In Our Hands the Stars Read online

  “How big a difference?” someone asked. “Could you give us some specific figures?”

  Arnie hesitated, thinking, but Ove Rasmussen stood to answer. “I think I can give you some help. I have been working it out while we have been talking.” He lifted his slide rule and made a few rapid calculations. “If we have a continuous acceleration and deceleration of one G—one gravity—there will be no feeling of either free fall or excess weight to passengers in the vehicle. This will be an acceleration of … nine hundred eighty—we’ll call it a thousand for simplicity—centimeters per second per second. The Moon is, on the average, about four hundred thousand kilometers distant. The result would therefore be …”

  There was complete silence as he made the calculations. He read off the result, frowned, then did it over again. The answer appeared to be the same, because he looked up and smiled.

  “If the Daleth effect does produce a true space drive, there is something new under the sun, gentlemen. We will be able to fly from here to the Moon ill a little under four hours.”

  During the unbelieving silence that followed he made another calculation.

  “The voyage to Mars will take a bit longer. After all, the red planet is over eighty million kilometers distant at its closest conjunction. But even that voyage will be made in about thirty-nine hours. A day and three-quarters. Not very long at all.”

  * * *

  They were stunned. But as they thought of the possibilities opened up by the Daleth effect a babble of conversation rose, so loud that Arnie had to tap on the blackboard with his chalk to get their attention and to silence them. They listened now with a fierce attention.

  “As you see, the possibilities of the exploitation of the Daleth drive are almost incalculable. We must change all of our attitudes about the size of the solar system. But before we sail off to the Moon for a weekend of exploration we must be sure that we have an adequate source of motive power. Will the drive work away from the Earth’s surface? Is it precisely controllable—that is can we make the minute course adjustments needed to reach an object of astronomical distances? Do we have a power source great enough to supply the energy demands for the voyage? Is the drive continuously reliable?

  “The next flight of Blaeksprutten should answer most of these questions. The craft will attempt to rise to the top of the Earth’s atmosphere.

  “As the most qualified person in regard to the drive equipment, I shall personally conduct the tests.” He looked around, jaw clamped, as though expecting to be differed with, but there was only silence. This was his day.

  “Thank you. I would suggest then that the second trial be begun immediately.”

  8

  “I’m beginning to see why they might need an airline pilot aboard a submarine,” Nils said, spinning the wheel that sealed the lower hatch in the conning tower.

  “Keep the log, will you?” Henning asked, pointing to the open book on the little navigator’s table fixed to the bulkhead.

  “I’ll do just that,” Nils said, looking at his watch and making an entry. “If this thing works you’ll be the only sub commander ever to get flight pay.”

  “Take us out, please, will you, Commander Wilhelmsen?” Arnie said, intent upon his instruments. “At least as far as you did the first time.”

  “Ja vel.” Henning advanced the impeller one notch and the pumps throbbed beneath their feet. He sat in the pilot’s seat just ahead of the conning tower. The hull rose here in a protuberance that contained three round, immensely thick ports. A control wheel, very much like that in an airplane, determined direction. For turning left and right it varied the relative speed of the twin water jets that propelled the sub. Tail planes aft caused them to rise or fall.

  “Two hundred meters out,” Henning announced, and eased off on the power.

  “The pumps for your jets, are they mechanical?” Arnie asked.

  “Yes, electrically driven.”

  “Can you cut them off completely and still maintain a constant output from your generator? We have voltage regulators, but it would help if you could produce as constant a supply as is possible.”

  Henning threw a series of switches. “All motor power off. There is still an instrumentation drain as well as the atmosphere equipment. I can cut them off-for a limited time-if you like?”

  “No, this will be fine. I am now activating the drive unit and will rise under minimum power to a height of approximately one hundred meters.”

  Nils made an entry in the log and looked at the waves splashing at the porthole nearest him. “You don’t happen to have an altimeter fitted aboard this tub, do you, Henning?”

  “Not really.”

  “Pity. Have to get one installed. And radar instead of that sonar. I have a feeling that you’re getting out of your depth …”

  Henning had a pained look and shook his head dolefully-then glanced at the port as a vibration, more felt than heard, swept through the sub. The surface of the water was dropping at a steady rate.

  “Airborne now,” he said, and looked helplessly at his useless instruments. The ascent continued; moments passed.

  “One hundred meters,” Nils said, estimating their height above the ship below. Arnie made a slight adjustment and turned to face them.

  “There appears to be more than enough power in reserve even while the drive is holding the mass of this submarine at this altitude. The equipment is functioning well and is in no danger of overloading. Are you gentlemen ready?”

  “I’m never going to be more ready.”

  “Push the button or whatever, Professor. Just hanging here seems to be doing me no good.”

  The humming increased and their chairs pressed up against them. Nils and Henning stared through the ports, struck silent by emotion, as the tiny submarine leapt toward the sky. A thin whistle vibrated through the hull as the air rushed past outside, scarcely louder than the sigh of the air-conditioning unit. The engine throbbed steadily. Seemingly without effort, as silently as a film taken from an ascending rocket, their strange craft was hurling itself into the sky. The sea below seemed to smooth out, their mother ship shrinking to the size of a model, then to a bathtub toy, before the low-lying clouds closed in around them.

  “This is worse than flying blind,” Nils said, his great hands clenching and unclenching. “Seat of the pants, not a single instrument other than a compass, it’s just not right.”

  Arnie was the calmest of the three, too attentive to his instruments to even take a quick glimpse through one of the ports. “The next flight will have all the instrumentation,” he said. “This is a trial. Just up and down like an elevator. Meanwhile the Daleth unit shows that we are still vertical in relation to the Earth’s gravity, still moving away from it at the same speed.”

  The cloud layers were thick, but soon fell away beneath their keel. Then the steady rhythm of the diesel engines changed just as Arnie said, “The current—it is dropping! What is wrong?”

  Henning was in the tiny engine compartment, shouting out at them.

  “Something, the fuel, I don’t know, they’re losing power …”

  “The atmospheric pressure,” Nils said. “We’ve reached our ceiling. The oxygen content of the air is way down!”

  The engine coughed, stuttered, almost died, and a shudder went through the submarine. An instant later they started to fall.

  “Can’t you do something?” Arnie called out, working desperately at the controls. “The flow—so erratic—the Daleth effect is becoming inoperable. Can’t you stabilize the current?”

  “The batteries!” Henning dived for his position as he spoke, almost floating in the air, so quickly was their fall accelerating.

  He clutched at the back of his chair, missed, floated up and hit painfully against the periscope housing and bounced back. This time his fingers caught the chair and he pulled himself down into it and strapped in. He reached for the switches.

  “Current on—full!”

  The fall continued. Arnie glanced q
uickly at the other two men.

  “Get ready. I have cut the drive completely. When I engage it now I am afraid that the reaction will not be gentle because—”

  Metal screeched, equipment crashed and broke, and there were hoarse gasps as the sudden deceleration drove the air from their lungs. They were slammed down hard into their chairs, painfully, and for an instant they hovered at the edge of blackout as the blood drained from their brains.

  Then it was over and they were gasping for air, dizzily. Henning’s face was a white mask streaked with red, bleeding from an unnoticed scalp wound where his skull had struck the periscope. Outside there were only clouds. The engine ran smoothly and the air hushed from the vents, soft background to their rough breathing.

  “Let us not—” Nils said, taking a deep breath. “Let us not … do that again!”

  “We are maintaining altitude with no lateral motion,” Arnie said, his words calm despite the hardness of his breathing. “Do you wish to return—or to complete the test?”

  “As long as this doesn’t happen again, I’m for going on,” Nils said.

  “Agreed. But I suggest that we operate on the batteries.”

  “How is the charge?”

  “Excellent. Down less than five percent.”

  “We will go back up. Let me know when the charge is down to seventy percent and we will return. That should give us an acceptable safety margin. Plus the fact that engines can be restarted when we are low enough.”

  It was smooth, exhilarating. The clouds dropped below them and the engine labored. Henning shut it down and sealed the air intake. They rose.

  “Five thousand meters high at least,” Nils said, squinting at the cloud cover below with a pilot’s eye. “Most of the atmosphere is below us now.”

  “Then I can step up the acceleration. Please note the time.”

  “It’s all in the log. Some of it in a very shaky handwriting, I can tell you.”

  The curvature of the Earth was visible, the atmosphere a blue band above it tapering into the black of space. The brighter stars could be seen; the sun burned like a beacon and, shining through the port, threw a patch of eye-hurting brightness onto the deck. The upward pressure ceased.

  “Here we are,” Arnie said. “The equipment is functioning well, we are holding our position. Can anyone estimate our altitude?”

  “One hundred fifty kilometers,” Nils said. “Ninety or a hundred miles. It looks very much like the pictures shot from the satellites at that altitude.”

  “Battery reserve seventy-five percent and dropping slowly.”

  “Yes, it takes power to hover, scarcely less than for acceleration.”

  “Then we’ve done it!” Nils said and, even louder when the enormity struck him, “We’ve done it! We can go anywhere— do anything. We’ve really done it…”

  “Battery reserve nearing seventy percent.”

  “We will go down then.”

  “A little slower than last time?”

  “You can be sure of that.”

  More gently than a falling leaf, the submarine dropped. They passed through a silvery layer of high cirrus clouds.

  “Won’t we be coming down much further to the west?” Nils asked. “The Earth will have rotated out from under us so we won’t be able to set down in the same spot.”

  “No, I have compensated for that motion. We should be no more than a mile or two from the original position.”

  “Then I had better get on the radio.” Henning switched it on. “We’ll be in range soon, and we’ll want to tell them …” A voice came clearly through the background static, speaking the fast, slang-filled Copenhagen Danish that only a native of that city would be able to understand.

  “… dive, daughter, dive, and don’t come up for air. Swim deep, little sister, swim deep …”

  “What on earth are they talking about?” Arnie asked, looking up, surprised.

  “That!” Nils said, looking out the port and turning his head swiftly to follow the silver swept-wing forms that flashed by below. “Russian MIG. We’re just out of the clouds and I don’t think they saw us. Can we drop any faster?”

  “Hold on.”

  A twist of Arnie’s fingers pushed their stomachs up into their throats.

  “Let me know when we are about two hundred meters above the water,” he said calmly. “So I can slow the drop before we hit.”

  Nils clutched the arms of his chair to keep from floating up despite his belt. The leaden surface of the Baltic flashed toward them, closer and closer, the waves with white caps were visible, and the Vitus Bering off to one side.

  “Closer … closer … NOW!”

  They were slammed down, loose equipment rolled, sliding across the suddenly canted deck. Then an even more powerful force crashed into the sub, jarring the entire hull, as they plunged beneath the surface.

  “Will you please take over, Commander Wilhelmsen,” Arnie said, and for the first time his voice was a bit uneven. “I am shutting down the Daleth unit.”

  The pumps throbbed to life and Henning almost caressed his control panel. It was hard to fly as a passenger in one’s own submarine. He whistled between his teeth as he made a slow turn and angled up to periscope depth.

  “Take a look through the periscope, will you, Hansen? It’s easy enough to use, just like they do in the movies.”

  “Up periscope!” Nils chanted, slapping the handles down and twisting his cap backward. He ground his face into the rubber cushion. “I can’t see blast-all.”

  “Turn the knob to focus the lenses.”

  “Yes, that’s better. The ship’s off to port about thirty degrees.” He swept the periscope in a circle. “No other ships in sight. This thing doesn’t have a big enough field, so I can’t tell about the sky.”

  “We’ll have to take a chance. I’ll bring her up a bit so the aerial is clear.”

  The radio hissed with background noise, then a voice broke in, died away and returned an instant later.

  “Hello, Blaeksprutten, can you hear me? Over. Hello …”

  “Blaeksprutten here. What’s happening? Over.”

  “It is believed that you appeared on the Russian early warning radar screens. MIGs have been all over the area ever since you went up. None in sight now. We think that they did not see you come in. Please close on us and report on test. Over.”

  Arnie took up the microphone.

  “Equipment functioned perfectly. No problems. Estimated height of a hundred fifty kilometers reached on battery power. Over.”

  He flicked the switch and the sound of distant cheering poured from the loudspeaker.

  9

  The table was littered with magazines and booklets that did not interest Horst Schmidt. Novy Mir, Russia Today, Pravda, Twelve Years of U.S. Imperialist Intervention and Aggression in Laos. He leaned back in the chair, resting his elbow on the journals, and drew deeply on his cigarette. A pigeon flapped and landed on the windowsill outside, turning a pink eye to look at him through the water-beaded pane. He tapped the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and, at the sudden motion inside the room, the pigeon flew away. Schmidt turned as the door opened and Lidia Efimovna Shirochenka came into the room. She was a slim, blond-haired girl, who might have appeared Scandinavian had it not been for her high Slavic cheekbones. Her green tweed suit was well cut and fashionable, undoubtedly purchased in Denmark. Schmidt saw that she was reading his report, frowning over it.

  “There is precious little here of any value,” she said curtly, “considering the amount of money we pay you.” She sat down behind the desk that bore a small plaque reading Troisième Secrétaire de la Légation. She spoke in German, utilizing this opportunity, as a good party member, to a dual advantage; gaining linguistic practice with a native speaker.

  “There is a good deal of information there. Intelligence, even negative information, is still intelligence. We now know that the Americans are as much in the dark as we are about the affair at Langeliniekaj. We know that their f
air-weather allies the Danes are not acquainting their NATO comrades with all of their internal secrets. We know that all of the armed forces seemed to be involved. And if you will carefully note the last paragraph, tovarich Shirochenka, you will see that I have tentatively identified one of the civilians who was aboard the Isbjorn during the same day when there was all that excitement. He is Professor Rasmussen, a Nobel prize winner in physics, which I find most interesting. What is the connection between this affair and a physicist?”

  Lidia Shirochenka seemed unimpressed by this disclosure. She took a photograph from a drawer and passed it over to Schmidt. “Is that the man you are talking about?”

  He had too many years of experience at guarding his expression to reveal any reaction—but he was very surprised. It was a very grainy picture, obviously taken with a telescopic lens under poor light conditions, yet good enough to be instantly recognizable. Ove Rasmussen, carrying a small case, was walking down a ramp from a ship.

  “Yes, that’s the same man. Where did you get this?”

  “That is none of your business. You must realize that you are not the only man in the employ of this department. Your physicist now appears to be connected in some manner with rockets or missiles. Find out all you can about him. Who he sees, what he is doing. And do not tell the Americans about this little bit of information. That would be most unwise.”

  “You insult me! You know where my loyalty lies.”

  “Yes. With yourself. It is impossible to insult a double agent. I am just attempting to make it clear that it would be a drastic mistake for you to betray us in the same manner that you have betrayed your CIA employers. There is no loyalty for you, just money.”

  “On the contrary, I am most loyal.” He snubbed out his cigarette, then took out his package and offered one to Lidia Shirochenka. She raised her eyes slightly at the label. American cigarettes were very expensive in Copenhagen. “Have one. I get them at PX discount, about a fifth of the usual price.” He waited until he had lighted her cigarette before he continued.