Read Ebook: Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire Notices biographiques accompagnées de reflexions et de souvenirs personnels by Desdunes Rodolphe Lucien

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Ebook has 1004 lines and 48619 words, and 21 pages

Trouble Near The Sun

"You idiot!" Captain Stevens shouted. "Next time give us warning!"

The lateral tubes pilot grinned wryly but didn't lift his eyes from the scanner before him. "Sorry, Sir. There was no time. When one of those calcium faculae come boiling up at you like a cannonball, you pick a new spot in the chromosphere for the ship and get there quick--or you don't arrive at all."

Bull Wright, one of the two men who had been strong enough to keep his hold, slowly untwined his huge fingers from a projection and flexed them. He looked across the room and grinned down at the floor where Skip Allen was struggling to his feet. "How do you like good old Sol from that angle?" he drawled sarcastically. "Different from reading about it in a textbook, isn't it?"

The slim built Ensign quickly came to his feet and automatically adjusted the cap on his red head. "Mr. Experience talking, eh? I wonder why Headquarters hasn't discovered that Ensign Wright sees all, knows all, and blabs all?"

"Why that's Fleet Command's new sun cruiser," Skip gasped. "What's happened to her?"

"Headquarters doesn't know exactly," Stevens replied. "They got part of a message saying her propulsion power controls were jammed and her anti-grav and anti-heat equipment was slowly losing effectiveness. They give her about four hours before she's falling too fast to contact; and about the same time before she gets too hot to maintain life.

"A laminated layer of charged particles must have whipped across her sending beam about then because her message became garbled and finally faded out."

"Rescue," growled Bull. "That's not our kind of job. We're not outfitted for it. If that bunch of stuffed shirts didn't know enough to navigate through the corona and into the chromosphere, they deserve to die. Why should we risk our necks to save them?"

"We're the only ship near enough to stand a chance of reaching them during the next couple hours. But that's not all. Alistar of Cygnus is on board."

"Alistar of Cygnus?" one of the officers questioned. "Who the hell is he?"

"An inspector from Intergalactic Federation Headquarters. Remember that container of electron stripped nuclei found in Federation Headquarters Building last month?"

The men all nodded.

"The Federation figures it came from one of our nuclei dredges in one of Sol's spots. With all the other crazy things that have been happening lately to throw suspicion our way, our system stands in danger of being ejected from the Federation unless we can clear ourselves. You know what that would mean to our trade activities?

"That's why they've sent Alistar of Cygnus here to make a preliminary investigation. His report will determine further action. Now suppose that something happens to Alistar? They're sure to think that it's part of some plot we're concocting in this corner of the galaxy.

"We've got to find that ship and get him out. Those are our orders. We do it--or die trying."

"Simple problem," sniffed Bull derisively. "All we have to do is locate a tiny thing like that on the sun. That's easy. Only about two and a half million miles of circumference to cover."

Captain Stevens smiled. "It isn't that bad. The message that was picked up also gave a rough location. They were about 15 degrees North and near a small sunspot about 70 degrees west of the east limb of the sun as seen from Earth at the time of the message. I have plotted the coordinates. We've been on our way there ever since we began talking.

"Are there any further questions, gentlemen? Then take up your assigned duties. You are all dismissed except Ensigns Wright and Allen."

Both men, standing stiffly at attention, muttered, "Yes, sir."

"You both are officers. Now act like you're supposed to. We should sight the Regis in the next hour. I'm assigning you both to the scanning screens. The minute either of you see the Regis, let me know. I'm going to do the rounds and make sure all equipment is ready."

As soon as Stevens left, Bull and Skip went to the tiny cubbyhole called the Vision Room which was located just off Main Control. There they sat back to back in chairs fixed in the middle of the room. This gave each of them a half circle to keep track of. Between them, they had a full view of the ship's entire surroundings. Sitting there, surrounded by screens, it was easy to imagine that they were afloat in the chromosphere without a ship deck under them.

Several times the forward motion of their ship carried them close to sunspots. These were carefully skirted before the ship entered the penumbra. The dark appearing central area of each spot, the umbra, yawned like monster pits into an area of magnetic forces that ships avoided if possible unless they were nuclei dredges or contact vessels especially constructed to enter the vortex. Twice they ran through loop-like spaces that appeared on their filtered screens. These were caused by prominences of exploding hydrogen shooting tens of thousands of miles into space. Prominences, the tips of which looped back to the sun's surface.

"What's the matter, Space Cadet?" Bull jibbed. "Don't tell me all that training of yours didn't include a course in how NOT to get space sick?"

Skip swallowed hurriedly before he spoke. "How this garbage collecting tub can stand this buffeting, I can't figure."

"That's just fancy talk," Skip interrupted. "All you're trying to do is talk yourself into thinking that this is the same as sitting on a stool in some Martian bar."

Glaring at one another across their shoulders, they slowly became aware of Captain Stevens' voice in the Vision Room doorway.

"Forget about the Regis, gentlemen?" His voice held a tempered edge that could have sliced through the million degree temperature of the corona.

Both men jerked to their screens. Off to the side they could see the Regis low in the chromosphere, hanging over the umbra of a small sunspot about ten thousand miles away.

Stevens' voice was bitter. "First you destroy the crew's morale. Now you're negligent in your assigned duty. That should be enough to wash you both out of the Inner Fleet. You're both cosmic debris the Service can do without. Stay out here in the Control Room where I can keep my eye on you. I'll attend to you both later."

Out in the control room Stevens questioned the communications man. "Get a rise out of her yet?"

"It's hopeless, sir. The interference here is too great for contact. This is actually a double spot if you look, sir. That makes communication impossible due to the reversed polarity of the spots."

Skip and Bull, standing wretchedly unwanted and useless to one side of the room, looked at the small screens on the control panel. They could see the Regis balanced precariously over the center of one spot; off in the distance another spot showed clearly--one of the best leader and follower set-ups they had ever seen.

"Getting low, aren't they, sir?" Malcolm, the Second-in-Command, asked Stevens.

"Down to about 500 miles. They must be using the magnetic field there which is perpendicular to the sun's surface to help counteract their own loss of power. They'll be in the reversing layer shortly."

"It's cooler there too," Malcolm observed. "The whirling effect of the gases sets up a low pressure that reduces the temperature to about 7000 degrees instead of the 11,000 outside the spot where we are."

"We'll have to close and hook on as soon as possible," Stevens directed. "Break out the strongest line we have. When we get within a mile, shoot her out until you contact."

"But, sir, we can't get a line out in that if we try."

"We can--and will, Mister. Follow your orders."

"Yes, sir."

A sigh oozed from every man in the control room. Stevens looked at his watch. "Two hours gone. Now for the tough part."

He called down to the outer lock room through the intership voice tubes. "We've made contact. Have the communicator tube ready to swing out of the lock when I give notice. We are going to start hauling the Regis in toward us now. Be sure that you batten all contact points tight. The men on the Regis haven't any suits to withstand the radiations of the sun. Their only chance is to walk through that tube once you get in contact. A radiation leak down there will kill them all."

Then he called the engine room. "Open up easy."

The deck of the control room began to throb with the power of the huge ionized particle engines. On the screen the traction line began to straighten between the two ships. Its still slack loop twisted like a dying snake between the forces that played over it. Then it tautened.

"It's moving toward us," Skip said aloud. No one answered him. Their eyes were too tightly fixed to the screens.

Stevens looked at the menacing sides of the sunspot. Actually there were no real sides--they were like the sides of a tornado in a mass of air. Here in the interior of the spot, their main problem was to balance the ship against the force of the rising column of gases from the mouth of the spot inside the sun's photosphere, and to adjust their position to the constantly downward drift of the Regis. There was a maximum distance that they could afford to let the Regis drift downward if they wished to save her. Now that they were close to the photosphere, the drag of the sun's 27 G's was greater than it had been out at 10,000 miles. If they managed to pull the Regis close enough for a transfer, it would have to be in the next hour.

"We'll have to take a chance," Stevens said.

Once more he called the engine room. "Throw them in full when I say go," he instructed.

"Let her go."

The deck leaped to life, reacting to the blows of countless millions of quanta of light as free electrons attached themselves to the stripped nuclei in the discharge chambers of the ship's engines.

The ship began to whip again; but the agile fingers of Captain Stevens brought her swiftly under control.

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