Around him the s.p.a.cemen were settling in their acceleration seats or snapping belts to safety hooks. From the direction of the stern came a rising roar as methane, heated to a liquid, dropped into the blast tubes, flaming into pure carbon and hydrogen under the terrible heat of the atomic drive.
Rip had to lean against the acceleration. Fighting for balance, he picked up his s.p.a.ck and made his way to the nine enlisted Planeteers. They had braced against the ship"s drive by sitting with backs against bulkheads or by lying flat on the magnesium deck. Sergeant Major Koa was seated against a vertical brace, his brown face wreathed in a grin.
Rip looked him over carefully. There was a saying among the Planeteers that an officer was only as good as his senior sergeant. Koa"s looks were rea.s.suring. His face was good-humored, but he had a solid jaw and a mouth that could get tough when necessary. Rip wondered a little at his size.
Big men usually didn"t go to s.p.a.ce; they were too subject to s.p.a.ce sickness. Koa must be a special case.
Rip slid to the floor next to the sergeant major and stuck out his hand.
He sensed the strength in Koa"s big fist as it closed over his.
Koa said, "Sir, that was the best _fleedle_ I"ve ever seen an earthling make. You been on Venus?"
Rip eyed him suspiciously, wondering if the big Planeteer was laughing at him. Koa was grinning, but it was a friendly grin. "What is a _fleedle_?"
Rip demanded. "I"ve never been on Venus."
"It"s the way the water hole people fight," Koa explained. "They"re like a bunch of rubber b.a.l.l.s when they get to fighting. They ram each other with their heads."
Rip searched his memory for data on Venus. He couldn"t recall any mention of _fleedling_. Venusians, if his memory was right, had a sort of blowgun as a main weapon. He told Koa so.
The sergeant major nodded. "That"s when they mean business, Lieutenant.
_Fleedling_ is more like us fighting with our fists. Sort of a sport.
Great Cosmos! The way they dive at each other is something to see."
Rip grinned. "I didn"t know I was going to _fleedle_ those officers. It isn"t the way I usually enter a cruiser." He hadn"t entered many. He added, "I suppose I ought to report to someone."
Koa shook his head. "No use, sir. You can"t walk around very well until the ship reaches _Brennschluss_. Besides, you won"t find any s.p.a.ce officers who"ll talk to you."
Rip stared. "Why not?"
"Because we"re Planeteers. They"ll give us the treatment. They always do.
When the commander of this bucket gets good and ready, he"ll send for you. Until then, we might as well take it easy." He pulled a bar of Venusian _chru_ from his pocket. "Have some. It"ll make breathing easier."
The terrific acceleration made breathing a little uncomfortable, but it was not too bad. The chief effect was to make Rip feel as though a ton of invisible feathers were crushing him against the vertical brace.
He accepted a bite of the bittersweet vegetable candy and munched thoughtfully. Koa seemed to take it for granted that the s.p.a.cemen would give them a rough time.
He asked, "Aren"t there any s.p.a.cemen who get along with the Special Order Squadrons?"
"Never met one." Koa chewed chru. "And I was on the _Icarus_ when the whole thing started."
Rip looked at him in surprise. Koa didn"t seem that old. The bad feeling between s.p.a.cemen and the Special Order Squadrons had started about eighteen years ago, when the cruiser _Icarus_ had taken the first Planeteers to Mercury.
He reviewed the history of the expedition. The s.p.a.cemen"s job had been to land the newly created Special Order Squadron on the hot planet. The job of the squadron was to explore it. Somehow confusion developed, and the s.p.a.cemen, including the officers, later reported that the squadron had instructed them to land on the sun side of Mercury, which would have destroyed the s.p.a.ceship and its crew, or so they believed at the time.
The commanding officer of the squadron denied issuing such an order. He said his instructions were to land as close as possible to the sun side, but not on it. Whatever the truth--and Rip believed the SOS version, of course--the crew of the _Icarus_ mutinied, or tried to. They made the landing on Mercury with squadron guns pointed at their heads. Of course, they found that a sun-side landing wouldn"t have hurt the ship. The whole affair was pretty well hushed up, but it produced bad feeling between the Special Order Squadrons and the s.p.a.cemen. "Trigger-happy s.p.a.ce b.u.ms," the s.p.a.cemen called them, and much worse, besides.
The men of the Special Order Squadrons, searching for a handy nickname, had called themselves Planeteers, because most of their work was on the planets. As Maj. Joe Barris had told the officers of Rip"s cla.s.s, "You might say the s.p.a.cemen own s.p.a.ce, but we Planeteers own everything solid that"s found in it."
The Planeteers were the specialists--in science, exploration, colonization, and fighting. The s.p.a.cemen carried them back and forth, kept them supplied, and handled their message traffic. The Planeteers did the hard work and the important work--or so they believed.
To become a Planeteer, a recruit had to pa.s.s rigid intelligence, physical, apt.i.tude, and psychological tests. Fewer than fifteen out of each one hundred who applied were chosen. Then there were two years of hard training on the s.p.a.ce platform and the moon before a recruit was finally accepted as a Planeteer private. Out of each fifteen who started training, an average of five fell by the wayside.
For Planeteer officers, the requirements were even tougher. Only one out of each five hundred applicants finally received a commission. Six years of training made them proficient in the techniques of exploration, fighting, rocketeering, and both navigation and astrogation. In addition, each became a full-fledged specialist in one field of science. Rip"s specialty was astrophysics.
Sergeant Major Koa continued, "That business on the _Icarus_ started the war, but both sides have been feeding it ever since. I have to admit that we Planeteers lord it over the s.p.a.cemen like we were old man Cosmos himself. So they get back at us with dirty little tricks while we"re on their ships. We command on the planets, but they command in s.p.a.ce. And they sure get a great big nuclear charge out of commanding us to do the dirty work!"
"We"ll take whatever they hand us," Rip a.s.sured him, "and pretend we like it fine." He gestured at the other Planeteers. "Tell me about the men, Koa."
"They"re a fine bunch, sir. I handpicked them myself. The one with the white hair is Corporal Nels Pederson, from Sweden. I served with him at Marsport, and he"s a real tough s.p.a.cewalker in a fight. The other corporal is Paulo Santos. He"s from the Philippines, and the best snapper-boat gunner you ever saw."
He pointed out the six privates. Kemp and Dowst were Americans. Bradshaw was an Englishman, Trudeau a Frenchman, Dominico an Italian, and Nunez a Brazilian.
Rip liked their looks. They were as relaxed as acceleration would allow, but you got the impression that they would leap into action in a microsecond if the word were given. He couldn"t imagine what kind of a.s.signment was waiting, but he was satisfied with his Planeteers. They looked capable of anything.
He made himself as comfortable as possible and encouraged Koa to talk about his service in the Special Order Squadrons. Koa had plenty to tell, and he talked interestingly. Rip learned that the tall Hawaiian had been to every planet in the system, had fought the Venusians on the central desert, and had mined nuc.l.i.te with SOS One on Mercury. He also found that Koa was one of the seventeen pure-blooded Hawaiians left. During the three hours that acceleration kept them from moving around the ship, Rip got a new view of s.p.a.ce and of service with the SOS--it was the view of a Planeteer who had spent years around the Solar System.
"I"m glad they a.s.signed you to me," Rip told Koa frankly. "This is my first job, and I"ll be pretty green, no matter what it is. I"ll depend on you for a lot of things."
To his surprise, Koa thrust out his hand. "Shake, Lieutenant." His grin showed strong white teeth. "You"re the first junior officer I ever met who admitted he didn"t know everything about everything. You can depend on me, sir. I won"t steer you into any meteor swarms."
Koa had half turned to shake hands. Suddenly he spun on around, banging his head against the deck. Rip felt a surge of relaxing muscles that had been braced against acceleration. At the same time, silence flooded in on them. Rip murmured "_Brennschluss_," and the murmur was like a trumpet blast.
The _Scorpius_ had reached velocity, and the nuclear drive had cut out.
From terrific acceleration, they had dropped to zero. The ship was making high speed, but velocity cannot be felt. For the moment the men were weightless.
A nearby s.p.a.ceman had heard Rip"s comment. He spoke in an undertone to the man nearest. His voice was pitched low enough that Rip couldn"t object officially, but loud and clear enough to be heard by everyone.
"Get this, gang. The Planeteer officer knows what _Brennschluss_ is. He doesn"t look old enough to know which end his bubble goes on."
Rip started to his feet, but Koa"s hand on his arm restrained him. With a violent kick, the big sergeant major shot through the air. His line of flight took him past the s.p.a.ceman, and somehow their arms got linked. The s.p.a.ceman was jerked from his post, and the two came to a stop against the ceiling.
Koa"s voice echoed through the ship. "Sorry. I"m not used to no-weight.
Didn"t mean to grab you. Here, I"ll help you back to your post."
He whirled the helpless s.p.a.ceman like a bag of feathers and slung him through the air. The force of the action only flattened Koa against the ceiling, but the hapless s.p.a.ceman shot forward head first and landed with a clang against the bulkhead. He didn"t hit hard enough to break any bones, but he would carry a b.u.mp on his head for a day or two.
Koa"s voice floated after him. "Great Cosmos! I sure am sorry, s.p.a.ceman.
I guess I don"t know my own strength." He kicked away from the ceiling, landing accurately at Rip"s side. He added in a hard voice all could hear, "They sure are a nice gang, these s.p.a.cemen. They never say anything about Planeteers."
No s.p.a.ceman answered, but Koa"s meaning was clear. No s.p.a.ceman had better say anything about the Planeteers! Rip saw that the deputy commander and the safety officer had appeared not to notice the incident. Technically, there was no reason for an officer to take action. It had all been an "accident." He smiled. There was a lot he had to learn about dealing with s.p.a.cemen, a lot Koa evidently knew very well indeed.
Suddenly he began to feel weight. The ship was going into rotation. The feeling increased until he felt normally heavy again. There was no other sensation, even though the s.p.a.ce cruiser was now spinning on its axis through s.p.a.ce at unaltered speed. The centrifugal force produced by the spinning gave them an artificial gravity.
Now that he thought about it, _Brennschluss_ had come pretty early. The trip apparently was going to be a short one. _Brennschluss_--funny, he thought, how words stay on in a language, even after their original meaning is changed. _Brennschluss_ was German for "burn out." It was rocket talk, and it meant the moment when all the fuel in a rocket burned out. It had come into common use because the English "burn out" could also mean that the engine itself had burned out. The German word meant only the one thing. Now, in nuclear drive ships, the same word was used for the moment when power was cut off.
Words interested him. He started to mention it to Koa just as the telescreen lit up. An officer"s face appeared. "Send that Planeteer officer to the commander," the face said. "Tell him to show an exhaust."
Rip called instantly to the safety officer. "Where"s his office?"
The safety officer motioned to a s.p.a.ceman. "Show him, Nelson."