At first, the ship's elliptical path had kept them advancing away from the Earth at a rate of more than three kilometers per second, as soon as they escaped from her gravitation and began wandering through space like a swarm of tiny, independent planets, drifting through the solar system. Then the Sun's gravitation had begun to act, and they were still swinging away from its source, although working against it. Their velocity along their elliptical path had day by day diminished, until their angular velocity around the Sun had been reduced to less than that of the Earth. The Earth had begun to overhaul them on her solar orbit, and would pass between them and the Sun at a distance of some 20 million kilometers. Thenceforth she would outdistance them more and more.
This day would offer the lonely crews of the Mars vessels a celestial spectacle never before beheld by the eye of man. They would see the Earth and the Moon transit the Sun's disk. It would be a farewell to Earth until they should again return towards the close of their sidereal journey.
Smoked glasses before their eyes, they hung at the ports, gazing at the Sun's blinding splendor. They could not see the luminous double planet with which they had become so familiar during the past weeks, for both Earth and Moon had turned towards them their nocturnal sides, and these did not detach themselves from the surrounding blackness of the sky.
At last a tiny black dot appeared against the enormous corona surrounding the blinding white Sun sphere like a robe of flames. It was, to begin with, sickle-shaped, gradually becoming circular in appearance. Deliberately, very deliberately, it moved from left to right into the full glare of the fiery ball. An hour or so later, another tiny spot appeared, even tinier than the first. It followed towards the Sun's center.To the navigators, this was far more than a spectacular sidereal slide show or sorrowful leave-taking from a midget dark spot that called itself the center of life, and which its inhabitants were wont to refer to as The World. The navigators could use it for a thorough-going check on the accuracy with which the convoy had maintained its velocity and track. In their astrodomes, they held filtered telescopes before their eyes, took the exact instants and measured exactly the points at which Earth and Moon transited the left and right edges of the Sun's disc.
Then they computed to the fraction of a second just how much time had elapsed since they had shut off the rocket motors some 2Vi months earlier and begun the long coast through space.
The transit of the Earth lasted eight hours and five minutes, and in two hours she disappeared from sight beyond the flaming edges of the corona. One hour later, the Moon followed suit.
The navigators compared notes and data by radio, consulted their tables, and came to the conclusion that their track was little, if at all, in error, and that no corrective maneuver need be undertaken.
Chapter 18 — The Aldebaran calls "Mayday!"
Three more months passed, and Holt and his faithful band still faced an equal period before they would reach their mysterious Red Planet.
Weariness and extended inactivity made themselves felt. Personalities were beginning to wear on one another with resulting tensions. The cook and the engineer of Antares had gotten into a fist fight, which might have had serious results had it not been for the handicaps imposed by weightlessness on physical combat.
This was no particular surprise to Holt, familiar as he was with the effects of restricted living quarters on the occupants. He therefore undertook an exchange of personnel between the space vessels so as to afford some variety in the human contacts between his men. It was, indeed, time to alleviate the unbearable monotony which supervenes when the same wisecrack has been worked over as many as ten times. Even Billingsley had seemingly exhausted his ample store of amusing anecdotes concerning English globetrotters and dead Chinese emperors. That had been the danger signal. Even if there are no new tales, thought Holt, we can improve things by getting a new set of listeners.
Captains, navigators and engineers had to stick it out, for it would not have done to throw away the intimate familiarity they had developed with the complicated mechanics under their charge. Tom Knight, captain of Holt's Polaris, remained of course, and none of the tensions had occurred between the two. Their friendship actually became deeper, despite the over-intricate contact in which they were obliged to live.
Tom's appearance had altered considerably since they had stood together at the rail of the Queen of Hawaii and watched the lights of San Diego melt into the distance. In accordance with a custom which sprang up in the whole Mars fleet a few weeks after departure, he had let his beard grow. With his smoothly parted blond hair, his bright blue eyes and his long blond beard, he looked like an ancient Viking sailing forth to Ultima Thule.
Holt himself remained clean-shaven. He insisted that no beard could "hang properly" without gravity and that it would interfere with eating. No matter how convincing the arguments of the beard-wearers that their experience proved the opposite, he stuck to his theory. But in the interest of the psychological welfare of his crews and to prevent them from becoming prey to depressive thinking, he instituted a broad program of activity.
Every passenger ship held a movie show at least twice a week. Sam Woolf and Howard Ross circulated from vessel to vessel and ran the projector. Those not on watch in the cargo ships we allowed to attend, since the limited spaces where they lived would not permit of such luxuries. This they called "getting out into the great world."
Dr. Gudunek would give radio lectures in English, French, German, Russian and Spanish for those who desired to improve their education during the long days of inactivity. He announced that he would include Martian during the return trip. He saw to it that there was an active interchange of books between the vessels, thus providing himself with an opportunity for extensive visiting, and he was always welcome.
The expedition's gravity cells offered one of the gratefully accepted escapes from boredom.
Early in the planning stage, Dr. Barrett and the specialists of the Institute of Space Medicine had expressed grave concern as to the effects of the weightless condition upon the crews, when protracted for months on end. Even Bergmann and his assistants, the champions in long-time weightlessness, had been able frequently to return to Lunetta during their extended observations and there to expose themselves to her synthetic gravity for several hours.
Many problems had been posed to the space doctors. What would be the effect of extended weightlessness upon body fluids? Would, perchance, the sensitivity of the organs of equilibrium of the inner ear, weight-sensitive as they are, suffer? It was theseorgans which for ages had told men and animals what was up and what was down — where Heaven and Hell were. In space flight their system of reference was gone… Would a general degeneration of the muscular and vascular systems not threaten organs such as arms and legs and heart, when, accustomed to working against gravity, they would be able to function with so little effort? In weightlessness, violent motion involved the danger of the mover's colliding with any of the six walls surrounding him, forcing him to use his physical strength with utmost caution! The muscles and limbs of the crews might well shrink as though in plaster casts, incapacitating them for their duties when they reached the surface of the distant Red Planet.
The answers to all such problems were the gravity cells, for it was impractical to provide the expedition with so bulky a doughnut as Lunetta. Peyton's designing genius evolved the dumbbell-shaped affairs which floated not far from the ships, whirling about the center points of their handles like giant maple keys.