Prelude to Space (18 page)

He turned toward the telescope, which had been temporarily deserted by its owner.

“This is rather handy,” he said. “I didn’t intend to do a visual inspection myself,
but this is too good a chance to miss—that is, if we can focus at this distance.”

“Exactly what are you trying to do?” asked Dirk as his friend racked the eyepiece
out to its fullest extent.

“That’s one of the reactor elements from the pile,” said Collins absently. “We want
to check it for activity. H’m—it seems to be standing up to it all right. Like a peep?”

Dirk peered through the telescope. He could see a few square inches of what at first
sight appeared to be metal; then he decided that it was some kind of ceramic coating.
It was so close that he could distinctly make out the surface texture.

“What would happen,” he said, “if you touched it?”

“You’d certainly get very bad delayed burns, gamma and neutron. If you stayed near
it long enough, you’d die.”

Dirk stared in fascinated horror at that innocent gray surface which seemed only a
few inches away.

“I suppose,” he said, “that the bits in an atomic bomb would look very much like this.”

“Just as harmless, anyway,” agreed Collins. “But there’s no danger of an explosion
here. The fissionable material we use is all denatured. If we went to a lot of trouble,
we
could
get an explosion—but a very small one.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Dirk suspiciously.

“Oh, just a large bang,” said Collins cheerfully. “I couldn’t give the figures off-hand,
but it would probably be no better than a few hundred tons of dynamite. Nothing to
worry about at all!”

The senior staff lounge always gave Dirk the impression of a slightly down-at-heel
London club. The fact that he had never been in a London club—prosperous or otherwise—did
nothing to shake this firm conviction.

Yet at any one time the British contingent in the lounge was likely to be in the minority,
and almost every accent in the world could be heard here during the course of the
day. It made no difference to the atmosphere of the place, which seemed to emanate
from the very English barman and his two assistants. Despite all onslaughts, they
had kept the Union Jack flying here in the social center of Luna City. Only once had
they yielded any territory, and even then the enemy had been swiftly routed. Six months
ago the Americans had imported a brand-new Coca-Cola machine, which for a while had
gleamed resplendently against the somber wooden paneling. But not for long: there
had been some hasty consultations and much midnight carpentry in the workshops. One
morning when the thirsty clients arrived, they found that the chromium plating had
disappeared, and that they must now obtain their drinks from what might have been
one of the late Mr. Chippendale’s minor masterpieces. The
status quo
had been restored, but as to how it had happened the barman confessed complete ignorance.

Dirk always called at least once a day to collect his mail and read the papers. In
the evening the place usually became rather crowded and he preferred to stay in his
room, but tonight Maxton and Collins had dragged him out of retirement. The conversation,
as usual, was not very far from the enterprise at hand.

“I think I’ll be going to Taine’s lecture tomorrow,” said Dirk. “He’s talking about
the Moon, isn’t he?”

“Yes; I bet he’ll be pretty cautious now that he knows he’s going! He might have to
eat his words if he’s not careful.”

“We’ve given him a perfectly free hand,” explained Maxton. “He’ll probably talk about
long-term plans and the use of the Moon as a refueling base to reach the planets.”

“That should be interesting. Richards and Clinton will both be talking about engineering,
I suppose, and I’ve had quite enough of that.”

“Thanks!” laughed Collins. “It’s nice to know that our efforts are appreciated!”

“Do you know,” said Dirk suddenly, “I’ve never even seen the Moon through a big telescope.”

“We could fix that up any evening this week—say after tomorrow. The Moon’s only a
day old at the moment. There are several telescopes here that would give you a pretty
good view.”

“I wonder,” said Dirk thoughtfully, “if we’re going to find life—I mean intelligent
life—anywhere in the solar system?”

There was a long pause. Then Maxton said abruptly: “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Look at it this way. It’s taken us only ten thousand years to get away from stone
axes to spaceships. That means that interplanetary travel must come pretty early in
the development of any culture—that is, if it proceeds along technological lines at
all.”

“But it needn’t,” said Dirk. “And if you throw in prehistory, it’s taken us a million
years to get to spaceships.”

“That’s still only a thousandth—or less—of the age of the solar system. If there was
any civilization on Mars, it probably died before humanity emerged from the jungle.
If it still flourished, it would have visited us long ago.”

“That’s so plausible,” replied Dirk, “that I’m sure it isn’t true. Moreover, you can
find plenty of incidents which make it look as if we
have
been visited in the past, by things or ships that didn’t like the look of us and
sheered off again.”

“Yes, I’ve read some of those accounts, and they’re very interesting too. But I’m
a skeptic: if anything ever has visited Earth, which I doubt, I’ll be very surprised
if it came from the other planets. Space and time are so big that it just doesn’t
seem probable that we’ll have neighbors only across the road.”

“That seems a pity,” said Dirk. “I think the most exciting thing about astronautics
is the possibility it opens up of meeting other types of minds. It won’t make the
human race seem quite so lonely.”

“That’s perfectly true; but perhaps it will be just as well if we can spend the next
few centuries quietly exploring the solar system by ourselves. At the end of that
time we’ll have acquired a lot more wisdom—and I
mean
wisdom, not mere knowledge. Perhaps we’ll be ready then to make contact with other
races. At the moment—well, we’re still only forty years from Hitler.”

“Then how long do you think we’ll have to wait,” said Dirk, a little discouraged,
“before we have our first contact with another civilization?”

“Who can say? It may be as near in time as the Wright Brothers—or as far away as the
building of the pyramids. It may even, of course, happen a week from tomorrow when
the ‘Prometheus’ lands on the Moon. But I’m darned sure it won’t.”

“Do you really think,” asked Dirk, “that we’ll ever get to the stars?”

Professor Maxton sat in silence for a moment, thoughtfully blowing clouds of cigarette
smoke.

“I think so. Some day,” he said.

“How?” persisted Dirk.”

“If we can get an atomic drive that’s more than fifty per cent efficient, we can reach
nearly the velocity of light—perhaps three-quarters of it, at any rate. That means
it’s about five years’ traveling from star to star. A long time, but still possible
even for us short-lived creatures. And one day, I hope, we’ll live a lot longer than
we do today. A
heck
of a lot longer.”

Dirk had a sudden vision of the three of them from the point of view of an outside
observer. He sometimes had these moments of objectivity, and they were valuable in
preserving his sense of proportion. Here they were, two men in the thirties and one
in the fifties, sitting in their armchairs around the low table carrying their drinks.
They might have been businessmen discussing a deal, or resting after a round of golf.
Their background was utterly commonplace; from time to time snatches of everyday conversation
drifted across from other groups, and there was a faint “clicking” of table-tennis
balls from the room next door.

Yes, they might have been discussing stocks and shares, or the new car, or the latest
gossip. But instead, they were wondering how to reach the stars.

“Our present atomic drives,” said Collins, “are about one hundredth of one per cent
efficient. So it will be quite a while before we think of going to Alpha Centauri.”

(
In the background a plaintive voice was saying: “Hey, George, what’s happened to my
gin and lime?”
)

“Another question,” said Dirk. “Is it absolutely certain that we can’t travel faster
than light?”

“In this universe, yes. It’s the limiting velocity for all material objects. A miserable
six hundred million miles an hour!”

(
“Three bitters, please, George!”
)

“Still,” said Maxton slowly and thoughtfully, “there may even be a way around that.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dirk and Collins simultaneously.

“In
our
universe, two points may be light-years apart. But they might be almost touching
in a higher space.”

(
“Where’s the
Times?
No, you ass, not the New York thing!”
)

“I draw the line at the fourth dimension,” said Collins with a grin. “That’s a bit
too fantastic for me. I’m a practical engineer—I hope!”

(
In the table-tennis room next door, it sounded as if an absent-minded victor had just
jumped the net to shake hands with his opponent
.)

“At the beginning of this century,” Professor Maxton retorted, “practical engineers
felt the same way about the theory of relativity. But it caught up with them a generation
later.” He rested his elbows on the table and stared into the remote distance.

“What,” he said slowly, “do you imagine the
next
hundred years will bring?”

The big Nissen hut was supposed to be connected to the camp’s heating system, but
no one would have noticed it. Dirk, who had grown accustomed to life at Luna City,
had wisely brought his overcoat with him. He felt sorry for the unfortunate members
of the audience who had neglected this elementary precaution. By the end of the lecture,
they would have a vivid impression of conditions on the outer planets.

About two hundred people were already seated on the benches, and more were continually
arriving, since it was still only five minutes after the time at which the lecture
was supposed to start. In the middle of the room a couple of anxious electricians
were making last-minute adjustments to an episcope. Half a dozen armchairs had been
placed in front of the speaker’s dais, and were the targets of many covetous eyes.
As clearly as if they had been labeled, they proclaimed to the world: “Reserved for
the Director-General.”

A door at the back of the hut opened, and Sir Robert Derwent entered, followed by
Taine, Professor Maxton, and several others whom Dirk did not recognize. All but Sir
Robert sat down in the front row, leaving the center seat empty.

The shuffling and whispering ceased as the Director-General stepped on to the dais.
He looked, Dirk thought, like some great impresario about to ring up the curtain.
And so, in a sense, he was.

“Mr. Taine,” said Sir Robert, “has kindly consented to give us a talk on the objects
of our first expedition. As he was one of its planners, and as he will be taking part
in it, I’m sure we’ll hear his views with great interest. After he’s talked about
the Moon, I gather that Mr. Taine is going to—er—let his hair down and discuss the
plans we have for the rest of the solar system. I believe he has it pretty well organized
all the way out to Pluto. Mr. Taine.”—(Applause.)

As he climbed on to the platform, Dirk studied the astronomer carefully. He had paid
little attention to him until now: indeed, apart from his chance meeting with Hassell
he had had few opportunities of studying any of the crew.

Taine was a slightly plump young man who seemed scarcely in the middle twenties, though
he was actually just under thirty. Astronautics, thought Dirk, certainly catches them
young. No wonder that Richards, at thirty-five, was considered quite an old crock
by his colleagues.

When he spoke, Taine’s voice was dry and precise and his words carried clearly throughout
the hut. He was a good speaker, but had an annoying habit of juggling with pieces
of chalk—which he frequently missed.

“I needn’t tell you very much about the Moon as a whole,” he said, “since you’ve already
read or heard quite enough about it in the past few weeks. But I’ll discuss the place
where we intend to land, and say what we hope to do when we get there.

“First of all, here’s a view of the whole Moon. (Slide One, please.) Since it’s full,
and the sun is shining vertically on the center of the disc, everything looks flat
and uninteresting. The dark area here at the bottom right is the Mare Imbrium, in
which we’ll be landing.

“Now this is the Moon when she’s nine days old—which is how you’ll see her from Earth
when we arrive. As the sun’s shining at an angle, you’ll see that the mountains near
the center show up very clearly—look at those long shadows they throw.

“Let’s go closer and examine the Mare Imbrium in detail. The name, by the way, means
‘Sea of Rains,’ but of course it isn’t a sea and it doesn’t rain there or anywhere
else on the Moon. The old astrologers called it that in the days before the invention
of the telescope.

“You’ll see from this close-up that the Mare is a fairly flat plain bounded at the
top (that’s the south, by the way) by this really magnificent range—the lunar Apennines.
To the north we have this smaller range, the Alps. The scale here gives you an idea
of the distances: that crater, for example, is about fifty miles across.

“This area is one of the most interesting ones on the Moon, and certainly has the
finest scenery, but we can only explore a small region on our first visit. We shall
land about here (Next Slide, please), and this is a drawing of the area under the
greatest magnification we can use. It’s as you’d see it with the naked eye from a
distance of two hundred miles away in space.

“The exact spot for the landing will be decided during the approach. We’ll be falling
slowly for the last hundred miles and should have time to select a suitable area.
Since we’re coming down vertically on shock absorbers, and holding off against the
rockets until the last moment, we need only a few square yards of reasonably horizontal
surface. Some pessimist has suggested that we may depend on what turns out to be dry
quicksand, but this doesn’t seem at all likely.