At 22/30 on 2/13/49 Mars date, we blasted off for Europa with fifty passengers, nine crewmen and a hold full of mining equipment. In that three hundred foot hull we were like sardines packed in a can. Sure, it was profiteering, but have you ever seen prosperity without it?
The trip out was almost too uneventful. We found a clear channel through the Belt and came through without a change of course. In those days no one had ever heard of deflectors, and a free passage through the Belt was a one in a thousand chance. Yet, being young and a bit cocky, I was willing to attribute it to my own spacemanship. I imagined that the trip back would be even easier.
The greeting we got at Europa didn't do much to teach me humility, either. Not many ships were getting through, and those miners wined and dined us in true frontier style.
It took six hours to unload our passengers and their gear, and another hour to round up a payload for the hop back to Mars. It was mostly ore and mail, but we did get two passengers.
We refueled out on the airless, rocky plain that served Europa as a space yard. Jupiter seemed to fill the sky. Deep space was a new experience to us and never had we grounded on a planet or moon so near to so large a primary. There were several cases of vertigo caused by the crazy feeling that we were upside down when we looked up at that hellishly big orb in the sky. That was one of the ever-present dangers on Europa. Enough of it and you found your mind going.
One passenger was a miner that cracked like that. The other was an attendant from the Triplanetary Medical Mission that had established a small base on the moonlet. In other words, his keeper.
The psycho came aboard in a straight-jacket and a blank bewildered look twisted his face as he climbed woodenly into the ventral valve. The attendant didn't look a great deal saner. Still, I was supremely confident, and my passenger's afflictions didn't worry me at all.
I was busily counting my imaginary profits as soon as we blasted free. To say that I was pleased with myself would be an understatement. Clem sought the sky like the proverbial homesick angel, her atomics throbbing beautifully under the care of Holcomb and his tube gang. Swanson and I set her into a hyperbolic trajectory with a couple of flourishes of the graphites and Jupiter moved into the proper position dead astern. It was all too easy....
A week passed before we crossed the outermost periphery of the Belt. Clem slipped between two small-sized mountains and we were in. For several hours the screens showed clear sky, and then came the deluge! There was no one in a thousand clear channel waiting for us this time. I learned what crossing the Belt really meant, but fast. Swanson and I sat at the consoles, eyes glued to the screens, sweat oozing off our ribs. Icy sweat, smelling of fear.