The Planet Mappers, E. Everett Evans [cheapest way to read ebooks .TXT] 📗

rule and did some quick figuring. Then he announced, crestfallen, "Great mackerel, I sure went off half-baked that time. OK, I'll take the ship up and bring it down closer."

"That's mighty delicate maneuvering." His mother looked at him in astonishment. "Sure you can do it?"

Jon shrugged. "If I can't the first time, I'll try again."

His father had to smile at the boy's confidence in himself, but he merely said, "This I've got to watch."

Assured everyone was safely strapped in, Jon started the tubes firing, raised the ship into the air—watching his plate closely as he circled about—then came down again ... right beside and not over five feet from port-lock to box.

"That's perfect," his father cried delightedly, watching in his plate. "You're sure getting to be an expert pilot, Son."

"And you're getting too excited and too tired from all this, Tad," Mrs. Carver said determinedly. "We'll have no more of it today. You boys go into the living room, and you, Mr. C., relax and take a nap. We can't have you getting sick again."

The boys started to protest but their father grinned. "Our mistress' voice, Boys. And she's right, I was trying too much. We're not in that big a hurry. Jon, you and Jak go make a box to hold our specimen."

They left him, and in moments he was asleep from exhaustion.

In the storeroom, Jon found some pieces of one-inch oak, and Jak and he made up their box, finishing just as their mother called them to dinner. It was a six-inch cube, sturdily fastened with plenty of screws; strong enough to hold solid osmium. The lead foil was carefully fitted into the interior, and was now twelve layers thick—three-eighths of an inch.

"That ought to do it," Jak said, and Jon agreed.

"Let's go out and fill it after we eat." Jak was all eagerness.

Jon shook his head. "Not unless Pop says to. Now that he's awake, I just don't like to make decisions."

Jak grinned. "You're right, of course. Guess we got too big-headed, having to do things ourselves while he was unconscious."

"Yes, we're still pretty inexperienced, and I'm glad we don't have to figure things out now."

"Still, we can't go back to depending too much on him," Jak said thoughtfully. "That way, we'll never get the habit of thinking for ourselves, and deciding—and that would be bad. But about this, I agree fully," he added quickly as he saw his brother about to protest.

"Even if I don't know much about it, I can see that this stuff's dangerous to monkey with."

Their father awakened later, much refreshed by his nap. After the boys had explained and exhibited their new box, he agreed it would be all right for them to go out and get a single piece of the metal.

"Leave it in the lock, though," he added. "Then, in the morning, maybe I'll feel like helping Jon study and experiment with it."

The two boys ran to get into their suits, and soon were outside, carrying their lead-lined box. They jumped into the large cache box after lifting off the lid, and took the top from the inner one. They set the carrier beside it, then ran back to the ship. With the "distant hands," Jon flipped a nugget into the small box, and set it aside on the sand. Using the same servo-mechanism, he closed both covers. Then he brought the little box back and deposited it on the floor of the lock.

The two boys took off their suits and hung them in the wall closet, then went into the control room.

"You were right, Pop. We sure couldn't have handled the big box at all." Jon grinned, still panting. "Even the little one is really heavy with just one nugget in it."

His father grinned back. "I had an idea, but thought I'd let you learn the hard way. Now maybe you'll remember it longer."

"Anyway, we got it in the lock, and tomorrow, if you feel up to it, we can start experimenting."

"Just how big are the pellets?"

"A little over half the size of our treated-copper ones," Jon told him.

"We'll have to cut it before we try working with it."

Jak, having disposed of the used plastic from their suits, had come into the control room and was listening interestedly, as was their mother, who was hovering near, not quite sure she liked the idea of her menfolks fussing with this unknown but admittedly dangerous metal.

"That means we'll have to make and install a smaller injector, too, doesn't it?" Jon asked. And when his father nodded, he added "I'll see about making it."

"Later, when we've found out whether we can use the stuff. Right now we'd all better get some sleep. I'm bushed, and I imagine you chaps are, too. How about you, Marci?" Mr. Carver turned to his wife.

"Well, I could use some sleep," she admitted.

"Right, Pop. Good night. 'Night, Mom."

12

Early the next morning the boys were clamoring to get started, but their mother would not let them go into the control room.

"Now you listen to Mother," she protested, using a favorite phrase of hers. "Your father hasn't made any sign yet. You wait until he's awake and has had something to eat. I know how anxious you are to do all these things, but you must remember he isn't strong yet, and we must not let him overdo. He is as much a child about such things as you two are, but someone has to watch him."

The boys laughed rather shamefacedly. "It's just we get so interested in things, Mom," Jon apologized.

"Yes, I know. But if you will look in your dictionary, you will find a word called 'moderation.'" She smiled.

"Never heard of it." Jon grinned as he went to get a reelbook on radioactives, and began studying. Jak, too, went back to studying and trying to classify the various specimens he had obtained from the two worlds. However, they soon remembered their usual duties—and whisked through their various chores about the ship, then went back to their absorbing occupations.

They had been at these nearly an hour when they heard their father's voice. Dropping everything, they sprang toward the control room, and found him wide-awake and looking much better. Mrs. Carver came running in, and they were told, "Feel fine. This is a wonderful bed. Seem to be much stronger today, too."

"That's wonderful, Mr. C. I'll go get you some breakfast."

Jon ran for a basin of water and towels, and he and Jak helped their father with his toilet.

"While you're eating, Pop, how about me cutting off that piece of the new metal so we can start studying it?"

"How big a piece were you figuring on?" Mr. Carver asked with that quizzical look.

Jon flushed and mentally changed the size he had planned to get. "About a gram?" he asked.

"I'd say more like a few milligrams." His father grinned. "That's plenty for our initial studies and analyses, and shouldn't hurt us any if we're careful and wear insulation."

"But that's only a pin-head size."

"Well?" again quizzically.

Jon flushed once more. "Yes, that's big enough to test, I realize now. It's a good thing I waited for you to help me. I'd probably have burned myself but bad. Actually," he smiled now, "I was figuring on about a quarter of a pellet."

His father frowned. "You should have known better than that, Jon. I thought I'd taught you something about being careful, and the dangers of rashness or impulsiveness. Especially around anything as dangerous as this stuff undoubtedly is."

"You did, sir, and I'm sorry. But I forget sometimes, when I get too enthusiastic."

"Well," philosophically, "you'll probably learn as you grow older ... if you live that long!" But again there was that disarming grin, which Jon repaid in kind before leaving to get his tools and go after the mite of new metal. This time, he did not neglect his precautions. He wore his suit, and put on a pair of extra-thick, lead-impregnated gloves.

Carefully he lifted a pellet from the box, wrapped it in several layers of lead foil left after making the box. He carried it so into the storeroom, locked it in a vice, and with a fine hacksaw cut off a tiny bit. Still wrapped carefully in the lead foil, he carried the remainder of the pellet back to the box in the lock, closed the lid and then took the sample inside. He took off his suit and donned a lead-impregnated, hooded gown and the leaded gloves.

"Good," his father said when Jon told what he had done. "I think I feel well enough to sit up a bit. Suppose you crank this seat halfway up, then I can watch better while you make the tests."

"Just be sure you don't get too tired," Jon said solicitously as he raised the seat and locked it at half-recline. He had brought in another of the leaded-gowns, and he slipped this over his father's head, arms and upper torso, arranging the balance of it down over his blanket-enwrapped legs.

Then, acting on his father's various instructions, he took the particle from its wrappings and began his tests. He measured the amount of radioactivity, and together they computed its half-life.

"Wow! That sure is high-pressure stuff," Jon exclaimed when they had completed the various tests which they had the equipment to make.

His father silently motioned him to set the seat back to full recline and lay there, concentrating, for some time before he spoke.

"Yes," he said at last, "it's even higher in the scale than I thought. Lots higher than Curium, even now. And no telling, by any tests we can make, what it was originally, before its many half-life reductions that must have taken place over the long time it has undoubtedly been lying out there. Probably way above anything known, even theoretically, to Terran scientists."

"Can we use it?" Jon was quivering with excitement.

"If we can figure out a way to do so safely, so it doesn't want to disintegrate all at once, I think we've really got a fuel—a super fuel. But we'll have to go at it mighty slow and easy. That stuff could blow us higher than up, if used wrongly."

"Yes, I know. But after our scientists first liberated atomic energy for their bombs, many people said they couldn't control a hydrogen bomb, but they did. And later the thorium bomb. And then they got our activated copper. So I'm betting they can figure this out."

Both fell silent, although there were a dozen eager questions the boy wanted so much to ask. But he did not interrupt his father's line of thought, even though long, long minutes dragged away while the elder still pondered the problem.

At last, after more than a quarter of an hour, Tad Carver stirred and looked up. "This is going to take a long time to figure out," he said slowly. "I'm not too much on atomics, myself, and neither are you. Now you run along and do whatever else you have to do. It's a cinch we won't be able to try this stuff right away—if we try it at all."

The disappointment on Jon's face was plain, but he restrained any protests, knowing his father was right, and not wishing to call down on himself another verbal chastisement like that recent one.

"What about the rest of the stuff?" he asked instead. "Shall I get the box out of the cache and weld it onto the hull, as we thought we might do?"

"I don't see why not. We want to take it back to Terra with us, whether we figure out how to use it, or decide the job's too big for us and turn it over to the scientists there to handle."

"Right." Jon went over to the controls of the handling arms in the lock. Watching in the special visiplate, he opened the outer lockdoor, extended the "hands" and guided them down into the cache, after using them to lift the lid off the larger pit-box.

Carefully he manipulated them to grasp the inner box by its lower end-edges, and experimentally lift it an inch or so. Finding that it balanced, he slowly made the servo-mechanism lift the heavy container from its ages old resting place and up onto the "top" surface of the ship, near the stern. Making sure it was securely held there, he put on his suit, gathered up his welding outfit, and went outside and climbed onto the hull.

Going to where the box rested, he began the task of welding its bottom back-edge onto the metal hull. Then he released the grip of the handlers and, leaving them dangling in the air, welded the other three bottom edges.

Finished, he turned off his torch, rose to his feet and started back. But after a step or two he stopped and thought.

"Pop," he said into his suit-radio, "do you hear me?"

"Yes,