The Project Gutenberg EBook of Solomon's Orbit, by William Carroll

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Title: Solomon's Orbit

Author: William Carroll

Illustrator: Schoenherr

Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23160]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

Solomon's Orbit

There will, sooner or later, be problems
of "space junk," and the right to dump in space.
But not like this...!

by William Carroll

Illustrated by Schoenherr

"Comrades," said the senior technician, "notice the clear view of North
America. From here we watch everything; rivers, towns, almost the
people. And see, our upper lens shows the dark spot of a meteor in
space. Comrades, the meteor gets larger. It is going to pass close to
our wondrous machine. Comrades ... Comrades ... turn to my channel. It
is no meteor--it is square. The accursed Americans have sent up a house.
Comrades ... an ancient automobile is flying toward our space machine.
Comrades ... it is going to--Ah ... the picture is gone."

Moscow reported the conversation, verbatim, to prove their space vehicle
was knocked from the sky by a capitalistic plot. Motion pictures clearly
showed an American automobile coming toward the Russian satellite.
Russian astronomers ordered to seek other strange orbiting devices
reported: "We've observed cars for weeks. Have been exiling technicians
and photographers to Siberia for making jokes of Soviet science. If
television proves ancient automobiles are orbiting the world, Americans
are caught in obvious attempt to ridicule our efforts to probe mysteries
of space."

* * *

Confusion was also undermining American scientific study of the heavens.
At Mount Palomar the busy 200-inch telescope was photographing a strange
new object, but plates returned from the laboratory caused astronomers
to explode angrily. In full glory, the photograph showed a tiny image of
an ancient car. This first development only