Space

by James A. Michener

  It was Dr. Mott who first noticed that Captain Pope was doing rather more work than necessary, or at best prudent, considering the problems of health. When he saw John hunched over a desk at eleven-thirty one night he asked, “What’s up?” and he found that Pope had been writing out on small sheets of flimsy but fire-resistant paper procedures which he would put into effect in every conceivable type of emergency.

  “But they’re all in the handbooks,” Mott said.

  “I want them up here,” Pope replied, tapping his forehead.

  “You can’t burden yourself with that much detail.”

  “That’s why I’m writing them down.”

  “But they are written down.”

  “Not till I write them.”

  Mott asked Dr. Feldman if he had noticed Pope tightening up, and Feldman said, “He’s always tightened up. That’s the definition of a straight arrow.”

  “Is it necessary?”

  “He thinks so, and that’s what matters.”

  “Well, I-”

  Feldman interrupted: “The time can come in any mission when one man’s right actions will make all the difference. Iron will. Coupled with the proper hours in the simulators. Those little pieces of paper are Pope’s simulators. Let him go.”

  But Mott observed a growing testiness in the astronaut, and when he reached Houston he suggested that Pope be summoned back from Canaveral and be given some rest and recuperation. The wisdom of this recommendation was so obvious that NASA directed Pope to join Timothy Bell [559] in an inspection of work being done by Allied Aviation in Los Angeles: “And we suggest that instead of flying a T-38 west, you travel by commercial airline and get some relaxation.” Pope, acknowledging at last that he might be approaching battle fatigue, counter-proposed that instead of flying, he and Penny drive across country, something they loved to do, and NASA assented.

  When Pope informed the crowd at the Bali Hai what he and Penny were about to do, Tim Bell asked to ride along, but John demurred: “Three on a honeymoon, never works.”

  “But I’d bring Cluny.”

  “Would she want to spend that much time?” And with the perception that marked most of what Pope did, he added, “You remember, the Mercury’s a convertible.”

  “If it rains, you put the top up, don’t you?” Bell argued so persuasively that Pope told him to go ahead and phone Cluny to see if she was interested, and Bell described the trip so glowingly that she flew in to join them. Twisting her pretty head this way and that as she tried to visualize what the five hurried days would be like, she had the good sense to decline: “I’m sure I wouldn’t like it.” But when she saw her husband’s disappointment, she added, “But you go, Tim.”

  “It’s a kind of honeymoon for the Popes. They won’t take me alone.”

  “How will you go if I don’t come along?”

  “I’d fly out later in a T-38.”

  “Alone?” she had an intuitive fear of this sensitive plane that had already killed two other astronauts, and her apprehension showed.

  “I enjoy flying that plane,” Bell said honestly, for the swift courier was a joy when handled with respect.

  No. I’ll drive out with you,” she said, and her husband, trying to be fair, said, “You know the Popes have a convertible.”

  “I’d like that.” And so the trip was arranged, but when Penny heard the details before flying down from Washington to join the safari, she asked over the phone, “Are you sure, John, that you want to take her with us on so long a trip?”

  “The Bells are fun. He’s a prime mover.”

  “I know he is. But I wonder if she’ll fit in.”

  [560] Cluny certainly did not fit into the Mercury convertible, or any other. If the top was down, she insisted on riding front seat so the wind wouldn’t blow her hair, but if it was raised, as it tended to be when late afternoons grew cool, she wanted a window halfway down so she could breathe, then complained that her hair was still being blown.

  Things had started badly on the first day, for the Popes wanted to leave Cape Canaveral at 0400, as usual, but thanks to Cluny’s unwillingness to rise early, they could not start west until 0900, by which time John had expected to be three hundred miles on the way.

  She absolutely demanded that they stop for lunch, and by six she was whining that “if we don’t find a motel soon, we might never find one.”

  “Haven’t you ever slept in a car?” Penny asked.

  “Certainly not!”

  “Try it, you’ll like it.”

  Cluny interpreted this correctly as a flip attack upon her, and while she did not complain to her husband, he knew that she had tensed up and would soon become unmanageable, so he supported her plea that they find a motel, and quickly.

  Since it was only 1730, John pointed out, accurately, “We have four more hours of driving, Cluny.”

  “And no motel when we stop.”

  “We always find something.”

  The statement terrified her, for she could visualize them knocking about some grubby Alabama town and settling at last upon a dirty boardinghouse or a totally unacceptable hotel. “I want to find our place while it’s still light,” she said firmly, so to John Pope’s disgust and his wife’s amazement, he pulled into a clean, modern motel that satisfied all of Cluny’s demands. It was 1733-half past five civilian time-and they had covered 316.3 miles instead of the more than twice that which the Popes were accustomed to do in a day.

  They ate a leisurely dinner, each bite of which gagged Penny Pope, who warned the Bells as everyone went to bed, “Tomorrow, 0400. Sharp.”

  This was agreed, but in the morning it proved impossible for Cluny to rise, shower, dress, make up and fix her hair till 0730, and then she refused to start until she had her cup of hot coffee: “It’s uncivilized to travel on an empty [561] stomach. “Their caravan hit the road at 0614 and John Pope was livid.

  It was the business with the map that started him plotting as to how he might escape from this disaster. When he and Penny roared across country it was their delight from time to time to use lesser roads and to make excursions to spots they had always heard of but never seen, and they never allowed their headlong flight to prevent them from enjoying themselves.

  Now, although they were only in western Alabama when they should have been leaving Mississippi, Penny wanted to see Mobile and its bay, important in the War of 1812 and in the Civil War. Normally, if John had been driving, she would have been riding shotgun with the map on her knees, and she was expert in identifying alternate roads of promise: “Turn left at the fork. Looks like a great trail beside the river.” Quite often she would have made a disappointing guess, so she would cry, “Let’s try the next road to the right. It’s got to get us back to Route 10 one way or another.”

  On this day, because the top was down, Cluny Bell sat beside John as he sped the Mercury along minor roads, so it was she who held the map, and this was a disaster. For the wind made it difficult to keep the map in order, and when John did show her how to fold it, she could make absolutely nothing out of east or west, north or south. Once when he demanded in a hurry to know whether he must turn right or left at the next crossroads, she wailed, “How do I know?”

  “It’s on the map,” he said curtly, and when she proved incapable of even guessing where they were, he grabbed the map abruptly, consulted it for less than five seconds, jabbed at it with his finger, and snapped, “There. It’s very clear.” She did not break into tears, but she almost did. It was curious, thought Penny in the back seat. American culture is based on the automobile, and any young man of promise is going to own one and want to travel great distances in it. Consequently, any young woman of aspiration should expect to spend most of her vacations in a car, probing into unfamiliar corners. She is not required to know how to drive-Cluny doesn’t-but she will certainly be expected to read the road map while her husband drives, and if she can’t, or if she’s abnormally slow [562] in giving him help, she’s bound to cause trouble. Therefor
e, you’d think that colleges which train the bright young women who’re going to marry the bright young men who are going to own the Cadillacs that roar back and forth across this continent would teach the girls to read maps. None do. They teach a hundred other useless things, but never a word about the one that will cause the greatest friction.

  “Can’t you see where the road joins Route 65?” John asked plaintively.

  “The map is going north,” Cluny said, “and we’re going south.” And it was only when she said this that John realized she was powerless to imagine how the map worked, or how one intuitively corrected for east and west regardless of orientation, or how one extrapolated information or calculated distances. The totality of America lay unfolded on Cluny’s knees, and she was unable to decipher a single element of it.

  “Better give the map to Penny,” John said compassionately.

  “I never wanted it in the first place.”

  “If we drove a couple of hours after supper, which I like to do,” John informed his passengers, “we could probably reach the Mississippi ...”

  “I think we should start looking for a good motel pretty soon,” Cluny said, and again the battle was joined. This time Penny supported her husband in his desire to reach the Mississippi, but Cluny created such a scene of petulant anxiety that her husband had to support her. They stopped at 1723, an ungodly hour when three hundred miles could be added to the log, and although Pope laid down the law at dinner-“We leave tomorrow at 0400 or we’ll never reach California”-they actually left at 0752.

  What was more infuriating, when they stopped for lunch Cluny spotted a hairdresser’s, and before anyone could stop her she had left the group and dropped in for a quick set to repair the damages caused by the windy convertible. She reappeared fifty minutes later, and at 1730 that afternoon began to whimper about a good motel, so they stopped.

  As was customary on such cross-country trips, John Pope awakened at 0330 and did the isometric exercises which kept him trim, but as he did so, Penny wakened, too, and after lying silent for a few minutes, she whispered, [563] “This trip is a disaster. And it gets worse every hour.”

  “I have never struck a woman ...” He did not finish his statement, but he did turn on the light, and when he saw their clothes lying on the floor, waiting to be jumped into, and the minute hand of his chronograph climbing toward 0400, he turned and looked intently at his wife.

  It was she who spoke: “We could, you know.”

  “It’s the only sensible thing to do,” her husband said.

  In a flash they were out of bed and in their traveling clothes. “How much money have you?” John asked.

  “In traveler’s checks I have-”

  “I mean cash.” Between them they could scrape up $143.55, of which they must withhold $20 for gasoline to be purchased before places would be open to cash their checks.

  They took the $123.55 and placed it in a motel envelope, which they addressed “The Bells, Room 117,” and this they intended jamming under the door of their companions’ room, but at the last moment John felt that some statement was essential, so on a clean sheet of paper he wrote:

  Dear Tim and Cluny,

  Obviously this isn’t going to work. Here is all the cash we have. It will get you to the nearest NASA installation. See you at Allied Aviation.

  All the best,

  Penny and John

  As soon as they were safely on Highway 10, roaring west toward Louisiana, John at the wheel, Penny with the map across her knees, they broke into joyous song:

  “Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

  Bring me my Arrows of desire:

  Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

  Bring me my Chariot of fire.

  No reference to this incident was ever made by either of the two astronauts. Tim Bell realized that his partner Pope had faced a problem and had done what was required, honestly and without hesitation; in a similar circumstance he would probably have done the same. At Allied Aviation [564] the two men worked together effectively, and once or twice they caught sight of Penny Pope performing her inspections for the Space Committee. The two couples did not dine together, but when they met at the hotel provided by Allied, they were reserved and courteous.

  They could not escape having a goodbye lunch with General Funkhauser, who was in charge of Allied-NASA relations, a two-billion-dollar windfall for his company. He was expansive as he presided in the company dining room.

  “This is abalone,” he said in his attractively accented English. “In Germany, I had never heard of it. And this is Oregon duckling, which I hadn’t heard of either.” He spoke revealingly of what Allied proposed to do about an instrument of radical new design that could walk on the Moon. “One-sixth gravity permits us to do wonders. Better than an automobile. Lighter than a baby carriage. Hermann Oberth always told us, ‘Your imagination must live, yes, in one-sixth gravity.’ ”

  There was an embarrassing moment when he asked the astronauts how they were returning to Cape Canaveral, for Pope said bluntly, “Penny and I are driving.”

  “Can you take so much time away from Washington?” Funkhauser asked. He had been especially solicitous of Mrs. Pope, anticipating the day when her committee might want to investigate the Allied-NASA contracts. They were honest, he felt sure, but they were also very favorable to the company, and if they were ever reviewed by the Senate, he knew that he would be expected to defend them, since senators listened to generals.

  “And you?” Funkhauser asked the Bells.

  “I’ll ask your secretary to get us a Transportation Request from the NASA office. Fly back commercial.”

  “You cannot leave Allied on a commercial plane,” Funkhauser snorted. “You and Mrs. Bell will fly back in my jet.” And it was so arranged.

  On the return trip in the convertible-never less than seven hundred miles a day-the Popes discussed their ungallant behavior toward the Bells, and whereas John was inclined to feel ashamed, his wife refused to be apologetic. “We have only so many trips across this great country. To allow two of them to be ruined would be craven.”

  “But one of these days I may have to fly with Tim.”

  [565] “He’ll think more of you for your courage in handling this problem.”

  “And I’ll be more attentive to him, after treating him so badly.”

  “John! Stop blaming yourself! You and I do fine work for this nation. More than any other couple I know. We’re entitled to get up at four and drive till ten, if we want to.”

  They always preferred the eastbound trip, for then in the early evening they could watch the new stars rise from the horizon and climb toward the apex. It was exciting to see the summer stars coming at them in grand array: Vega, Deneb, Altair.

  “It’s very strange,” he told Penny as they climbed through the Rockies. “Every chart advises the beginner to identify these three stars in relationship to each other. I can never find Vega. Not until I see those four little stars to the north. Head of the Dragon. Whenever I spot that parallelogram I know where I am.” She could not even see it.

  Capricorn appeared and the Great Square of Pegasus, and John wanted to drive all night, to see the stars climb up at him as he had come to know them on the plains of Fremont, and the battlefields of Korea, and the hilltops at Boulder. “We wouldn’t have to drive too long before the blazing constellations start to appear,” he told Penny.

  “Why not?” she said. It would be about three hours before Capella and the Pleiades and the Bull, so John suggested that they drive off the main road and catch a couple of hours sleep, and in the high country they found a meadow set down between tall peaks, and there they slept, huddled under coats, John in the front seat, Penny in the back.

  They had no trouble in waking, and when they resumed their trip eastward at three in the morning, Orion and the Twins and the Dog were preparing to greet them, and as night faded and the Rockies gave way to vast and empty plains and the brilliant stars left the heavens, John said, “Wh
y don’t we push right on to Fremont?” They did, arriving there exhausted in late afternoon.

  Dr. Pope hurried home from the drugstore, and the Hardestys came from across the railroad tracks for a celebratory supper, but the younger Popes were too tired to enjoy it. They went to bed early, but at 0400 they were in the convertible heading east across the Missouri River, and as they sped once more into the path of the morning [566] stars Penny caught a slight glimpse of what it meant to be an aviator or an astronaut.

  “You fly toward the stars, don’t you?”

  “And sometimes away from them, but always in relation to where they are,” and for the first time she sensed what the ancient Assyrians had known and the men at Stonehenge and Albert Einstein: that man and all his doings and his Earth and his Sun and his Galaxy are held in interlocking responsibilities which operate beyond the farthest reaches of the mind.

  John Pope was working at Cape Canaveral on a computer to be used in the next flight, and Penny was in Washington organizing a meeting of the Space Committee, on the day when Tim Bell, returning from a contractors’ meeting in Wichita, flew his T-38 into a radio tower in Cincinnati, where he was stopping for fuel. His plane exploded and burned so furiously that it could almost be said there was no corpse.

  Word was flashed to NASA headquarters in Houston and from there immediately to Cape Canaveral and to the Space Committee in Washington, so that John and Penny heard the desolating news at about the same time. Each could guess what the other must feel, but Penny could not know that the local command had directed John to rush down to Cocoa Beach to inform Cluny Bell of her husband’s death.

  “I don’t think I’m the man,” Pope said.

  “It can be no one else,” the administrator said, for in NASA it was obligatory that a fellow astronaut be the one to inform a widow of tragedy. No clergyman, no reporter, no sobbing woman television star and no front-office administrator would do. An astronaut had died in line of duty, and another astronaut would carry the fatal news.