Rocket to Luna

Dr. Gehardt assumed a listening pose, his head cocked to one side. “There is no sound,” he said at last. He shrugged as if to excuse his unfamiliarity with the workings of a rocket ship.

“Nothing to worry about,” Merola assured him. “We’re just in free fall.”

“Fall? Does that mean...?” Dr. Gehardt’s brow wrinkled.

Merola smiled. “I guess it’s not such a good term, Doc, in that it implies a downward motion — which isn’t the case at all. We’re still traveling up from Earth. ‘Free fall’ simply means that our rockets have been turned off.”

“If I may expose my own stupidity...” another voice put in. Ted, floating close to the overhead looked down to see Dr. Phelps, the ship’s physician, swing upright on his couch. The doctor was a thin man with an angular face and a wide, expressive mouth. He looked strangely out of his element in the baggy coveralls worn by the entire crew.

“Glad to have you with us,” Merola said, grinning.

The doctor nodded. “Thank you. May I ask some questions?”

“Sure. Fire away.”

“Well, have we already dropped the first two stages of the rocket?”

Lieutenant Dan Forbes shoved himself off his couch and drifted dangerously close to the radar screen. “Let me answer that one, George,” he said.

Forbes was tall, with a long-limbed body amply padded with muscles that filled out his coveralls. His blond hair was cut close to his scalp, topping the browned, rugged planes of his face like a tight-fitting skullcap. He cocked one blond eyebrow over a gray eye now and said, “Well, Captain, may I?”

“Sure,” Merola said. “Go ahead.”

“We dropped the first two stages quite a while back, Dr. Phelps,” Forbes said. “How high are we now, George?”

Merola glanced over his shoulder at the instrument panel. “Seventy-five miles.”

Forbes nodded. “We dropped the first stage at — check me on these figures, George — a height of 24.9 miles.” He looked at Merola. “That right?”

“Go on,” Merola said.

“When we were 39.8 miles high, we cut off the second stage,” Forbes said. “The third stage, the one we’re in now, kept blasting until we’d reached a height of 63.5 miles.”

“63.3 miles,” Merola corrected.

“63.3 miles,” Forbes amended. “Then we ended our power flight and entered free fall.”

Dr. Gehardt moved to make himself comfortable on the couch, and then opened his mouth in surprise as he began to drift across the cabin. He reached for the cushion and pulled himself back, a pleased smile on his mouth. “This dropping of the stages,” he said, gripping the sides of the couch, “isn’t it dangerous? I mean, when they fall.”

“That’s one of the reasons we blasted off from Johnston Island,” Merola put in. “Both stages fell over water, you see.”

“I remember now,” Dr. Gehardt said, nodding. “You mentioned something about a wire-mesh parachute on each stage.”

“That’s right, Doc,” Merola said. “Those ring-shaped ribbon parachutes carry the stages safely to the water. They’re probably being picked up right now by Navy ships.”

“And they will be used again, of course,” Dr. Phelps said, his voice rising slightly to make his statement a question.

“Yes, of course,” Forbes said.

Merola suddenly clapped one palm against the other. “And that ends the lecture for today. Now if you gentlemen will silently float down this way, I’ll give you some size fourteens that will keep you glued to the deck.”

“Shoes?” Dr. Phelps asked.

Merola bent, lifting the lid on a foot locker. “Well, in a manner of speaking.” He lifted an object that looked very much like a metal sandal, fully two inches thick, with canvas straps dangling loose over the arch. “This is magnetized,” Merola explained. “One on each foot, and you can stop being eagles.”

Ted poked his forefinger against the overhead and began to drift toward the deck immediately. Merola handed him a pair of sandals, and he quickly strapped them to the heavy soles of his boots. He stood upright, his feet firmly rooted to the deck now.

“I think I liked floating up there better,” he said, grinning.

“The shoes have advantages,” Forbes told him. “You can climb up the side of the bulkheads with these. Makes you feel just like a fly.”

“Who wants to feel like a fly?” Jack asked.

His voice surprised Ted, who suddenly realized Jack had been unnaturally quiet ever since blastoff.

“Well, you might as well get used to them anyway,” Merola said, his brown eyes flashing. “It won’t matter on this short hop, but you might get tired of floating around when we’re on our way to the Moon.”

Dr. Phelps finished strapping on his sandals and stood up, the coveralls bagging loosely on his wiry frame. “That’s much better,” he said, staring down at his feet. “I’ve always been one to stand on my own two feet.”

Dr. Gehardt chuckled at this and stood up alongside Dr. Phelps, testing the sandals like a new pair of tennis shoes.

“I feel like a robot,” he announced.

“Wait until we put you in a space suit,” Merola said.

“Will we be wearing suits?” Dr. Gehardt asked. “That is, I know we’ll have to wear them on the Moon. But the Station...”