Adventure on the Sun's Doorstep

Sue and Steve Shannon watched the magic world of stardust through a port of the rocket freighter. The ship was moving under power of its atomic engines, headed toward the sun.

They had one more cargo stop to make before returning to their beloved soil on the Earth.

The twins heard the clack of magnetic soles behind them. Without such shoes holding them to the floor, space travelers would float about helplessly like wingless birds.

“Hi, kids,” greeted their father. “Growing tired of the view?”

“I guess I am, Dad,” Steve admitted. His blue eyes were tired.

“How far away is Apollo’s Chariot now?” Sue asked.

Mr. Shannon grinned. “That’s the umpteenth time you two have asked that. But I suppose I’m as restless as you are to get back to Mom in Arkansas.”

Hearing this made Steve suddenly homesick. There was really no place like home, just like the poet had said. Steve knew Sue felt the same way. He had seen a wistful look in her hazel eyes every time they had talked of Little Rock.

The seemingly endless days finally did end. The three Shannons went up into the lookout dome with the crewmen. The dome was covered by a darkened plastic screen to cut down the blinding glare of the sun, which was very close.

It was a heart-stopping sight for Sue and Steve. The planet Mercury covered the face of the sun like a black plate. Streaming out from the edges were mountainous tongues of living fire. Mr. Shannon called this flaming halo the sun’s chromosphere.

“Gee, what a thing to see!” Steve gasped.

“It’s—it’s unbelievable!” Sue added, breathless.

“Indeed, it is,” Mr. Shannon agreed. “See that thing like a lighted wheel just ahead of us? That’s Apollo’s Chariot. It was named after the famous Greek sun god, you know.”

Sue and Steve knew that Apollo’s Chariot was really a space laboratory that was a home for scientists who were studying the sun. They had been the ones who had given their tiny world its colorful nickname. It was protected with asbestos and other special material to shield it from the heat as it circled the great star, month after month, year after year.

“We had to contact Apollo’s Chariot while Mercury was shading our ship from the sun’s rays,” Mr. Shannon said. “We aren’t protected like Apollo’s Chariot is.”

“Mercury seems as big as the sun, the way it covers it completely,” Steve remarked.

“That’s because we’re so close to Mercury,” his father explained. “Actually, the sun is so much bigger it’s like comparing a pinpoint to a grapefruit!”

In the midnight darkness between the ships, giant searchlights had to be turned on. Then the scientists on the other ship came out onto their loading platform to receive their cargo. Conversation was carried on by means of space suit radios with those aboard the freighter, who stood on their own outside platform.

“Why can’t we get closer to Apollo’s Chariot?” Steve asked Biff Warren, who was the twins’ favorite among the crewmen. Biff was piling boxes and crates at the edge of the platform.

“Space regulations,” answered Biff. “If a meteor should hit one of us, the other ship would explode too if we were close. Also, rocket tubes are so tricky that you never know when one is going to misfire and send your ship scooting off suddenly in the wrong direction.”

One end of a double cable was fastened to rings on the freighter’s platform. Then the other end was tossed across the space between the two ships and attached by the scientists to their own side.

Steve saw the crewmen around him pick up cords from out of the cable equipment box. They fastened one end to buckles on their suits and the other to the cable. Steve guessed that the lines were a safety measure to keep the men from drifting off into space as they carried the cargo across.

The first crewman picked up a crate as lightly as if it were a pile of feathers. Then with his foot he shoved off from the platform.

He guided the crate through the emptiness with his gloved hands and the men on the opposite platform helped him aboard. Another crewman stepped off the freighter with another crate. Then another crewman with another piece of cargo. The carriers returned by the other cable line.

Steve went over to his dad who, as an official of the American Space Supply Company, was supervising the work as always. “Dad, may Sue and I carry a box across? We’ll be careful.”

Mr. Shannon thought a moment. “I suppose it will be all right. There’s no way you can go adrift if you fasten on to the cable. But you have to be careful you’re snapped on securely.”

Mr. Shannon made a place for them in line. Sue in front. There was a wait before Sue’s turn so that more crates could be placed on the platform’s edge. The children looked beyond Apollo’s Chariot at the huge black circle of Mercury as it masked the mighty sun.

“Biff,” Steve asked his friend as he was stacking the crates, “why couldn’t the Apollo scientists study the sun from Mercury?”