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Updated: May 29, 2025
His and Lester's blastoff drums were still in the freight compartment, but the ionics and air-restorers had been similarly rendered unworkable. Their oxygen and water flasks were gone. Only their bubbs were intact, but there was nothing with which to inflate them. When Frank examined the sun-powered tractor, he found that tiny platinum plates had been taken from the thermocouple units.
At grey dawn, there was a breakfast stop, the two truck drivers and their relief man grinning cynically at the Bunch. Then there was more country, rolling and speeding past. Wakefulness was half sleep, and vice-versa. And the hours, through the day and another night, dwindled toward blastoff time, at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning.
The metal of the strut was polished and slick, but it was better than trying to cling to the open hull. He tensed now, not daring to relax for fear that the blastoff accelleration would slam him when he was unprepared. Deep in the ship, the engines began to rumble. He felt it rather than heard it, a low-pitched vibration that grew stronger and stronger.
Everybody was looking down at the Moon, whose crater-pocked ugliness and beauty was sparsely dotted with the blue spots of stellene domes, many of them housing embryo enterprises that were trying to beat the blastoff cost of necessities brought from Earth, and to supply spacemen and colonists with their needs, cheaply. The nine fragile rings were soon in orbit.
Something that looked like pain came into Captain Donnell's eyes, but only for an instant. He smiled. "It's strange, seeing the two of you like this. So you brought back Steve, eh? We'll have to put him back on the roster. Why is he asleep? He looks like he's out cold." "He is. It's a long story, Dad." "You'll have to explain it to me later, then after blastoff." Alan shook his head. "No, Dad.
"So we'll get a good meal, and then buy our load," Frank enthused. He felt the texture of his deflated bubb. The hard lines of deep-space equipment quickened his pulses. He forgot the call of Earth. He felt as free and easy as a hobo with cosmic dust in his hair. Blastoff from Serene's port, even with three heavily loaded trader rockets, was comparatively easy and inexpensive.
"What do you care what I do, Mex?" he snarled. "And as for you two Hunky Kuzaks you oversized bulldozers how about weight limits for blastoff? Damn I don't care how big you are!" In mounting rage, he was about to lash out with his fists, even at the two watchful football men. But then he looked surprised. With a terrible effort, he bottled up even his furious words.
Storey and Reynolds were still struggling with their bubbs. They had been delayed by trying to quiet Dave Lester, who now floated in a drugged stupor, lashed to his blastoff drum. Slowly, pushed by their shoulder ionics, Gimp, Ramos and Frank Nelsen drifted over to see what they could do for Lester. He was vaguely conscious, his eyes were glassy, his mouth drooled watery vomit.
In the earphones he could hear the sporadic chatter between Greg and the control tower. No hint that this was anything but a routine blastoff.... But there was trouble ahead, Tom was certain of that. Everybody on Mars was aware that Roger Hunter's sons were heading out to the Belt to pick up where he had left off.
They arose in the long climb of the gantry elevator and split into two groups, for the two rockets, according to their GO numbers. It didn't seem to matter, now, who went with whom. Each man had his own private sweating party. The padded passenger compartments were above the blastoff drum freight sections. "Helmets secure? Air-restorer systems on? Phones working? Answer roll call if you hear me.
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