Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

Rig ' ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION When he saw the ground tackle drop at X-30 seconds, he began his own count-down. He was slow; when he reached X-6 seconds, he saw flame burst from the stern of the ship. She rose, the colorful Martian desert hills falling away from her. The thun- dering rumble of her departure echoed back from the red sands, and the trail began to twist as winds caught it. The sunlight was too bright, he told himself as he wiped his eyes. He needed a drink, and the League Club was Close at hand. The League steward stared at Garver’s hand. ““You’re . . . sure you want to get on the book?” Garver clenched his hand, moving it slowly, silently, smoothly in a per- fectly normal fashion. “You heard me.” Turning back to his papers, the steward looked them over. ‘‘Well, I don’t know. We don’t have anything open right now. Pil notify you if anything shows up.” - “Yeah . .. sure... thanks.” Garver turned from the desk and walked to the door. Yeah, he thought, nothing available for a one-handed man with fifteen years’ experience. It’ IT be a cold day on Mercury before anyone shows up who needs me. Settle down, chum; it may be years before you'll see Terra again. The regular routine of the Canal- opolis Spaceport went on. Each day, ships would thunder in from the far planets, bringing heavy metals from the asteroids, chemical products from Venus, machinery and cloth from Terra, minerals from Ganymede and Callisto, and radioactives from Luna. They stood tall in their gantries while cargo lifts and cranes loaded them with Martian steel from her iron- oxide deserts. There was a ceaseless procession of ships, the tall freighters, the rotund liners, the stubby ore ships, and the sleek military vessels of Terra. Attempting vainly to forget them, Garver sat in the League club bar with Angus McBee, a jetman off the Veda and an old buddy. He could have picked any number of bars in Canal- opolis, but he liked to talk shop with the boys as they came and went—and there was always the chance that the steward would call him. “Mon,” Angus told him, “there are plenty of jobs in space fer ye. Ye dinna have to leave.”’ “Tell me another, Mac,’ Garver said as he drained his ginger-high. “Well, you’re pretty handy wi’ your hands now—” Looking at his left hand, Garver discovered that he was holding a cigarette firmly without even crinkling the paper. “Sure, I can control it O.K., but Pll never have any strength in it again. Did you ever try to lift an impeller that weighs one hundred fifty pounds, Earth-weight?”’ “Sure, Garv,” Angus broke in, “but, mon, you’ve got a head on yer shoulders. Ye can always rig—” “*All personnel stand by!” the loud- speaker on the wall cut in. “Approach- ing ship in emergency!” They moved in a hurry. The bar cleared in thirty seconds. Although the League building was a good five miles from the nearest landing area, that meant nothing to a ship dropping out of the sky. Picking a spot near a deep irriga- tion ditch on the edge of the building’s lawn, they turned to watch the sky. People were scurrying everywhere. The non-spacemen were making for the underground shelters. The ground crews and flight crews who had lived around spaceships longer, merely took refuge under trucks, behind walls, or next to holes in the red soil. “‘Who’s due in?” Garver asked. “Don’t know,” Angus _ replied, ConmiclooolxS.conm