Read Ebook: 240000 miles straight up by Hubbard L Ron La Fayette Ron Finlay Virgil Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 370 lines and 13434 words, and 8 pages

A NOVELET BY L. RON HUBBARD

The party was wild. The night was gay. And the "Angel" was very, very drunk.

But who wouldn't have got drunk on such an occasion? The Angel was about to head man's first attempt to conquer space and within a few short hours he would be boring space to the Moon, 240,000 miles straight up.

He had tried to stay sober but this, being without precedent in the Angel's career, was entirely too great a strain. "Don't dare take another grink--well--jush one more--hic!"

The Angel was First Lieutenant Cannon Gray of the United States Army Air Forces, Engineers. He was five feet two inches tall and he had golden curly hair and a face like a choir boy. Old ladies thought him wonderful and beautiful. His superiors, from the moment he had entered West Point, had found him just about the wickedest, hard drinkingest, go-to-hell splinter of steel they'd ever tried to forge.

The army, with a taste of opposites, called him Angel from the first, called it to his face, loved him and was hilarious over his escapades.

This was probably the first time in history that Angel had attempted to stay sober. But it was a wonderful party they were giving in his honor and people kept insisting that he wouldn't get another chance at a drink for months and maybe never and everyone was so pleasant that good resolutions were very hard to hold--especially for a dashing young officer who had never tried to make any before.

The occasion was gala and his hand was sore from being pumped by brasshats and newsmen and senators. For at zero four zero eight of the dawning, First Lieutenant Cannon Gray, U.S.A., was taking off for the Moon.

It was in all the papers.

Several times Colonel Anthony, a veritable old maid of a flight surgeon, had tried to pry his charge loose and steer him to bed and, while Angel seemed willing and looked blue eyed and agreeable, he always vanished before the hall was reached. Really, it was not Angel's fault.

No less than nineteen frail, charming and truly startling young ladies, all professing undying passion and future faithfulness, had turned up one after the other and it was something of a task making each one unaware of the other eighteen and confirmed in her belief in his lasting fidelity.

Such strains should not be placed upon young men about to fly two hundred and forty thousand miles straight up. And it takes hours to say a proper good-by. And it takes more hours to be respectful to brass. And it takes time, time, time to drink up all the toasts shoved at one. All in all it was a very exhausting evening.

The golden head dropped on the Colonel's eagle and Angel slept.

Cruelly, it was no time at all before somebody was slapping Angel awake again, standing him on his feet, getting him into a uniform, wrapping him up in furs, weighing him down with equipment and generally tangling up a dark, dismal and thoroughly confused morning.

Angel was aware of a howling headache. Small scarlet fiends, especially commissioned by the Prince of Darkness for the purpose, played a gay chorus with red hot hammers just behind Angel's eyes. He was missing between his chin and his knees and his feet wandered off on various courses.

A flight major and two sergeants undeniably capped with horns, danced in high anxiety around him and managed to touch him in all the places that hurt.

He was in horrible condition and no mistake.

And the watch on his wrist gleamed as hugely as a steeple clock and said, "Zero three fifty-one," in an unnecessarily loud voice.

The corridor was at least half the distance to Mars and Angel kept hitting the walls. The casual chairs with which he collided all apologized profusely.

A potted palm fell on him and then became a general who, with idiotic pomposity said, "Fine morning, fine morning lieutenant. You look fit. Fit, sir. No clouds and a splendid full moon."

He felt the call, one which generals too old for command can never resist, to give a young officer the benefit of a wealth of experience but, fortunately, his aide swiftly interposed.

The aide was brilliant with the usual aide's enthusiasm for paper glory and distaste for generals. Angel knew him well. The aide, in Angel's day at the Point, had been an Upperclassman, a noted grind, a shuddery bore and the darling of his seniors. He didn't look any better to Angel this morning.

"Beg pardon, sir," said the aide sidewise to the general, "but we've just time to brief him as we ride down. Here, this way lieutenant." And, abetted by the usherlike habit peculiar to the breed of aides, he got Angel into the car.

"Now," said the aide to Angel, who was hard put to stifle his groans and shivers at the unearthly hour, "you have been thoroughly briefed. But there must be a quick resum? unless you think you are thoroughly cognizant of your duties."

Angel would have answered but the sound came out as a groan.

"You will confine yourself wholly to this one task. It has been thought wisest to entrust a topographer with this first mission because, after all, that's the way things are done. We've insufficient reconnaissance to send up a main body."

Angel would have added that he was a guinea pig. They didn't even know if he could really get to the moon. But aides talk like that and lieutenants somehow let them.

"As soon as you have completed a survey of an elementary sort you will televise your maps, then send a complete set in a pilot rocket and return if you are able. But you are not to risk bringing the maps back personally."

They were little enough sure he'd ever get there, much less get back.

"You will phone all data back to us. Our tests show that the wave can travel much further than that. Anything you may think important, beyond maps and perhaps geology, you are permitted to note and report.

"Under no circumstances are you to attempt to change any control settings in your ship. Everything is all prenavigated and proper setting will be phoned to you for your return.

"All instructions are here in this packet."

Angel shoved the brown envelope into his jacket and felt twinges of pain as he did so.

"My boy," said the general, getting a word in there somehow, "this is a glorious occasion. You have been chosen for your courage and loyalty and it is a great honor. A great honor, my boy. You will, I am sure, be a credit to your country."

Angel didn't mean it to be a groan but that is the way it came out. They had chosen him because he was the smallest man ever to enter West Point, his height having been waived because of the lump of tin--the Congressional Medal of Honor, no less--he had won as an enlisted man in the war.

They had needed a topographer who wouldn't subtract from pay load. Space travel was to begin with seeming to create a demand for a race of small men. But he didn't tell the general this and they came to the end of the ride.

The aide expertly ushered Angel out into the bleak blackness of the take-off field, where every officer and newspaperman who could wangle it was all buttoned up to the ears and massed about the whitish blob of the ship.

The flight surgeon took over and protected Angel from the back swats and got him through to the ladder. The two smallish master sergeants--Whittaker and Boyd--were waiting at the top in the open door of the ship. Metal glinted beyond them in the lighted interior.

Whittaker was methodically chewing a huge wad of tobacco and Boyd was humming a bawdy tune as he stared up at the romantically round and glowing moon in the west. They were taking off away from it for reasons best known to the U.S. Navy navigators who had set the course.

A commander was hurrying about, muttering sums, and he paused only long enough to glare at Angel. "Don't touch those sets!" he growled, and rushed off to take station at the pushbutton which, when all was well, would fire the assist rockets under the carriage on the rails. These were keyed in with the ship's rockets. The commander glared at his ticking standard chronometer.

The flight surgeon said, "Well, you've got a week to sober up, boy. You won't like this take-off."

Angel gave him a green smile. It hadn't been the champagne. It was the apricot cordial that Alice had brought him to take along. "I'll be fine," said Angel, managing a ghost of his lovely smile.

Angel went up the ladder. Whittaker spat out his chaw and lent a hand. Boyd was standing by on the stage and, more to avert the necessity of having to see Angel's poor navigation than from interest, turned a powerful navy night glass on the Moon. Boyd was very fond of Angel in a cussing sort of way.

But Angel made it without help and had just turned to give the faces, white blurs there in the floodlights, a parting wave to the click of cameras when Boyd yelled.

"Oh, my aching Aunt!"

There was so much amazed fear in that shout that everyone stared at Boyd and then turned to find what he saw. Angel found Boyd shoving the glasses at him.

"Look, lieutenant!"

Angel hadn't supposed himself able to see a thousand-dollar bill, much less the clear Moon. And then he jumped as if he'd been clipped with a bullet.

The commander was howling at them to batten down but Angel stood and stared, glasses riveted to the lunar glory.

Those with sharper eyes could see it now. And a wail went up interspersed with awful silences. Even the testy commander turned to stare, looked back to the ship and then whipped about to snatch a quartermaster's glass from his gunner. He took one look and froze in silence.

Every face was uplifted now, the field was stunned. For there on the moon in print which must have been a hundred miles high, done in lampblack, were the letters--

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet