Astounding Science Fiction (British edition) — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

28 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION Two, which was in turn surrounded by Step One. Once inside the spaceship, he checked to see that the trim load of 23.8 pounds was strapped in tightly. Its presence, even as dead weight, made certain of the spaceship’s bal- ance, its center of gravity. He merely swallowed hard when he saw the sandbags in the gyro compart- ment making up the weight of the missing stand-by gyro unit. It re- minded him again that he was riding a death ship. “Well, my last ride’s going to be a brass-plated doozy,” he thought bitterly. The control room was a cross be- tween those of a plane, a submarine, and a transocean rocket. Stretching out on the adjustable pilot’s couch, he turned everything on. The Nomad’s counterpart of a submarine “Christ- mas tree’’ flashed red and green lights at him : autopilot on, computer circuits warm and ready, control circuits green, gyro running and on track, ra- dar in sync with ground stations, tele- metering ready with filaments on, power plant and pressures normal, and ship still on external power. He fastened on the pickups which would telemeter his body responses back to the ground. The ceiling speaker rasped, “*Minus- ten minutes! Mark!” Then another voice cut in, “‘Hello, Dick, this is Don.” Dick put on his earphones and switched on his throat mike. “Go ahead.” ‘Any troubles?” “Not yet.” “O.K. I’m here in Control if you want to talk.” “Thanks.” Karlter would never know, perhaps, how much Dick wanted to talk right then. But the pilot put down the desire and went to work running down the check list in an effort to keep busy. He didn’t want to stop and think about why he was doing this. The check list did not last long. The ship was working perfectly, and he whipped through as though this were a mock firing. “This is Project Control. Minus- five minutes! Mark!” Five minutes. Funny how five min- utes could change a man’s life. It was a certain five minutes that had changed his and were responsible for his being in the Nomad right then: that night he’d come back prematurely from a test flight to Australia. In his own house he’d found a nasty situation, hard words, then screaming anger. It was not that he’d never suspected, but because he’d been a fool for telling himself he was wrong on those long sub cruises, during the long waits of carrier battle problems, and in the midst of the long, curving trajectories to the other side of the ocean. ‘“Minus-four minutes. Mark!” Well, if she wanted it that way, he was willing to free her. He’d never been able to give her the things she wanted in marriage anyway, no matter how hard he tried. She’d have been better off with a nine-to-five business- man and a cosy house in the suburbs. A naval officer’s life wasn’t like that, and a test pilot’s even. worse. ‘Three minutes!” O.K., she’d get her way—except with his son. Tommy was going to be free to choose his own way of life, if he had anything to say about it. That had been a bone of bitter contention for a long time, and he would settle it once and for all. Sure, it was natural for her to try to find in Tommy the things absent in the father, but she was wrecking the kid’s life by forcing him to do something he didn’t want. It made him burn to think of the emo- tional blackmail she’d used. “Two minutes! Stand by to fire!” He made another quick check of the Christmas tree; all green and red in conniicloooks.c© nn