THE AMAZING ATOMIC ROCKET

Mark Styles stepped from his beat up model-T and whistled slowly as he took in the front entrance of the Starr Estate. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright back in the thirties, it looked like a house of the future, even now. The front gates were elegant art deco affairs that hadn’t cared for the changing of the seasons and the shifting of style. Heroic figures held aloft the sides of the doors, statues with stark features and bold proportions. Along the top of the gate read the Latin inscription of the Starr family.

“Ad Astra? The heck does that mean?” Jimmy Katz asked, leaning his head from the side of the car. Mark chuckled.

“Kid, I pay you to take pictures, take pictures,” he said and Jimmy hurried from the car to set up his camera. He snapped a shot quickly, then another – and the front gate slowly opened as Mark himself took in the rest of the mansion beyond. Two wings, three stories, statuary in a tasteful style that spoke of great wealth and greater restraint ... but there were odder things too. The greenhouse dome on the left side. The large garage. What looked to be a target shooting range, with rifles of various kinds propped up under an awning, where they could be snatched up at a moment’s notice.

But what he noticed most was the overgrown nature of the garden.

“This Starr bird doesn’t have many guests, does she?” he muttered, his unlit cigarette dancing at the corner of his mouth.

“Sure doesn’t, Mr. Styles!”

“I was talking to myself, kid,” Mark said, looking at Jimmy. Jimmy flushed, then held up his camera. Then his jaw hit the floor – and the camera flashed at the same time. Mark turned away to see what it was he had snapped and...

“Fhew,” Mark whistled to himself as the gate started to slide open and he caught his first sign of anyone alive on the Starr estate. The fact she was the prettiest looking girl he’d ever seen since ‘45 in a little townhouse two miles east of the Seine just made the little black and white uniform she was all dolled up in kick even harder. French maid outfits were really their own reward. She had opened the gate with some kind of electric device in her hands, and she smiled brightly at him and Mark.

“Mademoiselle,” Mark said, immediately slipping back into the passable French he picked up over there. “Enchantée!”

“Oh, hah, tarnation, I don’t speak German,” she said, with a thick Tennessee accent. She did curtsy. “My name’s Claudette! Why don’t ya’ll come in. The Missus is waiting fer ya in the observatory! Oh, none of ya’ll are interested in drinkin’, right?”

“Uh, I don’t mind a snort or two, why?” Mark asked as Claudette fished a small box from one of the many folds of her frilly uniform. She beamed and bent forward to hold out the box – which gave a remarkable view of her ... ah ... photogenic side. Jimmy, who had been a short-pint back when Mark had been killing Nazis, looked as if he was about to faint, his eyes going completely crossed as he tried to look right down Claudette’s dress. Mark, from his lofty and mature age of twenty six, was considerably better at hiding his glance and elbowed him.

“Well, uh, the Missus says y’all wanna skip any kind of whiskey or spirits after taking these,” she said.

“What are they?” Mark asked, taking one of the pills from the case curiously. They were tiny white oval shaped pills, looking a bit like Tylenol or aspirin. He looked from the pill to Claudette who smiled at him.

“Potassium Eye Oh Die!” she said, bringing out the elemental name with a flair only someone from the south could. “Missus says it’ll keep yer guts safe as houses. Just in case.”

Mark’s eyebrows shot right up. “Your missus is a doctor now?”

“Doctor, yeah!” Claudette said, turning – her skirts swishing. “She got her first doctorate when she was ten years old, mister! She became a medical doctor during the war, and won the gold medal-”

“Twice, yeah,” Mark said, nodding as they walked together through the front door. The lobby of the Starr estate had a huge portrait of a forbearing looking older man that Mark was fairly sure was Jasmine Starr’s eccentric grandfather, who had raised her ever since her parents had died on the Lusitania. Jacob Starr had been an oil baron, then a telephone innovator, then a reclusive coot after his claims of receiving messages from space aliens had been debunked by the scientific community. He had died in obscurity and left his vast fortune to Jasmine. According to the research Mark had done, she had doubled it with clever investments ... then lost almost all of it in a string of economic decisions that could only be considered ‘utterly baffling.’

“In fencing,” Claudette said, taking the stairs ahead of her with a cheerful humming. Mark dry swallowed his pill. Jimmy, trying to ape him, started to choke. But that might have been because the stairs leading from the lobby to the second story of the estate were remarkably steep and the view was...

“The observatory is right this way, gentlemen,” Claudette said, cheerfully as she stepped off the stairs and turned to the right, her hips and her high heels working together to get Jimmy to trip over his own feet. Mark stepped up hurriedly and followed after Claudette, leaning in to speak quietly to her.

“Fencer, doctor, tinkerer, entrepreneur,” he said, ticking the things off on his fingers. “Private investigator.”

“Private investigator?” Claudette chuckled, shaking her head. “Shucks no, the Missus doesn’t do ... how you say it, gumshoe work?”

“She led to the arrest of Fatts Ricci,” Mark said, dryly.

“Oh, that was just a side thing,” Claudette said, brushing off the event that had rocked New York City to its roots for a solid three weeks and implicated several senators in the criminal underground – and had made Jasmine Starr a household name ... again.

The maid opened the door leading to the observatory and Mark stepped inside and realized that the breadth of his interview may have gone further than he expected. The observatory was not, as he had guessed, a telescope or something. It wasn’t a place to gaze at stars. It was, in fact, a gantry bay that looked down upon the insides of a workshop that looked like it should have been turning out tanks or B-52s, not sitting in the hands of some weird bachelorette in upper New York State. The machine tools were sophisticated, sturdy, and well used and the fruits of their work sat in the center of the garage, easily viewed from the observatory.

“Is that a...” Mark bit back the stronger word. “Is that a rocket?”

“You are quite correct, Mr. Styles! That is none other than my very own rocket – I call her ... Atomo!”

The arrival of Jasmine Starr was almost as arresting as the arrival of her maid. She was less conventionally attractive – skinnier, taller, more mannish in her dress and mannerisms – but that didn’t stop her from being one of the prettiest girls that Mark had ever seen. Her hair was short and frizzy, clinging tight to her head like she was a kind of pixie, and her face was all sleek angles and hard edges, with bright blue eyes that seemed to take in everything at once. She was dressed in simple coveralls that were stained with grease, and had a clipboard in her hand, covered with neat, even handwriting. She beamed at him as she held out her hand – work roughened and strong in his grip – and shook.

“Please, call me Mark,” Mark said.

“Then you can call me Jaz. My favorite kind of music, you know,” she said, nodding. “Pioneered by remarkable people and appreciated round the world, Jazz...” She looked down at the rocket, then looked back at Mark, beaming at him. “I see you’re impressed.”

Jimmy snapped a picture.

“Impressed? Hell, I...” Mark whistled. “It looks like someone took one of those big V2 things and blew it up three times as big!”

“Ah, the work of Herr Von Braun, yes,” Jaz said, shaking her head with a little thin frown. “I have differences with the man – but that’s not what you’re here about. You want to know what the Mad Spinster of New York is all about.”

“Well-”

“Come!” Jaz turned and then headed to the side of the observatory, where a metal pole was set against the ceiling, running down to the next level – like a firehouse. She casually swung onto it and gripped to it, sliding down with a squeak. Jimmy gulped and Mark, remembering the kid was scared of everything, put his hand on his shoulder.

“Stay here, Kid. Snap shots of the rocket, get lots of pictures. This is going to be a big story,” he said, nodding, then turned to the pole.

He stepped away from it a moment later, his heart racing despite himself – and then he heard a squeak and a thump behind him. Turning, he saw Claudette untangling herself from the pole as if she slid down it every day. Mark changed his mental evaluation of the curvaceous maid a bit, anyone who could take a pole like that in a dress like hers was someone not to underestimate.

Jas gestured him forward, pointing. “Do you know how rockets operate?”

“Not really, Jas, no,” Mark said.

“Ah, yes, well!” Jas’s finger stabbed out. “A rocket requires power and reaction mass. In Von Braun’s clumsy devices, the power and reaction mass are one in the same! Rocket fuel can use, for instance, hydrogen and oxygen mixed together and ignited, much as we use gasoline in our automobiles. However, this is rather wasteful and hard to control. There is a far more effective and small source of power that can be utilized for rockets – separate from the reaction mass, so that one may ‘refuel’ the rocket with nothing more complex than water!”

Mark took his cigarette from his lips, holding it nervously, thinking of how explosive hydrogen gas was. Then he furrowed his brow. “What kind of power can that be, Jas?” He smirked. “I’m guessing it isn’t clean burning Blue Coal.”

“Ah, no. While Blue Coal might be more than enough to warm the homes and cook the meals of millions of hard working Americans – cleanly, safely, and cheaper than the next leading brand, I must add – my rocket requires a significantly more potent source of energy. No, Mark ... I turned to the might of the atom.”

Mark’s eyebrows shot straight to the underside of his bangs. He looked back at the rocket, then back to Jas, who had placed her hands confidently on her hips.

“This rocket is powered by A-bombs?” he asked.

“No, Mark, it is powered by an atomic reactor! With a slug of Uranium-235 a fraction the size of the fuel in one of Von Braun’s clankers, we will have power enough to travel to Pluto and back again! The engine works by heating and thrusting the reaction mass out of the rocket’s nozzle, here. The nozzle, as you can see, is built upon gimbals that allow for it to be canted at various angles, allowing for steering. But for when the full strength of the engine is not required, my rocket is covered with small thrusters that use nothing more complex than compressed gasses to push the nose, adjust the spin, and any number of maneuvers that will serve of great use in orbit.”

“Orbit?” Mark asked, his head spinning. “You ... you’re telling me you plan to go into orbit?”

Jas beamed at him, her blue eyes flashing. “Me? No, Mark. I do not plan to go into orbit alone. Why do you think I asked for you specifically-” Mark blinked, having not known that she had asked for him specifically at all! “-you served two years in the War and so I know you are brave. You reported on seven of the fifteen most important news stories of the past year, and most importantly ... you’re a looker.” She winked at him and Mark snorted.

“You expect me to climb into that a-bomb powered rocket machine and fly with you into space? So I can report on it?” Mark asked.

“Of course!” Jas said.

“All cause you said I’m a looker?” Mark asked. “Lady, I’m flattered, but my mom didn’t raise a fool.”

Jas’ eyes glittered. “Did she raise a coward, then?”

Mark paused.

He clicked his teeth.

“Do you really want to let the Reds beat us into space?” Jas whispered, quietly.

Mark groaned. “Ah. Hell. You only live once.”

Jas beamed, then kissed his cheek – one quick peck that caused Mark to blush and grumble.

“Hey, Jas, why do we gotta wear these fruity get ups?” Mark asked as he eyed the foil suit that he had been handed while in the locker rooms that adjoined the rocket bay. The foil glittered and shone before his eyes.

“They’re not fruity!” Jas called through the door. “You must be nude beneath them – they only will operate properly if they can press to your skin directly. Vacuum is a harsh mistress. There are two means to protect one’s flesh from the dangers of near-zero pressure: The first is to fill a balloon with air, but this is awkward and clumsy and heavy. The second is to have the skin of the suit cling tightly to your skin, providing direct kinetic reinforcement to your body.” She chuckled. “Hence why I designed these, my kinetic pressure star suits!”

“Do they all come in silver?” Mark muttered as he began to strip his shirt off, wincing at the tug against his old bullet wounds.

“Of course not!” Jas chuckled.

“D-Do ... I have ta wear ‘em too, Missus?”

Mark’s head snapped up at the faint southern drawl.

“Yes, my dear Claudette, there’s no way I’m taking that rocket up without you.”

Mark began to tug his suit on as quickly as he could, the idea of seeing Claudette in one nearly making him hyperventilate. He zipped and found that the kinetic pressure star suit was remarkable comfortable and, once it was no longer a bunch of crinkly, reflective foil, quite attractive looking. He eyed himself in the mirror in his changing room: Lantern jaw, swarthy skin, a furrowed scar along his chin from a very near miss, and dark gray eyes, all framed in a silver suit that showed off his rangy, muscular body. He had to admit, it looked good.

Not quite as good as his old GI uniform, but good.

He stepped from the locker to find that his expectations had been right. Claudette was devastating in a french maid outfit that just barely managed to contain her modesty. In a bright gold suit that looked as if it had been painted onto her body, it was nearly impossible for his brain to function. The suit also provided ... ah ... support. Which made his cheeks flush and his hand go down to adjust the suit, trying to get a certain part of his anatomy to be a tiny bit less obvious. Fortunately, Claudette had no eyes for him – or anyone else. Her hands were over her face, covering her eyes and cheeks as she groaned.

“T-Tarnation, missus! This ain’t a proper getup for a lady!”

“Nonsense,” Jas said, stepping from her locker, where she had her bright red suit on, a bubble shaped objects tucked under both arms. She shifted her grip on them, then held them out, revealing that they had rings that would socket right onto the neck holes of the suits. “Here, put on your vacuum air helmets. They’ll keep you from suffocating in space.”

“Well ain’t that just lovely...” Claudette moaned, putting the helmet on and latching it into place with a twist, wincing as she did so. Mark did likewise.

“Well, it’s more comfortable than my old shrapnel stopper, that’s for sure,” he said, nodding.

“The suits have radio-phones built into them, so we should be able to communicate while within range. Once we leave the Earth’s atmosphere, we will have to be in line of sight – no ionosphere once we’re beyond it, ha ha!” She beamed.

“How far do you plan to go?”

“Oh, not far, not far,” Jas said, confidently. Mark frowned, then followed after her as she strode from the locker. He lifted his gaze to the observatory, where Jimmy was snapping pictures still. He raised his hand to him – hoped that he’d be back in time to write some copy – and then climbed onto the rocket after Jas. The ladder in question jutted from the bottom of the rocket and led to a circular room that had another ladder that ran along the spine the ship. Jas gestured around herself, smiling cheerfully. “This is the engineering deck. Below us is the radiation shroud, which keeps us safe from the uranium that powers the ship. There, there, and there, are the reaction mass tanks that contain the water for the flight. We have nearly twenty kilometers per second of delta-V in those tanks and, good thing too, they take up seventy five percent of the ship!”

Jas then smiled. “But that? That is the most important part.”

She nodded to a large red button that was situated next to a hatch in the floor. Mark frowned, walking to it, reading the stenciled letter on it: SCRAM.

“What does scram mean?” Mark asked.

Jas smiled. Her expression was ... enigmatic. “Lets hope we don’t ever find out. Now! As I was saying, this rocket has loads of Delta-V!”

“And what is that?” Mark asked, climbing up after Jas as she swung herself up the ladder. He ... rather wished he had been beneath Claudette, but as it was...

This view had advantages.

“Change in velocity, Mark! In space, you cannot simply fly by flapping your wings. Every bit of reaction mass we use, we can never get back without refueling. And so, we measure our legs in how much we can change our velocity – our direction and our motion relative to whatever it is we’re blasting away from. The Earth has an escape velocity of about ten kilometers per second of Delta-V, thus, we need to only burn through half of our water to get into a stable orbit.”

“That doesn’t seem too great,” Mark said. “One of my buddies, Chip? He was a flyboy...” He paused as they came to the top of the rocket, where a cluttered, three man cockpit was waiting. The whole room looked like the middle point between a B-52 super fortress bomber, a submarine, and some madman’s idea of what a radio station would look like – and then, once all that had been flung together, the madman had gone and put it all on its side, so the backs of the chairs faced the ladder, rather than forward like they should.

Mark shook his head. “If Chip burned up more than half his fuel in a sortie – if he had to use most of that just getting from England to France, he’d have been in trouble.”

“Come on, Mark!” Jas said, swinging herself into the highest perch. “You forget two things.” She began to strap herself in. “Firstly, we aren’t going into orbit to fight the Nazis. Those sorry fools aren’t going to menace the world again, not in our lifetime.” She flicked a few switches and the whole rocket began to hum softly, as if it was beginning to awaken a great beast indie of itself. Distant clanks and burring noises filled the air.

Mark swung into the seat to Jas’ lower left, strapping himself in as well. As the buckles clicked home, he frowned. “And the second thing I forgot?”

“Once you are in orbit, Mark, you’re halfway to anywhere,” Jas said, cheerfully. “That’s the hardest part, after all. Now, before you, you will see my very own radio telescope and electromagnetic ray distance analyzer. They should be relatively simple to use – they’ll alert us if anything attempts to approach us in space. Claudette, my dear, you are on the weapons console.”

“W-Weapons!?” Claudette squeaked. “Missus, you said you weren’t gonna arm this dang thing!”

“Well, Claudette, I may have stretched the line between truth and falsehood a smidge,” Jas said, lifting her right hand and indicating the amount of stretching with her finger and thumb – the distance was needle thin. She beamed. “It’s merely for self defense. Just in case my old grandfather was right about those signals...”

Mark frowned. “Why is she on the weapons and not me?”

“The weapons are slaved to my magneto-computational device,” Jas said, cheerfully. “All Claudette has to do is authorize it. Your tools require a smidgen more finesse. Besides, Claudette is the most level headed of all of us and least likely to open fire on peaceful people, right?”

Claudette mewed softly, like a soaked kitten.

“What kind of guns do you put on a rocket? Death rays?” Mark asked.

“Preposterous! The energy requirement on a death ray is prohibitive and absurd, compared to the relative efficiency of gunpowder,” Jas’ eyes sparkled and she beamed at him. “The nose cannon has a magneto-catapult loaded with iron dust, to swat anything lightly armored out of space, while the sides have a pair of ball turret mounted nuclear pellet coilguns. I found that once uranium is used up as a power source, the slugs are remarkably effective at piercing armor. When jacketed in ferrous metals – say, iron bands – it can be accelerated by magnetic fields to incredible speeds!”

Mark whistled. “I wish we had you around back when we were dusting it up with Jerry.”

Jas chuckled again, then settled into her seat. “Oh, the OSS was quite happy to have a seventeen year old with my mental flexibility, I’ll have you know.” She chuckled. “And ... other kinds of flexibility too.”

Mark blanched.

Then he learned that Jasmine Starr, for all of her qualities, did have one fault.

She didn’t believe in anything as pedestrian as ‘counting down.’

In darkness, the only light came from the cathode ray projectors, shining on scales and glittering nictitating membranes. A claw tip came down, pointing at the bright white smear that appeared every rotation of the radar-scopes.

Sibilant voices hissed.

“Commander Vile ... a ssssship hasssss launched...”

The chuckle that came from the rear of the bridge was as vicious as its namesake.

“Well, then, Signalzard Greenscale. It seems that the hostages are about to have a ... terrible wedding.”

“No, sssssssssir.” The claw tapped again. “The launch ... came from ... Earth...”

Silver gauntlets crashed down on black armrests. Glowing red eyes flared as a shape moved in the shadowed bridge – standing. Then a gleaming silver finger pointed towards the astrogation globe that swirled in the center of the cruiser’s bridge.

“Set our course to intercept! Prepare the Robot Death Rockets for immediate launch!”

“Yesssss ssssssssssir!” A scaled tail thumped the deck plating and claws clacked as they operated toggles and dials.

And on the glimmering green screen, the white dot began to draw closer...

And closer...

And closer still.

Claudette did not enjoy being in space.

But this was not the first time she had been dragged along despite her best wishes on the Missus’ madcap schemes. There had been the underground civilization that she had explored when she was fourteen, and the thawed out primeval dinosaur that they had had to flee from when they had both been both going to college. And the less said about Count Von Jager, the better!

This, though?

This?

This was just too much. Her arms crossed over her chest as she tried to keep some kind of modesty when she was dressed in nothing more than a thin layer of gold paint – or so it felt – while her stomach tried to do loop dee loops in her belly. The reporter, Mark (Gosh, he’s handsome, a tiny part of her brain was thinking) looked as if he was just barely keeping his stomach down as the rocket felt as if it had begun to fall ... but rather than the fall terminating in their immediate death, it just went on and on forever.

The Missus laughed, softly, then tapped at her controls. “We’re out! We’ve attained orbit!”

“Amazing,” Mark said, his voice tight. “Why aren’t there any windows?”

“Windows?” The Missus sounded confused. “Oh! Uh, the wheel, there.”

Mark reached out and started to crank a wheel. With a slow clattering noise, the shutters that covered the windows began to retract, folding up on themselves...

Claudette forget her modesty entirely.

The Earth hung above them – a glittering orb of white clouds and blue, blue oceans. It looked as vast as she could imagine ... and yet, so, incredibly small. She shook her head, faintly, while the Missus chuckled, her voice soft. “That is where every king and emperor, every mad handed dictator, every Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler, every President and celebrity that has ever lived has been – a tiny blue dot in a sea of night...” She shook her head, slowly. “Not so tiny here, but we’re but in the shallows of the cosmic ocean!”

“G-Gee, Missus,” Claudette said, her voice soft. “I never thought it’d be so ... pretty.”

Mark nodded. He blew a little kiss at the window.

“I bet yer friend Chip is going to be so ding dang jealous when you get to tell him about this!” Claudette said, trying to relax into her seat – it was hard without the press of gravity, or without arms to brace with. As it was, she was not unlocking her arms from over her chest until she was in proper clothes.

Mark opened his mouth, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I bet he will.” He looked back out the window again. Then he frowned. “Well, I’ll be a son of a...” He bit himself off, then leaned forward. “There are five, I repeat, five bogies on this scope – they look like they’re coming towards us faster than a damn bullet!”

“Retrograde or prograde?” The Missus asked, her voice dipping into the confident attitude she always had when things were about to go very, very, very, very wrong.

“ ... the ... indicator says RG, so, retrograde.”

“Racing Rockets, who launched their birds retrograde?” The Missus muttered under her breath. “I didn’t think the Reds would be so wasteful. And five? Their Sputnik program is still on the drawing board stages!”

“Missus, I got a bad feelin’ about this!” Claudette said.

“Do we have them on the scopes?” The Missus asked, smiling over her shoulder at Mark.

“We do ... damn they’re fast! I can’t get more than a blur outta this thing.”

“Their orbits are very high ... they look kind of small, their radar signal bounce is half our size – who in damnation launched these things?” The Missus’ brow knitted. Then she reached over and pulled down her intercom, speaking into it. “Unknown space rockets, this is Jasmine Starr of the Atomo. You are cutting your orbits very close to mine – please respond.”

Silence.

Claudette started to chew on her knuckle, whimpering.

“I repeat, this is Jasmine Starr of the Atomo, please respond or we shall be forced to assume you are hostile!”

“Shit!” Mark exclaimed. “They’re opening fire on us! Death rays or something!”

Claudette moaned in terror – while she saw the scope-screen flashing up on the forward view of the rocket. It showed the five glints that were the approaching rockets, and the glittering streams of green light rushing towards them.

The Missus chuckled. “No, you are quite mistaken – those aren’t beams or rays of any kind! Those appear to be pyrotechnic tracers, attached to their bullets, to aid in their targeting.”

“Just like on Normandy...” Mark said through gritted teeth.

“Quite! But it seems they fired too soon!” The Missus touched the controls and the rocket rumbled and hissed. Pressure shoved Claudette back into her seat – and through the window, she could see streamers of glittering green whip past the rocket, almost like sinuous bands of liquid. “Claudette, be a dear and activate ... the magneto-catapult.”

Claudette looked down at her console and forced her shaking hands to move. She triggered flicked on the electro-catapult and waited for the magneto-calculator that the Missus had mentioned to take over. Instead, a bulky circular screen popped out of the console, showing her a grainy televisual feed of the view outside of the rocket. A moment later, a metal grating swung down, layering a circular cross-hair on the center of the screen, with a grid providing rangefinding context for the five streams of glittering green smearing across the view.

A pair of handles swung free and pressed against her forearms. Claudette meeped.

“Missus! You said-”

“The magneto-calculator does most of the work, don’t fear! Just keep the circle on the center of their formation and when it chimes, pull the trigger!” the Missus said, and the entire rocket shuddered again as they maneuvered to dodge another streamer of whipping tracers. This time, the Atomo was not quite fast enough, and the whole hull rattled and clanked and groaned as the Missus frowned, her eyes intent as she glared ahead of her.

Claudette whimpered as she swung the crosshairs ... they locked and she felt the handles ticking loudly – the upper right corner of the cross-hair had a small mechanical indicator that clicked up moment by moment, towards completion as the magneto-calculator did its best to target...

The handles chimed through her gloves.

Claudette closed her eyes and thumbed down the triggers.

The pressure pushing her back into her seat lessened, then cut off entirely.

She opened one eye. “A-Are we all right, Missus?”

“They’ve gone over the horizon, you got a great shot!” The Missus said.

“You got three of them,” Mark said, nodding.

“They’ll be back around again,” The Missus said, her voice set and determined. “We should flack up – those hits were all in the midsection, but we could have been a lot less lucky...”