Space Pioneers

by Hank Davis

We waited. We hoped.

  Fifty-six minutes. They passed. An hour. Thirty minutes more. We reminded ourselves—and were reminded—that the first concern was Rev. It might be hours before we would get any real news.

  The tension mounted unbearably. We waited—a nation, a world—for relief.

  At eighteen minutes less than two hours—too soon, we told ourselves, lest we hope too much—we heard the voice of Captain Frank Pickrell, who was later to become the first commander of the Doughnut.

  “I have just entered the ship,” he said slowly. “The airlock was open.” He paused. The implication stunned our emotions; we listened mutely. “Lieutenant McMillen is dead. He died heroically, waiting until all hope was gone, until every oxygen gauge stood at zero. And then—well, the airlock was open when we arrived.

  “In accordance with his own wishes, his body will be left here in its eternal orbit. This ship will be his tomb for all men to see when they look up towards the stars. As long as there are men on Earth, it will circle above them, an everlasting reminder of what men have done and what men can do.

  “That was Lieutenant McMillen’s hope. This he did not only as an American, but as a man, dying for all humanity, and all humanity can glory for it.

  “From this moment, let this be his shrine, sacred to all the generations of spacemen, inviolate. And let it be a symbol that Man’s dreams can be realized, but sometimes the price is steep.

  “I am going to leave here now. My feet will be the last to touch this deck. The oxygen I released is almost used up. Lieutenant McMillen is in his control chair, staring out towards the stars. I will leave the airlock doors open behind me. Let the airless, frigid arms of space protect and preserve for all eternity the man they would not let go.”

  Good-bye, Rev! Farewell! Good night!

  Rev was not long alone. He was the first, but not the last to receive a space burial and a hero’s farewell.

  This, as I said, is no history of the conquest of space. Every child knows the story as well as I and can identify the make of a spaceship more swiftly.

  The story of the combined efforts that built the orbital platform irreverently called the Doughnut has been told by others. We have learned at length the political triumph that placed it under United Nations control.

  Its contribution to our daily lives has received the accolade of the commonplace. It is an observatory, a laboratory, and a guardian. Startling discoveries have come out of that weightless, airless, heartless place. It has learned how weather is made and predicted it with incredible accuracy. It has observed the stars clear of the veil of the atmosphere. And it has insured our peace . . .

  It has paid its way. No one can question that. It and its smaller relay stations made possible today’s worldwide television and radio network. There is no place on Earth where a free voice cannot be heard or the face of freedom be seen. Sometimes we find ourselves wondering how it could have been any other way.

  And we have had adventure. We have travelled to the dead gypsum seas of the Moon with the first exploration party. This year, we will solve the mysteries of Mars. From our armchairs, we will thrill to the discoveries of our pioneers—our stand-ins, so to speak. It has given us a common heritage, a common goal, and for the first time we are united.

  This I mention only for background; no one will argue that the conquest of space was not of incalculable benefit to all mankind.

  The whole thing came back to me recently, an overpowering flood of memory. I was skirting Times Square, where every face is a stranger’s, and suddenly I stopped, incredulous.

  “Rev!” I shouted.

  The man kept on walking. He passed me without a glance. I turned around and stared after him. I started to run. I grabbed him by the arm. “Rev!” I said huskily, swinging him around. “Is it really you?”

  The man smiled politely. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.” He undamped my fingers easily and moved away. I realized then that there were two men with him, one on each side. I felt their eyes on my face, memorizing it.

  Probably it didn’t mean anything. We all have our doubles. I could have been mistaken.

  But it started me remembering and thinking.

  The first thing the rocket experts had to consider was expense. They didn’t have the money. The second thing was weight. Even a medium-sized man is heavy when rocket payloads are reckoned, and the stores and equipment essential to his survival are many times heavier.

  If Rev had escaped alive, why had they announced that he was dead? But I knew the question was all wrong.

  If my speculations were right, Rev had never been up there at all. The essential payload was only a thirty-day recording and a transmitter. Even if the major feat of sending up a manned rocket was beyond their means and their techniques, they could send up that much.

  Then they got the money; they got the volunteers and the techniques.

  I suppose the telemetered reports from the rocket helped. But what they accomplished in thirty days was an unparalleled miracle.

  The timing of the recording must have taken months of work; but the vital part of the scheme was secrecy. General Finch had to know and Captain—now Colonel—Pickrell. A few others—workmen, administrators—and Rev . . .

  What could they do with him? Disguise him? Yes. And then hide him in the biggest city in the world. They would have done it that way.

  It gave me a funny, sick kind of feeling, thinking about it. Like everybody else, I don’t like to be taken in by a phony plea. And this was a fraud perpetrated on all humanity.

  Yet it had led us to the planets. Perhaps it would lead us beyond, even to the stars. I asked myself: could they have done it any other way?

  I would like to think I was mistaken. This myth has become part of us. We lived through it ourselves, helped make it. Someday, I tell myself, a spaceman whose reverence is greater than his obedience will make a pilgrimage to that swift shrine and find only an empty shell.

  I shudder then.

  This pulled us together. In a sense, it keeps us together. Nothing is more important than that.

  I try to convince myself that I was mistaken. The straight black hair was gray at the temples now and cut much shorter. The moustache was gone. The Clark Gable ears were flat to the head; that’s a simple operation, I understand.

  But grins are hard to change. And anyone who lived through those thirty days will never forget that voice.

  I think about Rev and the life he must have now, the things he loved and can never enjoy again, and I realize perhaps he made the greater sacrifice.

  I think sometimes he must wish he were really in the cave of night, seated in that icy control chair, 1,075 miles above, staring out at the stars.

  This story was first published in February 1955, two and a half years before the first satellite was orbited, and six and a half years before the first man was put into orbit.

  It is interesting to see in what ways James Gunn (who now works in an administrative position at the University of Kansas) foresaw events correctly, and in what ways he did not.

  Gunn felt, as science fiction writers had always felt, that it was logical for a man to be inside the first object orbited. Actually, this proved not to be the case. All sorts of objects (including animals) were placed in orbit before the men in charge of the space programmes in either the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R. would trust men to ride a spaceship safely.

  Gunn’s final twist has a recording orbited before a man after all (and that is much more nearly correct) and he uses that recording as a device to force mankind of all nations to be willing to invest in a space programme. This was, actually, a remarkable piece of prophecy. The first orbiting vehicle, even though it was very simple, transmitted only a bleep, and did not represent a human life in danger, did arouse enough interest to bring about the spending of billions.

  The space effort that resulted, however, was not a united drive aimed at an errand of mercy, but was a nationalistic push on the part of two competing nations,
each determined to pull prestige-coups over the other. (This no science fiction writer foresaw.)

  Gunn assumed (as all American science fiction writers did) that the American effort would be the first to succeed. He does say the U.S.S.R. announced “its space programme was already on the verge of success” but Gunn may have intended this ironically as the sort of thing the vainglorious Russians would be bound to say for propaganda reasons. He must have been surprised (as I was) when, in 1957, it was the Russians, after all, who managed to put up a satellite first.

  Gunn had the centre of the effort at Cocoa, Florida, which is only fifteen miles west of Cape Canaveral (later Cape Kennedy) where the launchings eventually did take place. On the other hand, his picture of Earth as seen from space seems to envisage a planet with all its land and ocean clearly in view. As it turned out, the most prominent feature visible from space is Earth’s cloud cover and very little of its land features can be made out easily at any given moment.

  HE FELL INTO A DARK HOLE

  by Jerry E. Pournelle

  A little reading of history will show that pioneers on Earth are not necessarily nice people. In this case, the governments backing the pioneers may be downright despicable, particularly when the rulers have convinced themselves that they are the only thing holding back a planet-killing nuclear holocaust so that anything they do is justified. This is one of the late Dr. Pournelle’s future history series in which the USA and the USSR formed the CoDominium to control the Earth and colony planets beyond, taking on the worst aspects of both systems in the process.

  CDSN Captain Bartholomew Ramsey watched his men check out, each man leaving the oval entry port under the satanic gaze of the master-at-arms. After nearly two years in space the men deserved something more exciting than twenty hours dirtside at Ceres Base, but they were eager for even that much. CDSS Daniel Webster got all the long patrols and dirty out-system jobs in the Navy because her captain didn’t protest. Now, when these men got to Luna Base and Navy Town, Lord help the local girls . . .

  Well, they’d be all right here, Ramsey thought. The really expensive pleasures were reserved for Belt prospectors and the crews of Westinghouse mining ships. Bart glanced at the screens displaying ships docked at Ceres. None of the big ore-processing ships were in Thorstown. Things should be pretty quiet. Nothing Base Marines couldn’t handle, even if Daniel Webster’s crew hadn’t been on a good drunker for twenty months. Ramsey turned away from the entry port to go back to his cabin.

  It was difficult to walk in the low gravity of Ceres. Very inconvenient place, he thought. But of course low gravity was a main reason for putting a Navy yard there. That and the asteroid mines . . .

  He walked carefully through gray steel bulkheads to the central corridor. Just outside the bridge entrance he met Dave Trevor, the first lieutenant.

  “Not going ashore?” Ramsey asked.

  “No, sir.” Trevor’s boyish grin was infectious. Ramsey had once described it as the best crew morale booster in the Navy. And at age twenty-four, Dave Trevor had been in space eleven years, as ship’s boy, midshipman, and officer. He would know every pub in the Solar System and a lot outside it . . . “Never cared much for the girls on Ceres,” he said. “Too businesslike.”

  Captain Ramsey nodded sagely. With Trevor’s looks he wouldn’t have to shell out money for an evening’s fun anywhere near civilization. Ceres was another matter. “I’d appreciate it if you’d make a call on the provost’s office, Mr. Trevor. We might need a friend there by morning.”

  The lieutenant grinned again. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Bart nodded and climbed down the ladder to his cabin. Trevor’s merry whistling followed him until he closed the door. Once Ramsey was inside he punched a four-digit code on the intercom console.

  “Surgeon’s office, Surgeon’s Mate Hartley, sir.”

  “Captain here. Make sure we have access to a good dental repair unit in the morning, Hartley. Even if we have to use Base facilities.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Ramsey switched the unit off and permitted himself a thin smile. The regeneration stimulators aboard Daniel Webster worked but there was something wrong with the coding information in the dental unit. It produced buck teeth, not enormous but quite noticeable, and when his men were out drinking and some dirtpounder made a few funny remarks . . .

  The smile faded as Ramsey sat carefully in the regulation chair. He glanced around the sterile cabin. There were none of the comforts other captains provided themselves. Screens, charts, built-in cabinets and tables, his desk, everything needed to run his ship, but no photographs and solidos, no paintings and rugs. Just Ramsey and his ship, his wife with the masculine name. He took a glass of whiskey from the arm of the chair. It was Scotch and the taste of burnt malt was very strong. Bart tossed it off and replaced it to be refilled. The intercom buzzed. “Captain here.”

  “Bridge, sir. Call from Base Commandant Torrin.”

  “Put him on.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” The watch midshipman’s face vanished and Rap Torrin’s broad features filled the screen. The rear admiral looked at the bare cabin, grimaced, then smiled at Ramsey.

  “I’m going to pull rank on you, Bart,” Torrin said. “Expect that courtesy call in an hour. You can plan on having dinner with me, too.”

  Ramsey forced a smile. “Very good, sir. My pleasure. In an hour, then.”

  “Right.” The screen went blank and Ramsey cursed. He drank the second whiskey and cursed again, this time at himself.

  What’s wrong with you? he thought. Rap Torrin is as good a friend as you have in the Navy. Shipmate way back in Ajax under Sergei Lermontov. Now Rap has a star, well, that was expected. And Lermontov is Vice Admiral Commanding, the number two man in the whole CoDominium Space Navy.

  And so what? I could have had stars. As many as I wanted. I’m that good, or I was. And with Martin Grant’s influence in the Grand Senate and Martin’s brother John in charge of United States security, Senator Martin Grant’s son-in-law could have had any post no matter how good . . .

  Ramsey took another whiskey from the chair and looked at it for a long time. He’d once had his star, polished and waiting, nothing but formalities to go, while Rap and Sergei grinned at his good luck. Sergei Lermontov had just made junior vice admiral then. Five years ago.

  Five years. Five years ago, Barbara Jean Ramsey and their son Harold were due back from Meiji. Superstitiously, Bart had waited for them before accepting his promotion. When he took it, he’d have to leave Daniel Webster for something dirtside and wait until a spacing admiral was needed. That wouldn’t have been long. The Danube situation was heating up back then. Ramsey could have commanded the first punitive expedition, but it had gone out under an admiral who botched the job. Barbara Jean had never come home from Meiji.

  Her ship had taken a new direct route along an Alderson path just discovered. It never came out into normal space. A scoutcraft was sent to search for the liner, and Senator Grant had enough influence to send a frigate after that. Both vanished, and there weren’t any more ships to send. Bartholomew Ramsey stayed a captain. He couldn’t leave his ship because he couldn’t face the empty house in Luna Base compound.

  He sighed, then laughed cynically at himself. Time to get dressed. Rap wanted to show off his star, and it would be cruel to keep him waiting.

  The reunion was neither more nor less than he’d expected, but Admiral Torrin cut short the time in his office. “Got to get you home, Bart. Surprise for you there. Come along, man, come along.”

  Bart followed woodenly. Something really wrong with me, he thought. Man doesn’t go on like this for five years. I’m all right aboard Old Danny Boy. It’s only when I leave my ship, now why should that be? But a man can marry a ship, even a slim steel whiskey bottle four hundred meters long and sixty across; he wouldn’t be the first captain married to a cruiser.

  Most of Ceres Base was underground, and Bart was lost in the endless rock corridors. Finally they reac
hed a guarded area. They returned the Marines’ salutes and went through to broader hallways lined with carpets. There were battle paintings on the walls. Some reached back to wet navy days and every CD base, insystem or out, had them. There were scenes from all the great navies of the world. Russian, Soviet, U.S., British, Japanese . . . there weren’t any of Togo at Tshushima, though. Or Pearl Harbor. Or Bengal Bay.

  Rap kept up his hearty chatter until they got inside his apartment. The admiral’s quarters were what Bart had visualized before he entered: richly furnished, filled with the gifts and mementos that a successful independent command captain could collect on a dozen worlds after more than twenty years in service. Shells and stuffed exotic fauna, a cabinet made of the delicately veined snakewood of Tanith, a table of priceless Spartan roseteak. There was a house on Luna Base that had been furnished like this . . .

  Bart caught sight of the man who entered the room and snapped to attention in surprise. Automatically, he saluted.

  Vice Admiral Lermontov returned the salute. The admiral was a tall, slim man who wore rimless spectacles which made his gray eyes look large and round as they bored through his subordinates. Men who served under Lermontov either loved him or hated him. Now his thin features distorted in genuine pleasure. “Bartholomew, I am sorry to surprise you like this.”

  Lermontov inspected Ramsey critically. The smile faded slightly. “You have not taken proper care of yourself, my friend. Not enough exercise.”

  “I can still beat you. Arm wrestling, anything you name—uh, sir.”

  Lermontov’s smile broadened again. “That is better. But you need not call me ‘sir’. You would say ‘sir’ only to Vice Admiral Lermontov, and it is quite obvious that the Vice Admiral Commanding cannot possibly be on Ceres. So, since you have not seen me . . .”

  “I see,” Ramsey said.

  Lermontov nodded. “It is rather important. You will know why in a few moments. Rap, can you bring us something to drink?”