particular reason for that, sir?” asked Tom.
“Oh, there just aren’t many arrivals and departures during that period. We have night crews to handle light traffic, but by midnight the station is pretty much like any sleepy Middle Western town. Rolls up the sidewalks and goes to bed.”
He motioned to Roger to follow him to the radar section and left Tom watching the interesting spectacle on the giant teleceiver. A huge star cluster flashed brilliantly, filling the screen with light, then faded into the endless blackness of space. Tom caught his breath as he remembered what Scott had told him about the light being thousands of years old before reaching the solar system.
“Manning’s all set, Corbett,” said Scott at Tom’s elbow. “Come on. I’ll show you the traffic-control deck.”
Tom followed the young officer out of the room. As all true spacemen do at one time or another in their lives, he thought about the pitifully small part mankind had played so far in the conquest of the stars. Man had come a long way, Tom was ready to admit, but there was still a lot of work ahead for young, courageous spacemen.
As Scott and Tom climbed the narrow stairs to the traffic-control deck, the Solar Guard officer continued to speak of the man-made satellite. “When the station was first built,” he said, “it was expected to be just a way station for refueling and celestial observations. But now we’re finding other uses for it, just as though it were a small community on Earth, Mars, or Venus. In fact, they’re now planning to build still larger stations.” Scott opened the door to the traffic-control room. He motioned to Tom to follow him.
This room, Tom was ready to admit, was the busiest place he had ever seen in his life. All around the circular room enlisted Solar Guardsmen sat at small desks, each with a monitoring board in front of him holding three teleceiver screens. As he talked into a mike near by, each man, by shifting from one screen to the next, was able to follow the progress of a spaceship into or out of the landing ports. One thing puzzled Tom. He turned to Scott.
“Sir, how come some of those screens show the station from the outside?” he asked. Tom pointed to a screen in front of him that had a picture of a huge jet liner just entering a landing port.
“Two-way teleceivers, Corbett,” said Scott with a smile. “When you arrived on the Polaris, didn’t you have a view of the station on your teleceiver?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Tom, “of course.”
“Well, these monitors picked up your image on the Polaris teleceiver. So the traffic-control chief here could see exactly what you were seeing.”
In the center of the circular room Tom noticed a round desk that was raised about eight feet from the floor. This desk dominated all activity in the busy room. Inside it stood a Solar Guard officer, watching the monitoring teleceivers. He wore a throat microphone for sending out messages, and for receiving calls had a thin silver wire running to the vibrating bone in his ear. He moved constantly, turning in a circle, watching the various landing ports on the many screens. Three-thousand-ton rocket liners, Solar Guard cruisers, scout ships, and destroyers all moved about the satellite lazily, waiting for permission to enter or depart. This man was the master traffic-control officer who had first contacted Tom on his approach to the station. He did that for all approaching ships—contacted them, got the recognition signal, found out the ship’s destination, its weight, and its cargo or passenger load.
Then the connection was relayed to one of the secondary control officers at the monitoring boards.
“That’s Captain Stefens,” said Scott in a whisper. “Toughest officer on the station. He has to be. From five hundred to a thousand ships arrive and depart daily. It’s his job to see that every arriving ship is properly taken into the landing ports. Besides that, everything you’ve seen, except the meteor and weather observation rooms, are under his command. If he thinks a ship is overloaded, he won’t allow it to enter and disrupt the balance of the station. Instead, he’ll order its skipper to dump part of his cargo out in space to be picked up later. He makes hundreds of decisions a day—some of them really hair-raising. Once, when a rocket scout crew was threatened with exploding reactant mass, he calmly told them to blast off into a desolate spot in space and blow up. The crew could have abandoned ship, but they chose to remain with it and were blown to atoms. It could have happened to the station. That night he got a three-day pass from the station and went to Venusport.”
Scott shook his head. “I’ve heard Venusport will never be the same after that three-day pass of Captain Stefens.”
The young officer looked at Corbett quizzically. “That’s the man you’re going to work for.”
Scott walked over to the circular desk and spoke rapidly to the officer inside. As Tom approached, Stefens gave him a quick, sharp glance. It sent a shiver down the cadet’s spine. Scott waved to him to come over.
“Captain Stefens, this is Cadet Tom Corbett.”
Tom came to attention.
“All right, Corbett,” said Stefens, speaking like a man who had a lot to do, knew how to do it, liked to do it, and was losing time. “Stand up here with me and keep your mouth shut. Remember any questions you want to ask, and when I have a spare moment, ask them. And by the rings of Saturn, be sure I’m free to answer. Take my attention at the wrong moment and we could have a bad accident.”
Stefens gave Scott a fleeting smile and turned back to his constant keen-eyed inspection of the monitors.
The radar watch was reporting the approach of a ship. Stefens began his cold, precise orders.
“Monitor seven, take freighter out of station on port sixty-six; monitor twelve, stand by for identification signal of jet liner coming in from Mars. Watch her closely. The Venusport Space Line is overloading again.…” On and on he went, with Tom standing to one side watching with wide-eyed wonder as the many ships were maneuvered into and out of the station.
Suddenly Stefens turned to Tom. “Well, Corbett,” he rasped, “what’s the first question?”
Tom gulped. He had been so fascinated by the room’s sheer magic and by Stefens’ sure control of the traffic that he hadn’t had a chance to think.
“I—I—don’t have one—yet, sir,” he managed finally.
“I want five questions within five minutes!” snapped Stefens, “and they better be rocket-blasting good questions!” He turned back to the monitors.
Tom Corbett, while he had gained the respect of many elder spacemen, was discovering that a cadet’s life got no easier as time went on. He wondered fleetingly how Roger and Astro were making out, and then he began to think of some questions.
Beside him, oblivious of his presence, Stefens continued to spout directions. “Monitor three, take rocket scout out of landing-port eight. One crew member is remaining aboard the station for medical treatment. He weighs one hundred and fifty-eight pounds. Make balance adjustments accordingly.…”
Tom’s head was spinning. It was all too much for one young cadet to absorb on such short notice.
CHAPTER 6
“There goes the jet liner to Mars,” said Al Mason wistfully. “Sure wish we wuz on her.” His eyes followed the beautiful slim passenger ship just blasting off from Venus.
“Why?” demanded Loring.
“Anything to get away from Venusport. What a stinking hole!” snorted the shorter of the two spacemen.
“For what we want to do,” said Loring, “there ain’t another city in the system that’s got the advantages this place has!”
“Don’t talk to me about advantages,” whined Mason. “Be darned if I can see any. All we been doing is hang around the spaceport, talk to the spacemen, and watch the ships blast off. Maybe you’re up to something but I’m blasted if I see what it can be.”
“I’ve been looking for the right break to come