Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 19: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

. AND A STAR TO STEER HER BY” 17 ‘Certainly! You are thinking I am maybe not on the stick?” “All right,” Vanderhoff sighed and turned around. “How about it, Garv? Power plant ready?” Garver decided not to worry the skipper by mentioning the pumps. There was a good chance they'd hold, anyway, but Garver didn’t know for how long. ‘Secure below, Skipper _ “How about the gyros? The gears looked pretty dry three days ago.” “I helped Garv put some erl on them yesterday,” Winch remarked. “Is all your gear in shape?” Vanderhoff asked. When Winch and Garver nodded, he went on, “‘O.K.., we'll go in with four normal braking ellipses. First pass at one hundred fifty miles. Take us about ten hours. to kill enough velocity to get into the atmosphere proper. I'll make a stall- and-fire landing. Garv, I want you to have those pumps up to speed when she pays off.”’ That was old stuff to Garver. “Right, Skipper.” From the power room port, Garver watched Terra approach on the first pass. The bulge of the planet seemed to flatten out. The sunset line was right below, cutting through Siberia, across Japan, then south through the Pacific Ocean. Just the eastern tip of Australia was in sunlight. As he watched, the terminator disappeared around the bulge of the planet. They were having a typhoon around the Marshall Islands below. The clouds were piled up like cotton in the big low-pressure area. The Fafnir was in a trajectory canted about fifty degrees to the equator, swinging southeast across the Pacific. The perigee of her first pass would occur at the high-noon meridian over the South Pacific. There was a creak in the hull. The wings were beginning to gain a little lift in the rarefied upper atmosphere. Garver checked the skin temperature. It was high, but not bad. The ship was suddenly parallel to the surface below and tearing along at a terrific clip. The wings were really lifting now; Garver could feel himself being pulled toward the section of the power room which was “‘down’’ with respect to Terra. Then the surface began to drop away slowly, and he knew the ship had passed perigee. She was on her way out now along an elliptical trajectory, but her velocity was far below that of escape. She’d swing back for another pass in a few hours. He watched the coast of South America come into view, then went back and checked the fuel-line con- nections. He was far too worried about getting the ship down to be aesthetic and watch Terra go by. It was beautiful, sure, but he wished he were down on the ground now instead of tearing around in the upper atmosphere. Anybody can get a rene off the ground, but it takes an incredible combination of guts, co-ordination, fast reflexes, and a high math to get one back—at a specific place. Berthing a spaceship on a planet is somewhat like riding around a merry-go-round on a coaster bike. The problem is to get on the merry-go-round with a load of eggs at one particular, predesignated place. This is merely a two-dimen- sional problem involving the essential vectors; bringing the Fafnir in was a three-dimensional problem of the same general type—with a few more variables. The ground dovar stations at Con- greve Field, Ryhnin Spaceport, White Sands Spaceport, and Santa Barbara Spaceport in Brazil were tracking her. CORNIClOOKSAeOnhn