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White to move and mate in two #414 -- The Wind From The Sun [1]

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Date: 2023-10-05  

Stories of the Space Age

Preface



This volume contains all the stories I wrote in the decade of the ‘60’s, which was one of the most dramatic periods in the entire history of science and technology. Those years embraced the laser, the genetic code, the first robot probes of Mars and Venus, the discovery of pulsars—and the landing on the Moon. Many of these events, either in anticipation or after achievement, are reflected in these tales; for that reason I have placed them in chronological order.

...

Colombo, Ceylon

February 1971

…

The Wind from the Sun



...

He did not bother to exhaust the air lock, and the rush of escaping gas blew him gently out into space. The thrust he gave her then was his last gift to Diana. She dwindled away from him, sail glittering splendidly in the sunlight that would be hers for centuries to come. Two days from now she would flash past the Moon; but the Moon, like the Earth, could never catch her. Without his mass to slow her down, she would gain two thousand miles an hour in every day of sailing. In a month, she wold be traveling faster than any ship that man had ever built.

As the Sun’s rays weakened with distance, so her acceleration would fall. But even at the orbit of Mars, she would be gaining a thousand miles an hour in every day. Long before then, she would be moving too swiftly for the Sun itself to hold her. Faster than a comet had ever streaked in from the stars, she would be heading out into the abyss.

… He would never win the race to the Moon; but his would be the first of all man’s ships to set sail on the long journey to the stars.



May 1963

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