Chapter 19

The interstellar ship Brainchild orbited around her destination, waiting during the final checkup before she landed on the planet below.

It was not a nice planet. As far as its size went, it could be classified as “Earth type,” but size was almost the only resemblance to Earth. It orbited in space some five hundred and fifty million miles from its Sol-like parent--a little farther away from the primary than Jupiter is from Sol itself. It was cold there--terribly cold. At high noon on the equator, the temperature reached a sweltering 180° absolute; it became somewhat chillier toward the poles.

H_O was, anywhere on the planet, a whitish, crystalline mineral suitable for building material. The atmosphere was similar to that of Jupiter, although the proportions of methane, ammonia, and hydrogen were different because of the lower gravitational potential of the planet. It had managed to retain a great deal more hydrogen in its atmosphere than Earth had because of the fact that the average thermal velocity of the molecules was much lower. Since oxygen-releasing life had never developed on the frigid surface of the planet, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. It was all tied up in combination with the hydrogen of the ice and the surface rocks of the planet.

The Space Service ship that had discovered the planet, fifteen years before, had given it the name Eisberg, thus commemorating the name of a spaceman second class who happened to have the luck to be (a) named Robert Eisberg, (b) a member of the crew of the ship to discover the planet, and© under the command of a fun-loving captain.

Eisberg had been picked as the planet to transfer the potentially dangerous Snookums to for two reasons. In the first place, if Snookums actually did solve the problem of the total-annihilation bomb, the worst he could do was destroy a planet that wasn’t much good, anyway. And, in the second place, the same energy requirements applied on Eisberg as did on Chilblains Base. It was easier to cool the helium bath of the brain if it only had to be lowered 175 degrees or so.

It was a great place for cold-work labs, but not worth anything for colonization.

Chief Powerman’s Mate Multhaus looked gloomily at the figures on the landing sheet.

Mike the Angel watched the expression on the chief’s face and said: “What’s the matter, Multhaus? No like?”

Multhaus grimaced. “Well, sir, I don’t like it, no. But I can’t say I dislike it, either.”

He stared at the landing sheet, pursing his lips. He looked as though he were valiantly restraining himself from asking questions about the other night’s escapade--which he was.

He said: “I just don’t like to land without jets, sir; that’s all.”

“Hell, neither do I,” admitted Mike. “But we’re not going to get down any other way. We managed to take off without jets; we’ll manage to land without them.”

“Yessir,” said Multhaus, “but we took off with the grain of Earth’s magnetic field. We’re landing across the grain.”

“Sure,” said Mike. “So what? If we overlook the motors, that’s okay. We may never be able to get off the planet with this ship again, but we aren’t supposed to anyway.

“Come on, Multhaus, don’t worry about it. I know you hate to burn up a ship, but this one is supposed to be expendable. You may never have another chance like this.”

Multhaus tried to keep from grinning, but he couldn’t. “Awright, Commander. You have appealed to my baser instincts. My subconscious desire to wreck a spaceship has been brought to the surface. I can’t resist it. Am I nutty, maybe?”

“Not now, you’re not,” Mike said, grinning back.

“We’ll have a bitch of a job getting through the plasmasphere, though,” said the chief. “That fraction of a second will--”

“It’ll jolt us,” Mike agreed, interrupting. “But it won’t wreck us. Let’s get going.”

“Aye, sir,” said Multhaus.

The seas of Eisberg were liquid methane containing dissolved ammonia. Near the equator, they were liquid; farther north, the seas became slushy with crystallized ammonia.

The site picked for the new labs of the Computer Corporation of Earth was in the northern hemisphere, at 40° north latitude, about the same distance from the equator as New York or Madrid, Spain, would be on Earth. The Brainchild would be dropping through Eisberg’s magnetic field at an angle, but it wouldn’t be the ninety-degree angle of the equator. It would have been nice if the base could have been built at one of the poles, but that would have put the labs in an uncomfortable position, since there was no solid land at either pole.

Mike the Angel didn’t like the idea of having to land on Eisberg without jets any more than Multhaus did, but he was almost certain that the ship would take the strain.

He took the companionway up to the Control Bridge, went in, and handed the landing sheet to Black Bart. The captain scowled at it, shrugged, and put it on his desk.

“Will we make it, sir?” Mike said. “Any word from the Fireball?”

Black Bart nodded. “She’s orbiting outside the atmosphere. Captain Wurster will send down a ship to pick us up as soon as we’ve finished our business here.”

The Fireball, being much faster than the clumsy Brainchild, had left Earth later than the slower ship, and had arrived earlier.

“_Now hear this! Now hear this! Third Warning! Landing orbit begins in one minute! Landing begins in one minute!_”