going!”
Nelson took the bundle of tent cloth that had been handed him and, getting in line behind McQueen, was the second to clear the lock and set foot on the surface of Mars’ little moon.
Soon all six were outside, their magnetic shoes bracing against the surface. Forgetting their supposed urgency, they stood and stared around them.
They were in a little comer of a barren plain. To one side some ridges of rock supplied the local equivalent of a mountain. The plain stretched off and came to an abrupt and rather startling horizon about a few hundred yards from where they stood. On a world as small as Phobos, this was the usual experience.
There was no air on this tiny body, no air and no life. The cold rocky surface, glistening under the light of a million million stars, was free of any sign of growth. Above, a great ball hung, now half lit as the Martian day crept across its surface and as Phobos itself sped around the greater planet. Even as the six men watched they could see the red world seem to rotate, could almost feel their little satellite speeding on its eternal invisible track around and around Mars.
“Enough, men,” called out John Parr. “There’ll be plenty of time to study the view, plenty. Let’s get cracking!”
They started to set up their observatory, their watch post to spy on those who had once spied on them— whoever or whatever they were!
Chapter 6 Beyond View of Earth
Nelson and Jim Worden went back into the ship and started the task of unloading the observational equipment. McQueen and Gutman set out to scout the area and find the best spot for setting up their scopes. Telders and the elder Parr helped unload the crates and set them up.
The work was easy. On Mars it would have been fairly hard, on Earth impossible without a crew of stevedores. Weightlessness is a very convenient thing where moving cumbersome packages is concerned. They still have a certain resistance due to inertia, but that can be overcome much more easily than weight. It would have been a very strange sight indeed on Earth to have seen Nelson Parr, even though a fairly strong young man of sixteen, carrying a crate several times his own size. But the novelty of the sight wore off rapidly as Jim Worden, shorter than Nelson though about fifteen years older, hefted similarly huge bundles.
In a surprisingly short time they had spread out the material on a fairly flat space where their observations could be carried on with the least interruption. Although a tiny body, Phobos had the same peculiarity as Lima, in that it did not turn on its own axis more than was sufficient to present the same side to its parent planet. At the spot where the Parr group had landed, Mars was a large ball directly overhead at all times.
McQueen and the rest assisted in putting up the observation shack, wherein the records would be kept. This was built of plastic walls, sealed airtight to each other and capable of holding air within it if necessary. As a rule, however, this shack would house a table, a file, and such records as could be kept in the airlessness of the natural surface. The men who would be on duty at their spotting posts would record their findings without removing their spacesuits.
Before long this shack was up, a special shockproof platform erected beyond it, and the lenses of the telescope mounted on a simple skeleton framework. No mechanical motor would be required to keep the objective in sight, for here the objective was always stationary. Hand controls could sweep any part of Mars in view. And as the red planet rotated on its axis, and Phobos followed its own path, very nearly all the surface would be kept under view regularly.
Radarscopic observation would also be placed in use to register moving bodies across the face of Mars. This probably would not be used except when such mysterious motion was suspected by the observer. Then this device could be focused on the
Nelson took the bundle of tent cloth that had been handed him and, getting in line behind McQueen, was the second to clear the lock and set foot on the surface of Mars’ little moon.
Soon all six were outside, their magnetic shoes bracing against the surface. Forgetting their supposed urgency, they stood and stared around them.
They were in a little comer of a barren plain. To one side some ridges of rock supplied the local equivalent of a mountain. The plain stretched off and came to an abrupt and rather startling horizon about a few hundred yards from where they stood. On a world as small as Phobos, this was the usual experience.
There was no air on this tiny body, no air and no life. The cold rocky surface, glistening under the light of a million million stars, was free of any sign of growth. Above, a great ball hung, now half lit as the Martian day crept across its surface and as Phobos itself sped around the greater planet. Even as the six men watched they could see the red world seem to rotate, could almost feel their little satellite speeding on its eternal invisible track around and around Mars.
“Enough, men,” called out John Parr. “There’ll be plenty of time to study the view, plenty. Let’s get cracking!”
They started to set up their observatory, their watch post to spy on those who had once spied on them— whoever or whatever they were!
Chapter 6 Beyond View of Earth
Nelson and Jim Worden went back into the ship and started the task of unloading the observational equipment. McQueen and Gutman set out to scout the area and find the best spot for setting up their scopes. Telders and the elder Parr helped unload the crates and set them up.
The work was easy. On Mars it would have been fairly hard, on Earth impossible without a crew of stevedores. Weightlessness is a very convenient thing where moving cumbersome packages is concerned. They still have a certain resistance due to inertia, but that can be overcome much more easily than weight. It would have been a very strange sight indeed on Earth to have seen Nelson Parr, even though a fairly strong young man of sixteen, carrying a crate several times his own size. But the novelty of the sight wore off rapidly as Jim Worden, shorter than Nelson though about fifteen years older, hefted similarly huge bundles.
In a surprisingly short time they had spread out the material on a fairly flat space where their observations could be carried on with the least interruption. Although a tiny body, Phobos had the same peculiarity as Lima, in that it did not turn on its own axis more than was sufficient to present the same side to its parent planet. At the spot where the Parr group had landed, Mars was a large ball directly overhead at all times.
McQueen and the rest assisted in putting up the observation shack, wherein the records would be kept. This was built of plastic walls, sealed airtight to each other and capable of holding air within it if necessary. As a rule, however, this shack would house a table, a file, and such records as could be kept in the airlessness of the natural surface. The men who would be on duty at their spotting posts would record their findings without removing their spacesuits.
Before long this shack was up, a special shockproof platform erected beyond it, and the lenses of the telescope mounted on a simple skeleton framework. No mechanical motor would be required to keep the objective in sight, for here the objective was always stationary. Hand controls could sweep any part of Mars in view. And as the red planet rotated on its axis, and Phobos followed its own path, very nearly all the surface would be kept under view regularly.
Radarscopic observation would also be placed in use to register moving bodies across the face of Mars. This probably would not be used except when such mysterious motion was suspected by the observer. Then this device could be focused on the
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