Chapter 4. _The Hidden Skyport_

Around the table there was a concerted sigh. Burl, his ears still

throbbing from his sudden excitement, realized each of them had been

holding his breath. General Shrove smiled and glanced at the elder

Denning, who sat expressionless. It is not an easy thing for him, Burl

thought.

At that moment, Burl knew that he had come of age. This moment of

decision, coming truly and literally like a bolt out of the blue, had

thrust him into man's estate before his time. He would show that he was

able to carry this burden.

Shrove now spoke to Lockhart. "Colonel, we are holding you to your

schedule. According to it, you can take off in five more days. Will you

need any more time because of this addition to your crew?"

The stocky air veteran shook his head. "Not at all. We'll be loaded and

ready on the hour I set. I'll take Denning in hand and brief him on what

he may need to know. Actually, we may even be able to get him a

home-leave. After all, his duties won't begin until actual planetfalls

are made."

They rose from their seats. Burl stood up, uncertain as to procedure,

but Lockhart came over to him and took his arm. "Burl, we're going to

have to give you a rundown on the ship and the plans. We've no time to

waste if you want to get a chance to say good-by to your folks later

on."

"I understand," said Burl. He turned and waved to his father, who was in

conversation with the general. "I'll see you at home in a few days,

Dad," he called, then followed Lockhart out.

Outside the building they were joined by several other members of the

conference and immediately ringed about by a squad of Air Force men

wearing sidearms. Burl realized that they were to be thus guarded

everywhere they went. Obviously, the possibility that the builders of

the Sun-traps might have agents operating on Earth had occurred to the

officers.

Russell Clyde, the young astronomer, was among their group. He walked

over to Burl and shoved out a hand. "Glad to have you with us, Burl.

This is going to be quite a trip!"

Clyde was about Burl's size. He had an engagingly boyish air about him,

and Burl took a liking to him. Burl had heard of him before. For the

young man, while still a college student, had formulated a remarkable

new theory of the composition of galactic formations which had instantly

focused the attention of the scientific world upon him. This theory had

been taken up by the gray-beards of the scientific world and had

survived the test of their debates. Now associated with the great Mount

Palomar Observatory, Russell Clyde had continued to build a reputation

in astronomical circles.

"You're one of the expedition, then?" asked Burl, shaking his hand.

The redhead nodded. "Yep. They're taking me as their chief astrogator.

And don't think it's because I'm any great shakes at it, either! It's

just that I'm still young enough to take the kind of shoving around

these high brass figure we're going to get. Boy, have they got it

figured!"

Burl chuckled. "Ah, you're kidding, Dr. Clyde. You've probably been in

on this from the beginning."

The other shook his head vigorously. "Nope. It was going to be

Merckmann's baby, but when they realize they have a fight on their

hands, they always look for young blood. And, say, cut out this 'Doctor'

stuff. Call me Russ. We're going to share quarters, you know."

"How do you know that?" asked a tall, rather sharp-featured man who had

overheard them. "The colonel will assign quarters."

"I say he will ... and you can bet on that," snapped Russell Clyde. He

waved a hand in introduction. "This is Harvey Caton, one of our

electronics wizards."

Caton nodded, but before he could continue the discussion, Lockhart

rounded them all up, packed them into a couple of station wagons, guards

and all, and they were off.

* * * * *

The next days were hectic ones. By car and plane the group was

transferred to the large, closely guarded base in Wyoming where the

secret anti-gravity ship was waiting. Burl did not see this ship right

away. First, he was introduced to all the other members of the crew, and

given a mass of papers to study which outlined the basic means of the

new space drive, and which detailed the opinions and suggestions of

various experts as to methods of procedure and courses of action. He was

subjected to various space medical tests to determine his reactions

under differing pressures and gravities. Although it proved a strenuous

and exhausting routine, he emerged from the tests with flying colors.

The expedition was commanded, as he had known, by Colonel Lockhart who

would also act as chief pilot. The famous military flier proved to be a

forceful personality with a great skill at handling people. He knew how

to get the most out of each man.

Russell Clyde was the chief astrogator and astronomical expert.

Assisting him was the rather pedantic and sober Samuel Oberfield, a

mathematical wizard and astrophysicist, on leave from an assistant

professorship at one of the great universities. Clyde and Oberfield

would also act as copilots relieving Lockhart.

Harvey Caton, blond Jurgen Detmar, and the jovial Frank Shea were the

three-man engineering crew. Completing the members of the expedition was

another trio chosen to act as general crew, medical and commissary men

while in flight, and as a trained explorer-fighter unit while on

planetside. Roy Haines, of whose exploits in Africa and the jungles of

South America Burl Denning had heard, was the first of these, a rugged,

weather-beaten, but astonishingly alert explorer. Captain Edgar Boulton,

on leave from the United States Marines, was the second--a man who had

made an impressive record in various combat actions in his country's

service. The Antarctic explorer, Leon Ferrati, completed the listing.

Ferrati was an expert on getting along in conditions of extreme

frigidity and hostile climates. Of these men, only Lockhart, Clyde,

Detmar and Ferrati had had space experience in the platforms and in

Moon-rocketry.

It was still, thought Burl, a large crew for a spaceship. No rocket

built to date had ever been able to carry such a load. But by then he

had realized that the strict weight limitation imposed by rocket fuels

no longer applied to this new method of space flight. Burl found himself

more and more anxious to see this wonderful craft.

It was not until the morning of the second day that Burl's chance came.

He had fallen asleep on the stiff army cot in the hastily improvised

base on the Wyoming prairie where the final work was being done. The

day had been a confused jumble of impressions, with little time to catch

his breath. Now he had slept the sleep of exhaustion, only to be

awakened at dawn by Lockhart.

"Up and dress," the colonel greeted him. "We're taking you out to look

the ship over. Detmar will come along and explain the drive."

Burl threw his clothes on, gulped down breakfast in the company of the

others at the messhall, and soon was speeding along a wide, new road

that ran up to the mountains edging the wide western plain. As they

neared the mountains, he saw a high wooden wall blocking the road and

view; this was the barrier that concealed the ship nestled in the valley

beyond.

They passed the guards' scrutiny and emerged into the valley. The A-G 17

loomed suddenly above them, and Burl's first impression was of a

glistening metal fountain roaring up from the ground, gathering itself

high in the sky, as if to plunge down again in a rain of shining steel.

The ship was like a huge, gleaming raindrop. It stood two hundred feet

high, the wide, rounded, blunt bulk of it high in the air, as if about

to fall upward instead of downward. It tapered down to a thin, perfectly

streamlined point which touched the ground. It was held upright by a

great cradle of girders and beams. At various points the polished steel

was broken by indentations or inset round dots that were thick portholes

or indications of entry ports. Around its equator, girding the widest

section was a ring of portholes, and there were scattered rings of

similar portholes below this.

As the three men drew near the tail, the great bulk loomed overhead, and

Burl felt as if its weight were bearing down on him as they walked

beneath.

Two men were suspended from the scaffolding above. Burl twisted his neck

and saw that the designation A-G 17 and the white-star insignia of the

United States had been lettered along the sides. But what was it the men

were painting now?

"It will read _Magellan_," said Lockhart, following Burl's eyes. "We

decided that that would be the appropriate name for it. For what we are

going to have to do with it is not just to make a simple trip to explore

another planet, but to circumnavigate the entire solar system."

Burl found his eyes dazzled by the vessel, hanging like a giant bulbous

mushroom over them. Around him, he began to realize that a number of

other activities were going on. There were spidery scaffolds leading up

to open ports in the metallic sides. Workmen were raising loads of

material into these ports, and for an instant Burl caught sight of

Haines, in rough work clothes, shouting orders from one of the openings

as to exactly where to stow something.

At last he took his eyes away from the startling sight. The little

valley around him had a number of low storage shacks. A road led in from

another pass through the mountains. Two loaded trucks came down this

pass now in low gear. Lockhart, watching, remarked, "We are having our

equipment and supplies flown up to a town twenty miles away and then

trucked in."

"Why didn't you leave this ship where it was built--in your plant in

Indiana--and load it from there?" Burl asked.

"It would have been easier," said the colonel, "but security thought it

better to transfer the craft to its launching sight up here in these

deserted hills. We are going to make our take-off from here because we

are still too experimental to know what might happen if something kicked

up or if the engines failed. We'd hate to splatter all over a highly

populated industrial area. Besides, you must know, if you looked over

those papers yesterday, that there's a lot of radioactive stuff here."

Burl nodded. Detmar cut in. "Why don't we get aboard and show him over

the ship? It will be easier to make it clear that way."

Suiting action to the word, the three went over to one of the loading

platforms, climbed on the wiry little elevator, and were hoisted up

fifty feet to the port in the side of the ship. They entered well below

the vast, overhanging equatorial bulge which marked the wide end of the

teardrop-shaped vessel.

They walked through a narrow plastic-walled passage, broken in several

places by tight, round doors bearing storage vault numbers. At the end

of the passage they came to a double-walled metal air lock. They stepped

through and found themselves in what was evidently the living quarters

of the spaceship.

The _Magellan_ was an entirely revolutionary design as far as space

vehicles were concerned. Its odd shape was no mere whimsy, but a

practical model. If a better design were to be invented, it would only

come out of the practical experiences of this first great flight.

It had long been known, ever since Einstein's early equations, that

there was a kinship between electricity, magnetism, and gravitation. In

electricity and magnetism there were both negative and positive fields

manifesting themselves in the form of attraction and repulsion. These

opposing characteristics were the basis for man's mastery of electrical

machinery.

But for gravitation, there had seemed at first no means of manipulating

it. As it was to develop, this was due to two factors. First, the Earth

itself possessed a gravitational phenomenon in this force outside of

that intense, all-pervading field. Second, to overcome this primal force

required the application of energy on such scales as could not be found

outside of the mastery of nuclear energy.

There was a simple parallel, Burl had been told the day before by Sam

Oberfield, in the history of aviation. A practical, propeller-driven

flying machine could not be constructed until a motor had been invented

that was compact, light and powerful enough to operate it. So all

efforts to make such machines prior to the development of the internal

combustion engine in the first days of the twentieth century were doomed

to failure. Likewise, in this new instance, a machine to utilize

gravitation could not be built until a source of power was developed

having the capacity to run it. Such power was found only in the

successful harnessing of the hydrogen disintegration explosion--the

H-bomb force. The first success at channeling this nuclear power in a

nonbomb device had been accomplished in England in 1958. The Zeta-ring

generator had been perfected in the next decade.

Only this source of harnessed atomic power could supply the force

necessary to drive an A-G ship.

The nose of the _Magellan_ housed an H-power stellar generator. Within

the bulk of the top third of the ship was this massive power source, its

atomic components, its uranium-hydrogen fuel, and the beam that

channeled the gravitational drive.

"Negating gravity is not a simple matter like inventing a magic sheet of

metal that cuts off the pull of the Earth, such as H. G. Wells wrote

about," Oberfield had explained. "That is impossible because it ignores

all the other laws of nature; it forgets the power of inertia, it denies

the facts of mass and density. It takes just as much energy to lift an

anti-gravity ship as to lift a rocketship. The difference is only in the

practicality of the power source. A rocketship must burn its fuel by

chemical explosion in order to push its cargo load upward. Its fuel is

limited by its own weight and by the awkwardness of its handling. This

A-G ship also must supply energy, foot-pound for foot-pound, for every

foot it raises the vehicle. But due to the amount of energy supplied by

this new nuclear generator, such power is at last available in one

compact form and in such concentration that this ship could propel

itself for hundreds of years."

He went on to explain that what then happened was that the vessel,

exerting a tremendous counter-gravitational force, literally pushed

itself up against Earth's drive. At the same time, this force could be

used to intensify the gravitational pull of some other celestial body.

The vessel would begin to fall toward that other body, and be repelled

from the first body--Earth in this case.

As every star, planet, and satellite in the universe was exerting a pull

on every other one, the anti-gravity spaceship literally reached out,

grasped hold of the desired gravitational "rope" hanging down from the

sky, and pulled itself up it. It would seem to fall upward into the sky.

It could increase or decrease the effect of its fall. It could fall free

toward some other world, or it could force an acceleration in its fall

by adding repulsion from the world it was leaving.

In flight, therefore, the wide nose was the front. It would fall through

space, pulled by the power beam generated from this front. The rear of

the spaceship was the tapering, small end.

As Burl was shown over the living quarters it became plain to him that

the actual living spaces in the _Magellan_ were inside a metal sphere

hanging on gymbals below the equatorial bulge that housed the power

drive. The bulk of this sphere was always well within the outer walls of

the teardrop, and thus protected from radiation. Being suspended on

gymbals, the sphere would rotate so that the floor of the living

quarters was always downward to wherever the greatest pull of gravity

might happen to be.

Burl and the others explored the three floors that divided the inner

sphere, all oriented toward Earth. The central floor, housing the

sleeping quarters and living quarters, was compact but roomier than

might have been expected. There were five bunkrooms, each shared by two

men. There was a main living and dining room. On the lowermost floor was

the cookroom, a small dispensary, and immediate supplies. On the upper

floor was the control room, with its charts and television viewplates

which allowed vision in all directions from sending plates fixed on the

surface in various areas.

In the spaces between the inner sphere and the outer shell were the

basic storage areas. Here supplies and equipment were being stocked

against all possible emergencies. In the tapering space of the tail

below the sphere was a rocket-launching tube. Stored in the outer shells

were various vehicles for planetary exploration.

Haines came into the control room where the three were standing. He was

wiping his hands on a piece of cloth, and looked tired. "Finally got the

special, sealed-engine jeep stowed away," he said. "I was afraid we

weren't going to get it in time. The Moon-base people had ordered it,

and they're going to holler bloody murder when they find out we

appropriated it."

Lockhart shrugged. "Let 'em yell. It'll be too late when they find out.

How much longer will we need before you finish the loading?"

Haines drew a chair up to the chart table and sat down. "I expect to get

some more stuff tomorrow, and then the two-man rocket plane the next

day. We already have the four-man rocket aboard. That'll do it. The rest

of your men ready?"

Lockhart nodded. "We're just about set. Denning here can take a quick

trip home tomorrow, and we'll be ready the day after."

Burl looked about him quickly. One day, two days, maybe a third--and

then, the plunge into the unknown. Detmar reached upward and drew down a

metal ladder hanging in the curved ceiling of the chamber. "I'm going to

take a look in the engine room," he said. "Want to come along?" he asked

Burl.

Before the young man could say yes, Lockhart shook his head. "No, I

don't want him to. I don't want anyone going up there who doesn't have

to. That stuff is shielded, but you can never be sure."

Burl was disappointed, for he had wanted to see the nuclear generators.

But Detmar shook his head, smiled, and pushed aside a round trap door in

the ceiling. Burl could see that it connected with a similar door a foot

higher. Detmar pushed it open and ascended into the forbidden sphere of

the Zeta-rings. Burl got a glimpse of subdued, bluish light, and then

the trap door shut after the engineer.

Later as they drove out through the valley, Burl looked back at the huge

ship, and now, instead of appearing like an overhanging metal waterfall,

he saw it as a wide-nosed bullet, aiming at the sky, surging against its

bonds--a bullet for humanity's sake.