The Absyrtis was canted over at a five-degree angle, and that was that. Chubb and Luna Louis surveyed the situation the next morning and came to the conclusion that any attempt to right the ship might cause her to fall even farther. The only answer was to secure the ship in its present position and proceed. Taking LeRoy’s suggestion, they fastened quick-release clamps on the guys, then promptly safetied them against accidental release.The rest of the check-outs on the “Leaning Tower of White Sands”—the name hung on the ship by Greg Shearer —went off more or less as scheduled. They weren’t all successful at first. Bert Eggstrom was the only one who didn’t have more than his share of troubles, but he had them nonetheless. The communication gear worked like a charm, and Bert was very proud the night he logged his first contact with Asgard Space Station as it went over. The computer and the autopilot finally made four consecutively successful dry runs. He had trouble with the radar; instead of tracking the high-flying evening antipodal rocket as intended, it locked onto a flight of ducks migrating south. But it tracked.LeRoy kept on finding leaks, sticky valves, broken welds, and loose nuts everywhere. Most of his trouble was with a very green crew. The college students working for him did extremely well, but he had trouble with other kinds of people. Imagine trying to teach a dry-goods salesman how to run a smooth weld.Greg Shearer was having trouble with the air system, the water recovery system, and the hatches and locks. Being a bachelor like Chubb, he didn’t have the same kind of trouble LeRoy was having, but he had trouble enough nonetheless.He had recruited every member of the SRS who would work and who had, like himself, a green thumb and a knowledge of organic and catalytic chemistry. On the first pressure test, gaskets leaked all over the place, but the worst part came when Greg replaced the standard air with the oxy-helium space mix from the air system. It drove everybody choking from the ship. The ship air from the blowers smelled something like a cross between a garbage dump, a stable, and a locker room. In disgust, he and his crew had to replace every bit of chlorogel solution in the system—while wearing respirators.In addition, the ship’s water came out a putrid brown for five days while he fiddled with the old and finnicky water recovery system.He was still working with it when Luna Louis came around with Chubb for a final inspection on the refitting. Louis inspected the ship with a critical eye, finding things that nobody expected. He suggested here, corrected there, bawled out ninety-percent of the crew for blunders and oversights, but finally pronounced the ship as ready as it ever would be for final checks, provisioning, and space.It should have been a day of rejoicing, but for Chubb it was one of anxiety. During the quiet evening hours after supper when everybody sat around listening to Luna Louis spin old space tales of faraway worlds, Chubb could not keep his mind off the subject.The final check of the ship would require that the reactor be activated. This meant heavy water and thorium , and as far as he was concerned that might take an act of God to get. The Bureau of Nuclear Power didn’t pass that kind of stuff around like tin pennies.They went in the personnel hatch. The interior of the ship was considerably different than it had been the day they had first walked her decks. New paint glistened on the bulkheads, and the smell of oil and solvents and men was in her again. After going up the main ship well, they emerged into the control room. The new pastahide cushions on the couches shone in the light of the resurrected flouro-units, and the gaping holes in the panels had been filled with instruments, gauges, switches, and winking lights. The computer rack now held a small electronic brain which was capable of flying the ship; Bert had managed to pick it up from Space Force surplus and had rebuilt it. It was capable of reading-in data in any number of ways: from sensing elements in the ship, from ground radio commands, from control panel commands, and from a self-programming keyboard. Its read-out was equally as versatile. Bert regarded it as being several grades smarter than any of the SRS men working on the ship.“About time you showed up,” Louis remarked caustically. “Grab a cup of joe and sit down. You might favor me by pouring me another cup while you’re at it. Can’t operate without coffee.” Luna Louis, true to Space Force tradition, had set up three indispensable things immediately on the Absyrtis; in order they were a coffee mess, a loudspeaker system, and a wardroom of division officers who really ran things.“It has to be that way, Mister Olson,” Louis pointed out. He took a long swig of coffee and went on, “And now we have a slight logistics problem: thorium and heavy water. What do you have to report on that, Mister Olson?”“It’s on its way. Be here tomorrow.”Chubb sat up and knocked his head against the bottom of the couch above. “Along with the BSC boys who will promptly hang a red tag on the lock?”Al Olson smiled knowingly. “Not yet. It seems the UN once passed a Nuclear Energy Act which has been on the books since 2005. It guarantees the delivery of available radioactive substances to non-profit organizations utilizing it for other than commercial purposes. After a little talk with the BNPRegional Director in Albuquerque, the way was paved.”“What did it cost?” Bert wanted to know.“It’s still BNP property under consignment lease to us,” Al replied.Luna Louis had to supervise the installation of the thorium and heavy water. The current BNP manuals possessed by the two men did not include the procedure for the Argonaut Class, the reactor being a long-obsolete model. This caused Chubb to ask Louis anxiously, “Skipper, are you sure this old reactor has enough soup to lift this ship?”“Mate,” Louis said huffily, “if the engineers hadn’t decided to go to the pure nuclear drive, they’d still be using this type of reactor. This old Mark Seven’s a damn-sight more reliable and efiicient per kilogram of mass and has a lower operating count so the ship shielding is lighter. What licked this type of drive years ago was the propellant mass you have to carry … and thermo-juice was more expensive then. The nuclear stuff cost less when they changed over, but this bucket’s flown for twenty years with that fish bowl, and it hasn’t had so much as a pin-hole leak in the heat exchanger. The Baja California power pile can't boast that record, mate!”At last, they were ready for the final checks. LeBoy, who had hand-picked his engineering gang, treated the reactor with a great deal of respect now. The power crew started using the particle counters which had been racked at the ready on the power room bulkhead for months. They raised the temperature to a stable plateau capable of running the ship’s generators and of charging the batteries, although ground power was still available to help them out. The other divisions began a gradual phase-over to reactor power but only as an emergency measure.The day dawned bright and clear, the New Mexico sun coming up in all its splendor over the Guadalupe Mountains to the east. But the crew of the Absyrtis didn’t notice it; they had been up all night, working in the artificial daylight of floodlamps, checking and re-checking. Some of them noticed it was getting light outside, but it made no impression on them.The air around the ship and Luna Louis’ junk yard rang with the tension which was mounting by the minute. There were a million last-minute checks and calibrations to be made, dozens of critical items which had to be taken care of, and scores of temperamental, precise gadgets which had to be watched and watched closely.No one was conscious of time save for a moment in the near future that was rushing closer with every tick of the clock and announced in a booming voice over a loud-speaker.Luna Louis seemed calm; he wasn’t. Chubb had no time to be nervous; he was kept busy checking on the progress of the division chiefs, and the division chiefs in turn were kept busy seeing to it that every little item was taken care of as stipulated on Louis’ pre-lift check sheet. The old spaceman had compiled a complete manual—the ship’s “cook book” and the crewman’s bible—entirely from memory. No one had grounds to doubt Luna Louis’ memory; he had not been wrong in the past.At X-minus one hour, the passengers and their baggage were loaded. Members of the SRS who were not assigned to the crew drew straws among themselves for the berths available on this shake-down cruise. They did not make up the full load the Absyrtis was able to carry; Louis wanted to run light and put extra mass into propellants in case of trouble. And he didn’t want non-working people under foot in what was essentially a new ship.The brown and yellow Absyrtis—deliberately painted in those colors to be a striking contrast to the white or silver of the commercial and military vessels—could be seen for miles. No registry number appeared on her spreading, swallow-like wings. This caused a great number of curious passerbys to stop.“No, it isn’t that,” Al corrected him. “I expect to go on the next one, which means I trust you’ll get to Dianaport and back without killing yourselves. Besides, I’ve got to stick around and watch the legal end.”“Huh? I thought we had that pretty well covered,” Chubb remarked.“Is it? Who’s going to look out for the interests of the private spaceman when the issue comes up before the UN? I intend to stick around because the fight isn’t really over yet. I want a private space yacht of my own after I’ve learned the ropes in this ship; but, more important, I want to see space opened up to private exploitation.“I’ve got to lay some groundwork, but the next move is up to you. You’ve got to make a successful flight to prove that space travel techniques have progressed to the point where an ordinary person with a limited amount of training can do something that up to now has been the private stomping ground of a bunch of experts.”Greg Shearer accompanied the lawyer down to the lock, and then Luna Louis got down to businessn The final briefing was short. “I’m lifting at 5-g. I want to get out of here in a hurry to economize propellant We may need later. Don’t let the noise bother you, and don’t worry about the vibration. This bucket has a resonant structure frequency of twenty-eight cycles.“When you hit free fall, remember: don’t panic! If something goes wrong, you’re dead so don’t worry about it. Take your shots when we hit free fall; you must do it in case some of your men need help. Don’t use the emergency procedures unless its absolutely necessary.trust you on that, but some of your men may get scared; that’s why each of you has aunder your couch pads. One man—just one man—can kill us all.”He stopped and look around. His eyes were now cold and hard under the visor of his brilliant red baseball cap. “We’ll sweat this first lift, all of us. But remember that the boys who really know how to do it are out there behind that fence watching us. They don't think we have a chance; I think we’ll do all right. Any questions?” There weren’t.

Refitting the Absyrtis turned out to be quite a task. The old ship lacked more than was apparent on a cursory inspection. As a result, Chubb closed the doors to his consulting office in order to devote his full energies to the project.So he moved in with Luna Louis, sharing the old bachelor’s quarters with him. It was far from being luxurious, but Chubb was having the time of his life. He didn’t really care where he slept or when he ate; he had his hands on a space ship at last.Louis turned out to be less senile than any of them expected. He seemed to snap out of his dreamy moods. The transition was strange to behold. Once again, he stood straight and his voice carried the tone of authority and casual competence. His eyes became alert, and his mind sharpened like a rusty knife edge that has been put to the whetstone at long last.The youngsters of the SRS were by far the most persistent at the work site. They came in droves on Friday afternoon and stayed on the job until Monday morning when they dragged back across the desert to classes or to their jobs. Many of them came out during the week to perform the many tasks at hand.Their first job was a complete and minute inspection of the ship as she stood. No manuals on the Argonaut Class could be found, but Luna Louis turned out to be a man of remarkable memory.“Hey, skipper, this valve seat mikes a tenth of a millimeter less than the blade. What gives here?” LeRoy called from the power room on the temporary intercom Bert Eggstrom had rigged.Louis answered from the forward radar blister, “Where did it come from?”“The feed heater just abaft of the forward tank bay.”“That sounds about right, Mister Finch. What’s the condition of the seat and gland packing?”“Packing’s shot. But how can this valve seal?”“Don’t worry about it. It gets hot in that forward feed heater. Thermal expansion of the seat causes that valve to seal tighter than your old britches. Get the part number off that valve, and we’ll see if maybe I’ve got some packing for it. Pull the whole valve and take it down to the shop.”“Right-o, skipper!”“Hey, skipper?” Chubb’s voce echoed up the main ship well. “Got a minute?”Louis turned to the youngster who was working in the blister with him. “Yank that sweep selsyn , Jimmy. The rotor’s shot. I think maybe one of the units from that old Mark Fourteen radar out in the yard will fit. Don’t bother with those cap screws; knock it loose with a hammer, because you’ll have to drill and tap new holes anyway."“How about these waveguide junctions, skipper?”“Put the torque wrench to them. They’ll warp back,” the old skipper told him, handing him his tools and crawling out of the little hatch into the main portion of the ship. Wiping the sweat from his neck with a piece of waste, he yelled down the well, “Up here, mate!”Chubb came puffing up the ladder from below. “Here’s a survey of the equipment in the boat-tail, skipper.”Leafing slowly through the sheaf of papers handed to him, Louis mused, “Not as bad as I expected.”“What do you mean, skipper? Half the structural members back there are bent, broken, or missing! Engineering-wise, it’s flimsy as a paper bag!”“And just what do you know about space ship structures, Mister Delany?” Louis asked sarcastically. “The tail of this bucket was grossly over-designed. We ripped out those members years ago to make room for the thermo-juice drive.” He handed the papers back to Chubb and told him, “Take them down and give them to that gal who’s doing the consolidation. I’ve got most of these missing parts—or something that will do the job.”“Check, skipper. Tank bays and radars are the only lists we need now. Maybe we’d better start thinking about moving the ship out to a launching pad.”“Why move her?”“Huh?”“A fine “engineer you are! What would the costs be? I've got the parts, the shops, and the tools right here.”Chubb thought about this. “You mean refit and lift from here?”“Is there a better place?”“But it’ll wreck your yard when we lift, skipper.”“So it will. But once we raise ship, mate, I’ll not be needing this yard any longer.”Chubb stared at him for a moment, then quietly went out the hatch and clambered down the hastily-rigged servicing tower. A month ago, he would have paled at the thought of hanging on a slender ladder fifty meters up. He had in fact done so. But it didn’t bother him now, and he was in much better physical shape. It was a matter of pride to him that he had managed to lose five kilos.Wandering back through the yard toward the hut they were using for an office, he noticed the change in Luna Louis’ junk yard. Old tools had been ressurected from the heaps, cleaned up, and placed in sheds. Under a ragged tarpoline, three youths were hydrostating valves and pressure vessels; beside them was a jury-rigged flow bench. Farther down the line, he passed a leaning shack in which Bert and several other men were working over old radar gear. A sign over the door proudly announced, “Department of Witchcraft and Sorcery. Slightly Used Pentacles and Klystrons For Sale.”“What’s that part number again?” the clerk behind the supply counter asked, turning his head to catch Chubb’s words.Chubb repeated the list of numbers.With an efficient flip of his wrist, the clerk swung the top off the locator keyboard and punched the numbers into the system with practiced, easy speed. When the machine failed to deliver a card indicating the availability and location of the parts in the bins, his bored look changed to one of surprise. He punched again, using a different code. This time, the card flopped out announcing “Unavailable in present stock. Part numbers unknown. Check visual catalogue.” With a wrinkled brow, the clerk did so, flipping quickly through a large bound volume on the desk. He finally looked up and exclaimed, “Great Scott, mister! We haven’t stocked that servo unit for years!”“Got any ideas where I can get it?”Looking puzzled, the clerk browsed through his tremendous catalogue, then looked up and said, “It was made by Midwest Electronics. They folded up shop five years ago; the dies were probably scrapped. A boneyard is your best bet. Have you tried, Luna Louis down by Soledad Canyon?”“He hasn’t got it.”“Then you’re just beating your gums, friend.”“Anything I can substitute that’ll meet the specs?”“Buddy, that stuff was four-hundred-cycle gear. Nobody makes it any more; they’ve all gone to pulsed-power.”"Mate, where did you get those draftsmen?” Luna Louis asked, indicating the drawing he held in his hand. “They’d make better cartoonists! How do you expect the boys in the shop to make those obsolete parts from drawings like this?”“Look, skipper,” Chubb came back on the defense, “those boys are just college kids. They’re doing design engineering on parts and equipment that’s been out-of-date for years. The original parts aren’t even around for them to get dimensions and tolerances from! How’d you like to by making working drawings for an old reciprocating automobile engine after being told only how it worked?”It took five long months filled with scrounging for old parts, digging around in junk yards all over North America, and draining of funds. Chubb’s savings were long gone. Luna Louis had converted everything he could to cash. Al Olson, being independently wealthy, kept the project on its feet.Everybody worked their hearts out. There were long hours. There were the inevitable minor accidents. There were daily crises which threatened to wreck the whole thing. Louis had his hands more that full working with a very green crew. Everybody made mistakes—but nobody made the same one twice. But the day finally arrived when they could start making dry runs of the ship and her equipment.The old Absyrtis didn’t look the same at all, Sporting a new coat of brown and yellow paint—a purposely difierent color and marking scheme than that used anywhere else —she was practically a new ship inside and out.Chubb stood surveying her in the late afternoon sunlight, taking a break in his schedule for a cigarette. Yes, every one of the hundreds of men and boys who had worked on her could take real pride in her now, he knew. A few more checks, radioactive bricks for her reactor, and propellants were all she needed—plus a trained crew.Olson was out pulling the legal strings for the reactor bricks. Chubb had no idea how they were going to be pried loose from the Bureaus of Nuclear Energy, but Al had assured him that there would be no trouble.The propellants? Well, Chubb was expecting ten tank cars into El Paso any day. There was no problem there. The “go-juice” for which the Absyrtis had been designed was a commercially-available chemical which would release its energy by thermo-catalytic action. It was cheap, but it was no longer used for space flight.The rocket engine is a basically useful device. Rocket engineers found this out many, many years before when they became aware that the military subsidies following the Second World War might not last forever. A rocket can do more than push. It can generate tremendous volumes of gas. It is an essential device for high-speed, high-temperature chemistry. And the jet of hot gases man dig holes. In the open-pit copper and iron mines all over the world, the snarl of rocket engines was a common thing as their exhausts dug holes faster and more economically than the best carbide bits.The crew was his only real worry. He knew they were still green as grass, himself included. Space Commander McLaughlin had been right on one point: you don’t learn it all out of the books. Some people had picked up Louis’ training with little effort; others just couldn’t understand the difference between a fitting and a flange or between a selsyn and a klystron , no matter how high their enthusiasm had been.“All hands clear the ship!” Louis’ voice came from a portable megaphone from the lock high on the side of the ship. “Stand clear for pressurizing and water-flow checks!”Chubb was joined by Bert, who was handling the electronics and had no part in this check of the propulsion system. “Ran the final checks on the radar today, Chubb. That doppler system is all hot to go. Same with the guidance and control.”“Good! Did you get the running rabbits off the surveilance screens?”“Yeah, found a mis-matched waveguide in the antenna system. How’s Greg doing with the air system?”“Had chlorogel all over Deck D the last I saw him,” Chuhb replied. “Sprung a leak in the irradiation chambers.”“Tough luck.”“He’ll get it fixed. He’s good.” Chubb watched the silent ship for a moment, then asked, “Say, Bert, maybe it’s none of my business, but how come a sharp electronic engineer like you never got into space in the first place?”“Oh,” Bert said offhandedly, “eyes for one thing. Plus the fact I’m a lunger.” T-B ? You don’t look like it!”“Hell, man, I’ve only got one lung—and that’s full of calcification. Why do you think I came to this country? Same reason as Greg: climate.”Great space! Chubb thought. What a crew this ship’s got! Greg with arthritis, Bert with one lung, LeRoy with a heart, and the skipper ripe for the grave! And me, twenty kilos overweight!“Stand by to pressurize!” came the call from the ship. Through the thick hull of the Absyrtis the two men on the ground heard the slam of valves and the high-pitched, ringing hiss of pressurized gas filling the propellant tanks.Nothing ruptured; the tanks held their pressure.“What are they doing?” Bert wanted to know.“We’ve got a dummy propellant load of water in the tanks,” Chuhb explained, rocking back on his heels with his arms on his hips. “They’ve pressurized to detect leaks and to see if the system will hold pressure. Next they’ll pop the main propellant valves and run the water out through the rocket nozzles to check flow rates and pressure drops.”“How can they run the propellant pumps without the reactor to drive them?”“They won't need the pumps. LeRoy and the skipper just want flow characteristics. They know what effect the pumps will have and they … Hold it! There they go!”It was quite a show. A terrific roar came from the stem of the ship, but no flame lashed out. Instead, the rocket nozzles sprayed solid streams of water which ran off onto the desert sands in a small flood. Thousand of gallons of water spewed out before the flood suddenly ceased with a bang and a hammering sound.“Wow! I’ll bet that shut-down opened a dozen joints!” Chubb took off across the desert like a huge ballon being driven before a gale.The power room was a mess when he climbed into it. LeRoy and his crew were trying to tighten fittings and stem the gush of water. There was still considerable water remaining in the tanks. Everybody was soaking wet. Chubb grabbed a box wrench, snugged up a leaking fitting, and shouted to LeRoy “Vents open?”“Hell, yes! Get that flange tight before we drown!”“Open your dump valves and drain those tanks! You’ll never get these fitting tight with ten meters of hydraulic head on them”LeRoy leaped for the jetman’s couch and threw switches. “Electrical system’s shorted out by water! Open that hand valve next to you, Chubb!”Once the situation was under control, Chubb—looking like a water-loogged whale—sat down on an auxiliary generator and observed. “I thought you guys knew this power room. What a sad show! What would you have done in a real emergency?”“Run like hell,” LeRoy returned sarcarstically, implying that Chubb would have done no better with the flow-checks. He opened the power room lock and uncapped the scuppers to allow the water to drain out. Then he suddenly sat down in a puddle on the floor.“What’s wrong, chum?” Chubb asked anxiously.“The old ticker,” LeRoy gasped. “Too much excitement.”Chubb lifted him under the armpits and deposited him on the jetman’s couch. “You stay put. I’ll clean up this mess. When you feel better, go home for the rest of the day.”“I’ll be all right,” LeRoy objected.“They all say that. Take care of yourself or you won’t be in any shape to make the jump.”It took Chubb and the crew of young college kids a good hour to clean up and get started on the loose fittings and flanges. They were hard at it when Luna Louis dropped cat-like through the hatch.“Mate, better heave-to and seal ship,” he cracked. ‘Weather coming up.”Dropping his Wrench, Chubb stepped to the hatch and looked out. Far across the Tularosa Basin a tremendous thunderhead had a torrent of rain streaming out of it like a skirt. And rolling across the sandy wastes, obscuring space ships and buildings, was a huge, turbulent wall of sand and dust kicked up by the thundersquall.“We’ll get winds out of that,” Louis warned, peering at the brown wall and the rain behind it. "I want everybody out of the ship. Empty as it is, it just may take a notion’ to topple”“Bring me some cable, skipper,” Chubb broke in. “I’ll throw some guy lines on the ship and anchor it.”“We haven’t got time! And they might not hold anyway if the ship started to go,” Louis snapped. “Shake a leg here!” He disappeared upward through the hatch.It took Chubb less than five minutes to get the locks and hatches closed. Ignoring Chubb’s orders, LeRoy climbed down into the boat-tail and installed a sealing diaphram in each nozzle throat.The wind and dust hit them ten minutes later. It howled and screamed around the ship and loading tower. Then it rained.It rained like Chubb had never seen it rain before. It was almost impossible to walk through it. Sheet after sheet of water hammered against the galvinized side of the hut in which they’d taken refuge. The rocky sand became rocky mud, and the water began to run in racing rivulets across the desert.It rained for two hours—a solid, wind-driven rain. The rivulets grew to flowing streams of water and then to raging flash floods.“Louis!” Chubb pointed out, yelling over the roar of the rain thundering against the shed. “The ship’s right in the middle of it!”“The water’s undercutting the concrete slab! She'll topple!” LeRoy yelled.A bolt of lightning arched down outyof the storm with a sharp crack, spearing the conical nose of the Absyrtis. Radar and communications antennas sparkled with glow discharge “LeRoy, round up some men!” Chubb shouted. “Skipper, where do you keep those long lengths of two-centimeter cable? Can you dig up some railroad rail we can drive into the ground to anchor guy lines to?”“Stay off that ship, mate! She’s being hit!”"To hell with it! We’ll lose the ship otherwise! Get me that cable! I’ll anchor it topside!”“You crazy hoot-owl! Stay here!” Luna Louis roared.“Skipper, don’t you understand? We'll lose the ship! The water’s undercutting the slab! She’ll topple!”“Let it topple! I’d rather lose the ship than lose lives! Stay here!”But Chubb was gone.

“Have you, now?” Louis said quizzically. “And how do you like the farce space flight is now?”“Farce?” Chubb echoed.“Farce, son. They’re too sloppy these days. It’s too easy. Automatic controls. Nuclear drives. There was a time when space flight was an art! Yes, sir An art! Not button pushing! Used to load her up with thermo-propellants, hit the firing button when the clock said so, and fly her by the seat of your pants and the astrostat ! All the time wondering if she was going to blow! … That was space flight! Pilots, they call themselves! Bah! Bus drivers is what they arel” He settled back in his chair and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Now, in the good old days, it was different. Take the old Absyrtis back there on my lot …”The junk yard was old stuff to Chubb, but LeRoy was utterly amazed at the terrific amounts of junk of all types. As the old skipper led them out to where the Absyrtis towered seventy meters over the low sheds, the real estate man found himself making mental estimates of the combined worth of this desert land and the tremendous inventory on it. It was plain to see that Luna Louis was not a down-and-out old spacebum. “Captain, there seems to be a little bit of everything here. How’d you come by it all?”“Ships are scrapped all the time, mate,” Louis replied.“Why? Do they wear out?”“No, sir! They just get obsolete,,and it becomes cheaper to build a new ship than to modify the old one,” Luna Louis explained. “The Bureau of Space Commerce has some pretty strict rules about the condition of space craft; when a ship reaches a certain age, they usually down-check it on principle …”“How’s that?”“They figure it’s old enough that if something hasn’t happened to it yet, it will. But with a little decent maintenance and repair, a space ship’s good for over a hundred years … and a power plant’s good for a lot longer than that because its operating time is only a fraction of that of its ship.” Louis paused for a moment. “Of course, we get a good deal of equipment from wrecked or damaged ships. Got one lad who does nothing but sit up on the roof with a pair of binoculars watching for ships that don’t make the grade …” He let it drop at that because they had reached the boat-tail of the Absyrtis. Chubb stopped to catch his breath and looked up. In addition to the rust streaking her sides, there was no doubt that this ship was old. The tall, slim, almost regal lines were not those of a modern ship. Modern ships looked efficient; they were. The Absyrtis was merely beautiful, a work of art, the result of a designer with a sense of line and sweep and proportion who had labored over his drawing boards doing work which he must have loved. It was reflected starting from the parabola of revolution of her nose cone down her sleek, unbroken sides to the graceful curve of her boat-tail with its six gaping thrust chambers, and in the swallow-like profile of her drooping wings. It belonged to another day of space flight.“Shipped many a ton of lunar ore in this bucket,” Louis said in recollection. “But she was a bitch to handle under thrust. Shake? Man, she’d shake your teeth right out! And the center of pressure would tend to wander forward of the center of gravity if you didn’t watch the mass distribution. Let’s go aboard.” He grabbed a rope ladder hanging down the side of the ship and clambered spryly aloft with an agility which amazed Chubb and LeRoy.LeRoy followed and Chubb waited until the other had gained the lock high on the ship before he entrusted his full weight to the ropes. He didn’t look down; if he had, he would have frozen to the ladder with vertigo. He kept his eyes aloft and climbed steadily, hand-foot-hand-foot. He was out of breath when he stepped through the air lock and looked around.The tour of the old ship was fascinating. Chubb’s eyes were alight the entire time. It was like a childhood dream come true. It brought up memories entombed by the years and Chubb remembered the toy spaceships which looked like the Absyrtis and the drawings he had hopefully sent to the Space Force at White Sands, crude sketches of a “Sooper Space Combat Rocket”. And there were forgotten memories of a chubby little boy playing spaceman in that pile of boxes in the back yard, dreaming of a space ship the image of which was the Absyrtis.Just being in her gave him a feeling of satisfaction he had not experienced for years. Feeling the cold metal of her companionways and smelling the ancient, musty odors of far-off worlds which still lingered in her made him suddenly realize with a pang of sorrow and regret that this could have been his—could have, if he had had a different gene makeupThe Absyrtis was far from a complete space ship. Most of the power plant essentials were missing, the electronics had been stripped, and there were no astrogation instruments. The Absyrtis had seen hand tools, but not a cutting torch.“Give her just a few essentials and she’s ready to lift,” Louis remarked, sitting down on an acceleration couch in the barren, echoing control room far forward in the nose. “Many’s the time I’ve sweated it out on this couch, mates. But this old bucket never failed me. A taut, reliable old ship she was. After we converted her to thermo-juice, she saw Mars and Venus and Ganymede. Bailey took her out to Titan once after I got stuck on dirt for keeps. But she knows her way into Dianaport by heart; hardly have to lay a finger on the board for a landing. She just sniffs her way in.”“What are you going to do with her, skipper?” Chubb ventured to ask.“She’s the last of her kind, mate. The pure-nuclear ships have taken over now. And a new kind of spaceman is flying them. We’re both obsolete, so she stays here with me. Oh, maybe one of these days I’ll get me a red-hot crew together. We may not get high enough to crash, but we’ll still get oft the ground again. The regulation hounds will try to stop us, but to hell with them! It’s a sad thing, mates, when the laws won’t let a man do what he wants or even kill himself as long as he doesn’t hurt anybody else in the process.” The old man’s eyes were on the empty holes in the control panels where instruments, lights, and switches should have been.

Gone was the glory. Gone was the thrill. Gone was Chubb’s enthusiasm as he lay there on the co-pilot’s couch chanting off the minutes left until zero time. Sweat was rolling off him in tiny streams although Greg had long since changed to space mix which was cool as it came out of the blower duct.Six months ago, a space ship lift had been a wonderful thing to watch. Now, Chubb was beginning to realize it was a terribly deadly game. So much depended on so many little things, and once they were under way, there was no backing out.Was that stubborn solenoid valve going to stick? Had he checked that sequence circuit thoroughly enough. Suppose there was an ignition delay which could blow the tail off? Should they have gone to the time and expense of static testing the propulsion system?The little relays, the pieces of wire, the lengths of tubing, the bolts and nuts which he had put into this ship Without really thinking about it were now the things which stood between him and death. They had seemed so insignificant and common when he had installed them; they were something more than that now. He had known this feeling before; every engineer is inwardly stupified at the tremendous strength and power of his achievements.He was almost ready to call it quits, admit he was a coward, and step out of the lock. But he recalled those agonizing months of hard work refitting this old hulk of a space ship and the terrible moments when they thought they would never make it at all. And he thought of the men in the ship with him, men who had put their hearts and souls into this great adventure, had neglected then professions and deserted their friends. And there were those outside that fence who would give anything they possessed to be inside the Absyrtis at that moment.There was LeRoy Finch who didn’t know if his heart could stand the high accelerations. And Greg Shearer, ridden with arthritis, who forced his stiff fingers to do things that were painful to him. And there was Luna Louis.“Ten minutes to zero, captain!” he snapped resolutely.“Roger, mate! Call all hands to lift stations and report!”“All hands, prepare for lift! All divisions report!”“Electronics standing by.”“Power room ready!”“Shipmaster secure!”“And co-pilot and astrogation ready! All hands to lift stations and ready for lift, captain!”“Very well. Final checks, please. Clear our lift with Traffic!”“All boards, Test-Fly to TEST! Perform final checks and report compliance! Electronics, clear with Traffic Control and secure your radar contacts!”“Roger!”“Check!”“Right-o!”For the last time, Louis and Chubh ran their final checks. Item by item, they went down the list. Then Chubb said, “Final checks complete in control room, skipper!”“Roger,mate!” Louis switched off his intercom and spoke privately to Chubb, “It looks good, mate; it looks good. I think we might make it after all.”“Sure, we’ll make it, skipper,” Chubb reassured him as he started the autopilot. He watched the chronometer.“Five minutes to zero! Five minutes to zero! Divisions report compliance on checks”“Roger from power room!”“Roger from electronics!”“Roger from shipmaster!”“Final checks complete, skipper.”Louis’ voice was sharp and raspy as he spoke from his couch, flipping up the safety guards over the switches and carefully adjusting knobs, “Stand by for lift! Red light condition!"“Condition red, all hands! All boards, Test-Fly to FLY! Four and one-half minutes to zero!” Chubb snapped.“Electronics to FLY!”“Power room to FLY!”“Shipmaster to FLY!”“Ready, captain!”Louis flipped a switch. “Key your board!”Slipping the key from around his wrist, Chubb inserted it in his board and turned it. “Power room, you may un-lock!”“Un-locked in power room! Tanks pressurizing! Reactor heat coming up!”“Three and one-half minutes to zero!”“Electronics reporting! Radar forward is hunting! Green light from Traffic!”“If you can’t fix it, let it hunt!” Louis ordered.Chubb took a deep breath and threw a switch, anxiously watching tell-tale lights on the board. “ Gyros uncaged and tracking! Autopilot tracking!” he reported with relief. For five hours he had babied those gyros up to speed and held them steady; it had been no easy task to erect and orient them with the ship at a tilt, and even more difficult to adjust their speed precisely so they would not precess “Two minutes to zero!”“Steady as she goes, mate,” Louis’ voice came back levelly. “Give me thirty-second counts.” The skipper, the mastermind of the ship operation inside and out, was calm but tense. He held the reins over everything; he was the absolute master at this point, a god in a steel and titanium hull.“Ninety seconds to zero!”“Reactor to heat! Tanks pressurized! Pumps coming up!”“Call up your shaft speeds!” Louis requested.“All coming up in synch!” LeRoy’s voice boomed over the interphone. The scream of the pumps could be heard in the background. “Four thousand r-p-m—five thousand— six thousand—seven—eight—steadying—nine thousand… peaked at ninety-four hundred… They’re holding!”“Bearing temps and outlet pressures?” Louis was vitally interested in the performance of the pumps. They were the only mechanically moving parts in the propulsion system.“Normal!—Pump Five just dropped a hundred!—There it comes back!”They could feel it in the control room now. Those six large staged-centrifigal pumps turning over as they would shake the most solid of structures. The vibration was a piercing, pulsing scream from the deck plates, bulkheads, and overheads.“Sixty seconds to zero!”“Give me aft view on the tv monitor!” the skipper ordered. It was Bert who complied from the electronics compartment below.“Forty-five seconds to zero!” Chubb smoothed his coveralls under him, adjusted his panel slightly, and pulled his astrostat hood down to where he could look through its eyepiece while still keeping the panel in view.The pumps were shaking the ship in every member.“Thirty seconds!”“Plugs away! Ship power!” came LeRoy’s high-pitched voice. “Whoa! Port generator just quit!”“Switch to emergency!”“Emergency batteries on! The inverter’s getting hot!”“Fifteen seconds!”Chubb felt the skipper should call a hold as he said this last. If the inverter went out, the radar would lose its source of pulsed power, and a ship without radar was blind. But Louis said nothing.“Autopilot in command! Seven—six—five—four—”His voice was drowned out by a snarling, thundering, rippling, beating universe of noise.Chubb never knew there could be so much noise.It shook the bulkheads and rattled the deck plates. It bounced Chubb up and down on the couch pads. The mighty thrust of the Absyrtis’ rocket engines hammered at the structure of the ship.“Ship is away!” somebody screamed.There was a sudden, backsnapping jolt and Chubb knew that the breakaways on the guy lines holding the ship had failed. The lines had merely parted, but two-centimeter steel cable does not give way easily.He sneaked a quick glance at the tv monitor, but all he saw was a malestrom of sand, flaming gases, and the litter and sheds of Luna Louis’ junk yard being scattered all over the desert.Then the ship really began to shake as the combustion vibration of the rocket engines reinforced and excited the natural resonance of the hull. It jarred Chubb’s teeth even though he Was being compressed into his pads by the force of five gravities of acceleration. Instrument needles were bouncing wildly, so he quit looking at them; he couldn’t see them anyway because he was being shaken so hard.He lost all sense of time. After seeming hours, he felt the vibration build up to the point where he had to shut his eyes and hold on with all he had. The increased vibration told him that the ship was passing sonic speed, and that in turn would bring blessed relief from the flooding noise.Then there was no sound except the rattle and shake of the ship’s old plates and the thunderous whine of the pumps in the tail. He could hear the scream of the dyna- motors in the electronics compartment aft and the Whistling note of the doppler radar as is climbed up—and up—and up the musical scale until it Was an ear-splitting screech. All of this he heard through a gray haze. He couldn’t breathe; he was pinned to his couch, his heart racing and his anns flattened against their rests. And he knew why high body mass was a disqualifying factor in space flight. His body muscles were no stronger than a lighter man’s, yet they had to support more apparent mass under acceleration.The take-offs of the antipodal rockets had been nothing like this! He could feel this in his face, in his bones, in his entrails. With the noise and the acceleration, he felt nearer death than he had ever been. If this doesn’t stop, he thought wildly and dismally, if it doesn’t stop, I’ll die! I can’t stand this much longer! I can’t stand it!Whang! Clank! Slam!“Cut-off” LeRoy’s voice screamed breathlessly over the interphone.There were three more rough jolts, and the force holding him to his couch suddenly disappeared completely. His stomach made a violent attempt to eject itself through his throat, and he convulsed involuntarily. Then his eyes came into focus and a sensation akin to dizziness overcame him. The control room was suddenly over on its side, then upside-down, then right-side-up again. Then his astrostat hood swam upwards in front of him, the panel following it. It began to spin to the right, then stopped and sank toward him.But something has gone wrong! was his thought. He still felt weight! They couldn’t be in free-fall!Chubb had had limited experience in sub-gravity on the antipodal rocket trips; it was not entirely new to him. It was diiferent, but not new. Before his autonomic nervous system could build up a “storm”, he got a hold of himself. It took a moment for the nystagmus of his eyes to stop. Then he remembered the injection. With practiced movement, he tried to bring his hand to the pocket in the arm rest—and over-shot the mark by a foot. On the second try, he got his fingers firmly around the ampule and gave himself his shot right through his coveralls into his thigh muscles.It helped. He gripped the arm rests and shouted into the interphone, “Al! divisions report!”“Power room here!” LeRoy’s voice came back.Good old LeRoy! Maybe his heart isn't as bad as everybody thought!“Power plant in cut-off!” LeRoy Went on. “Pumps running down! Tanks holding pressure! But the reactor heat-exchanger is running too hot! We can’t get it down!”“Louis told me that might be normal! Keep your pumps running if you have to! How’s that generator?”“Out like a light! But the inverter’s holding! We’re okay. But, buddy, that was rough!”“Shipmaster reporting,” Greg called in. “My baliwick’s running. I’ve got a lot of sick passengers and I’m not feeling too chipper myself. Doc Barcarez is giving drop-shots or knock-outs as the case requires.”“Electronics Report!” Chubb snapped after a few seconds’ silence. “Bert! Report!”Bert’s head appeared instead in the aft hatch. His face was pale and drawn, his dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses giving him a ghostly appearance. There was a cut under his left eye with blood streaming in all directions over his face. “I’ve got a busted intercom,” he reported, “but one of my boys has a busted jaw. Thanks for the billy !”Chubb nodded and gulped, moving his hand slowly over to press against his stomach. He salivated freely for a second, then decided he wasn’t going to lose everything after all.“Bert Eggstrom will relinquish the command of his division to his senior engineer and report to the control room to assume the duties of the executive officer. Power officer, secure your power room from lift and proceed with underway activities. Electronics, notify White Sands Traffic Control of the situation and have them stand by for my formal report later. We’ll also need some radar fixes very shortly.” He switched off the interphone and turned to Bert. “Set up Program Number Two on the computer and get ready to process data. Move, while I get this star fix!” He pulled the astrostat hood down over his eyes while Bert seated himself before the computer console by the chart desk and began to program the computer.He scribbled the star angles on a pad attached to the astrostat and started making a preliminary determination. Actually, it was no star fix, but a sight on Venus, Jupiter, Luna, and Sol for Euler angles of ship attitude . On the short jump to Luna, he would rely heavily on the precision of radar and doppler data. The trajectory was too short and too simple for him to bother with stellar methods.He finished his calculations to find Bert hovering near him. “Does is check?” the new first mate asked.“Looks good. I think we can live with it.”“Computer’s ready. Bob Danforth's taken over below for me and has the radar data ready.”When they all showed up-some of them looking half-dead—Chubb was still running the computer. He checked the answer and satisfied himself with it, then set the device up to run a continuous program of trajectory by presenting x-, y-, and z-plots on three chart recorders.

(ed note: sadly Mr. Louis dies on the way up. But with a smile on his face as he finally goes home.)

I have no better qualifications for the job than any of you. But three thousand years of naval tradition, reinforced by recent precedents in space, are in point here.

Why not run the ship with each division chief in joint control—a democratic system?

“Because a space ship is operated from the control room,”

We’re used to looking to one man for leadership; our group habits can’t be changed on the spur of the moment. We’re neophytes, we’re in trajectory to Luna in a slightly marginal ship, and we’ve just lost the only man aboard who was experienced. Down below on dirt, a democratic system may work at times. But here, one man and one man alone must correlate the data, co-ordinate efforts, and make the decision.

and that committee system rule was too slow and cumbersome

(at least no pieces larger than two atoms sticking together)

He took a swig of the hot coffee from the bag Greg had brought up and turned to face his officers.“I assumed command,” he began, "because Luna Louis appointed me executive officer with the knowledge I might have to do it.So my assumption of command is not subject to vote—until we hit dirt at any rate. Then the Society can kick me out if they like.“But I’ll still have to rely on your support until then. We’ve lost Louis, but I’ll try to run things as I think he might have done. At this point, co-operation is the only thing that will save us.”“Just a minute, Chubb,” LeRoy out in. “We’ve all worked together for months.Chubb told him.“But, look, Chubb…” LeRoy persisted.“Gentlemen,” the new skipper cut in, “I don’t think some of you realize the position we’re in.“I don’t relish this job. The responsibility scares me a little. But I’m by-God going to see that this ship and the people in it get down on Luna safely! Then—and not before—each one of you is entitled to a swift kick at my fanny if you want. Do we understand each other?”There was silence. Chubb looked at each of them in turn, meeting their eyes. He knew they had accepted Louis’ leadership and had respected him because of his age and experience; it was a bit difficult for them to do the same toward one of their own group. But behind the doubt and reluctance in some eyes, he saw the reassuring fact that each man realized that the Absyrtis had to have a captain“Well, we’re with you, skipper,” Greg Shearer spoke up. “What are your orders?”And the baffling, trifling problems with the ship’s equipment started. Taking a figurative hitch in his belt, each man put down his fear and called up all his reserve of knowledge, determination, and skill—no matter how small each may have been.The vent valve on the forward tank bay jammed, and LeRoy lost all tank pressure. Since it was a sure bet they would lose precious propellant through an open vent and since the tanks had to have a suppression head on them for the pumps, LeRoy was in a quandry.“Pull the valve and cap the line,” Chubb told him.“But I’m liable to rupture the tanks!” LeRoy objected. “That valve acted as a relief valve as well!”“You’ll just have to watch your pressures, boy. And watch ’em close!”Then the drive on the forward radar antennas quit cold. Bob Danforth crawled into the nose cone with Bert, and they came back shaking their heads.“Can it be fixed?” Chubb asked.“No.”“Why?”“Some goof on the ground crew tightened the gear-retaining nuts with a straight wrench instead of a torque wrench . Must have been when I wasn’t looking. He got them too tight. All the gears are stripped. Those that didn’t grind themselves to bits got chunks of other gears in them and chewed themselves to pieces or jammed up tight,” Bert said in a tired voice. “It's locked up and the selsyns are smoldering messes.”“It’ll take a whole new antenna system,” Danforth remarked. “And it happened in about twenty seconds flat.”“Can we use it for fixed forward sights?” Chubb wondered.Bert shook his head. “The dish is canted fifteen degrees to the starboard.” He started through the aft hatch. “So we’re blind forward—staggering blind!”This was followed fifteen minutes later by the utter failure of the water recovery system. The tangle of coils in the vacuum still plugged up—somewhere—with something. Greg did his best, but finding a plug in three hundred meters of tubing was beyond him. The air system was still removing water from the air, but it wasn’t enough. Everyone went on very short water rations.“I’m not too sure about the purity of what we’ve got,” Greg reported. “The purification took place in the still.”Chubb took a look at the running-time clocks over the chart desk. Over twenty-six hours left until touch-down at Dianaport. He reached out, touched the interphone switch, and called for Doc Barcarez.“Doc, how much medicinal alky have you got?”Doc told him. “I … ah … I’ve also got a couple of jugs of Mexican rum I smuggled aboard in my baggage.”“You have any thiamine?”“Some. I have to take it.”“Okay. Greg’s having trouble with the water. Can you hit it with enough alcohol so we can stay sober and yet keep from coming down with the galloping crud? You may have to push thiamine to anybody who gets tight.”“Bueno! Can do!”Greg went aft and Chubb finished up checking the position fix. It looked good so far. “Take the deck, Bert,” he told his exec. “I’m going down and see if We can’t raise Al on the radio. I want to keep him plugged in on what’s going on.”“You want to speak to who?” the ham operator in El Paso asked. Chubb repeated Al’s name. “Oh, he’s your lawyer, isn’t he? Well, he isn’t here. I haven’t seen him at all.”There was a sharp snap, a pop, and the smell of smoldering insulation. The voice on the speaker quit. Half the sets in the electronics compartment went dead. The lights flickered. With a jerk, Bob Danforth reached over and pulled the main power switch.“Overload somewhere!” the new electronics officer re- marked hastily. “No, that wasn’t it; line voltage soared.” He reached for the intercom switch. The squawk box was still operative. “Hello, power room! This is electronics! Our line voltage went wild! What’s wrong?"“Wait one! Electrical fire in the power room!”Chubb reached the handle on a red box and yanked it down. A horn squawked throughout the ship. He muscled Bob away from the intercom and pushed the all-call. “All hands, general alarm! Fire in the power room! Greg, cut their blowers and stand by to seal-off! Bert, proceed with an emergency party to the power room. Damage and disaster plan number two is in operation!”He almost collided with Bert coming aft as he went forward to his own post in the control room. The desire to get back there and see what was going on couldn’t overcome his sense of responsibility as skipper. Chubb had to be in the control room right then. He just barely got into his couch before LeRoy passed the word, “Stand by, control room! We’ve got it under control!”“Bert’s coming back, LeRoy,” Chubb told him.“We won’t need him. We’ve almost got it out. Just some insulation on the port generator.”Chubb breathed a sigh of relief. Had it been bad, the entire tail might have gone. A fire in space is not serious; it can alWays—or nearly always—be extinguished by evacuating the compartment where it is. But in a power room, it can get out of hand in a hurry. He knew of one case, the SS Mirmidon, where an electrical fire had gotten to the reactor control circuits; no pieces of the ship had ever been reported“Hello, Chubb, this is Bert. It’s secure back here. I just got here, and it’s out. Smoky, though. How about some blowers?”Chubb sounded the word to secure, then asked, “What’s the damage?”“The voltage regulator on the one remaining generator’s conked out. LeRoy got a terrific voltage surge on the line. The regulator itself is a sooty mess right now. We can write it off. Better find out what it did elsewhere.”The news was not encouraging. The lighting units on two decks were gone, the microwave oven in the galley was washed-up, and—most important—nearly half the communications gear was finished.“We still have radar and doppler,” Danforth reported. “And the low-power UHF stuff is okay; it was off. We can talk to Dianaport when we get close enough. But we can't even listen to anything else—not even Sammy in El Paso.”LeRoy and his crew started running continuous shifts on the power boards, regulating the ship’s electrical voltage by hand.“Well—how do things stand?”“We’ll make it. We’ve got plenty of scotch tape and glue.”“And the generator?”“As long as We keep heavy loads off it, We’re all right. I’ve asked everybody to call the power room before they so much as turn on a light. We could actually run the reset of the way on the emergency batteries…”“Don’t. Save them. We may need them yet.”“All divisions stand by to commence pre-landing checks at will! Executive officer report to the control room. It is now approximately ten hours to zero on landing at Dianaport!”Chubb left the details of the ship up to Bert and concentrated on the mechanics of their landing at Dianaport. He knew it was a critical test of the ship and crew. Lift was mere button-pushing. It takes considerably more skill to bring a space craft to rest with another object—considerably more skill indeed. He planned for a straight-in approach . An involute would have been better, but he did not want to stretch his luck in that complex a maneuver. With the Moon’s slow rotation, he did not have to allow for much of a drift angle. But because of Dianaport's position in Mare Nubium , he would have to correct quite a bit to get a truly radial approach.He had it worked down to one application of thrust for correction of trajectory and another for landing and was about to set up a prob to see if it could be done with one prolonged acceleration period when Bert interrupted him.“My checks don’t look so good, skipper,” the first mate told him. “Servo systems on the guidance nozzles are wild. We’ve apparently lost the dither on the transfer valves, and the system’s become critically damped.”“Oh, great balls of fire! Can it be fixed?” Chubb exploded.“I don’t know. I’ll have to check.”“Well, check—and fix it! How am I going to get this crate down without guidance nozzles?”“I’ll try, skipper …” “Try, hell! Do it! If you need help, I’ll lend a hand. I’m familiar with that lash-up.”“Okay. But brace yourself for something else …”“Break it gently,” Chubb moaned.“Danforth's got running rabbits on the approach radar, and the range tracking element's gone out of calibration.”Chubb looked dismayed. “One more failure, and we can forget about trying to land; we’ll be lucky to get close enough to crash.”“How about going into circum-lunar orbit, skipper?”“That’s not a bad idea, but I don’t know if it can be done.” He scratched his head. “Let me feed it to Isaac Newton here. Get busy on that guidance and radar—and don’t Waste my time telling me it can’t be fixed. Get the lead out and use that time to figure out how it can be fixed —then let me know how you did it. And move! We haven’t got six months to play around this time!”Thirty minutes later, Chubb had determined that the Absyrtis could not make circum-lunar orbit. The mechanics of the maneuver were too expensive and too complex to be attempted. He told Bert, “It’s Dianaport or nothing, chum. Can I give you a hand with that servo problem?”LeRoy was almost at his wit’s end. The million little troubles he was havingin the power room were almost beyond him. He called Bert to report it. Chubb overheard. He muscled Bert away from the intercom and told LeRoy, “Look, you spent six months with that tangle of plumbing! Don’t tell me you can’t make it work now! Get out those spares you made! Get on the stick, man!”“But, skipper, this rusty old …”“If you want to gripe, join the Space Marines!” Chubb paused and went on in a quieter tone of voice, “What’s the trouble, LeRoy? Can I help?”Chubb could. He was a trained hydaulic engineer. LeRoy wasn’t the only one he helped in those long hours before turn-over. He wasn't doing the job Louis could have done; but it didn’t worry him because he was doing the best he could. He cajoled, cursed, encouraged, reassured, and bawled out his division chiefs, but he was always ready to help them. The crew responded. At turn-over time, there were still troubles, but the crew was of the state of mind where they would have gotten out and pushed if that would have done any good.The men of the Absyrtis were no longer the South-western Rocket Society; they were the crew of the space ship Absyrtis, a rusty, obsolete old bucket but still their pride and joy. Amateurs they were and would admit the fact—but unqualified, no. Heaven help the man who had the temerity to say they were not competent. Hadn’t they taken a piece of rotting junk and remade it into a space ship which was able to break free of the Earth’s stubborn gravity?They were not thoroughly satisfied with that, however. There was a matter of landing, the final portion of the examination. When they landed—not if—they would not have to take the ridicule of the seasoned spacemen. The landing would be their accolade.There are no adequate adjectives to describe their utter determination to get that ship down on Luna and eventually back to White Sands.It was reflected in the manner in which they performed turn-over, swinging the ship around so that the rocket nozzles pointed toward Luna. The radar was still jumping, but Danforth was reading it; the servos had no dither, but Bert was working the guidance nozzles by direct coupling, hoping that the hydraulic lines would hold; and the power plant—well, it looked good, but only the actual operation would tell the story.They came in boldly but carefully on their approach.“Dianaport Traffic reports that we are in the groove,” came the report from Bob Danforth.“Do they sound worried?" Bert asked.“No. Doubtful, perhaps. They’re going to hold traffic when we get in the final approach leg—and the meat wagons are standing by.”“Tell them we won’t need them,” Chubb remarked from under the astrostat hood.“How about some radar and doppler data?” Bert asked the electronics officer.“In half a shake. I’m having a little trouble reading the scopes and getting the aft radar locked in. We’re still a little far out; I’m getting a double trace on my scopes, but you’ll have data shortly.”“Well, start pushing doppler difference frequencies up to the computer as soon as you can.” The ballistic computer was standing by, its memory banks loaded with all the information Chubb and Bert could give it. The program data was also inside it. It was merely waiting patiently for final position data in order to swing into action.“Line up looks good,” Chubb said, pushing his astrostat hood up. “Give or take a half r-c-h, I think we can live with it. What’s the minus time for correction maneuver?”“I won’t know exactly until we get some radar. Wup!”“Electronics to control! Do you read that radar data okay?” Danforth’s voice came over the phones.Chubb and Bert checked the winking tell-tale lights and swinging dials on their boards.“It looks rough, but the computer’s taking it,” Bert told him. He looked over at Chubb. “Computer and autopilot tracking, skipper. Minus five minutes to correction time.”“Okay, Bert. All hands to acceleration stations and strapped. Get the power plant hot and ready to go. Give me thirty-second counts.”“Aye, sir. Do you want all hand in pressure suits?”“Negative. We don’t have enough to go around. Have Greg seal all compartments in case we spring a leak under thrust.”It was, as usual, a long wait.After making one final adjustment on the autopilot panel, Chubb floated over to his couch and started strapping in. He studied the data presentations on his panel as he did so, trying to get the feel of this landing. He had studied the techniques of landing in texts, but realized it was more of an arcane art than a science. It took What they called “touch”, and he didn’t have any. He would have to feel his way down by inches, but he didn’t dare waste any time about it. The Absyrtis had only so much propellant left in her tanks, and he didn’t want to waste it by needless maneuvering or fighting gravity too long.“All hands ready, sir,” Bert reported, jostling him from his concentration. “Ninety seconds to zero!”“Let’s have pumps!”“Roger! Power room, stand by to fire!”“Power room here! Pumps coming up! Tank pressures coming up! Reactor at pre-fire heat!” LeRoy’s voice replied. “I think she’ll hold! I think she’ll hold!”“Read-back check on parameters!” Chubb ordered.Bert consulted his panel. “Set for all units one-third thrust—Three degrees pitch positive and seven degrees yaw left on the guidance nozzles for five seconds thrust duration. Do you concur?”“Concur.”“Sixty seconds to zero!”In theory, the Absyrtis could have made the Earth-Luna jump with two applications of thrust: one at lift and one at landing. However, it would have required accuracy far beyond practical engineering ability. Instruments could not be read that closely, neither by man nor machine. And the instruments could not possibly be expected to have that sort of accuracy. It was much cheaper, both in terms of all-up ship mass and sheer complexity of machinery, to allow for deviations and carry along a meneuvering margin in the propellant tanks.“Thirty seconds to zero!”“Power plant hot!” The pumps were shaking the ship again.Chubb stared at the pin-point stars in his astrostat, making a last check. Pushing a switch, he changed the mirror angles to show three separate stars which would coincide in the eyepiece once the correction had been made “—fifteen—fourteen—thirteen—” Bert was chanting in a monotone.Chubb braced himself, relaxing and at the same time preparing himself for the push that was coming. “Fire on autopilot!”“—four—three—two—one—”It was a hard start, even at reduced thrust. The ship bucked violently, then settled down to shaking. But it didn’t last long. The motors shut down with their usual clamoring and bellowing, a wet, sloppy blubber that was heard even in the control room.Chubb squinted through the astrostat. “Looks good here,”“Bert remarked.“Power plant in cut-off!” LeRoy called. “She works smooth!”“Smooth, my foot!” Greg’s voice snapped. “What are you burning for go-juice?”“Shut up!” Chubb roared. The three stars were perfectly aligned and holding their positions. “Steady as she goes, Bert. Give me some ranges and bearings?”“Dianaport or Divana Space Station?”“Both.”He lay silent as the data flowed into the computer. Watching, he saw it was assimilating the data continuously and was holding to program. It was a reliable piece of equipment, but with the fouled-up radar, Chubb felt he would probably have to make part of the landing either on manual control or manual over-ride.The Absyrtis was in quite close and falling toward the Moon’s surface at a little better than a kilometer per second. Bert was reading Moon-relative vectors now, using his own astrostat as a drift indicator.So far, so good, thought Chubb. He was just beginning to correlate all the data into a fair mental picture when LeRoy’s voice screamed over the interphone, “Control room, we’ve lost a pump! Number Four has seized her bearings! Chambers three and five are out!”That was almost too much for Chubb. He hesitated for a split-second, then saw the approach rate indicator. “Bert! All available chambers stand by for full thrust! Program the computer for four-g by chambers one, two, four, and six! Guidance corrections accordingly! Move! I want to know if we can do it with what we’ve got!”So near, he thought disparingly, and yet so far. Three- hundred and eighty-three thousand kilometers behind them and less than a thousand to go. A half-year of work, hours of sweat and worry, a man’s life—and a failure with the goal in sight.Bert had the keyboard console swung over his couch and was setting up the new prob. LeRoy called up, “Skipper, can we make it on four chambers?”“Pipe down and keep your britches on!”“Whew!” Bert breathed. “We can make it! Four and a half minutes to zero!”“LeRoy,” Chubb called the power man, speaking in a firm but quiet tone, “we’re going to have to mash it in under high-g. Can the plant take it? How does it look?”"I've got my fingers crossed. We’ll have to do something about the vibration at high thrust; it shakes everything loose.”Chubb thought back, trying to remember his theory of combustion. “Look, are your pumps running fast enough? Try increasing the injector pressures.” He was shooting in the dark, but it might work.“It may bust the chambers.”“Not those iron maidens it won’t.” The Absyrtis had been built long before the thin-walled, light-weight modern rocket engines had become standard equipment. They were such an integral part of the ship’s structure that they had never been torn out during the many modifications; the ship-yards had merely modified the injectors."We'll have to cut the over-speed trips on the turbines!”“Do it! Let ‘em run hot! Those turb buckets will stand it for a couple minutes! Just hang on, LeRoy, and twist her tail hard!—Or there’ll be a new lunar crater called Absyrtis!”“Two minutes to zero, skipper!” Bert armounced. “Doppler indicates our approach rate is within one-percent of calculated. Dianaport and Divana have confirmed. Autopilot is tracking. Dianaport Traffic says we’re eight degrees north of the groove and to correct. They’re holding traffic and have cleared the vicinity of Landing Pad Twenty-three for us.”“I’ll bet they’re standing by. Meat wagons for us and cops for LeRoy.” Chubb growled. “Okay,” he went on, then paused before giving the long-awaited order. “Bert, stand by to take her down;”“All hands Stand by for landing! Ninety seconds to zero!”“All boards Test-Fly to FLY!”“Boards to FLY!”“Power room here! Pumps coming up!—Up!—Up!—Up!—Good Lord!—Up!”The sound was a scream in the deck plates.“Hold it, LeRoy! Hold her, boy!”“Seventy-five seconds to zero!”“Autopilot?”“Tracking, skipper! Corrections noted and ready for compensation!”“Radar?”“Locked on Dianaport beacons!”The rocky craters lining Mare Nubium were plainly visible through the conning blister now. There was no doubt that the Absyrtis was falling toward the Moon.“Bert,” Chubb said privately to his exec, “I don’t know what’s going to happen after we hit dirt down there—but whatever it is, so help me if we get out of the sky safely I’ll figure it was worth it.”“Sure, it was worth it! Sixty seconds to zero!”“We’!l make it—We’ve got to make it!”“Control, these pumps may not hold up much longer at this speed!” LeRoy yelled over the interphone.“Electronics reporting! Divana just went into our blind spot toward!”“We go down on one radar, then!”“Skipper, that’s suicide!”“Shut up and do as you’re told!”“Forty-five seconds!”“Control room, these pumps are shaking everything! We’ve got a leak!”“Where? How bad?”“Squirting out around a fitting!”“Tighten that fitting or seal it! Hurry!”“Thirty seconds to zero”“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want …”“Shut up, Greg! I can’t hear LeRoy!” Chubb yelled.“Twenty-five!”“We’ll let it leak, Chubb. We’ll just get a little wet, that’s all”“Twenty!”“All hands brace for landing!”“Fifteen!” Bert screamed. “All green! Autopilot in command!”“Like hell! I’m on manual over-ride.”“Ten!—Nine—eight—.”It looked—well, they might make it—if the radar didn’t fizzle out—if the computer didn’t go wild—if the guidance system didn’t jitter—if the propulsion system worked. There were too many “if’s” for Chubb. He braced his fingers over the manual controls, not sure of whether he could land the ship or not, but willing to make a try.“Three—two—one—.”This time one chamber lit off before the rest. He felt the ship start to swing under the unbalanced thrust. Then all chambers were lit and correction was possible. The Absyrtis gyrated wildly, then settled down to a bone-crushing four-g's of acceleration.She hammered and rattled. Chubb clamped his jaws tight to keep from biting his tongue. He alternated his glances between the panel with the meters blurred by vibration and the conning blister.They were falling too fast! No, that was his imagination. He couldn’t read the approach rate indicator clearly enough. View aft on the tv monitor was useless; the vibration in the boat-tail had thrown the camera unit out of synch.But that couldn’t be Mare Nubium below them! It was much too rugged! Mountain peaks were spearing toward the ship.There was a weak voice in his headphones. “They’re holding! They’re holding!” LeRoy was screaming.The acceleration increased slightly, then slacked off as the autopilot felt its way down, the ground clutter on the radar confusing it to some extent.Then the ship cocked over at a ten-degree angle. Chubb almost over-rode it then, but it righted itself before he could move against the acceleration. Almost immediately, he was glad; through the brilliant orange haze of the jet aft, he could see the tiny checkerboard of Dianaport.What had Luna Louis once said? Why, he had been right! The old bucket did know her way into Dianaport by heart!The autopiot slacked off and let them fall at a half-g. The lunar soil rushed up at the ship. Chubb panicked invountarily, the old, ingrained fear of falling taking over. He tried to grope for switches. Something must be wrong! He got his hand over the panel, and a sudden burst of acceleration slammed his hand down on another switch.“What did I hit? What did I hit?” he screamed to himself.But it happened too quickly. Another burst of acceleration, a fall of about, a second’s duration, and then a back-wrenching jolt. The rocket nozzles blubbered and the dust swirled up around the conning blister.They were down on the Moon.And Chubb discovered what switch he had accidentally hit. He found himself staring at a luminous light panel on the overhead which said plainly:“You have just hit the panic switch, provided by the electronics division for your convenience in times of stress.”He started to laugh." “Jack down,” he managed to get out. “Secure all in-flight operations. Prepare to …” He couldn’t go on. He was laughing so hard that tears were running down his cheeks, pulled by the feeble lunar gravity. It was not hilarious laughter; there were sobs mingled in.Bert was a bit quieter, but he was doing the same thing. They lay there together on their couches, having trouble believing that they had made it at last.Chubb and Bert finally got the ship secured as the big loading towers were pulling up to the ship. The skipper of the Absyrtis would have liked to have seen the lunar landscape outside, but by the time things had quieted down to the point where he was able to take a look, the pressurized towers had cut off the view.“Electronics,” Chubb called, “give Dianaport Traffic a yelp and tell them we’re down and secured—and find out when the quarantine crew will be out …”“Wait one, skipper! I’m talking with them right now!” Danforth’s voice came back, strangely excited.“How about it, Bert? Have we got ground power yet?” Chubb asked his exec, checking.“Ready to switch now.”“Okay, all hands unstrap at will and stand by for …”“Chubb! Uh—Control, this is electronics! Skipper! We’ve got a reception waiting for us!…”“I’ll bet”“No, not what you’re thinking! We’re heroes, skipper! The mayor of Dianaport and all the colonial officials are waiting to greet us as soon as we get our locks open! This whole place is going nuts!”