Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The speaker blared out again without pause, “Correction, correction—forty miles east, repeat east.”

  Coster sighed. The sigh was cut short by a report. “Spot One to Blockhouse—step three free, minus five seconds,” and a talker at Coster’s control desk called out, “Mr. Coster, Mr. Coster—Palomar Observatory wants to talk to you.”

  “Tell ’em to go—no, tell ’em to wait.” Immediately another voice cut in with, “Track One, auxiliary range Fox—Step one about to strike near Dodge City, Kansas.”

  “How near?”

  There was no answer. Presently the voice of Track One proper said, “Impact reported approximately fifteen miles southwest of Dodge City.”

  “Casualties?”

  Spot One broke in before Track One could answer, “Step two free, step two free—the ship is now on its own.”

  “Mr. Coster—please, Mr. Coster—”

  And a totally new voice: “Spot Two to Blockhouse—we are now tracking the ship. Stand by for reported distances and bearings. Stand by—”

  “Track Two to Blockhouse—step four will definitely land in Atlantic, estimated point of impact oh-five-seven miles east of Charleston bearing oh-nine-three. I will repeat—”

  Coster looked around irritably. “Isn’t there any drinking water anywhere in this dump?”

  “Mr. Coster, please—Palomar says they’ve just got to talk to you.”

  Harriman eased over to the door and stepped out. He suddenly felt very much let down, utterly weary, and depressed.

  The field looked strange without the ship. He had watched it grow; now suddenly it was gone. The Moon, still rising, seemed oblivious—and space travel was as remote a dream as it had been in his boyhood.

  There were several tiny figures prowling around the flash apron where the ship had stood—souvenir hunters, he thought contemptuously. Someone came up to him in the gloom. “Mr. Harriman?”

  “Eh?”

  “Hopkins—with the A.P. How about a statement?”

  “Uh? No, no comment. I’m bushed.”

  “Oh, now, just a word. How does it feel to have backed the first successful Moon flight—if it is successful?”

  “It will be successful.” He thought a moment, then squared his tired shoulders and said, “Tell them that this is the beginning of the human race’s greatest era. Tell them that every one of them will have a chance to follow in Captain LeCroix’s footsteps, seek out new planets, wrest a home for themselves in new lands. Tell them that this means new frontiers, a shot in the arm for prosperity. It means—” He ran down. “That’s all tonight. I’m whipped, son. Leave me alone, will you?”

  Presently, Coster came out, followed by the V.I.P.s. Harriman went up to Coster. “Everything all right?”

  “Sure. Why shouldn’t it be? Track three followed him out to the limit of range—all in the groove.” Coster added, “Step five killed a cow when it grounded.”

  “Forget it—we’ll have steak for breakfast.” Harriman then had to make conversation with the Governor and the Vice President, had to escort them out to their ship. Dixon and Entenza left together, less formally; at last Coster and Harriman were alone save for subordinates too junior to constitute a strain and for guards to protect them from the crowds. “Where you headed, Bob?”

  “Up to the Broadmoor and about a week’s sleep. How about you?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll doss down in your apartment.”

  “Help yourself. Sleepy pills in the bathroom.”

  “I won’t need them.” They had a drink together in Coster’s quarters, talked aimlessly, then Coster ordered a copter cab and went to the hotel. Harriman went to bed, got up, read a day-old copy of the Denver Post filled with pictures of the Pioneer, finally gave up and took two of Coster’s sleeping capsules.

  X

  Someone was shaking him. “Mr. Harriman! Wake up—Mr. Coster is on the screen.”

  “Huh? Wazza? Oh, all right.” He got up and padded to the phone. Coster was looking tousle-headed and excited. “Hey, Boss—he made it!”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Palomar just called me. They saw his mark and now they’ve spotted the ship itself. He—”

  “Wait a minute, Bob. Slow up. He can’t be there yet. He just left last night.”

  Coster looked disconcerted. “What’s the matter, Mr. Harriman? Don’t you feel well? He left Wednesday.”

  Vaguely, Harriman began to be oriented. No, the take-off had not been the night before—fuzzily he recalled a drive up into the mountains, a day spent dozing in the sun, some sort of a party at which he had drunk too much. What day was today? He didn’t know. If LeCroix had landed on the Moon, then—never mind. “It’s all right, Bob—I was half-asleep. I guess I dreamed the take-off all over again. Now tell me the news, slowly.”

  Coster started over. “LeCroix has landed, just west of Archimedes crater. They can see his ship, from Palomar. Say, that was a great stunt you thought up, marking the spot with carbon black. Les must have covered two acres with it. They say it shines out like a billboard, through the Big Eye.”

  “Maybe we ought to run down and have a look. No—later,” he amended. “We’ll be busy.”

  “I don’t see what more we can do, Mr. Harriman. We’ve got twelve of our best ballistic computers calculating possible routes for you now.”

  Harriman started to tell the man to put on another twelve, switched off the screen instead. He was still at Peterson Field, with one of Skyways’ best stratoships waiting for him outside, waiting to take him to whatever point on the globe LeCroix might ground. LeCroix was in the upper stratosphere, had been there for more than twenty-four hours. The pilot was slowly, cautiously wearing out his terminal velocity, dissipating the incredible kinetic energy as shock wave and radiant heat.

  They had tracked him by radar around the globe and around again—and again . . . yet there was no way of knowing just where and what sort of landing the pilot would choose to risk. Harriman listened to the running radar reports and cursed the fact that they had elected to save the weight of radio equipment.

  The radar figures started coming closer together. The voice broke off and started again: “He’s in his landing glide!”

  “Tell the field to get ready!” shouted Harriman. He held his breath and waited. After endless seconds another voice cut in with, “The Moon ship is now landing. It will ground somewhere west of Chihuahua in Old Mexico.”

  Harriman started for the door at a run.

  Coached by radio en route, Harriman’s pilot spotted the Pioneer, incredibly small against the desert sand. He put his own ship quite close to it, in a beautiful landing. Harriman was fumbling at the cabin door before the ship was fairly stopped.

  LeCroix was sitting on the ground, resting his back against a skid of his ship and enjoying the shade of its stubby triangular wings. A paisano sheepherder stood facing him, open-mouthed. As Harriman trotted out and lumbered toward him LeCroix stood up, flipped a cigarette butt away and said, “Hi, Boss!”

  “Les!” The older man threw his arms around the younger. “It’s good to see you, boy.”

  “It’s good to see you. Pedro here doesn’t speak my language.” LeCroix glanced around; there was no one else nearby but the pilot of Harriman’s ship. “Where’s the gang? Where’s Bob?”

  “I didn’t wait. They’ll surely be along in a few minutes—hey, there they come now!” It was another stratoship, plunging in to a landing. Harriman turned to his pilot. “Bill—go over and meet them.”

  “Huh? They’ll come, never fear.”

  “Do as I say.”

  “You’re the doctor.” The pilot trudged through the sand, his back expressing disapproval. LeCroix looked puzzled. “Quick, Les—help me with this.”

  “This” was the five thousand cancelled envelopes which were supposed to have been to the Moon. They got them out of Harriman’s stratoship and into the Moon ship, there to be stowed in an empty food locker, while their actions were s
till shielded from the later arrivals by the bulk of the stratoship. “Whew!” said Harriman. “That was close. Half a million dollars. We need it, Les.”

  “Sure, but look, Mr. Harriman, the di—”

  “Sssh! the others are coming. How about the other business? Ready with your act?”

  “Yes. But I was trying to tell you—”

  “Quiet!”

  It was not their colleagues; it was a shipload of reporters, camera men, mike men, commentators, technicians. They swarmed over them.

  Harriman waved to them jauntily. “Help yourselves, boys. Get a lot of pictures. Climb through the ship. Make yourselves at home. Look at anything you want to. But go easy on Captain LeCroix—he’s tired.”

  Another ship had landed, this time with Coster, Dixon and Strong. Entenza showed up in his own chartered ship and began bossing the TV, pix, and radio men, in the course of which he almost had a fight with an unauthorized camera crew. A large copter transport grounded and spilled out nearly a platoon of khaki-clad Mexican troops. From somewhere—out of the sand apparently—several dozen native peasants showed up. Harriman broke away from reporters, held a quick and expensive discussion with the captain of the local troops, and a degree of order was restored in time to save the Pioneer from being picked to pieces.

  “Just let that be!” It was LeCroix’s voice, from inside the Pioneer. Harriman waited and listened. “None of your business!” The pilot’s voice went on, rising higher, “and put them back!”

  Harriman pushed his way to the door of the ship. “What’s the trouble, Les?”

  Inside the cramped cabin, hardly large enough for a TV booth, three men stood, LeCroix and two reporters. All three men looked angry. “What’s the trouble, Les?” Harriman repeated.

  LeCroix was holding a small cloth bag which appeared to be empty. Scattered on the pilot’s acceleration rest between him and the reporters were several small, dully brilliant stones. A reporter held one such stone up to the light.

  “These guys were poking their noses into things that didn’t concern them,” LeCroix said angrily.

  The reporter looked at the stone said, “You told us to look at what we liked, didn’t you, Mr. Harriman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your pilot here—” He jerked a thumb at LeCroix. “—apparently didn’t expect us to find these. He had them hidden in the pads of his chair.”

  “What of it?”

  “They’re diamonds.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “They’re diamonds all right.”

  Harriman stopped and unwrapped a cigar. Presently he said, “Those diamonds were where you found them because I put them there.”

  A flashlight went off behind Harriman; a voice said, “Hold the rock up higher, Jeff.”

  The reporter called Jeff obliged, then said, “That seems an odd thing to do, Mr. Harriman.”

  “I was interested in the effect of outer space radiations on raw diamonds. On my orders Captain LeCroix placed that sack of diamonds in the ship.”

  Jeff whistled thoughtfully. “You know, Mr. Harriman, if you did not have that explanation, I’d think LeCroix had found the rocks on the Moon and was trying to hold out on you.”

  “Print that and you will be sued for libel. I have every confidence in Captain LeCroix. Now give me the diamonds.”

  Jeff’s eyebrows went up. “But not confidence enough in him to let him keep them, maybe?”

  “Give me the stones. Then get out.”

  Harriman got LeCroix away from the reporters as quickly as possible and into Harriman’s own ship. “That’s all for now,” he told the news and pictures people. “See us at Peterson Field.”

  Once the ship raised ground he turned to LeCroix. “You did a beautiful job, Les.”

  “That reporter named Jeff must be sort of confused.”

  “Eh? Oh, that. No, I mean the flight. You did it. You’re head man on this planet.”

  LeCroix shrugged it off. “Bob built a good ship. It was a cinch. Now about those diamonds—”

  “Forget the diamonds. You’ve done your part. We placed those rocks in the ship; now we tell everybody we did—truthful as can be. It’s not our fault if they don’t believe us.”

  “But Mr. Harriman—”

  “What?”

  LeCroix unzipped a pocket in his coveralls, hauled out a soiled handkerchief, knotted into a bag. He untied it—and spilled into Harriman’s hands many more diamonds than had been displayed in the ship—larger, finer diamonds.

  Harriman stared at them. He began to chuckle.

  Presently he shoved them back at LeCroix. “Keep them.”

  “I figure they belong to all of us.”

  “Well, keep them for us, then. And keep your mouth shut about them. No, wait.” He picked out two large stones. “I’ll have rings made from these two, one for you, one for me. But keep your mouth shut, or they won’t be worth anything, except as curiosities.”

  It was quite true, he thought. Long ago the diamond syndicate had realized that diamonds in plentiful supply were worth little more than glass, except for industrial uses. Earth had more than enough for that, more than enough for jewels. If Moon diamonds were literally “common as pebbles” then they were just that—pebbles.

  Not worth the expense of bringing them to Earth.

  But now take uranium. If that were plentiful—

  Harriman sat back and indulged in daydreaming.

  Presently LeCroix said softly, “You know, Boss, it’s wonderful there.”

  “Eh? Where?”

  “Why, on the Moon of course. I’m going back. I’m going back just as soon as I can. We’ve got to get busy on the new ship.”

  “Sure, sure! And this time we’ll build one big enough for all of us. This time I go, too!”

  “You bet.”

  “Les—” The older man spoke almost diffidently. “What does it look like when you look back and see the Earth?”

  “Huh? It looks like—it looks—” LeCroix stopped. “Hell’s bells, Boss, there isn’t any way to tell you. It’s wonderful, that’s all. The sky is black and—well, wait until you see the pictures I took. Better yet, wait and see it yourself.”

  Harriman nodded. “But it’s hard to wait.”

  XI

  “FIELDS OF DIAMONDS ON THE MOON!!!”

  “BILLIONAIRE BACKER DENIES DIAMOND STORY

  Says Jewels Taken Into Space for Science Reasons”

  “MOON DIAMONDS: HOAX OR FACT?”

  “—but consider this, friends of the invisible audience: why would anyone take diamonds to the Moon? Every ounce of that ship and its cargo was calculated; diamonds would not be taken along without reason. Many scientific authorities have pronounced Mr. Harriman’s professed reason an absurdity. It is easy to guess that diamonds might be taken along for the purpose of ‘salting’ the Moon, so to speak, with earthly jewels, with the intention of convincing us that diamonds exist on the Moon—but Mr. Harriman, his pilot Captain LeCroix, and everyone connected with the enterprise have sworn from the beginning that the diamonds did not come from the Moon. But it is an absolute certainty that the diamonds were in the spaceship when it landed. Cut it how you will; this reporter is going to try to buy some lunar diamond mining stock—”

  Strong was, as usual, already in the office when Harriman came in. Before the partners could speak, the screen called out, “Mr. Harriman, Rotterdam calling.”

  “Tell them to go plant a tulip.”

  “Mr. van der Velde is waiting, Mr. Harriman.”

  “Okay.”

  Harriman let the Hollander talk, then said, “Mr. van der Velde, the statements attributed to me are absolutely correct. I put those diamonds the reporters saw into the ship before it took off. They were mined right here on Earth. In fact I bought them when I came over to see you; I can prove it.”

  “But Mr. Harriman—”

  “Suit yourself. There may be more diamonds on the Moon than you can run and jump over. I don’t g
uarantee it. But I do guarantee that those diamonds the newspapers are talking about came from Earth.”

  “Mr. Harriman, why would you send diamonds to the Moon? Perhaps you intended to fool us, no?”

  “Have it your own way. But I’ve said all along that those diamonds came from Earth. Now see here: you took an option—an option on an option, so to speak. If you want to make the second payment on that option and keep it in force, the deadline is nine o’clock Thursday, New York time, as specified in the contract. Make up your mind.”

  He switched off and found his partner looking at him sourly. “What’s eating you?”

  “I wondered about those diamonds, too, Delos. So I’ve been looking through the weight schedule of the Pioneer.”

  “Didn’t know you were interested in engineering.”

  “I can read figures.”

  “Well, you found it, didn’t you? Schedule F-17-c, two ounces, allocated to me personally.”

  “I found it. It sticks out like a sore thumb. But I didn’t find something else.”

  Harriman felt a cold chill in his stomach. “What?”

  “I didn’t find a schedule for the canceled covers.” Strong stared at him.

  “It must be there. Let me see that weight schedule.”

  “It’s not there, Delos. You know, I thought it was funny when you insisted on going to meet Captain LeCroix by yourself. What happened, Delos? Did you sneak them aboard?” He continued to stare while Harriman fidgeted. “We’ve put over some sharp business deals—but this will be the first time that anyone can say that the firm of Harriman and Strong has cheated.”

  “George—I would cheat, lie, steal, beg, bribe—do anything to accomplish what we have accomplished.”

  Harriman got up and paced the room. “We had to have that money, or the ship would never have taken off. We’re cleaned out. You know that, don’t you?”

  Strong nodded. “But those covers should have gone to the Moon. That’s what we contracted to do.”