This mercy rocket was Rawson's first command;
and his last, it seemed—for mutineers had taken
over, then lost the ship in a quicksand pool.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Captain Todd Rawson snapped angry eyes at the directional needle thatindicated that his space ship the Star Flight was holding steady toher course like a bullet. He had ordered differently.
He was savagely kicking back his chair when the televisor leaped intolife.
"Calling the Star Flight," the control officer from Saturn intoned,"Calling the Star Flight."
Rawson clicked a switch, continued to glare at the directional needle."Rawson—Star Flight." His voice was richly vibrant and charged withemotion. "Running into spatial storm. Must detour to tangent to course.Will be late."
"For God's sake!" The voice from Saturn was urgent. "The plague iswiping out the entire colony! Hurry!"
"We'll get the serum there! Out!"
Rawson glanced once more at the unwavering needle of the directionindicator, and he switched off the televisor with such abrupt forcethat he broke off the dial. He tore from his desk and rumbled like aJupiter avalanche across the vibrating deck of the Star Flight intothe rocket room. "Mr. Durk, I ordered the rockets reversed."
The crew men looked up, winking at each other. This was it!
Durk raised a short, blunt body like a Venusian alligator and lumberedto attention. His voice came in a hoarse growl.
"The Old Man—you young punks think you know everything! The old manwould 'a' headed right into the storm!"
Captain Rawson flushed slightly and felt the tips of his ears turn hotas he stared at the man who was twenty years his senior—the man whohad twenty-five years of experience in space flight.
"I'm the captain here," Rawson said in a voice as steady as the beat ofthe motors. "My commands are to be obeyed without question."
"Sure, now, you're the captain." Durk winked slyly at one of thecrew. "You got a gold star and the fixings. But we ain't goin' to getourselves killed on account o' something you learned in a book."
Surprisingly Rawson laughed, a deep-throated laugh, although he knewthat he had to break this man or be broken himself. His words lashedout like a cat-o-nine tails at the senior officer.
"Mr. Durk, don't let your bitterness defeat your common sense. Theold man knew all the tricks. You know them. But space navigation hasadvanced to a science. It requires more than rule of thumb knowledge."
"I ain't going to reverse the rockets!"
Rawson looked at the stolid faces of the space hardened crew. Veteransall. The underofficer's men.
When he spoke, Rawson's words came in smooth, clipped phrases. "Mr.Durk, I'll explain briefly why it would be fatal to head straight intothe storm. The instruments indicate that the storm drift ahead of theship is heavily charged with electrons. Our space ship is a chargedbody. Breaking the relation of the space ship and the drift downmathematically we have the equation
V equals q/r
where V is the velocity of the ship and q the potential of theelectronic charge in the center of the drift, and r the radius."
Rawson watched the underofficer's face grow longer and longer, butdeterminedly he continued.
"Should we head directly into the drift we will be up against thefollowing law—the shorter the distance in which a given amount of workis done the greater the force that must be exerted. We will be stalledin the cen