Hanging by a Thread

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction August 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  HANGING BY A THREAD

  By DAVID GORDON

  _It's seldom that the fate of a shipful of men literally hangs by a thread--but it's also seldom that a device, every part of which has been thoroughly tested, won't work...._

  Illustrated by Douglas

  * * * * *

  Jayjay Kelvin was sitting in the lounge of the interplanetary cargovessel _Persephone_, his feet propped up on the low table in front ofthe couch, and his attention focused almost totally on the small bookhe was reading. The lounge itself was cozily small; the _Persephone_had not been designed as a passenger vessel, and the two passengersshe was carrying at the time had been taken on as an accommodationrather than as a money-making proposition. On the other hand, the_Persephone_ and other ships like her were the only method of gettingto where Jayjay Kelvin wanted to go; there were no regular passengerruns to Pluto. It's hardly the vacation spot of the Solar System.

  On the other side of the table, Jeffry Hull was working industriouslywith pencil and paper. Jayjay kept his nose buried in his book--notbecause he was deliberately slighting Hull, but because he wasgenuinely interested in the book.

  _"Now wait," said Masterson, looking thoughtfully at the footprints onthe floor of the cabin where Jed Hooker had died. "Jest take anotherlook at these prints, Charlie. Silver Bill Greer couldn't have gotmuch more than his big toe into boots that small! Somethin' tells methe Pecos Kid has...."_

  "... Traveled nearly two billion miles since then," said Hull.

  Jayjay lifted his head from his book. "What?" He blinked. "I'm sorry;I wasn't listening. What did you say?"

  The younger man was still grinning triumphantly. "I said: We areapproaching turnover, and, according to my figures, nine days ofacceleration at one standard gee will give us a velocity of seventeenmillion, five hundred and fifty miles per hour, and we have covered adistance of nearly two billion miles." Then he added: "That is, if Iremembered my formulas correctly."

  Jayjay Kelvin looked thoughtfully at the ceiling while he ran throughthe figures in his head. "Something like that. It's the right order ofmagnitude, anyway."

  Hull looked a little miffed. "What answer did you get?"

  "A little less than eight times ten to the third kilometers persecond. I was just figuring roughly."

  Hull scribbled hastily, then smiled again. "Eighteen million miles anhour, that would be. My memory's better than I thought at first. I'mglad I didn't have to figure the time; doing square roots is a processI've forgotten."

  That was understandable, Jayjay thought. Hull was working for hisdoctorate in sociology, and there certainly wasn't much necessity fora sociologist to remember his freshman physics, much less hishigh-school math.

  Still, it was somewhat of a relief to find that Hull was interested insomething besides the "sociological reactions of Man in space". Theboy had spent six months in the mining cities in the Asteroid Belt,and another six investigating the Jovian chemical synthesis planes andtheir attendant cities. Now he was heading out to spend a few moremonths observing the "sociological organization Gestalt" of the menand women who worked at the toughest job in the System--taking theheavy metals from the particularly dense sphere of Pluto.

  Hull began scribbling on his paper again, evidently lost in the joysof elementary physics, so Jayjay Kelvin went back to his book.

  He had just read three words when Hull said: "Mr. Kelvin, do you mindif I ask a question?"

  Jayjay looked up from his book and saw that Jeffry Hull had revertedto his role of the earnest young sociologist. Ah, well. "As I've toldyou before, Mr. Hull, questions do not offend me, but I can'tguarantee that the answers won't offend you."

  "Yes; of course," Hull said in his best investigatory manner. "Iappreciate that. It's just that ... well, I have trained myself tonotice small things. The little details that are sometimes soimportant in sociological investigations. Not, you understand, as anattempt to pry into the private life of the individual, but to roundout the overall picture."

  Jayjay nodded politely. To his quixotic and pixie-like mind, the term_overall picture_ conjured up the vision of a large and carefullydetailed painting of a pair of dirty overalls, but he kept the smileoff his face and merely said: "I understand."

  "Well, I've noticed that you're quite an avid reader. That isn'tunusual in a successful businessman, of course; one doesn't become asuccessful businessman unless one has a thirst for knowledge."

  "Hm-m-m," said Jayjay.

  "But," Hull continued earnestly, "I noticed that you've read most ofthe ... uh ... historical romances in the library...."

  "You mean Westerns," Jayjay corrected quietly.

  "Uh ... yes. But you don't seem to be interested in the modernadventure fiction. May I ask why?"

  "Sure." Jayjay found himself becoming irrationally irritated withHull. He knew that the young sociologist had nothing to do with hisown irritation, so he kept the remarks as impersonal as possible. "Inthe first place, you, as a sociologist, should know what market mostfiction is written for."

  "Why ... uh ... for people who want to relax and--"

  "Yes," Jayjay cut in. "But what kind? The boys on Pluto? The asteroidslicers? No. There are four billion people on Earth and less than fivemillion in space. The market is Earth.

  "Also, most writers have never been any farther off the surface ofEarth than the few miles up that an intercontinental cruiser takesthem.

  "And yet, the modern 'adventure' novel invariably takes place inspace.

  "I can read Westerns because I neither know nor care what the OldAmerican West was _really_ like. I can sit back and sink into thenever-never land that the Western tells about and enjoy myself becauseI am not forced to compare it with reality.

  "But a 'space novel' written by an Earthside hugger is almost as mucha never-never land, and I have to keep comparing it with what isactually going on around me. And it irritates me."

  "But, aren't some of them pretty well researched?" Hull asked.

  "Obviously, you haven't read many of them," Jayjay said. "Sure, someof them are well researched. Say one half of one per cent, to beliberal. The rest don't know what they're talking about!"

  "But--"

  "For instance," Jayjay continued heatedly, "you take a look at everyblasted one of them that has anything to do with a spacecraft havingtrouble. They have to have an accident in space in order to disablethe spaceship so that the hairy-chested hero can show what a great guyhe is. So what does the writer do? He has the ship hit by a meteor! Ameteor!"

  Hull thought that over for a second. "Well," he said tentatively, "aship _could_ get hit by a meteor, couldn't it?"

  Jayjay closed his eyes in exasperation. "Of course it could! And anair-ship can run into a ruby-throated hummingbird, too. But how oftendoes it happen?

  "Look: We're hitting it up at about one-fortieth of the velocity oflight right now. What do you think would happen if we got hit by ameteor? We'd be gone before we knew what had happened.

  "Why doesn't it happen? Because we can spot any meteor big enough tohurt us long before it contacts us, and we can dodge it or blast itout of the way, depending on the size.

  "You've seen the outer hull of this ship. It's an inch thick shell ofplastic, supported a hundred feet away from the steel hull by longbooms. Anything small enough t
o get by the detectors will be smallenough to burn itself out on that hull before it reaches the ship.The--"

  * * * * *

  Jayjay Kelvin was not ordinarily a man to make long speeches,especially when he knew he was telling someone something that theyalready knew. But this time, he was beating one of his favorite drums,and he went on with his tirade in a fine flush of fury.

  Alas ... poor Jayjay.

  Actually, Jayjay Kelvin can't be blamed for his attitude. All he wassaying was that it was highly improbable that a spaceship would be hitby a meteor. In one way, he was perfectly right, and, in another, hewas dead