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Rip saw instantly what had happened. He called, "All right, men. Down on the floor." The Planeteers instantly slid to the shower deck. In a few seconds the pressure of deceleration pushed at them. "I like spacemen," Rip said wryly. "They wait until just the right moment before they cut the water and decelerate. Now we're stuck in our birthday suits until we land wherever that may be."
It would add to the plausibility of reported deceleration, though, and would arouse acute suspicion. Justly so. At 8:20, Lockley called Sattell who was southeast of him. The measuring instruments used microwaves and gave readings of distance by counting cycles and reading phase differences.
The Earth was farther away and moving farther still. They were 100 miles high. They were 200 miles high.... There was no longer any sound at all, except their gaspings for breath. Their muscles had refused to lift their chests at all during the most brutal of the deceleration period. Presently Joe croaked a question. He looked at the hull-temperature indicators. They were very, very high.
They stared at him. He added quickly, "Supplies came aboard at Marsport. We'll get the clue when we open them. Headquarters must have known the method when they assigned us and ordered the equipment they thought we'd need." Koa stood up. He was the only one who could have moved upright against the terrific deceleration.
So they compromised, and came up behind the Moonship at better than 2,000 feet per second difference in speed they approached it as fast as most rifle-bullets travel and all creation was blotted out by the fumes of the rockets they fired for deceleration. Then the space tug came cautiously close to the Moonship.
He sat down, too, because deceleration was starting. As his men looked at each other in surprise at the quickness of it, he continued, "The old bucket found something we need an asteroid of pure thorium." The enlisted Planeteers knew as well as he what that meant. There were whistles of astonishment. Koa slapped his thigh. "By Gemini! What do we do about it, sir?" "We capture it," Rip said.
"Attention," boomed the voice of the captain over the ship's loud-speaker. "Fasten your deceleration belts, please! We land at Atom City in thirty minutes. Fasten your deceleration belts, please!" Certain he wouldn't be seen by the passengers and crew strapped in for the landing, Tom slipped out of his berth and down the companionway to the luggage compartment.
Although he knew that Hobart must be fully as eager as any of them to land, it seemed to Raf, and the other impatient crew members, that they were very long in entering the atmosphere of the chosen world. It was only when the order came to strap down for deceleration that they were in a measure satisfied.
If there are any corrections, we'll send them to you. That will give you a check on your own figures." "Don't worry," Rip assured him, "we're going to have plenty of corrections before we're through." Deceleration had been dropping steadily. It ceased altogether, leaving them weightless. O'Brine's voice came over the speaker. "Get it! Valve crews take stations at landing boats five and six.
As other computations followed other observations, a second place of fall was calculated, then a third. Then the Oregon radar unbelievably reported that the object was decelerating. Allowing for deceleration, three successive predictions of its landing point agreed.
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