FAR FROM HOME
BY J. A. TAYLOR
Illustrated by Emsh
“Far” is strictly a relative term. Half a world awayfrom home is, sometimes, no distance at all!
Someone must have talked over the fence because the newshounds wereclamoring on the trail within an hour after it happened.
The harassed Controller had lived in an aura of“Restricteds,” “Classifieds” and “TopSecrets” for so long it had become a mental conditioning andautomatically hedged over information that had been public property foryears via the popular technical mags; but in time they pried from him anadmittance that the Station Service Lift rocket A. J. “AbleJake” Four had indeed failed to rendezvous with Space Station One,due at 9:16 Greenwich that morning.
The initial take-off and ascent had gone to flight plan and the pilot,in the routine check-back after entering free flight had reported nomotor or control faults. At this point, unfortunately, a fault in thetracking radar transmitter had resulted in it losing contact with thetarget. The Controller did not, however, mention the defection of thehungover operator in fouling up the signal to the standby unit, or theconsequent general confusion in the tracking network with no contact atall thereafter, and fervently hoped that gentlemen of the press were nottoo familiar with the organization of the tracking system.
At least one of the more shrewd looking reporters appeared as though hewere mentally baiting a large trap so the Controller, throwing cautionto the winds, plunged headlong into a violent refutal of variouserroneous reports already common in the streets.
Able Jake did not carry explosives or highly corrosive chemicals, onlysome Waste Disposal cylinders, dry foodstuffs and sundry StationHousehold supplies.
Furthermore there was no truth in the oft-revived rumors of weaknessesin the so-called “spine-and-rib” construction of the Baurand Hammond Type Three vessel under acceleration strain. The type hadbeen discontinued solely because the rather complicated structure raisedcertain stowage difficulties in service with overlong turnabout timesresulting.
There may have been a collision with a meteor he conceded, but, it wasthought, highly unlikely. And now, the urgent business of the searchcalled, the Controller escaped, perspiring gently.
Able Jake was sighted a few minutes later but it was another three hoursbefore a service ship could be readied and got away without load toallow it as much operating margin as possible. Getting a man aboard wasyet another matter. At this stage of space travel no maneuver of thisnature had ever been accomplished outside of theory. Fuel-thrust-massratios were still a thing of pretty close reckoning, and the servicelift ships were simply not built for it.
The ship was in an elliptical orbit and a full degree off its normalcourse. A large part of the control room was demolished and there was alengthy split in the hull. There was no sign of the pilot and some[66]of the cargo was missing also. The investigating crew assumed theobvious and gave it as their opinion that the pilot had been literallydisintegrated by the intense heat of the collision.
The larger part of the world’s population made it a point tolisten in on the first space burial service in history over the absentremains of Johnny Melland.
Such a small thing to cause such a fury. A mere