Fast Trip
Fast Trip
16500 words
With the sounding of the five second warning the clicking, whining
bedlam inside Ramsey built suddenly to a climax.
Ramsey, the first real passenger-carrying spaceship, is on a sixteen-week
course to Mars. Then the radio, food supply, fuel tank, and
Captain Ramsey himself (skippers are psychologically tailored to
fir their ships) all go phffft! Engineer/’obsolete’
captain Herdman explains the three-cornered problem: “First,
our captain is physically incapable of handling the approach and
landing when we reach Mars. Second, when we reach Mars we
will be going too fast because we haven’t enough fuel to decelerate
into a landing orbit. And third, there isn’t enough food to
keep us alive anyway.” One of those constants should
have been treated as a variable factor . . . but that’s your
lot.
Synopsis by Graham Andrews |
| Publication history: |
- FANTASY & SF Brutish Edition, August 1963
- OUT OF THIS WORLD 6, Blackie, 15/-, October 1967
- Macmillan Topliner Collection IN TIME TO COME, 1975
|
| Foreign Publication: |
- F&SF German Edition, Heyne Bucher No 248 as Zwischen
Erde und Mars
- FICTION No 130, September 1964 as e Pilote
|
|
