Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi)

Jed Cochrane tried to be cynical as the helicab hummed softly through
the night over the city. The cab flew at two thousand feet, where
lighted buildings seemed to soar toward it from the canyons which were
streets. There were lights and people everywhere, and Cochrane
sardonically reminded himself that he was no better than anybody else,
only he'd been trying to keep from realizing it. He looked down at the
trees and shrubbery on the roof-tops, and at a dance that was going on
atop one of the tallest buildings. All roofs were recreation-spaces
nowadays. They were the only spaces available. When you looked down at a
city like this, you had cynical thoughts. Fourteen million people in
this city. Ten million in that. Eight in another and ten in another
still, and twelve million in yet another ... Big cities. Swarming
millions of people, all desperately anxious—so Cochrane realized
bitterly—all desperately anxious about their jobs and keeping them.

"Even as me and I," said Cochrane harshly to himself. "Sure! I'm shaking
in my shoes right along with the rest of them!"

But it hurt to realize that he'd been kidding himself. He'd thought he
was important. Important, at least, to the advertising firm of Kursten,
Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe. But right now he was on the way—like a
common legman—to take the moon-rocket to Lunar City, and he'd been
informed of it just thirty minutes ago. Then he'd been told casually to
get to the rocket-port right away. His secretary and two technical men
and a writer were taking the same rocket. He'd get his instructions from
Dr. William Holden on the way.

A part of his mind said indignantly, "
Wait till I get Hopkins on the
phone! It was a mixup! He wouldn't send me off anywhere with the
Dikkipatti Hour depending on me! He's not that crazy!
" But he was on
his way to the space-port, regardless. He'd raged when the message
reached him. He'd insisted that he had to talk to Hopkins in person
before he obeyed any such instructions. But he was on his way to the
space-port. He was riding in a helicab, and he was making adjustments in
his own mind to the humiliation he unconsciously foresaw. There were
really three levels of thought in his mind. One had adopted a defensive
cynicism, and one desperately insisted that he couldn't be as
unimportant as his instructions implied, and the third watched the other
two as the helicab flew with cushioned booming noises over the dark
canyons of the city and the innumerable lonely lights of the rooftops.

There was a thin roaring sound, high aloft. Cochrane jerked his head
back. The stars filled all the firmament, but he knew what to look for.
He stared upward.

One of the stars grew brighter. He didn't know when he first picked it
out, but he knew when he'd found it. He fixed his eyes on it. It was a
very white star, and for a space of minutes it seemed in no wise
different from its fellows. But it grew brighter. Presently it was very
bright. It was brighter than Sirius. In seconds more it was brighter
than Venus. It increased more and more rapidly in its brilliance. It
became the brightest object in all the heavens except the crescent moon,
and the cold intensity of its light was greater than any part of that.
Then Cochrane could see that this star was not quite round. He could
detect the quarter-mile-long flame of the rocket-blast.

It came down with a rush. He saw the vertical, stabbing pencil of light
plunge earthward. It slowed remarkably as it plunged, with all the
flying aircraft above the city harshly lighted by its glare. The
space-port itself showed clearly. Cochrane saw the buildings, and the
other moon-rockets waiting to take off in half an hour or less.

The white flame hit the ground and splashed. It spread out in a wide
flat disk of intolerable brightness. The sleek hull of the ship which
still rode the flame down glinted vividly as it settled into the inferno
of its own making.

Then the light went out. The glare cut off abruptly. There was only a
dim redness where the space-port tarmac had been made incandescent for a
little while. That glow faded—and Cochrane became aware of the
enormous stillness. He had not really noticed the rocket's deafening
roar until it ended.

The helicab flew onward almost silently, with only the throbbing pulses
of its overhead vanes making any sound at all.

"
I kidded myself about those rockets, too
," said Cochrane bitterly to
himself. "
I thought getting to the moon meant starting to the stars.
New worlds to live on. I had a lot more fun before I found out the facts
of life!
"

But he knew that this cynicism and this bitterness came out of the hurt
to the vanity that still insisted everything was a mistake. He'd
received orders which disillusioned him about his importance to the firm
and to the business to which he'd given years of his life. It hurt to
find out that he was just another man, just another expendable. Most
people fought against making the discovery, and some succeeded in
avoiding it. But Cochrane saw his own self-deceptions with a savage
clarity even as he tried to keep them. He did not admire himself at all.

The helicab began to slant down toward the space-port buildings. The sky
was full of stars. The earth—of course—was covered with buildings.
Except for the space-port there was no unoccupied ground for thirty
miles in any direction. The cab was down to a thousand feet. To five
hundred. Cochrane saw the just-arrived rocket with tender-vehicles
running busily to and fro and hovering around it. He saw the rocket he
should take, standing upright on the faintly lighted field.

The cab touched ground. Cochrane stood up and paid the fare. He got out
and the cab rose four or five feet and flitted over to the waiting-line.

He went into the space-port building. He felt himself growing more
bitter still. Then he found Bill Holden—Doctor William Holden—standing
dejectedly against a wall.

"I believe you've got some orders for me, Bill," said Cochrane
sardonically. "And just what psychiatric help can I give you?"

Holden said tiredly:

"I don't like this any better than you do, Jed. I'm scared to death of
space-travel. But go get your ticket and I'll tell you about it on the
way up. It's a special production job. I'm roped in on it too."

"Happy holiday!" said Cochrane, because Holden looked about as miserable
as a man could look.

He went to the ticket desk. He gave his name. On request, he produced
identification. Then he said sourly:

"While you're working on this I'll make a phone-call."

He went to a pay visiphone. And again there were different levels of
awareness in his mind—one consciously and defensively cynical, and one
frightened at the revelation of his unimportance, and the third finding
the others an unedifying spectacle.

He put the call through with an over-elaborate confidence which he
angrily recognized as an attempt to deceive himself. He got the office.
He said calmly:

"This is Jed Cochrane. I asked for a visiphone contact with Mr.
Hopkins."

He had a secretary on the phone-screen. She looked at memos and said
pleasantly:

"Oh, yes. Mr. Hopkins is at dinner. He said he couldn't be disturbed,
but for you to go on to the moon according to your instructions, Mr.
Cochrane."

Cochrane hung up and raged, with one part of his mind. Another part—and
he despised it—began to argue that after all, he had better wait before
thinking there was any intent to humiliate him. After all, his orders
must have been issued with due consideration. The third part disliked
the other two parts intensely—one for raging without daring to speak,
and one for trying to find alibis for not even raging. He went back to
the ticket-desk. The clerk said heartily:

"Here you are! The rest of your party's already on board, Mr. Cochrane.
You'd better hurry! Take-off's in five minutes."

Holden joined him. They went through the gate and got into the
tender-vehicle that would rush them out to the rocket. Holden said
heavily:

"I was waiting for you and hoping you wouldn't come. I'm not a good
traveller, Jed."

The small vehicle rushed. To a city man, the dark expanse of the
space-port was astounding. Then a spidery metal framework swallowed the
tender-truck, and them. The vehicle stopped. An elevator accepted them
and lifted an indefinite distance through the night, toward the stars. A
sort of gangplank with a canvas siderail reached out across emptiness.
Cochrane crossed it, and found himself at the bottom of a spiral ramp
inside the rocket's passenger-compartment. A stewardess looked at the
tickets. She led the way up, and stopped.

"This is your seat, Mr. Cochrane," she said professionally. "I'll strap
you in this first time. You'll do it later."

Cochrane lay down in a contour-chair with an eight-inch mattress of foam
rubber. The stewardess adjusted straps. He thought bitter, ironic
thoughts. A voice said:

"Mr. Cochrane!"

He turned his head. There was Babs Deane, his secretary, with her eyes
very bright. She regarded him from a contour-chair exactly opposite his.
She said happily:

"Mr. West and Mr. Jamison are the science men, Mr. Cochrane. I got Mr.
Bell as the writer."

"A great triumph!" Cochrane told her. "Did you get any idea what all
this is about? Why we're going up?"

"No," admitted Babs cheerfully. "I haven't the least idea. But I'm going
to the moon! It's the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me!"

Cochrane shrugged his shoulders. Shrugging was not comfortable in the
straps that held him. Babs was a good secretary. She was the only one
Cochrane had ever had who did not try to make use of her position as
secretary to the producer of the Dikkipatti Hour on television. Other
secretaries had used their nearness to him to wangle acting or dancing
or singing assignments on other and lesser shows. As a rule they lasted
just four public appearances before they were back at desks, spoiled for
further secretarial use by their taste of fame. But Babs hadn't tried
that. Yet she'd jumped at a chance for a trip to the moon.

A panel up toward the nose of the rocket—the upper end of this
passenger compartment—glowed suddenly. Flaming red letters said,
"
Take-off, ninety seconds.
"

Cochrane found an ironic flavor in the thought that splendid daring and
incredible technology had made his coming journey possible. Heroes had
ventured magnificently into the emptiness beyond Earth's atmosphere.
Uncountable millions of dollars had been spent. Enormous intelligence
and infinite pains had been devoted to making possible a journey of two
hundred thirty-six thousand miles through sheer nothingness. This was
the most splendid achievement of human science—the reaching of a
satellite of Earth and the building of a human city there.

And for what? Undoubtedly so that one Jed Cochrane could be ordered by
telephone, by somebody's secretary, to go and get on a passenger-rocket
and get to the moon. Go—having failed to make a protest because his
boss wouldn't interrupt dinner to listen—so he could keep his job by
obeying. For this splendid purpose, scientists had labored and dedicated
men had risked their lives.