The Secret of Saturn’s Rings Read Online Free PDF

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    Then like a bullet from a gun the ship shot out of the end of the half-mile long rack, and Jennings slammed in the full force of its engines.
    There was a moment of intolerable pressure. Bruce felt as if he were strangling, as if an invisible elephant had suddenly sat down on him, crushing him deep into the padding. He gasped for breath, fought to keep himself from blacking out.
    For instant after instant he seemed about to be crushed completely. He caught glimpses out of the comer of his tortured eye of the porthole getting darker and darker, of the blue merging into blackness.
    Then, at last, as he began to feel that he could bear the strain no longer, as if he would sink into total unconsciousness, the terrible pressure ceased. There was a moment of intense relief and he found himself fighting to control his pumping lungs.
    Bruce knew then that the ship was free of Earth’s grip; it was on its way!

CHAPTER 3  The Other Side of the Moon 
    As soon as Bruce had unstrapped himself from his hammock, he found himself in the state of “free-fall” that is so familiar to space fliers. Bruce discovered that there was nothing at all pleasing about having no weight, in spite of the fascination this no-gravity condition seems to hold for those who have never been in space. He felt as if he were going to be sick, as if his stomach were jumping, and his eyes and ears straining to detect something which wasn’t there. It was the same sort of sensation that he would have had had he been falling from the top of a very high building and had not yet hit the ground.
    It took a little time to readjust himself to this strange feeling. He had to think about his every motion rather consciously for the first few hours, for when he did not, his muscles, expecting through habit to find the resistance of weight, would strike out forcefully and then wildly in sudden panic. The uneasiness of the falling feeling was always there, and it took concentration to build up the new set of mental commands for his body to act by.
    Bruce was not entirely unfamiliar with the feeling. When he’d paid the visit to his father at the Copernicus research base, he’d gone through all these sensations before. Although he had tried to steel himself for what was coming, it was still alarming when it came.
    Fortunately, perhaps, he did not have time to sit around and worry about his feelings. In the few hours that the moon hop would take, there was work to be done. Arpad Benz was already in the central corridor, swinging from the various straps and stanchions that were the means of motion in the floating interior of the ship. “Come on, Bruce,” he called. “Now’s the time to pitch in. We’ve got to get the moon-runners unfolded and set up.”
    Bruce reached for a leather strap that hung from the wall nearby and, using it as Tarzan in the movies once used the branches of trees, swung himself after Arpad. He knew what the moon-runners were, but he had never quite realized that it was necessary to go outside the ship to adjust them. The young spaceman who had guyed him originally was now climbing into a pressurized space suit.
    Bruce wasn’t sure what he would have to do, but he had made up his mind that there was nothing anyone could do that he could not do also. He was ready for anything. Let Arpad kid him about his age, let the others think what they would, they would find that he was up to the job.
    Arpad helped him into the space suit, zipped up the pressure-tight fabric coverall, fitted the transparent plastic helmet, and checked the heating and air regulators. The helmet phone on, Arpad explained what they had to do while they stood in the little space lock as the ship’s air was pumped out.
    When the outer hull door swung open, Bruce gazed down into the blackness of outer space. Covering half the view was the glowing surface of the Earth, a gorgeous and awe-inspiring hemisphere, like a relief map in