Prelude to Space (10 page)

“We had, then, to design some kind of atomic reactor which would heat a gas stream
to a very high temperature indeed—at least 4,000 degrees Centigrade. Since all known
metals melt a long way below this, the problem gave us a bit of a headache!

“The answer we produced is called the ‘line-focused reactor.’ It’s a long, thin, plutonium
pile, and gas is pumped in at one end and becomes heated as it travels through. The
final result is a central core of intensely hot gas into which we can concentrate
or focus the heat from the surrounding elements. In the middle the jet temperature
is over 6,000 degrees—hotter than the sun—but where it touches the walls it’s only
a quarter of this.

“So far, I haven’t said
what
gas we’re going to use. I think you’ll realize that the lighter it is—strictly speaking,
the lower its molecular weight—the faster it will be moving when it comes out of the
jet. Since hydrogen is the lightest of all elements, it would be the ideal fuel, with
helium a fairly good runner-up. I ought to explain, by the way, that we still use
the word ‘fuel,’ even though we don’t actually burn it but simply use it as a working
fluid.”

“That’s one thing that had me puzzled,” confessed Dirk. “The old chemical rockets
carried their own oxygen tanks, and it’s a bit disconcerting to find that the present
machines don’t do anything of the sort.”

Collins laughed.

“We could even use helium as a ‘fuel,’” he said, “though that won’t burn at all—or
indeed take part in any chemical reaction.

“Now although hydrogen’s the ideal working fluid, as I called it, it’s impossible
stuff to carry round. In the liquid state it boils at a fantastically low temperature,
and it’s so light that a spaceship would have to have fuel tanks the size of gasometers.
So we carry it combined with carbon in the form of liquid methane—CH
₄
—which isn’t hard to handle and has a reasonable density. In the reactor it breaks
down to carbon and hydrogen. The carbon’s a bit of a nuisance, and tends to clog the
works, but it can’t be helped. Every so often we get rid of it by turning off the
main jet and flushing out the motor with a draft of oxygen. It makes quite a pretty
firework display.

“That, then, is the principle of the spaceship’s motors. They give exhaust speeds
three times that of any chemical rocket, but even so still have to carry a tremendous
amount of fuel. And there are all sorts of other problems I’ve not mentioned: shielding
the crew from the pile radiations was the worst.

“‘Alpha,’ the upper component of the ‘Prometheus,’ weighs about three hundred tons
of which two hundred and forty are fuel. If it starts from an orbit around the Earth,
it can just make the landing on the Moon and return with a small reserve.

“It has, as you know, to be carried up to that orbit by ‘Beta.’ ‘Beta’ is a very heavy,
super-high-speed flying-wing, also powered by atomic jets. She starts as a ramjet,
using air as ‘fuel,’ and only switches over to her methane tanks when she leaves the
top of the atmosphere. As you’ll realize, not having to carry any fuel for the first
stage of the journey helps things enormously.

“At take-off, the ‘Prometheus’ weighs five hundred tons, and is not only the fastest
but the heaviest of all flying machines. To get it airborne, Westinghouse have built
us a five-mile-long electric launching track out in the desert. It cost nearly as
much as the ship itself, but of course it will be used over and over again.

“To sum up, then: we launch the two components together and they climb until the air’s
too thin to operate the ramjets any more. ‘Beta’ then switches over to her fuel tanks
and reaches circular velocity at a height of about three hundred miles. ‘Alpha,’ of
course, hasn’t used any fuel at all—in fact, its tanks are almost empty when ‘Beta’
carries it up.

“Once the ‘Prometheus’ has homed on the fuel containers we’ve got circling up there,
the two ships separate, ‘Alpha’ couples up to the tanks with pipelines and pumps the
fuel aboard. We’ve already practiced this sort of thing and know it can be done. Orbital
refuelling, it’s called, and it’s really the key to the whole problem, because it
lets us do the job in several stages. It would be quite impossible to build one huge
spaceship that would make the journey to the Moon and back on a single load of fuel.

“Once ‘Alpha’s’ tanked up, it runs its motors until it’s built up the extra two miles
a second to get out of its orbit and go to the Moon. It reaches the Moon after four
days, stays there a week and then returns, getting back into the same orbit as before.
The crew transfers to ‘Beta,’ which is still patiently circling with her very bored
pilot (who won’t get any of the publicity) and is brought down to Earth again. And
that’s all there is to it. What could be simpler?”

“You make me wonder,” laughed Dirk, “why it hasn’t been done years ago.”

“That’s the usual reaction,” said Collins in mock disgust. “It’s not easy for outsiders
to realize the terrific problems that had to be overcome in almost every stage of
the work. That’s where the time and money went. It wouldn’t have been possible, even
now, without the world-wide research that’s been going on for the last thirty years.
Most of our job was collecting the results of other people’s work and adapting them
to our use.”

“How much,” said Dirk thoughtfully, “would you say the ‘Prometheus’ cost?”

“It’s almost impossible to say. The research of the world’s laboratories for two generations,
right back to the 1920s, has gone into the machine. You should include the two billion
dollars the atomic bomb project cost, the hundreds of millions of marks the Germans
put into Peenemünde, and the scores of millions of pounds the British government spent
on the Australian range.”

“I agree, but you must have some idea of the money that actually went into the ‘Prometheus’
itself.”

“Well, even there we got quite priceless technical assistance—and equipment—for nothing.
However, Professor Maxton once calculated that the ships cost about ten million pounds
in research and five million in direct construction. That means, someone pointed out,
that we’re buying the Moon for a pound a square mile! It doesn’t seem a lot, and of
course the later ships will be a good deal cheaper. Incidentally, I believe we’re
almost recovering our expenses for the first trip on the film and radio rights! But
who cares about the money, anyway?”

His eyes wandered toward that photograph of the distant Earth, and his voice became
suddenly thoughtful.

“We’re gaining the freedom of the whole Universe, and all that that implies. I don’t
think it can be valued in terms of pounds and dollars. In the long run, knowledge
always pays for itself in hard cash—but it’s still absolutely beyond price.”

Dirk’s meeting with Professor Maxton and Raymond Collins marked an unconscious turning
point in his thinking, and indeed in his way of life. He felt, perhaps wrongly, that
he had now found the source of the ideas which McAndrews and Matthews had passed on
to him at second-hand.

No one could have been more unlike the coldly passionless scientist of fiction than
the Deputy Director-General. He was not only a first-class engineer, but he was obviously
fully aware of the implications of his work. It would be a fascinating study to discover
the motives which had led him, and his colleagues, into this field. The quest for
personal power did not seem a likely explanation in the cases that Dirk had met. He
must guard against wishful thinking, but these men seemed to have a disinterested
outlook which was very refreshing. Interplanetary was inspired by a missionary zeal
which technical competence and a sense of humor had preserved from fanaticism.

Dirk was still only partly aware of the effects his new surroundings were having on
his own character. He was losing much of his diffidence; the thought of meeting strangers,
which not long ago had filled him with mild apprehension or at least with annoyance,
no longer worried him at all. For the first time in his life, he was with men who
were shaping the future and not merely interpreting the dead past. Though he was only
an onlooker, he was beginning to share their emotions and to feel with their triumphs
and defeats.

“I’m quite impressed,” he wrote in his Journal that evening, “by Professor Maxton
and his staff. They seem to have a much clearer and wider view of Interplanetary’s
aims than the non-technical people I’ve met. Matthews, for instance, is always talking
about the scientific advances which will come when we reach the Moon. Perhaps because
they take that sort of thing for granted, the scientists themselves seem more interested
in the cultural and philosophical repercussions. But I mustn’t generalize from a few
cases which may not be typical.

“I feel that I’ve now a pretty clear view of the whole organization. It’s now mostly
a matter of filling in details, and I should be able to do that from my notes and
the mass of photostats I’ve collected. I no longer have the impression of being a
stranger watching some incomprehensible machine at work. In fact, I now feel that
I’m almost a part of the organization—though I mustn’t let myself get too involved.
It’s impossible to be neutral, but
some
detachment is necessary.

“Until now I’ve had various doubts and reservations concerning space flight. I felt,
subconsciously, that it was too big a thing for man. Like Pascal, I was terrified
by the silence and emptiness of infinite space. I see now that I was wrong.

“The mistake I made was the old one of clinging to the past. Today I met men who think
as naturally in millions of miles as I do in thousands. Once there was a time when
a thousand miles was a distance beyond all comprehension, yet now it is the space
we cover between one meal and the next. That change of scale is about to occur again—and
with unprecedented swiftness.

“The planets, I see now, are no further away than our minds will make them. It will
take the ‘Prometheus’ a hundred hours to reach the Moon, and all the time she will
be speaking to Earth and the eyes of the world will be upon her. How little a thing
interplanetary travel seems if we match it against the weeks and the months and the
years of the great voyages of the past!

“Everything is relative, and the time will surely come when our minds embrace the
Solar System as now they do the Earth. Then, I suppose, when the scientists are looking
thoughtfully toward the stars, many will cry: ‘We don’t want interstellar flight!
The nine planets were good enough for our grandfathers and they’re good enough for
us!’”

Dirk laid his pen down with a smile and let his mind wander in the realms of fantasy.
Would Man ever face that stupendous challenge and send his ships into the gulf between
the stars? He remembered a phrase he had once read: “Interplanetary distances are
a million times as great as those to which we are accustomed in everyday life, but
interstellar distances are a million-fold greater still.” His mind quailed before
the thought, but still he clung to that phrase: “
Everything is relative
.” In a few thousand years, Man had come from coracle to spaceship. What might he
yet do in the eons that lay ahead?

It would be false to suggest that the five men on whom the eyes of the world were
now fixed regarded themselves as daring adventurers about to risk their lives in a
stupendous scientific gamble. They were all practical, hard-headed technicians who
had no intention of taking part in a gamble of any kind—at least, where their lives
were concerned. There was a risk, of course, but one took risks when one caught the
8.10 to the City.

Each reacted in his own way to the publicity of the past week. They had expected it,
and they had been well prepared. Hassell and Leduc had been in the public eye before
and knew how to enjoy the experience while avoiding its more annoying aspects. The
other three members of the crew, having fame thrust suddenly upon them, showed a tendency
to huddle together for mutual protection. This move was fatal, as it made them easy
meat for reporters.

Clinton and Taine were still sufficiently unused to the experience of being interviewed
to enjoy it, but their Canadian colleague Jimmy Richards hated it. His replies, none
too helpful at the beginning, became progressively more and more brusque as time went
by and he grew tired of answering the same questions
ad nauseam
. On one famous occasion, when harried by a particularly overbearing lady reporter,
his behavior became somewhat less than gallant. According to the description later
circulated by Leduc, the interview went something like this:

“Good morning, Mr. Richards. I wonder if you’d mind answering a few questions for
the
West Kensington Clarion?”

Richards (bored but still fairly affable): “Certainly, though I have to meet my wife
in a few minutes.”

“Have you been married long?”

“About twelve years.”

“Oh: any children?”

“Two: both girls, if I remember correctly.”

“Does your wife approve of your flying off from Earth like this?”

“She’d better.”

(Pause, during which interviewer realizes that, for once, her ignorance of shorthand
is going to be no handicap.)

“I suppose you have always felt an urge to go out to the stars, to—er—place the flag
of humanity upon other worlds?”

“Nope. Never thought about it until a couple of years ago.”

“Then how did you get chosen for this flight?”

“Because I’m the second best atomic engineer in the world.”

“The first being?”

“Professor Maxton, who’s too valuable to risk.”

“Are you at all nervous?”

“Oh, yes. I’m frightened of spiders, lumps of plutonium more than a foot across, and
anything that makes noises in the night.”

“I mean—are you nervous about this voyage?”

“I’m scared stiff. Look—you can see me trembling.” (Demonstrates. Minor damage to
furniture.)