your pay, it seems to me. I wouldn't
do that for any woman. Money for value received, not a cent more."
"Money isn't it. I get to thinking out here. A woman
likes company. A kid needs his father. What am I doing 'way out here?"
"Getting set to go home."
"Ah-h, you don't understand."
8
Ted Long wandered over the ridged surface of the ring
fragment with his spirits as icy as the ground he walked on. It had all seemed
perfectly logical back on Mars, but that was Mars. He had worked it out
carefully in his mind in perfectly reasonable steps. He could still remember exactly
how it went.
It didn't take a ton of water to move a ton of ship. It was
not mass equals mass, but mass times velocity equals mass times velocity. It
didn't matter, in other words, whether you shot out a ton of water at a mile a
second or a hundred pounds of water at twenty miles a second. You got the same
final velocity out of the ship.
That meant the jet nozzles had to be made narrower and the
steam hotter. But then drawbacks appeared. The narrower the nozzle, the more
energy was lost in friction and turbulence. The hotter the steam, the more
refractory the nozzle had to be and the shorter its life. The limit in that
direction was quickly reached.
Then, since a given weight of water could move considerably
more than its own weight under the narrow-nozzle conditions, it paid to be big.
The bigger the water-storage space, the larger the size of the actual
travel-head, even in proportion. So they started to make liners heavier and
bigger. But then the larger the shell, the heavier the bracings, the more
difficult the weldings, the more exacting the engineering requirements. At the
moment, the limit in that direction had been reached also.
And then he had put his finger on what had seemed to him to
be the basic flaw—the original unswervable conception that the fuel had to be
placed inside the ship; the metal had to be built to encircle a million
tons of water.
Why? Water did not have to be water. It could be ice, and
ice could be shaped. Holes could be melted into it. Travel-heads and jets could
be fitted into it. Cables could hold travel-heads and jets stiffly together
under the influence of magnetic field-force grips.
Long felt the trembling of the ground he walked on. He was
at the head of the fragment. A dozen ships were blasting in and out of sheaths
carved in its substance, and the fragment shuddered under the continuing impact.
The ice didn't have to be quarried. It existed in proper
chunks in the rings of Saturn. That's all the rings were—pieces of nearly pure
ice, circling Saturn. So spectroscopy stated and so it had turned out to be. He
was standing on one such piece now, over two miles long, nearly one mile thick.
It was almost half a billion tons of water, all in one piece, and he was
standing on it.
But now he was face to face with the realities of life. He
had never told the men just how quickly he had expected to set up the fragment
as a ship, but in his heart, he had imagined it would be two days. It was a
week now and he didn't dare to estimate the remaining time. He no longer even
had any confidence that the task was a possible one. Would they be able to
control jets with enough delicacy through leads slung across two miles of ice
to manipulate out of Saturn's dragging gravity?
Drinking water was low, though they could always distill
more out of the ice. Still, the food stores were not in a good way either.
He paused, looked up into the sky, eyes straining. Was the
object growing larger? He ought to measure its distance. Actually, he lacked
the spirit to add that trouble to the others. His mind slid back to greater
immediacies.
Morale, at least, was high. The men seemed to enjoy being
out Saturnway. They were the first humans to penetrate this far, the first to
pass the asteroids, the first to see Jupiter like a glowing pebble to the naked
eye, the first to see Saturn—like that.
He didn't think fifty practical,
do that for any woman. Money for value received, not a cent more."
"Money isn't it. I get to thinking out here. A woman
likes company. A kid needs his father. What am I doing 'way out here?"
"Getting set to go home."
"Ah-h, you don't understand."
8
Ted Long wandered over the ridged surface of the ring
fragment with his spirits as icy as the ground he walked on. It had all seemed
perfectly logical back on Mars, but that was Mars. He had worked it out
carefully in his mind in perfectly reasonable steps. He could still remember exactly
how it went.
It didn't take a ton of water to move a ton of ship. It was
not mass equals mass, but mass times velocity equals mass times velocity. It
didn't matter, in other words, whether you shot out a ton of water at a mile a
second or a hundred pounds of water at twenty miles a second. You got the same
final velocity out of the ship.
That meant the jet nozzles had to be made narrower and the
steam hotter. But then drawbacks appeared. The narrower the nozzle, the more
energy was lost in friction and turbulence. The hotter the steam, the more
refractory the nozzle had to be and the shorter its life. The limit in that
direction was quickly reached.
Then, since a given weight of water could move considerably
more than its own weight under the narrow-nozzle conditions, it paid to be big.
The bigger the water-storage space, the larger the size of the actual
travel-head, even in proportion. So they started to make liners heavier and
bigger. But then the larger the shell, the heavier the bracings, the more
difficult the weldings, the more exacting the engineering requirements. At the
moment, the limit in that direction had been reached also.
And then he had put his finger on what had seemed to him to
be the basic flaw—the original unswervable conception that the fuel had to be
placed inside the ship; the metal had to be built to encircle a million
tons of water.
Why? Water did not have to be water. It could be ice, and
ice could be shaped. Holes could be melted into it. Travel-heads and jets could
be fitted into it. Cables could hold travel-heads and jets stiffly together
under the influence of magnetic field-force grips.
Long felt the trembling of the ground he walked on. He was
at the head of the fragment. A dozen ships were blasting in and out of sheaths
carved in its substance, and the fragment shuddered under the continuing impact.
The ice didn't have to be quarried. It existed in proper
chunks in the rings of Saturn. That's all the rings were—pieces of nearly pure
ice, circling Saturn. So spectroscopy stated and so it had turned out to be. He
was standing on one such piece now, over two miles long, nearly one mile thick.
It was almost half a billion tons of water, all in one piece, and he was
standing on it.
But now he was face to face with the realities of life. He
had never told the men just how quickly he had expected to set up the fragment
as a ship, but in his heart, he had imagined it would be two days. It was a
week now and he didn't dare to estimate the remaining time. He no longer even
had any confidence that the task was a possible one. Would they be able to
control jets with enough delicacy through leads slung across two miles of ice
to manipulate out of Saturn's dragging gravity?
Drinking water was low, though they could always distill
more out of the ice. Still, the food stores were not in a good way either.
He paused, looked up into the sky, eyes straining. Was the
object growing larger? He ought to measure its distance. Actually, he lacked
the spirit to add that trouble to the others. His mind slid back to greater
immediacies.
Morale, at least, was high. The men seemed to enjoy being
out Saturnway. They were the first humans to penetrate this far, the first to
pass the asteroids, the first to see Jupiter like a glowing pebble to the naked
eye, the first to see Saturn—like that.
He didn't think fifty practical,
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