FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   >>  
tracted. A panel of signal lights was immediately below it where the operator could see it without taking his eyes off the tellecarbon. When we took off I was in the driver's seat, Lahoma standing beside me. We had found that when she thought of hamburger sandwiches the tellecarbon became antigravitational, just as when I thought of chickens being killed. It took the combined power of our thoughts to lift the ship. As we found out later, the ship rose sluggishly from the water and floated erratically upward, reaching the stratosphere in a little over an hour. By midnight we were over two thousand miles above the Earth's surface and rising more and more rapidly. By then both of us were exhausted and spelling each other off every ten minutes. Jud was constantly determining our position and speed. At two o'clock in the morning he relieved Lahoma and concentrated on the tellecarbon to give us more forward speed. By eight o'clock in the morning our speed and direction of travel were correct for escape from the Earth's gravity field toward the planet Mars, and I crawled out of the control booth, practically a wreck. * * * * * From there on it was smooth sailing. We would coast along for two months before nearing Mars, and play with the gadgets we had brought along for taking all sorts of measurements in outer space. Space is very different than most writers picture it. Instead of being dark it is intensely bright in all directions. It was fortunate that we had movable dark shields on each porthole. By varying the number over a porthole we could block out most of the light and keep our objective in view. Our most amazing discovery was that the temperature of interplanetary space is not absolutely zero. Our outside thermostat, carefully shielded against all rays, that is, infrared, visible, and ultraviolet, and in the vacuum of space, showed a constant temperature of minus one hundred and three degrees F. at all times in outer space. Jud explained that this was probably due to x-rays and cosmic rays which could penetrate the protective shield. On the fifty-eighth day after leaving the earth, Jud, at the forward telescope, became suddenly excited. Dashing from the telescope to the chart table he began scribbling figures, ignoring our queries as to what was wrong. After fifteen minutes of figuring he straightened up, a worried frown on his face. Muttering, "I was afraid of that," h
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   >>  



Top keywords:

tellecarbon

 

forward

 

Lahoma

 

porthole

 

temperature

 

taking

 

thought

 

minutes

 
morning
 
telescope

discovery

 
straightened
 

thermostat

 

absolutely

 

worried

 
interplanetary
 

varying

 
writers
 

picture

 

Instead


intensely

 
afraid
 

Muttering

 
bright
 

directions

 

objective

 
number
 

fortunate

 

movable

 

shields


carefully
 

amazing

 
constant
 

eighth

 

queries

 

penetrate

 

protective

 

shield

 

leaving

 

ignoring


scribbling

 

figures

 
suddenly
 
excited
 

Dashing

 

cosmic

 

showed

 

fifteen

 

vacuum

 

ultraviolet