Hal Clement - Mistaken for Granted

VIP免费

2024-11-24 0 0 84.14KB 26 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Mistaken For Granted

PEOPLE CAN USUALLY get used to the weightlessness of space flight during the days or

weeks it takes to cross from one world to another. In a long orbit it is easy to convince oneself that

one's ship is not about to fall onto anything, even though the sensation of weightlessness is that of

endless falling. There simply is nothing visible nearby to hit. Of course, travelers have had

nervous breakdowns in spaceships too badly designed to let them see out.

To a physicist or an experienced space pilot, a bounce ride is just another orbit.

Unfortunately most of the orbit is underground, like that of a baseball—though, as with a

baseball, the underground part is not what is used. Traveling by bounce from, say, Ley Base in

Sommering Crater to Wilsonburg under Taruntius X, the trip takes only thirty-five minutes

and is never much more than two hundred miles above the Moon. But during the final third

of it anybody can see that most definitely he is falling toward the ground.

Rick Suspee had gladly shown off his adaptation to free-fall during the long trip from Earth.

He hoped, however, that no one was watching him now. In his mind he knew that the

bounce-shuttle's computer was keeping track of position and velocity through its radar eyes. That

the computer would light the main engines at the proper instant. That a second computer with a sepa-rate

power source and independent sensors would fire a solid-fuel safety brake if the first engine failed to

ignite. That a living, highly competent pilot with his own sight-ing equipment and firing circuits could take

over if both the automatics failed. Rick's mind knew all that but the lower parts of his nervous system

were not convinced. Traveling at thousands of feet a second on a downward slant low over the moon's

surface still made him tense.

Annoyed and frightened as he was, Rick felt sorry for his stepmother as he glanced

back and saw the ex-pression on her face. She was petrified. He decided it would be best

to talk, and luckily he had seen enough Moon charts to be able to talk sense.

"We're past the peak now, I think. That's Ariadaeus behind on the left, just into the

sunlight. You can relax for a while—we're still more than two hundred miles up. Look for

a white beacon flashing three times a sec-ond just to the south of our arc. That will be the

Tran-quility Base monument. We're out over the Mare now. Look—on the horizon ahead you can

see Crisium and the mountains where Wilsonburg is."

The rocket swung slowly around so that its main en-gines pointed "forward." The

braking blast was about due.

The mountains southwest of Mare Crisium were looming huge "ahead" and below. The

Mare itself stretched beyond the horizon, which was much nearer than it had been a

quarter-hour before. The pilot's calm voice sounded.

"Thirty seconds to power. Check your safety straps and rest your heads in the pads."

The two passengers obeyed. The pad allowed Rick Suspee to see the stars beyond the

rocket's bow, nothing else.

The braking stage was made at two Earth gravities, the computer applying changes of

one percent or so in power and a fraction of a degree in direction every tenth of a second

throughout firing time—none of these adjustments could be sensed by human nerves. The only change

at touchdown was from two Earth gravities to one Lunar pull.

"You may unstrap," the pilot said, "but stay in your seats until we're inside the lock. I'll

tell you when there's air enough for you to exit."

Rick watched the mobile rack trundle the rocket to-ward the side of the sixty-foot

circle of smooth rock on which it had settled. The circle was the bottom of a craterlet in one of

the hills over Wilsonburg. The bottom had been leveled and the side next to the upward slop of

the hill cut to a vertical wall. In this wall was the lock, now yawning open to gulp the shuttle.

The craft was through the huge outer valve in mo-ments. The black sky and sunlit rock

outside were cut off from view as portals slid shut.

The pilot spoke again. "You can start for the door now. There's a pound and a half of

oxygen outside and it will be up to three before I get our own valves open. It's been a

pleasure to have you aboard."

Rick was on his feet before the speech was over. His stepmother was more careful. She did not

exactly mind weighing only twenty-one pounds, but she was not yet used to it and the ceiling

was low. She was about to make some remark about inadequate gravity, Rick w sure, when she

was distracted by what she saw outside.

"Rick! Look! There's Jim! He hasn't changed a bit. I don't see Edna, though—"

Rick picked out the man easily enough from the dozen figures at the foot of the ladder

outside. He was the heaviest and obviously the oldest. Rick gave less thought to the

whereabouts of his aunt. He was noticing that none of the group were wearing spacesuits. Yes,

the air had to be all right outside. This realization was supported by a slight pop in his ears as the shuttle's

air pressure changed slightly. Evidently the pilot had opened both valves of the vehicle's airlock.

Rick headed rapidly for the exit, leaving his stepmother to follow more cautiously.

The top of the ladder was forty-five feet from the floor of the big lock. Rick accomplished

the distance in a single jump—at least, he meant it for a jump. In terms of energy, this was

about the same as an eight-foot drop on Earth; in time, it took rather more than four

seconds. Which was enough to let Jim Talles step forward and catch him, the catch being

embarrassingly necessary because the four seconds were also quite long enough to permit Rick to

complete the best part of a unintended somersault. His Moon coordination not good as he had

supposed—he had left the top step with more spin than he realized. His uncle's first words were a tactful

reproof.

"Watch it, lad. Carelessness can be dangerous on the Moon. I take it your mother is aboard?"

"Sure is. I—I guess you're my Uncle Jim. Uh-—hello." Rick could not decide whether

he was more frightened or embarrassed. It had been a weird sensa-tion on the way down,

something like that of a diver leaving the board to do a jackknife and deciding too late to

turn it into a half-twist. That was bad enough—but still worse, Rick felt, was the fact that

the five young persons accompanying his uncle were all about Rick Suspee's own age.

None had laughed or even smiled, but he could imagine what they were thinking. For

about the five-hundredth time since his fifteenth birthday he told himself to stop showing

off. Then he took a closer look at the five teenagers.

One, on second glance, appeared almost too old for that category. He was about

Rick's own height—five--and-a-half feet—but stouter, sturdier. His broad shirt-front was

covered even more solidly than Rick's own by competence badges, many of which the Earth boy could

not recognize—naturally enough.

A quick glance showed that all the others were simi-larly decorated. But Rick saw

with relief that none ex-hibited nearly as much badge area as he did. Maybe they would

be impressed enough by his Earth-gained skills to be able to forget, or at least discount,

the slip he had just made. For one thing, none of them could possibly hold an underwater

rating. Rick's scuba badge had been earned so recently that he was still gloating over it.

"Jim! It's so wonderful to meet you at last!" His stepmother's voice pulled Rick from

his thoughts. She stood at the top of the ladder, Jim Talles posting him-self at the foot to

cover possible accidents. An unneces-sary precaution. Mrs. Suspee's methods of showing off

were more subtle than her son's. She descended slowly and carefully, reaching the bottom quite

safely. She em-braced her brother-in-law with an enthusiasm Rick sus-pected was due to

her relief that the bounce ride was over. Then she asked about Edna's health and whereabouts,

delivered messages from her husband and sundry friends, and finally allowed Talles to shepherd the party

out of the lock chamber and make introductions.

"Edna couldn't get off the job," Jim Talles said. "But she'll be home by the time we get there. The kids

here with me will be hosting Rick a lot"—Rick gulped; these would be just the ones he'd played the fool

for—"and will probably show him a good deal more than I could. This is Aichi Yen, chairman by earned

competence of the group known officially as the Fresh Footprints. Usually they call themselves by less

formal names." Talles indicated the oldest member, whose badges Rick had already particularly noticed.

His face, to Rick, seemed rather nondescript. His hair, cut short in the common Moon style so as to give

no trouble inside a space helmet, was jet black. His eyes gave just a sugges-tion of the ancestry implied

by his name although the color of his skin suggested suntan much more than Earth's Orient.

"This is Marie D'Nombu." A girl certainly not yet sixteen nodded in greeting. She was several inches

shorter than Rick and Aichi but her shirt was well cov-ered with badges. Her lips were parted in a

good-hu-mored smile, and Rick wished he were sure she was not laughing at him. "Orm Hoffman—Peter

Willett—Audie Rice." A tall, unbelievably thin boy of Rick's own age, a fourteen-year-old with a shy

expression and skin al-most as dark as Marie's, and a girl about twenty pounds more massive than Marie

acknowledged their names in turn. All were looking more at Rick's shirt than at his face.

"Rick will come with me for now," Talles told the young people. "It was good of you to trouble to

meet him here. I'll be glad to see all of you at my place around ten P.M. and as long after as

anyone can stay awake. I know you're busily scheduled now—so thanks again for coming."

Aichi Yen shook hands with Talles and, as an after-thought, with Rick, then nodded to Mrs. Suspee

and disappeared into a nearby tunnel mouth. Three of the others did the same. Marie altered the pattern

by speak-ing.

"I'm glad to meet you, Rick. I've been looking for-ward to it ever since Chief Jim told us you were

com-ing. I've read, a lot about Earth. I've tried to imagine what it's like to be able to go outdoors with no

special preparation unless it's raining or something like that. I hope you'll tell us about wind and rainbows

and glaciers and such—"

"I can try. I've never seen a glacier, though."

"Well, that makes us even. I've never seen a radical trap."

"What's that?"

"I'll tell you tonight if the Chief hasn't beaten me to it. I'm supposed to be in class now. 'Bye." She

was gone on the track of the others.

"Those seem interesting youngsters," Mrs. Suspee re-marked as the girl disappeared. "I'm not sure I

approve of that flaunting of badges, though. It seems like show-ing off. I was hoping we'd be away from

that sort of thing on the Moon. We get enough of it at home."

"If the badges are properly earned, why not display 'em?" responded her brother-in-law. "There are

a lot worse things than letting the world know what you can do well."

"Well, Jim, I won't argue. And you'll notice I didn't forbid Rick to wear his badges here, even if I did

hope they'd turn out to be out of style." She gazed off to her left. "I think those must be our bags over

there. Do we take a cab, or do you live close by?"

"Our place is about eight miles away." Talles seemed amused. Smiling, he added, "We walk, and

carry our baggage."

His sister-in-law looked at him, stupefied. Rick, too, was startled. The bags weren't heavy, especially

on the Moon, but—

"There's no public transportation here. We could probably work out some arrangement for getting

the luggage delivered, but it would inconvenience a lot of people."

"I hadn't thought of that." Mrs. Suspee frowned. "I suppose this is a sort of frontier town, in a way."

Talles laughed. "Maybe it is, but that's not why we walk. You're on the Moon now.

You weigh about a sixth of what you did on Earth. You need exer-cise, plenty of it, or your muscle

tone goes down, your circulation falters, your bones start getting soft. A good rule of thumb is ten miles

of fast walking every day for each hundred pounds of body mass. If your work doesn't give you

time for that, you get a doctor to pre-scribe some specific exercises and you do 'em faithfully. All

right—traveling!"

He picked up his sister-in-law's luggage—a forty -pound-mass bag in each hand—and started off

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

Hal Clement - Mistaken for Granted.pdf

共26页,预览3页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Hal Clement - Mistaken for Granted

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: