Stand by for Mars!, Carey Rockwell [early readers .TXT] 📗

are you two guys talking about?” asked Roger.

“Saving a ship, Roger,” said Tom. “Dumping the whole assembly of the number-three rocket!”

“Ah⁠—you’re space happy!”

“Maybe,” said Tom, “but I think it’s worth trying. How about it, Astro?”

“OK by me, Tom,” replied Astro.

“Good. You get the cutting torches rigged, Astro. Roger, you give him a hand and keep your eye on the counter. Then feed the torches to me when I get inside the tube. I’m going outside to get rid of a bad rocket and save a five-million-credit spaceship!”

Before Astro or Roger could protest, Tom opened the hatch and began to climb out on the steel hull toward the rocket tubes, main exhaust.

His magnetic-soled shoes gripping the smooth steel hull, the cadet made his way aft to the stern of the ship and began the climb down around the huge firing tubes and into the tubes themselves.

“Hey, Astro,” he yelled into the spacephone, “I’m inside the tubes. How about those torches?” The cadets had adjusted the wave length so that all could hear what was said.

“Take it easy, spaceboy,” said Roger, “I’m leaving the hatch now. You and your fatheaded friend from Venus are so hopped up for getting a Solar Medal⁠—”

“Knock it off, Manning!” said Astro from inside the ship. “And for your information, I don’t want a medal. I don’t want anything except for you to stop griping!”

Roger reached the end of the ship and began to climb down inside the tube where Tom was waiting for him.

“OK, spaceboy,” said Roger, “here’re your cutting torches.” He started moving back. “I’ll see you around. I don’t mind being a little hero for saving people and all that stuff. But not for any ship. And the odds against a big hero staying alive are too big!”

“Roger, wait,” shouted Tom. “I’ll need.⁠ ⁠…” And then the curly-headed cadet clamped his teeth together and turned back to the task at hand.

He made adjustments on the nozzle of the cutting torch, and then, focusing his chest light, called to Astro.

“OK, Astro,” he said, “shoot me the juice!”

“Coming up, Tom!” answered Astro. “And wait till I get my hands on that Manning! I’m going to smear that yellow space crawler from one corner of the universe to another!”

“Never mind the talk,” snarled Roger, who at the moment was re-entering the tube. “Just get that juice down to this torch and make it fast!”

Tom turned to see Roger crawling back into the tube and adjusting a cutting torch.

“Glad to have you aboard, Roger,” said Tom with a smile that Roger could not see in the darkness of the tube. The two boys went to work.

Suddenly the torches came to life. And immediately Tom and Roger began to cut away at the cleats that held the tube lining to the skin of the ship. Steadily, the cadets worked their way up toward the center of the ship, cutting anything that looked as though it might hold the giant tube to the ship.

“Boy,” said Tom, “it’s getting hot in here!”

From inside the ship, Astro’s reassuring voice came back in answer. “You’re getting close to the reactant-mass chamber. The last cleat is up by one of the exhaust gratings. Think you can last it?”

“Well, if he can’t,” snarled Roger, “he’s sure to get that medal anyway!” He inched up a little. “Move over, Corbett, I’m skinnier than you are, and I can reach that cleat easier than you can.”

Roger slipped past Tom and inched his way toward the last cleat. He pulled his torch up alongside and pulled the trigger. The flame shot out and began eating the steel. In a moment the last cleat was cut and the two boys started their long haul down the tube to the outside of the ship.

As they walked across the steel surface, back to the air lock, Tom stuck out his hand.

“I’m glad you came back, Roger.”

“Save it for the boys that fall for that stuff, Corbett,” said Roger sarcastically. “I came back because I didn’t want you and that Venusian hick to think you’re the only ones with guts around here!”

“No one has ever accused you of not having guts, Roger.”

“Ah⁠—go blast your jets,” snarled Roger.

They went directly to the power deck where Astro was waiting for them, the Geiger counter in his hand.

“All set to get rid of the rotten apple?” he asked with a smile.

“All set, Astro,” said Tom. “What’s the count?”

“She seems to have steadied around fourteen hundred ninety⁠—and believe me, the ten points to the official danger mark of fifteen hundred is so small that we could find out where the angels live any moment now!”

“Then what’re we waiting for,” said Tom. “Let’s dump that thing!”

“How?” snarled Roger.

Tom and Astro looked at him bewilderedly. “What do you mean ‘how’?” asked Astro.

“I mean how are you going to get the tube out of the ship?”

“Why,” started Tom, “there’s nothing holding that tube assembly to the ship now. We cut all the cleats, remember? We can jettison the whole unit!”

“It seems to me,” drawled Roger lazily, “that the two great heroes in their mad rush for the Solar Medal have forgotten an unwritten law of space. There’s no gravity out here⁠—no natural force to pull or push the tube. The only way it could be moved is by the power of thrust, either forward or backward!”

“OK Then let’s push it out, just that way,” said Astro.

“How?” asked Roger cynically.

“Simple, Roger,” said Tom, “Newton’s laws of motion. Everything in motion tends to keep going at the same speed unless influenced by an outside force. So if we blasted our nose rockets and started going backward, everything on the ship would go backward too, then if we reversed⁠—”

Astro cut in, “Yeah⁠—if we blasted the stern rockets, the ship would go forward, but the tube, being loose, would keep going the other way!”

“There’s only one thing wrong,” said Roger. “That mass is so hot now, if any booster energy hit it, it would be like a trigger on a bomb. It’d blow us