Skyprobe by Philip McCutchan

after the initial deceleration of the retro-rockets. Danvers-Marshall didn’t, in fact, move far—he didn’t need to do more than reach down by his feet. In his hand he held a tiny metal cylinder which he now placed against a red lead, one of hundreds running all around the capsule’s interior. Once the cylinder was in position he flicked a switch in its base and that was all he needed to do. In front of him Schuster’s fingers activated the retro-rocket control, and Schuster and Morris tensed to take the tremendous backward pressure that would come on their bodies and build up agonizingly as the capsule went into its sudden and rapid deceleration.
    After a couple of seconds Schuster, with his ground communication switched to transmit, quietly said, “Christ.” Down below at Kennedy Klaber heard that. Schuster put his hand back on the retro-rocket control, pressed off and on, off and on again. Nothing happened. He tried the alternative system . . . still no result. They were way beyond their position now. Schuster poured sweat into his helmet. His heart pumping rapidly, he fought down a feeling of incipient panic . . . mission control had been right after all, in fact had maybe not acted fast enough. There was decidedly something wrong somewhere. They weren’t going to make it. He said harshly, “Something’s gone crazy.”
    Then experience and training took over. “Skyprobe calling control . . . am unable to fire the retro-rockets. Repeat, am unable to fire the retro-rockets ... on either system. I am negativing further attempts at splashdown on this orbit. Over.”
    “Control to Skyprobe.” The voice was sharp with anxiety. “What is causing the trouble? Over.”
    “Come up and tell me!” Schuster’s voice, too, was harsh and strained; his hands were shaking. “Could be it’s the metal stresses—couldn’t it? Whatever it is, there’s a fault We can’t ditch till I have located this. I’ll investigate while making another orbit.”
    “You are okay to do this?”
    “Sure. I find no other fault. Over and out.”
    Behind Schuster, Danvers-Marshall straightened, switched off the metal cylinder and concealed it again in his gloved hand. He had a curious look in his eyes, a look of relief and hope and triumph. On the ground mission control went into immediate emergency routine and all over the world the telephone and cable and radio links got busy. Klaber himself called the Schuster and Morris homes.
TWELVE
    Maybe, Shaw thought, he should do something, anything, before he became physically too weak to act at all.
    He could have been in the shaft for almost any length of time. It could have been hours, it could equally well have been days for all he could tell. Swinging at the end of the rope in the pitch blackness, touching now one slimy, greasy wall and now another, knocking the crumbling brickwork, he was sick from the filthy smell in which he existed, tired and hungry and thirsty. His head ached and his eyes were stinging and his chest and armpits felt rubbed raw by the rope. Three times more the manhole cover had been opened up, three times he had answered that he wouldn’t talk. He was still playing for time because it was all he could do. Someone might get on the track of Katherine Danvers-Marshall. . . and the longer he could hang on, the greater the chances of her trail leading to this place.
    But—chance was the right word! It was a hell of a long shot. . . .
    And he wasn’t to be allowed it anyway. More hours, days or weeks passed and then he heard the cover above him coming off once again and he saw the bright light streaming down. Horn called, “You’re coming up.”
    A moment later Shaw felt himself being pulled slowly up the shaft. It was a long haul and it took a long time before he was lifted right through into the cellar. He was lifted almost to the gallows-head, with his legs clear of the shaft. He was lifted into electric light and the dark behind the air grating told him it was