The Rolling Stones (16 page)

PHOBOS PORT

M
ARS HAS TWO READY-MADE

space stations, her two tiny, close-in moons—Phobos and Deimos, the dogs of the War God, Fear and Panic. Deimos is a jagged, ragged mass of rock; a skipper would be hard put to find a place to put down a ship. Phobos was almost spherical and fairly smooth as we found her; atomic power has manicured her into one big landing field all around her equator—a tidying-up that may have been over-hasty; by one very plausible theory the Martian ancients used her themselves as a space station. The proof, if such there be, may lie buried under the slag of Phobos port.

The
Rolling Stone
slid inside the orbit of Deimos, blasted as she approached the orbit of Phobos and was matched in with Phobos, following an almost identical orbit around Mars only a scant five miles from that moon. She was falling now, falling
around
Mars but falling
toward
Phobos, for no vector had been included as yet to prevent that. The fall could not be described as a headlong plunge; at this distance, one radius of Phobos, the moon attracted the tiny mass of the spaceship with a force of less than three ten-thousandths of one Earth-surface gravity. Captain Stone had ample time in which to calculate a vector which would let him land; it would take the better part of an hour for the
Stone
to sink to the surface of the satellite.

However he had chosen to do it the easy way, through outside help. The jet of the
Rolling Stone,
capable of blasting at six gravities, was almost too much of a tool for the thin gravity field of a ten-mile rock—like swatting a fly with a pile-driver. A few minutes after they had ceased blasting, a small scooter rocket up from Phobos matched with them and anchored to their airlock.

The spacesuited figure who swam in removed his helmet and said, “Permission to board, sir? Jason Thomas, port pilot—you asked for pilot-and-tow?”

“That’s right, Captain Thomas.”

“Just call me Jay. Got your mass schedule ready?”

Roger Stone gave it to him; he looked it over while they looked him over. Meade thought privately that he looked more like a bookkeeper than a dashing spaceman—certainly nothing like the characters in Hazel’s show. Lowell stared at him gravely and said, “Are you a Martian, Mister?”

The port pilot answered him with equal gravity. “Sort of, son.”

“Then where’s your other leg?”

Thomas looked startled, but recovered. “I guess I’m a cut-rate Martian.”

Lowell seemed doubtful but did not pursue the point. The port official returned the schedule and said, “Okay, Captain. Where are your outside control-circuit jacks?”

“Just forward of the lock. The inner terminals are here on the board.”

“Be a few minutes.” He went back outside, moving very rapidly. He was back inside in less than ten minutes.

“That’s all the time it took you to mount auxiliary rockets?” Roger Stone asked incredulously.

“Done it a good many times. Gets to be a routine. Besides, I’ve got good boys working with me.” Quickly he plugged a small portable control board to the jacks pointed out to him earlier, and tested his controls. “All set.” He glanced at the radar screen. “Nothing to do but loaf for a bit. You folks immigrating?”

“Not exactly. It’s more of a pleasure trip.”

“Now ain’t that nice! Though it beats me what pleasure you expect to find on Mars.” He glanced out the port where the reddish curve of Mars pushed up into the black.

“We’ll do some sightseeing I expect.”

“More to see in the State of Vermont than on this whole planet. I know.” He looked around. “This your whole family?”

“All but my wife.” Roger Stone explained the situation.

“Oh, yes! Read about it in the daily
War Cry.
They got the name of your ship wrong, though.”

Hazel snorted in disgust. “Newspapers!”

“Yes, mum. I put the
War God
down just four hours ago. Berths 32 & 33. She’s in quarantine, though.” He pulled out a pipe. “You folks got static precipitation?”

“Yes,” agreed Hazel. “Go ahead and smoke, young man.”

“Thanks on both counts.” He made almost a career of getting it lighted; Pollux began to wonder when he intended to figure his ballistic.

But Jason Thomas did not bother even to glance at the radar screen; instead he started a long and meandering story about his brother-in-law back Earthside. It seemed that this connection of his had tried to train a parrot to act as an alarm clock.

The twins knew nothing of parrots and cared less. Castor began to get worried. Was this moron going to crash the
Stone
? He began to doubt that Thomas was a pilot of any sort. The story ambled on and on. Thomas interrupted himself to say, “Better hang on, everybody. And somebody ought to hold the baby.”

“I’m not a baby,” Lowell protested.

“I wish I was one, youngster.” His hand sought his control panel as Hazel gathered Lowell in. “But the joke of the whole thing was—” A deafening rumble shook the ship, a sound somehow more earsplitting than their own jet. It continued for seconds only; as it died Thomas continued triumphantly: “—the bird never did learn to tell time. Thanks, folks. The office’ll bill you.” He stood up with a catlike motion, slid across the floor without lifting his feet. “Glad to have met you. G’bye!”

They were down on Phobos.

Pollux got up from where he had sprawled on the deck-plates—and bumped his head on the overhead. After that he tried to walk like Jason Thomas. He had weight, real weight, for the first time since Luna, but it amounted to only two ounces in his clothes. “I wonder how high I can jump here?” he said.

“Don’t try it,” Hazel advised. “Remember the escape velocity of this piece of real estate is only sixty-six feet a second.”

“I don’t think a man could jump that fast.”

“There was Ole Gunderson. He dived right around Phobos—a free circular orbit thirty-five miles long. Took him eighty-five minutes. He’d have been traveling yet if they hadn’t grabbed as he came back around.”

“Yes, but wasn’t he an Olympic jumper or something? And didn’t he have to have a special rack or some such to take off from?”

“You wouldn’t have to jump,” Castor put in. “Sixty-six feet a second is forty-five miles an hour, so the circular speed comes out a bit more than thirty miles an hour. A man can run twenty miles an hour back home, easy. He could certainly get up to forty-five here.”

Pollux shook his head. “No traction.”

“Special spiked shoes—and maybe a tangent launching ramp for the last hundred yards—then
woosh!
off the end and you’re gone for good.”

“Okay, you try it, Grandpa. I’ll wave good-by to you.”

Roger Stone whistled loudly. “Quiet, please! If you armchair athletes are quite through, I have an announcement to make.”

“Do we go groundside now, Dad?”

“Not if you don’t quit interrupting me. I’m going over to the
War God.
Anyone who wants to come along, or wishes to take a stroll outside, may do so—just as long as you settle the custody of Buster among you. Wear your boots; I understand they have steel strip walkways for the benefit of transients.”

Pollux was the first one suited up and into the lock, where he was surprised to find the rope ladder still rolled up. He wondered about Jason Thomas and decided that he must have jumped…a hundred-odd feet of drop wouldn’t hurt a man’s arches here. But when he opened the outer door he discovered that it was quite practical to walk straight down the side of the ship like a fly on a wall. He had heard of this but had not quite believed it, not on a
planet…
well, a moon.

The others followed him, Hazel carrying Lowell. Roger Stone stopped when they were down and looked around. “I could have sworn,” he said with a puzzled air, “that I spotted the
War God
not very far east of us just before we landed.”

“There is something sticking up over there,” Castor said, pointing north. The object was a rounded dome swelling up above the extremely near horizon—an horizon only two hundred yards away for Castor’s height of eye. The dome looked enormous but it grew rapidly smaller as they approached it and finally got it entirely above the horizon. The sharp curvature of the little globe played tricks on them; it was so small that it was possible to see that it was curved, but the habit of thinking of anything over the horizon as distant stayed with them.

Before they reached the dome they encountered one of the steel walking strips running across their path, and on it a man. He was spacesuited as they were and was carrying with ease a large coil of steel line, a hand-powered winch, and a ground anchor with big horns. Roger Stone stopped him. “Excuse me, friend, but could you tell me the way to the R.S.
War God
? Berths thirty-two and -three, I believe she is.”

“Off east there. Just follow this strip about five miles; you’ll raise her. Say, are you from the
Rolling Stone
?”

“Yes. I’m her master. My name’s Stone, too.”

“Glad to know you, Captain. I’m just on my way out to respot your ship. You’ll find her in berth thirteen, west of here when you come back.”

The twins looked curiously at the equipment he was carrying. “Just with that?” asked Castor, thinking of the ticklish problem it had been to move the
Stone
on Luna.

“Did you leave your gyros running?” asked the port jockey.

“Yes,” answered Captain Stone.

“I won’t have any trouble. See you around.” He headed out to the ship. The family party turned east along the strip; the traction afforded by their boot magnets against steel made much easier walking. Hazel put Lowell down and let him run.

They were walking toward Mars, a great arc of which filled much of the eastern horizon. The planet rose appreciably as they progressed; like Earth in the Lunar sky Mars never rose nor set for any particular point of the satellite’s surface—but they were moving over the curve of Phobos so rapidly that their own walking made it rise. About a mile farther along Meade spotted the bow of the
War God
silhouetted against the orange-red face of Mars. They hurried, but it was another three miles before they had her in sight down to her fins.

At last they reached her—to find a temporary barrier of line and posts around her and signs prominently displayed: “
WARNING
!—
QUARANTINE
—no entrance by order of Phobos Port Authority.”

“I can’t read,” said Hazel.

Roger Stone pondered it. “The rest of you stay here, or go for a walk—whatever you please. I’m going in. Mind you stay off the field proper.”

“Shucks,” answered Hazel, “there’s plenty of time to see a ship coming in and run for it, the way they float in here. That’s all the residents do. But don’t you want me to come with you, boy?”

“No, it’s my pidgin.” He left them at the barrier, went toward the liner. They waited. Hazel passed the time by taking a throat lozenge from her gun and popping it in through her mouth valve; she gave one to Lowell. Presently they saw Roger walk up the side of the ship to a view port. He stayed there quite a while, then walked down again.

When he got back to them his face was stormy. Hazel said, “No go, I take it?”

“None at all. Oh, I saw Van and he rapped out some irrelevant insults. But he did let me see Edith—through the port.”

“How did she look?”

“Wonderful, just wonderful! A little bit thinner perhaps, but not much. She blew a kiss for all of you.” He paused and frowned. “But I can’t get in and I can’t get her out.”

“You can’t blame Van,” Hazel pointed out. “It would mean his ticket.”

“I’m not blaming anybody! I’m just mad, that’s all.”

“Well, what next?”

He thought about it. “The rest of you do what you like for the next hour or so. I’m going to the administration building—it’s that dome back there. I’ll meet you all at the ship—berth thirteen.”

The twins elected to walk on east while Meade and Hazel returned at once to the ship—Buster was getting restless. The boys wanted a really good look at Mars. They had watched it through the
Stone
’s ports, of course, on the approach—but this was different…more real, somehow—not framed like a television shot. Three more miles brought all of it in sight, or all of it that was illuminated, for the planet was in half phase to them, the Sun being at that point almost overhead.

They studied the ruddy orange deserts, the olive green fertile stretches, the canals stretching straight as truth across her flat landscape. The south polar cap was tipped slightly toward them; it had almost disappeared. Facing them was the great arrowhead of Syrtis Major.

They agreed that it was beautiful, almost as beautiful as Luna—more beautiful perhaps than Earth in spite of Earth’s spectacular and always changing cloud displays. But after a while they grew bored with it and headed back to the ship.

They found berth thirteen without trouble and walked up into the ship. Meade had dinner ready; Hazel was playing with Buster. Their father came in just as they were ready to eat. “You,” announced Hazel, “looked as if you had bribed a chairwarmer.”

“Not quite.” He hesitated, then said, “I’m going into quarantine with Edith. I’ll come out when she does.”

“But Daddy—” protested Meade.

“I’m not through. While I’m gone Hazel takes command. She is also head of this family.”

“I always have been,” Hazel said smugly.

“Please, Mother. Boys, if she finds it necessary to break your arms, please be advised that the action is authorized in advance. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”—“Aye aye, sir.”

“Good. I’m going to pack now and leave.”

“But Daddy!” Meade objected, almost in tears, “aren’t you even going to wait for dinner?”

He stopped and smiled. “Yes, sugar pie. You are getting to be a good cook, did you know?”

Castor glanced at Pollux, then said, “Uh, Dad, let me get this straight. We are simply to wait here in the ship—on this under-sized medicine ball—until you and Mother get out of hock?”

“Why, yes—no, that isn’t really necessary. I simply hadn’t thought about it. If Hazel is willing, you can close down the ship and go down to Mars. Phone us your address and we’ll join you there. Yes, I guess that’s the best scheme.”