Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 3, 2025
In half an hour, the two space craft were bound firmly together, but far enough apart for the rocket blasts to dissipate before they reached the Moonship. Mike returned to the tug. A pair of the big Mark Twenty rockets burned frenziedly in emptiness. The Moonship was slowed by a fraction of its speed. The deceleration was hardly perceptible. There were more burnings.
In fine alignment, they plunged forward through emptiness, swerved with a remarkable precision, and headed out for emptiness beyond the Platform's orbit. Their function had been to protect the Moonship on its way out. That function was performed. There were too many of them to recover, so they went out toward the stars. When their rockets burned out they vanished.
But it did measure the exact distance to the nearest solid object. "Prepare for firing on a count of five," said Joe quietly. "Five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... fire!" The space tug's rockets blasted. For the first time since they overtook the Moonship, the tug now had help. The remaining rockets outside the Moonship's hull blasted furiously.
From there, the Moonship would have only to brake its fall against a gravity one-sixth that of Earth, and reaching out a vastly shorter distance. Joe and the others watched the roiling masses of rocket fumes as the ship seemed to grow infinitely small. "We should've been in that ship," said Haney heavily when the naked eye could no longer pick it out. "We could've beat her to the Moon!"
Tiny figures in space suits extended the incredibly straight lines which were plastic hoses filled with air. Very, very gently indeed, the great, bulbous Platform and the squat, flat Moonship came together and touched. They moored in contact. And then the inert small missiles that had floated below, all the way up, flared simultaneously. Their rockets emitted smoke.
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.
Naked-eye stuff, too! I wonder if anybody ever saw that before!" "Not likely," said Joe. Mike stared out a port. Haney looked, also. "How're we going to get back, Joe?" "The Moonship has rockets on board," Joe told him. "Only they can't stick them in the firing-racks outside. They're stowed away, all shipshape, Navy fashion.
The Navy takes over the Moon." Joe looked startled. "But " "You're Space Exploration personnel," said the major with the same coolness. "You will be used to instruct naval personnel, and your space tug will be asked to go along to the Platform as an auxiliary vessel. For purposes of assisting in the landing of the Moonship at the Platform, you understand.
If one stood still and looked at it, it would undoubtedly be seen to be revolving, once in some twenty-four hours. Mike scuffled in the dust in which he walked. Nobody had emerged from the Moonship yet. The four of them were literally the first human beings ever to set foot on the surface of the Moon. But none of them mentioned the fact, though all were acutely aware of it. Mike kicked up dust.
He now deliberately overlooked all that, and Joe approved of him within limits. But Mike and Haney and the Chief did not. They laid for him. And they considered that they got him. When he took over the Moonship, Lieutenant Commander Brown naturally maintained naval discipline and required snappy, official naval salutes on all suitable occasions, even in the Platform.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking