Rocket Jockey Read online

  "But-"

  The judge stopped, and thought it over. He'd agreed to grant Jerry all the privileges of a citizen under the Martian code for the purposes of the trial, which meant that he couldn't retreat now to the Earth code legal age of twenty-one.

  He grinned wryly, and Jerry knew that his guess as to the judge's thoughts had been correct. "Very well. The court finds the defendant was wrongly deprived of his rights."

  He motioned Jerry out, and the boy lost no time in going. Then he swung back quickly, realizing that he had received no order for the removal of the seals on the ship.

  But the judge had anticipated him. "The court is recessed until tomorrow!" he declared, and moved back to his chambers, leaving Jerry to face an empty bench.

  Jerry found a cab outside, and directed the driver to the Commission agency. It moved off at a snail's pace, managing to miss almost every traffic light. It took an hour to reach the agency. Then the representative was having lunch, and no one knew where he had gone!

  Jerry cooled his heels, fuming. He'd felt pleased with himself for remembering the age of majority under the Martian code and using it so neatly. Then he'd had to go and ruin it all by carelessness in not demanding immediately that the ship be unsealed. Without a court order, the field authorities would never let him aboard.

  Tod must be going crazy while he had to wait for the agent to return. He was sure that the man was honest—Commission agents might have their prejudices, but they were careful to be fair in the actions and their decisions. There had never been any charge leveled against the men who ran the Classic.

  He was apparently right. When the agent came back and heard of the situation, he went into action. But more delays were inevitable. No one knew where the judge was, and no one had any idea where he could be reached. The agent called the governor, but he was also away.

  "And I can't prove that he isn't," he growled to Jerry. "We know it's a stall, but there's no proof. Come on, we'll make a tour. We may be able to locate someone."

  Even the minor officials seemed to be away for the day, or sick. Disgusted, the agent of the Commission finally gave up, and thought it over. Then he headed the trimobile back to the rocket port.

  Jerry watched in surprise as he moved forward and began wrapping a small chain around the lock to the field dome. A field official came running over.

  "I'm closing this port, pending an investigation of the case against Jerry Blaine," the agent announced loudly. "This requires full evidence, and until the Commission can send a committee to examine the facts, I have to be sure no evidence is removed from the field."

  Tod was signaling from inside the field dome, and Jerry waved back. But his mind was busy wondering whether the bluff would work—if it was a bluff. The powers of the Commission were extensive, and the agent might be within his rights.

  In less than ten minutes, Judge Condon drove up in a car driven by a policeman, huffing and puffing as he ran toward the Commission representative.

  "It's all a misunderstanding!" the judge was crying. "Just a case of misunderstanding. The governor tells me you think we're trying this young man. I let him free hours ago!"

  "And my ship?" Jerry asked.

  The judge tried to look surprised, but he was too exhausted to put on a good act. "Of course, of course. Here, I've brought the order with me! You know there's no case to be investigated, young man!"

  Jerry nodded as the field workers ran toward the ship to remove the seal. He wished he could rail at them the way Tod was doing, but he was unable to think of anything beyond his need to get the ship up and on her way.

  It was only a few minutes later that the all-clear signal dropped, and he blasted off. The clock showed that it was ten p.m., Monday the sixteenth—and they'd lost sixteen hours on Ganymede. Now, a hundred and four hours off Dick's schedule, they were farther behind in the race than ever.

  And less than half of the race was completed.

  Chapter V Mars Strikes Again

  n efore, coming toward Jupiter, Jerry had been running at an angle which put him slightly out of the paths of the rocks and debris that floated around » Jupiter, like tiny moonlets. But on the outward trip, the rules of the race called for him to stick to the plane of the ecliptic and to pass through the asteroid belt. The chances of his hitting one of the orbital chunks of stone were small, but he wasn't counting on luck any more. He forced back the fatigue and stuck to his piloting.

  He was still disgusted with himself for wasting so much time on Ganymede. He'd been warned to watch them and should have asked the Commission agent to go back to the ship with him in the first place.

  Then he'd been careless about the ship after his half-victory over Judge Condon.

  He could blame the trouble on the Moon and Mars to the trickery of the red planet. But the rest of his troubles were his own fault, and not bad luck. The dip into Jupiter's atmosphere had been sheer foolishness, caused by half-thinking. It had gained a little time, but it had been lost again by more half-thinking on Ganymede.

  It was time he grew up, he decided, if he was to call himself a pilot. It was his duty to get the ship back to Earth, and to do that, he'd have to examine things thoroughly, and make sure his decisions were more than snap judgments. He'd been running this like a kid's race, instead of serious business.

  Mars was smarter there; she might not play fair, but she played carefully. Not one of the tricks could be proved against her. And she wasn't risking lives, he realized suddenly. When it came to a man's ability to go on living, Mars was as decent as the next planet.

  Or maybe that was smart too. Except for the clogged rocket nozzle—which might have been an honest bit of bad luck—nothing she had done endangered anyone aboard the Last Hope. Mars didn't want Earth to wash out; it was much better for her to have Earth come in last, or to give up after only part of the race had been won. That would be much more disgraceful than blowing up.

  It also meant that Jerry couldn't count on the fact that Mars was still bucking him to indicate he was a serious menace to her chances of winning; they wanted him to make the worst possible showing, and would go on fighting him, even if he was already in last place.

  Tod brought up food. The engineer had insisted on going on with his offer to do all the cooking and cleaning; Jerry suspected that he actually wanted it that way.

  "How's she look down there?" he asked the older man.

  Tod shifted his Venus gum and frowned, his bushy eyebrows meeting over his nose. "Looks all right. But I don't like it. I'll bet they did something to us, more'n just holding us up! I've been checking up. Going back to it now."

  Jerry nodded, feeling an uneasy suspicion that the old man was right. The ship was running smoothly now, with almost no sound from the tube, since the Io spacemen had overhauled her. He heard Tod go back and begin his inspection again. The engineer was whistling uneasily, which indicated he was seriously worried.

  There was good reason to worry. They would be safe for a while, once they were beyond Jupiter's moons, but they had to be in first-class condition when they reached the asteroids. Those little broken fragments of a world that had once circled the sun between Mars and Jupiter were rough passage. They came in all sizes, from bits of sand to worlds the size of Ceres, 480 miles in diameter.

  Their hundreds of orbits crossed and crisscrossed wildly, and no pilot could plot them all. Jerry knew them better than most men in the race would, but he'd still need perfect response from his rockets to get them through. More racers had died in passing through them than in all the rest of the course.

  He went down to the engine room finally, but there was nothing he could do but watch Tod's nervous pacing from indicator to indicator. Jerry followed him about, but the controlling valves and indicators all seemed to be behaving properly.

  The big tube was balanced so completely that hardly a sound came through die insulation. Jerry put his ear against the main fuel line and listened. "Gurgling like a baby," he said. "I guess you were wrong, Tod."


  "Yeah. Gurgling—gurgling?" The little engineer made a single leap that carried him across the room, in spite of the thrust that doubled their weight. "You're right—I knew something was bothering my ears! Shouldn't make a sound."

  He listened for half a second more and began reaching for the main valve, screwing it in rapidly with the manual control. The thrust fell off, and suddenly stopped, leaving them weightless.

  "Something in the fuel?" Jerry guessed, and the engineer nodded.

  Jerry lent a quick hand, while the old man began unscrewing a plug in the line beside a little valve. Black fuel began to run out into the plastic bag Tod held below it. Here, without weight, any liquid tended to break into little round drops and go drifting about messily, unless held in a container.

  It ran clear for a few seconds, and then something lumpy oozed through slowly. Tod let it fall into the container, and then screwed back the plug, catching the few tiny drops floating about on a piece of waste that soaked them up. He was careful not to touch the fuel with his hands as he fished the heavier substance out of the plastic container.

  He spread it on a sheet of metal, pushing at it with a little wrench handle. "Tar! Half dissolved in the fuel. Jerry, if a good-sized lump of that came through, it'd clog the nozzle for sure—do the same to the steering jets. We've gotta filter the whole shebang!"

  "How long?" Jerry asked.

  "Won't know till I see how many tanks got this stuff in them. Wait a minute."

  Jerry tried to guess how much margin of time they would have. They were four hours out from Ganymede, and well past the dangerous section. But Jupiter's pull was strong, even at this distance, and they'd be losing speed steadily, if slowly. He'd figured that their course would bring them through the next layer of rocks that circled the big planet while the space was fairly clear, according to the information he'd gotten from the spacemen on Io. Most of the rocks beyond Callisto's orbit were bunched in two positions. But without power, they would coast up too slowly, and might crash squarely into the first grouping of the debris.

  Tod's yell of misery interrupted his thoughts, and he floated up the shaft to the narrow passageways between the tanks of fuel. The engineer was crouched over one of them, hanging in mid-air and fishing delicately with a long rod through a small hole. His face looked as if his only friend had kicked him in the stomach.

  "Every one of 'em! The stinkers got their gunk into the whole shebang! Six tanks, all filled with tar lumps!" He used the rod as a prod, and shoved himself back down beside Jerry. "Kid, well be stuck here half a day on this stuff. I should have tested it before I let those lousy crooks touch the fuel taps."

  "We've got no more than five hours for the job," Jerry told him. He began explaining about the danger from the bits of rock that lay waiting for them.

  Tod groaned. "If I had an empty, I could pump it from a full tank into that through a bucket of waste. The tank flush pumps would do it. Then we could run on one tank while we took care of the others. But they're all full to the gills—and we're gonna need the whole kaboodle if we're gonna reach Venus at full steam. This way, though, we're gonna have to cut pipe and fix up a filter in the feed lines. And we don't have the tools to do that right."

  "Isn't there any way to put a filter over the drain in the tank. Sort of a wire cage around it, to hold the filter in place?"

  Tod shook his head. His body flipped back and forth under it; any motion in space when their gravity was zero automatically balanced by some opposite movement.

  "Build one out of sheet metal, with holes punched in it. Line it with waste, stick another metal can inside that, and screw it down to the drain." He shrugged his shoulders, lifting his feet off the floor for a moment. "Only we don't have anything that'll reach down to the bottom and screw it down, even if I welded it together."

  Jerry pressed his toes down lightly, and floated up to die top of the room, where he hitched himself over one of the tanks. He could see that there was a large manhole there, and a smaller, transparent plastic section for viewing the inside of the tank. It seemed to be completely full, until he realized that the liquid would have spread over all the walls of the tanks, without the rocket thrust to hold it down.

  "How full are they, anyhow?" he called down.

  "A few gallons missing. Maybe thirty gallons in all of them."

  They could pump the fuel out of one and into the others until five were completely filled and the sixth would have the smallest possible amount left. He shouted down orders for Tod to set the pumps going. With thirty gallons missing from the one tank, it might work.

  "Better start building your filter, Tod," he suggested as he forced himself back down again, catching a handhold to prevent bouncing back. "I'll screw it down. And Tod, make sure there's no tin in it."

  The engineer seemed puzzled, but he turned toward the engine room. "Don't worry. I saw what happened to your dad's ship, lad. No tin!"

  Jerry checked his position carefully. The five-hour estimate he'd given the engineer was close enough.

  If they could get die tube going in that length of time, they should be safe. If they didn't—well, they might still be lucky and avoid a collision with one of the miniature satellites, but they might not! The chances seemed about even.

  He pulled the space suit out of its closet and began buckling it on, pulling the straps as tight as he could get them. He didn't want any excess bulges of air this time to lighten him. Even so, he'd need heavy weights to hold him down in the thick, heavy liquid. He replaced the heavy space mittens with the lightest gloves that came with the suit. They were still clumsy, but they were the best he could do.

  He checked his air tank carefully, and then headed down the shaft toward the engine room, taking it in a single long glide. The glare of the little electric welder was already lighting the room as he checked his landing and turned around. Tod was welding a threaded nipple to a section of metal plate. He'd already cut most of the parts.

  The engineer glanced up as Jerry came over, and a look of sudden comprehension crossed his face. His voice was muffled by the thick helmet. "There are times I figure you've got brains, lad. But it won't be easy."

  Jerry had no misgivings, though. It would be a simple enough matter to climb into the partly emptied tank, slip to the bottom, and screw in the nipple. Once firmly fixed into the drain, they could feed the rockets from the safe tank, and have more time to work on the others.

  He helped Tod with the welding. The filter was a big double-walled can of copper, with the space between the two metal layers filled with waste that would collect the lumps of tar. The holes in the metal of the cans would also keep some of the tar back, though they were not so fine that they could be covered over by the gummy lumps.

  Probably after the tank reached the near-empty stage, the filter would clog up. But it should work long enough.

  They loaded Jerry's pockets with lumps of metal-being sure that no tin was used—and went up to the tanks. Then Tod shook his head, and began unloading the metal from the suit. "Dumb fools! There's no weight."

  Jerry grimaced, again aware of how easy it was to let habit overcome sounder thinking. With gravity, a man sank in heavy liquid by adding weight—but here, everything weighed the same—exactly nothing!

  The manhole presented a problem. It came loose easily enough, but the fuel immediately tried to spread out from it. It was thick enough to spread slowly, however. After half a dozen tries, followed by hasty moppings up, Jerry managed to get inside the tank almost as soon as the manhole was lifted. He held the filter and a wrench in one hand, and reached out for one of the tank walls with the other. Over him, Tod was screwing the manhole cover down firmly.

  Now he was in complete darkness. The liquid of the fuel completely surrounded him, and it was so black that no light would have helped. He began to force his way to the bottom, using the rod that Tod had thrust down at the first opening.

  The liquid was too thick. It was like trying to wade through thin molasses. W
ith no weight to give him a sense of direction, he had to hope that he was heading for the bottom.

  He felt for handholds, which should have lined the tank for the use of the crewmen who cleaned them. But he must have already been lost, since he couldn't locate one. From outside, it had seemed simple enough a matter to dive to the bottom at once. Now, it was an entirely different matter.

  He began trying to swim through the stuff, and that was better. Progress was agonizingly slow, and each movement took more energy than it should, but he found that he could make some progress. He headed laboriously for what should have been the tank, but he wound up against another curved wall—he was still hugging the sides.

  Half a dozen times he headed out from the wall toward where the bottom must be, only to find that he was still at the wall.

  Finally, he began swimming around it, keeping in touch with it at the end of each stroke. It took a long time for his sense of direction to orient itself, but the curve of the wall finally guided him into a short, circular curve. The bottom had to be at right angles to that—or the top; there was no way of knowing which.

  He came out at the top, judging by the fact that his fingers found the edge of the manhole. But it told him that the bottom must lie in the other direction, and he was finally getting used to navigating in the little tank. His sudden relief made him realize that he'd been half panicky before.

  Now he headed downward, and his direction was right. The flatness of the bottom finally met his groping fingers. He swam along it, barely able to move his arms. The long struggle through the thick stuff had taken nearly all his strength, but he managed to keep moving. He couldn't quit now.

  Still touching the bottom, he circled the tank until he could get the feel of where the center must be. Now he moved out, feeling cautiously as he thought he must have reached it. He was beginning to realize that locating a two-inch threaded hole in a tank of this size was worse than finding a needle in any possible haystack.