The Space Trilogy by Arthur C. Clarke Read Free Book Online Page B

Mars run, and she had been here for some weeks having her routine overhaul. During the last two days fuel and passengers had been going aboard, and she had now drifted away from the Station until we were separated by a space of several miles. Like the Residential Station, the Canopus slowly revolved to give the passengers a sense of gravity. She was shaped rather like a giant doughnut, the cabins and living quarters forming a ring around the power plant and drive units. During the voyage the ship's spin would be gradually reduced, so that by the time her passengers reached Mars they would already be accustomed to the right gravity. On the homeward journey, just the reverse would happen.
    The departure of a spaceship from an orbit is nothing like as spectacular as a take-off from Earth. It all happens in utter silence, of course, and it also happens very slowly. Nor is there any flame and smoke: all that I could see was a faint pencil of mist jetting from the drive units. The great radiator fins began to glow cherry red, then white hot, as the waste heat from the power plant flooded away into space. The liner's thousands of tons of mass were gradually picking up speed, though it would be many hours before she gained enough velocity to escape from Earth. The rocket that had carried me up to the Station had travelled at a hundred times the acceleration of the Canopus : but the great liner could keep her drive units thrusting gently for weeks on end, to build up a final speed of almost half a million miles an hour.
    After five minutes she was several miles away and moving at an appreciable velocity—pulling out away from our own orbit into the path that led to Mars. I stared hungrily after her, wondering when I, too, would travel on such a journey. Norman must have seen my expression, for he chuckled and said:
    Thinking of stowing away on the next ship? Well, forget it. It can't be done. Oh, I know it's a favourite dodge in fiction, but it's never happened in practice—there are too many safeguards. And do you know what they'd do to a stowaway if they found one?'
    'No,' I said, trying not to show too much interest—for to tell the truth I had been thinking rather along these lines.
    Norman rubbed his hands ghoulishly.
    'Well, an extra person on board would mean that much less food and oxygen for everyone else—and it would upset the fuel calculations too. So he'd simply be pushed overboard.'
    Then it's just as well that no one ever has stowed away.'
    'It certainly is—but of course a stowaway wouldn't have a chance. He'd be spotted before the voyage began. There just isn't room to hide in a space-ship.'
    I filed this information away for future reference. It might come in handy someday.
    Space Station One was a big place, but the apprentices didn't spend all their time aboard it, as I quickly found out. They had a club-room which must have been unique, and it was some time before I was allowed to visit it.
    Not far from the Station was a veritable Museum of Astronautics, a floating graveyard of ships that had seen their day and had been withdrawn from service. Most of them had been stripped of their instruments and were no more than skeletons. On Earth, of course, they would have rusted away long ago, but here in vacuum they would remain bright and untarnished for ever.
    Among these derelicts were some of the great pioneers—the first ship to land on Venus, the first to reach the satellites of Jupiter, the first to circle Saturn. At the end of their long voyages, they had entered the five-hundred mile orbit round Earth and the ferry-rockets had come up to take off their crews. They were still here where they had been abandoned, never to be used again.
    All, that is, except the Morning Star . As everyone knows, she made the first circumnavigation of Venus, back in '85. But very few people know that she was still in an excellent state of repair, for the apprentices had adopted her, made her their private headquarters, and, for