MEN INTO SPACE
By Murray Leinster
COPYRIGHT © 1960 BY ZIV TELEVISION PRODUCTIONS, INC.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
All rights reserved
BERKLEY EDITION, OCTOBER, 1960
BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS are published by
The Berkley Publishing Corporation
101 Fifth Avenue, New York 3, New York
Printed in the United States of America
IN OUTER SPACE
There was no sensation of weight. Nothing weighed anything. Nothingcould be considered light or heavy. The difference in weight betweena copper penny and the ship itself was imaginary. They had differentmasses, but both would weigh the same—zero. McCauley suddenly turnedoff the silent air-circulator of the cabin. He struck a match. Theflame flared, but not as a rising leaf-shape. It was a perfect ball ofincandescence. But it did not continue to burn. It went out, and a ballof white smokiness remained where the flame had been....
MEN INTO SPACE
1
(When Ed McCauley was a very young officer—in fact, a new-made firstlieutenant, space travel was restricted to robots. They did good work,for robots, but it wasn't enough. No man had ever gone up in a rocket.Nobody had ever gone up—let alone land safely. So the time came whensomebody had to. And in those very early days McCauley volunteered forthe job and managed to get it.)
First Lieutenant Ed McCauley opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling,wondering drowsily why this morning seemed so much more satisfyingand important than any other. He'd had a good sleep, even though heremembered vaguely that he'd had a hard time dropping off. Now thesunlight came through the window blind in slatted streaks, the wall wasa pale tan, and he was lying on an iron cot, his uniform neatly drapedover a chair. Then he heard voices and the clattering of china, andsuddenly he remembered where he was and what was important about today.
Today was the day of the shoot. The rocket shoot. It wasn't going tobe big and spectacular, with a multiple-stage giant looming so highthat a man couldn't see the payload capsule on top without his neckcreaking. There'd be no giant gantry crane hovering over a slim butmonstrous missile with its hundreds of plugged-in wires recordingthe performances of some tens of thousands of separate parts, all ofwhich had to work perfectly if one part were to be any good. Even theelectric wires had to pull clear perfectly when the gantry crane rolledback a matter of seconds before the end of the count down.
No. This shoot wouldn't be spectacular. There weren't even anyreporters around. Official Service cameramen would record whathappened; and if all went well there'd be plenty of excitement aboutit later, and if all didn't go well it wouldn't matter too much. Thistime there was no publicity buildup. Nobody'd be disappointed if thingswent wrong. The only person who'd feel badly was First Lieutenant EdMcCauley, and he wouldn't feel it too keenly. In fact, he wouldn't feelanything.
He'd be dead.
He considered the idea for a moment, but when a person is FirstLieutenant McCauley's age, dying is something that happens to somebodyelse. You can't imagine it happening to you. It's a sort of reverse ofbeing born, but you can't imagine that either, though it happened.
He sat up and kicked his feet over the side of the cot. He