The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke [81]
It was too late to turn back, of course: the conspirators wouldn’t have made an elementary miscalculation like that. He would just have to make the best of what looked to be the trickiest voyage in his career.
He was still trying to think of something to say when the PRIORITY signal started flashing on the radio board. The stowaway looked at his watch.
“I was expecting that,” he said. “It’s probably the Prime Minister. I think I’d better speak to the poor man.”
Saunders thought so too.
“Very well, Your Royal Highness,” he said sulkily, and with such emphasis that the title sounded almost like an insult. Then, feeling much put upon, he retired into a corner.
It was the Prime Minister all right, and he sounded very upset. Several times he used the phrase “your duty to your people” and once there was a distinct catch in his throat as he said something about “devotion of your subjects to the Crown.” Saunders realized, with some surprise, that he really meant it.
While this emotional harangue was in progress, Mitchell leaned over to Saunders and whispered in his ear:
“The old boy’s on a sticky wicket, and he knows it. The people will be behind the prince when they hear what’s happened. Everybody knows he’s been trying to get into space for years.”
“I wish he hadn’t chosen my ship,” said Saunders. “And I’m not sure that this doesn’t count as mutiny.”
“The heck it does. Mark my words—when this is all over you’ll be the only Texan to have the Order of the Garter. Won’t that be nice for you?”
“Shush!” said Chambers. The prince was speaking, his words winging back across the abyss that now sundered him from the island he would one day rule.
“I am sorry, Mr. Prime Minister,” he said, “if I’ve caused you any alarm. I will return as soon as it is convenient. Someone has to do everything for the first time, and I felt the moment had come for a member of my family to leave Earth. It will be a valuable part of my education, and will make me more fitted to carry out my duty. Goodbye.”
He dropped the microphone and walked over to the observation window—the only spaceward-looking port on the entire ship. Saunders watched him standing there, proud and lonely—but contented now. And as he saw the prince staring out at the stars which he had at last attained, all his annoyance and indignation slowly evaporated.
No one spoke for a long time. Then Prince Henry tore his gaze away from the blinding splendor beyond the port, looked at Captain Saunders, and smiled.
“Where’s the galley, Captain?” he asked. “I may be out of practice, but when I used to go scouting I was the best cook in my patrol.”
Saunders slowly relaxed, then smiled back. The tension seemed to lift from the control room. Mars was still a long way off, but he knew now that this wasn’t going to be such a bad trip after all . . .
THE WIND
FROM THE SUN
“The Wind From the Sun” was written just twenty years ago, but is far more topical now than it was in 1963. I have in front of me at the moment a folder full of technical papers assembled by the World Space Foundation in support of its Solar Sail Project—conducted in cooperation with the University of Utah, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, with the assistance of the Charles A. Lindbergh Fund.
Let me quote from the Foundation’s leaflet, so that you will better appreciate the background of the story that follows:
“In 1924, Fridrikh Tsander, perhaps as a result of suggestion by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, noted that in the vacuum of space, a large thin sheet of reflective material illuminated by the Sun and controlled in orientation could be used as a propulsion device requiring no propellant. This propulsion device is now called a solar sail. In 1973, NASA sponsored a design study which led to a full-scale evaluation of solar sailing for the proposed Halley’s Comet rendezvous mission. Plans for this mission were suspended in 1977, but not