The Secret of Saturn’s Rings Read Free

turned out to be a young man wearing spacehand overalls, who was waiting in the car. He turned to Bruce, gave him a single narrow glance, shook hands rather limply. “Glad to know you,” he said.
    Bruce returned the greeting and after that the three rode in silence, as Waldron drove the two-wheeled, teardrop-shaped ground car away from the terminal and onto the twelve-mile road to the base of the launching racks.
    They made the trip in a few minutes, reaching an enclosure at the base of a towering peak. There they got out, passed through a gate at which was stationed an armed guard in UN police uniform. Dr. Rhodes signed Bruce in, and gave his son a card.
    “This will identify you. As you see, this is all top-secret work. Waldron will take you out to look over the ship while I get back to the computing rooms and chart our course.”
    “When are you going to take off?” Bruce asked quickly as his father started away.
    “As soon as possible,” the old engineer called back. “In an hour perhaps!”
    Waldron pointed to a gleaming vessel already standing on a long arrangement like a railroad flatcar. Bruce knew this was the trolley by means of which the space ships were rolled into place on the launching rack. The two walked over to it.
    “Whose ship is that?” asked Bruce, as he noticed that it bore none of the markings of Terraluna or any of the standard space lines.
    “It’s a special United Nations exploration craft. It’s being loaned to your father for this trip. It’s almost completely ready,” Waldron replied. “Come on inside. There's still some work I've got to complete.”
    Bruce noticed a tank truck still pumping atomic rocket fuel into the ship’s tanks. “How many men are going along?” he asked.
    As they climbed the ladder to the entrance lock, Waldron answered, “Were carrying a crew of five, including your father. Two spacehands, myself one of them, an astrogator, a pilot, and Dr. Rhodes as captain.”
    They entered the ship. It was narrow and cramped, being built for endurance and having most of its space taken up with fuel storage tanks and equipment. Waldron proceeded to the engine room in the rear, a small chamber where the exposed tubes of the various connections were open to survey and where checks could be made directly by crew members on the operation of the various flows and wirings.
    “Wait a second,” Waldron said. “There’s a job I have to do before I can show you the rest of the ship.” He glanced at a wrist watch anxiously, then knelt down, picked up a wrench from a wall rack and began to unbolt the cover over the center wall, the one that had meters of direction and speed which duplicated those in the master control chamber at the nose of the ship.
    The panel unbolted, Bruce saw that the complicated wiring was exposed, a very neat and exact pattern of many colored wires and tubes. It looked very shipshape to him.
    As it happened, Bruce had studied the wiring on the dummy ship in the school space class, and he was pleased to recognize how exactly the scheme was duplicated.
    Waldron evidently was not so pleased. He stood for a moment staring at it, then, taking pliers in hand, carefully wrenched loose several of the wires and began to reconnect them.
    Bruce watched him, puzzled. Somehow what he was doing didn't seem to make much sense. If anything, it seemed to him that Waldron was making connections that were simply completely wrong. After all, the wires were of different colors, the points of connection were very clearly marked and had seemed to be correct in the first place. Finally Bruce spoke up: “I don't understand how you can expect to get the correct reading for that with the wires as you have placed them. I don't claim to be a mechanic, yet that blue wire is plainly marked as coming from Tank Five. You have attached it to the meter listed for Tank Three. How will the pilot know?”
    Waldron glanced at him sharply. “Mind