of the ship. They finally made it by letting Oscar take most of the lieutenant’s weight by hauling from the bank with his one good arm.
When they had gotten Thurlow laid out on the turf Matt jumped back aboard the jeep. Oscar shouted at him. “Hey, Matt—where do you think you’re going?”
“Back inside.”
“Don’t do it. Come back here.” Matt hesitated, Oscar added, “That’s an order, Matt.”
Matt answered, “I’ll only be a minute. We’ve got no weapons and no survival kits. I’ll duck in and toss them out.”
“Don’t try it.” Matt stood still a moment, balanced between Oscar’s unquestioned seniority and the novelty of taking direct orders from his roommate. “Look at the door, Matt,” Oscar added. “You’d be trapped.”
Matt looked. The far end of the door was already in the mud and a steady stream was slopping into the ship, like molasses. As he looked the jeep rolled about a quarter turn, seeking a new stability. Matt made it to the bank in one flying leap.
