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 literallyhangs by a thread—but it's also seldom that a device, everypart of which has been thoroughly tested, won't work....
Illustrated by Douglas
ayjay 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 Persephonehad 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, thePersephone 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