Of a Fire on the Moon

by Norman Mailer

  III

  He had had an interview with the head of the Manned Space Program when he was back at Kennedy. Once a professor of electronics, Mueller had become the second highest man in NASA, indeed nobody was higher than him but Dr. Thomas O. Paine, yet Mueller was in appearance a very modest man, an archetype to Aquarius of the technician. Mueller—whose name was pronounced Miller—was not tall, certainly he was not short, he was slim in weight, in fact without excess weight, he looked forty-five although he had to be older, and he had a long thin face, a high forehead, straight black hair which he combed straight back—so his black horn-rimmed glasses jutted forth, so did the blade of his nose, the blade of his jaw. He spoke with mild icky-dicky Midwest expletives like “Golly gee, gee whiz, gosh!” that modest but central sense of presence one might find in a YMCA secretary on the night desk—the manner friendly, impersonal, and on an astral plane, a manner to indicate that of course one is used to talking to all sorts of people—golly gee, you ought to see some of the characters who come in here.

  Mueller had the reputation of being tremendously determined when he wanted to get something done, and one could believe it, for he emitted the gentle but total impersonality of a man for whom obstacles if irrational were unforgivable. Perhaps for this reason he was curiously reminiscent of Hugh Hefner. The publisher of Playboy was a little in relation to ordinary men like a guy who had been to the moon and back and Dr. Mueller could have been his older brother.

  Aquarius met him in Mueller’s motel at Cocoa Beach, a room as modest as his pretensions. There had been a photographer taking pictures. Mueller apologized, explaining that he had been so busy for so many years that he had hardly had a picture taken—now they had discovered there weren’t enough pictures of him for the NASA files. So he posed for a few more, in some degree as pleased and flustered as a man walking into a room, and crack! flashbulbs! they are giving him a birthday party.

  Yet once the interview began, Mueller was sensitive to every change about him. Did Aquarius, searching for his next question, feel some intensity of motive or charge of energy, then Mueller was there to respond as quickly as the needle on any of the measuring instruments he had used in all the electrical labs of his youth and academic career. Dart! would go his head; up! would fly a finger; sway! would swing his torso. How alert he must have been to signs of overload or impedance in all the human circuits about his field position in the room. Yes, Dr. George Mueller was certainly one full academic counterpart to the Black professor. Having seen Apollo-Saturn rise from the drawing board to an orbit of the moon, it was as natural for him to live with comfort in the future as it was flesh and drink for the Black to brood upon the past. So Mueller was looking beyond this landing to the uses of space in the future. He talked of rocket shuttles which could be fired up to rendezvous with space stations in orbit and yet be able to return through the heats of reentry to land at spaceports in order to be used again; he spoke of lowering the cost of transport in space from $100,000 a pound to $200 a pound; he outlined future projects for nuclear power plants on the moon whose heats would melt the permafrost and so make available a supply of water. The electrical output of the power plant could then separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen—some of that product would be used to make Lox and LH2 for rocket fuels; the rest would be mixed with nitrogen extracted from the rocks so they would have the elements necessary to create a livable atmosphere within an enclosed space. Perhaps they would even grow plants. Would it be Aristotle Onassis or Richard Burton who would be first to spring for a bouquet of moon roses?

  The space station orbiting the earth could go in for a “total earth sensing program,” doubtless as comprehensive for the earth, Aquarius decided, as a thorough physical examination conducted daily for a man. The space station would also set up a high-energy physics laboratory. It would certainly accelerate every technique in the manufacture of cameras, telescopes, radars, lasers, and that was just the beginning. Mueller went on in full sentences. He had spoken of these matters a hundred times, but like all high bureaucrats he was equal to a professional actor in his ability to repeat the same dialogue with verve another hundred times. If any reporter had brought a tape recorder, he could by transcribing Mueller’s remarks directly have had a printable feature story for a Sunday section. As though unwinding a scroll, Mueller indicated the possibility of a new wonder with each paragraph. Since the space stations would have a weightless environment at their command, it would be possible to grow crystals which would be molecularly perfect. As a corollary, one would be able to build up flawless diamonds of any size. Before Aquarius could ask if the diamond would be as big as the Ritz, Mueller assured him in his cheerful small-town voice that the diamond could be as big as a basketball anyhow—such a cargo might be worth much more than two hundred dollars a pound. Thus the perspective of space factories returning the new imperialists of space a profit was now near to the reach of technology. Forget about diamonds! The value of crystals grown in space was incalculable: gravity would not be pulling on the crystal structure as it grew, so the molecules would line up in lattices free of shift or shear. Such a perfect latticework could serve to carry messages for a perfect computer. Computers the size of a package of cigarettes would then be able to do the work of present computers the size of a trunk. So the mind could race ahead to see computers programming go-to-school routes in the nose of every kiddie car—the paranoid mind could see crystal transmitters sewn into the rump of every juvenile delinquent—doubtless, everybody would be easier to monitor. In the Systematized Detection Systems of the future, Big Brother could get superseded by Moon Brother—the major monitor of them all might yet be sunk in a shaft on the back face of the lunar sphere.

  The possibilities of the new technology glowed in the enthusiasms of Mueller’s voice. “Ball bearings,” he said holding up a finger like an antenna to focus all scattered waves of random thought, “it’s fascinating to consider what possibilities are opened in the manufacture of ball bearings.” He went on to explain in his careful considerate feature-story paragraphs that ball bearings which were cast in a weightless environment would come out as perfect spheres; the deviation on their skin need be no greater than the thickness of a molecule. Earth ball bearings were of course imprecise. In the instant it took the shot to cool, gravity was pulling on the molten ball. So to obtain precision they must be polished, a relatively imprecise technique.

  Aquarius was to think again of the ball bearings after he said good-by to Dr. Mueller. Such creations of a weightless environment could yet prove monumental for the manufacturer, since ball bearings were as crucial to every load-bearing or load-transporting machine as the valves of the human heart to the flow of blood. Out of the imperfections of ball bearings (which were located after all around the center of every high-speed moving part) came the multiplication of all the other imperfections, since each moving part added the scope of its imprecision to the next moving part. Once perfect ball bearings could be installed, the action of the machines might become a whole order of efficiency closer to the laws of physics, rather than to the adjustments and counterbalances of engineering. That meant a world of future machines whose view of present-day machines might be equal to nothing less than our view of Piltdown man. Or would it merely mean that plastic could now be employed for the ball bearings in order to maintain the built-in obsolescence of machines? Indeed the center of the problem of capitalism’s morale was in the perfect ball bearing. Machines built on perfect ball bearings would have a life duration so much greater than present machines that modern capitalism living with the vice of built-in obsolescence as the poison-stimulant to its blood, would be face to face with problems greater and more inescapable than automation. For once space explorers, seeking economic justification, would be forced to develop perfect ball bearings, their use would be bound to explode the sustaining fevers and indulgences of the economy. What then would they all do? Then, capitalism would be as much at war with itself over the continuing nature of the econom
y as world communism was at war with itself over the direction of its ideology.

  So the mood of space which remained with Aquarius after talking to Mueller, that mood elegant and austere as the perfect laws of physical principle, was still a force for disruption. Sitting in the spaced-out colors of Dun Cove, inhabiting the shank end of ruminations like this, was the thought that the moon shot was conceivably the first voyage of the very cancer of the world, for indeed the first journeys of the cancer cell in a body, taken from the point of view of the cancer cell, were certainly bold and dangerous. Not by little effort did a cell leave its own organ and learn how to survive in another. Cancer cells, seen in relation to ordinary cells, were often extraordinary in the variety of their form, as different as a view of Las Vegas at night is different from a village in the Bluegrass, or as different as the internal works of Apollo were in comparison to the works of the family car. Did that account for the curious depression, the sobriety mixed in so many faces with the pride of the achievement? Aquarius did not know.

  That was still another reason why he did not perceive the decade to come with any clear picture of events. A dull sense of disaster pushed at the compass of the picture. He was not so certain the decade would have a life like other decades. If space was benign, then on we would continue into space, and the artists would yet be voyaging with the astronauts—think of that happy day when he would nominate himself to be first writer to visit the moon. (Not a chance! NASA would opt for Updike!)

  But what if space were not so benign? What if we did not act upon space, explore into space, but space rather acted upon us, drew us toward her dispositions, her plans for us, her intent upon human life, what if we thought we moved up but were drawn up, what if the moon was as quiet as the fisherman when he lays the fly on the water …

  Having journeyed to the center of his gloom, Aquarius went to sleep. In his dreams a country doctor he had known for years murmured, “I don’t know about all of this. Recognize that the moon could be some kind of catchall simple as the tonsils to protect us here on earth. Maybe those craters come from catching all the cess.” In his dream Aquarius answered back, “It depends on your idea of God, that’s what it must depend on.” Out into sleep he went again, ringings of ether in his ear.

  IV

  In the morning after breakfast, he found himself rereading a transcript of the postlaunch briefing, a curious activity, but he was like a man on the cusp of a clue. To fall asleep in pursuit of the answer to a mystery was to awaken with the fire in a new place. It had burned beneath the ground while he was sleeping. So he dallied over the substance of the transcript as if some hint of smoke could linger here in the words of men taken down for posterity four hours after the launch.

  PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER: I’d like to introduce Mr. Rocco A. Petrone, Director of Launch Operations for the Kennedy Space Center and Launch Director for the Apollo 11 flight. Rocco?

  PETRONE: Thank you. Well, this is our sixth Saturn V, the Apollo aboard, to go up in a row on time. But I’m not saying, of course—this meant a lot more to us. This is the big one. This is the one we’ve been working for eight years. The mission is just getting started. I’m sure you all know. But the first step in this historic mission has been just the step we’ve wanted to take.

  Every detail of the launch, Aquarius recollected, had been Petrone’s responsibility. Four hours after lift-off, matters now comfortably out of his hands, he was by the evidence of the transcript as tired as a boxer in his dressing room after a fifteen-round fight.

  PETRONE: From the moment of truth here, from the moment of ignition and lift-off, lots and lots of equipment have to work for a number of starts to come on our side. We had a few difficulties in the count. I’m sure they already fed it to you. I’d be glad to answer questions. I’m pleased to say that the team was able to handle the problems, keeping the count rolling, and very obviously start this historic mission off. I say on the right first step, which I can assure you is most pleasing to me. And for the team that’s worked so hard to get to this point …

  PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER: Okay, thanks, Rock.

  At NASA, the elegance was in the design of the engineering systems rather than in the manners of the men. Which future student of language, unfamiliar with Saturn V, Apollo 11 or lift-off, would have any idea, encountering this scrap of Petrone’s transcript, that the man was describing the emotions he felt after having led thousands of men in Launch Control through the nine hundred hours, the ninety and the nine hours of the preparations and countdowns which put his ship into the air. Who was to know by such a speech—thought Aquarius sipping his breakfast tea—that Petrone had been midwife to the most momentous week, and the mightiest hour. Yes, and that was not so ridiculous if one recognized that to believe in progress and believe in God as well might make it necessary to conceive of our Lord as a vision of existence who conceivably was obliged to compete with other visions of existence in the universe, other conceptions of how life should be. But this had brought him to the heart of the question. It was as if his mind, knowing the style of his thoughts, had directed him to the transcript in the confidence that his sense of irony once aroused, his sense of apocalypse could never be far behind. He was, after all, quick to hunt for reason in absurdity. So to read the language of men who were not devoid of mechanical genius and yet spoke in language not even fit for a computer, of events which might yet dislocate eternity, was a fine irony—the banality of the verbal reaction was an indication of the disease of our time, so advanced in one lobe, so underdeveloped in the other, a fine irony! Unless one was encountering the very desperation of the Lord—there might not be time to develop men to speak like Shakespeare as they departed on heavenly ships.

  To believe in God and to believe in progress—what could that mean but that the desire for progress existed in the very creation of man, as if man were designed from the outset to labor as God’s agent, to carry God’s vision of existence across the stars. If this were true then the intent of the Lord could hardly be to reveal His goodness to us; rather He must employ us to reveal His vision of existence out there, somewhere out there where His hegemony came to an end and other divine conceptions began to exist, or indeed were opposed to us. If God finally was the embodiment of a vision which might cease to exist in the hostilities of the larger universe, a vision which indeed might be obliged to prevail or would certainly cease to exist, then it was legitimate to see all of human history as a cradle which had nurtured a baby which had now taken its first step. Intended by divine will to travel across the heavens, we were now at least on our way to the moon, and who could know if we were ahead or behind of some schedule the Lord had presented us, a schedule which presumably each man and woman alive would keep in the depths of their unconscious along with everything else most vital for the preservation of life. A large and uncomfortable thought, for if it were so, then the flight of Apollo 11 was a first revelation of the real intent of History. So this much, anyway, had been revealed: one could not make a judgment on the value or absurdity of devoting such effort to go to the moon unless one was ready to recognize that eschatology had conceivably been turned on its head. For if eschatology, that science of “the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell,” was now to be considered in the light of God’s need for supermen to negotiate His passage quickly through the heavens, then how much more value might He give to courage than to charity, how much harsh judgment to justice itself if the act to be considered was not expeditious but merely just, yes if speed were of the essence then Hell’s Angels were possibly nearer to God than the war against poverty.

  This last suggested a step Aquarius was not prepared to take: the idea was as disruptive to a liberal philosophical system as tartar emetic and mustard to a glutton. For it offered a reason why the heroes of the time were technologists, not poets, and the art was obliged to be in the exceptional engineering, while human communication had become the routine function. It was because the Power guiding us had desired nothing less. He
was looking to the day when all of mankind would yet be part of one machine, with mechanical circuits, social flesh circuits, and combined electromagnetic and thought-transponder circuits, an instrument of divine endeavor put together by a Father to whom one might no longer be able to pray since the ardors of His embattled voyage could have driven Him mad.

  Sweet thoughts for Aquarius to have as a sequel to the ascent, but the questions were grand at least, they could occupy the consciousness of the century. It was somehow superior to see the astronauts and the flight of Apollo 11 as the instrument of such celestial or satanic endeavors, than as a species of sublimation for the profoundly unmanageable violence of man, a meaningless journey to a dead arena in order that men could engage in the irrational activity of designing machines which would give birth to other machines which would travel to meaningless places as if they were engaged in these collective acts of hugely organized but ultimately pointless activity because they had not the wit, goodness, or charity to solve their real problems, and so would certainly destroy themselves if they did not have a game of gargantuan dimensions for diversion, a devilish entertainment, a spend-spree of resources, a sublimation, yes, the very word, a sublimation of aggressive and intolerably inhuman desires, as if like a beast enraged with the passion of gorging nature, we looked now to make incisions into the platinum satellite of our lunacy, our love, and our dreams.