[Cosmic Stories - May 1941 as by Edward J
[Cosmic Stories - May 1941
as by Edward J. Bellin]
No Place to
Go
Gallacher was no doctor of
Philosophy or Science, no more than a humble "mister," and as such could
not hope to rise beyond the modest university readership which he had held for
some score of years. He was in the Department of Physics, and his job was
little more than the especially dirty one of correcting examinations and
reading the hardy perennial themes submitted by generation after generation of
students. He was also the man who punched calculating machines late into the
afternoon, tabulating work of men higher up and preparing their further ground.
He left the university grounds as
the sun was setting over the Hudson, jammed a dark green, crumpled felt hat on
his head and walked briskly home to the five-room bungalow where he had lived
since his marriage.
Entering through the kitchen door,
he was greeted by no more than a curt nod from his wife and his buoyant gait
reduced to a hesitant shuffle. For Mrs. Gallacher, with her bitter tongue,
endless ills and higgling economy, was the terror of her husband.
Dinner was, as always, a grim
affair punctuated by little bitter queries from the distaff sidemoney, always.
Why didn't he stand up to Professor Van Bergen for a raise? Then he'd be able
to get a little car and not have to walk two miles from home and back on the
highway like a common tramp. And why didn't he see her cousin, the Realtor, about
another place near here but where those terrible Palisades wouldn't arouse her
acrophobia. Gallacher had shuddered when his wife, seven years ago, first
proudly told him that she "had" acrophobia. He knew then that it
would not be the last said on the subject.
Vaguely he wiped his mouth with a
napkin and said: "'M going down for a little tinkering ..."
"Tinkering!" spat Mrs.
Gallacher poisonously. "You in that cellar where I can't keep my washing
machine because it's cluttered up with"
He heard her out, smiling
deprecatingly, and without answering went into the tiny foyer and opened the
cellar door with two keys. His wife did not have copies of either.
Down the steps he snapped a
switch, and the plot-sized basement sprang into sharp being under the glareless
brilliance of the most modern refractory glow-tube installation. He smiled
proudly on the place and its furnishings. This, he thought, is my real life,
and I can deny it nothing.
From the shelf of black-bound,
imperishable notebooks, through great racks of reagents, turning lathe, forge,
reference library, glassware and balances to the electronics and radioactivity
outfits, nothing was lacking to make up an almost complete experimental set-up
for advanced work in physics, chemistry or practical mechanics.
Gallacher, sitting there among his
tools, had a spark of something in his eyes that would have baffled his wife.
He opened a notebook and stared almost feverishly down at the half-written
page. The last words had been: "to dry set in 12 hrs. This cmpnd to be
xmnd tomorrow."
Swallowing gingerly, he turned the
book face down and lifted a tray from a drying rack cunningly placed in the
cool draft of a window high up in the wall. Removing a tiny speck of the
marble-sized, flinty mass that rested on the glass surface he inserted it into
a spectroscope's field chamber, then snapped on the current that sent his
electric bills soaring higher month by month. The speck glowed a vivid white;
he squinted through a series of colored filters at the incandescent particle.
Then, sighing inaudibly, he lit the projector's bulb. On the calibrated
ground-glass screen appeared the banded spectrum of the compound.
Gallacher ticked off the bands
with a pencil. Thoughtfully he turned up his notebook and wrote:
"Spctrscpe confirms 100%."
Mrs. Gallacher was in bed, a
magazine flung irritably on the floor beside her. As she heard the steps of her
husband coming slowly up the cellar stairs she settled her hair and scowled.
He came through the door and
blinked dazedly. "Still up?" he asked. "I had some special work
to dofinishing my tinkering ..." He smiled feebly.
"Tinkering!" She crowded
into his own word all the vitriolic indignation of which her small, mean soul
was capable. Then, seeing his face, she paused, frightened and almost
terrified. For it was white and giddy with triumph. "Andrew," she
said sharply, "what have you done?"
"My series of
experiments," he said mildly. "Tonight I closed my notebooks. My work
is finishedand successful." Then, astonishingly, he blazed forth:
"Edith! What I have done, no man has done before mein this house I have
synthesized the perfect rocket fuel." He smiled as he saw her face pale.
"The fumbling adventurers who tried three times to reach the Moon and
finally blew themselves uptheir mistake was not to wait for me. Their fuel was
not only dangerous but too weak for the job; any adding machine could have told
them that. I have been working with explosive propellants for seventeen years,
and have you ever heard one of my thousands of tests? No, for I worked calmly
and with small quantities. And yet through me the universe has been opened to
man! Venus, Luna, Mars"
"Mars," whispered Mrs.
Gallacher inaudibly. Then for the first time in many years she addressed her
husband sweetly: "Andrew, what are you going to do now?"
"Publish my facts," he
rapped. "Take my place among the immortals of science."
"Justhave them printed in
some magazine?" she asked, bewildered.
"That would be
sufficient," he said. "I shall give my work to the world." He
turned into himself, smiling secretly at the thought of honorary degrees,
banquets, plaques ...
"Andrew," snapped his
wife, "if you think I'll allow you to waste this stuff you're mistaken.
For your own sake, Andrew, for your own sake I ask you to come to your senses.
Her eyes grew hard as she mused, "We could be richricher than
anyone!" A sudden purpose crystallized in her mind. "How big would
one of your ships have to be?" she demanded.
"Thinking of that Lunar
Rocket?" he asked. "Foolishness! All a ship powered with my
propellant needs is living quarters, a hull, about a half-ton firing chamber
with an infusible exhaust tube and tanks holding a few cubic feet. Foolproof
firing apparatus weighs about two pounds. I could build a rocket myself."
"Yes," she said
abstractedly. "I know that." And in her mind the proud boast was
spinning, "Wife of the first interplanetary traveller!" How she could
lord it over the full professors' wives who wouldn't invite her to tea more
than twice a year! She'd show them "Andrew," she began carefully ...
And so it was that Gallacher found
himself with a sick headache and groaning muscles roaring through space in the
tiniest one-man rocket imaginable, following only his bare specifications, from
end to end no larger than a light automobile. Far astern was Mars, red planet
that he had not reached, and frustration bit into his vitals.
He had resigned his readership and
raised money from relations, finance companies and every source he knew of to
build this little space-scooter. His exultation as he plunged through the
stratosphere of Earth and the sky went from violet to black had tempered and
was now quite gone. The flawwell, how could he have known? He had been a
physicochemist, and this insane adventuring was none of his doing, he thought
confusedly. Ahead he could plainly see North America. He wondered if he could
land as quietly as he had taken off, not one person in the world knowing except
himself and his wife. Then he would publish the incredible proofs of his journey
and his fuel. Then he would patent his compound and possibly lease contracts
for its manufacture.
Eras of progress incredible, to
come from his mind alone! Huge ships of unemployed immigrants leaving for the
fertile soil of Venus. Astronomers to establish observatories on airless
asteroids and see with incredible clarity the answers to old, vexatious
riddlesfreighters winging their ways to icy worlds undreamed of for rare hauls
of alien artisanry and produce, making Mother Earth a richer and fairer place
to be on
He laughed chatteringly. No; he
had forgotten again. It was not to be so; it was not to be at all. Ahead there
loomed New York State. He fired off his one braking rocket-tube and began to
head south above the Hudson. Why not, he wondered, plunge beneath those
watersnow? He shuddered. If he was to land it would be without photographs,
without data, without a hope for the future of Mr. Gallacher except a slow,
corroding old age.
The rocket passed low above Poughkeepsie, and he began to recognize landmarks. Ahead were the palisaded banks of the
river, and aboveEast Sidewas his cottage. He had taken off from a field near
by, and there he was to have landed in triumph.
His headache was worse; the
needles of pain lanced into his skull so savagely that he almost shot past the
field without seeing it. But, not quite. Almost at the last moment possible, he
slanted the ship downward and cut loose all his brakes. He hit Earth with a
terrible shock, for all the safety devices aboard, and lay on his side in the
canted pit of the rocket until he heard a vigorous clanging on the side. His
wife's face peered exultantly through the quartz porthole. He looked at her,
struggling to recognize the woman, then reached out to open the heavy door of
the little craft. His strength was not enough; he heaved himself to his feet
and leaned on the sealing bar, bearing down heavily. It gave. With a sucking
noise, the rubber-lipped door yielded and swung open. He lifted himself through
the port and dropped onto the ground, resting against the warm side of the
ship.
"I came over as soon as I
heard the rockets," said his wife. "Are you all right?"
"Sick," he answered
weakly, holding his head.
"Never mind that," she
said. "How did the ship behave? Did you have any trouble?"
"'M a scientist," he
replied plaintively, "not an adventurer. Shouldn't have gonemy
fueluseless ..." His voice trailed off incoherently.
"Useless!" she snapped,
startled. "You got to Mars!"
"No!" he gasped. "I
didn't. Nobody 'can."
"Andrew!" she cried,
"what are you saying?"
With a terrible effort he fought
his way through a haze of pain and confusion. He said, in lecturer style:
"Now and then meteors hit Earth that do not behave as meteors
should." Someone had to know this, he thought bitterly, before he ran
down. He could see figures far away, figures sprinting toward the ship.
"They drift down,
observers sayCharles Fort tells of many instancesyet, as soon as they strike
Earth, or rather, high ground, they fall normallythe rest of the way. Just
heavy pieces of rock."
The woman stared bespelled at his
blank, lax face. "The reasondidn't know. But nowknow too well. I didn't
land on Mars. No one can. Gravity is just like magnetism. Likes repel each
other. I was charged with Earth gravity; Mars charged with the same sort of
stuff" Gallacher laughed hysterically. "I couldn't get near
it," he complained. "Nobody canmeteors that land the usual way have
another kind of gravityfrom outside the Solar System, must be."
Suddenly, bitterly, he cried:
"Shouldn't have gone! Fuel, useless. No good for anything except rockets.
Rockets useless. Nowhere to land. No place to go in rockets!"
And those were the last sane words
that he uttered in his life.
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