Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) by Operation: Outer Space

not underneath the ship. Cochrane puzzled tiredly over it for a
moment. Then he understood. The ship would lift on its rockets, hover
over the plate—which would be generating its half of the field—and
then Jones would switch on the apparatus in the ship itself. The
forward, needle-pointed nose of the ship would become another generator
of the Dabney field. The ship's inertia, in that field, would be
effectively reduced to a fraction of its former value. The rockets,
which might give it an acceleration of a few hundred feet per second
anywhere but in a Dabney field, would immediately accelerate the ship
and all its contents to an otherwise unattainable velocity. The
occupants of the rocket would lose their relative inertia to the same
degree as the ship. They should feel no more acceleration than from the
same rocket-thrust in normal space. But they would travel—
    Cochrane felt that there was a fallacy somehow, in the working of the
Dabney field as he understood it. If there was less inertia in the
Dabney field—why—a rocket shouldn't push as hard in it, because, it
was the inertia of the rocket-gases that gave the rocket-thrust. But
Cochrane was much too tired to work out a theoretic objection to
something he knew did work. He was almost dozing when Babs touched his
arm.
    "Space-suits, Mr. Cochrane."
    He got wearily into the clumsy costume. But he saw again that Babs wore
the shining-eyed look of rapturous adventure that he had seen her wear
before.
    They got out of the moon-jeep, one after the other. The sling came down
the space-ship's gleaming side. They got in it, together. It lifted
them.
    The vast, polished hull of the space-ship slid past them only ten feet
away. The ground diminished. They seemed less to be lifted than to float
skyward. And in this sling, in this completely unreal ascent, Cochrane
roused suddenly. He felt the acute unease which comes of height. He had
looked down upon Earth from a height of four thousand miles with no
feeling of dizziness. He had looked at Earth a quarter-million miles
away with no consciousness of depth. But a mere fifty feet above the
surface of the moon he felt like somebody swinging out of a skyscraper
window.
    Then the airlock opening was beside them, and the sling rolled inward.
They were in the lock, and Cochrane found himself pushing Babs away from
the unrailed opening. He was relieved when the airlock closed.
    Inside the ship, with the space-suits off, there was light and warmth,
and a remarkably matter-of-fact atmosphere. The ship had been built to
sell stock in a scheme for colonizing Mars. Prospective investors had
been shown through it. It had been designed to be a convincing
passenger-liner of space.
    It was. But Cochrane found himself not needed for any consultation, and
Jones was busy, and Bill Holden highly preoccupied. He saw Alicia
Keith—but her name was Simms now. She smiled at him but took Babs by
the arm. They went off somewhere.
    Cochrane waited for somebody to tell him what to look at and to admire.
He saw Jamison, and Bell, and he saw a man he had not seen before. He
settled down in a deeply upholstered chair. He felt neglected. Everybody
was busy. But mostly he felt tired.
    He slept.
    Then Babs was shaking his arm, her eyes shining.
    "Mr. Cochrane!" she cried urgently. "Mr. Cochrane! Wake up! Go on up to
the control-room! We're going to take off!"
    He blinked at her.
    "We!" Then he started up, and went five feet into the air from the
violence of his uncalculated movement. "We? No you don't! You go back to
Lunar City where you'll be safe!"
    Then he heard a peculiar drumming, rumbling noise. He had heard it
before. In the moonship. It was rockets being tested; being burned;
rockets in the very last seconds of preparation before take-off for the
stars.
    He didn't drop back to the floor beside the chair he'd occupied. The
floor rose to meet him.
    "I've had our baggage brought on board," said Babs, happily. "I'm going
because I'm a stockholder! Hold on