Robert H. Wilson

“ In that instant he could have struck my head from my body, if he wished.
"But, Garth, old friend—"
"No friend to you. You shall win Kelvar now, or I. I'm giving you a sporting chance. One of your light cuts letting the fluorine inside will be as deadly as anything I can do. The one who goes back will tell of an accident, making repairs out in space. Damn you, if you don't want me to kill you where you stand, come on and fight."
"Garth, you've gone mad."
"I've been waiting ever since I got you to leave the moon. On guard!" ”

“ Down far below, I could see for a moment the city of Nardos with its great white bridge, and a spot that might be Kelvar. Then there was only the ocean, sparkling in the Earth-light, growing smaller, smaller. And then we had shot out of the atmosphere into the glare of the sun and a thousand stars.
On and up we went, until the moon was a crescent with stars around it. Then Garth threw the power forward.
"Might as well turn in," he told me. "There'll be nothing interesting until we get out of the solar system and I can put on real speed. I'll take the first trick." ”

“ Somehow, as the scientists had always told us would be the case eventually, the air of the moon, with so little gravity to hold it back, had evaporated into space.
But in six months? It was unthinkable. Surely someone had survived the catastrophe. Some people must have been able to keep themselves alive in caves where the last of the atmosphere would linger. Kelvar must be still alive. I could find her and bring her to the Comet. We would go to some other world.
Frantically, I pulled on my space-suit and clambered through the air-lock. ”

“ As you approach that velocity, the mass keeps increasing, and with it the amount of energy required for a new increase in speed. At the speed of light, the mass would be infinite, and hence no finite energy could get you any further."
"Maybe so. It won't take long to find out."
A few of the brightest stars had begun to appear. We could just see the parallelogram of Orion, with red Betelguese at one corner, and across from it Rigel, scintillant like a blue diamond.
"See," Garth said, pointing at it. "Three months from now, that's where I'll be. The first man who dared to sail among the stars." ”

“ Kelvar asked.
"I've had it on and felt nothing. With a rocket exhaust shoving the ship, it couldn't be done, but my gravitational field attracts the occupant of the Comet just as much as the vessel itself."
"You're sure," I interrupted, "that you have enough power to keep up the acceleration?"
"Easily. There's a two-thirds margin of safety."
"And you haven't considered that it may get harder to push? You know the increase of mass with velocity. You can't take one-half of the relativity theory without the other. And they've actually measured the increase of weight in an electron." ”

“ In our argument as to the possible speed of the Comet, Garth and I had both been right. In our reference frame, the vessel had put on an incredible velocity, and covered the nine-hundred-odd light-years around Rigel in six months. But from the viewpoint of the moon, it had been unable to attain a velocity greater than that of light. As the accelerating energy pressed the vessel's speed closer and closer toward that limiting velocity, the mass of the ship and of its contents had increased toward infinity. ”

“ I whispered, counting on the radio to carry my voice. "Let them think we're dead, and then give them a surprise."
"All right."
Long, long minutes.... If only they did not know that it was the customary thing for a dead man to fall.... Slowly they began to move in.
Then Garth and I were upon them. They halted as if stupefied. We had hacked our way half through their mass. The rest fled, and we began running toward the Comet, praying that we might reach the ship before they could get organized again. How we floundered through the sand in wild and desperate haste. ”

“ With both gravity projectors in readiness, we pulled out of our orbit and straight across toward [Pg 302] the planet, letting the attraction of Rigel fight against our still tremendous speed. For a while, the pull of the big star was almost overpowering. Then we got past, and into the gravitational field of the planet. We spiralled down around it, looking for a landing place and trying to match our speed with its rotational velocity.
From rather unreliable observations, the planet seemed a good deal smaller than the moon, and yet so dense as to have a greater gravitational attraction. ”

“ You see, since your mathematical friends derived their identical formulas for gravity and electromagnetism, my job was pretty easy. As you know, a falling body follows the line of least resistance in a field of distortion of space caused by mass. I bend space into another such field by electromagnetic means, and the Comet flies down the track. Working the mercury disintegrators at full power, I can get an acceleration of two hundred miles per second, which will build up the speed at the midpoint of my trip to almost four thousand times that of light. ”

“ That indicator over there shows our approach to any body. It works by the interaction of the object's gravitational field with that of my projector, and we can spot anything sizable an hour away. Sure you've got everything?"
It all seemed clear. Then I noticed at the top three clock-like dials; one to read days, another to record the speeds of light, and the third to mark light-years traveled.
"These can't really work?" I said. "We have no way to check our speed with outer space."
"Not directly. This is geared with clockwork to represent an estimate based on the acceleration. ”

“ There was no star to mark the middle of our journey. Only, toward the close of one of my watches, a blue light which I had never noticed came on beside the indicator dials, and I saw that we had covered 233 light-years, half the estimated distance to Rigel. The speed marker indicated 3975 times the speed of light. I wakened Garth.
"You could have done it yourself," he complained, sleepily, "but I suppose it's just as well."
He went over to the board and started warming up the rear gravity projector.
"We'll turn one off as the other goes on. Each take one control, and go a notch at a time." ”

“ Stars and lunar localities will be given their traditional Earth names; and measures of time, weight, and distance have been reduced, in round numbers, to terrestrial equivalents. Of the space ship described, the Comet, no trace has been found. It must be buried under the rim of one of the hundreds of nearby Lunar craters—the result, as some astronomers have long suspected and as Dunal's story verifies, of a great swarm of meteors striking the unprotected, airless moon. ”

“ Either of us can jump eight feet at home, and we'll get back up somehow."
I jumped, failing to allow for the slightly greater gravity, and fell sprawling. Garth got down more successfully, in spite of a long package of some sort he carried in his hand.
Scrambling down from the cliff and walking out on the sand, I tried to get used to the combination of greater weight and the awkward suit. If I stepped very deliberately it was all right, but an attempt to run sank my feet in the sand and brought me up staggering. There was no trouble seeing through the glass of my helmet over wide angles. ”

“ Somehow we must fight our way as long as we lasted. Perhaps they might be frightened. We threw ourselves at the side next our goal. The line gave perhaps a yard, then stiffened, and we found ourselves swallowed up in a thick cloud of brown smoke. ”