drawl—
Jawjuh, Jawjuh,
No peace Ah fahnd,
Jes’ an ole sweet song
Keeps Jawjuh awn mah mahnd ...
‘You grow any cotton over there in your Georgia, Vanya? Any corn or tobacco?’
He says, ‘Corn, tobacco, yes. Cotton, no. Also oranges and lemons like your California and Florida. Also tea, almonds, silk, sugarbeets, wine!’
‘What part of Georgia you come from? You a farm boy?’ He shakes his head. ‘From city, big city, capital. Tbilisi, what you call Tiflis.’
‘Don’t that beat all. I’m from the capital of Georgia, too.’ He smiles. ‘From my home comes Dzhugashvili.’
‘You don’t say. That some kind of vodka?’
He laughs. ‘No! Is Stalin, Yosef Stalin!’
‘Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Say, was he some kind of kin to you? That name of yours. Yashvili, it sounds like his, sort of chopped down.’
‘In my home, many names sound so. Cholokashvili, Orachelashvili, Baratashvili, Taktakishvili. But not only Georgians live in Georgia. Is like your country, melting pot. Sixty-five percent, Georgians. Ten percent, Russians. Rest, Armenians, Ossetians, Abkhazians, Ukrainians, Azeri Turks, Jews, Greeks, Kurds. Many peoples.’
And that’s the way it goes, the first few hours out from Earth, until that bad time comes, that first real bad bad time.
Now, the big problem on a trip like this, you know, isn’t air—the life-support system includes tanks of a compound that absorbs the carbon dioxide we exhale and releases one hundred per cent simon-pure air. As for food, we only need like less than a week’s worth because the whole round-trip to the Moon, going and coming, is only a hundred and thirty hours—which is fourteen hours short of six days—so food storage is no problem, either (hell, even if they forgot to store food aboard, we’d make it... we’d be mighty hungry and mighty skinny by the time we got back, but we’d make it—five and a half days? It would be rough, no fun, but not fatal). So air and food, like I say, are no problem. The problem is fuel.
Storing enough fuel for two lift-offs, enough to push this bucket of bolts plus a pair of grown men up and out of a gravitational field—twice—that’s the problem. We need every speck of fuel we can cram into this thing. Those slide-rule boys downstairs have got it figured down to the last drop—and there’s no margin for error, no room to spare for a safety factor...
That’s why I’m a mite upset, I guess you could say, when, second day out from Earth, I take myself a good long glim at the fuel storage gauge. ‘Vanya, old buddy,’ I say, ‘looky here.’
He looks. He shakes his head. ‘I see nothing, Johngenry.’
‘Figure it out, buddy. Figure out how much fuel we need to get where we’re going. Then, making allowances for the lesser gravity of the Moon, figure out how much we’ll need to get back. Then look at this gauge again.’
He uses pencil and paper. He double-checks his figures. Then he looks up at me with a big frown. ‘You are right, Johngenry.’
‘Not enough fuel to get us back?’
‘Not enough fuel to get us both back,’ he says.
Talk about conversation-stoppers. We just sit there, sweating. Oh, the air-conditioning is working fine, but we’re sweating. We’re thinking about weight—each other’s weight—we’re thinking about how that medium-size hunk of muscle and bone strapped in the next couch is going to make all the difference between the other one getting back to Earth or dying on the Moon. Weight: just a few pounds: just the difference between life and death. And we don’t say a thing for a long long time.
Finally, he breaks the silence. ‘Johngenry, this is... accident, you think?’
‘Sure. What else?’
‘I do net know. But how can it be accident? All is done with precision, with mathematical precision, after many tests. How can it be accident?’
‘Hell, man, what else could it be?’
He turns to me. ‘Johngenry, before I am coming to join you,
Jawjuh, Jawjuh,
No peace Ah fahnd,
Jes’ an ole sweet song
Keeps Jawjuh awn mah mahnd ...
‘You grow any cotton over there in your Georgia, Vanya? Any corn or tobacco?’
He says, ‘Corn, tobacco, yes. Cotton, no. Also oranges and lemons like your California and Florida. Also tea, almonds, silk, sugarbeets, wine!’
‘What part of Georgia you come from? You a farm boy?’ He shakes his head. ‘From city, big city, capital. Tbilisi, what you call Tiflis.’
‘Don’t that beat all. I’m from the capital of Georgia, too.’ He smiles. ‘From my home comes Dzhugashvili.’
‘You don’t say. That some kind of vodka?’
He laughs. ‘No! Is Stalin, Yosef Stalin!’
‘Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Say, was he some kind of kin to you? That name of yours. Yashvili, it sounds like his, sort of chopped down.’
‘In my home, many names sound so. Cholokashvili, Orachelashvili, Baratashvili, Taktakishvili. But not only Georgians live in Georgia. Is like your country, melting pot. Sixty-five percent, Georgians. Ten percent, Russians. Rest, Armenians, Ossetians, Abkhazians, Ukrainians, Azeri Turks, Jews, Greeks, Kurds. Many peoples.’
And that’s the way it goes, the first few hours out from Earth, until that bad time comes, that first real bad bad time.
Now, the big problem on a trip like this, you know, isn’t air—the life-support system includes tanks of a compound that absorbs the carbon dioxide we exhale and releases one hundred per cent simon-pure air. As for food, we only need like less than a week’s worth because the whole round-trip to the Moon, going and coming, is only a hundred and thirty hours—which is fourteen hours short of six days—so food storage is no problem, either (hell, even if they forgot to store food aboard, we’d make it... we’d be mighty hungry and mighty skinny by the time we got back, but we’d make it—five and a half days? It would be rough, no fun, but not fatal). So air and food, like I say, are no problem. The problem is fuel.
Storing enough fuel for two lift-offs, enough to push this bucket of bolts plus a pair of grown men up and out of a gravitational field—twice—that’s the problem. We need every speck of fuel we can cram into this thing. Those slide-rule boys downstairs have got it figured down to the last drop—and there’s no margin for error, no room to spare for a safety factor...
That’s why I’m a mite upset, I guess you could say, when, second day out from Earth, I take myself a good long glim at the fuel storage gauge. ‘Vanya, old buddy,’ I say, ‘looky here.’
He looks. He shakes his head. ‘I see nothing, Johngenry.’
‘Figure it out, buddy. Figure out how much fuel we need to get where we’re going. Then, making allowances for the lesser gravity of the Moon, figure out how much we’ll need to get back. Then look at this gauge again.’
He uses pencil and paper. He double-checks his figures. Then he looks up at me with a big frown. ‘You are right, Johngenry.’
‘Not enough fuel to get us back?’
‘Not enough fuel to get us both back,’ he says.
Talk about conversation-stoppers. We just sit there, sweating. Oh, the air-conditioning is working fine, but we’re sweating. We’re thinking about weight—each other’s weight—we’re thinking about how that medium-size hunk of muscle and bone strapped in the next couch is going to make all the difference between the other one getting back to Earth or dying on the Moon. Weight: just a few pounds: just the difference between life and death. And we don’t say a thing for a long long time.
Finally, he breaks the silence. ‘Johngenry, this is... accident, you think?’
‘Sure. What else?’
‘I do net know. But how can it be accident? All is done with precision, with mathematical precision, after many tests. How can it be accident?’
‘Hell, man, what else could it be?’
He turns to me. ‘Johngenry, before I am coming to join you,
Similar Books
