Science Fiction - Daily Short Stories
Shipwreck in the Sky - Eando Binder
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- Broadcast on:
- 22 Sep 2024
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Shipwreck in the Sky by Iando Binder. The flight into space that made pilot Captain Dan Barstow famous. The flight was listed at GHQ as Project Songbird. It was sponsored by the Space Medicine Labs with the U.S. Air Force. And its pilot was Captain Dan Barstow. A hand-picked man, Dan Barstow, chosen for the AF's most important project of the year because he and his VX-3 had already broken all previous records set by hordes of V-2s, Navy arrow bees, and anything else that flew the skyways. Dan Barstow, first manned across the sea of air and sight open, unlimited space, pioneer flight to infinity. He grinned and hummed to himself as he settled down for the long jump. Too busy to be either thrilled or scared, he considered the 37 instruments he'd have to read, the twice that many records to keep, and the miles of camera film to run. He'd been hand-picked in thoroughly conditioned to take it all without more than a 10% increase in his pulse rate, so he worked as a matter of fact as if he were down in the G's centrifuge of the Space Medicine Labs where he'd been schooled for this trip for months. He kept up a running fire of oral reports through his helmet radio down to Rough Rock and his CO. All roger, sir, temperature falling fast, but this rubberoid space suit keeps me cozy, no chills. Doc Blaine will be happy to hear that, wait with sensations pretty queer and I feel upside down as much as right side up, but no bad effect. Taking shots of the sun's corona now through color film, huh? Oh yes, sir, it's beautiful all right now that you mention it, but hell, sir, who has got time for aesthetics now? Oops, that was a close one. Tenth meteor whizzing past makes me think of the flak back on those Berlin bombing runs. Dan couldn't help wincing when the meteors peppered down past the flak of space. Below he could see the meteors flare up brightly as they hit the atmosphere. Most of those near his position were small, none bigger than a baseball, and Dan took comfort in the fact that his rocket was small, too, in the immensity around him. A direct hit would be sheer bad luck, but the good old law of averages was on his side. Yes, Colonel, this tin can I'm writing in is holding together okay. Dan continued to rough rock. If he paused even a second in his report, a top sergeant's yell from the Colonel's throat came back for him to keep talking. Every bit of information he could transmit to them was a vital revelation in his USAF Alpha exploration of open space beyond Earth's air cushion, with ceiling unlimited to infinity. Cosmic Ray, sir? Sure, the reading shot up double on the Geiger. Huh? No, I don't feel a thing. Lockdock Baird suspected we invented a lot of old wives tales in advance before going into space. I feel fine so you can put down the cosmic ray intensity as a boogie man. What's that? Yeah, yeah, sir, the stars shine without winking up here. What else? Space is inky black. No deep purples or queer more than blacks like some jettied up riders dreamed up. Just plain old ordinary dead black. Earth, sir? Well, it does look disshaped from up here, concave. Sure, I can see all the way to Europe, and say here's something unexpected. I can see that hurricane off the coast of Florida. You said it, sir, once we install permanent space stations up here, it will be easy to spot typhoons, volcano eruptions, tidal waves, earthquakes, what have you? The moment they start. If you ask me with a good telescope, you could even spot force fires the minute they broke out, not to mention a sneak bombing on a target city. Uh, sorry, sir, I forgot. Dan broke off and almost retched as his stomach turned to flip flop to end all flip flops. The VX-3 had reached the peak of its trajectory at over 1,000 miles altitude and now turned down, lazily at first. He gulped oxygen from the emergency tube at his lips and felt better. Turning back on schedule, rough rock, peak altitude 1,037 miles. Everything fine. No danger. This was a cinch. Hey, wait, something not in the books has popped up. Standby. Dan had felt the rocket swing a bit strangely, as if gripped by a strong force. Instead of falling directly toward Earth with a slight pitch it slanted sideways and spun on its long axis and then Dan saw what it was. Beneath, intercepting his trajectory, coming around fast over the curvature of Earth was a tiny black whirllet, 998 miles above Earth. It might be an enormous meteor, but Dan felt he was right the first time, for it wasn't falling like a meteor, but swinging parallel to Earth's surface on even keel. He stared at the unexpected discovery, amazed as if it were a fire-breathing dragon out of legend, for it was actually he realized in swift, stunned comprehension, more amazing than any legend. Dan kept his voice calm. Hello, rough rock, listen, nobody expected this. Hold your hat, sir, and sit down. I've discovered a second moon of Earth. Uh-huh. You heard me right, a second moon. Tie that, will you? Sure, it's a tiny. Less than a mile in diameter, I'd say, dead black in color. Guess that's why telescopes never spotted it. Tiny and black blends into the black backdrop of space. It has terrific speed, and that little Maverick's gravitational field caught my rocket. Of course, it can't yank me away from Earth gravity, but the trouble is, dyte, my rocket and that moonlet may be in for a mutual collision course. Dan's trained eye suddenly saw that grim possibility, barreling around Earth in narrow orbit with a speed something near to over 12,000 miles an hour the tiny new moon had, since his ascent, charged directly into his downward freefall. It was a chance in a thousand for a direct hit, except for one added factor. The moonlet exerted enough gravity pull out of its many million ton bulk to warp the rocket into its path, and the thousand to one odds were thus wiped out, becoming even money. If in tuck reported Dan answering the excited pleadings and questions from roughrock, it won't be a head on crash, I may even miss it entirely. Oh lord, not with that spire of rock sticking out from it, I'm going to hit that. Dan heard an atomic bomb blast once, and it sounded like a string of them set off at once as the rocket smashed into the rocky prominence. The rock splintered, the rocket splintered, but Dan was not there to be splintered likewise, he had jammed down a button at the critical moment, and the rocket's emergency escape hatch had ejected him a split second before the violent impact. But Dan blacked out, receiving some of the concussion of the exploding rocket, when his eyes snapped open he was floating like a feather in open airless space. His rubroid spacesuit living up to its rigid test had inflated to its elastic limit, but it held, and within its automatic unit began feeding him oxygen, heat, and radio power. He had a chance now because he had been injected cleanly from the rocket without damage to the protective suit. The star's wheeled dizzily around him. Dan finally saw the reason why. He was not just floating as a free agent in space, he was circling the black moonlit at perhaps a thousand yards from its pitted surface. "Hello, rough rock," he called. Still alive and kicking, sir, only now of all crazy mad things I'm a moon of this moon. The collision must have knocked me clear out of my down-to-earth orbit. I must have been injected in the same direction as the moonlit's course in its gravity field. I don't know, but an electronic brain figured out sometime. Anyway, now I'm being dragged along in the orbit of this moonlit. How about that? "Yes, sir, I'm circling down closer and closer." "No, don't worry, sir. It has a weak gravity pull, only a fraction of an Earth-G, so I'm drifting down as gently as a cloud, standing by for my landing on Earth's second moon." The bloated figure in the bulging spacesuit circled the black stony surface several more times in a narrowing spiral and finally landed with a soft, skidding bump that didn't even jar Dan's teeth. He bounced several times from a diminishing height of fifty odd feet in grotesque, slow motion before he finally came to a stop. He sat still for a moment, adjusting to the fantastic fact of being shipwrecked on an uncharted moonlit, crowding down his pulse rate which must be over ten percent normal now. "Okay, rough rock, I hear you. You're telling me, sir? Obviously I'm marooned here. No rocket to leave with. No way to get back to terra firma. What? If you'll pardon my saying, sir, that's a silly question. Of course I'm scared. Scared green. Sorry about the rocket, sir, losing it for you. "Me, sir?" "Thank you, sir, but stop apologizing, will you?" "I know you haven't got any duplicates of the VX-3 ready. No rescue rocket." Dan listened for a moment longer than broken roughly. "Oh, for Pete's sake, will you stop crying over me, sir? So I get mine here. I might have gotten it over Berlin too. Forget it, sir." Dan grinned suddenly. "Look, what have I got to kick about? I'll go out in a flash of glory. At least one headline will put it that way. And I'll get credit in the history books as the man who discovered that earth has TWO moons. What more could I ask, really?" Dan blushed at the reply from rough rock. "Will you lay off, please, Colonel? How else should a man take it? I'm still scared silly inside, but look, I've really got something to report now. This little runt moon makes tracks around earth in probably two hours minus. If I remember my space-nautics right, I'm already looking down over the Grand Canyon heading west. I'm going to get a pretty terrific bird's-eye view of the whole world in two more hours, which is just about how much oxygen I've got left. Lucky, huh?" Dan looked down, watching in fascination the majestic wheeling of the earth below him. This little moonlet did not rotate, or rather, it rotated once for each revolution around earth, as the moon did, keeping one face earthward, giving him an uninterrupted view. The sea-arres on earth hove into clear view, and the broad Pacific. There would follow Hawaii, then Japan, Asia, Europe. No, he saw he was slanting southwest. It would be across the equator, past Australia, perhaps near the south pole, then up around over the top of the world, past Greenland, falling that great circle around the globe. In any case, his was the speediest trip around the world ever made by man. Before we're out of mutual range, rough rock, I'm going to explore this new moon, me and Columbus, standby for reports. Dan did his walking in huge leaps that propelled him fifty feet at a step with slight effort, due to the extremely feeble gravity of the tiny moon. What did he weigh here? Probably no more than an ounce or two. Too much to report, Colonel, it's a dead, airless, pipsqueak planetoid. Just a big, mile-thick rock, probably, no life, no vegetation, no people, no nothing. Guess you might call me the man in the second moon, and the joke's on me. Well, one and three-quarters hours of oxygen left, by the gauge, or 105 minutes. Sounds like more that way. What's that, sir? Your voice is getting faint, and you'll ask requests from me? Well, one favor, maybe. Pick up my body some day on another rocket. Yeah, it'll stay preserved up here in this deep-freeze of space. Thanks, sir. Can't hear you much now. Going out of range, give Betty my fondest. You know, the broad. Well sir, goodbye now. Dan was glad that rough rock's radio voice invaded to a whispery nothingness. It wasn't easy to stay casual now. There was nothing more to say, really. He didn't want to hear many more crying from the CO. The old man had sounded almost hysterical. He wanted just to be alone with his thoughts now, making his final peace with the universe. He checked the gauge with his watch. 90 minutes of oxygen to zero, or he thought with a grin, eternity minus 90 minutes. He was beginning to have trouble breathing, but it was awesomely grand watching the sweep of earth beneath him. The procession of dots that were islands strung across the south Pacific seas, like a necklace of green beads. He was still within radio range of ships below its sea, yet he didn't contact them. He had nothing to say, like a ghost in the sky. Oddly, he kept pitching loose stones, watching their rifle-like speed away from him, again a phenomenon of the weak gravity of the moonlit. Actually, he was able to pick up a boulder ten feet across and heave it away with ease. We who are about to die amuse ourselves, he thought, then because of a threat of stubborn hope, still clung in the corner of his mind, he got an idea. It had lurked just beyond his mental grasp for some time now, something significant. Abruptly, face a light, Dan switched on his radio and contacted his ship, asking them to relay him to rough rock with their more powerful transmittance. "Ahoy, rough rock. Stop adding up my insurance. Colonel, I'm coming back. No sir, I haven't gone out of my head. It's so simple. It's a laugh, sir. I'll see you in a few hours, sir." And he did. Dan grinned when they hauled his dripping form from the sea. Abroad the search plane, they cut him out of his spacesuit, to which he was still attached his emergency twin parachute. But his helmet was gone. Ripped loose for Dan had been breathing fresh earth air during the long parachute descent. They stared at him as a dead man, cum alive. Impossible to escape, he chuckled repeating their babble. That's what I thought, too, until I remembered those data tables on gravity and escape velocity, and such. How on the moon the escape velocity is much less than on earth. And on that tiny second moon, well, my clue was when I threw a stone into the air, and it never came back. Dan gulped hot coffee. I got off the moonlet myself then, got up to more than a mile above it where I was free of its feeble gravity, but I was still in the same orbit, circling earth. I'd have continued revolving as a human satellite forever, of course, but this emergency gadget hooked to my belt. Dan held up the metal gun with its empty tank and needle nose half burned away. Reaction pistol fires hydrazine and oxidizer, ordinary jet rocket principle, aiming it toward the star's opposite earth that's reactive blast shoved me earthward thanks to Newton. I needed a speed of about one half mile a second, but the powerful little jet gun had only my small mass to shove in free space without gravity or friction. That brought me from free fall around earth to gravity fall toward earth. Then I spiraled down under gravity pull. I reached lung-filling air density just in time before my oxygen gave out. One more danger was that I began heating up like a meteor due to air friction. I flung out a prayer first followed by my twin parachutes designed for extreme initial shock. They held. Slowed me down to a paratrooper's drift the rest of the way down. "Wait!" A puzzled pilot objected. "Your story doesn't hang together. How did you get off that moonlit? How did you get up there a mile above it away from its gravity? There was no one to throw you like a stone." "I threw myself," said Dan. "First, I ran as fast as I could, maybe a half way around that moonlit to get a good running start." "Then?" Dan Barstow's grin was undoubtedly the biggest grin in history. "Well, then, since the feeble gravity couldn't pull me back again, what I really did was to jump clear off that moon, end of shipwreck in the sky by Yando Binder." Owning a rental property sounds like a dream until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. Determine a competitive rent price, market the property, schedule the showing screen tenants drop at the lease at a rent collection, handle maintenance request, maintain communication. Sound complicated? Runners' warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to-do list. Qualify tenants? Check. Rent collection? 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