“I wish I could be as confident as you,” Dom said.
“I have to be confident, Flash,” J. J. said. “If I didn’t feel that way I’d strap on as much plastique as I could carry and walk into an Earthfirster rally and pull the pin.”
Chapter Eight
A million and one things can go wrong with a collection of complicated components, and the Kennedy was the most complex ship ever constructed. Every system aboard had been tested time and time again, but never in flight with all of them operating to move a huge mass of metal and a cargo of water.
Just in case, the entire backside of the moon was evacuated. Dom said a silent prayer, and he was sure that each of the others aboard were doing the same as Neil, buckled into the pilot’s chair, finished the last preflight checklist and looked over at J.J. and winked. Neil’s blue eyes were squinted and his mouth twisted into a grin which was not amusement, but his way of showing tension.
There was no dramatic countdown. When all systems were ready and all the thousands of little things checked out, J.J. gave a thumbs-up sign and Neil pressed a switch which ignited the preheater. Down in the engineroom Paul Jensen saw the light go on and ran a visual of the automatics. The sound of the preheater was a muffled rumble in Jensen’s ears. There was a tiny vibration which only a trained man would notice. It came up to his senses through the soles of his feet.
“All right, baby,” Neil said. “Do it for old Neil.” When the awesome power began to build there was no loud noise, only a small hum. The sensation of power was there, however, and something in the closed atmosphere of the ship seemed to absorb it, to become alive with it. There was a charge in the air, a tingling which went beyond skin-deep to become a part of the entire sensory system.
Slowly power overcame inertia. Slowly the heavily laden monster of a ship moved, the force which powers the stars building, building, as crew members checked and reported, and it was “Go. Go. Go.”
Dom’s eyes flashed back and forth among an array of instruments which read stress and loading on hull and internal components. Inertial strain registered and was noted, but she had been built well, built with pride and loving care by men who felt that she might be the last of her breed, the last ship they’d ever build.
Acceleration was smooth and more rapid than a conventional rocket. The moon’s gravity was a mere feather of force to be brushed aside by the brute power in Kennedy’s drive.
Up and out she went smoothly. Neil goosed her, and the sudden acceleration pushed the crew against the backs of their seats. She was in position to turn, to assume the stance for the long, hard drive for acceleration which would take her to a rendezvous with Mars. She did it with only a fraction of her available muscle, a creature of free space, proud, beautiful, huge. There she lay as the crew examined her from stem to stern.
Although she handled like a dream and was doing great, Neil Walters was still aware that he was flying an untested ship with a crew aboard. He knew that Kennedy had been a crash project, and he didn’t like flying the results of crash projects. He knew his space history. The first crash construction project produced the Vanguard series of rockets, and he’d seen the old films of Vanguards melting down on the launch pad. Crash programs did that. In the 1950s, the United States had pushed hard to catch up with the Russians, who had put a dog, Laika, into space with a total payload of over one thousand pounds. Up to that point the prestige of the United States had rested on a super job of jury-rigging by a crew under Wernher von Braun. They used spit and scrap wire, antique rockets, a lot of determination and imagination, and placed thirty-point-eight pounds of payload into orbit with a tiny Jupiter C.
Von Braun proved that crash techniques do not always fail, but still there was the Vanguard, which blew with spectacular regularity to prove that if you persist in crash techniques in things as complicated as space hardware you’re going to have a few loud bangs.
The big question in Neil’s mind was this: Was the Kennedy an inspired job of jury-rigging in the von Braun mold, or was she a Vanguard? If she stayed in one piece and performed, future historians would call her a technical miracle. If she blew, or simply fizzled, brought down by the failure of one tiny and relatively insignificant system somewhere deep inside her, they would go back to calling her what she was called in the beginning, Folly.
She checked out. Doris’ computer ticked out, for the automatics, course settings and power settings and thousands of pieces of individual information which formed the word “Go.”
Neil missed the familiar bellow of burning rockets, soundless in space, loud and all-pervasive inside a ship. His eyes squinted again as he activated her and started her on that long, long drive. His voice was professionally calm. His words went to the crew and on a tight beam back to Lunar Control.
“All systems normal, all systems go.”
The next pucker period began, an attempt to get the big bird up to cruising speed without blowing her wide open. It was more than just opening a throttle, but it was handled, in its complexity, by the shipboard computers, matching power to stress, every action monitored in a half-dozen ways, both electronic and visual. The ship hummed with that inaudible energy and began to move, faster and faster, the acceleration creating an artificial gravity pushing the crew members backward in their seats.
She didn’t blow. Neil kept the crew working long hours during that initial period of acceleration. She reached cruise speed sixty-five percent faster than conventional ships and was moving faster than anything man had built. Every system was checked and rechecked, tested in flight.
At last Neil was satisfied. Rotating watches began, and some of the crew had time for a nap. The Kennedy performed as if she’d gone through the most thorough flight testing.
Neil took first watch. Dom, who had the second watch, knew he would be unable to sleep. He stayed near his panel, checking stress and loading. Paul Jensen kept an eye on the powerplant. Only Doris and Art retired to their cabins.
It was J.J. who took the call from Lunar Base. Even before the message was complete, his hand flicked an alarm and the lights flashed and the alarm whooped throughout the ship.
With the crew at emergency quarters, J.J. fed the message from the base into the sound system.
“John F. Kennedy, this is Moon Control.”
“Moon Control, this is J.F.K.”
“J.F.K., Admiral Pinkerton speaking. Please alert your crew. We have received a bomb threat. Repeat, there is a bomb threat directed against the Kennedy.”
“I am now going live to Moon Control,” J.J. said. “Moon Control, this is Kennedy. Details, please.”
“J.F.K., a team of Earthfirsters have seized control station eight-five with its communications intact. We estimate the number of terrorists at five. We are in contact with them. They have made two demands. One, the Kennedy returns moonside. Two, we broadcast, and I quote, ‘our guilt,’ unquote, to the world.”
J.J. shook his head impatiently. “Details on bomb threat, please.”
“Stand by, J.F.K. The following is a recording of our communications with the terrorist in control of station eight-five.”
There was a click and then an excited young voice. “Moon Control, Moon Control, this is the voice of freedom. Listen carefully. We are in control of station eight-five. We are heavily armed. We can resist any attack. Listen carefully. The folly of imperialism, the spaceship you call the John F. Kennedy, will be destroyed unless you meet the following requirements. One, you will order the Kennedy to return to Moon Base immediately. Two, you will broadcast to the world an abject apology for your wastefulness in allowing such a crime to be perpetrated on the people of the Earth, for using materials and money which should have gone to feed our starving millions. Three, you will provide a ship of the Explorer class to transport this group of freedom fighters to a free port Earthside.”