Rocket To Limbo
by Alan E. Nourse
Cover
Quotes from the reviews:
“This is no ordinary star-jump: author Nourse had conceived a really credible plot with three dimensional characters motivated by plausible reasoning. Furthermore, he has an almost uncanny ability to visualize the strange sensations and settings of the world of the future.”
“There is something haunting about Rocket to Limbo . . . The author suggests that if man has faith, he can literally rearrange his environment to suit himself!”
“The pace is good, suspense well sustained, and the conclusion satisfyingly surprising.”
“Better than most.”
Copyright Page
Rocket To Limbo by Alan E. Nourse
Ace Books, Inc., 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
Copyright ©, 1957, by Alan E. Nourse
An Ace Book, by arrangement With David McKay Co.
All Rights Reserved
Printed In U.S.A.
Rocket To Limbo
To J.McP.H., who will wright his own someday
Prologue
Ad astra, the words on the bronze plaque read.
The heavy metal sheet was bright and new, gleaming red-brown in the afternoon sunlight. Great bolts of brass buckled it to the base of the launching rack, a slab of gray granite cut in a single piece from the living rock of the mountains high above the rocket port. Reaching up from the rack, the Star Ship stood like a silvery needle, poised, graceful, eager to break away from the bonds of Earth—pointing upward toward the stars it sought.
To the stars.
The ship was named Argonaut in memory of that legendary ship and its crew that had plunged into unknown waters so many centuries before. She had been built with tireless care and devotion; years had been spent outfitting her for the brave journey she was now daring to make. The finest engineers on Earth had designed her to carry the growth tanks and fuel blocks, the oxygen and reprocessing equipment, the libraries and information banks that her crew would require during the long voyage. Her massive engines had been tested and retested to tolerances never before achieved on Earth.
They had to be, for these engines must not fail.
The ship’s name was carved on the bronze plaque, and the names of the men and women of her crew. Below this the dates were written:
Launched: March 3, 2008
Returned:
There was no way of knowing when she would return, if she ever did return. There had never been a ship like the
Argonaut before. This was no clumsy orbit-craft to carry colonists and miners to the outpost stations on Mars and Venus. The Argonaut was a Star Ship, designed for one purpose—to carry her crew across the black gulf of space between the stars. Her destination was Alpha Centauri; her voyage might take centuries to complete.
None of the crew who launched her would live to make landfall at her destination—they knew that. But their children, or perhaps their children’s children might survive to send the ship blasting homeward again.
The Argonaut was bound on the Long Passage.
Up on the scaffolding surrounding the ship, lights were shining, men were moving quickly up and down as last-minute preparations were completed. The gantry crane crept up and down, up and down, loading aboard the final crates of supplies. For weeks the giant nuclear engines had been warming, preparing for the sudden demand of power to thrust the ship away from Earth’s gravity. A chronometer clicked off the dwindling minutes. Gradually the scaffolding cleared of men; the crane at last came down and stayed, its lights blinking out.
High up on the hull a pressure door swung slowly shut, sealing the silvery skin of the great ship.
Around it, well beyond the range of blast gases, crowds of people stood waiting silently, thinking in their hearts what they could not put into words. Across the land eyes were turned upward, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of the ship as she streaked up through the quiet sky. Others saw it on silvery screens, or listened to the excited voice of the 3-V announcer. One thing was certain—the eyes of Earth were on the Argonaut, a crowded, war-weary, overpopulated, hungry Earth. The people knew die hope that lay behind the voyage: that the Argonaut would find a place where Earthmen could settle, could build homes and colonies, and so relieve the terrific press of people on their own crowded planet.
But there was another reason too for the voyage. The stars were a challenge that Man had to answer sometime. The time had come at last.
A young woman of twenty stood in the crowd, watching the ship with sad eyes. Her husband placed his arm around her shoulder and drew her closer to him.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
She shivered. “I’m scared.”
“So am I. Everyone’s scared, in a way. It means so much, and it’s so frightening and yet so wonderful, too—you know?”
She nodded and clung closer. Her father was the first officer of the Argonaut. She knew she would never see him again, and she knew that he would never set foot on land again. The trip would take too long. His life was the ship now, and the ship was his life and responsibility, the ship and the children who would be born aboard it.
“John, I wish we could go along.”
He patted her shoulder. “I know. I do too. But our work is here.”
“A hundred years, maybe two hundred! How can they hope to make it?”
He watched the last of the ground-crew scurrying down the ramps, heard the expectant hush falling over the crowd. “I don’t know, but they’ll make it,” he said firmly. “They will—”
There was a restless stirring as the seconds passed. Then, like thunder gathering in the distance, rising louder and lounder, the roar began. White flame blossomed from the jet of the ship, billowed out in a searing mushroom against the fallout dampers, as the roar echoed and re-echoed down the valley. Slowly, as if lifted gently on the magic fire the ship rose; slowly, then faster, higher and higher. The mushroom became a tongue of fire as the roar rose to a scream and the ship drove heavenward. The eyes of Earth followed the great finger of light into the sky, not daring to breathe, waiting, waiting—
And then the ship was gone. A sigh rippled through the crowds of people, and they turned their faces away from the sky. Slowly the crowd began to melt away, leaving the granite pedestal with the bronze plaque sitting in the gathering dusk, waiting to receive the ship when she returned. When? No one knew. No one there would live to see it.
The Long Passage had begun.
The young woman clenched her husband’s hand, and without a word they turned away. She felt her child move within her, and she smiled.
He will be proud of his grandfather, she thought, if he’s a he.
She did not know that the great-grandson of this unborn son of hers would be the man who would give mankind a Short Passage to the stars.
Silently, John and Mary Koenig turned and left the field as darkness gathered.
Chapter One
Ad astra, the words on the bronze plaque read.