Space

by James A. Michener

  His excitement grew at such a pace that he telephoned Huntsville, even though he suspected that Dieter Kolff would be asleep, and when the drowsy man came on the telephone, he asked, “Dieter, read about a man who has just made a dazzling proposal and I want your reading on it. Could we build a giant gossamer telescope in two parts? Throw one by rocket about a billion miles out into space and fix it there in orbit? Then throw an exact duplicate a billion miles out in the opposite direction? I think he recommends an angle of about a hundred and twenty degrees and ...”

  “You have a base line of enormous length.”

  “Something like ten astronomical units.”

  “And you could penetrate beyond the farthest known galaxy.”

  “Is it practical?”

  “We could do it tomorrow.”

  The two men talked for about an hour, with Kolff always bringing the discussion back to the two activating rockets, which he was prepared to build if NASA wanted [659] to bring him back from retirement, and Mott speaking always about the gossamer construction of the telescopes: “You understand, Dieter, we use no metal except in the frame for the radio eye. Everything is gossamer. Whole telescope would weigh, what? Less than three thousand pounds?”

  When the call to Huntsville ended he could not sleep, and as he pored over Letterkill’s proposal, the thought came to him that this might well be the same man who had planned to make the Wallops Island rocket device the first satellite into space, and at four in the morning he had an operator track this Letterkill down at the Lewis Center in Cleveland: “Are you the fellow who came up with that brilliant proposal at Wallops Island? Excuse me, I’m Dr. Stanley Mott, who supported you at that time.”

  It was the same Levi Letterkill. A man who has one good idea is always apt to have another, but his proposal for a telescope with a base line of ten A.U.’s did not get immediate attention, because later that morning, about 830 Washington time, the Miami police called to inform the Motts that their son Christopher was in jail again, this time on a very serious charge of bringing cocaine in from Colombia.

  When Christopher Mott went to trial in Florida on the charge of smuggling cocaine from Colombia to the street value of $3,000,000, as they said in the newscasts, his parents defended him in anguish. Nearing sixty and unwavering defenders of all that was good in American life, they flew down to the muscular town of West Palm Beach, across the Intracoastal Waterway from the real Palm Beach, and sat for three days in a grubby courtroom while the state’s attorneys wove a web of damning evidence against their son.

  The Motts presented a sorrowful picture as they listened to the ugly facts they had tried so diligently to ignore through the preceding years: a middle-aged couple who had always tried to appear respectable-Rachel, her Grecian hairdo severely in place, her tailored suit neatly pressed, her firm mouth never quivering; and Stanley in his blue-black pin-striped suit, white shirt, foulard tie and steel-rimmed glasses. They looked like an executive family from Bethlehem Steel or IBM, but since the trial took [660] place so near to Cape Canaveral, the papers emphasized their membership in the NASA family.

  Christopher was twenty-five years old now and no longer entitled to consideration as an unknowing youth, but as he sat with the defense lawyers he seemed so slim and frail, so close to what a young man of his age with an assistant professorship at some college like Bates or Bowdoin should look like, that Rachel sometimes had to bow her head to keep from weeping, but then fresh evidence of his behavior would echo throughout the courtroom, and she would ask herself: How could this have happened? What in God’s name went wrong?

  At the end of each day’s testimony she and Stanley returned to their glossy motel near the big shopping center, and it seemed to her that this was the other face of Cape Canaveral: up there the huge rockets soaring off into space with cheers and hundreds of technicians monitoring the flight and the young heroes in the capsule; down here. only a few miles away, a confused young man in a courtroom attempting to defend himself against a society which had almost encouraged him to become a criminal.

  The songs of his day, the patterns of dress, television’s idealization of the illiterate rowdy who disrupts the classroom, sleazy newspaper stories and the dreadful pressure of one’s peers, all had conspired to put her son on trial, and she and Stanley had been too preoccupied with society’s business to combat the destructive influences.

  “We never worked for ourselves,” she whispered as the damaging second day ended. “It was always for the Army. for the Germans at El Paso, for the Alabama rural children, even now, for the families of the astronauts. We’ve not been selfish, Stanley.”

  “I may have been,” he said mournfully as he sat on the motel bed casting up the accounts of his life. “You tried to warn me in California when I was studying so hard. We know that’s when Millard started running with the wrong crowd and Chris began his undisciplined behavior. I feel the guilt almost unbearably.”

  On the third day the case went to the jury at eleven in the morning, and shortly after lunch the seven men and five women brought in their verdict of guilty on all counts. The judge announced that because Christopher’s parents had to leave Florida quickly, he would sentence their son [661] two days later, and they spent most of those days at the jail talking with Chris and giving him what belated support they could.

  When Rachel heard the sentence-five years in jail-she almost fainted, but then joined her husband and the defense lawyers in a plea that her son be remanded to a minimum-security prison where the likelihood of abuse and sodomy would be diminished. The judge listened tentatively, said that he could not accept the insinuation that Florida jails were out of control, and denied the request.

  When the President suggested that John Pope make a world tour to allow other nations to see what an engaging hero America had produced, the NASA medical staff demurred on the grounds that he had undergone a grueling experience and deserved rest, but Pope said, “I’ll go if I can be routed through Australia. I’d like to thank that fellow at Honeysuckle. He was very important to me-twice.

  So Pope flew to Europe, where the papers made much of his determination to visit the Australian voice that had helped save him, and Down Under newspapers kept track of how many days it would be before he reached Australia. The American ambassador flew from Canberra to Sydney to welcome him, then flew him in an American plane to receptions in rowdy Brisbane, staid Adelaide and gracious Melbourne, with a final stop at the American embassy in Canberra, where a large assembly waited to greet the hero.

  He was courteous as always, explaining several times that his wife, Penny, would normally have accompanied him, except that this time she was kept in Washington by her duties with the Senate. The Russian ambassador gave a small party for what he termed “The American cosmonaut and a very brave man,” and then Pope called it quits.

  “I came here to see the Australian communicator at Honeysuckle, and it’s time we got to it.” The U.S. ambassador agreed, and next morning a car and driver were provided to take Pope to the concentration of huge radio dishes hidden among the hills south of Canberra. These formed the system whereby Houston kept in touch with its satellites when they were over the Indian Ocean and [662] the western Pacific, and Pope was awed by their size, their complexity and the beauty of their setting.

  “This must be one of the most attractive features of the space age,” he told the Australian manager, and before he entered the low buildings where the messages were processed in a bank of computers, he walked among the trees and flowers that made the place a garden.

  “Appropriately named,” he told the Australians, then he stopped suddenly to watch two kangaroos feeding in a grassy swale. “They really do hop along on their hind feet,” he said, and his guides had to tug at his arm. “McGuigan’s waiting,” they said, “and some press people want to talk with you later.”

  So reluctantly he left the Australian woodland with its enchantments and entered the working area of the communications center, where wires fr
om the great hemispherical dishes pointing to the invisible satellites delivered their messages. McGuigan, a tall, thin, hipless Australian with a barbarous accent, stepped forward eagerly to meet the man with whom he had talked in both Gemini and Apollo.

  “Hello, Pope. Glad you made it back.”

  “Thanks to your help.” They talked for some minutes most amiably, and then Pope said to one of the managers, “I guess I’ve got to go through with it,” and the manager shrugged.

  “Call the staff together, please,” Pope said, and while the local workers assembled he inwardly asked forgiveness for what as a guest he was now required to say.

  On almost every important American space shot, the Australian workers had waited till the last crucial moment, then threatened a strike for higher wages. For a spacecraft to try to negotiate the vast corridors of heaven without any contact over half the surface of the Earth was unthinkable, so always NASA had to surrender to the blackmail, but Pope also knew that once the higher wages were agreed to, the Australians provided the best communications in the entire network. On one occasion men left the picket line, and under the most adverse circumstances, walked miles into the arid backlands to repair a communications link to ensure that the American spacecraft passing over the Indian Ocean could maintain its communication with Houston.

  [663] When the crew was assembled, Pope said quietly, “All astronauts realize what a profound debt they owe you wonderful communicators in Australia, and especially this superb crew here at Honeysuckle. On two occasions Mr. McGuigan here provided me with assistance beyond the call of duty, and I should like to hand him two medals, placed in my care by the American government. The first is to him personally. The second is to him as representative of your excellent crew.” As he handed over the medals and listened to the cheering, he wanted to add, but didn’t: “That’s till the next time you strike, you lovable sonsabitches.”

  After the crowd dispersed, the manager said, “The press is in the other building,” and Pope had a second chance to observe the rugged beauty of this unusual place. He was therefore in an amiable mood when he entered the press room to find five journalists awaiting him, four from Australia, one from Japan. He could see only Cindy Rhee, beautiful like the flowers outside, dressed in somber colors and staring at him with those dark, slanted eyes.

  “I have wanted to finish my story,” she said as she took his hand.

  “You came all the way here from Tokyo?”

  “I wanted to see the last of my astronauts in a real setting. With his own kind. At Honeysuckle.”

  “This is Captain John Pope,” one of the managers said. “You’re all aware of his accomplishments.” In answer to the Australian questions, John lied: “We’ve never had anything but the most amiable relations with your stations. They’ve been invaluable links in our chain of communications, and I particularly can testify ...” He saw Cindy smiling sardonically, and then he remembered the night at the Bali Hai motel when Claggett told the gang how the Australians at Honeysuckle had threatened a strike before his first Apollo flight. “I wanted to go down there when the flight was over and cut their balls off,” Claggett had said, and Pope had watched Cindy copying his words in her notebook. Now she was copying his, and smiling.

  “I asked especially to come to Honeysuckle,” he continued, “to pay my respects to Mr. McGuigan. I couldn’t always understand his accent, but I sure could appreciate the warmth of his interest.”

  When the press conference ended, the managers started [664] to walk Pope back to his embassy car, but Cindy interposed, saying, “I’ve a rented car. I’ll take him back,” and before anyone could protest, she had ordered the American car to return empty to the embassy compound while she led Pope to her Volkswagen.

  “I have a room in a village toward Mt. Kosciusko in the Australian alps,” she said, and they drove for more than an hour through parklands that sometimes teemed with kangaroos, large, tawny beasts that played along the roadway. “I’ve written my book,” she said, “but it can’t be completed without your story, John.”

  “Mine’s easily told. Three of us went up, one of us came down.”

  “But why did you go up? When, on those great flat plains of Fremont, did you first visualize yourself in the heavens?”

  “Did you take the trouble to visit Fremont?”

  “I visit everywhere. I visited Honeysuckle last week to be sure I would know my way around.”

  “But why?”

  “John, you and the others, you’re real ... don’t you realize it? You’re immortal. Four hundred years from now they’ll read about you the way we read about Magellan today.”

  She said this so simply, and with such conviction, that he could say nothing, nor did she, and after passing through a village he asked, “What did you mean by real?”

  “Well,” she said as she looked directly at him, her hands almost off the steering wheel, “There’s Randy Claggett, one of the best men this century will produce, and then there’s Timothy Bell, a pathetic bombast.”

  “Are you going to say that? He’s dead, you know.”

  “He was always dead, and I shall say so.”

  “You’re remorseless.”

  “So is the truth.”

  She drove to an inviting country inn whose sign announced that it sold Toohey’s ale, and since it was not yet dusk they sat in the garden with their tea. Slowly, at first, he began to talk; then words rolled out unimpeded, as if he had hoarded a universe of impressions which he must now share. He spoke of things close to the heart of space, things he had never before been able to verbalize, not even [665] in those long debriefings conducted by the super brains of NASA.

  “They kept asking how I felt, alone in the command module flying home, and I kept feeding them the answers I knew they wanted, expressed in words I knew they would accept. Responsibility. The job I was assigned to do. Training in the simulators quite adequate. Plus a lot of real guff about loneliness. But would you like to hear the truth?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “The module was a very small place. Like from here to here. When I was alone, how did I feel? I felt roomy. Free to spread out. At last I had all the space I needed, and to confess the truth, I was rather relieved.” He laughed at himself for having revealed his anti-heroism, but then he stopped. “The others? Even in the roominess their ghosts crowded in upon me.”

  They talked till dinner was called, and all through the meal, and afterward in the parlor decorated with brightly colored English hunting prints, a great outflowing of evaluation, and when the time came to go to bed, there was a brief moment of embarrassment, as if Cindy expected him to suggest that they sleep together, or as if he expected her to. It passed when he banged on the desk bell and asked the manager, “Can you show me to my room?” Cindy followed them upstairs and accompanied him to his door, where she said, “Goodnight, John. Let’s continue at breakfast.”

  They spent the entire next day lounging about the inn or walking its flower-strewn grounds, but always talking about space, and when they passed members of the hotel staff he could hear them whisper, “That’s John Pope, the one who brought the spaceship home. He’s rooming with the Japanese newspaper girl.”

  By the end of that day it seemed as if everyone in Australia knew what he was up to, plus many of the people in Washington. Senator Grant, receiving a flow of confidential messages from NASA, did his best to keep their content hidden from the committee counsel, but before long one of the secretaries felt that Mrs. Pope should really know how her errant husband was behaving: “He’s shacked up with that Korean babe.” With a forced smile Penny said, “Occupational hazard,” and no more.

  [666] When cables began pouring into the embassy in Canberra, demanding that Pope be found and escorted personally to his major speech in Sydney, the embassy tracked down where he was hiding and telephoned to reprimand him, but he would accept no calls, so the woman running the inn brought him the messages in person: “I’m afraid the fat’s in th
e fire, Captain Pope.”

  “It’s been there before,” he told her, and to Cindy he said, “We seem to have whipped up a storm.”

  As if they both realized that this probing interview could never be repeated, the mood and the willingness having been lost, they spent that last day at the core of the space experience, and Pope found himself saying strange things which he would never have divulged to another:

  “Claggett from the South and me from an area where there were no blacks, yet we had the standard prejudices. ‘Niggers smell funny,’ Claggett insisted, ‘and bein’ cooped up in that tight module ain’t gonna be fun.’ So I pointed out that this would be my problem, since it was my seat which jammed against Linley’s.

  “Well, Paul was about the most fastidious man I ever knew. Cleaner than an elk’s horn in autumn. Me? After a couple of days without proper washing I began to smell like fermenting turnips. Just before we reached the Moon, I asked Paul, ‘Do I stink?’ and he said, ‘You sure do.’ And all three of us busted out in laughter because we all knew that he was the one who was supposed to smell bad.”

  Cindy took notes constantly, then bored in with her harsh questioning: “Pope-san, do you think of yourself as mature?”

  He bit his lower lip. “I guess I’ve always been a plebe at Annapolis.”

  “The others were simply oriented, too. Claggett, Jensen. From the day of their births they were intended-”

  “I use that word a lot. Intended. I intended to do certain things, in certain ways. I believed that manhood consisted of stating your intentions and fulfilling them.”

  “Did you ever fail?”

  [667] “No,” he said, and then he shivered. “I’m not sure how to answer that truthfully. As a boy I dreamed of going to Annapolis. Our senator, Ulysses S. Gantling-get the son-of-a-bitch’s full name-promised me an appointment, but at the last minute he reneged. I was left with nothing.”