Atom Drive

Atom Drive by Charles L. Fontenay

"Atom Drive" follows Captain Jonner Jons of the atomic-powered freighter Radiant Hope as he competes against Captain Russo Baat's chemical-rocket Marsward XVIII, sponsored by the Mars Corporation, in a race set up by the Space Control Commission: the Atom-Star Company's ship must return from Mars with full cargo at least twenty hours ahead of the Marsward to break the Mars Corporation's exclusive Earth-Mars franchise. The Radiant Hope is an unusual vessel, a small atomic tug towing a cargo and passenger section two miles behind on a cable, capable of only 1/3,000th-G acceleration but able to thrust continuously across the whole voyage rather than coasting, which Jonner calculates will beat the Marsward's brief high-G burn and long unpowered drift. Jonner's crew includes engineer T'an Li Cho, Martian astrogator Qoqol, and a newly signed ship's doctor-psychologist, Serj. Before departure Jonner takes aboard a 200-ton landing boat at the last minute, unknowingly shifting the ship's orbit out of the path of an "experimental missile" that had been aimed to strike the tug's engines. Weeks into the flight, Serj sabotages the mission by cutting the cable joining the tug to the cargo section while on a spacewalk, having been bribed with a thousand solars. Jonner discovers the severed cable and a burned-out radio control that prevents him from immediately reversing the drifting tug. To hold the ship to the tug until repairs can be made, the crew improvise with part of the ship's own cargo: 6,000 miles of flonite-sheathed television cable meant for a Martian network. Jonner spacewalks to attach it, Qoqol operates the winch, and the ship is saved. Jonner then handcuffs Serj to face charges at Mars. At Mars City, Jonner turns Serj over to Commission officer Kruger and meets Atom-Star's local representative, Deveet. With only one G-boat available and Marscorp controlling the rest, unloading and reloading is slow. Jonner hires a new ship's doctor, Lana Elden, by radiophone. Marscorp then blocks Atom-Star's fuel supply by having its subsidiary, Space Fuels, refuse to sell hydrazine and nitric acid, citing an exclusive contract; Kruger explains the Commission cannot intervene without Atom-Star holding a franchise. A mechanic then sabotages the G-boat's fuel line, draining its hydrazine; Jonner strikes the man and pays a small fine. At a Commission hearing, the examiner dismisses Atom-Star's complaint for lack of proof that the fuel line was deliberately damaged rather than accidentally broken. Baat, sympathetic despite being Jonner's rival, denies involvement in Marscorp's dirty tricks and offers to ferry Lana Elden up to the Radiant Hope at Phobos before his own ship departs for Earth with full cargo. With the G-boat disabled and no fuel obtainable, the Radiant Hope sits idle at Phobos for weeks while its only twenty tons of Earthbound cargo remain grounded. While fishing with Deveet at the Mars City Recreation Center, Jonner is struck by the mechanics of the mechanical fish, which are hooked by matching orbital-style speeds, and works out a way to load cargo into orbit without a G-boat or fuel. He and Deveet secretly charter a cargo plane through an intermediary, load the twenty tons of return cargo and parachutes aboard, and take off. Once airborne, Jonner forces the pilot to bail out by parachute and takes control himself. Coordinating by radio with Qoqol aboard the Radiant Hope at Phobos, he has the crew fire a signal rocket trailing the end of the television cable down toward Mars. Jonner and Deveet knock out the plane's windows and, working port to port against the slipstream, catch the cable and its attached rocket, tying it off with a bowline knot. Jonner then explains the orbital mechanics involved, comparing it to how a spinning space station's outer parts move faster than its center: by matching the plane's speed to that of the cable's end—roughly 1,200 miles an hour relative to Mars' 500-mile-an-hour rotation—the cable can be reeled in from Phobos without snapping, hauling the plane and its cargo up to the ship's orbit like a winch, bypassing the need for a G-boat or rocket fuel entirely. As the plane is winched toward Phobos, Jonner tells Deveet they can now reach Earth eighty-three days faster than the Marsward despite its twenty-day head start, securing Atom-Star's franchise and ensuring the wider adoption of atomic drive in space travel within the coming decade. He closes by asking Deveet to arrange for Atom-Star to buy and ship more flonite cable to Phobos, remarking that this method may prove cheaper than using G-boats at all.

By Charles L. Fontenay · First published 1953 · Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Space Opera · 8,552 words

First lines

_It was a race between the tortoise and the hare. But this hare was using some dirty tricks to make sure the ending would be different._

The two spaceship crews were friendly enemies, sitting across the table from each other for their last meal before blastoff. Outside the ports, the sky was nothing but light-streaked blackness, punctured periodically by Earth glare, for Space Station 2 whirled swiftly on its axis, creating an artificial gravity.

What this Textopian page supports

Atom Drive is listed on Textopian as a novel by Charles L. Fontenay, dated 1953 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

Discussion starters

Similar titles

Genres

Tags

science fiction · space exploration · technology · nuclear power · futuristic · adventure · interstellar travel · humanity · engineering · aliens · conflict · survival

More by Charles L. Fontenay