"Campbell, John W Jr - The Space Beyond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

Finally Corliss spoke. "I don't like the idea of using those magnets. We don't think they'll disturb any instruments. But we don't know. Still-I suppose we may as well."
The men cheered. "Attaboy, Bar. We start tomorrow then?" asked Brad.
"Uhm-I guess so."
There was no sleeping that "night." They were preparing. Goodbyes. So-longs. And hungrily gazing at the ship that was to make the crossing. There were thirty-two men hi the expedition. And there were just five who were on the "Mercury" when she took off the next day, and shook off her burden of snow, to sail out again into
space. Five men.
No more, because every man breathed precious air, and ate heavy food; and on Jupiter that would represent another five hundred pounds of force to be overcome in climbing up. They had to calculate close on this trip. Then: fuel would just about make it. And even so, the other ships, "Two" and "Three," would have to be sacrificed to pull them free. Satellite Five revolved at only 112,000 miles from Jupiter's center, and only 70,000 from his surface. On Five, "Corliss II" and "III" were to wait, with fuel for the "Mercury" as she climbed up from Jupiter's cloud-wrapped atmosphere. And they would never leave Five.
No less, because it took two men to operate the ship, and they needed-a spare. Dr. Louis Lombard was their physician, and spare. He was a Doctor of Medicine by vocation, but an expert geologist and paleontologist by avocation, and camp-chief and mechanic by necessity. Rather an unusually useful man? Every man in that ultra-select group had to be, had to be in deadly earnest. He was small, too. He weighed only 135 pounds, all bone and muscle, because weight was important-and incidentally, appetite was, too. They'd have to learn to get over wanting food when their stomachs were empty, because they would always be nearly empty. Concentrated, ashless food had to be used, and it wasn't either tasty
or filling.
Ben Riley was going along, because he was another handy man, an electrical engineer, and radio engineer among other things, with an avocation as an artist and photographer. These five had to be a dozen things in one. And he weighed 137 pounds.
Karl Thrumann was going. He was the chemist-among other things, and Tad Martin, artist of the monkey wrench
and lathe.
Only Bar Corliss didn't belong, really. Not because he wasn't versatile. He was the mathematician, the physicist, the rocket engineer. But he was big, and powerful. He
weighed 197 pounds-all muscle and bone. He tried to make it 195, and couldn't.
They were the selected five. Brad didn't go, because he was second in command, the most thankless position of all. He had to remain in charge of the group on Ganymede, so he couldn't leave. The others didn't quite equal these five.
For all the good it did them, Corliss might as well have taken the whole crew. They didn't stand a bit better chance of returning because they took only five, and shaved the weight by taking no razors, since shaving equipment meant weight, but they didn't know it then.
So the "Mercury" took off from Ganymede with five aboard. She plowed her way up through space, and toward Jupiter, behind her trailing her faithful escort diminished by one, "One" remaining on the satellite. They went on, the blue flames of her rockets trailing out, till the ship was well away from Ganymede, and falling freely to Jupiter. Then the rockets of the "Mercury" stopped, and as she fell, the other two ships maneuvered and twisted to approach the falling ship. Presently a black, snaky cable reached out with a great round lump on the end of it. The two ships were moving slowly relative to each other, and presently the round lump began to accelerate of itself toward the "Mercury." It struck with a thump and a jar that the men aboard the ship felt to their bones, and clung.
The magnet was on. Slowly, those aboard the "Two" reeled hi on the braked winch, braking their relative speed. Twice the magnet pulled loose, to jump back as the strain was released on the cable. It took an hour of maneuvering before the feed pipe could be sent across. Then the "Three" made fast by the same laborious process. Two hours later, the "Mercury," her fuel tanks full, was falling all alone through space. Far behind her, two dots of blue flame marked the "Two" and the "Three" returning to Ganymede. The Great Adventure had really begun-the final dash for which they had spent five years in preparation.
Alone, a dust mote in infinity, the mottled football of synthium dropped. Bar Corliss was about to learn something of the strength of the wonderful stuff Bob Randall had invented.
It didn't take very long. They reached Jupiter's outer
fringes of atmosphere in only eleven hours, on a long, long slant. They were forty-five degrees removed from the Red Spot, and forty-five degrees south of the north pole. Before they slowed to a stop, relative to Jupiter, they would be ninety degrees removed from the danger that might lurk in the Red Spot. They were more interested in learning something of Jupiter and returning with it than in learning all-and not returning.
The shriek of air sounded again in the spread vanes on the wings, high and shrill and thin. The "Mercury" was going more swiftly now than it had been when it touched Ganymede's atmosphere. But there was unlimited room to maneuver hi this atmosphere. There was no fear of darting out of it again.
Five thousand miles they shrilled through that air, their speed slowly dying, the friction wanning the ship. They weren't falling any more, no longer a free fall, and they didn't have orbital speed any more, so the wings began to support them against Jupiter's pull.
Corliss looked at Lombard, standing beside him, looking anxiously over the pilot's shoulders, through the ports. There was a vast darkness, and below, a vast sheet of sheening clouds, scudding, racing. There was no horizon. It was level, just a distant point so far no eyes could see it. Jupiter was too huge.
"Doc," said Corliss softly, "do you feel the way I do?" "I don't know, Bar. I don't know how you feel, but I feel awfully tired."
"I think Jupiter's taking hold of us, Doc." Bar looked solemnly at the accelerometer. It stood at one point two. Only twenty percent greater than Earth's pull-and they were feeling it. "Six months on that pebble out there didn't prepare us for this, exactly, did it" "Not exactly."
"She's not obeying the controls too well, Bar," said Tad Martin, piloting now, as the most expert of them. "I think we're getting in to wind."
There was a different note in the squeal of the air now, a deeper note, a throaty cry, and a pulsing howl was coming in, a gustiness to replace the steady-high-noted fluting of the air as they split through it at twenty-seven thousand miles an hour. Their speed had dropped to about six thousand miles an hour now, and it was falling rapidly, more rapidly than the airplaning rocketship.
There were pushes now, little jabs and jerks. They were getting out of the clear, straight streaming of the uppermost air levels into something slightly turbulent. Only thirty miles below them now lay the cloud level.
At that particular moment, the "Mercury" could have pulled out. Fifteen minutes later, it was tossing, jumping, leaping wildly, horribly in a screaming tornado.
"I can't do a thing," snapped Martin, struggling with the controls. "They don't affect her-she's too heavy for them, and the wind's too much." "Can they stand the strain?" asked Corliss anxiously. "They're synthium. They won't break, but-" As if in answer to his words came the harsh grind of the control racks, racks of molded parium, not a tenth as strong as the synthium wings. It was a harsh, grating squeal of tortured metal.
Corliss dragged himself back. It was labor, for the terrific accelerations of the wind's force, doubling and tripling Earth's gravity, made him near helpless. Finally his voice called out. "The main rack's sprung half an inch. If it gives another half it'll strip the teeth on the left pinion, and break the shaft on the right pinion."
The "Mercury" was heavy, very heavy, and the winds were terrific. The ship was still traveling close to five hundred miles into the atmosphere since detecting the first faint screams of air. It approximated stratospheric density, and the wings gripped well and solidly in this air.
Almost abruptly they descended from what we know as the "supersphere" of comparatively calm air into the stratosphere of Jupiter. Jupiter's stratosphere isn't like ours. There are clouds in it for one thing. And it has winds. The "Mercury" was now hi forty-five degrees north, and so unfortunate as to be right near one of the junctures between neighboring "belts."
Martin had a chance to look for a second. Below, off to the left, he saw the clouds tumbling, tossing, rolling by him at terrific speed, nearly seven hundred kilometers per second. On the other side, off to the right tnd below, he saw them racing back in the opposite direction at nearly two hundred. And right hi between was a vortex effect.
Martin's face turned white as he suddenly jammed borne the firing lever. The rockets thundered deafening
defiance; for an instant the "Mercury" righted herself, and steadied, then started slowly to climb upward.
From somewhere, Jupiter thrust up a giant hand. The flea that had been buzzing around him apparently planned to leave. The mighty hand smacked the flea on the back; there was a horrible rending shriek of torn metal, the grinding bumping thump of broken beams thrashing about Martin turned owlishly to look out of the ports. A great broad flat thing went skating down the wind, turning over and over. Presently another one joined it. Simultaneously the rockets stopped operating as the fuel pumps gave up trying to operate in the wildly pitching accelerations aboard the ship.
Ten seconds later the men were relieved of the weight that had been crushing them down, and some fifteen later the great broad flat things were flapping dismally upward past the ship. They were dropping much more rapidly than the wings.
"Happy landings," said Corliss grimly. "I wonder if synthium bounces?"
"We won't know, I'm afraid," sighed Martin. "I'd like to leave this place but-well."
Abruptly they had fallen through the area of terrific winds. The clouds that still wrapped them seemed less turbulent, save where their rapidly mounting speed tossed the vessel. The ship seemed calm and almost motionless; only an almost-earth-normal gravity affected them. "We're approaching stability," said Corliss. There was a limit to how fast the football-shaped ship would fall-though Corliss knew it was a very high limit, for the ship was streamlined.
"Is the air-brake out?"
Martin snorted. "The cable snapped like a thread when the wings went. The rudder's off too. I don't know how much the airspeedometer means, but it says we're making about two thousand an hour. Still climbing, I see." There was heavy silence for some seconds, age-long seconds. Then a soft laugh from Martin broke it. "We're thirty thousand feet below sea-level according to the barometer." He reached over and closed the synthium valve connecting it to outside pressure. They were fortunate it was welded synthium, really. It would have been so easy to make those tubes of brass, or steel.
They began to feel again the sudden heavy weight of
Jupiter. The ship had reached its maximum speed, and was going down now at a constant velocity. "Stability," said Corliss. "Does the radio work?"
"No," replied Riley. "It quit shortly after the storm began. I guess we passed the reflective layer. The waves bounce back, and we can't reach out, nor they in."
"Too bad-we could have told them not to send the rescue ship in six months. They'll wait six months 'now."
"Hasn't most of it gone already?" asked Thrumann, slightly green. "It seems that way."
"The air must be-we've hit!" gasped Corliss. Then he realized he was wrong. There was a steady, terrific bombardment, a shattering, bone-jarring series of colossal smashes. "Hail!" he gurgled ten seconds later. "My God- everything's on a giant scale here!"
"They sound like asteroids, they may puncture us-"