Not far from the scientists sat the radio men, headed by their boss, spare, snowyhaired Francis Lussigny of Canada. It was he who had designed the High-Duty radio sets which were to bridge the unfathomable distances which would soon separate them from the Lunetta orbit. He was one of the doubters until he met Holt in Lunetta. But the darkness and solitude of the deep heavens bewitched him during his long struggle to perfect satisfactory interplanetary radio in the orbit. Then he sought and was granted the opportunity to communicate personally across the multi-million-mile radio bridge his genius had conceived.
Lieutenant Hempstead and his military troop of 18 sat at another table. It was they who would guard and guide the landing party. John Wiegand would keep them employed during the extended coasting flight through space, and they had been trained to a tick along many lines. Some of them would preside in the ships' galleys with their electric stoves. Others would operate the busy bees from ship to ship or apply the damage control knowledge they had acquired in the simulators for repair personnel. All of them were to be of the landing party except Jimmy Cox, the heavyweight chief cook and storekeeper, and his two helpers. Once on solid Mars, they would drive the caterpillars and, if necessary, employ their light weapons to protect the others. They would taste all the surprises the Red Planet might hold in store.
In the orbit of departure, the Mars vessels had been abandoned by their ship-keepers and were manned by their regular crews. All the ferry vessels had returned to Christmas Island except Astroliner, the luxurious command vessel of the Space forces. In her cabin, Braden, Spencer and Dick Peyton awaited the final departure of the strange agglomeration of cumbersome shapes apparently floating motionless in space some few hundred yards form their observation ports.
Braden terminated a short valedictory radio talk, reminding the crews of the scope and intrepidity of the enterprise. He stressed the responsibility to the peoples of Earth resting upon them and emphasized the importance of Spartan discipline. Lack of the latter might jeopardize not only success, but their own lives.
Six journalists scribbled tensely at notes, reporting the great departure while two newsreel men worked their cameras under the unaccustomed handicaps of weightlessness.
Outside the observation ports, Holt's flagship, Polaris, hung motionless at the head of the column of Mars craft. She bore the spherical control and living nacelle at her fore.
Silvery in color, it exhibited the seven astrodomes and sundry portholes. Behind it and vertical to the longitudinal axis of the vessel was the framework of the cruciform "forward tank retainer." The fat-bellied dual hydrazine tanks for the first propulsive maneuver hung swollen and silver from its outer ends. Each contained 540 cubic meters of the liquid.
Below them and supported from below by a second tank retainer were the nitric acid tanks for the maneuvers, tanks of almost equivalent dimensions.
In the other plane of the cruciform tank retainers hung the elongated tanks for the second and third maneuvers. In the center, almost obscured by the latticework backbone of the vessel, were the attenuated pipe-like storages for the ultimate maneuver of adaptation to the terrestrial orbit when the expedition should return. The reserve tanks for propellants left over from prior maneuvers were cramped between them and the huge spheres for the maneuver of departure. Their filling would begin with any excess which might remain when the first maneuver was complete.
There was a long extension protruding transversely from the after tank retainer. A universal joint at its end supported the long, gutter-like solar reflector for the power plant.
The mercury vapor turbine and its electric generator could be seen beside it.
Behind the after tank retainer were the serpentines of the propellant piping leading from the tanks to the feed pumps. Abaft the latter was the enormous rocket motor, flat, and in appearance not unlike a huge cake. Around its rim were the four movable steering rockets for flight path control.
Echeloned astern of the Polaris floated the cargo vessel Robert H. Goddard.
The Goddard's appearance was dominated by the enormous wings of the landing boat constituting her fore-part and serving as crew nacelle. Behind the stern of the boat, almost concealed by the great struts of the connecting structure of the ship, was a spare propulsion plant intended to replace any which might prove defective in the Goddard or some other Mars vessel. Goddard carried no tanks or propellants for the last tow maneuvers, for she would never make them. She was to be left circling Mars. But to make up for it, she was laden like a Mexican burro with all sorts of tanks and equipment for the easement of the tasks of her sister ships. Among her burdens were the large telescope, the solar reflector and the circular reflecting antenna of the High-Duty radio set.
She also carried two busy bees, oxygen tanks, the water supply and many objects whose applications were not immediately apparent.
In Astroliner, the loudspeaker had been hooked up to intercept communications between the ships.
"Colonel Holt in Command of Polaris speaking. X minus six minutes. Send ready reports as called. Nordenskjold!"
"Nordenskjold, cargo ship Goddard, ready!" Ponderously came the other reports.
"Sherman, passenger ship Aldebaran, ready."
"Van Newman, passenger ship Arcturus, ready."
"Duncan, passenger ship Regulus, ready."
"Hubbard, cargo ship Oberth, ready."
"Burck, passenger ship, Capella, ready."
"Laroche, passenger ship Vega, ready."
"Haynes, cargo ship Ziolkowsky, ready."
"Steinmetz, passenger ship Antares, ready."
"To squadron from Polaris; Time X minus 3. At X equals zero, beginning with Polaris and in order of reporting, ships will apply thrust at 30 second intervals."
The seconds dragged wearily as tension among the men in Astroliner waxed, their eyes glued to the ports.
Then Holt's voice spoke calmly, "X minus 10, 9, 8, -"
At the word "three," a tiny flame leaped from the motor of Polaris, to be followed bya long trail of fire. The thunder of the jet was imperceptible, for this was no rocket launch from Earth. There was no air to transmit the sound even across the short span between Astroliner and the convoy.
Slowly, very slowly, the colossal vessel began to move across their field of vision and disappeared.
Then the Goddard's, flaming jet lashed out and she too bore away majestically with her outthrust wide wings.
Aldebaran, Arcturus, Regulus — one after another, they forged into the illimitable distances by the consecutive ignition of their fiery tails. Amid a silence in which the buzzing of a gnat might have been heard, the cumbersome craft departed from view.
The cabin of Astroliner resounded to a mechanical buzzing as the pilot ran up his flywheels and twisted his vessel in space so that Braden might again see the convoy.
There they were against the velvet black sky with its unwinking stars. An orderly line of ten man-made comets trailed ten flaming exhausts laterally across the heavens and Braden's heart swelled within him. This was truly a departure on man's proudest exploration; a departure in flaming confidence! He was still musing upon the incalculable possibilities facing the space crews when Astroliner's jet roared out to start him and the other stay-at-homes back to Christmas Island.
Chapter 15 — Killing Time Between the Worlds
Five days of the voyage to Mars were behind the ten ships of the convoy.
After the initial impulse away from Earth, their intervals had slowly become greater.
After three days, at the exact end of which each ship had fixed her position by stellar parallax, Hal Royer, the head navigator, reported to Holt that Ziolkowsky was the only vessel to have applied her thrust so accurately as to both direction and amount that she needed no correction. Duncan, the solid fellow in command of Regulus had slipped ahead so far that the sunlight on her glittering tanks appeared but like one of the fixed stars in the dim distance. Burck in Capella brought up the tail of the procession, some 40 miles astern of Ziolokowsky. Polaris held her position well and was but little ahead of Ziolkowsky.