The Flight of RX-1 By Raymond Z
Amazing Stories, July, 1933
The Flight of RX-1
By Raymond Z. Gallun
AUL HAHN chuckled inanely. It had
wondering he looked down at himself; saw the
been a good joke that old Rawlsey had
trim leather coverall suit which he wore. It had
P told at the banquet about a negro and a military pockets. Lightly his gloved fingers Dutch sea captain. The foods and drinks had
touched his forehead, which was almost
also been good. The company had been covered by the tight-fitting helmet. There was interesting and jovial. All in all he had a painful bruise there. When his hand came thoroughly enjoyed himself. Now that the away it was daubed with blood. His right leg affair was over he could rest. God, how he
too was badly scratched and bruised.
wanted to rest! He felt himself floating
Paul Hahn’s features became suddenly
through darkness that was softer and more
strained. His white lips were pursed hard. In a
soothing than black velvet—yes, black velvet.
sort of panic he scrambled to a window and
To-morrow he could start out on that crazy
rubbed away the veiling frost. Through the
venture that old Rawlsey was financing. But
thick pane of reinforced glass he could see an
to hell with it now. Sleep, that was what he
area of ground covered with an ash-grey dust,
wanted. His whole body begged for it, and he
which glared painfully under the intense
was very comfortable there, wherever he was,
sunlight. With a half-eager, half-fearful
except that he felt sort of cramped, and his leg
expectancy he hunched his head down
ached. Darn that aching; he wished that it
between his shoulders so that he could look
would stop...
farther out over the strange landscape. For
Slowly the delirium left him. His eyes
almost half a mile a desolate plain extended,
burned. Uncertainly his gauntletted hand its details harshly clear-cut. It was strewn with groped toward a misty blob of white light—a
great lumps of rock, and jumbled masses of
tiny circular window on which a thin film of
hardened lava, the jagged lines of which had
frost had settled. The sun was shining on the
never been softened by the eroding action of
frost, making it glisten. Raising himself from
wind or rain. The portion of the level area
his huddled position, he stared about. There
which he could see, was terminated abruptly
was an expression of puzzled vexation on his
where dense shadows cast by the serrated
smooth, boyish face.
range of mountains, poured down over the
The compartment in which he found
plain. The long, slender needles of darkness
himself was very small; the circular floor was
seemed to grope toward him over the dusty
not more than five feet across, and the domed
ground, like the black fingers of some
roof was only a foot over his head. nightmare monster. Close above the Everything, with the exception of the three
mountains, the slopes of which were hidden in
small windows, and a complicated the gloom, was the sun, shining with fierce arrangement of levers and dials against the
white intensity. It was surrounded by the
wall, was padded with thick felt.
feathery, wispy veil of its corona. About it
Gradually a realization of his position
was the sky, dead black except for the cold
was coming into his fogged mind. Still stars, whose brightness was undiminished by
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their close proximity to the flaming solar orb.
Paul had signed the papers releasing
At last Paul Hahn understood. For a
Rawlsey from all responsibility for what
full minute he gazed at the panorama of would inevitably happen to him. There had hellish grandeur spreading out before him. been a period of intensive training and Except for the low weird hum of the soda-lime
instruction. Paul recalled the farewell banquet
air purifying apparatus beneath the floor, there
at Rawlsey’s mansion. After midnight, the
was no sound.
moon-bound vessel had roared its way toward
“God!” he rasped hoarsely. The word
zenith.
was half a sob. A paroxysm of terror and
The trip had taken fifty-one hours and
loneliness seized him, and he crumpled down
fourteen minutes—exactly as predicted. Every
beneath the window, his face buried in his
detail of the journey had corresponded with
arms.
scientific nicety with the calculations of
Rawlsey’s engineers. The fifty tons of liquid
BUT it did not last long. After a moment he
fuel had been sufficient to propel the rocket to
raised himself. His teeth were gritted its goal, and to retard its speed in making a savagely, and he forced a smile to his lips.
landing. Every ounce carried by the craft had
“Steady boy—steady,” h» muttered been necessarily taken into consideration in reassuringly. “Just think, you’re a pioneer, an
planning the journey. The strictest economy of
explorer like Christopher Columbus. The first
weights had had to be exercised. If the load of
man—the very first—to reach the moon!”
the RX-1 had been twenty-five pounds
The sound of his own voice startled
greater, the craft could not have reached the
him. It seemed so long since he had heard a
moon.
human voice. And what he had told himself
Paul remembered the last moments of
aided him to fix in his mind the realization of
the trip. Yawning directly below him had been
his achievement. It had seemed so utterly the maw of the lunar crater, Plato. He had felt impossible! For an instant he felt like one who
a sickening sensation of falling. About him
has defamed the sanctity of Nature’s secrets.
had flamed the gaseous streams of the
He could remember all the details now.
retarding vents. Then the crash had come—as
For almost five years, since before his
predicted. It had not been really a very violent
seventeenth birthday, he had piloted crash, but he had been badly bruised, and atmospheric rocket ships for the Rawlsey knocked senseless. He was on the floor of Transcontinental Air Lines. Then old George
Plato now, in this tiny, cramped
Rawlsey’s experts had designed and built the
compartment—the last segment of the huge
moon rocket, RX-1, capable of carrying one
rocket that had left Earth a little over two days man. This craft was the result of a long and
before.
gradual period of experimentation which had
Paul groped instinctively into his
been initiated by Goddart, Valier and Opel
breast pocket, and drew forth a crumpled
more than a century before.
cigarette. His fingers trembled slightly as he
Competition for the privilege of lighted up. His hands were cold. It was still piloting the RX-1 had been keen. The pilot
chilly in that sealed car, even under the fierce
must be young, courageous and resourceful;
sunshine. Paul inhaled deeply several times,
he must have stamina, and a superlatively cool
and then crushed the fire from the last
head. With his usual thoroughness, Rawlsey
cigarette.
had chosen carefully. He had selected Paul
He raised a section of the felted floor.
Hahn.
Here, in a square compartment was an array of
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3
capsule-shaped oxygen bottles. All but one of
His sense of wonder and awe seemed
them were empty. Only a half-hour supply
somehow deadened since his first realization
remained. Those specialists of Rawlsey’s were
of achievement. Only the prepondering silence
clever; they had predicted that he would have
of the place entered his consciousness, and it
oxygen to last thirty minutes after his arrival
was best to keep that out of one’s mind as
on the moon. Paul managed to grin ruefully.
much as possible. There was no sound except
He had plenty of work to do in that half-hour.
the gentle hiss of the oxygen valve inside his
His face grew hard and solemn, and faint
helmet....
hollows seemed suddenly to form in his
The thrill of accomplishment, of
/> normally plump cheeks.
touching the soil of Luna, was strangely
Beside the oxygen flasks was a small
absent. And he had looked forward to it so
box containing some chocolate bars, several
eagerly. A dulling influence seemed to have
sandwiches, and a bottle of water. No need to
dropped down on his mind, smothering all
take food now, but the water would help. ....
emotions. He wondered why he wasn’t
fearful; why he wasn’t exultant. Instead of
HE opened another compartment and drew
these seemingly logical feelings, his mind was
forth a peculiar sort of attire made of flexible
filled only with a strange, dead, numbing
wire cloth heavily doped with a heat-resisting,
calm. He had felt it only once before when he
rubberite composition. He slipped quickly into
had dragged the charred body of his best
the vacuum suit and closed the air-tight zipper
friend, Stan Lawson from the smoking
sealers. Fastening the oxygen flask into place,
remains of his flier. He had heard that
he donned the aluminum headpiece, the condemned men often felt that way. Was he forward portion of which was fitted with two
not also——? He checked the thought. It was
enormous eye-windows of darkened glass.
best to let the blurred, soothing influence that
A determined jerk undid the clamps
had come over him, prevail. The ways of
which held the sealed hatch of the car in place.
Nature were kind.
It popped open, pushed by the pressure of the
There was work to do, and the
expanding air inside the narrow quarters.
moments were slipping away. The catchy tune
Almost carelessly Paul tossed several
of a love song that had recently become
objects through the opening; a square metal
popular was throbbing inside his head.
case, a large flattened cylinder, another long
Unconsciously he began to hum it.
cylinder tapered and formed like a torpedo.
He picked up the large flattened
On earth it would have been very heavy, but
cylinder he had tossed from the car, and
here the force of gravity was only one sixth as
hurried toward the western edge of the crater.
great.
There the sharp-cut shadows were
Paul Hahn, in his grotesque attire lengthening, as the long lunar afternoon apparently become some native denizen of
progressed. Easy bounds carried him rapidly
this weird world, clambered awkwardly over the rough terrain. He did not stop where through the hatch and dropped to the ground
the shadows began, but continued for several
beside his paraphernalia. He glanced about
hundred yards toward the mountain slopes.
tentatively, almost casually, over the dazzling
The gloom, unabated by atmospheric diffusion
floor of Plato, toward the encircling ring of
of light, was almost like the interior of a dark
mountains, and up into the black sky, which
cave.
was in harsh contrast with the blazing, sunlit
He set the cylinder on the ground and
landscape.
hurriedly unscrewed from it a metal peg. A
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long leap carried him clear of the zone of
him. A curious bit of rock crystal glinted in
danger. Almost immediately there was a the dust. He picked it up.
soundless flash of white light, as the upper
From the corner of his eye he saw, or
surface of the cylinder was blasted off; then a
thought he saw, the shadow of a rock several
fountain of incandescent fire spouted upward.
hundred yards distant, change shape slightly,
The oxy-magnesium flare would continue to
as though something had moved there. He
burn for several minutes.
paused, and watched intently for several
Paul Hahn did not pause to watch the
moments, but detected nothing more.
inspiring sight. Instead he hastened back in the
Arriving beside the battered and
direction of the rocket car. He knew that from
scorched rocket car, he opened his case of
the grey-green sphere hanging stationary in
instruments. First he took his camera, and
the sky above, thousands of telescopes were
made a number of exposures—of the vehicle
probing the lunar surface, seeking for a sign.
which had brought him to the moon, of the
The astronomers would detect a faint, crater’s floor in various directions, of the sky, flickering spot of light in the shaded portion of of the sun, and of the earth. The picture of the
Plato.
half-illuminated terrestrial globe, with its
cloud-mottled continents and its grey seas,
PAUL could feel eyes upon him; eyes that
would be very interesting. Last of all, by using
worshiped him as a hero, and eyes that the time shutter of the camera, he contrived to condemned him as a fool. In a moment the
get a picture of himself. Old Rawlsey had
newscasters would be feeding the report of his
particularly instructed him to do that....
success to the hungry populace. Paul felt a
Working with thoughtless, automatic
faint, unrecompensing thrill that was quickly
efficiency, for his mind was still in a sort of
swallowed up by the vast silent loneliness
daze, he placed the roll of film in a small
about him.
aluminum cylinder.
He leaped over a narrow chasm that
Paul’s aneroid barometer registered an
zigzagged its erratic way across the crater
atmospheric pressure of nine millimeters—an
floor. Its bottom, if bottom it had, was lost in
insignificant amount when compared with the
utter darkness.
normal earthly pressure of seventy-four
An area of grey, darker than the centimeters. He jotted the reading down in his general hue of the ashy soil, caught his log book with a pencil.
attention. He stooped to examine it. He found
With the aid of a small hand-pump he
that it was a cluster of lichen-like growths, the managed to secure a compressed sample of
small crinkled whorls of which seemed lunar air. It would probably be mostly carbon perfectly dry and lifeless, like moldy paper.
dioxide. The plants he had plucked from the
That the moon possessed an extremely crater’s floor, together with a sample of soil tenuous atmosphere had long been suspected;
and the fragment of rock crystal he had picked
and it was evident now that there was also a
up, he placed in a cylinder similar to the one
trace of water in the soil—enough to support
in which he had put the films.
rudimentary forms of vegetation. Paul plucked
Crouching against the side of the car,
several of the lunar plants free. Here was
he proceeded to make further entries in his log
something that should interest Rawlsey’s book which contained a record of his trip: specialists.
“Landed in crater Plato on lunar surface at
Continuing toward the rocket car, his
5:16 A. M., Central Standard Time. Hit pretty
eyes roved searchingly over the ground about
hard and was senseless for a minute or two.
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5
There were no unusual developments, an ocean. But on reaching earth it would be however. Everything proceeded exactly as light enough to float.
predicted.”
About Paul, the milky, powdery vapor