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Ebook has 329 lines and 17651 words, and 7 pages

MEN INTO SPACE

COPYRIGHT 1960 BY ZIV TELEVISION PRODUCTIONS, INC.

BERKLEY EDITION, OCTOBER, 1960

Printed in the United States of America

There was no sensation of weight. Nothing weighed anything. Nothing could be considered light or heavy. The difference in weight between a copper penny and the ship itself was imaginary. They had different masses, but both would weigh the same--zero. McCauley suddenly turned off the silent air-circulator of the cabin. He struck a match. The flame flared, but not as a rising leaf-shape. It was a perfect ball of incandescence. But it did not continue to burn. It went out, and a ball of white smokiness remained where the flame had been....

First Lieutenant Ed McCauley opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling, wondering drowsily why this morning seemed so much more satisfying and important than any other. He'd had a good sleep, even though he remembered vaguely that he'd had a hard time dropping off. Now the sunlight came through the window blind in slatted streaks, the wall was a pale tan, and he was lying on an iron cot, his uniform neatly draped over a chair. Then he heard voices and the clattering of china, and suddenly he remembered where he was and what was important about today.

Today was the day of the shoot. The rocket shoot. It wasn't going to be big and spectacular, with a multiple-stage giant looming so high that a man couldn't see the payload capsule on top without his neck creaking. There'd be no giant gantry crane hovering over a slim but monstrous missile with its hundreds of plugged-in wires recording the performances of some tens of thousands of separate parts, all of which had to work perfectly if one part were to be any good. Even the electric wires had to pull clear perfectly when the gantry crane rolled back a matter of seconds before the end of the count down.

No. This shoot wouldn't be spectacular. There weren't even any reporters around. Official Service cameramen would record what happened; and if all went well there'd be plenty of excitement about it later, and if all didn't go well it wouldn't matter too much. This time there was no publicity buildup. Nobody'd be disappointed if things went wrong. The only person who'd feel badly was First Lieutenant Ed McCauley, and he wouldn't feel it too keenly. In fact, he wouldn't feel anything.

He'd be dead.

He considered the idea for a moment, but when a person is First Lieutenant McCauley's age, dying is something that happens to somebody else. You can't imagine it happening to you. It's a sort of reverse of being born, but you can't imagine that either, though it happened.

He sat up and kicked his feet over the side of the cot. He felt a little bit relieved. He was excited, now that he remembered what was in the works for today, but it wasn't a solemn feeling. He got up and looked at himself in the small square mirror over the washstand. He looked exactly as he always did. He felt the same way. Well-l, maybe a little more awake and alive than usual, because he'd been horribly afraid that something would happen and the shoot would be called off. But it hadn't--so far.

He went down the hall to the showers, trailing a towel over his shoulder. He showered, thinking zestfully about the prospects. There'd be no trouble about the weather. At this base clouds were exceptional and a cloud cover that hindered even visual tracking was almost unknown. Suddenly he wanted to sing, but he restrained himself. As lucky as he felt, it might sound like showing off.

The door of the shower room opened and somebody came in.

"Hi, National Hero. You in there?" It was Randy's voice, slightly sardonic.

"Ain't nobody here but us chickens, boss," McCauley answered cheerfully. "Nary a hero."

Randy grunted.

"How d'you feel, Ed?"

"Wet," said McCauley. He turned off the shower and began to towel himself. When he emerged, Randy searched his face, his anxiety showing on his own.

"Nope," said McCauley, "the condemned man's got a good appetite for breakfast. Quit worrying about me, Randy!"

"If you'd only slipped on your soap and broken your doggone neck," Randy complained, "a good guy might've gotten a chance to take your place!"

McCauley grinned. Randy would give his eyeteeth to take his place today. Anybody would. McCauley still worried that even now something would spoil things, but he'd been worrying for months. He'd been jumpy ever since the rumor first went around that sometime soon somebody was going up in a rocket and coming down again. Nobody ever had. Up to this morning it was still waiting to be done. But somebody--in fact, he himself--should do it today. This was why today was the most special day of his life.

Back in his quarters he shaved, marveling at the luck of the man he saw in the mirror. Three--four--five months ago he'd been telling himself that he didn't have a chance of being picked, even though he was sure he'd put in for it as soon as anybody had. He'd hoped he'd been the first to apply, but actually he was one of two hundred. They'd winnowed the applicants, though, and four months ago twenty were left, and then only ten. Now there was only himself in first place, with four other bitterly envious characters--Randy was one of them--wishing he'd break his neck so they could go in his place.

But nothing like that would happen if he could help it. Washing the shaving soap off his face, he found himself praying that everything would go all right. He didn't think of asking that he come down safely; after all, he could insure his safety by backing out. He just asked that he'd be all right when they checked him over, and that the count down would go all right, and that he'd get up to where the sky turned purple and then black and he saw the stars shining bright, with the sun among them as the nearest and greatest star of all. And he prayed that he'd do the right things while he was up there so the shoot would be a success.

He settled his uniform and went to breakfast. Randy had ordered for him and was waiting. Randy still looked worried. He'd tried hard for the job for himself, but now he was afraid that his friend McCauley might not check out. That the rocket might not check out. That when he got up there something might go wrong. That coming down would be bad.

"Soft-boiled," said McCauley appreciatively, breaking an egg. "My favorite fruit!"

"Do you really feel okay, Ed?" asked Randy.

McCauley grinned again, which was answer enough. Maybe he felt too good. He probably should tone down a little. After all, this shoot with a man as the payload wasn't a pleasure trip. It was research. It was an operation to verify other research. The medicos believed they knew what the psychological, physiological, and emotional effects of long-continued weightlessness would be. They needed to know how a normal man like McCauley would react to the unparalleled environment of nearer space. It was high-altitude research, primarily to enable planes to fly faster. A plane could be powered right now so that its wings would melt at sea level because of the heat its speed produced. The only way to reach theoretical top speed in a plane was to fly it away up. There was a thermal barrier to really high-speed flight. The only way around this barrier was over it, and it was necessary to find out how a man would make out in that detour. The Service had a long-established custom of spending a dollar instead of a man; now it had not to spend a man perhaps, but to risk one. And McCauley was the man.

He felt remarkably good, knowing that presently he should be where no man had ever been before, seeing with his own eyes that the earth was round. It struck him suddenly that everybody else in the world had only indirect evidence for believing this. He'd be the first man to know this for a fact simply because he'd gone up to where he would see the earth as a ball.

"No shivers?" asked Randy presently, as if in envy. "Wouldn't you rather not and say you did? I'll take over for you!"

"Don't tempt me!" said McCauley, pushing his cup across the table. "And how about some more coffee?"

Randy grunted. Maybe he'd been ordered to do some kidding, so McCauley wouldn't get the wind up. But it didn't matter to Ed. If only everything went all right at the blockhouse everything would have to go all right all along the line. But the chance that things might be fouled up there made him want to keep his fingers crossed. Yes. The blockhouse was the big hurdle. Anything that happened after that wouldn't be failure on his part. He wanted to pray again, this time about the blockhouse. But he didn't.

The two men left the officers'-quarters building together. There was a jeep waiting, with Sergeant Hall at its wheel.

"Mornin', Lieuten't. How you feeling?"

The sergeant looked at McCauley with the same combination of envy and anxiety that Randy had shown--envy for what McCauley had ahead of him, anxiety for whether he felt all right so that he could go through with it.

"Look!" said McCauley, annoyed. "I'm all right! There's nothing to worry about! The thing's been done before with instruments, dummies, monkeys, and now it's me. I'm just another ape. That's all! For the love of Saint Aloysius stop worrying!"

Sergeant Hall let in the clutch.

"Okay, Lieuten't," he said mildly. "I was just going to wish you good luck."

"Cross your fingers against the medics," said McCauley dourly. "I never liked doctors. I've got to get by some of them."

He settled back in the jeep and it went bolting out into the already blazing sunlight beyond the shadow of the building.

The landscape wasn't pretty--sun-baked clay and sand on the road, and mesquite and more mesquite all around. The sunshine was hotter here than anywhere else in the world. It was still long before noon, but already the horizon shimmered in the heat and occasional little sand-devils rose up half-heartedly and then subsided as if it were too hot even for whirlwinds. Far away there were the mountains. McCauley had gone over there once, and they'd towered impossibly toward the sky. But presently he'd have trouble picking them out because they'd be so small and the ground so nearly flat. Heat beat up from the ground and through the windshield. After a quarter of an hour he could see the spindly launching tower--no gantry cranes here!--above one of the ridges over which the jeep went rolling, kicking up a monstrous cloud of yellow dust behind it.

McCauley didn't mind the heat. He felt remarkably aware of being alive and breathing, of the sunlight, and of a wrinkle in his pants on the jeep seat. After a little he saw the flat roof of the blockhouse. Then he felt scared. He was afraid of the blockhouse. There'd be a last checkup to make sure he was perfectly all right, perfectly normal, no more tense than the doctors decided was allowable, and so on. His heart began to pound a little and he agonized over it. If they decided it was acting queer....

He found himself praying again. Please, God, don't let them find anything wrong with me! I want so much to do this!

Randy didn't look at him. A good guy, Randy. He'd know it was panic over those doggone doctors poking stethoscopes at him and going off to mutter together about what they'd heard.

"Randy, if I look scared, it's because I am," McCauley said between his teeth. "There's a medic in that blockhouse who wanted his brother-in-law to get this job. He'd be just the kind to mess me up now!"

Randy offered a cigarette. McCauley shook his head.

The blockhouse was sunk in the dry earth. It was concrete, yards thick, with nothing visible from this side except a deep-sunk door in the wall. On the other side there was a narrow slit to look out of, and there were periscopes and in a pit over yonder the close-by trackers. There were other trackers in other spots--as far away as the mountains. But there wasn't much of anything to be seen here.

... No. There was the rocket. One of the new big Aerobees. Nothing fancy about it. The Atlas and the long-distance jobs generally got all the publicity these days. But the Aerobees were solid and workmanlike, veteran performers. Fancy hardware broke the records and was what people meant when they talked about missiles and rockets, but Aerobees were the workhorses that went up without fanfare, got the information they were sent up for, and got it back down again. It was an Aerobee that had proved matter-of-factly that most of the stuff in the textbooks about the upper air simply wasn't so. Aerobees were the first to disprove the belief that the tropopause was a motionless, featureless calm belt up aloft. Aerobees brought back conclusive evidence of vertical currents in that supposed utter calm, currents that shot upward at three hundred meters per second. And it was Aerobees that brought back proof of ultraviolet light reaching Earth on its dark side, so the theory boys could go quietly mad figuring out where the light came from.

Yes. The pointed nose and sleek shape of the Aerobee was a comfort, standing by its straight-up launching tower. McCauley'd seen dozens of shoots of Aerobees. He felt the affection a man feels for something that does its job competently and casually, day in and day out, when called upon to do it.

The jeep stopped. Randy got out and McCauley followed him. The sergeant opened his mouth but thought better of it. He drove away without saying anything more about luck.

The doorway of the blockhouse was cool. Inside, as the door closed behind him, McCauley felt the air-conditioned chill and the clatter of the place almost as if he'd been struck a blow. There were people everywhere. Practically everybody wore a phone headset and chest microphone and everybody was talking to somebody somewhere else, paying no attention to anyone nearby.

McCauley stood still, waiting to be told where to go. Somebody called to him:

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