The Trouble with Telstar Read online

pounds, with its fancy ratchet and torque clutch.Since in my suit I weighed just about a hundred times as much, Istarted toward _Nelly_ at just one-one-hundredth of the velocity I hadimparted to the screwdriver. In a couple minutes I was drifting prettyclose, but tumbling. I had forgotten that part.

  Throwing the screwdriver had given my body the correct vector and somevelocity, but I had set up quite a tumbling moment, since I had thrownfrom the shoulder and not from my center of gravity.

  I chucked a couple lighter tools away to correct my drift, and Sidsnagged me as I drifted by the hatch.

  "Come to Papa," he said, and drew me inside. We didn't horse aroundcongratulating ourselves. My air tanks were no longer hissing, and wemade a quick swap.

  Sid let me dog down the hatch while he figured position. He used theiron compass method, just taking a close look at Earth, which was moreor less dead ahead of us. That was a good place for it, because we hadno steering fuel.

  The re-entry was a mess, from Sid's point of view. We came in at aweird angle and heated up to beat hell before there was enoughatmosphere for our rudder to swing us around straight. He bounced usoff twice after that as we slowed down, but the creak of heating metalwas all about us each time we dropped in. He cussed me plenty all theway.

  The trick, of course, was to slow down to the point where he couldspiral us down to Muroc Dry Lake. _Nelly_ was a sort of glider. Herperformance at about Mach 10 and two hundred thousand feet was quiterespectable, but the lower and slower we went, the more she flew likethe proverbial kitchen sink. Sid only had one bright spot: Our bigfuel supply gave him plenty of rocket and retro when he wanted it, andallowed him to get us back over Muroc.

  I can't say he made the landing look easy, because he didn't. Itlooked like plain hell to me, for we scorched in at something overfour hundred miles an hour.

  When _Nelly_ screeched to a stop, we just sat there. There was none ofthis romantic business about snapping open face plates and exchangingwitty remarks. Bubble helmets don't have face plates, and besides, Ididn't have anything I wanted to say to Sid. I was as tired of him ashe was of me. I was just plain tired, if you want to know the truth.

  They didn't let us alone, of course. While the crash trucks were stillkicking up a dust trail tearing out to get us, there were guys on theradio with those cool voices, and Sid was tiredly saying "Roger," toall their questions. And we didn't do any moving about. You'd besurprised how weighing four hundred pounds makes you willing to waitfor the crane to lift you from your seat. All at once I almost wantedto be back in space again, where I didn't weigh anything at all.Almost.

  * * * * *

  They flew us back to Canaveral for the de-briefing, both asleep. Thewhole mob was there to greet us, Paul Cleary, Fred Stone, and evenSylvia. They met us at the plane and Sylvia was the first to grab meas I came down the steps.

  "Mike!" she squealed. "Are you all right?"

  "Better now," I said, kind of untangling from her. "How did you managethis?" I looked up. "Hi, Paul," I said to his sleepy old grin, andknew how.

  "Dinner tonight?" she insisted.

  "I don't know," I said, looking over at Paul. "I think there's ade-briefing or something before they turn me loose."

  "Don't be silly," Sylvia said. "It's not as if you were an astronautor something."

  I was back on the ground, all right.

  Well, there was sort of a de-briefing. Cleary and Stone got me alonefor a moment in somebody's office.

  "Well, Mike," Paul said, "that was a great performance. What was thetrouble up there?"

  I laughed at both of them. "Go jump in the lake," I said. "I'm out ofthe middle."

  "What do you mean, Mike?" Doc Stone asked, holding his young-man'spipe at arm's length.

  "It wasn't design--because the solenoid worked. And it wasn'tinstallation. It was materials." I told them about the no-goodinsulation.

  "Lucky it's only used in a couple points," Paul said, scowling. "Iguess any other point where it broke up wasn't as critical indimension and no short resulted."

  "Not yet," I grinned. "It may. And I couldn't care less."

  "You're a big winner, then, Mike," Paul grinned. "Fred and I have kindof made up anyway, and you're in solid with Sylvia."

  "Not with that noise," I said. "No dame was worth that ride. Let Sidhave her."

  * * * * *