Tight Squeeze-2

"O.K., O.K. Laugh. Just remember this, Gargantua; I may not be tall, but

I sure am skinny." MacNamara smiled again, nodding agreement. "Well,

don't everybody talk at once. How is she, Mac?"

"With luck," answered MacNamara, "we might get ten feet off the turf."

He paused for effect. "Seriously, Carl, she never looked better. You could

take her up right now. Say, where's Johnny? I thought you'd just be

checking in to the medics; looks like everybody's early today."

"He's probably over in some corner, making out his will. He was down

below a while ago with a face a mile long."

Probably, thought Mac, he's still thinking about the Wyld. Why did I have

to bring that up? Aloud, he said, "I ought to check the ground crew. Did

you bring the forms?"

"Nope. Just my magnificent self. If anything had gone astray, they'd have

told you."

"All the same, I think I'll go down and question the troops. Don't leave

without me." He clambered out onto the catwalk, leaving the air lock

open. The sun was riding higher every minute. In a little over an hour,

he'd be a thousand miles away--vertically. The knot in his stomach began

to form again. He wasn't scared, exactly; he kept telling himself "excited"

was a nicer word.

The inspection forms signed, Mac held a short interrogation with the crew

chief. The grizzled lieutenant, commissioned because of his long

experience and responsibilities, gave Valier a clean bill of health. Each

engine of the booster stage had been fired separately, before dawn. A

cubic foot of mercury seemed to roll from Mac's shoulders as he saw

Logan and Ruiz lounging at the bottom of the lift; there wasn't anything

to worry about. He recalled feeling the tension before the other three

flights, then chided himself. Ya, ya, scared-y cat. Well, why not? It's a

helluva risk every time you make a shot, in spite of all the propaganda.

Hooey; if you didn't know everything's O.K., you wouldn't be getting

ready to make the shot. Yeah, but you never can tell----He stopped his

inward battle and forced some spring into his step as he moved toward

Logan and Ruiz.

"I've tried my best to abort this big bug, but I can't find anything amiss."

"That's Granny MacNamara for you," jibed Logan. "Always trying to find

fault." He winked at Ruiz and rubbed his hands together. "Well--tennis,

anyone?"

Mac knew without asking that Logan, for all his apparent indifference, had

painstakingly gone over every phase of the flight, checking distribution,

radar, final instructions from Operations, weather, et al. Ruiz, as usual,

watched and took notes as Logan gathered data.

* * * * *

At minus fifteen minutes, the trio was in the dome, checking personal

equipment, while outside, the scaffolding ponderously slid away, section

by section.

There was little time for soliloquies of to go, or not to go; within the

quarter-hour, Captain Ruiz and Majors MacNamara and Logan would be in

readiness for the final count-down. With the emergency bail-out

equipment checked, the men busied themselves on another continuity

test of the myriad circuits spread like a human neural system throughout

the ship. All relays, servo systems and instrument leads were in perfect

condition as expected, and the trio was settled comfortably in acceleration

couches with minutes to spare.

Logan contacted Ground Control a few seconds after the minus-three

minute signal, informing all and sundry that Gridley could fire when

ready. MacNamara sighed, thinking that if Logan's humor wasn't exactly

original, it was surely tenacious.

The ship was brought to dim half-life at minus one minute by Logan's

agile fingers, and as the final countdown rasped in his headset, Mac felt

his innards wrestle among themselves.

Valier bellowed her enthusiasm suddenly, lifting her eight thousand-odd

tons from the ground almost instantly. Inside, her occupants grimaced

helplessly as they watched various instruments guide tiny pointers across

calibrated faces. Mac's throat mike threatened to crush his Adam's apple,

weighing five times its usual few ounces. Of his senses, sound was the

one that dominated him; an intolerable, continuous explosion from the

motors racked his mind like tidal waves of formic acid. He forced himself

to overcome the numbness which his brain cast up to defend itself. Then,

as quickly as it had begun, Valier fell deafeningly silent; that meant Mach

1 was passed.

It was an eternity before stage one separated. The loss of the empty hulk

was hardly felt as Valier streaked high over the Texas border. Ruiz,

watching the radarscope, saw Lubbock slide into focus miles below. Next

stop, Fort Worth, he thought. I used to drive that in five hours. The

jagged line of the caprock told him they were well on their way to Fort

Worth already.

The altimeter showed slightly over forty-two miles when stage two

detached itself. Logan, in constant contact with White Sands, was

informed that they were tracking perfectly as Valier arrowed over central

Texas toward rendezvous at the doughnut. The exhausted lower stages

were forgotten now; only the second stage was of any concern anyway.

The radar boys tracked it all the way down, ready to detonate it high in

the air if its huge 'chutes wafted it near any inhabited community.

The motors of stage three blasted for a carefully calculated few seconds,

then cut out automatically. With the destitution of his weight, Mac felt his

spirits soar also. They were almost in orbit, now, climbing at a slight

angle with a velocity sufficient to carry them around Earth forever, a

streamlined, tiny satellite.

After the first few moments of disorientation, rocket crews found that a

weightless condition gave them, ambiguously, a buoyant feeling. Only the

doughnut crew had really adapted to this condition, living as they did

without the effects of gravity for hours at a time every day. The

temporary "housing" was rotated for comfort of the crews during rest

periods, but while moving the plates and girders of the giant doughnut

into place, they had no such luxuries. For these men, weightlessness

became an integral part of their activities, but the rocket crews were

subjected to this phenomenon only during the few hours needed to

rendezvous, unload the cargo, and coast back after another initial period

of acceleration.

Hence, Mac felt a strange elation when he tapped his fingers on the arm

of his couch and saw his arm float upward, due to reaction from the tap.

Against all regulations, Logan unstrapped himself and motioned his

comrades to do the same. This unorthodox seventh-inning stretch was

prohibited because it left the pilot's arm-rest controls without an operator,

hence could prove disastrous if, through some malfunction, the ship

should veer off course.