Rocket to Limbo

Rocket To Limbo by Alan E. Nourse

Cover

Quotes from the reviews:

“This is no ordinary star-jump: author Nourse had conceived a really credible plot with three dimensional characters motivated by plausible reasoning. Furthermore, he has an almost uncanny ability to visualize the strange sensations and settings of the world of the future.”

— Virginia Kirkus

“There is something haunting about Rocket to Limbo . . . The author suggests that if man has faith, he can literally rearrange his environment to suit himself!”

— English Journal

“The pace is good, suspense well sustained, and the conclusion satisfyingly surprising.”

— Best Sellers

“Better than most.”

— San Francisco Chronicle

Copyright Page

Rocket To Limbo

by Alan E. Nourse

Ace Books, Inc.

23 West 47^th Street,

New York 36, N. Y.

Copyright ©, 1957, by Alan E. Nourse

An Ace Book, By

arrangement With

David McKay Co.,

All Rights Reserved

Printed In U.S.A.

Rocket To Limbo

To J.McP.H., who will wright his own someday

Prologue

Ad astra, the words on the bronze plaque read.

The heavy metal sheet was bright and new, gleaming red-brown in the afternoon sunlight. Great bolts of brass buckled it to the base of the launching rack, a slab of gray granite cut in a single piece from the living rock of the mountains high above the rocket port. Reaching up from the rack, the Star Ship stood like a silvery needle, poised, graceful, eager to break away from the bonds of Earth—pointing upward toward the stars it sought.

To the stars.

The ship was named Argonaut in memory of that legendary ship and its crew that had plunged into unknown waters so many centuries before. She had been built with tireless care and devotion; years had been spent outfitting her for the brave journey she was now daring to make. The finest engineers on Earth had designed her to carry the growth tanks and fuel blocks, the oxygen and reprocessing equipment, the libraries and information banks that her crew would require during the long voyage. Her massive engines had been tested and retested to tolerances never before achieved on Earth.

They had to be, for these engines must not fail.

The ship’s name was carved on the bronze plaque, and the names of the men and women of her crew. Below this the dates were written:

Launched: March 3, 2008

Returned:

There was no way of knowing when she would return, if she ever did return. There had never been a ship like the

Argonaut before. This was no clumsy orbit-craft to carry colonists and miners to the outpost stations on Mars and Venus. The Argonaut was a Star Ship, designed for one purpose—to carry her crew across the black gulf of space between the stars. Her destination was Alpha Centauri; her voyage might take centuries to complete.

None of the crew who launched her would live to make landfall at her destination—they knew that. But their children, or perhaps their children’s children might survive to send the ship blasting homeward again.

The Argonaut was bound on the Long Passage.

Up on the scaffolding surrounding the ship, lights were shining, men were moving quickly up and down as last-minute preparations were completed. The gantry crane crept up and down, up and down, loading aboard the final crates of supplies. For weeks the giant nuclear engines had been warming, preparing for the sudden demand of power to thrust the ship away from Earth’s gravity. A chronometer clicked off the dwindling minutes. Gradually the scaffolding cleared of men; the crane at last came down and stayed, its lights blinking out.

High up on the hull a pressure door swung slowly shut, sealing the silvery skin of the great ship.