Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘I have never been happier,’ he said. ‘I have the best job in the world. I work with the best men. And I sometimes imagine it will go on forever.’

  Penny replied that she felt that she had the best job possible: ‘To be at the center of things. To feel the changes coming on so fast. I suspect that Glancey and Grant will be reelected forever, and I’ll stay at their right hand doing the work.’

  They were an unusually handsome pair, there in the shadows cast by the great stones; they were both thirty years old, both slightly underweight, both of medium height and fine appearance, and they were both straight arrows, attuned to jobs which they took seriously and which demanded their best. Their future prospects were illimitable; they were in love; and they were spending their vacation in one of the gentlest areas of the world.

  Penny saw in the English papers that three choral societies were uniting for a program in Winchester Cathedral, and with the help of women at the air base she arranged tickets for the Popes and an English couple whose husband flew with John. Somehow they jammed themselves into the sports car and trundled off to Winchester, where the united choir was a delight: boys of fourteen and elderly women of seventy, old men and round-faced young girls, singing the ancient songs of England and the best religious music.

  John had little appreciation of the music but could enjoy the soaring architecture of the cathedral, and during intermission he found special pleasure in noting the numerous plaques set into the walls in commemoration of this or that English regiment which had served in India or Khartoum, but at the close of the second half of the program the choirs offered two encores that brought Pope right out of his seat. He had never heard either piece before, but with the aid of the brief explanation by the choir leader, he could immediately recognize their importance. The first began as a show piece for the baritones, who were then joined by all the voices; the words were a poem he did not know by a poet whose name he did not catch:

  ‘And did those feet in ancient time …’

  The majestic thunder of the song made him want to cheer, and when the voices died away in prayer for a better day, he led the applause, hoping the chorus would repeat the song. Instead they closed with what the announcer said was one of the finest operatic choruses, which, like the first encore, had a solid religious base. It was the chorus of Israelites lost in their Babylonian captivity, dreaming of their homeland:

  ‘Va, pensiero, sull’ ali dorate …’

  It was a perfect musical setting to words of deep emotion, and again Pope led the applause, watching with delight as the mixed choir bowed again and again.

  Back at the Boar and Thrush he commissioned Penny to find copies of the two encores, and at the first music store she entered, an enthusiastic woman clerk interrupted as soon as Penny started humming. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that’s a grand hymn. Words by William Blake about 1800, music by Sir Hubert Parry about 1900, and the rousing arrangement by Elgar around 1915.’ She blushed, then added in a whisper, It became the marching song of the Labour party. My father’s Labour and he made me learn it.’ She had three good versions of the hymn, but neither in this store nor in the others Penny visited could she find a recording of the second encore.

  However, an older clerk who seemed to know a good deal about music told her that the chorus was from Verdi’s Nabucco, an opera almost never given. He thought that perhaps the chorus might have been put on discs by an Italian company, but could find no proof of this in any catalogue.

  So the Popes had to be content with the William Blake song and a record player borrowed from the landlord at the Boar and Thrush, and for the last two mornings in England, Penny could hear her husband bellowing in the resonant bathroom:

  Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

  Bring me my Arrows of desire: …’

  When they returned to Patuxent River they found that Claggett had completed his tour and was taking command of an F8U-1 Marine squadron at Beaufort Air Base near Parris Island in South Carolina. At the farewell party on Solomons, after he had sold his two Chevys for $30 and $65, he took Penny aside. ‘You have a big job to do, Penny. When I leave, John becomes Numero Uno. Every pressure will be put on him to stay here at Pax River. Good living quarters. Great assignments.’

  ‘Where do I come in?’

  ‘You must drive him out of here. Don’t, don’t let that fine young man accept another tour here. That’s the graveyard. That stigmatizes him as a man without real drive. Get him busted free.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Goddammit, don’t give me that simple school-girl crap. You know damned well for what. For command. To get in line for the big jobs. Captain of a carrier. An admiral’s stripes.’ He gripped Penny firmly by the arm. ‘You see it in the Senate. Some of the men forge ahead. Most stay on the minor committees. Your man is destined to be a mover and a shaker. Don’t let him be sidetracked.’

  ‘Are you destined to be a mover and a shaker?’ she asked sarcastically.

  ‘You bet your ass I am. And so are you.’

  Claggett’s warning had been perceptive, for when he left Pax River, John Pope became the front runner, the true airplane driver admired by the incoming classes. He got the best assignments, worked most closely with the better manufacturers, but most important was the joy he continued to find in taking a new aircraft high above the peaceful Chesapeake and out over the turbulent Atlantic, testing it, pushing it, feeling it respond to his commands, and sometimes identifying terrible faults which would forever prevent the plane from gaining acceptance into the Navy’s arsenal.

  Another man augered in, and John Pope was sent to notify his widow, then almost immediately thereafter still another, a young man who seemed destined to follow in the Glenn-Shepard-Claggett-Pope hierarchy of solid test pilots. Now he was gone, a white fish-gnawed corpse dredged out of his crashed plane at the bottom of the Chesapeake.

  For some days Pope stayed off by himself, reflecting on the tremendous price the nation paid and would continue to pay so that it might have small, complex airplanes that could carry fighter pilots safely in defense of the country, or large, simplified aircraft that could transport huge numbers of people from place to place. The attrition was fearful, sometimes even sickening, so that Captain Penscott was safe in warning any incoming class of fifteen that ‘by this time next year two of you will be dead,’ because invariably they were. In his gloom John wanted very much to talk with Penny, or to spend an evening with the Claggetts, but he was alone, and perhaps this was best because it forced him to sort out his ideas, and after three bad days he came back onto the line, choosing for himself the newest and most difficult planes.

  He had one extremely close call, when the ailerons on a prototype failed to perform properly and he feared he might have to eject over the Chesapeake, but to do so would mean the loss of an aircraft, and this he could not permit. So with sweat standing on his face, he wrestled the difficult plane into obedience, then brought it savagely back to base and slammed it onto the tarmac.

  That afternoon, teeth grimly set, he took control of the area in which outlines of an aircraft carrier had been neatly painted on the tarmac, complete with landing signals and restraining gear submerged beneath the runway, and there he watched the new students bring their planes in for landings as near to the real thing as possible.

  They would fly a long leg to the west, turn over the Patuxent River and come banging eastward toward the bay. At the proper moment they would begin their swift descent, watch the landing lights at the rear of the simulated carrier, drop very low, cut their engines and slam onto the deck, where cables stretched taut would catch at the dangling hook, stopping the heavy plane with a force of G’s that was unimaginable to one who had never experienced it.

  After heckling the newcomers for two hours, Pope took one of the F6Q-ls up himself, made the long circuit, and came thundering down to the make-believe carrier. Reading the signals perfectly, he dropped his plane precisely on the deck, felt his hook grab, then experienced a wil
d sensation as the hook tore loose from the undercarriage, allowing the plane to skid at great speed down the tarmac on its damaged and collapsing wheels.

  With automatic reflexes, Pope did everything possible to keep his plane from crashing wildly or turning over in flaming wreckage. Nine of the routine procedures proved useless, and he thought: We bought the ranch on this one. But when he wrenched the wheel violently to the left, some sorely damaged hydraulic system caught for a moment; the left wheel stayed upright and the plane came to rest in the middle of the tarmac.

  Coldly, Pope climbed onto a wing, worked his way aft, and dropped to the ground. After surveying the wrecked plane for about half an hour, checking the points of failure, he let somebody drive him to the ready room, where he spent two hours writing his report on exactly what he thought had happened, with pen-and-ink sketches of where in his opinion the metal had failed. He concluded his report:

  The F6Q-1 is a fine airplane, very responsive under all conditions in flight and with remarkable maneuverability along all axes. If the hook can be strengthened, especially where it joins the empennage, I believe the plane will give a good account of itself.

  He then spent four hours with the distraught representatives of Allied Aviation, and on succeeding days he devoted so much time to the field representatives that some of the old-timers, who had witnessed this phenomenon before, started the rumor: ‘Pope’s had it. Seven, eight near-misses. Now he’s sucking up to Allied for a desk job in industry.’

  One of the young fliers who had great regard for Pope’s impeccable record went to him with the rumor, at which Pope snapped: ‘You think I’m a desk type?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Neither do I.’ And when General Funkhauser flew in to check personally on the bad performance of his plane, Lieutenant Commander Pope refused even to see him, saying that his written report had to suffice.

  Captain Penscott made apologies: ‘I’ve seen it a dozen times, Helmut. It’s called “end-of-the-skies syndrome.” A young tiger, flew anything with wings. His days here are numbered and he’s scared to death that from now on he’ll do no more flying. Desk job. Executive on a carrier.’

  ‘A man like Pope can still fly, even at such jobs.’

  ‘There’s flying, Helmut, and there’s real flying. They know the glory days are over. And it makes them edgy.’

  For the past four years Norman Grant had been having a lonely time in Washington, for his wife no longer came to the capital even for brief visits, saying that she preferred staying in Clay, where she could supervise the education of their daughter, Marcia, now a headstrong high-school senior. It had been Mrs. Grant’s correct suspicion that Marcia would not thrive in Washington, and this became an added reason for avoiding the capital, but primarily she wanted to stay home to receive the urgent messages sent by Universal Space Associates, and the more deeply her husband became involved in space, the more she rejected everything he was doing, for she knew that the Visitors were going to assume control any day now; their advanced technology, Dr. Strabismus warned, would make obsolete anything being attempted.

  The senator dealt increasingly with what might be called ‘the space program,’ even though no one in government had officially acknowledged that America needed a space program. Thoughtful men like Lyndon Johnson, Michael Glancey and Wernher von Braun did speculate on what the next practical steps ought to be, but their work had little real focus because most of the experimentation was being conducted in secret by the military.

  In their discussions, the leaders were always apprehensive lest the space program become identified with the Democratic party, then in control of both houses despite the fact that the Republican Eisenhower had been reelected President by a huge majority. So whenever a consensus had been reached as to what must be done next, the men brought Norman Grant into their confidence and depended increasingly upon him for bipartisan support. At one informal meeting, when they disclosed some of their hopes for the future, Grant asked, ‘What cost figure would you propose for such a program?’ And Majority Leader Johnson said, without apology, ‘About two billion.’

  ‘Billion!’ Grant exploded. ‘You’d be lucky if you could get two hundred million over a three-year period.’

  ‘Norman,’ Johnson said in his expansive Texas style, ‘we’re talking about a man-sized budget for a man-sized project for a man-sized nation.’ And he outlined roughly his turbulent vision of the future: ‘New machines, new types of men flying them, new materials, new problems. It’s all going to change, Norman.’

  It was at this meeting that Grant dug in his heels. Pointing his finger at Von Braun, he said sternly, ‘I’m not going to serve as errand boy to the Treasury to finance your grandiose playthings.’

  With the suavity that had always marked Von Braun’s relationships with any authority which might have the power to veto his grand design of putting men into space, the German said quietly, ‘Senator Grant, it isn’t my plaything. It’s the world’s obligation, and there can be no turning back.’

  ‘Simply because a thing can be done is no justification for doing it,’ Grant said, ‘and certainly not at the cost you men propose.’

  Von Braun laughed warmly and said, ‘You’re entirely right, Senator. We never have to do something merely because it can be done. But you and I aren’t going to be the judge of that.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Russia,’ Von Braun said with iron in his voice. ‘Every report we get from behind the Iron Curtain confirms our fears that Russia will soon amaze the world with some bold move.’

  ‘Like what?’ Grant asked.

  ‘I don’t know. But I think they have a capability of putting a nest of scientific instruments into earth orbit.’

  ‘I can’t see that as revolutionary,’ Grant said.

  ‘And I would not be surprised if they followed with a man in orbit.’

  ‘To what purpose?’

  ‘To astound the world. To gain an enormous propaganda victory.’

  When Grant demurred still further, Lyndon Johnson broke in: ‘Von Braun’s convinced me that if Russia succeeds …’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Be prepared, Norman. I want you to think about these problems, because if Wernher is correct, and the Russians do perform some spectacular feat under the gaze of the whole world … hell, we could be in hot water.’ And then he lapsed into the Texas drawl he used when making a folksy point: ‘They was this rancher on the Pedernales and he didn’t have much of a herd, so he got his two sons to make imitation cow flops outen brown papier-mǎché, and he placed hunnerds of ‘em aside the highway, and when my Uncle Sam Houston Richards asked the old man, “What you doin’, Clem?” the old man said, “Whether you got a herd or not, the neighbors better think you do.” When Russia makes its big move, Norman, we better be prepared to prove to the neighbors that we can match her.’

  When Grant showed that he was not convinced about Russia’s capacity, the men convened another meeting at which two experts from the Russian desk at the Central Intelligence Agency made reports on the current state of their information, and both Glancey and Grant were astonished by what they heard:

  ‘We have good reason to believe that Russia right now has the capacity to throw a man into space and keep him there for several days.’

  ‘How can you know that?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Workmen who report to us about launch and landing sites in Siberia.’

  ‘Are they reliable?’

  ‘Always have been. Also, we speak with scientists in Sweden who monitor the skies, and with the world’s best detection devices at Jodrell Bank in England. Bits and pieces, but each confirms the other.’

  ‘And you think Russia has the ability to do what Von Braun predicts?’

  ‘We can reach no other conclusion.’

  Grant rose and moved about the room, as if preparing himself for his next question. ‘Tell me in simple terms, what would it mean if Russia did put a little machine in space? Or a big one
with a man?’

  Intuitively, everyone turned to Von Braun, who had been contemplating just this situation for nearly thirty years, and a bland smile came over his large features. ‘The world will be turned upside down. It will be told by Moscow that this proves the superiority of Communism, and where space is concerned, Moscow will be right, and the world will know it.’

  Grant asked the CIA men what they thought, and they agreed that the propaganda victory would be immense. ‘We’d be on the defensive in every country in the world. Can’t you hear them chiding us? “You said you were world leaders, but in reality you’re world followers.” I assure you, Senator, it would be a disaster.’

  ‘And the very next day,’ Johnson predicted, ‘you and I and Glancey would rush into the Senate and approve a House bill for five billion dollars … to catch up. That’s why I plead with you to help us now, before the event.’

  Grant was a conservative Western senator with broad experience in the military, and he suspected that this was all part of a tactic to scare and get funds, so he asked, ‘If Russia is so far ahead of us, and we’ve been spending so much money these last few years, why in hell are we so far behind?’ He glared at Von Braun.