Prelude to Space (11 page)

“What do you expect to find on the Moon?”

“Lots of lava, and very little else.”

(Interviewer wearing a hunted look, and now clearly preparing to disengage.)

“Do you expect to find any life on the Moon?”

“Very likely. As soon as we land, I expect there’ll be a knock on the door and a voice
will say: ‘Would you mind answering a few questions for the
Selenites’ Weekly?
’”

Not all interviews, of course, were anything like this flagrant example, and it is
only fair to say that Richards swore the whole thing had been concocted by Leduc.
Most of the reporters who covered Interplanetary’s affairs were science graduates
who had migrated into journalism. Theirs was a somewhat thankless task, since the
newspaper world frequently regarded them as interlopers while the scientists looked
upon them as apostates and backsliders.

Perhaps no single point had attracted more public interest than the fact that two
of the crew would be reserves and would be fated to remain on Earth. For a time speculation
about the ten possible combinations became so popular that the bookmakers began to
take an interest in the subject. It was generally assumed that since Hassell and Leduc
were both rocket pilots one but not both of them would be chosen. As this sort of
discussion might have bad effects on the men themselves, the Director-General made
it clear that no such argument was valid. Because of their training,
any
three men would form an efficient crew. He hinted, without making a definite promise,
that the final choice might have to be made by ballot. No one, least of all the five
men concerned, really believed this.

Hassell’s preoccupation with his unborn son had now become common knowledge—which
did not help matters. It had begun as a faint worry at the back of his mind which
for a long time he had been able to keep under control. But as the weeks passed, it
had come to trouble him more and more until his efficiency began to fall. When he
realized this, it worried him still more and so the process had gathered momentum.

Since his fear was not a personal one, but concerned someone he loved, and since it
had a logical foundation, there was little that psychologists could do about it. They
could not suggest, to a man of his temperament and character, that he ask to be withdrawn
from the expedition. They could only watch: and Hassell knew perfectly well that they
were watching.

Dirk spent little time at Southbank during the days before the Exodus. It was impossible
to work there: those who were going to Australia were too busy packing and tidying
up their affairs, while those who weren’t seemed in a very unco-operative mood. The
irrepressible Matthews had been one of the sacrifices: McAndrews was leaving him in
charge. It was a very sensible arrangement, but the two men were no longer on speaking
terms. Dirk was very glad to keep out of their way, especially as they had been a
little upset over his desertion to the scientists.

He saw equally little of Maxton and Collins, as the technical department was in a
state of organized uproar. It had apparently been decided that
everything
might be needed in Australia. Only Sir Robert Derwent seemed perfectly happy amid
the disorder, and Dirk was somewhat astonished to receive a summons from him one morning.
As it happened, it came on one of the few days when he was at Headquarters. It was
his first meeting with the Director-General since their brief introduction on the
day of his arrival.

He entered somewhat timidly, thinking of all the tales he had heard about Sir Robert.
The D.-G. probably noticed and understood his diffidence, for there was a distant
twinkle in his eye as he shook hands and offered his visitor a seat.

The room was no larger than many other offices which Dirk had seen at Southbank, but
its position at a corner of the building gave it an unrivaled view. One could see
most of the Embankment from Charing Cross to London Bridge.

Sir Robert lost no time in getting to the point.

“Professor Maxton’s been telling me about your job,” he said. “I suppose you’ve got
us all fluttering around in your killing-bottle, ready to be pinned down for posterity
to examine?”

“I hope, Sir Robert,” smiled Dirk, “that the final result won’t be quite as static
as that. I’m not here primarily as a recorder of facts, but of influences and motives.”

The Director-General tapped thoughtfully on his desk, then remarked quietly: “And
what motives, would you say, underlie our work?”

The question, through its very directness, took Dirk somewhat aback.

“They’re very complex,” he began defensively. “Provisionally, I’d say they fall into
two classes—material and spiritual.”

“I find it rather difficult,” said the D.-G. mildly, “to picture a third category.”

Dirk gave a slightly embarrassed smile.

“Perhaps I’m a little too comprehensive,” he said. “What I mean is this: The first
men seriously to advance the idea of interplanetary travel were visionaries in love
with a dream. The fact that they were also technicians doesn’t matter—they were, essentially,
artists using their science to create something new. If space flight had been of no
conceivable practical use, they would have wished to have achieved it just the same.

“Theirs was the spiritual motive, as I’ve called it. Perhaps ‘intellectual’ is a better
word. You can’t analyze it any further, because it represents a basic human impulse—that
of curiosity. On the material side, you now have the vision of great new industries
and engineering processes, and the desire of the billion-dollar communication companies
to replace their myriads of surface transmitters by two or three stations out in space.
This is the Wall Street side of the picture, which of course came a good deal later.”

“And which motive,” said Sir Robert, pressing on ruthlessly, “would you say is predominant
here?”

Dirk was now beginning to feel completely at ease.

“Before I came to Southbank,” he said, “I thought of Interplanetary—when I thought
of it at all—as a group of technicians out for scientific dividends. That’s what you
pretend to be, and you deceive a lot of people. The description may apply to some
of the middle grades of your organization—but it isn’t true at the top.”

Dirk drew back his bow, and took a long shot at that invisible target out there in
the dark.

“
I think that Interplanetary is run—and always has been run—by visionaries, poets if
you like, who also happen to be scientists. Sometimes the disguise isn’t very good
.”

There was silence for a while. Then Sir Robert said, in a somewhat subdued voice,
though with a trace of a chuckle:

“It’s an accusation that’s been thrown at us before. We’ve never denied it. Someone
once said that all human activity was a form of play. We’re not ashamed of wanting
to play with spaceships.”

“And in the course of your play,” said Dirk, “you will change the world, and perhaps
the Universe.”

He looked at Sir Robert with new understanding. He no longer saw that determined,
bull-dog head with its broad sweep of brow, for he had suddenly remembered Newton’s
description of himself as a small child picking up brightly colored pebbles on the
shore of the ocean of knowledge.

Sir Robert Derwent, like all great scientists, was such a child. Dirk believed that,
in the final analysis, he would have crossed space for no other reason than to watch
the Earth turning from night to day above the glittering lunar peaks, or to see Saturn’s
rings, in all their unimaginable glory, bridging the sky of his nearest moon.

The knowledge that this was his last day in London filled Dirk with a sense of guilty
regret. Regret, because he had seen practically nothing of the place; guilt, because
he couldn’t help feeling that this was partly his own fault. It was true that he had
been furiously busy, but looking back on the past few weeks it was hard to believe
that he’d found it impossible to visit the British Museum more than twice, or St.
Paul’s Cathedral even once. He did not know when he would see London again, for he
would return direct to America.

It was a fair but rather cool day, with the usual possibility of rain later. There
was no work he could do at his flat, for all his papers had been packed and even now
were halfway round the world ahead of him. He had said good-bye to those members of
Interplanetary’s staff he would not see again: most of the others he would meet at
London Airport early tomorrow morning. Matthews, who seemed to have grown quite attached
to him, had become almost tearful, and even his sparring partners Sam and Bert had
insisted on a little farewell celebration at the office. When he walked away from
Southbank for the last time, Dirk realized with a pang that he was also saying good-bye
to one of the happiest periods of his life. It had been happy because it had been
full, because it had extended all his resources to the utmost—above all, because he
had been among men whose lives had a purpose which they knew was greater than themselves.

Meanwhile, he had an empty day on his hands and did not know how to occupy it. In
theory, such a situation was impossible; but it seemed to have happened now.

He went into the quiet square, wondering if he had been wise to leave his raincoat
behind. It was only a few hundred yards to the Embassy, where he had a little business
to conduct, but he was rash enough to take a short cut. As a result he promptly lost
himself in the labyrinth of side streets and culs-de-sac which made London such a
continual source of exasperating delight. Only a lucky glimpse of the Roosevelt Memorial
finally gave him his bearings again.

A leisurely lunch with some of his Embassy acquaintances at their favorite club disposed
of the earlier afternoon; then he was left to his own resources. He could go anywhere
he pleased, could see the places which otherwise he might always be sorry to have
missed. Yet a kind of restless lethargy made him feel unable to do anything but wander
at random through the streets. The sun had finally secured its bridgehead, and the
afternoon was warm and relaxing. It was pleasant to drift through the back streets
and to come by chance upon buildings older than the United States—yet bearing such
notices as: “Grosvenor Radio and Electronic Corporation,” or “Provincial Airways,
Ltd.”

Late in the afternoon Dirk emerged into what, he concluded, must be Hyde Park. For
a full hour he circulated under the trees, always keeping within sight of the adjoining
roads. The Albert Memorial held him paralyzed with frank disbelief for many minutes,
but he finally escaped from its hypnotic spell and decided to cut back across the
Park to Marble Arch.

He had forgotten the impassioned oratory for which that spot was famous, and it was
very entertaining to wander from one crowd to another, listening to the speakers and
their critics. What, he wondered, had ever given people the idea that the British
were reserved and undemonstrative?

He stood for some time enthralled by a duet between one orator and his heckler in
which each maintained with equal passion that Karl Marx had—and had
not
—made a certain remark. What the remark was Dirk never discovered, and he began to
suspect that the disputants themselves had long since forgotten it. From time to time
helpful interjections were provided by the good-natured crowd, which obviously had
no strong feelings on the subject but wanted to keep the pot boiling.

The next speaker was engaged in proving, apparently with the aid of Biblical texts,
that Doomsday was at hand. He reminded Dirk of those apocalyptic prophets of the anxious
year
A.D.
999; would their successors, ten centuries later, still be predicting the Day of
Wrath as the year 1999 drew to its close? He could hardly doubt it. In many ways human
nature changed very little: the prophets would still be there, and there would still
be some to believe them.

He moved on to the next group. A small but attentive audience was gathered around
an elderly, white-haired man who was giving a lecture—a remarkably well-informed lecture—on
philosophy. Not all the speakers, Dirk decided, were by any means cranks. This lecturer
might have been a retired schoolmaster with such strong views on adult education that
he felt himself impelled to hold forth in the marketplace to all who would listen.

His discourse was on Life, its origin and its destiny. His thoughts, like those of
his listeners, were no doubt influenced by that winged thunderbolt lying in the desert
on the far side of the world, for presently he began to speak of the astronomical
stage upon which the strange drama of life was being played.

He painted a vivid picture of the sun and its circling planets, taking the thoughts
of his listeners with him from world to world. He had a gift for picturesque phrases,
and though Dirk was not sure that he confined himself to accepted scientific knowledge,
the general impression he gave was accurate enough.

Tiny Mercury, blistering beneath its enormous sun, he pictured as a world of burning
rocks washed by sluggish oceans of molten metal. Venus, Earth’s sister planet, was
forever hidden from us by those rolling clouds which had not parted once during the
centuries in which men had gazed upon her. Beneath that blanket might be oceans and
forests and the hum of strange life. Or there might be nothing but a barren wilderness
swept by scorching winds.

He spoke of Mars; and one could see a ripple of increased attention spread through
his audience. Forty million miles outward from the Sun, Nature had scored her second
hit. Here again was life: we could see the changing colors which on our own world
spoke of the passing seasons. Though Mars had little water, and his atmosphere was
stratospherically thin, vegetation and perhaps animal life could exist there. Of intelligence,
there was no conclusive evidence at all.