Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol XII

by Various

  Jordan shook hands, noticing as he did so that Mr. McGuire was carrying something that closely resembled a hip flask. It had a bright green silk ribbon tied around the neck.

  "It's a pleasure," he said. "What's in the bottle?"

  Mr. McGuire laughed a rich bellow.

  "That, me friend," he said in a brogue so carefully cultivated that Jordan winced almost visibly, "is a bottle o' wather from the River Shannon, fer the christening', b'dad 'n' bejabers."

  "The christening?" Jordan echoed hollowly.

  "Indade, the christenin' ... with the Senator's kind permission I'll now step down and officiate. One piddlin' smash at the nose of yonder rocket is all I ask. One smash and a Hail Mary, and she's off to Glory!"

  "Jordan ..." began the Senator.

  "Now, Senator ..." began Jordan.

  But the bullhorn above them drowned out everything and effectively stalled the plans of the Hibernians by announcing in deafening syllables that everyone was to clear the launch area.

  In the distance Jordan observed dozens of tiny figures scuttling from the gleaming Vanguard toward something that looked vaguely like a turtle but which he had heard was called a blockhouse.

  "I think," he said in unutterable relief, "that we're about ready to launch."

  Jordan finally found Clements in the milling throng. They stood at the balcony rail staring fixedly at the Vanguard as the count progressed downward with what seemed dreadful slowness.

  "How long is a second, anyway?" growled Jordan peevishly.

  The countdown proceeded to minus twenty minutes ... minus fifteen minutes. Then came the quick announcement, "The count is T minus twelve minutes and holding."

  "Twelve minutes and holding?" repeated Jordan jumpily. "What does that mean?"

  "It means," answered Clements with just a touch of superiority, "that they have stopped the count at T minus twelve minutes because something is wrong. It will delay the launch."

  * * * * *

  Jordan wrung his hands fretfully.

  "Something wrong? I never heard of such a thing. What could possibly go wrong?"

  "Oh," ventured Clements, "I suppose there are a few things about this rocket that could fail to function under unusual circumstances." He snubbed out his cigarette. "After all, your watch stops sometimes, doesn't it?"

  "Sometimes," Jordan admitted sourly, "but never at T minus twelve minutes."

  After a short time the bullhorn shook the area with the news that the count had resumed. Jordan borrowed Clements' binoculars and stared fixedly at the abandoned Vanguard. Suddenly he started violently. "My God, Clem," he yelled, "it's on fire! There's smoke flying out right there in the middle. Look!"

  Clements took a quick glance.

  "Relax, chief," he said reassuringly. "It's oxygen coming from a vent. They can't seal the oxygen tank till just before launch, or it'll blow up."

  "Oh, it can't blow up," quavered Jordan, going to pieces. "But it will. I feel it in my bones. It's going to blow up ... ker BOOM!"

  Clements patted him on the back.

  "Stop worrying, chief. It's going to work just fine. You wait and see."

  Jordan shook his head in disbelief. "kerBOOM!" he said faintly.

  The bullhorn announced T minus four minutes. To divert Jordan's attention Clements suggested that he watch the pilots of the photography ships who were about to board. With some difficulty Jordan focussed the instrument and observed the two pilots walk across the apron in front of the main operations building and climb into their small ships. A blue halo formed softly around the stern of each as they cut on the engines and brought them up to idle.

  Then suddenly the count was a T minus ten seconds. 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 Jordan thought he was going to faint ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 Zero!

  There was a dazzling flash of igniting kerosene and lox which caused Jordan to jump into the air, a terrible burst of smoke and dust and then an overwhelming, harsh shattering roar such as had not disturbed Canaveral Space Port in more than a hundred years.

  Deafened Clements looked at Jordan; saw his lips form the work "ker BOOM."

  But in spite of all the evidence to the contrary the Vanguard was off the launcher, balancing with unbelievable, rocklike steadiness on that flickering, fiery column. Slowly, almost painfully the thing rose, gathered speed, pitched slowly eastward and bored triumphantly into the sky. Beside it, a thousand yards to the north and south, sped the photo ships, their drive haloes still scarcely brighter than when idling on the ground. With cameras whirring they escorted '58 Beta into space for the second time.

  There was considerable confusion, some hoarse cheering and a great deal of milling around. Clements got a grip on Jordan and steered him to the AstroBar where two quick ones put him back together again.

  "Now, what we should do," Clements suggested, "is to go down to the trajectory section and find out the latest word on the launch analysis."

  Jordan hiccupped.

  "Why?" he said, a little belligerently. "What's to analyze? We got it launched, didn't we? What more d'they want? Besides, I like it here."

  * * * * *

  Forty five minutes later the reports clattered in from Cairo and Woomera. In the Port Commander's private briefing room a young woman brought a sheaf of papers to the Commander. He began to read aloud. The audience leaned forward in strained attention.

  "Preliminary flash report on the re-launch of satellite '58 Beta. The launch phase was eminently successful. The hold at T minus twelve minutes was not due to any malfunction in the missile itself, but rather to a disorder of another kind ... the engineer who was functioning as Launch Monitor had fainted in the blockhouse. The count was picked up under the direction of the Assistant Launch Monitor. After launch the three stages of the rocket separated properly, and injection into orbit occurred at the predicted altitude."

  He paused and shuffled the papers.

  "Now I have here," he continued, dropping a sheet and picking it up, "the description of the orbit now occupied by '58 Beta. We have a perigee of six hundred twenty five miles and an apogee of twenty nine hundred miles, and ... oh, my word; this is a tough break! Well, gentlemen, we can't win 'em all. As you know, we had hoped for a permanent orbit. However, according to our computers, while '58 Beta is now in an orbit, it is a degenerative one. She will unfortunately suffer a progressive perigee drop on each resolution and after three hundred forty eight years, seven months and approximately nineteen or twenty days she will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. I am heartily sorry, gentlemen."

  * * * * *

  They returned to the AstroBar, and Clements began trying to catch up with Jordan.

  "You know," said Jordan, his head wobbling a little with the emphasis he put into the words, "this is the damnedest farce in the history of the world."

  "You're absolutely right, chief," agreed Clements, taking another slug. "And what are we going to do about it?"

  Over his empty glass Jordan gave Clements a slow, confidential wink. Then he fished some papers out of his pocket. He folded them carefully and slipped them into an envelope. Meticulously drying a spot on the bar with his coatsleeve he put down the envelope and began writing on it. Finally he finished. Sealing it he waved it in the air in front of Clements.

  "These," he said solemnly "are the resignation forms you got for me that day. Do you remember those resignation forms, Clements, you old appointee, you?"

  Clements set his glass down indignantly.

  "Certainly I remember, old chiefie. I remember because I got a set for myself while I was at it."

  "Well, good for you, old appointee. Now, you take this envelope, and when we get back to Washington you put it in the office archives file, O.K.? Safest place this side of Fort Knox."

  "Depend on me, chief," he said, taking the envelope and reading the instructions Jordan had written.

  To be held for the use of the Undersecretary for Cislunar Navigation incumbent in the year 2492.

  "Good idea," said Clements. "Let's drink
to the jerk ... O.K.?"

  * * * * *

  Memo: 92 8574 27 October 2492

  From: Secretary for Cislunar Navigation

  To: Undersecretary

  The oldest item in the archives file was opened today. We are not certain that it does not constitute some sort of barbaric practical joke. Note that the forms involved have been superseded several dozen times over since they were originally printed. Investigate and report.

  Memo: 92 1751 29 October 2492

  From: Undersecretary for Cislunar Navigation

  To: Secretary

  Due to excessive demands for time caused by the present Congressional furor regarding our department and its rights and duties concerning debris collection and disposal we have been unable to act on your memo 92 8574. Present priority weighting indicates that the earliest compliance date will be late in December. Please denote concurrence.

  * * *

  Contents

  WHAT NEED OF MAN?

  By Harold Calin

  Bannister was a rocket scientist. He started with the premise of testing man's reaction to space probes under actual conditions; but now he was just testing space probes--and man was a necessary evil to contend with.

  When you are out in a clear night in summer, the sky looks very warm and friendly. The moon is a big pleasant place where it may not be so humid as where you are, and it is lighter than anything you've ever seen. That's the way it is in summer. You never think about space being "out there". It's all one big wonderful thing, and you can never really fall off, or have anything bad happen to you. There is just that much more to see. You lie on the grass and look at the sky long enough and you fall into sort of a detached mood. It's suddenly as if you're looking down at the sky and you're lying on a ceiling by some reverse process of gravitation, and everything is absolutely pleasant.

  In winter it's quite another thing, of course. That's because the sky never looks warm. In winter, if you are in a cold climate, the sky doesn't appear at all friendly. It's beautiful, mind you, but never friendly. That is when you see it as it really is. Summer has a way of making it look friendly. The way you see it on a winter night is only the merest idea of what it is really like. That's why I can't feel too bad about the monkey. You see, it might have been a man, maybe me. I've been out there, too.

  * * * * *

  There are two types of classified government information. One is the type that is really classified because it is concerned with efforts and events that are of true importance and go beyond public evaluation. Occasional unauthorized reports on this type of information, within the scope that I knew it at least, are written off as unidentified flying objects or such. The second type of classified information is the kind that somehow always gets into the newspapers all over the world ... like the X-15, and Project Dyna-Soar ... and Project Argus.

  Project Argus had as its basis a theory that was proven completely unsound six years ago. It was proven unsound by Dennis Lynds. He got killed doing it. It had to do with return vehicles from capsules traveling at escape velocity, being oriented and controlled completely by telemetering devices. It didn't work. This time, the monkey was used for newspaper consumption. I'm sure Bannister would have preferred it if the monkey had been killed on contact. It would have been simpler that way. No mass hysteria about torturing a poor, ignorant beast. A simple scientific sacrifice, already dead upon announcement, would have been a fait accompli, so to speak, and nothing could overshadow the success of Project Argus.

  But Project Argus was a failure. Maybe someday you'll understand why.

  Because of the monkey? Possibly. You see, I flew the second shot after Lynds got killed. After that, came the hearing, and after that no men flew in Bannister's ships anymore. They proved Lynds nuts, and got rid of me, but nobody would try it, even with manual controls, where there is no atmosphere.

  When you're putting down after a maximum velocity flight, you feed a set of landing coordinates into the computer, and you wait for the computer to punch out a landing configuration and the controls set themselves and lock into pattern. Then you just sit there. I haven't yet met a pilot who didn't begin to sweat at that moment, and sweat all the way down. We weren't geared for that kind of flying. We still aren't, for that matter. We had always done it ourselves, (even on instruments, we interpreted their meaning to the controls ourselves) and we didn't like it. We had good reason. The telemetry circuits were no good. That's a bad part of a truly classified operation: they don't have to be too careful, there aren't any voters to offend. About the circuits, sometimes they worked, sometimes not. That was the way it went. They wouldn't put manual controls in for us.

  It wasn't that they regarded man with too little faith, and electronic equipment with too much. They just didn't regard man at all. They looked upon scientific reason and technology as completely infallible. Nothing is infallible. Not their controls, not their vehicles, and not their blasted egos.

  * * * * *

  Lynds was assigned the first flight at escape velocity. They could not be dissuaded from the belief that at ultimate speed, a pilot operating manual controls was completely ineffectual. Like kids that have to run electric trains all by themselves, playing God with a transformer. That was when I asked them why bother with a pilot altogether. They talked about the whole point being a test of man's ability to survive; they'd deal with control in proper order. They didn't believe it, and neither did we. We all got very peculiar feelings about the whole business after that. The position on controls was made pretty final by Bannister.

  "There will be no manuals in my ships," he said. "It would negate the primary purpose of this project. We must ascertain the successful completion of escape and return by completely automatic operation."

  "How about emergency controls?" I asked. "With a switch-off from automatic if they should fail."

  "They will not fail. Any manual controls would be inoperative by the pilot in any case. No more questions."

  I feel the way I do about the monkey, Argus, because, in a way, we all quit about that time. You don't like having spent your life in a rather devoted way with purposes and all that, and then being placed in the hands of a collection of technologists like just so many white mice ... or monkeys, if you will. Lynds, of course, had little choice. The project was cleared and the assignment set. He hated it well enough, I know, but it was his place to perform the only way one does.

  It ended the way we knew it would. I heard it all. It wasn't gruesome, as you might imagine. I spoke with Lynds the whole time. It was sort of a resigned horror. The initial countdown went off without a hitch and the hissing of the escape valves on the carrier rocket changed to a sound that hammered the sky apart as it lifted off the pad.

  "Well, she's off," somebody said.

  "Let's don't count chickens," Bannister said tautly. Wellington G. Bannister worked for the Germans on V-2s. He is the chief executive of technology in the section to which we were assigned at that time. He is the world's leading expert on exotic fuel rocket projectile systems, rocket design, and a brilliant electronic engineer as well. High enough subordinates call him Wellie. Pilots always called him Professor Bannister. I issued the report that was read in closed session in London in which I accused Bannister of murdering Lynds. That's how come I'm here now. I was cashiered out, just short of a general court martial. That's one of the nice parts about truly classified work. They can't make you out an idiot in public. Living on a boat in the Mediterranean is far nicer than looking up at the earth through a porthole in a smashed up ship on the moon, you must admit.

  Well, Bannister could have well counted chickens on that launching. The first, second and third stages fired off perfectly, and within fourteen minutes the capsule detached into orbit just under escape velocity. The orbit was enormously far out. They let Lynds complete a single orbit, then fired the capsule's rockets. He ran off tangential to orbit at escape velocity on a pattern that would probably run in a straight path to infinity. In fact, the capsule is
probably still on its way, and as I said, it's six years now. After four minutes, the return vehicle was activated and as it broke away from the capsule, Lynds blacked out for twenty seconds. That was the only time I was out of direct contact with him after he went into orbit.

  * * * * *

  "Now do you understand about the manual controls?" Bannister said.

  "He'll come out of it in less than a minute."

  "One can never be sure."

  "There's still no reason why you can't use duplicate control systems."

  "With a switch-off on the automatic, if they fail?"

  "Yes. If for nothing more than to give a man a chance to save his own neck."

  "They won't fail."

  "The simplest things fail, Bannister. Campbell was killed in a far less elaborate way."

  He looked at me. "Campbell? Oh, yes. The landing over the reef. I had nothing to do with that."

  "You designed the power shut-off that failed."

  "Improper servicing. A simple mechanical failure."

  "Or the inability of a mechanism to compensate. The wind shifted after computer coordination. A pilot can feel it. Your instruments can't. There was no failure, there. The shut-off worked perfectly and Campbell was killed because of it."

  I watched the tracking screen, listened to the high keening noises coming from the receivers. The computers clicked rapidly, feeding out triangulated data on the positions of the escape vehicle and the capsule. The capsule had been diverted from its path slightly by reaction to the vehicle's ejection. Its speed, however, was increasing as it moved farther out. The vehicle with Lynds was in a path parabolic to the capsule, almost like the start of an orbit, but at a fantastic distance. He was, of course, traveling at escape velocity or better, and you do not orbit at escape velocity.

  * * * * *

  "Harry. Harry, how long was I out?" We heard Lynds' voice come alive suddenly through the crackling static.

  "Hello, Dennis. Listen to me. How are you?"