Chapter 11

When the boys came into the dinette the next morning, their mother was humming happily as she prepared breakfast, and greeted them with a cheery smile.

“Pop awake yet?” Jon asked as he saw her mood.

“No, but he’s sleeping so sweetly I know he’s all right,” she answered.

They sat down and began eating. After finishing, Jak said, “Well, we might as well go out and work some more on our townsite.”

“Call us when Pop wakes up, will you, please?” Jon took a last sip of his juice-concentrate.

“That’d be silly.” Jak frowned. “We know he can’t come and help us, so why should we run several miles back here when we can see him when we get back?”

Jon opened his mouth to reply, his eyes flashing almost angrily, but their mother interrupted quickly with a question, “Boys, just why do you have to lay out such a site?”

“The Board requires it,” Jon answered shortly.

“In the early days of exploration,” Jak explained more patiently, “some of the space crews used to make their reports after merely flying above the surface of the planets of a new system. In fact, some of them didn’t even go that close, and merely made up sketchy reports.”

“Then when colonists got there,” Jon, who had simmered down by now, took up the explanation, “they often found conditions very different, and many times quite dangerous to them.”

“Yes, sometimes there were even intelligent inhabitants who hadn’t been reported, so their planets couldn’t be used for colonization. So the Board made this new ruling,” Jak continued. “Now we have to have so many photos taken from various heights and at different places all over the surface of each planet, and each moon more than one hundred miles in diameter. And we have to lay out a townsite on the most Earthlike planet, mostly to show we actually have been there and spent some time there...”

“And it really doesn’t make any difference whether the people who’ll come here to live use it or not...”

“But we think they will use ours because we selected a place close to a river and the ocean, close to forests and fairly near minerals.”

“Yes, you have done a wonderful job, I know that much about it.”

“Well, we’ll go out and re-check our lines,” Jon said. “I’ve been studying and experimenting with the theodolite, and I can...”

“What is that?” she asked.

“What’s what? Oh, the ‘theodolite’? That’s the surveyor’s telescope.

I’ve learned enough about it so I can tell if our lines have been run straight, and as we were so careful in measuring the distances, I’m quite sure they’re fairly accurate.”

“Yes,” Jak chimed in, “I’ll bet none of them are more than an inch off, if that.”

“Optimist,” Jon scoffed. “I’d take that bet away from you, only it’d be cheating an infant.”

Jak started a retort, then thought better of it, and shut up.

They left the ship soon, Jon carrying the surveying instrument over his shoulder, and Jak the marker-pole. Arrived at the nearest corner of their townsite, Jon set the instrument down, while Jak went on to the next stake.

By means of the graduated circle attached just below the telescope, and the plumb line suspended from it, Jon adjusted the collapsible legs until he felt sure it was correctly focussed. Then, as Jak went ahead from stake to stake, Jon took sights to make sure each marker was centered on his cross hairs. The ones that were not, he indicated by hand signals, and Jak reset them to left or right, until Jon was satisfied.

They completed all of one side before lunch, then returned to the ship.

They found their mother had opened both lockdoors while they were gone, and fresh, crisp, though warm, air was circulating through the ship, blowing out the old chemically pure yet “stale-feeling” air their purifiers had been re-circulating for so long.

Their father was awake, but still so weak he was making no attempt to sit fully up in bed, although his wife had slipped an extra pillow beneath his head.

“Ho, fellows!” he greeted the boys as they came into the bunkroom.

“How’s the job coming?”

“Just fine, Pop.”

“We have the townsite all laid out, and now we’re checking to make sure the lines are straight,” Jak told him.

He frowned a bit. “How did you manage it? Neither of you is a surveyor.

Or have you learned how to do that, too?”

“I think I’ve figured out the theodolite well enough to tell if our lines are straight, and that’s what we’re using now,” Jon continued. “I can’t measure distances with it, though.”

Jak explained more in detail how they had measured the blocks and street widths, and rechecked them all.

“I can’t see why it won’t pass,” their father said when they finished.

“Probably no one will ever check it, unless they actually use the site when the colonists come. It shows we were landed here long enough to do the work, and that’s the important thing. What about the rest of the mapping?”

“I’ll go get the papers.” Jon ran out, to return in a few minutes with the book of reports, and the rolls of film and prints they had made on all the planets and satellites. “You can check these as you feel up to it, Pop, and anything that looks wrong we can go back and re-check or do over.”

Mr. Carver riffled quickly through the pages, and saw that each question had been answered; each measurement given an answer--though whether correct or not, of course, he could not know. All the information required had been supplied, at least.

He gave the boys his old-time grin, even as he was shaking his head in wonder. “You chaps certainly have done a job. Looks like I’ll have to take the backseat from now...”

“No!“ The two boys were shocked by that.

“Not on your life, Pop! We maybe did fairly well, but we need you, just the same.”

“I’ll say we do,” Jak chimed in. “There’s so much yet you can teach us.

Why, we’ve only begun learning most of the things we want to know.”

Mr. Carver smiled up at his sons. “I’m always glad to tell you anything I can, Fellows. It’s good to see you growing up, though.” He turned his head to face Jon more directly. “What’s that about a new system you rigged up so you can land and take off with only one switch?”

Jon explained, and the two were soon deep in technical talk of electronic relays and cells, and automatic switch-overs. Finally, Mrs.

Carver came in with a tray of lunch for her husband, and told the boys their food was on the table.

“All right, you chaps, go and eat,” Mr. Carver said. “I’ll take another nap while you’re out this afternoon. Then maybe I’ll feel up to talking some more this evening, and going over these reports with you.”

The second day later the boys finished their re-checking, and came back to the ship in midafternoon. Their father was again awake, and they went in to see him.

“We’re all done here, Pop, so what say we go back to that fuel-metal cache and see about getting the stuff aboard?” Jon asked.

“I guess from all you’ve said that’s the most important thing now,” he agreed after a moment’s consideration. “Only thing is, I’ve been wondering if you couldn’t move me into the control room, and fix a couch for me there?”

“Sure, that’s easy,” Jak told him.

But Jon frowned in thought. “Yes, we can do it, but we’ll have to figure out first how to fasten the cot down and then make some arrangement so you can stand any acceleration we may have to use.”

“How about fixing the co-pilot’s seat into a bunk?”

“Hey, that’s the ticket!” Jon brightened. He ran out and soon was helping his mother gather blankets, sheets and pillows, and going with Jak to bring an extra mattress from the storeroom.

They set the seat to recline, and then while Mrs. Carver was making up the bed, the boys carried their father--a much lighter load now than when he had first been hurt--and put him in his new bed.

“Say, this is all right!” Mr. Carver exclaimed after Jon had lowered the co-pilot’s visiplate so his father could look into it without distortion or neck-craning. “All the comforts of home.” He grinned at his wife.

She stooped and kissed him. “Be sure and let us know any time you get too tired, though, Mr. C.”

“I will, Honey,” he assured her. “But actually, I’m so comfortable I don’t see why I can’t stay here as well as in bed, until the leg’s strong enough to start getting up.”

Everything else ready, he watched anxiously, then admiringly, as Jon started the tubes firing, balanced them and took them off with the throwing of his one switch. In his visiplate the elder man watched with intense interest the scenery over which they were passing--Jon had set course so they would go completely around this world of Two until they came to that desert. Mr. Carver made many enthusiastic comments about this splendid planet that now bore his wife’s name.

“Yes, and Three’s just as nice, only colder,” Jon reported eagerly.

“Folks who like cold weather can live there without too much trouble at all.”

“It’s funny, though,” Jak declared with a frown, “that there’s no protoplasmic life there at all. That we could find,” he hastened to add.

“Lots of vegetation, though,” Jon added. “That means the soil will be good for growing things, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly sounds like it.” His father smiled. “The colonists may have to adapt their Earth-seeds to fit, and probably bring their own worms and bees and so on. But they should be able to farm there. From your surveys, it appears there are plenty of minerals so they can start mines and factories of all kinds right away. Yes, this looks like a pretty good solar system.”

“You bet, Pop. You sure picked a winner in this one,” Jon’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction.

“I had an idea, from the spectroscopic examinations we made ‘way back there near Sirius, that we’d find it fairly good here. But, to be honest, I didn’t dare hope it would be this good. To tell the truth, I was really more interested in that line which seemed to indicate that fuel-stuff, than I was in new planets for colonization, although we needed those, too, to make the trip pay off.”

Before long they came above the beginning of that well-remembered desert, and Jon slowed and circled, preparatory to landing.

Jon kept his eyes upon his instruments, and when he saw they were close to the actual latitude and longitude, he killed the speed to their slowest cruising range, and their height to a few hundred yards. When he knew he was almost at the exact spot, he stared intently into his pilot’s magnifying visiplate, at the same time keeping his fingers tautly on the landing switch.