Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Rachel saw a different vision: ‘You’ve made yourself one of the top brains in the country. The world is wheeling around to your point of view. Stay with it, Stanley. You could be the American Von Braun.’

  Just as his committee was about to announce that America would adopt Von Braun’s Earth-orbit rendezvous, he received a cryptic call from Mrs. Pope in the Washington office: ‘Senator Glancey wants you to fly directly to Huntsville. Dieter Kolff seems to be making waves. Has strong objections about something.’

  When Mott checked in to the Huntsville motel and called Dieter, he sensed tension and assumed that as soon as Kolff could drive down from Monte Sano to pick him up, the German would launch his complaint, but young Magnus was in the car with him. Mott was pleased to see the boy because despite his absorption in his work, there was an ever-present worry in the back of his mind as to what he and Rachel ought to do about their sons, and it was helpful to observe another boy of about the same age for comparison.

  ‘How are you doing in school?’ he asked the square-faced blond, and the answer he received was so different from what his own sons might have given that he was astonished: ‘I still do poorly in English, but I’m really learning something in mathematics and science, but what I like best is music.’

  ‘What music?’

  ‘We have an orchestra in town. I play trumpet.’

  ‘He’s only fifteen,’ Dieter said as he drove the Volkswagen up the steep roads leading to Monte Sano, ‘but he’s been accepted at the university. Scholarship in music’

  ‘Do you drive your father’s car yet?’ Mott asked.

  ‘Oh, no! That comes when I’m sixteen. Special permit.’

  ‘But can you drive?’

  ‘Oh, no! That comes when I’m sixteen.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want him to touch the car till it’s legal,’ Dieter said.

  At the cottage on the hillside Mott was impressed by the clever additions the Kolffs had made to their home—a room here, an added storage space there, and since their continued stay at Huntsville had been endorsed by the President, a screened-in porch on which they could sit and survey the city lights gleaming below them.

  The meal was one of Liesl’s best, an inexpensive cut of beef marinated in a strong vinegar and cooked for an extra period in a pressure cooker; this broke the tough fibers and allowed the marinade to penetrate all parts. With the Sauerbraten she served potato dumplings and a homemade dark bread, and the meal was so appetizing and so obviously nutritious that Mott asked for seconds, his hearty appetite belying his thin, wiry frame.

  While Mrs. Kolff cleared the table and Magnus went to his room to study, the two engineers sat on the porch and began a conversation which challenged all that Mott’s committee had been doing:

  MOTT: What’s eating you, Dieter?

  KOLFF: The decisions you’re about to make. They distress me.

  MOTT: I was told you now supported Von Braun’s proposals.

  KOLFF: I do. I’m always a loyal soldier. You know that.

  MOTT: I’m sorry your simpler plan couldn’t be accepted. But the Jules Verne Approach …

  KOLFF: I argued. I lost. That’s finished.

  MOTT: Then what’s the problem?

  KOLFF: The idea itself. It’s corrupt with error.

  MOTT: Going to the Moon? You’ve talked to me about that for years. In El Paso…

  KOLFF: To the Moon, yes. But never to the Moon as a major target.

  MOTT: What’s wrong with the Moon as a major target?

  KOLFF: Because when you hit the wrong target you congratulate yourself. As if you’d accomplished some great thing.

  MOTT: Do you doubt we’ll land on the Moon?

  KOLFF: We’ll land there. Trouble is we’ll never get off.

  MOTT: Now wait! Just wait! I’ve spent months reviewing every step of our procedure, and I’m morally certain we can get our men safely off.

  KOLFF: The men, yes. The nation, no. Once we land on the Moon, we’ll remain imprisoned there.

  MOTT: (soberly): What do you mean?

  KOLFF: I mean the terrible error of sending astronauts there. The terrible error of making the Moon shot a circus event.

  MOTT: The men are the heart of this adventure.

  KOLFF: And that’s what’s wrong. We do not require them for a Moon landing. They’ll be in the way. They’ll make the adventure less significant than it should be. They’ll cheapen everything. And in the end, Stanley, they’ll be the reason why we stay imprisoned on the Moon.

  MOTT: Explain.

  KOLFF: Look at the Moon, coming like a gray goddess in the east. Then look at the stars over there where the moonlight doesn’t fade them out. The Moon is a vagrant thing. It comes and goes. The stars are forever, and our obligation is not with the temporary Moon … that’s easy to grasp. Our obligation is with the stars … and they’re not easy to comprehend.

  MOTT: Would you scrub the Moon shot?

  KOLFF: Not at all! It’s a logical first step. But I would get it over in a hurry. I’d not send any men there, to avoid the circus effect. And I’d get on with the job of real exploration. Out there, where the battleground of the mind awaits us. (And he pointed in a direction far from the Moon.)

  MOTT: Why do you object to the astronauts?

  KOLFF: Now we come to the heart of the matter. The men are not technically necessary. You know that and I know it. But to accommodate them, we have to make the capsule enormous when it should be quite small. Then to lift the capsule we don’t need, we must have rockets twice normal size. Then we must have fuel for the oversize rockets. And we have to have support systems for all the things we don’t need. And most dangerous of all, when we get there the attention of the world is diverted to the men and away from the significance of our adventure.

  MOTT (very slowly): Dieter, I know what’s eating you. You’re a man who can build very big rockets. At Peenemünde, you dreamed of one that could cross the Atlantic. At White Sands, it was always bigger, bigger. All you want to do is fire great big rockets and to hell with their purpose. You’re an engineer who’s gone mad.

  KOLFF: And you’re an engineer who’s lost sight of the big goal. Science has corrupted you.

  MOTT: You believe we could explore the Moon and Mars without men in the machines to guide them? To react to emergencies?

  KOLFF: And better. Give me the money we’re wasting on the manned part, we could complete the basic exploration of the solar system in three years. We could land our machines on the Moon and bring back samples tomorrow. We have the devices to photograph the universe, to land on Venus, to fly out to Saturn to inspect the rings. We could do it faster and better and obtain twice as much information.

  MOTT: Why don’t we?

  KOLFF: Politics. For political reasons President Kennedy said ‘We’ll fly a man to the Moon and bring him home.’ (Here he paused to laugh at himself.) All my life I’ve been the plaything of politics. Adolf Hitler has a dream, and I’m summoned from the Russian front. Helmut Funkhauser wants to wipe out the stain of Nazism, so he leads me into your arms. Now it’s the business politics of Life magazine.

  MOTT: What in hell do you mean?

  KOLFF: Life has a contract with the astronauts. Exclusive. No other magazine. So it has to make them notable, how you say, newsworthy. Fifteen writers spend all their time converting seven ordinary young men into gods. And look at the newspaper! Abandons all critical judgment and writes about Al Shepard as if he were Columbus. And what did he do? He rode in a machine like the one we made at Peenemünde a quarter of a century ago. And neither Life nor the Times perceives the real significance of these flights.

  MOTT: It’s news. It’s tremendous news.

  KOLFF: It’s the wrong news.

  MOTT: You can’t stop it, and Von Braun can’t stop it, and I can’t stop it, so what are you going to do?

  KOLFF: I’m going to watch quietly while the circus triumphs, and then watch sadly as the meaningless parade grinds to a halt. And when we are doing not
hing I shall sit here on this porch and look at the stars and weep.

  Kolff was so impressive in his analysis that Mott impulsively altered his travel plans, remaining in Huntsville to talk with the other experts about the implications of what Dieter had said, and although the Germans were loath to disclose anything counter to government policy, it was clear that they shared Kolff’s apprehensions about manned flight as a dead end. Von Braun was not in residence at this time, so Mott sought permission to wait until he returned, for he suspected that the German leader must also see the essential uselessness of including human beings in the package being sent to the Moon, and in the two extra days he had to wait he talked guardedly with many people.

  Von Braun proved an enigma. He was delighted that Mott’s committee had eliminated the Jules Verne Approach, and had pretty well dismissed the three other options, for this meant that his recommended assembly in Earth-orbit rendezvous would have to be adopted, and this would require his continued management. He was in a strong position, and he knew it.

  He did not want to discuss, even fragmentarily, the possibility of making the Moon shot without the involvement of human beings. ‘That’s all been settled at the top. We can live with it, quite easily. Besides, the men they’ve chosen are so highly trained they’ll be an asset during the flight.’

  ‘But wouldn’t it be simpler …’

  ‘The matter’s settled,’ Von Braun said, and it was obvious that he did not intend saying anything which might reopen it. As at Peenemünde, authority had spoken, ending speculation, but as Von Braun ushered Mott to the door he did say two things. ‘I hear you were one of the strongest champions of my Earth-orbit rendezvous. Thank you. You were not only courageous. You were right. And don’t let Dieter Kolff disturb you with his speculations. He’ll never be happy till he fires one of his rockets right out of the solar system. And when that time comes, he’ll be right. But for the present, he’s not.’

  Two hours later, as Mott was preparing to fly back to California, he received an urgent phone call from the Space Committee in Washington. It was Mrs. Pope: ‘Senator Glancey wants you in his office this afternoon at four. Bring Kolff.’

  The meeting was short and brusque. On one side of the table, like a condemnatory grand jury, sat Senators Glancey and Grant, accompanied by their chief of staff, Penny Pope, who took no notes. The meeting had been called by Glancey, but it was Grant who started the discussion:

  ‘Just what in hell do you two men think you’re doing?’

  ‘What, sir?’ Mott asked.

  ‘Stirring up trouble about the Moon shot. Goddammit, we have trouble enough without men in our own organization adding to it.’

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’ Mott asked, with no sign of subserviency. The many invitations to join major companies that had been offered since he had achieved his doctorate gave him a confidence which he had not known before.

  Norman Grant, with sixteen years in the Senate, had also lost the hesitancy which had marked him at his first election. He was now accustomed to knocking down adversaries if persuasion failed, and he judged that in this crisis some knocking down was needed. ‘We have reports that you two men have been agitating at Marshall Space Flight Center against our proposal to have astronauts man the capsule when we land on the Moon.’

  ‘Dr. Kolff and I discussed it, sir,’ Mott said, using Dieter’s cherished designation to impress the senators. ‘Dr. Kolff is a world expert in these fields and I sought his opinion.’

  ‘Well, I can assure Dr. Kolff that in this matter his opinion is not worth a damn, and he had better keep it to himself.’

  ‘All opinions demand attention, Senator Grant. Have you heard some of the crazies we’ve honored with a hearing?’ When he told the senators about the Air Force colonel who wanted to be set down on the Moon with a three-year supply of food and oxygen against the day when more powerful rockets might be invented to come save him, Senator Glancey shook his head, but Senator Grant said grimly, ‘I’m sure we could get volunteers to try it. If I were younger, I’d go in a minute.’

  Glancey said, ‘The problem is this, Mott. Grant and I have to justify before Congress the God-awful budgets you NASA people hit us with. Five billion dollars a year. We cannot justify this if we go before the Senate and say, “This is for scientific exploration.” But if I stand before the Senate and say, “This is to put a brave American boy on the Moon and bring him back safely,” the senators will wipe the tears from their eyes and approve twice what Grant and I ask for.’

  ‘But you know,’ Mott said stubbornly, ‘that it could be done cheaper and better without the men.’

  Grant banged the table in disgust. ‘Dammit, Mott, when Mrs. Pope brought you in here a few years ago I thought you were one of the brightest men we had in NACA. Now you sound downright stupid.’ As soon as he said these harsh words he apologized. ‘Withdraw that. If there’s one thing you’re not, it’s stupid. I’m told you did wonders at Cal Tech. Congratulations. But you are obtuse. By God, you are obtuse.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Glancey said, and now the tense session got down to cases.

  ‘It’s like this,’ Grant explained. ‘The NASA program is terribly expensive. It depends on people like Glancey and me and the Vice-President to keep it funded, and the best thing we have going for us is not Wernher von Braun, good as he is, or brilliant men like you and Kolff. It’s the astronauts, God bless ’em, because the people of this country have taken these men to their hearts. If you were perceived as saying one bad word against John Glenn, you’d be driven out of NASA by nightfall. He’s sacrosanct, and so are the others. On them rests the whole defense of NASA. We’re not sending a monkey to the Moon. That was a terrible mistake. Ran the risk of people laughing. And we’re not sending a machine, because people can’t love machines. And we’re not sending scientific instruments, because people are interested in them only in Boris Karloff movies. What we are sending is brave young American heroes, and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘What we’re really doing,’ Glancey said amiably, ‘is muzzling you two. You can talk between yourselves about next steps and better steps, but in public, you keep your mouths shut.’

  ‘If you don’t,’ Grant said, ‘you could imperil the very program that you’ve worked so diligently to set in motion.’ Turning abruptly to Mrs. Pope, he said, ‘You may bring him in now,’ and when she left the meeting room, Grant said, ‘We’ve invited a gentleman to join us. To explain facts.’

  The newcomer was a handsome, meticulously groomed man of about fifty, dressed in an expensive gray whipcord and wearing imported shoes fastened not by ordinary laces but by lengths of leather ending in soft Italian tassels. ‘I’m proud to introduce Tucker Thompson,’ Grant said, ‘long-time editor of Folks magazine. His corporation’s been awarded an exclusive contract for covering the special group of astronauts we’re about to select, and I’ve asked him to outline the gravity of the situation.’

  Thompson spoke in a Vermont dialect, twangy, subdued, extremely confidential; every sentence he uttered conveyed the impression that he wished to take the particular group of hearers and none other into the secrets of the space age:

  ‘I suffer from two grave disadvantages. Our company has won this contract in opposition to Life, so we’re newcomers. I don’t wish to say a word against Life, because they’ve done an outstanding job presenting the astronauts to the public. But we’re convinced we can do better. Also, my job makes me a kind of public relations man, and you’d have a right to be suspicious of anything I say.

  ‘Folks magazine does not interpret the great space adventure as a circus. We’re not in the business of creating instant heroes. And I truly believe we’ll never overplay our hand in presenting our astronauts as anything supernatural … just the finest young men our nation has produced and their wives as prototypes of what young American womanhood should be. We are not selling dreams, we’re selling realities.

  ‘And the reality is this. America sees its space program as identical
with the astronauts. And their families, I might add. Their families are a significant part of this mighty program. It would be impossible to imagine a bachelor astronaut, because half his significance would be missing. I think I could say without fear of successful contradiction that without its astronauts, America would have no space program.

  ‘What’s the bottom line? No one must print or say or circulate in any way even the slightest hint that any part of the space program could go forward without the astronauts. We have an enormous investment in these fine young men and it simply must not be imperiled.’

  Mott found it offensive to be lectured by someone who apparently knew so little about the scientific difficulties of the space program—the mind-breaking anxieties which kept even the best astronomers agitated for months—and he decided the moment had come when he must speak as a scientist.

  ‘Our two senators remind us of the political realities. This distinguished editor tells us of the public relations aspect. Dr. Kolff and I are here as engineers and scientists responsible for the crucial decisions, and I remind you that the Moon shot is only part of our program. Either before or after its success, we’ll be sending a probe to Mars. Unmanned.’

  ‘And the nation will know nothing of it,’ Tucker Thompson predicted, ‘because writers like me will have no human beings on which to hang our story.’

  ‘You think the story is everything?’ Mott asked.

  ‘I do.’ Then, sensing that he was being put into opposition to these two brilliant scientists, he told a joke. ‘Public relations men, which I am not, have to be watched. When Moses was leading the children of Israel out of their captivity in Egypt, he gathered them on the banks of the Red Sea and told them frankly, “Children, we’re in trouble, deep trouble. The sea ahead of us. The desert around us. The Egyptian army bearing down upon us. Tell you what I’m agonna do. I’m gonna separate that Red Sea and make a pathway of dry land. We’ll march across, and when the Egyptian army tries to follow, I’ll tell you what I’m agonna do. I’m gonna close up that pathway and drown ‘em all.” The Israelite PR man who heard this was ecstatic. “You do that, Moses,” he cried, “and I can get you three pages in the Old Testament.” ’