“Danish honor,? Nils said gravely, then broke into a wide grin. “This is really going to rock the Russians back on their heels! How many people in their country? Two hundred twenty-six or two hundred twenty-seven million, too many to count. And how many in all of Denmark?”
“Under five million.”
“Correct—a lot less than in Moscow alone. So they have all their parades and rockets and boosters and speeches and politicians, and their thing falls over and all die juice runs out. So we come along and pick up the pieces!”
The ship’s officers at the next table had been silent, listening as Nils’s voice grew louder with enthusiasm. Now they burst out in applause, laughing aloud. This flight appealed to the Danish sense of humor. Small they were, but immensely proud, with a long and fascinating history going back a thousand years. And, like all the Baltic countries, they were always aware of the Soviet Union just across that small, shallow sea. This rescue attempt would be remembered for a long time to come. Ove looked at his watch and stood up.
“It is less than two hours to our first lift-off computation. Let us see if we can make it.”
They finished quickly and hurried on deck. The submarine was already out of the hold and in the water, with technicians aboard making the last-minute arrangements.
“With all these changes the tub really needs a new name,” Nils said. “Maybe Den Flyvende Blaeksprutte—the Flying Squid. It has a nice ring to it.”
Henning Wilhelmsen climbed back over the rail and joined them, his face set in lines of unalloyed glumness. Since he knew her best, he had supervised all of the equipment changes and installations.
“I don’t know what she is now—a spaceship I guess. But she’s no longer a sub. No power plant, no drive units. I had to pull out the engine to make room for that big tin can with all the plumbing. And I even bored holes in the pressure hull!” This last crime was the end of the world to any submariner. Nils clapped him on the back.
“Cheer up—you’ve done your part. You have changed her from a humble larva into a butterfly of the skies.”
“Very poetical.” Henning refused to be cheered up. “She’s more of a luna moth than a butterfly now. Take good care of her.”
“You can be sure of that,” Nils said, sincerely. “It’s my own skin that I’m worried about, and Den Flyvende Blaeksprutte is the only transportation around. All changes finished?”
“All done. You have an air-pressure altimeter now, as well as a radio altimeter. Extra oxygen tanks, air-scrubbing equipment, a bigger external aerial, everything they asked for and more. We even put lunch aboard for you, and the admiral donated a bottle of snaps. Ready to go.” He reached out and shook the pilot’s hand. “Good luck.”
“See you later tonight.”
There was much handshaking then, last-minute instructions, and a rousing cheer as they went aboard and closed the hatch. A Danish flag had been painted on the conning tower and it gleamed brightly in the early morning sun.
“Dogged tight,” Nils said, giving an extra twist to the wheel that sealed the hatch above, set into the conning tower’s deck.
“What about the hatch on top of the tower?” Ove asked.
“Closed but not sealed, as you said. The air will bleed out of the conning tower long before we get there.”
“Fine. That’s about as close to an airlock as we can rig on a short notice. Now, are we all certain that we know what to do and how to do it?”
“I know,” Nils grumbled, “but I miss the checklists.”
“The Wright brothers didn’t have checklists. We’ll save that for those who follow after. Arnie, can we run through the drill once more?”
“Yes, of course. We have a computation coming up in about twenty minutes, and I see no reason why we should not make it.” He went forward to look out of a port. “The ship is moving away to give us plenty of room.” He pointed down at the controls in front of Nils, most of them newly mounted on top of the panel.
“Nils, you are the pilot I have rigged controls here for you that will enable you to change course. We have gone over them so you know how they operate. We will have to work together on take-offs and landings, because those will have to be done from the Daleth unit, which I will man. Ove is our engine room and will see to it that we have a continuous supply of current. The batteries are still here, and charged, but they will be saved for emergencies. Which I sincerely hope we will not have. I will make the vertical take-off and get us clear of the atmosphere. Nils will put us on our course and keep us on it. I will control acceleration. If the university computer that ties in with the radar operates all right, they should tell us when to reverse thrust. If they do not tell us, we shall have to reverse by chronometer and do the best we can by ourselves.”
“Now that is the part I don’t understand,” Nils said, pushing his cap back on his head and pointing to the periscope. “This is a plain old underwater periscope—now modified so that it looks straight up rather than ahead. It had a cross hair in it. Fm supposed to get a star in the cross hair and keep it there, and you want me to believe that this is all we have to navigate by? Shouldn’t there be a navigator?”
“An astrogator, if you want to be precise.”
“An astrogator then. Someone who can plot a course for us?”
“Someone whom you can have a little more faith in than a periscope you mean?” Ove asked, laughing, and opened the door to the engine compartment.
“Exactly. I’m thinking about all those course corrections, computations, and such that the Americans and Soviets have done before to get to the Moon. Can we really do it with this?”
“We have the same computations behind us, realize that. But we have a much simpler means of applying them because of the shorter duration of our flight. When time is allowed for our initial slower speed through the atmosphere, our flying time is almost exactly four hours. Knowing this, certain prominent stars were picked as targets and the computations were made. Those are our computation times. If we leave at the correct moment and keep the target star in the sight all of the time, we will be aiming at the spot in the Moon’s orbit where it will be at the end of the four hours. We both move to our appointed meeting place, and the descent can be made. After we locate the Soviet capsule, that is.”
“And that is going to be easy?” Nils asked, looking dubious.
“I don’t see why not,” Ove answered, poking his head out of the engine cubby, wiping his hands on a rag. “The generator is operating and the output is right on the button.” He pointed to the large photograph of the Moon pasted to the front bulkhead. “Goodness, we know what the Moon looks like, we’ve all looked through telescopes and can find the Sea of Tranquility. We go there, to the right spot, and if we don’t see the Soviets we use the direction finder to track them down.”
“And at what spot do we look in the Sea of Tranquility? Do we follow this?” Nils pointed to the blurry photograph of the Moon that had been cut from the newspaper Pravda.› There was a red star printed in the north of the mare where the cosmonauts had landed. “Pravda says this is where they are. Do we navigate from a newspaper photo?”
“We do unless you can think of something better,” Arnie said mildly. “And do not forget our direction finder is a standard small boat model bought from A.P. Moller Ship Supplies in Copenhagen. Does that bother you too?”
After one last scowl Nils burst out laughing. “The whole thing is so outrageous that it just has to succeed.” He fastened his lap belt. “Blaeksprutten to the rescue!”
“It is all much more secure than it might look,” Ove explained. “You must remember that we had this operational submarine to begin with. It is a sealed, tested, proven, self-sufficient spaceship built for a different kind of space. But it works just as well in a vacuum as under water. And the Daleth drive is operational and reliable—and will get us to the Moon in a few hours. The combination of radar and computer on Earth will track us and compute the correct course for us to follow. Everything possible has been done to make this trip a safe one. There will be later voyages and the instrumentation will be refined, but we have all we need now to get us safely to the Moon afld back. So don’t worry.”