Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘But we aren’t!’ Von Braun cried. ‘Two years ago we could have propelled an object into space. At Wallops Island our multiple-stage rockets—’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Grant interrupted. ‘There’s an expert from Wallops Island in Washington right now. I think Mrs. Pope will know how to catch him.’ And when Stanley Mott was presented to the informal committee, Grant said, ‘Mott, we’ve been told that Wallops had the capacity, some time ago, to loft a device into earth orbit. Is that correct?’

  ‘We think so, sir.’ And he told them of that Wallops launch the previous January when Levi Letterkill voiced his guess that if all five rockets of the Honest John + Nike + Nike had fired directly upward, orbital velocity of 16,029 mph would have been achieved.

  ‘That was Letterkill’s guess,’ Grant snapped. ‘Anyone can make a guess.’

  ‘But later he ran his figures through the computer. Three days’ intensive analysis. And he proved conclusively that Honest John could have done it.’

  ‘And America would have had a satellite in orbit?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How sure are you of your data?’

  ‘Letterkill’s one of our best men.’

  ‘Were you satisfied with his figures?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Mott said with his customary caution, ‘I can only give an opinion.’

  ‘That’s why we asked you here,’ Grant snapped.

  ‘We could have gone into orbit.’

  Grant threw down his pencil. ‘Damn it all, if Von Braun in Huntsville knew we could do it, and this Letterkill at Wallops knew it, and you knew it, Mott, why in hell didn’t we do it?’

  Von Braun did not speak, nor did Mott, although each knew the answer. Grant, disgusted by what he was hearing, glared at Lyndon Johnson, who deferred politely to Glancey, who frowned and said, ‘So you nominate me to be the bastard? All right.’ Clearing his throat, he said, ‘If Dr. Von Braun was not a good soldier, he would tell you, Norman, that your Secretary of Defense, Charley Wilson, issued secret orders that no American rocket was to be thrown into space.’

  ‘Good God, why not?’ When no one answered, Grant fumed: ‘If a Russian space shot is so all-important, why haven’t we been first?’

  Mott replied, ‘Direct orders from President Eisenhower.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Grant said, and he stormed out of the office, shouting at Mrs. Pope, ‘Tell the White House I’m on my way over.’

  By good luck Charley Wilson, whose retirement from Defense had already been announced, was still in Washington and Grant had a chance to talk with both men. ‘They inform me, Mr. President, that Russia may be about to loft a scientific package of some kind into outer space.’

  ‘Those fellows at NACA, they’re always dreaming something.’

  ‘They’re like the military commanders,’ Wilson said. ‘Using Russia to justify their request for more money.’

  ‘They assure me, Mr. President, that if Russia gets there first, it’ll be a huge propaganda victory.’

  ‘I’m sure they think so, Grant,’ Eisenhower said with a look of gentle amusement. ‘But I can’t believe the world is going to get very excited over something not much bigger than a football going around the Earth.’

  ‘I’ve learned two things in this town,’ Wilson said. ‘The military always wants more hardware and the scientists always want more money to study things like why dogs bark and why grass is green. You can’t ever satisfy them, and they never accomplish a damned thing.’

  ‘Have orders been given to our team not to put anything into space?’

  ‘They certainly have,’ Wilson said. ‘We don’t want that can of worms opened up.’

  ‘I judged it best,’ Eisenhower concurred, ‘that we not trespass into areas about which we know so little. And if you think about it, Norman, you’ll agree.’

  The two leaders, each so impressive in his early field of war or business, each so stalwart and responsible in his later work as a leader of government, walked Grant to the door, assuring him that Lyndon Johnson and Wernher Von Braun were fine men, but never to be taken too seriously in this matter of space. At parting, Eisenhower said, ‘Norman, keep a cautious eye on your committee. One of these days it’ll be needed, but it mustn’t go off half-cocked.’

  So Senator Grant returned to the room where Mrs. Pope was collecting stray papers to be burned, and told her, ‘It’s reassuring to talk with the President. He puts things in perspective.’ And at that moment, late afternoon at Jodrell Bank in England, a British scientist who specialized in monitoring Russian activity telephoned one of the CIA men who had testified earlier in the day with information that ‘something happened in Siberia this morning, Position L, nothing big. We can’t decipher it, but for sure, something was tried.’

  That summer of 1957 was, in Elinor Grant’s judgment, one of the most exciting periods of world history, for as she explained to her eighteen-year-old daughter Marcia: ‘The Visitors have been extremely displeased with the way President Eisenhower has dragged his feet in the takeover, and on three separate and distinct occasions they’ve been about to invade Washington and have been stopped only because Dr. Strabismus has intervened.’ She had the telegrams to prove it. The most recent stated:

  Last week the Visitors held a plenary session in a spaceship off Morocco, which I was privileged to attend. Two members of Eisenhower’s cabinet, who are in reality Visitors implanted there long ago, joined me in persuading the Visitors to delay for one more brief respite their planned takeover. I can state with ultimate authority that it is now scheduled to take place the first week of October. The precise date will be sent you later.

  LEOPOLD STRABISMUS

  Universal Space Associates

  Marcia recalled with amusement that the implanted Visitors had originally been ‘one Washington official with access to President Eisenhower,’ but had quickly become ‘one of the President’s intimate advisers,’ then ‘a member of the Cabinet,’ and now ‘two members of Eisenhower’s Cabinet,’ and she speculated on what kind of charm Strabismus might possess to enable him to seduce her mother so outrageously, but in mid-July the world-famous scientist, as his brochures described him, came personally to Clay to solicit further funds for the impending plenary session of the Visitors, the one which would determine pretty much how the United States would be governed after the takeover.

  He was heavier now, thirty-two years old, with a beard increasingly handsome. He wore his black hair combed straight back and it emphasized the white suits he preferred in summer, and this offset his dark eyes, whose effect he strengthened by a judicious use of mascara. But his salient characteristic was the growing self-confidence that surrounded him like an aura; experience had shown that he could do anything, defend even the most outrageous fraud, and gain increasing support from the very people he was bilking. He had charisma, as carefully nurtured as delicate plantings in a spring garden, and his only problem now was how best to capitalize upon it.

  ‘It’s essential that I be in attendance,’ he told Marcia and her mother as he sat with them in their sunny reception room, ‘because the fate of outstanding citizens like the senator will hang in the balance. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that superior though they are, the Visitors will have to depend upon some of our citizens to help them govern, and it might as well be Senator Grant as some boob from New Jersey.’ And then he turned his dark eyes full upon Mrs. Grant. ‘Or you, Mrs. Grant. The Visitors are certainly not going to discriminate against able women.’

  Brazenness like this captivated Marcia, and speculating on just how brazen he would dare to be, she started to watch him intensely, and he decided that the target on this visit was not the mother, whose limitations he understood, but the very pretty daughter whose capabilities were as yet unknown. Marcia was a petulant girl that summer, entered in the university but displaying no unusual promise except for her striking beauty. She was taller than her mother and slimmer, and her unblemished complexion testified to th
e care she gave it. She wore her hair attractively long, with two plaited braids behind her ears, and these she decorated with small blue ribbons that matched nicely her blue peasant’s skirt—which flared, when she moved suddenly, to display her fine legs.

  Dr. Strabismus noticed the legs, and with never a word spoken between them, the great scientist and the senator’s daughter launched a courtship which proceeded with deepening import as the three talked about the impending invasion. The doctor was meeting with financial disappointment, for as Mrs, Grant explained: ‘The senator has closed out our joint account. He became quite infuriated over that last check, so I no longer have access to money which is half mine, by rights.’

  Indeed it is,’ Strabismus agreed. ‘But didn’t you tell me last time that you had personal funds … from your father? Wasn’t he a distinguished …’

  ‘Farmer. Yes, he did leave me an inheritance, but I’m saving that for Marcia when she marries.’

  Dr. Strabismus smiled at Marcia and said that this was an excellent idea, most prudent, but in view of the culminating importance of the impending meeting, and its special importance to them through the position in the new government which her father might obtain, did they not agree that a contribution now might be the best way to protect Marcia’s future?

  While Mrs. Grant flustered this way and that, trying to find an answer, Marcia stared directly at Dr. Strabismus in her sultriest manner, as if to say: ‘I know you’re a fraud, an outrageous fraud, and if I had you alone for two minutes, I’d have your pants down.’ He smiled right back, as if to say: ‘Well, we know one another, and if I had you alone for two minutes, I’d have your panties off completely.’

  It was Mrs. Grant’s opinion that she and Marcia could spare, at most, $1,500 of the latter’s inheritance, and for this Strabismus thanked them profusely, then with masterful skill maneuvered so that Marcia could drive him back to his motel in her Pontiac, and six minutes after he got her there, they were in bed, wildly, joyously.

  ‘You’re the most cunning fraud,’ she whispered into his beard.

  ‘And you’re the sexiest kid on the block. You’re ready for California, Marcia baby.’

  ‘My parents would never let me …’

  ‘You don’t have to tell them.’

  ‘They are a pitiful pair of jerks, aren’t they?’

  Strabismus preferred not to answer, because he knew that Mrs. Grant was no worse than other flighty women who supported him, and that while Senator Grant was largely ineffective, he was not a public disgrace like some congressmen he had heard of. Most of the girls who flocked to California to share in the adventures of space with him were convinced that their parents were imbecilic, and he supposed that this was a national sickness upon which a clever man could capitalize.

  She laughed. ‘In effect, I’m paying you fifteen hundred dollars of my own money for this toss in the hay.’

  ‘And it’s worth every penny, isn’t it?’ Marcia agreed that it was, and when next day Dr. Strabismus met with Senator Grant’s two women, he warned them: ‘Remember! The takeover occurs without any chance of postponement during the first week of October.’

  When the senator returned from Washington, Mrs. Grant showed him the October letter from USA, mailed in mid-September to speed donations, and he slumped into a chair to read every word of this amazing document, trying desperately to fathom how his wife could believe such transparent rot. When she told him that her cooperation had assured him a job with the new government, he exploded: ‘Are you losing your mind, Elinor?’

  ‘No. And when Dr. Strabismus visited here Marcia liked him, too.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s gone to California. To visit school chums.’

  ‘Where in California?’

  ‘Los Angeles, I think.’

  ‘Good God! Don’t you see what’s happened? He’s enticed her out there, and you know what that means.’

  ‘Norman, that’s unworthy! Just because you can’t see what’s happening about you …’

  He called the FBI in Washington, and within two hours had confirmation that one Marcia Grant, rumored to be the daughter of Senator Grant, was living with Dr. Strabismus and helping address letters in the two-room office of Universal Space Associates.

  ‘What have you done to your daughter?’ he cried when he told his wife the ugly news.

  ‘Spies,’ Mrs. Grant snorted. ‘They’re trying to protect an old regime from the revolution that’s about to overtake the world, and they’ll say anything to save their skins.’

  In the middle of September, Marcia returned sheepishly to Clay, entering her university classes two weeks late; when her mother tried to interrogate her about Strabismus, she broke into tears, then entered into a series of passionate dates with a football player.

  The three Grants were at home in Clay when the urgent telegram arrived on the first of October warning them to be extra attentive during the coming week because the intentions of the little Visitors were not at all clear:

  But I can assure you that events of supreme importance threaten, and we must all be prepared. I wish I could be more specific, but the Visitors are extremely impatient with President Eisenhower, and I cannot predict what they might do.

  The senator was so disturbed by this nonsense that he called the Secret Service to see whether it constituted a criminal threat to the President, and they dispatched from their Chicago office an operative wise in American ways to consult with Grant:

  ‘America’s full of kooks, probably three in every hundred. Political, economic, religious, the world-is-ending gang. You ought to see the stuff that reaches our desk. Unbelievable. If we tried to track down all the wild ones in orbit, we’d need a force ten times as large, and even then we’d cover only the fringe. This is a nation of zanies held precariously in check by the sane majority.’

  When Grant showed him the actual telegram, the Secret Service man laughed. ‘This is tame. We know Strabismus well. Compared to the others, he’s sane. Works rackets on widows. Has a sweet tooth for girls one day older than sixteen. He provides amusement, I suppose, and does minimum harm.’

  ‘Can he be held in any way for stealing money? A good deal of money?’

  ‘From your wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She gave it to him of her own free will and accord, as the legal saying goes.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I could guess what it was when you called, and I checked the bank records. Twenty-one thousand dollars plus, and every cent legal.’ Then he spoke as father to father. ‘Senator, your girl came home, didn’t she? If she’s free of VD and not pregnant, you’re a lot luckier than some families. Take my advice, drop the case.’

  When the first three days of October passed without incident, Mrs. Grant grew apprehensive, for she had convinced herself that this time the Visitors really would arrive, and she believed that because of her faithfulness, they would invite her to help in governing. She was forty that year, with a long life ahead of her, and she welcomed the arrival of the little men and the better world they promised.

  Family problems reached a crisis on Friday when the three Grants dined together and the senator proved powerless to combat his wife’s reckless slide into unreality. ‘I forbid you to give that charlatan another penny of Marcia’s money.’

  ‘I’m doing it to protect her position in the new world … and yours, too, I might add.’

  ‘Can’t you see he’s a charlatan?’

  ‘Don’t keep parroting that word,’ Mrs. Grant screamed, and she would have rushed from the table had not her daughter reached out to take her hand.

  ‘Mother,’ Marcia said, ‘we all know he’s a fraud.’ And while she continued to hold Elinor’s hand she recited the facts: the two mangy rooms, Mr. Ramirez and his forgeries, the young girls who trekked in from various parts of the nation. ‘You might as well know the truth. He kicked me out when a girl sixteen years old came in by bus from Oklahoma.’

  M
rs. Grant drew her hand away and stared straight ahead, refusing to hear these calumnies, but Marcia was now relentless. ‘Research? He dreams up everything. He has a staff of one, himself. And as for travel to Morocco, the only trips he takes are to towns like this to steal money from women like you.’

  Mrs. Grant remained very erect, hands in lap, then said gently, ‘I hope you’ll be forgiven when the Visitors arrive tomorrow or Sunday. God knows, I’ve done all I could to protect you.’

  At that moment the phone rang. It was Michael Glancey from Washington with news that would soon astound the nation: ‘Norman, turn on the television. Hear it for yourself.’

  ‘The Soviet Union has announced, and observers at England’s Jodrell Bank confirm, that Russia has today placed in orbit about the Earth a satellite they call Sputnik. It makes a complete circuit of the Earth every ninety minutes and is broadcasting a series of clearly heard radio signals in code as it moves swiftly through the sky. It is the world’s first adventure into space.’

  ‘The world has nothing to do with it,’ Elinor said rhapsodically. It’s the little Visitors … on the day he predicted.’

  Marcia had to smile. ‘Strabismus! That lucky son-of-a-bitch!’

  If America had been laggard in its exploration of space, despite the recommendations of its premier minds, it displayed an astonishing determination to catch up once the Russians had led the way, but before effective steps could be taken, intellectual choices of the most excruciating complexity had to be made in the areas of management, finance, personnel, and above all, engineering and science. From October 1957 through June 1962 some of the best intellects in the nation grappled with these matters and strove desperately to make the right choices.

  President Eisenhower and Congress faced three tremendous problems: Should space be controlled by the military, since they could use it effectively against an enemy? Should it be financed by creating a bold new agency like the Atomic Energy Commission, which had masterminded the atomic bomb? If men were to fly in space, from what pool of volunteers should they be chosen?