Astounding Science Fiction (British edition) — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

30 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION seconds to go... twenty... ten .. five... four... three— The gyros tumbled. The panel lights told him before he felt it. He jabbed frantically at the cut-off switch, but the electronic auto- pilot had a faster reaction time. There was dead silence. Dick’s stomach was suddenly wrenched against his ribs, and he found himself . hanging on his straps. He ignored the little light which belatedly announced Cut-off,’ and reached his mike switch. ‘*“Helio, Control! Hello, Control! Don, answer Nomad!’’ “Hello, Dick,’ Don’s voice came back exuberantly. ““Man, oh man! We're still tracking you, and you’re right in the groove! You should have seen that take-off! You did it!” “Tm in trouble,” Dick cut in, try- ing to hold the panic in his voice. “Something happened about two sec- onds before cut-off. It looks like my gyros are gone.” “Wait a minute... Bahama Ra- dar reports your beacon intermittent.” Don’s voice had lost its exuberance. ‘Are you tumbling?” “Wait one. I’ve got to get a look at things.” That was what he said, but not what he wanted to do. He was on the knife edge of panic; something had happened, and he was not sure what. He had to get his bearings, calm down, find what was wrong, and try to fix it. The only thing he knew for sure was that he was still alive. He struggled to get a grip on himself. The straps were beginning to hurt, and he discovered he was hanging on them. The control room seemed to have turned upside down. He checked the radar screen and saw the Earth wipe across it periodically. He timed the reappearance of Bahama Radar as its beacon wiped across the screen. He knew then. The last second of firing after the gyros tumbled had given just enough misdirected push to throw the ship head over heels. The autopilot, without reference to the gyros, had been powerless to correct it. It was also evident why the room had turned “upside-down.” The end- over-end motion of the Nomad about her center of gravity produced cen- trifugal force along the long axis of the ship. And since the control room was normally forward of the center of grav- ity, this pseudo-gravity of rotation was in the wrong direction in the control room, giving the compartment about one-half Earth-normal gravity directed toward the former overhead. Dick called the ground and ex- plained that the ship was in a ten- second tumble. “Can you get it out?” was Don’s anxious question. Dick said it would be tough with the gyros tumbling too and nothing with which to re-align them. “Give me an orbit calculation,”’ he told Don. “If perigee is inside the atmosphere, I’ll have a chance to straighten her out aerodynamically.” He held the line while those on the ground gathered radar data. Don finally answered, ““The computer says you're. up there to stay—unless you can do something about it.” Doing “something” meant killing the Nomad’s orbital velocity of over four miles-per-second and _ spiraling back to Earth. He had to fire the jet in the precise direction at the precise time to do it. With the Nomad tum- bling as it was, he knew that was im- possible. He was up there to stay until he, or someone on the ground, figured a way to get down. He tore the telemetry pickups off, crawled from under the straps, and dropped to the “floor.” Ten minutes later, Project Control swung out of line-of-sight around the bulge of the Earth, and he lost communication Connie ooolkks.e© im