Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “Not good enough. I want it to go there, land, and come back. Whether it lands here under power or by atmosphere braking is unimportant.”

  It appeared that Coster never answered promptly; Harriman had the fancy that he could hear wheels turning over in the man’s head. “That would be a very expensive job.”

  “Who asked you how much it would cost? Can you do it?”

  “I could try.”

  “Try, hell. Do you think you can do it? Would you bet your shirt on it? Would you be willing to risk your neck in the attempt? If you don’t believe in yourself, man, you’ll always lose.”

  “How much will you risk, sir? I told you this would be expensive—and I doubt if you have any idea how expensive.”

  “And I told you not to worry about money. Spend what you need; it’s my job to pay the bills. Can you do it?”

  “I can do it. I’ll let you know later how much it will cost and how long it will take.”

  “Good. Start getting your team together. Where are we going to do this, Andy?” he added, turning to Ferguson. “Australia?”

  “No.” It was Coster who answered. “It can’t be Australia; I want a mountain catapult. That will save us one step-combination.”

  “How big a mountain?” asked Harriman. “Will Pikes Peak do?”

  “It ought to be in the Andes,” objected Ferguson. “The mountains are taller and closer to the equator. After all, we own facilities there—or the Andes Development Company does.”

  “Do as you like, Bob,” Harriman told Coster. “I would prefer Pikes Peak, but it’s up to you.” He was thinking that there were tremendous business advantages to locating Earth’s spaceport #1 inside the United States—and he could visualize the advertising advantage of having Moon ships blast off from the top of Pikes Peak, in plain view of everyone for hundreds of miles to the East.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Now about salary. Forget whatever it was we were paying you; how much do you want?”

  Coster actually gestured, waving the subject away. “I’ll work for coffee and cakes.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Let me finish. Coffee and cakes and one other thing: I get to make the trip.”

  Harriman blinked. “Well, I can understand that,” he said slowly. “In the meantime I’ll put you on a drawing account.” He added, “Better calculate for a three-man ship, unless you are a pilot.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Three men, then. You see, I’m going along, too.”

  IV

  “A good thing you decided to come in, Dan,” Harriman was saying, “or you would find yourself out of a job. I’m going to put an awful crimp in the power company before I’m through with this.” Dixon buttered a roll.

  “Really? How?”

  “We’ll set up high-temperature piles, like the Arizona job, just like the one that blew up, around the corner on the far face of the Moon. We’ll remote-control them; if one explodes it won’t matter. And I’ll breed more X-fuel in a week than the company turned out in three months. Nothing personal about it; it’s just that I want a source of fuel for interplanetary liners. If we can’t get good stuff here, we’ll have to make it on the Moon.”

  “Interesting. But where do you propose to get the uranium for six piles? The last I heard the Atomic Energy Commission had the prospective supply earmarked twenty years ahead.”

  “Uranium? Don’t be silly; we’ll get it on the Moon.”

  “On the Moon? Is there uranium on the Moon?”

  “Didn’t you know? I thought that was why you decided to join up with me?”

  “No, I didn’t know,” Dixon said deliberately. “What proof have you?”

  “Me? I’m no scientist, but it’s a well-understood fact. Spectroscopy, or something. Catch one of the professors. But don’t go showing too much interest; we aren’t ready to show our hand.” Harriman stood up. “I’ve got to run, or I’ll miss the shuttle for Rotterdam. Thanks for the lunch.” He grabbed his hat and left.

  * * *

  Harriman stood up. “Suit yourself, Mynheer van der Velde. I’m giving you and your colleagues a chance to hedge your bets. Your geologists all agree that diamonds result from volcanic action. What do you think we will find there?” He dropped a large photograph of the Moon on the Hollander’s desk.

  The diamond merchant looked impassively at the pictured planet, pockmarked by a thousand giant craters. “If you get there, Mr. Harriman.”

  Harriman swept up the picture. “We’ll get there. And we’ll find diamonds—though I would be the first to admit that it may be twenty years or even forty before there is a big enough strike to matter. I’ve come to you because I believe that the worst villain in our social body is the man who introduces a major new economic factor without planning his innovation in such a way as to permit peaceful adjustment. I don’t like panics. But all I can do is warn you. Good day.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Harriman. I’m always confused when a man explains how he is going to do me good. Suppose you tell me instead how this is going to do you good? Then we can discuss how to protect the world market against a sudden influx of diamonds from the Moon.”

  Harriman sat down.

  Harriman liked the Low Countries. He was delighted to locate a dog-drawn milk cart whose young master wore real wooden shoes; he happily took pictures and tipped the child heavily, unaware that the set-up was arranged for tourists. He visited several other diamond merchants but without speaking of the Moon. Among other purchases he found a brooch for Charlotte—a peace offering.

  Then he took a taxi to London, planted a story with the representatives of the diamond syndicate there, arranged with his London solicitors to be insured by Lloyd’s of London through a dummy, against a successful Moon flight, and called his home office. He listened to numerous reports, especially those concerning Montgomery, and found that Montgomery was in New Delhi. He called him there, spoke with him at length, then hurried to the port just in time to catch his ship. He was in Colorado the next morning.

  At Peterson Field, east of Colorado Springs, he had trouble getting through the gate, even though it was now his domain, under lease. Of course he could have called Coster and gotten it straightened out at once, but he wanted to look around before seeing Coster. Fortunately, the head guard knew him by sight; he got in and wandered around for an hour or more, a tri-colored badge pinned to his coat to give him freedom.

  The machine shop was moderately busy, so was the foundry . . . but most of the shops were almost deserted. Harriman left the shops, went into the main engineering building. The drafting room and the loft were fairly active, as was the computation section. But there were unoccupied desks in the structures group and a churchlike quiet in the metals group and in the adjoining metallurgical laboratory. He was about to cross over into the chemicals and materials annex when Coster suddenly showed up.

  “Mr. Harriman! I just heard you were here.”

  “Spies everywhere,” remarked Harriman. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Not at all. Let’s go up to my office.”

  Settled there a few moments later Harriman asked, “Well—how’s it going?”

  Coster frowned. “All right, I guess.”

  Harriman noted that the engineer’s desk baskets were piled high with papers which spilled over onto the desk. Before Harriman could answer, Coster’s desk phone lit up and a feminine voice said sweetly, “Mr. Coster—Mr. Morgenstern is calling.”

  “Tell him I’m busy.”

  After a short wait the girl answered in a troubled voice, “He says he’s just got to speak to you, sir.”

  Coster looked annoyed. “Excuse me a moment, Mr. Harriman—O.K., put him on.”

  The girl was replaced by a man who said, “Oh, there you are—what was the holdup? Look, Chief, we’re in a jam about these trucks. Every one of them that we leased needs an overhaul and now it turns out that the White Fleet company won’t do anything about it—they’re sticking
to the fine print in the contract. Now the way I see it, we’d do better to cancel the contract and do business with Peak City Transport. They have a scheme that looks good to me. They guarantee to—”

  “Take care of it,” snapped Coster. “You made the contract and you have authority to cancel. You know that.”

  “Yes, but Chief, I figured this would be something you would want to pass on personally. It involves policy and—”

  “Take care of it! I don’t give a damn what you do as long as we have transportation when we need it.” He switched off.

  “Who is that man?” inquired Harriman.

  “Who? Oh, that’s Morgenstern, Claude Morgenstern.”

  “Not his name—what does he do?”

  “He’s one of my assistants—buildings, grounds, and transportation.”

  “Fire him!”

  Coster looked stubborn. Before he could answer a secretary came in and stood insistently at his elbow with a sheaf of papers. He frowned, initialed them, and sent her out.

  “Oh, I don’t mean that as an order,” Harriman added, “but I do mean it as serious advice. I won’t give orders in your backyard—but will you listen to a few minutes of advice?”

  “Naturally,” Coster agreed stiffly.

  “Mmm . . . this your first job as top boss?”

  Coster hesitated, then admitted it.

  “I hired you on Ferguson’s belief that you were the engineer most likely to build a successful Moon ship. I’ve had no reason to change my mind. But top administration ain’t engineering, and maybe I can show you a few tricks there, if you’ll let me.” He waited. “I’m not criticizing,” he added. “Top bossing is like sex; until you’ve had it, you don’t know about it.” Harriman had the mental reservation that if the boy would not take advice, he would suddenly be out of a job, whether Ferguson liked it or not.

  Coster drummed on his desk. “I don’t know what’s wrong and that’s a fact. It seems as if I can’t turn anything over to anybody and have it done properly. I feel as if I were swimming in quicksand.”

  “Done much engineering lately?”

  “I try to.” Coster waved at another desk in the corner. “I work there, late at night.”

  “That’s no good. I hired you as an engineer. Bob, this setup is all wrong. The joint ought to be jumping—and it’s not. Your office ought to be quiet as a grave. Instead your office is jumping and the plant looks like a graveyard.”

  Coster buried his face in his hands, then looked up. “I know it. I know what needs to be done—but every time I try to tackle a technical problem some bloody fool wants me to make a decision about trucks—or telephones—or some damn thing. I’m sorry, Mr. Harriman. I thought I could do it.”

  Harriman said very gently, “Don’t let it throw you, Bob. You haven’t had much sleep lately, have you? Tell you what—we’ll put over a fast one on Ferguson. I’ll take that desk you’re at for a few days and build you a setup to protect you against such things. I want that brain of yours thinking about reaction vectors and fuel efficiencies and design stresses, not about contracts for trucks.” Harriman stepped to the door, looked around the outer office and spotted a man who might or might not be the office’s chief clerk. “Hey, you! C’mere.”

  The man looked startled, got up, came to the door and said, “Yes?”

  “I want that desk in the corner and all the stuff that’s on it moved to an empty office on this floor, right away.”

  The clerk raised his eyebrows. “And who are you, if I may ask?”

  “Damn it—”

  “Do as he tells you, Weber,” Coster put in.

  “I want it done inside of twenty minutes,” added Harriman. “Jump!”

  He turned back to Coster’s other desk, punched the phone, and presently was speaking to the main offices of Skyways. “Jim, is your boy Jock Berkeley around? Put him on leave and send him to me, at Peterson Field, right away, special trip. I want the ship he comes in to raise ground ten minutes after we sign off. Send his gear after him.” Harriman listened for a moment, then answered, “No, your organization won’t fall apart if you lose Jock—or, if it does, maybe we’ve been paying the wrong man the top salary . . . okay, okay, you’re entitled to one swift kick at my tail the next time you catch up with me, but send Jock. So long.”

  He supervised getting Coster and his other desk moved into another office, saw to it that the phone in the new office was disconnected, and, as an afterthought, had a couch moved in there, too. “We’ll install a projector, and a drafting machine and bookcases and other junk like that tonight,” he told Coster. “Just make a list of anything you need—to work on engineering. And call me if you want anything.” He went back to the nominal chief engineer’s office and got happily to work trying to figure where the organization stood and what was wrong with it.

  Some four hours later, he took Berkeley in to meet Coster. The chief engineer was asleep at his desk, head cradled on his arms. Harriman started to back out, but Coster roused. “Oh! Sorry,” he said, blushing. “I must have dozed off.”

  “That’s why I brought you the couch,” said Harriman. “It’s more restful. Bob, meet Jock Berkeley. He’s your new slave. You remain chief engineer and top, undisputed boss. Jock is Lord High Everything Else. From now on you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about—except for the little detail of building a Moon ship.”

  They shook hands. “Just one thing I ask, Mr. Coster,” Berkeley said seriously. “Bypass me all you want to—you’ll have to run the technical show—but for God’s sake record it so I’ll know what’s going on. I’m going to have a switch placed on your desk that will operate a sealed recorder at my desk.”

  “Fine!” Coster was looking, Harriman thought, younger already.

  “And if you want something that is not technical, don’t do it yourself. Just flip a switch and whistle; it’ll get done!” Berkeley glanced at Harriman. “The Boss says he wants to talk with you about the real job. I’ll leave you and get busy.” He left.

  Harriman sat down; Coster followed suit and said, “Whew!”

  “Feel better?”

  “I like the looks of that fellow Berkeley.”

  “That’s good; he’s your twin brother from now on. Stop worrying; I’ve used him before. You’ll think you’re living in a well-run hospital. By the way, where do you live?”

  “At a boarding house in the Springs.”

  “That’s ridiculous. And you don’t even have a place here to sleep?” Harriman reached over to Coster’s desk, got through to Berkeley. “Jock—get a suite for Mr. Coster at the Broadmoor, under a phony name.”

  “Right.”

  “And have this stretch along here adjacent to his office fitted out as an apartment.”

  “Right. Tonight.”

  “Now, Bob, about the Moon ship. Where do we stand?”

  They spent the next two hours contentedly running over the details of the problem, as Coster had laid them out. Admittedly very little work had been done since the field was leased but Coster had accomplished considerable theoretical work and computation before he had gotten swamped in administrative details. Harriman, though no engineer and certainly not a mathematician outside the primitive arithmetic of money, had for so long devoured everything he could find about space travel that he was able to follow most of what Coster showed him.

  “I don’t see anything here about your mountain catapult,” he said presently.

  Coster looked vexed. “Oh, that! Mr. Harriman, I spoke too quickly.”

  “Huh? How come? I’ve had Montgomery’s boys drawing up beautiful pictures of what things will look like when we are running regular trips. I intend to make Colorado Springs the spaceport capital of the world. We hold the franchise of the old cog railroad now; what’s the hitch?”

  “Well, it’s both time and money.”

  “Forget money. That’s my pidgin.”

  “Time then. I still think an electric gun is the best way to get the initial acceleration for a
chem-powered ship. Like this—” He began to sketch rapidly. “It enables you to omit the first-step rocket stage, which is bigger than all the others put together and is terribly inefficient, as it has such a poor mass-ratio. But what do you have to do to get it? You can’t build a tower, not a tower a couple of miles high, strong enough to take the thrusts—not this year, anyway. So you have to use a mountain. Pikes Peak is as good as any; it’s accessible, at least.

  “But what do you have to do to use it? First, a tunnel in through the side, from Manitou to just under the peak, and big enough to take the loaded ship—”

  “Lower it down from the top,” suggested Harriman.

  Coster answered, “I thought of that. Elevators two miles high for loaded space ships aren’t exactly built out of string, in fact they aren’t built out of any available materials. It’s possible to gimmick the catapult itself so that the accelerating coils can be reversed and rimed differently to do the job, but believe me, Mr. Harriman, it will throw you into other engineering problems quite as great . . . such as a giant railroad up to the top of the ship. And it still leaves you with the shaft of the catapult itself to be dug. It can’t be as small as the ship, not like a gun barrel for a bullet. It’s got to be considerably larger; you don’t compress a column of air two miles high with impunity. Oh, a mountain catapult could be built, but it might take ten years—or longer.”

  “Then forget it. We’ll build it for the future but not for this flight. No, wait—how about a surface catapult. We scoot up the side of the mountain and curve it up at the end?”

  “Quite frankly, I think something like that is what will eventually be used. But, as of today, it just creates new problems. Even if we could devise an electric gun in which you could make that last curve—we can’t, at present—the ship would have to be designed for terrific side stresses and all the additional weight would be parasitic so far as our main purpose is concerned, the design of a rocket ship.”

  “Well, Bob, what is your solution?”

  Coster frowned. “Go back to what we know how to do—build a step rocket.”