A Science Fiction Novel
Step to the Stars
By LESTER DEL REY
Jacket and Endpaper Designs by Alex Schomburg
Ceci/e Matschat, Editor Carl Carmer, Consulting Editor
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY Philadelphia • Toronto
Copyright, 1954 By Lester del Rey
Copyright in Great Britain and in the British Dominions
and Possessions
Copyright in the Republic of
the Philippines
Made in the United States of America L. C. Card #54-8792
TO
Willy Ley who taught us to believe
Only a Decode Away!
Any normal man can jump over an eight-foot fence, even though he can't jump eight feet straight up! If a step-
ladder is placed beside the fence, he can climb up that and then make the small jump needed to clear the fence. It may not be a way to break records for the high jump, but it is one way of getting over the fence.
In the same way, we can use a stepladder—or step, since only one lift is needed—to get to the Moon and other planets. We can't build practical rocket ships that will develop the speed of seven miles a second (25,000 miles an hour) needed to tear us completely away from Earth. We can, however, design a ship which will develop five miles a second speed, and which will reach a height of a thousand miles above Earth, carrying a crew and practical cargo. If a space station is built to circle the Earth at that height, a rocket could refuel there and it would be quite practical to develop the extra speed needed to reach other worlds in space.
VII
viii Step to the Stars
We can build such a station, and we will do it! Already men are busily at work on the plans and techniques. Government contracts have been let for such work. All the basic knowledge is available—which was not the case with the building of the atom bomb! We have fuels, materials and engineering skills to do the job.
It will take time and large amounts of money. Dr. Wernher von Braun, who was so largely responsible for the V-2 rocket, estimates it will take ten years and cost twice as much as developing the atom bomb, though new fuels and techniques might reduce both the time and expense. Most experts feel the station will be built by 1970, at the latest.
It is the only sure way to the planets beyond Earth. But even if there were no Moon or other planets, we would need such a station. Observations from it will make real weather forecasting possible; such accurate forecasts a week in advance could save us far more than the cost of the station. Its value as a scientific laboratory, with conditions impossible on Earth, cannot even be estimated. And finally, it is the only possible means for policing the whole world to insure peace. If we get it up and provide it with a stock of guided missiles, no other nation would dare to attack us; if we wait until some foreign power builds a space station first, we can never feel completely safe again. We need such a station for peaceful purposes—and we have to have it to make sure of peace! Hence, it may be built earlier than 1970.
Building it will be unlike any construction job ever done before. The station must be built in space. There is no conceivable way to lift such a huge structure up to its final orbit around the Earth, nor would it be practical to
Only a Decade Away! ix
build the station heavy and strong enough to stand such a take-off from the ground. The parts must be shipped up by rocket ships and assembled in the orbit in which the finished station will travel.
Working there will require new ways of living and even of thinking. There is no air in space, and men must work inside airtight suits. The centrifugal force of the motion around the Earth—the same force which keeps a whirling stone at the end of a string—will exactly balance the pull of the Earth, and there will be no feeling of weight or sense of up and down. Yet it will still take work to move objects; even on the smoothest ice, starting or stopping a heavy sled is difficult because of inertia, which resists any change in speed or direction; this inertia will still exist. The men will be baked by the Sun on one side; on the other, there will be the freezing cold of space. And their lives will depend on the success of the rockets which bring up new supplies.
They will be engaged in the greatest feat of the human race — the first step which will free men from a single world and give us the whole universe for a frontier. The men who live through it will never again be quite the same. And no man who follows them can ever quite equal their experience.
To me, it seems the greatest story that can ever be told, and I believe that Step to the Stars is the first scientifically accurate novel about the building of a space station. It is also one of the few science fiction stories of the future which needs no presently impossible gadgets or unknown scientific tricks. In fact, I have been careful to use only known methods. Even the rocket fuel is in use today.
For many of the facts in this, I am deeply indebted to
x Step to the Stars
the work of Dr. Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, and others who have worked out a practical means of building such a station as I describe. A fuller description, together with some of the best pictures I have seen, can be found in a book entitled Across the Space Frontier, which was edited by Cornelius Ryan and published by The Viking Press; everybody should read it.
For any errors or faults, I can blame no one but myself, though I have done everything I can to avoid mistakes in both facts and methods.
My deepest regret is that I can never be one of the men who help Jim Stanley build the first station in space!
L. a R.
Contents
Only a Decade Away!
1. No Strings Attached
2. The Big Shush
3. Space Station One
4. Operation Misfit
5. A Little Sunlight
6. Vertigo
7. Paint Job
8. Foul Weather Below
9. The Stolen Papers
10. Spin It!
11. A Problem in Ethics
12. Earthside
13. Errand Boy
14. Decision and Rumor
15. Blowup in Space
16. Castaways from Earth
17. Penalty Clause
18. Deadline
19. Step to the Stars
Chapter 1 No Strings Attached
the floor of the big garage was bitterly cold with
the first touch of winter. Jim Stanley shoved his
short, stocky figure out from under the big turbine-
powered car and stood up, beating his hands
together to warm them. He put his tools and grease
gun back on the rack and headed for the warmth of
the washroom, shucking off his cap and goggles as
he went.
Where the goggles had protected his face, rings of clean skin contrasted with the grease and oil smudges elsewhere, and there were still hints of freckles over his snub nose. As a kid, he'd hated the freckles even more than his carroty-red hair and the blue eyes that went with his complexion. But now he was used to his looks and didn't notice them as he began scrubbing off the grime.
"Griswold wants you," one of the other mechanics shouted at him from the doorway. "Better make it snappy, Jim. Looks like one of his bad days!"
2 Sfep fo fhe Stars
Jim nodded and began drying his face in front of a blast of hot air. It was a bad day for Griswold most of the time, but the owner of the garage was usually fair about things, even though his disposition left much to be desired. Jim tried to think of some error he might have made, and could think of none. He shrugged and went back into the shop.
"Stanley!" Griswold was waiting by the outer door of the office, scowling. He waited until Jim reached him, and then jerked his hand back toward the office. "Stanley, there's another FBI man in there, asking about you. I thought you told me you'd never been in any trouble."
"That's right, sir. I told you before, I applied for some kind of job. And I don't know how the FBI got into it. They were around to see my landlady, too. But . . ."
Griswold grunted doubtfully. "Since when do they check up twice on job applications? I don't like it, Stanley. Don't like the FBI prowling around investigating here, taking up my time. And there's something else I don't like! How old are you?"
"Eighteen, Mr. Griswold. I never told you anything else."
The man pondered over it, and nodded doubtfully. "Maybe you didn't—but you knew blamed well I took you for a lot older. You're getting a man's wages here, and I don't pay that to kids. I can get plenty of them at half price if I want them."
jsfo Strings Attached 3
"Haven't I been doing a man's work, sir?" Jim protested.
Griswold nodded again, reluctantly. "Maybe so. I'm not kicking about the work. But I don't like this whole business. Finish the job?"
He followed Jim to the big Chrysler, inspected the work sheet, and started the motor, listening to the steady purring sound it made. "Good job," he said finally. "Better'n most of the men do. Look, Stanley, I want to be fair with you. But the rest of them can't be expected to work for the same wages a kid can get. And I'm not going to have them all yelling for more pay. How much you got coming to you?"
Jim felt his face tighten, and there was a hard knot in his stomach. But if there had ever been any redheaded impulsiveness about him, he'd had it beaten out of him by other, larger boys years before. He kept his voice under control. "Four days, sir."
"Okay. Change your clothes and see what the FBI man wants. I'll have your pay check ready when you come out." He hesitated, then shrugged. "And I'll throw in a week's severance pay and give you a top letter of recommendation. Okay?"
"Thanks. I—I appreciate it." Jim tried to make it sound sincere, knowing the man was being more than fair according to his own ideas. He headed for the lockers.
The other men were staring at him as he passed, but he avoided their glances. He'd been getting along
4 Step to the Stars
all right with them, but he hadn't made friends with anyone in particular, and he was hoping that he wouldn't have to answer any questions. Now that he was fired again, the sooner he was gone the better. Yet somehow, it hurt when none of them came into the locker room after him. He switched to his regular clothes with fumbling fingers and headed back to the office without looking at the others. One started toward him, then turned back to work. That was all.
There was a tall, rough-featured man waiting for him. The man stood up, smiling pleasantly, and held out a hand. "James Stanley? I'm John Mattern." He flipped a badge out of his wallet. "About your application . . ."
"Can't we talk about it somewhere else?" Jim asked. "I mean, I'd rather not block Mr. Griswold's office. My room's just a few blocks away."
The other nodded at once. "Sure, let's get out of here. As a matter of fact, I'm supposed to take you for an interview at the office." He hesitated for a second, clearing his throat. "Stanley, I'm sorry about what happened. If I'd known your boss didn't know your age, I'd have handled things differently. But maybe it's just as well. Your application has been getting a lot of attention."
"Yeah." Jim brushed the apology aside and managed something like a grin. "It isn't the first time I've been fired because of my age, Mr. Mattern. What kind of job is this I'm being investigated for, anyhow? I didn't think the government was mixed up in it."
No Strings Attached 5
"It isn't, exactly. Maybe you'd better ask about it at your interview."
Mattern was still pleasant, but he refused to say anything more. Jim collected his check on the way out, endorsed it, and waited while Griswold cashed it from the till. The garage owner shook Jim's hand briefly and wished him an automatic good luck. Then Mattern led the way to his parked car. Jim climbed in and sat watching the street without seeing it as they headed toward the heart of the city.
"We're early. Want to stop for lunch?" the FBI man asked. At Jim's assent, he swung up in front of a small steak house. It was still early enough for seats to be available.
Jim let Mattern order and asked for the same. It turned out to be sirloin. He began eating it automatically, wondering what a government job would pay to someone who had no special training. It would be less than Griswold's wages, probably. Yet with jobs harder to get the last few months, it might take too long to find another. He couldn't afford to live on his savings, if he ever intended to go back to finish his course at Central Tech. And that was something he had to do.
Jim's mother had died when he was born, and he'd always traveled with his father, who was a construction engineer. It had been tough at times, but he'd loved it, and it had been taken for granted that he had to be an engineer someday, too. Then, when his father had found a job on a government rocket project, Jim
6 Step to the Stars
had known exactly what he wanted. He'd nearly "killed" himself forcing his way through high school in half the normal time so that he could enter the rocketry courses at Central Tech while the field was still new. With the help of some of the men on the project, he'd been admitted as the youngest freshman in his class. And a few months later, he learned that his father had been killed in the wild explosion of one of the rockets.
When the shock wore off, he found himself living with his only other relative, his mother's older brother, who had been appointed his guardian. He'd swallowed his grief and dug into his studies, swearing that he'd use the money his father had left to become an engineer his father would have been proud of. He finished the first year, came back to his uncle's house to study all through the summer, and rushed back to his courses.
The next summer, his uncle disappeared before he could return. Apparently the man had meant well, but his business had been failing, and he'd borrowed Jim's money—as well as what he could get from his friends— and had lost it all. Rather than face his nephew, he'd slipped away, leaving only a fumbling, unhappy letter and a check for the few dollars that had remained.
When college started again, Jim had been working in an airplane assembly plant. When the union discovered his age and protested, he'd found work at Griswold's. Rocketry wasn't a subject that could be studied while holding down a part-time job, and bis
No String* Attached 7
only hope had been to save enough in one year to pay his way through his courses the next. And now . ..
He shoved the empty plate aside and followed Mattern out of the restaurant, stopping to buy a paper. He glanced at the headlines. Employment was down slightly. There were new threats of possible trouble being stirred up by the Combine, the big collection of countries occupying eastern Europe and most of northern Asia. The editorial was one of the paper's regular blasts at the administration for not building a space station. It was obvious the writer knew nothing about space stations, but was using the idea for purely political purposes. And there were no jobs that looked possible.
They were heading downtown again as Jim dropped the paper. Mattern glanced at him, and shook his head. "I feel like a heel for letting your age slip, kid. I don't blame you for being a little bitter."
"Bitter?" Jim considered it, wondering if the man was sounding him out. But it didn't matter. "I don't hate the world or anyone in it, if that's what you think. And if I'm bitter, what about everyone else?"
Mattern shrugged. "At your age, you should be bubbling with hope and idealism. I was. But now all you young men seem to be confused and uncertain. You're like a bunch of pups out in the rain, wondering if they'll ever be dry again. It's as if you still had your ideals, but they'd gone sour. What's behind it?"
"I don't know." It was an uncomfortable conversation, but it dug into Jim's mind somehow. He stirred
8 Step to the Stars
uncertainly. "Maybe they should have built that space station!"
...
jeff.blazkowicz