The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke [41]
“If we threw out the cargo,” said McNeil at last, “would we have a chance of changing our orbit?”
Grant shook his head.
“I’d hoped so,” he replied, “but it won’t work. We could reach Venus in a week if we wished—but we’d have no fuel for braking and nothing from the planet could catch us as we went past.”
“Not even a liner?”
“According to Lloyd’s Register Venus has only a couple of freighters at the moment. In any case it would be a practically impossible maneuver. Even if it could match our speed how would the rescue ship get back? It would need about fifty kilometers a second for the whole job!”
“If we can’t figure a way out,” said McNeil, “maybe someone on Venus can. We’d better talk to them.”
“I’m going to,” Grant replied, “as soon as I’ve decided what to say. Go and get the transmitter aligned, will you?”
He watched McNeil as he floated out of the room. The engineer was probably going to give trouble in the days that lay ahead. Until now they had got on well enough—like most stout men McNeil was good-natured and easy going. But now Grant realized that he lacked fiber. He had become flabby—physically and mentally—living too long in space.
A buzzer sounded on the transmitter switchboard. The parabolic mirror out on the hull was aimed at the gleaming arc-lamp of Venus, only ten million kilometers away and moving on an almost parallel path. The three-millimeter waves from the ship’s transmitter would make the trip in little more than half a minute. There was bitterness in the knowledge that they were only thirty seconds from safety.
The automatic monitor on Venus gave its impersonal Go ahead signal and Grant began to talk steadily, and he hoped, quite dispassionately. He gave a careful analysis of the situation and ended with a request for advice. His fears concerning McNeil he left unspoken. For one thing he knew that the engineer would be monitoring him at the transmitter.
As yet no one on Venus would have heard the message, even though the transmission time-lag was over. It would still be coiled up in the recorder spools, but in a few minutes an unsuspecting signal officer would arrive to play it over.
He would have no idea of the bombshell that was about to burst, triggering trains of sympathetic ripples on all the inhabited worlds as television and newssheet took up the refrain. An accident in space has a dramatic quality that crowds all other items from the headlines.
Until now Grant had been too preoccupied with his own safety to give much thought to the cargo in his charge. A sea captain of ancient times, whose first thought was for his ship, might have been shocked by the attitude. Grant, however, had reason on his side.
The Star Queen could never founder, could never run upon uncharted rocks or pass silently, as so many ships have passed, forever from the knowledge of man. She was safe, whatever might befall her crew. If she was undisturbed she would continue to retrace her orbit with such precision that men might set their calendars by her for centuries to come.
The cargo, Grant suddenly remembered, was insured for over twenty million dollars. There were not many goods valuable enough to be shipped from world to world and most of the crates in the hold were worth more than their weight—or rather their mass—in gold. Perhaps some items might be useful in this emergency and Grant went to the safe to find the loading schedule.
He was sorting the thin, tough sheets when McNeil came back into the cabin.
“I’ve been reducing the air pressure,” he said. “The hull shows some leaks that wouldn’t have mattered in the usual way.”
Grant nodded absently as he passed a bundle of sheets over to McNeil.
“Here’s our loading schedule. I suggest we both run through it in case there’s anything in the cargo that may help.”
If it did nothing else, he might have added, it would at least give them something to occupy their minds.
As he ran down the long columns of numbered items—a complete cross-section of interplanetary commerce—Grant found himself wondering what lay behind these inanimate symbols. Item 347—1 book