Prelude to Space (5 page)

“You’d almost think, wouldn’t you,” said Matthews, “that the house was ready to take
off at any moment. It’s a complete mock-up, of course, of ‘Alpha’s’ control room.
I’ve seen them training on it, and it’s fascinating to watch even if you don’t quite
know what it’s all about.”

Dirk gave a somewhat forced laugh.

“It’s a bit eerie, coming across a spaceship control panel in a quiet London suburb.”

“It won’t be quiet next week. We’re throwing it open to the Press then, and we’ll
probably be lynched for keeping all this under cover so long.”

“Next week?”

“Yes, if everything goes according to plan. ‘Beta’ should have passed her final full-speed
tests by then, and we’ll all be packing our trunks for Australia. By the way, have
you seen those films of the first launchings?”

“No.”

“Remind me to let you see them—they’re most impressive.”

“What’s she done so far?”

“Four and a half miles a second with full load. That’s a bit short of orbital speed,
but everything was still working perfectly. It’s a pity, though, that we can’t test
‘Alpha’ before the actual flight.”

“When will that be?”

“It’s not fixed yet, but we know that the take-off will be when the Moon’s entering
her first quarter. The ship will land in the Mare Imbrium region while it’s still
early morning. The return’s scheduled for the late afternoon, so they’ll have about
ten Earth-days there.”

“Why the Mare Imbrium, in particular?”

“Because it’s flat, very well mapped, and has some of the most interesting scenery
on the Moon. Besides, spaceships have
always
landed there since Jules Verne’s time. I guess that you know that the name means
‘Sea of Rains.’”

“I did know Latin pretty thoroughly once upon a time,” Dirk said dryly.

Matthews came as near a smile as he had ever known him to.

“I suppose you did. But let’s get out of here before we’re caught. Seen enough?”

“Yes, thanks. It’s a bit overwhelming, but not so very much worse than a transcontinental
jet’s cockpit.”

“It is if you know what goes on behind all those panels,” said Matthews grimly. “Arnold
Clinton—that’s the electronics king—once told me that there are three thousand tubes
in the computing and control circuits alone. And there must be a good many hundreds
on the communications side.”

Dirk scarcely heard him. He was beginning to realize, for the first time, how swiftly
the sands were running out. When he had arrived a fortnight ago, the take-off still
seemed a remote event in the indefinite future. That was the general impression in
the outside world; now it seemed completely false. He turned to Matthews in genuine
bewilderment.

“Your Public Relations Department,” he complained, “seems to have misled everyone
pretty efficiently. What’s the idea?”

“It’s purely a matter of policy,” replied the other. “In the old days we had to talk
big and make spectacular promises to attract any attention at all. Now we prefer to
say as little as possible until everything’s cut and dried. It’s the only way to avoid
fantastic rumors and the resulting sense of anticlimax. Do you remember the KY 15?
She was the first manned ship to reach an altitude of a thousand miles—but months
before she was ready everyone thought that we were going to send her to the Moon.
They were disappointed, of course, when she did exactly what she’d been designed for.
So nowadays I sometimes call my office the ‘Department of Negative Publicity.’ It
will be quite a relief when the whole thing’s over and we can go into forward gear
again.”

This, thought Dirk, was a very self-centered outlook. It seemed to him that the five
men he had just been watching had far better reasons for wishing that the “whole thing
was over.”

“So far,” wrote Dirk in his Journal that night, “I’ve only nibbled round the edges
of Interplanetary. Matthews has kept me orbiting around him like a minor planet—I
must reach parabolic velocity and escape elsewhere. (I’m beginning to pick up the
language, as he promised!)

“The people I want to meet now are the scientists and engineers who are the real driving
force behind the organization. What makes them tick, to put it crudely? Are they a
lot of Frankensteins merely interested in a technical project without any regard for
its consequences? Or do they see, perhaps more clearly than McAndrews and Matthews,
just where all this is going to lead? M. and M. sometimes remind me of a couple of
real-estate agents trying to sell the Moon. They’re doing a job, and doing it well—but
someone must have inspired them in the first place. And in any case, they are a grade
or two from the top of the hierarchy.

“The Director-General seemed a very interesting personality when I met him for those
few minutes the day I arrived—but I can hardly go and catechize
him!
The Deputy D.-G. might have been a good bet, since we’re both Californians, but he’s
not back from the States.

“Tomorrow I get the ‘Astronautics Without Tears’ course that Matthews promised me
when I came. Apparently it’s a six-reel instructional film, and I’ve not been able
to see it before because no one in this hotbed of genius was able to repair a thirty-five-millimeter
projector. When I’ve sat through it, Alfred swears I’ll be able to hold my own with
the astronomers.

“As a good historian, I suppose I should have no prejudices one way or the other,
but should be capable of watching Interplanetary’s activities with a dispassionate
eye. It isn’t working out that way. I’m beginning to worry more and more about the
ultimate consequences of this work, and the platitudes that Alfred and Mac keep bringing
up don’t satisfy me at all. I suppose that’s why I’m now anxious to get hold of the
top scientists and hear their views. Then, perhaps, I’ll be able to pass judgment—if
it’s my job to pass judgment.

“
Later
. Of course it’s my job. Look at Gibbon, look at Toynbee. Unless an historian draws
conclusions (right or wrong) he’s merely a file clerk.

“
Later Still
. How could I have forgotten? Tonight I came up to Oxford Circus in one of the new
turbine buses. It’s very quiet, but if you listen carefully you can hear it singing
to itself in a faint, extremely high soprano. The Londoners are excessively proud
of them, since they’re the first in the world. I don’t understand why a simple thing
like a bus should have taken almost as long to develop as a spaceship, but they tell
me it has. Something to do with engineering economics, I believe.

“I decided to walk to the flat, and coming out of Bond Street I saw a gilded, horse-drawn
van looking as if it had rolled straight out of
Pickwick
. It was delivering goods for some tailor, I believe, and the ornamental lettering
said: ‘Est. 1768.’

“This sort of thing makes the British very disconcerting people to a foreigner. Of
course, McAndrews would say that it’s the English, not the British, who are crazy—but
I refuse to draw this rather fine distinction.”

“You’ll excuse me for leaving you,” said Matthews apologetically, “but although it’s
a very good film, I’d scream the place down if I had to see it again. At a guess,
I’ve sat through it at least fifty times already.”

“That’s O.K.,” laughed Dirk, from the depths of his seat in the little auditorium.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever been the only customer at a movie, so it will be a
novel experience.”

“Right. I’ll be back when it’s finished. If you want any reels run through again,
just tell the operator.”

Dirk settled back into the seat. It was, he reflected, just not comfortable enough
to encourage one to relax and take life easily. Which showed good sense on the part
of the designer, since this cinema was a strictly functional establishment.

The title with a few brief credits flashed on the screen.

THE ROAD TO SPACE

Technical advice and special effects by Interplanetary.

Produced by Eagle-Lion.

The screen was dark: then, in its center, a narrow band of starlight appeared. It
slowly widened, and Dirk realized that he was beneath the opening hemispheres of some
great observatory dome. The star-field commenced to expand: he was moving toward it.

“For two thousand years,” said a quiet voice, “men have dreamed of journeys to other
worlds. The stories of interplanetary flight are legion, but not until our own age
was the machine perfected which could make these dreams come true.”

Something dark was silhouetted against the star-field—something slim and pointed and
eager to be away. The scene lightened and the stars vanished. Only the great rocket
remained, its silver hull glistening in the sunlight as it rested upon the desert.

The sands seemed to boil as the blast ate into them. Then the giant projectile was
climbing steadily, as if along an invisible wire. The camera tilted upward: the rocket
foreshortened and dwindled into the sky. Less than a minute later, only the twisting
vapor-trail was left.

“In 1942,” continued the narrator, “the first of the great modern rockets was launched
in secret from the Baltic shore. This was V.2, intended for the destruction of London.
Since it was the prototype of all later machines, and of the spaceship itself, let
us examine it in detail.”

There followed a series of sectional drawings of V.2, showing all the essential components—the
fuel tanks, the pumping system and the motor itself. By means of animated cartoons,
the operation of the whole machine was demonstrated so clearly that no one could fail
to understand it.

“V.2,” continued the voice, “could reach altitudes of over one hundred miles, and
after the War was used extensively for research into the ionosphere.”

There were some spectacular shots of New Mexico firings in the late 1940s, and some
even more spectacular ones of faulty take-offs and other forms of misbehavior.

“As you see, it was not always reliable and it was soon superseded by more powerful
and readily controlled machines—such as these—”

The smooth torpedo-shape was being replaced by long, thin needles that went whistling
up into the sky and came floating back beneath billowing parachutes. One after another
speed and altitude records were being smashed. And in 1959….

“This is the ‘Orphan Annie’ being assembled. She consisted of four separate stages,
or ‘steps,’ each dropping off when its fuel supply was exhausted. Her initial weight
was a hundred tons—her payload only twenty-five pounds. But that payload of magnesium
powder was the first object from Earth to reach another world.”

The Moon filled the screen, her craters glistening whitely and her long shadows lying,
sharp and black, across the desolate plains. She was rather less than half full, and
the ragged line of the terminator enclosed a great oval of darkness. Suddenly, in
the heart of that hidden land, a tiny but brilliant spark of light flared for a moment
and was gone. “Orphan Annie” had achieved her destiny.

“But all these rockets were pure projectiles: no human being had yet risen above the
atmosphere and returned safely to Earth. The first manned machine, carrying a single
pilot to an altitude of two hundred miles, was the ‘Aurora Australis,’ which was launched
in 1962. By this time all long-range rocket research was based upon the great proving-grounds
built in the Australian desert.

“After the ‘Aurora’ came other and more powerful ships, and in 1970, Lonsdale and
McKinley, in an American machine, made the first orbital flights around the world,
circling it three times before landing.”

There was a breathtaking sequence, obviously speeded up many times, showing almost
the whole Earth spinning below at an enormous rate. It made Dirk quite dizzy for a
moment, and when he had recovered the narrator was talking about the force of gravity.
He explained how it held everything to the Earth, and how it weakened with distance
but never vanished completely. More animated diagrams showed how a body could be given
such a speed that it would circle the world forever, balancing gravity against centrifugal
force just as the Moon does in its own orbit. This was illustrated by a man whirling
a stone around his head at the end of a piece of string. Slowly he lengthened the
string, but still kept the stone circling, more and more slowly.

“Near the Earth,” explained the voice, “bodies have to travel at five miles a second
to remain in stable orbits—but the Moon, a quarter of a million miles away in a much
weaker gravitational field, need move at only a tenth of this speed.

“But what happens if a body, such as a rocket, leaves the Earth at
more
than five miles a second? Watch…”

A model of the Earth appeared, floating in space. Above the equator a tiny point was
moving, tracing out a circular path.

“Here is a rocket, traveling at five miles a second just outside the atmosphere. You
will see that its path is a perfect circle. Now, if we increase its speed to
six
miles a second the rocket still travels round the Earth in a closed orbit, but its
path has become an ellipse. As the speed increases still further, the ellipse becomes
longer and longer and the rocket goes far out into space. But it always returns.

“However, if we increase the rocket’s initial speed to seven miles a second the ellipse
becomes a parabola—so—and the rocket has escaped for ever. Earth’s gravity can never
recapture it: it is now traveling through space like a tiny, man-made comet. If the
Moon were in the right position, our rocket would crash into it like the ‘Orphan Annie.’”

That, of course, was the last thing one wanted a spaceship to do. There was a long
explanation then, showing all the stages of a hypothetical lunar voyage. The commentator
showed how much fuel must be carried for a safe landing, and how much more was needed
for a safe return. He touched lightly on the problems of navigation in space, and
explained how provision could be made for the safety of the crew. Finally he ended: