Interstellar travel -- Fiction; Science fiction; Television programs -- Fiction
They stopped in space to extrude from the airlock a small package which
expanded into a forty-foot plastic balloon with a minute atomic battery
attached to it. The plastic was an electric conductor. It was a
field-plate of the Dabney field. It took over the field from Earth and
maintained it. It provided a second field for the ship to maintain. The
ship, then, could move at any angle from the balloon. The Dabney field
stretched 178.3 light-years through emptiness to the balloon, and then
at any desired direction to the ship.
The ship's rockets thrust again--and the booster-circuit came into play.
There were maneuverings. A second balloon was put out in space.
At 8:30 Central U. S. Time, on a period relinquished by other
advertisers--bought out--a new program went on the air. It was a
half-hour show, sponsored by the Intercity Credit Corporation--"Buy on
Credit Guaranteed"--with ten straight minutes of commercials interjected
in four sections. It was the highest-priced show ever put on the air. It
showed the interior of the ship's control-rooms, with occasional brief
switches to authoritative persons on Earth for comment on what was
relayed from the far-off skies.
The first broadcast ensured the success of the program beyond possible
dispute. It started with curt conversation between Jones and the pilot,
Al--Jones loathed this part of it, but Al turned out to be something of
a ham--on the problems of approaching a new solar system. Cut to
computers back on Earth. Back to the control-room of the starship.
Pictures of the local sun, and comments on its differentness from the
sun that had nourished the human race since time began.
Then the cameras--Bell worked them--panned down through the ship's
blister-ports. There was a planet below. The ship descended toward it.
It swelled visibly as the space-ship approached. Cochrane stood out of
camera-range and acted as director as well as producer of the opus. He
used even Johnny Simms as an offstage voice repeating stern commands. It
was corny. There was no doubt about it. It had a large content of ham.
But it happened to be authentic. The ship had reached another planet,
with vast ice-caps and what appeared to be no more than a
twenty-degree-wide equatorial belt where there was less than complete
glaciation. The rockets roared and boomed as the ship let down into the
cloud-layers.
Television audiences back on Earth viewed the new planet nearly as soon
as did those in the ship. The time-lag was roughly three seconds for a
distance of 203.7 light-years.
The surface of the planet was wild and dramatic beyond belief. There
were valleys where vegetation grew luxuriantly. There were ranges of
snow-clad mountains interpenetrating the equatorial strip, and there
were masses of white which, as the ship descended, could be identified
as glaciers moving down toward the vegetation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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