"Bye, Rog!"
"Good trip, folks!"
"Aloha!"
"Hurry back"
Their friends started filing down a ramp mto one of the field tunnels; Mr. Stone turned to his family. "Thirty minutes. Man the ship!"
"Aye aye, sir."
Hazel started up the ladder with Pollux after her. She stopped suddenly, backed down and stepped on his fingers. "Out of my way, youngster!" She jumped down and ran toward the group disappearing down the ramp. "Hey, Tom! Beasley! Wait! Half a mo-"
The mayor paused and turned around; she thrust a package into his hand. "Mail this stuff for me?"
"Certainly, Hazel."
"That's a good boy. ‘Bye!"
She came back to the ship; her son inquired, "What was the sudden crisis, Hazel?"
"Six episodes. I stay up all night getting them ready... then I didn't even notice I still had 'em until I had trouble climbing with one hand."
"Sure your head's on tight?"
"None of your lip, boy."
"Get in the ship."
"Aye aye, sir."
Once they were all inboard the port's weightmaster made his final check, reading the scales on the launching flat under each fin, adding them together. "Two and seven-tenths pounds under, Captain. Pretty close figuring." He fastened trim weights in that amount to the foot of the ladder. "Take it up."
"Thank you, sir." Roger Stone hauled up the ladder, gathered in the trim weights, and closed the door of the air lock. He let himself into the ship proper, closed and dogged the inner door behind him, then stuck his head up into the control room. Castor was already in the co-pilot's couch. "Time?"
"Minus seventeen minutes, Captain."
"She tracking?" He reached out and set the trim weights on a spindle at the central axis of the ship.
"Pretty as could be." The main problem and the exact second of departure had been figured three weeks earlier; there is only one short period every twenty-six months when a ship may leave the Luna-Terra system for Mars by the most economical orbit. After trial weight had been taken the day before Captain Stone had figured his secondary problem, i.e., how much thrust for how long a period was required to put this particular ship into that orbit. It was the answer to this second problem which Castor was now tracking in the automatic pilot.
The first leg of the orbit would not be towards Mars but toward Earth, with a second critical period, as touchy as the take off, as they rounded Earth. Captain Stone frowned at the thought, then shrugged; that worry had to come later. "Keep her tracking. I'm going below."
He went down into the power room, his eyes glancing here and there as he went. Even to a merchant skipper, to whom it is routine, the last few minutes before blast-off are worry making. Blast-off for a spaceship has a parachute-jump quality; once you jump it is usually too late to correct any oversights. Space skippers suffer nightmares about misplaced decimal points.
Hazel and Pollux occupied the couches of the chief and assistant. Stone stuck his head down without going down. "Power Room?"
"She'll be ready. I'm letting her warm slowly."
Dr. Stone, Meade, and Buster were riding out the lift in the bunkroom, for company; he stuck his head in. "Everybody okay?"
His wife looked up from her couch. "Certainly, dear. Lowell has had his injection." Buster was stretched out on his back, strapped down and sleeping. He alone had never experienced acceleration thrust and free falling; his mother had decided to drug him lest he be frightened.
Roger Stone looked at his least son. "I envy him."
Meade sat up. "Head pretty bad, Daddy?"
"I'll live. But today I regard farewell parties as much overrated affairs, especially for the guest of honor."
The horn over his head said in Castor's voice, "Want me to boost her, Dad? I feel fine."
"Mind your own business, co-pilot. She still tracking?"
"Tracking, sir. Eleven minutes."
Hazel's voice came out of the horn. " ‘The wages of sin are death'."
"Look who's talking! No more unauthorised chatter over the intercom. That's an order."
"Aye aye, Captain."
He started to leave; his wife stopped him. "I want you to take this, dear." She held out a capsule.
"I don't need it."
"Take it."
"Yes, Doctor darling." He swallowed it, made a face, and went up to the control room. As he climbed into his couch he said, "Call tower for clearance."
"Aye aye, sir. Rolling Stone, Luna City registry, to Tower - request clearance to lift according to approved plan."
"Tower to Rolling Stone - you are cleared to lift"
"Rolling Stone to Tower - roger!" Castor answered. Captain Stone looked over his board. All green, except one red light from power room which would not wink green until he told his mother to unlock the safety on the cadmium damper plates. He adjusted the microvernier on his tracking indicator, satisfied himself that the auto-pilot was tracking to perfection as Castor had reported. "All stations, report in succession -power room !"
"She's sizzling, Skipper!" came back Hazel's reply.
"Passengers!"
"We're ready, Roger."
"Co-pilot!"
"Clear and green, sir! Check off completed. Five minutes."
"Strap down and report!"
"Power gang strapped." - "We're strapped, dear." - "Strapped, sir all stations."
"Power room, unlock for lift."
The last red light on his board winked green as Hazel reported, "Power board unlocked, Skipper. Ready to blast."
Another voice followed hers, more softly: "Now I lay me down to sleep -"
"Shut up, Meade!" Roger Stone snapped. "Co-pilot, commence the count!"
Castor started singsonging: "Minus two minutes ten... minus two minutes... minus one minute fifty... minus one minute forty -"
Roger Stone felt his blood begin to pound and wished heartily that he had had the sense to come home early, even if the party had been in his honor.
"Minus one minute!... minus fifty-five... minus fifty -"
He braced his right hand with his forefinger over the manual firing key, ready to blast if the auto-pilot should fail - then quickly took it away. This was no military vessel! If it failed to fire, the thing to do was to cancel - not risk his wife and kids with imperfect machinery. After all, he held only a private license - "Minus thirty-five... half minute!"
His head felt worse. Why leave a warm apartment to bounce around in a tin covered wagon?
"Twenty-eight, twenty-sev'n, twenty-six -"
Well, if anything went wrong, at least there wouldn't be any little orphans left around. The whole Stone family was here, root and branch. The rolling Stones -
"Nineteen... eighteen... seventeen -,
He didn't fancy going back and meeting all those people who had just come out to say good-by - telling them, "It's like this: we swung and we missed -"
"Twelve! Eleven! and ten! and nine! "
He again placed his forefinger over the manual button, ready to stab.
"And five!
" And four!
" And three!
" And two!
" And – " Castor's chant was blanked out by the blazing 'white noise' of the jet; the Rolling Stone cast herself into the void.
VI - BALLISIICS AND BUSTER
Blasting off from Luna is not the terrifying and oppressive experience that a lift from Earth is. The Moon's field is so weak, her gravity well so shallow, that a boost of one-g would suffice - just enough to produce Earth-normal weight.