Bring Back Yesterday by A. Bertram Chandler

Author:A. Bertram Chandler [Chandler, A. Bertram]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1961-01-22T16:15:08+00:00

15

Five hours and two air bottles later, I wasn’t feeling so cocky. Just imagine that you’re a juggler. Just imagine that your specialty is to balance a billiard cue on the tip of your nose, and an assortment of crockery on top of the cue. Just imagine that you are obliged to perform this feat not for five minutes, but for five hours. Just imagine that, to make things a little harder, your reaction time has been slowed down more than somewhat.

That’s what it was like.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been able to manipulate gyroscopes and steering jets directly from the control room. But every order had to be given verbally, and every order had to be given to Anna Bentz, who passed it on to the not very bright Nikki. I did think of having Nikki wear the suit so that I could give him his orders first hand, but that would have meant that he would have had to handle his controls with heavily gloved hands. A spacesuit with detachable gloves or detachable helmet would have been the answer, but unluckily Moonmaiden’s spacesuits were inexpensive models, just good enough to pass the tests and no better.

Of all the instruments, it was the radar that I missed the most badly. Without it, our jerky descent was a matter of guesswork—and, towards the finish, not very inspired guesswork. Ironically enough, it was the very lack of this navigational aid that had made a landing mandatory. With radar I could have flung the ship into a nice, stable orbit around Wenceslaus, there to hang until a tug could be despatched to do something about us. Without radar, to land was the lesser of several evils.

And radio would have been a blessing. Radio could have been a blessing if Port Pilsen Spaceport Control had delegated and decided to use the spacesuit frequency as soon as it became obvious that our main transceiver was dead. But they were a dim bunch and, I learned later, hunted up and down the wavebands until somebody had a long-overdue rush of brains to the head and thought that it was just possible that Moonmaiden s people might be wearing spacesuits. By that time it was too late for Spaceport Control to be of any assistance to me. By that time the fresh voice yelping into the helmet phones was no more than an annoying nuisance.

An annoying nuisance?

A dangerous one.

“Port Pilsen to Moonmaiden. Port Pilsen to Moonmaiden. Do you hear me? Do you hear me? Over.”

I ignored the query. “Anna, fire Numbers two and three steering jets. One-second blast.”

“Fire two and three. One second.”

“Port Pilsen to Moonmaiden. What was that? Over.”

“Main drive—oh point three five G…”

“Port Pilsen to Moonmaiden. What was that? Over.” “Moonmaiden to Port Pilsen. Shut up, damn you! Anna, Main drive—oh point two five.”

“Port Pilsen to Moonmaiden. You are overshooting. You are overshooting. Correct your line of fall. Over.”

I stared into the periscope screen with watering eyes. I could see the domed administration buildings, the high control tower.

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