Tales of the Flying Mountains (20 page)

He'd compensate himself for that when he got back to Ceres. Few girls could resist a scoopman's uniform and reputation. Especially when Charles de Gaulle d'Andilly wore them.

…
Dans le jardin d'mon père

Les lilas sont fleuris
.

Tous les oiseaux du monde

Y viennent fair' leur nid
.

Auprès de ma blonde

Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon.…

The radio receiver buzzed. He flipped the switch. “
Vesta Castle
calling ship detected at …” The dispatcher's voice gave coordinates which indicated him. “Come in, please.”

“
Mignonne
responding to
Vesta Castle,
” said d'Andilly. “Everything okay.”

“Hi, Chuck. How was the trip?”

“Rough. Later I shall elaborate my experiences for you at some length. But being me, I had no unconquerable problems. So give me a guide beam to discharge, please.”

“Roger.” Cartesian axes flickered to life within the globe of a signal 'scope. D'Andilly aligned the dot that represented his own craft and rode on in. Approach must be under his personal control, with Jupiter's radio interference potentially so great. Nevertheless, he needed to devote little of his mind to it. After a dive, the matching of vectors in space was nothing but relaxation.

Auprès de ma blonde

Qu'il fait bon dormir!

His thoughts drifted back to that certain blonde who was responsible for his having left the United European Space Corps a few years ago. He didn't blame her. He should have known better than to play games with the daughter of his commanding officer. But she was so very tempting. He might try to find her again, when at last he must retire; Jupiter-diving was not for men past thirty-five or so. No, she was doubtless married by now. Well, there would be many others. And it would be good to stroll along the Seine, nurse an apértif in a café on the Champs-Elysées, dine on civilized food before proceeding to the opera. He had no intention of staying in the Belt forever. With his accumulated pay he could buy into a good small business on Earth and live like a gentleman.

Not that he regretted his time out here. It had been glorious fun, mostly.

The
Vesta Castle
grew before his eyes, a great metal egg with softly glowing ports, the smooth curve broken by turrets, air locks, and boat blisters. Her orbit had carried her near the Jovian terminator line, so that the shrunken sun glared hard by the vast hazy crescent of the planet, but there was still ample light. Shadows lay sharp across the hull. Large though it was, it was dwarfed by the balloon harnessed to the stern. And the latter would double its present radius before it was considered full.

D'Andilly edged close to the gas bag. He could see stars through it. The plastifilm had to be thin, to save mass. He didn't worry about ripping it in case of collision. That elastomer was quite incredibly tough, could even bounce back small meteoroids. But one could all too easily start the whole awkward ship-and-balloon system twisting around three simultaneous axes, and have the devil's own job getting rid of that angular momentum.

On such a whisper of drive that he felt no weight worth mentioning, he matched velocities. A radar at the balloon's main valve locked onto him. He followed the beam to within meters of target. A hose snaked out from
Mignonne's
stern, its nozzle driven by a miniature geegee and homing on the valve. They coupled. Between them, the pilots of the two ships killed what slight rotation was induced.

Pumps throbbed, forcing the scoopship's cargo of Jovian gas into the balloon. The sphere did not expand much; a single load was a small fraction of its total capacity. D'Andilly continued working to balance forces and hold the entire system steady in orbit.

At the end, he directed the hose to uncouple and retract. Then he slipped smoothly toward his assigned blister on the mother ship. This far spaceward there was seldom need to operate hydro-magnetic screens against solar particle radiation, so approach and contact were simple. While he got out of his harness and suit, the final adjustments of angular momentum were made. The balloon waited quietly for the next arrival.

Who would not be d'Andilly. He had twenty hours off till he dove again.

Whistling he climbed through joined air locks into the
Vesta Castle
. Two maintenance men waited in the companionway to clean his gear. Afterward the ship would be inspected. That was no concern of d'Andilly's. He gave the tech monkeys a greeting less condescending than compassionate—imagine so dreary a job!—and sauntered to pilot's country; a short, stocky man, brown hair carefully waved and mustache carefully trimmed, blue eyes snapping in, a hook-nosed square face.

Ulrich von Raaben, tall, blond, and angular, was emerging from the showers as d'Andilly entered. “Whoof!” he exclaimed. “You smell like an uncleaned brewer's vat.” He saw the condition of the undersuit that the Frenchman began to strip off, and paused. “Bad down there?”

“I hit an unobserved storm,” d'Andilly said, as casually as he could manage.

Von Raaben stiffened. “We shall have a word with the weather staff about that.”

“Oh, I will report the matter, of course. But they cannot be blamed. It must have risen from the depths faster than normal. Our meteorologists can only observe so far down.”

“A cyclonic disturbance does not rise for no reason. Surrounding conditions ought to give a clue, at least to the probability of such a thing happening. If they tell us a given region looks calm, and it proves not to be, by heaven, they will have some explanations to make!”

D'Andilly cocked his head at the other. “You are too Prussian to believe. Where were you born … Milwaukee?” Von Raaben reddened. D'Andilly slapped his back and laughed. “No matter,
mon vieux
. For a filthy Boche you are quite a good fellow.”

He ducked under the shower and wallowed in an extravagance of hot water. That was one of numerous special privileges enjoyed by the scoopship pilots. Others included private cabins, an exclusive recreation room, seats at the officers' mess with wine if desired, high pay, and a dashing uniform that one was free to modify according to taste. In exchange they made a certain number of dives per Earth-year, into Jupiter.

One must be young and heedless to strike such a bargain. Sensible men, even among the asterites, preferred a better chance of reaching old age. No wonder that scoopship pilots off duty tended to act like ill-disciplined sophomores.
Including me, no doubt
.

There are exceptions, to be sure. Like poor Tom Hashimoto. I should take him out with me when we reach Ceres and show him the proper way to valve off accumulated pressure. But no, he is much too married
.

In his own quarters d'Andilly put on lounging pajamas. From there he proceeded to the rec room. He found von Raaben, battered and eagle-decorated military cap shoved back on his head, playing rummy with Bill Wisner. The latter, who affected loud clothes and foul stories, was one of the few native-born asterites aboard. Immigration was still ahead of birth in expanding the population of the Republic.

“Hi,” Wisner said. “I hear you hit some weather.”

“Yes. I'd best report it before someone else dives into that region.” D'Andilly observed the glasses on the table and headed for the liquor cabinet himself. “Are we the only ones here?”

“The only divers, yes,” von Raaben said in his meticulous way. “None others are due for several hours, I believe.” The scoopships operated on a staggered but loose schedule, and no one liked to discharge by starlight alone. Those who had completed a flit would assume parking orbits and rendezvous when the
Vesta Castle
was back in the sunshine.

“Well, the more for us, then.” D'Andilly poured a stiff drink, tossed it off, and sipped appreciatively at a second. “Ah! Praise be that the cognac is holding out. When we are reduced to asterite booze, then it is time to head for Ceres, and never mind whether the balloon is full or not.”

“Oh, Comet Blood isn't that bad,” said Wisner defensively.

“It is for any man whose palate was not burned out by it in infancy. Your liquor is one excellent reason I shall not remain in the Belt after they shelve me as a diver.”

“You ought to, though, Chuck,” Wisner said with characteristic patriotism. “The life's rough and risky, sure. But with any luck at all, you stand to make a fortune. And no bureaucrat's going to tax most of it away and tell you how you can spend the rest, either.”

“True. I admire the pioneer spirit, in an abstract fashion. But do you see, I am not interested enough, myself, in wealth or fame or power. There are so many other things to do.”

“If one lives that long. Well”—von Raaben raised his own glass—“
prosit
.”

“May we love all the women we please,” Wisner toasted, “and please all the women we love.”

D'Andilly was about to propose something equally traditional when the emergency summons cut loose.

The wardroom was also used for briefings and conferences. Captain ben Judah stood looking down the green length of the table. Roy Pearson sat on his right, the chief engineer on his left, other officers not on watch beyond them. But the three scoopship pilots, clustered at the foot, were those whose eyes he must meet.

He felt sick. The words dragged from his throat:

“Gentlemen, we have received a call. Hashimoto is down.”

There could be no adding to the silence that followed. But Wisner lost color and von Raaben slowly took off his cap.

“Not exactly down, yet,” ben Judah went on. “His engine quit on him. But not too suddenly. When it first began misbehaving, he got as high as he could and threw himself into orbit. That's how we were able to receive his 'cast. He was above the sources of atmospheric interference, though it was still bad enough.”

D'Andilly half rose. “
Pardieu!
Why do we sit here? I can go fetch him myself.”

“If he were in clear space, yes,” ben Judah said. “But he didn't get that far. There's still a trace of gas where he is. Frictional resistance—he's spiraling inward.”

“How fast?” von Raaben barked.

“That can only be estimated. We know his approximate altitude, from the orbital velocity as given by Doppler shift of his signal. That is thirty-one-point-five kilometers per second, in the same sense as our own path. On the basis of the average density-altitude relationship in the Jovian atmosphere, the weathermen figure he should … should start burning in five or six hours.”

“No chance that Stuart or Dykstra or any of the others can give a hand?” asked Wisner.

“We've tried to raise them,” said ben Judah. “No luck, as expected.” Only a tight beam could drive a recognizable message from the
Vesta Castle
to a scoopship deep in the radio chaos of Jupiter's air. And the exact position of such a ship was never known—constantly and unpredictably changing, anyway. A broadcast could be received by a man in clear space, over considerable distances. But the parking orbits of those who had taken on full loads and were waiting to rendezvous on dayside were eccentric ellipses, crossing the mother ship's circle at the space-time point of the meeting. Now Jupiter lay between, a wall to block off any cry. Unless some man still in its neighborhood should find some reason to call, and come around the edge of the radio shadow for that purpose, there was no measurable probability of getting in touch.

“We could accelerate toward dayside ourselves, couldn't we, till we can get a 'cast through?” asked the engineer.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Pearson snorted. “We could, sure. But they'd all be far out, farther out than we are now. It would only waste time.”

“So the problem's ours,” Wisner said. “Well, I don't see why you're looking so down in the nose about it. What the hell, even at one
g
a scoopship gets from here to the atmospheric fringes inside of two hours. Let's see … if you got his call a few minutes ago, he must still be on our side of Jupe, and his period just about three hours. You don't gain much by flitting a high-acceleration curve over such a short distance, seeing that you also have to brake, but you do gain a little. Yes, I think I can meet him in something like two hours. Three at the most, to allow for matching speeds and so forth.… Sure, we can do it. Assume I start out half an hour from this moment at five g's, and have a curve computed for me. It'll take me that long to get ready. Got to dope up with stim and gravanol——”

“No, I shall go,” said d'Andilly, and “
Nein, ich,
” von Raaben. They began to rise.

“Sit down!” rapped Pearson.

Men's gazes focused on him, the ship's officers' with incomprehension, the pilots' with flaring resentment. The manager clamped his lips together for a space before he asked, “Precisely what do you propose to do?”

“Equalize velocities, couple air locks, and take him aboard,” said d'Andilly. “
Voilà!
”

“Easy in space,” Pearson said. “But do you realize that he's in atmosphere?”

“Very thin atmosphere thus far,” the engineer said. “Nearly a vacuum.”

“He'll be down where it's thicker by the time another ship can arrive,” Pearson said.

“If he has five hours to go before he hits such a density that metal volatilizes,” d'Andilly said, “it will not be too thick three hours from now for a scoopship hull to stand orbital speeds.”

“No. You can't do it, I tell you.”

D'Andilly reddened. “Well, perhaps not. But we must try, or stop claiming to be men.”

“Very dramatic,” Pearson scoffed. “Too bad the laws of physics don't sympathize.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, I admit the air friction is slight where he is now. If only we could contact one of the men now diving, rescue would not be hard. But by the time you can reach him, he'll be down to a level where it's considerably worse. Oh, the air will still be tenuous, upper stratosphere density or less. Aerodynamic forces will tend to keep the hull aloft, preventing an extremely quick plunge to destruction.