Islands in the Sky Read online

There was the feeblest of tugs, and our ship slowly rotated until it was parallel to the great disk of the station. The cable had been attached amidships, and the station was hauling us in like an angler landing a fish. The pilot pressed the button on the control panel, and there was the whining of motors as our undercarriage lowered itself. That was not something you’d expect to see used in space, but the idea was sensible enough. The shock absorbers were just the thing to take up the gentle impact on making contact with the station.

  We were wound in so slowly that it took almost ten minutes to make the short journey. Then there was a slight jar as we “touched down,” and the journey was over.

  “Well,” grinned the pilot, “I hope you enjoyed the trip. Or would you have liked some excitement?”

  I looked at him cautiously, wondering if he was pulling my leg.

  “It was quite exciting enough, thank you. What other sort of excitement could you supply?”

  “Well, what about a few meteors, an attack by pirates, an invasion from outer space, or all the other things you read about in the fiction magazines?”

  “I only read the serious books, like Richardson’s Introduction to Astronautics, or Maxwell’s Modern Spaceships—not magazine stories.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he replied promptly. “I read ’em, anyway, and I’m sure you do. You can’t fool me.”

  He was right, of course. It was one of the first lessons I learned on the station. All the people out there have been hand-picked for intelligence as well as technical knowledge. If you weren’t on the level, they’d spot it right away.

  I was wondering how we were going to get out of the ship when there was a series of bangings and scrapings from the air lock, followed a moment later by an alarming hiss of air. It slowly died away, and presently, with a soft sucking noise, the inner door of the lock swung open.

  “Remember what I told you about moving slowly,” said the pilot, gathering up his log book. “The best thing is for you to hitch on to my belt and I’ll tow you. Ready?”

  I couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t a very dignified entry into the station. But it was safest to take no risks, so that was the way I traveled through the flexible, pressurized coupling that had been clamped on to the side of our ship. The pilot launched himself with a powerful kick, and I trailed along behind him. It was rather like learning to swim underwater, so much like it, in fact, that at first I had the panicky feeling that I’d drown if I tried to breathe.

  Presently we emerged into a wide metal tunnel, one of the station’s main passageways, I guessed. Cables and pipes ran along the walls, and at intervals we passed through great double doors with red EMERGENCY notices painted on them. I didn’t think this was at all reassuring. We met only two people on our journey. They flashed by us with an effortless ease that filled me with envy, and made me determined to be just as skillful before I left the station.

  “I’m taking you to Commander Doyle,” the pilot explained to me. “He’s in charge of training here and will be keeping an eye on you.”

  “What sort of man is he?” I asked anxiously.

  “Don’t you worry—you’ll find out soon enough. Here we are.”

  We drifted to a halt in front of a circular door carrying the notice: “Cdr. R. Doyle, i/c Training. Knock and Enter.” The pilot knocked and entered, still towing me behind him like a sack of potatoes.

  I heard him say: “Captain Jones reporting, Mr. Doyle—with passenger.” Then he shoved me in front of him and I saw the man he had been addressing.

  He was sitting at a perfectly ordinary office desk, which was rather surprising in this place where nothing else seemed normal. And he looked like a prize fighter. I think he was the most powerfully built man I’d ever seen. Two huge arms covered most of the desk in front of him, and I wondered where he found clothes to fit, for his shoulders must have been over four feet across.

  At first I didn’t see his face clearly, for he was bending over some papers. Then he looked up, and I found myself staring at a huge red beard and two enormous eyebrows. It was some time before I really took in the rest of the face. It is so unusual to see a real beard nowadays that I couldn’t help staring at it. Then I realized that Commander Doyle must have had some kind of accident, for there was a faint scar running diagonally right across his forehead. Considering how skilled our plastic surgeons are nowadays, the fact that it was still visible meant that the original injury must have been very serious.

  Altogether, as you’ll probably have gathered, Commander Doyle wasn’t a very handsome man. But he was certainly a striking one, and my biggest surprise was still to come.

  “So you’re young Malcolm, eh?” he said, in a pleasant, quiet voice that wasn’t half as fearsome as his appearance. “We’ve heard a great deal about you. O.K., Captain Jones—I’ll take charge of him now.”

  The pilot saluted and glided away. For the next ten minutes Commander Doyle questioned me closely, building up a picture of my life and interests. I told him I’d been born in New Zealand and had lived for a few years in China, South Africa, Brazil and Switzerland, as my father—who is a journalist—moved from one job to another. We’d gone to Missouri because Mom was fed up with mountains and wanted a change. As families go these days, we hadn’t traveled a great deal, and I’d never visited half the places all our neighbors seemed to know. Perhaps that was one reason why I wanted to go out into space.

  When he had finished writing all this down, and adding many notes that I’d have given a good deal to read, Commander Doyle laid aside the old-fashioned fountain pen he was using and stared at me for a minute as if I was some peculiar animal. He drummed thoughtfully on the desk with his huge fingers, which looked as if they could tear their way through the material without much trouble. I was feeling a bit scared, and to make matters worse I’d drifted away from the floor and was floating helplessly in mid-air again. There was no way I could move anywhere unless I made myself ridiculous by trying to swim, which might or might not work. Then the commander gave a chuckle, and his face crinkled up into a vast grin.

  “I think this may be quite amusing,” he said. While I was still wondering if I dared to ask why, he continued, after glancing at some charts on the wall behind him: “Afternoon classes have just stopped. I’ll take you to meet the boys.” Then he grabbed a long metal tube that must have been slung underneath the desk, and launched himself out of his chair with a single jerk of his huge arm.

  He moved so quickly that it took me completely by surprise. A moment later I just managed to stifle a gasp of amazement. For as he moved clear of the desk, I saw that Commander Doyle had no legs.

  When you go to a new school or move into a strange district, there’s always a confusing period so full of new experiences that you can never recall it clearly. My first day on the Space Station was like that. So much had never happened to me before in such a short time. It was not merely that I was meeting a lot of new people. I had to learn how to live all over again.

  At first I felt as helpless as a baby. I couldn’t judge the effort needed to make any movement. Although weight had vanished, momentum remained. It required force to start something moving and more force to stop it again. That was where the broomsticks came in.

  Commander Doyle had invented them, and the name, of course, came from the old idea that once upon a time witches used to ride on broomsticks. We certainly rode around the station on ours. They consisted of one hollow tube sliding inside another. The two were connected by a powerful spring, one tube ending in a hook, the other in a wide rubber pad. That was all there was to it. If you wanted to move, you put the pad against the nearest wall and shoved. The recoil launched you into space, and when you arrived at your destination you let the spring absorb your velocity and so bring you to rest. Trying to stop yourself with your bare hands was liable to result in sprained wrists.

  It wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds, though, for if you weren’t careful you could bounce right back the way you’d come.

&n
bsp; It was a long time before I discovered what had happened to the commander. The scar he’d picked up in an ordinary motor crash when he was a young man, but the more serious accident was a different story, having occurred when he was on the first expedition to Mercury. He’d been quite an athlete, it seemed, so the loss of his legs must have been an even bigger blow to him than to most men. It was obvious why he had come to the station; it was the only place where he wouldn’t be a cripple. Indeed, thanks to his powerfully developed arms, he was probably the most agile man in the station. He had lived here for the last ten years and would never return to earth, where he would be helpless again. He wouldn’t even go over to any of the other space stations where they had gravity, and no one was ever tactless or foolish enough to suggest such a trip to him.

  There were about a hundred people on board the Inner Station, ten of them apprentices a few years older than myself. At first they were a bit fed up at having me around, but after I’d had my fight with Ronnie Jordan everything was O.K., and they accepted me as one of the family. I’ll tell you about that later.

  The senior apprentice was a tall, quiet Canadian named Tim Benton. He never said much, but when he did speak everyone took notice. It was Tim who really taught me my way around the Inner Station, after Commander Doyle had handed me over to him with a few words of explanation.

  “I suppose you know what we do up here?” he said doubtfully when the commander had left us.

  “You refuel spaceships on their way out from earth, and carry out repairs and overhauls.”

  “Yes, that’s our main job. The other stations—those farther out—have many other duties, but we needn’t bother about that now. There’s one important point I’d better make clear right away. This Inner Station of ours is really in two parts, with a couple of miles between them. Come and have a look.”

  He pulled me over to a port and I stared out into space. Hanging there against the stars, so close that it seemed I could reach out and touch it, was what seemed to be a giant flywheel. It was slowly turning on its axis, and as it revolved I could see the glitter of sunlight on its observation ports. I could not help comparing its smooth compactness with the flimsy, open girder work of the station in which I was standing—or, rather, floating. The great wheel had an axle, for jutting from its center was a long, narrow cylinder which ended in a curious structure I couldn’t understand. A spaceship was slowly maneuvering near it.

  “That’s the Residential Station,” said Benton disapprovingly. “It’s nothing but a hotel. You’ve noticed that it’s spinning. Because of that, it’s got normal earth gravity at the rim, owing to centrifugal force. We seldom go over there; once you’ve got used to weightlessness, gravity’s a nuisance. But all incoming passengers from Mars and the moon are transshipped there. It wouldn’t be safe for them to go straight to earth after living in a much lower gravity field. In the Residential Station they can get acclimatized, as it were. They go in at the center, where there’s no gravity, and work slowly out to the rim, where it’s earth normal.”

  “How do they get aboard if the thing’s spinning?” I asked.

  “See that ship moving into position? If you look carefully, you’ll see that the axle of the station isn’t spinning; it’s being driven by a motor against the station’s spin so that it actually stands still in space. The ship can couple up to it and transfer passengers. The coupling’s free to rotate, and once the axle revs up to match speed with the station, the passengers can go aboard. Sounds complicated, but it works well. And see if you can think of a better way!”

  “Will I have a chance to go over there?” I asked.

  “I expect it could be arranged—though I don’t see much point in it. You might just as well be down on earth. That’s the idea of the place, in fact.”

  I didn’t press the point, and it wasn’t until the very end of my visit that I was able to get over to the Residential Station, floating there only a couple of miles away.

  It must have been quite a bother showing me around the station, because I had to be pushed or pulled most of the way until I’d found my “space legs.” Once or twice Tim just managed to rescue me in time when I’d launched myself too vigorously and was about to plunge headlong into an obstacle. But he was very patient, and finally I got the knack of things and was able to move around fairly confidently.

  It was several days before I really knew my way around the great maze of interconnecting corridors and pressure chambers that was the Inner Station. In that first trip I merely had a quick survey of its workshops, radio equipment, power plant, air-conditioning gear, dormitories, storage tanks and observatory. Sometimes it was hard to believe that all this had been carried up into space and assembled here five hundred miles above the earth. I didn’t know, until Tim mentioned it casually, that most of the material in the station had actually come from the moon. The moon’s low gravity made it much more economical to ship equipment from there instead of from the earth, despite the fact that earth was so much closer.

  My first tour of inspection ended inside one of the air locks. We stood in front of the great circular door, resting snugly on its rubber gaskets, which led into the outer emptiness. Clamped to the walls around us were the space suits, and I looked at them longingly. It had always been one of my ambitions to wear one and to become a tiny, self-contained world of my own.

  “Do you think I’ll have a chance of trying one on while I’m here?” I asked.

  Tim looked thoughtful; then he glanced at his watch.

  “I’m not on duty for half an hour, and I want to collect something I’ve left out at the rim. We’ll go outside.”

  “But…” I gulped, my enthusiasm suddenly waning. “Will it be safe? Doesn’t it take a lot of training to use one of these?”

  He looked at me calmly. “Not frightened, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, let’s get started.”

  Tim answered my question while he was showing me how to get into the suit.

  “It’s quite true that it takes a lot of training before you can operate one of these. I’m not going to let you try. You sit tight inside and tag along with me. You’ll be as safe there as you are now, as long as you don’t meddle with the controls. Just to make sure, I’ll lock them first.”

  I rather resented this, but didn’t say anything. After all, he was the boss.

  To most people, the word “space suit” conjures up a picture of something like a diving dress, in which a man can walk and use his arms. Such suits are, of course, used on places like the moon. But on a space station, where there’s no gravity, your legs aren’t much use anyway, because outside you have to blow yourself round with tiny rocket units.

  For this reason, the lower part of the suit was simply a rigid cylinder. When I climbed inside it, I found that I could use my feet only to work some control pedals, which I was careful not to touch. There was a little seat, and a transparent dome covering the top of the cylinder gave me good visibility. I could use my hands and arms. Just below my chin there was a neat little control panel with a tiny keyboard and a few meters. If I wanted to handle anything outside, there were flexible sleeves through which I could push my arms. They ended in gloves which, although they seemed clumsy, enabled one to carry out quite delicate operations.

  Tim threw some of the switches on my suit and clamped the transparent dome over my head. I felt rather like being inside a coffin with a view. Then he chose a suit for himself and attached it to mine by a thin nylon cord.

  The inner door of the air lock thudded shut behind us, and I could hear the vibration of the pumps as the air was sucked back into the station. The sleeves of my suit began to stiffen slightly. Tim called across at me, his voice distorted after passing through our helmets.

  “I won’t switch on the radio yet. You should still be able to hear me. Listen to this.” Then he went over to the familiar radio engineer’s routine: “Testing, One, Two, Three, Four, Five…”

  Around “Five”
his voice began to fade. When he’d reached “Nine” I couldn’t hear a thing, though his lips were still moving. There was no longer enough air around us to carry sound. The silence was quite uncanny, and I was relieved when talk came through the loud-speaker in my suit.

  “I’m opening the outer door now. Don’t make any movements—I’ll do all that’s necessary.”

  In that eerie silence, the great door slowly opened inward. I was floating freely now, and I felt a faint “tug” as the last traces of air puffed out into space. A circle of stars was ahead of me, and I could just glimpse the misty rim of earth to one side.

  “Ready?” asked Tim.

  “O.K.,” I said, hoping that the microphone wouldn’t betray my nervousness.

  The towing line gave a tug as Tim switched on his jets, and we drifted out of the air lock. It was a terrifying sensation, yet one I would not have missed for anything. Although, of course, the words “up” and “down” had no meaning here, it seemed to me as if I were floating out through a hole in a great metal wall, with the earth at an immense distance below. My reason told me that I was perfectly safe, but all my instincts shouted, “You’ve a five-hundred-mile fall straight down beneath you!”

  Indeed, when the earth filled half the sky, it was hard not to think of it as “down.” We were in sunlight at the moment, passing across Africa, and I could see Lake Victoria and the great forests of the Congo. What would Livingstone and Stanley have thought, I wondered, if they had known that one day men would flash across the Dark Continent at 18,000 miles an hour? And the day of those great explorers was only two hundred years behind us. It had been a crowded couple of centuries….

  Though it was fascinating to look at earth, I found it was making me giddy, and so I swiveled round in my suit to concentrate on the station. Tim had now towed us well clear of it, and we were almost out among the halo of floating ships. I tried to forget about the earth, and now that I could no longer see it, it seemed natural enough to think of “down” as toward the station.