Fallen Star by James Blish Read Free Book Online Page A

photos Farnsworth had given me showed it in flight, though presumably Hawkes had flown it; but Hawkes has flown
     everything, and is alive today only by virtue of multiple miracles, like all the Quiet Birdmen who survived the barnstorming
     era. To me, the Flying Tail looked in Farnsworth’s photos to be about as airworthy as a child’s jack, for all its massive
     size.
    And I was going to be flying to the North Pole in that crate. Of course it was airworthy if the CAA had granted it an airworthiness
     certificate—but I noticed that it bore an X-series licence number on its airfoils, meaning “experimental”, which meant the
     CAA would consider it airworthy until events proved it otherwise. I was not reassured.
    “Is this the plane you got to Boston in last year?” I said.
    “No, we couldn’t get it certified in time. Last year we flew a C-Forty-Seven—a flying boxcar. But I’ve taken this plane up.
     She handles very well once you get used to her; the main problem is in landing, because of the odd configuration. I don’t
     anticipate any trouble.”
    I didn’t anticipate any
specific
trouble either. But I had a hunch that a man who invariably gets kicked when he bends over to pick up a ten dollar bill had
     no business boarding the Hawkes Flying Tail, even on an inspection tour.
    “I’m afraid Dr. Elvers isn’t going to make it,” Jayne was saying. “It’s too bad. We did so want the two of you to meet.”
    “There’ll be another time,” the Commodore said abstractedly over the pictures. Jayne’s remark, however, reminded me that it
     was getting late. I looked at my watch.
    “Oh, oh,” I said. “If I’m going to catch my train home, I’ll have to hump for it. Thanks very much for the drinks. I’ll be
     seeing you again shortly, of course. When is the take off scheduled for?”
    “Monday, April twenty-ninth,” Farnsworth said. “Glad you’re going with us, Julian.”
    “I’m sure your scientific training will be a great asset,” Jayne said, uncoiling, and giving me a glowing smile of a kind
     I have never before seen bestowed on scientific training.
    “I’ll go along with you,” Harriet said.
    And she did; and so I missed my train after all. Harriet insisted that we stop off in a bar for another drink, and since I
     was indebted to her, I couldn’t very well refuse.
    “You can catch a later train,” she insisted. “I want to talk to you.”
    Once we had our drinks, she came at me directly. “Are you really going to go along with that big blowhard?” she demanded.
    “It looks that way,” I said. “I’ll admit that I see a few drawbacks I hadn’t seen before. I don’t like the looks of that aircraft
     one bit. And Jayne rather alarms me, too. But on the whole I think the Commodore’s rather likeable. And the expedition’s worth
     while, after all.
    “That I don’t see at all. It’s just a grandstanding stunt. Him and his asteroids.”
    “The asteroids are at least harmless, and he might even be on the right track. And the IGY seems to think the expedition will
     be valuable.”
    Harriet scowled into her drink. “What is this IGY, anyhow? I keep seeing stuff about it in the papers, but I never did find
     a coherent account of what it’s all about. Is it just this artificial satellite business Ike announced in ’55?”
    “No, there’s a lot more to it than that. The period itself runs from July 1st, 1957, to December 31st, 1958. Essentially it’s
     a world-wide co-operative study of the Earth itself. Geophysics covers the land, the atmosphere, the oceans, and all the things
     outside the Earth that affect it—the sun, for instance, and cosmic rays. During the Year, the scientists are concentrating
     on fields of study that require simultaneous observations to be made all over the world. I can’t give you the whole list—it
     keeps growing constantly, anyhow—but some of the problems they’re tackling are the aurora borealis and the airglow, the magnetism
     of