Part 1

_The Teen-Age Library_

Teen-Age Stories of Action Edited by Frank Owen

Teen-Age Adventure Stories By Charles I. Coombs

Teen-Age Aviation Stories Edited by Don Samson

Teen-Age Baseball Stories Edited by Frank Owen

Teen-Age Boy Scout Stories By Irving Crump

Teen-Age Companion Edited by Frank Owen

Teen-Age Football Stories Edited by Frank Owen

Teen-Age Historical Stories By Russell Gordon Carter

Teen-Age Mystery Stories Edited by Frank Owen

Teen-Age Victory Parade Edited by Frank Owen

Teen-Age Champion Sports Stories By Charles I. Coombs

Teen-Age Super Science Stories By Richard M. Elam, Jr.

Teen-Age Science Fiction Stories By Richard M. Elam, Jr.

Teen-Age Sea Stories Edited by David Thomas

Teen-Age Sports Stories Edited by Frank Owen

Teen-Age Stories of the West By Stephen Payne

Teen-Age Animal Stories By Russell Gordon Carter

Teen-Age Cowboy Stories By Stephen Payne

Teen-Age Basketball Stories By Josh Furman

Teen-Age Dog Stories Edited by David Thomas

Teen-Age Sports Parade By B. J. Chute

Teen-Age Horse Stories Edited by David Thomas

Teen-Age Gridiron Stories Edited by Josh Furman

Teen-Age Stories of the Diamond Edited by David Thomas

Teen-Age Humorous Stories By A. L. Furman

Teen-Age Frontier Stories Edited by A. L. Furman

Teen-Age Treasure Chest of Sports Stories By Charles I. Coombs

Teen-Age Baseball Jokes and Legends By Mac Davis

Teen-Age Treasure Hunt By Richard M. Elam

Teen-Age Nurse Stories Edited by A. L. Furman

Teen-Age Nature Stories Edited by A. L. Furman

_The Teen-Age Library_

_TEEN-AGE_ SUPER SCIENCE STORIES

By RICHARD M. ELAM, Jr.

_Illustrated by_ Frank E. Vaughn

Grosset & Dunlap _Publishers_ NEW YORK

Copyright © 1957 by Lantern Press, Inc.

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH LANTERN PRESS, INC. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 57-8908 PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN CANADA BY GEORGE J. MCLEOD, LIMITED, TORONTO

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

_The First Man Into Space_ 9 _Mystery Eyes Over Earth_ 33 _Race Around the Sun_ 43 _Flight of the Centaurus_ 58 _Expedition Pluto_ 73 _Mercy Flight to Luna_ 95 _The Peril from Outer Space_ 106 _The Ghost Ship of Space_ 149 _Space Steward_ 227

ILLUSTRATIONS

_Cold, bulging eyes peered into his own_ 70 _That pledge of secrecy for you begins at this instant_ 110 _Clay’s hand guided the burning instrument to within inches of the top of the bomb_ 143 _Almost exhausted, he pulled the ladder across and out of their reach_ 209 _The unicorn rushed up the slope, his head lowered and his frightening ivory horn poised for attack_ 245

THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE

Cadet Marshall Farnsworth woke from a nightmare of exploding novae and fouling rockets. After recovering from his fright, he laughed contemptuously at himself. “Here I was picked as the most stable of a group of two hundred cadets,” he thought, “and chosen to make man’s first trip into space, yet I’m shaking like a leaf.”

He got out of bed and went over to the window. From his father’s temporary apartment, he could see distant Skyharbor, the scene of the plunge into space tomorrow night. He had been awarded the frightening honor of making that trip.

As he watched teardrop cars whip along Phoenix, Arizona’s, double-decked streets, elevated over one another to avoid dangerous intersections and delaying stop lights, he thought back over the years; to the 1950’s, when mice and monkeys were sent up in Vikings to launch mankind’s first probing of the mysterious space beyond Earth, and the first satellites were launched; to the 1960’s, when huger, multiple-stage rockets finally conquered the problem of escape velocity; to 1975—today—when man was finally ready to send one of his own kind into the uninhabited deeps.

Marsh climbed back into bed, but sleep would not come.

In the adjoining room, he could hear the footsteps of mother and father. By their sound he knew they were the footsteps of worried people. This hurt Marsh more than his own uneasiness.

The anxiety had begun for them, he knew, when he had first signed up for space-cadet training. They had known there was an extremely high percentage of washouts, and after each test he passed, they had pretended to be glad. But Marsh knew that inwardly they had hoped he would fail, for they were aware of the ultimate goal that the space scientists were working for—the goal that had just now been reached.

Marsh finally fell into a troubled sleep that lasted until morning.

He woke early, before the alarm rang. He got up, showered, pulled on his blue-corded cadet uniform, and tugged on the polished gray boots. He took one final look around his room as though in farewell, then went out to the kitchen.

His folks were up ahead of time too, trying to act as though it were just another day. Dad was pretending to enjoy his morning paper, nodding only casually to Marsh as he came in. Mom was stirring scrambled eggs in the skillet, but she wasn’t a very good actor, Marsh noticed, for she furtively wiped her eyes with her free hand.

The eggs were cooked too hard and the toast had to be scraped, but no one seemed to care. The three of them sat down at the table, still speaking in monosyllables and of unimportant things. They made a pretense of eating.

“Well, Mom,” Dad suddenly said with a forced jollity that was intended to break the tension, “the Farnsworth family has finally got a celebrity in it.”

“I don’t see why they don’t send an older man!” Mom burst out, as though she had been holding it in as long as she could. “Sending a boy who isn’t even twenty-two—”

“Things are different nowadays, Mom,” Dad explained, still with the assumed calmness that masked his real feelings. “These days, men grow up faster and mature quicker. They’re stronger and more alert than older men—” His voice trailed off as if he were unable to convince himself.

“_Some_body has to go,” Marsh said. “Why not a younger man without family and responsibility? That’s why they’re giving younger men more opportunities today than they used to.”

“It’s not younger men I’m talking about!” Mom blurted. “It’s you, Marsh!”

Dad leaned over and patted Mom on the shoulder. “Now, Ruth, we promised not to get excited this morning.”

“I’m sorry,” Mom said weakly. “But Marsh is too young to—” She caught herself and put her hand over her mouth.

“Stop talking like that!” Dad said. “Marsh is coming back. There’ve been thousands of rockets sent aloft. The space engineers have made sure that every bug has been ironed out before risking a man’s life. Why, that rocket which Marsh is going up in is as safe as our auto in the garage, isn’t it, Marsh?”

“I hope so, Dad,” Marsh murmured.

Later, as Dad drove Marsh to the field, each brooded silently. Every scene along the way seemed to take on a new look for Marsh. He saw things that he had never noticed before. It was an uncomfortable feeling, almost as if he were seeing these things for the last as well as the first time.

Finally the airport came into view. The guards at the gate recognized Marsh and ushered the Farnsworth car through ahead of scores of others that crowded the entrance. Some eager news photographers slipped up close and shot off flash bulbs in Marsh’s eyes.

Skyharbor, once a small commercial field, had been taken over by the Air Force in recent years and converted into the largest rocket experimental center in the United States.

Dad drove up to the building that would be the scene of Marsh’s first exhaustive tests and briefings. He stopped the car, and Marsh jumped out. Their good-by was brief. Marsh saw his father’s mouth quiver. There was a tightness in his own throat. He had gone through any number of grueling tests to prove that he could take the rigors of space, but not one of them had prepared him for the hardest moments of parting.

When Dad had driven off, Marsh reported first to the psychiatrist who checked his condition.

“Pulse fast, a rise in blood pressure,” he said. “You’re excited, aren’t you, son?”

“Yes, sir,” Marsh admitted. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong man, sir. I might fail them.”

The doctor grinned. “They don’t have the wrong man,” he said. “They might have, with a so-called iron-nerved fellow. He could contain his tension and fears until later, until maybe the moment of blast-off. Then he’d let go, and when he needed his calmest judgment he wouldn’t have it. No, Marshall, there isn’t a man alive who could make this history-making flight without some anxiety. Forget it. You’ll feel better as the day goes on. I’ll see you once more before the blast-off.”

Marsh felt more at ease already. He went on to the space surgeon, was given a complete physical examination, and was pronounced in perfect condition. Then began his review briefing on everything he would encounter during the flight.

Blast-off time was for 2230, an hour and a half before midnight. Since at night, in the Western Hemisphere, Earth was masking the sun, the complications of excessive temperatures in the outer reaches were avoided during the time Marsh would be outside the ship. Marsh would occupy the small upper third section of a three-stage rocket. The first two parts would be jettisoned after reaching their peak velocities. Top speed of the third stage would carry Marsh into a perpetual-flight orbit around Earth, along the route that a permanent space station was to be built after the results of the flight were studied. After spending a little while in this orbit, Marsh would begin the precarious journey back to Earth, in gliding flight.

He got a few hours of sleep after sunset. When an officer shook him, he rose from the cot he had been lying on in a private room of General Forsythe, Chief of Space Operations.

“It’s almost time, son,” the officer said. “Your CO wants to see you in the outside office.”

Marsh went into the adjoining room and found his cadet chief awaiting him. The youth detected an unusual warmth about the severe gentleman who previously had shown only a firm, uncompromising attitude. Colonel Tregasker was past middle age, and his white, sparse hair was smoothed down close to his head in regulation neatness.

“Well, this is it, Marshall,” the colonel said. “How I envy you this honor of being the first human to enter space. However, I do feel that a part of me is going along too, since I had a small share in preparing you for the trip. If the training was harsh at times, I believe that shortly you will understand the reason for it.”

“I didn’t feel that the Colonel was either too soft or strict, sir,” Marsh said diplomatically.

A speaker out on the brilliantly lit field blared loudly in the cool desert night: “X minus forty minutes.”

“We can’t talk all night, Marshall,” the colonel said briskly. “You’ve got a job to do. But first, a few of your friends want to wish you luck.” He called into the anteroom, “You may come in, gentlemen!”

There filed smartly into the room ten youths who had survived the hard prespace course with Marsh and would be his successors in case he failed tonight. They formed a line and shook hands with Marsh. The first was Armen Norton who had gotten sick in the rugged centrifuge at a force of 9 G’s, then had rallied to pass the test.

“Good luck, Marsh,” he said.

Next was lanky Lawrence Egan who had been certain he would wash out during navigation phase in the planetarium. “All the luck in the world, Marsh,” he added.

Each cadet brought back a special memory of his training as they passed before him, wishing him success.

When they had gone and the speaker outside had announced: “X minus thirty minutes,” the colonel said that he and Marsh had better be leaving. Colonel Tregasker was to be Marsh’s escort to the ship.

Photographers and newspapermen swarmed about them as they climbed into the jeep that was to take them to the launching site farther out on the field. Questions were flung at the two from all sides, but the colonel deftly maneuvered the jeep through the mob and sped off over the asphalt.

At the blast-off site, Marsh could see that the police had their hands full keeping out thousands of spectators who were trying to get into the closed-off area. The field was choked with a tide of humanity milling about in wild confusion. Giant searchlights, both at the airport and in other parts of Phoenix, directed spears of light on the towering rocket that held the interest of all the world tonight. There was one light, far larger than the rest, with powerful condensing lenses and connected to a giant radar screen, which would guide Marsh home from his trip among the stars.

A high wire fence surrounded the launching ramp and blockhouses. International scientists and dignitaries with priorities formed a ring around the fence, but even they were not allowed inside the small circle of important activity. The guards waved the colonel and Marsh through the gate.

Marsh had spent many weeks in a mock-up of the tiny third stage in which he was to spend his time aloft, but he had never been close to the completely assembled ship until this moment. The three stages had been nicknamed, “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” Marsh swallowed as his eyes roved up the side of the great vessel, part of a project that had cost millions to perfect and was as high as a four-story building.

The gigantic base, “Big Tom,” was the section that would have the hardest job to do, that of thrusting the rocket through the densest part of the atmosphere, and this was a great deal larger than the other sections. Marsh knew that most of the ship’s bulk was made up of the propellant fuel of hydrazine hydrate and its oxidizer, nitric acid.

“We’re going into that blockhouse over there,” Colonel Tregasker said. “You’ll don your space gear in there.”

First a multitude of gadgets with wires were fastened to the cadet’s wrists, ankles, nose, and head. Marsh knew this to be one of the most important phases of the flight—to find out a man’s reaction to space flight under actual rocketing conditions. Each wire would telemeter certain information by radio back to the airport. After a tight inner G suit had been put on to prevent blackout, the plastic and rubber outer garment was zipped up around Marsh, and then he was ready except for his helmet, which would not be donned until later.

Marsh and the colonel went back outside. The open-cage elevator was lowered from the top of the big latticed platform that surrounded the rocket. The two got into the cage, and it rose with them. Marsh had lost most of his anxiety and tension during the activities of the day, but his knees felt rubbery in these final moments as the elevator carried him high above the noisy confusion of the airport. _This was it._

As they stepped from the cage onto the platform of the third stage, Marsh heard the speaker below call out: “X minus twenty minutes.”

There were eleven engineers and workmen on the platform readying the compartment that Marsh would occupy. Marsh suddenly felt helpless and alone as he faced the small chamber that might very well be his death cell. Its intricate dials and wires were staggering in their complexity.

Marsh turned and shook hands with Colonel Tregasker. “Good-by, sir,” he said in a quavering voice. “I hope I remember everything the Corps taught me.” He tried to smile, but his facial muscles twitched uncontrollably.

“Good luck, son—lots of it,” the officer said huskily. Suddenly he leaned forward and embraced the youth with a firm, fatherly hug. “This is not regulations,” he mumbled gruffly, “but hang regulations!” He turned quickly and asked to be carried down to the ground.

A man brought Marsh’s helmet and placed it over his head, then clamped it to the suit. Knobs on the suit were twisted, and Marsh felt a warm, pressurized helium-oxygen mixture fill his suit and headpiece.

Marsh stepped through the hatch into the small compartment. He reclined in the soft contour chair, and the straps were fastened by one of the engineers over his chest, waist, and legs. The wires connected to various parts of his body had been brought together into a single unit in the helmet. A wire cable leading from the panel was plugged into the outside of the helmet to complete the circuit.

Final tests were run off to make sure everything was in proper working order, including the two-way short-wave radio that would have to penetrate the electrical ocean of the ionosphere. Then the double-hatch air lock was closed. Through his helmet receiver, Marsh could hear the final minutes and seconds being called off from inside the blockhouse.

“Everything O.K.?” Marsh was asked by someone on the platform.

“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied.

“Then you’re on your own,” were the final ominous words.

“X minus five minutes,” called the speaker.

It was the longest five minutes that Marsh could remember. He was painfully aware of his cramped quarters. He thought of the tons of explosive beneath him that presently would literally blow him sky-high. And he thought of the millions of people the world over who, at this moment, were hovering at radios and TV’s anxiously awaiting the dawn of the space age. Finally he thought of Dad and Mom, lost in that multitude of night watchers, and among the few who were not primarily concerned with the scientific aspect of the experiment. He wondered if he would ever see them again.

“X minus sixty seconds!”

Marsh knew that a warning flare was being sent up, to be followed by a whistle and a cloud of smoke from one of the blockhouses. As he felt fear trying to master him, he began reviewing all the things he must remember and, above all, what to do in an emergency.

“X minus ten seconds—five—four—three—two—one—FIRE!”

There was a mighty explosion at Skyharbor.

The initial jolt which Marsh felt was much fiercer than the gradually built up speed of the whirling centrifuge in training. He was crushed deeply into his contour chair. It felt as though someone were pressing on his eyeballs; indeed, as if every organ in his body were clinging to his backbone. But these first moments would be the worst. A gauge showed a force of 7 G’s on him—equal to half a ton.

He watched the Mach numbers rise on the dial in front of his eyes on an overhead panel. Each Mach number represented that much times the speed of sound, 1,090 feet per second, 740 miles an hour.

Marsh knew “Big Tom” would blast for about a minute and a half under control of the automatic pilot, at which time it would drop free at an altitude of twenty-five miles and sink Earthward in a metal mesh ’chute.

Marsh’s hurting eyes flicked to the outside temperature gauge. It was on a steady 67 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and would be until he reached twenty miles. A reflecting prism gave him a square of view of the sky outside. The clear deep blue of the cloud-free stratosphere met his eyes.

Mach 5, Mach 6, Mach 7 passed very quickly. He heard a rumble and felt a jerk. “Big Tom” was breaking free. The first hurdle had been successfully overcome, and the ship had already begun tilting into its trajectory.

There was a new surge of agony on his body as the second stage picked up the acceleration at a force of 7 G’s again. Marsh clamped his jaws as the force pulled his lips back from his teeth and dragged his cheek muscles down. The Mach numbers continued to rise—11, 12, 13—to altitude 200 miles, the outer fringe of the earth’s atmosphere. There was a slight lifting of the pressure on his body. The rocket was still in the stratosphere, but the sky was getting purple.

Mach 14—10,000 miles an hour.

“Dick” would jettison any moment. Marsh had been aloft only about four minutes, but it had seemed an age, every tortured second of it.

There was another rumble as the second stage broke free. Marsh felt a new surge directly beneath him as his own occupied section, “Harry,” began blasting. It was comforting to realize he had successfully weathered those tons of exploding hydrazine and acid that could have reduced him to nothing if something had gone wrong. Although his speed was still building up, the weight on him began to ease steadily as his body’s inertia finally yielded to the sickeningly swift acceleration.

The speedometer needle climbed to Mach 21, the peak velocity of the rocket, 16,000 miles per hour. His altitude was 350 miles—man’s highest ascent. Slowly then, the speedometer began to drop back. Marsh heard the turbo pumps and jets go silent as the “lift” fuel was spent and rocket “Harry” began its free-flight orbit around Earth.

The ship had reached a speed which exactly counterbalanced the pull of gravity, and it could, theoretically, travel this way forever, provided no other outside force acted upon it. The effect on Marsh now was as if he had stopped moving. Relieved of the viselike pressure, his stomach and chest for a few seconds felt like inflated balloons.

“Cadet Farnsworth,” the voice of General Forsythe spoke into his helmet receiver, “are you all right?”

“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied. “That is, I think so.”

It was good to hear a human voice again, something to hold onto in this crazy unreal world into which he had been hurtled.

“We’re getting the electronic readings from your gauges O.K.,” the voice went on. “The doctor says your pulse is satisfactory under the circumstances.”

It was queer having your pulse read from 350 miles up in the air.

Marsh realized, of course, that he was not truly in the “air.” A glance at his air-pressure gauge confirmed this. He was virtually in a vacuum. The temperature and wind velocity outside might have astounded him if he were not prepared for the readings. The heat was over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind velocity was of hurricane force! But these figures meant nothing because of the sparseness of air molecules. Temperature and wind applied only to the individual particles, which were thousands of feet apart.

“How is your cosmic-ray count?” asked the general.

Marsh checked the C-ray counter on the panel from which clicking sounds were coming. “It’s low, sir. Nothing to worry about.”

Cosmic rays, the most powerful emanations known, were the only radiation in space that could not be protected against. But in small doses they had been found not to be dangerous.

“As soon as our recorders get more of the figures your telemeter is giving us,” the operations chief said, “you can leave the rocket.”