Prelude to Space (7 page)

Matthews leaned back to watch the effect of his shock tactics. For a moment Sir Michael
looked a little dazed: then he made a quick recovery and downed the remainder of his
drink.

“It’s all a little overwhelming,” he said ruefully. “But what will you do when you
get to the Moon, anyway?”

“You must realize,” said Matthews, pressing on remorselessly, “that the Moon’s only
the beginning. Fifteen million square miles is quite a good beginning, to be sure,
but we only look upon it as a stepping-stone to the planets. As you know, there’s
no free air or water there, so the first colonies will have to be totally enclosed.
But the low gravity will make it easy to build very large structures and plans have
been drawn up for whole cities under great transparent domes.”

“Seems to me,” said Sir Michael shrewdly, “that you’re going to take your ‘goldfish
bowls’ with you!”

Matthews nearly smiled.

“A good point,” he conceded, “but probably the Moon will be mainly used by the astronomers
and physicists for scientific research. It’s enormously important to them, and whole
new areas of knowledge will be opened up when they can build labs and observatories
up there.”

“And will that make the world a better or a happier place?”

“That, as always, depends on humanity. Knowledge is neutral, but one
must
possess it to do either good or ill.”

Matthews waved his arm along the great river moving sluggishly past them between its
crowded banks.

“Everything you can see, everything in our modern world, is possible because of the
knowledge which men won in ancient times. And civilization isn’t static: if it stands
still, it will die.”

There was silence for a while. Almost in spite of himself, Dirk felt deeply impressed.
He wondered if he had been wrong in thinking that Matthews was merely an efficient
salesman, propagating the ideals of others. Was he no more than a talented instrumentalist,
performing a piece of music with complete technical skill but without any real feeling?
He could not be sure. Matthews, extrovert though he was, concealed depths of reserve
which Dirk could never plumb. In this, though in no other respect, he filled the specifications
of that fabulous creature, the typical Englishman.

“I’ve had a good many letters,” said Sir Michael presently, “from friends of mine
in Ireland who don’t like the idea at all and think we were never intended to leave
the Earth. What am I to say to them?”

“Remind them of history,” replied Matthews. “Tell them that we’re explorers, and ask
them not to forget that once upon a time
someone
had to discover Ireland!” He gave Dirk a glance as if to say: “Here it comes.”

“Imagine that it’s five centuries ago, Sir Michael, and that my name’s Christopher
Columbus. You want to know why I’m anxious to sail westward across the Atlantic, and
I’ve tried to give you my reasons. I don’t know whether they’ve convinced you: you
may not be particularly interested in opening up a new route to the Indies. But this
is the important point—neither of us can imagine just how much this voyage is going
to mean to the world.
Tell your friends, Sir Michael, to think what a difference it would have made to Ireland
if America had never been discovered
. The Moon’s a bigger place than North and South America combined—and it’s only the
first and smallest of the worlds we’re going to reach.”

The great reception hall was almost deserted when they said good-bye to Sir Michael.
He still seemed a trifle dazed when they shook hands and parted.

“I hope that settles the Irish question for a while,” said Matthews as they walked
out of the building into the shadow of the Victoria Tower. “What did you think of
the old boy?”

“He seemed a grand character. I’d give a lot to hear him explaining your ideas to
his constituents.”

“Yes,” Matthews replied, “that should be rather entertaining.”

They walked on for a couple of yards, past the main entrance and toward the bridge.
Then Matthews said abruptly:

“What do
you
think of it all, anyway?”

Dirk hedged.

“I think I agree with you—logically,” he said. “But somehow I can’t feel about it
the way you seem to do. Later, perhaps, I may—I just can’t tell.”

He looked at the great city around him, throbbing with life and commerce. It seemed
as ageless and eternal as the hills: whatever the future brought, surely this could
never pass away! Yet Matthews had been right, and he of all people should recognize
it. Civilization could never stand still. Over the very ground on which he was walking,
the mammoths had once come trampling through the rushes at the river’s edge. They,
and not the ape-men watching from their caves, had been the masters of this land.
But the day of the ape had dawned at last: the forests and swamps had given way before
the might of his machines. Dirk knew now that the story was merely beginning. Even
at this moment, on far worlds beneath strange suns, Time and the Gods were preparing
for Man the sites of cities yet to be.

Sir Robert Derwent,
M.A., F.R.S.
, Director-General of Interplanetary, was a rather tough-looking character who invariably
reminded people of the late Winston Churchill. The resemblance was somewhat spoiled
by his addiction to pipes, of which, according to rumor, he possessed two varieties—“Normal”
and “Emergency.” The “Emergency” model was always kept fully fuelled so that it could
be brought into action at once when unwelcome visitors arrived. The secret mixture
used for this purpose was believed to consist largely of sulphureted tea leaves.

Sir Robert was such a striking personality that a host of legends had grown up around
him. Many of these had been concocted by his assistants, who would have gone through
Hell for their chief—and frequently did, since his command of language was not that
normally expected of an ex-Astronomer Royal. He was no respecter of persons or proprieties,
and some of his retorts to famous but not excessively intelligent questioners had
become historic. Even Royalty had been glad to disengage itself from his fire on one
celebrated occasion. Yet despite all this façade, he was at heart a kindly and sensitive
person. A good many people suspected this, but very few had ever been able to prove
it to their satisfaction.

At the age of sixty, and three times a grandfather, Sir Robert appeared to be a rather
well-preserved forty-five. Like his historic double, he attributed this to a careful
neglect of all the elementary rules of health and a steady intake of nicotine. A brilliant
reporter had once aptly called him “A scientific Francis Drake—one of the astronomical
explorers of the Second Elizabethan Age.”

There was nothing very Elizabethan about the Director-General as he sat reading the
day’s mail beneath a faint nimbus of tobacco smoke. He dealt with his correspondence
at an astonishing rate, stacking the letters in small piles as he finished them. From
time to time he filed a communication directly into the wastepaper basket, from which
his staff would carefully retrieve it for inclusion in a voluminous folder with the
elegant title “NUTS.” About one per cent of Interplanetary’s incoming mail came under
this category.

He had just finished when the office door opened and Dr. Groves, Interplanetary’s
psychological adviser, came in with a file of reports. Sir Robert looked at him morosely.

“Well, you bird of ill-omen—what’s all this fuss about young Hassell? I thought that
everything was under control.”

Groves looked worried as he laid down the folder.

“So did I, until a few weeks ago. Until then all five of the boys were shaping well
and showing no signs of strain. Then we noticed that Vic was being worried by something,
and I finally had it out with him yesterday.”

“It’s his wife, I suppose?”

“Yes. The whole thing’s very unfortunate. Vic’s just the sort of father who gives
trouble at the best of times, and Maude Hassell doesn’t know that he’ll probably be
on his way to the Moon when the boy arrives.”

The D.-G. raised his eyebrows.

“You know it’s a boy?”

“The Weismann-Mathers treatment is ninety-five per cent certain. Vic wanted a son—just
in case he didn’t get back.”

“I see. How do you think Mrs. Hassell will react when she knows? Of course, it still
isn’t certain that Vic
is
going to be in the crew.”

“I think she’ll be all right. But Vic’s the one who’s worrying. How did you feel when
your
first kid arrived?”

Sir Robert grinned.

“That’s digging into the past. As it happens, I was away myself—on an eclipse expedition.
I very nearly smashed a coronograph, so I understand Vic’s point of view. But it’s
a damned nuisance; you’ll just have to reason with him. Tell him to have it out with
his wife, but ask her not to say anything. Are there any other complications likely
to arise?”

“Not that I can foresee. But you never can tell.”

“No, you can’t, can you?”

The Director-General’s eyes strayed to the little motto in its frame at the back of
his desk. Dr. Groves could not see them from where he sat, but he knew the lines by
heart and they had often intrigued him:

One day, he’d have to ask where that came from.

Two hundred and seventy miles above the Earth, “Beta” was making her third circuit
of the globe. Skirting the atmosphere like a tiny satellite, she was completing one
revolution every ninety minutes. Unless the pilot turned on her motors again, she
would remain here forever, on the frontiers of space
.

Yet, “Beta” was a creature of the upper atmosphere rather than the deeps of space.
Like those fish which sometimes clamber on to the land, she was venturing outside
her true element, and her great wings were now useless sheets of metal burning beneath
the savage sun. Not until she returned to the air far beneath would they be of any
service again
.

Fixed upon “Beta’s” back was a streamlined torpedo that might, at first glance, have
been taken for another rocket. But there were no observation ports, no motor nozzles,
no signs of landing gear. The sleek metal shape was almost featureless, like a giant
bomb awaiting the moment of release. It was the first of the fuel containers for “Alpha,”
holding tons of liquid methane which would be pumped into the spaceship’s tanks when
it was ready to make its voyage
.

“Beta” seemed to be hanging motionless against the ebon sky, while the Earth itself
turned beneath her. The technicians aboard the ship, checking their instruments and
relaying their findings to the control stations on the planet below, were in no particular
hurry. It made little difference to them whether they circled the Earth once or a
dozen times. They would stay in their orbit until they were satisfied with their tests—unless,
as the chief engineer had remarked, they were forced down earlier by a shortage of
cigarettes
.

Presently, minute puffs of gas spurted along the line of contact between “Beta” and
the fuel tank upon her back. The explosive bolts connecting them had been sheared:
very slowly, at the rate of a few feet a minute, the great tank began to drift away
from the ship
.

In the hull of “Beta” an airlock door opened and two men floated out in their unwieldy
spacesuits. With short bursts of gas from tiny cylinders, they directed themselves
toward the drifting fuel tank and began to inspect it carefully. One of them opened
a little hatch and started to take instrument readings, while the other began a survey
of the hull with a portable leak detector
.

Nothing else happened for nearly an hour, apart from occasional spurts of vapor from
“Beta’s” auxiliary steering jets. The pilot was turning her so that she pointed against
her orbital motion, and was obviously taking his time over the maneuver. A distance
of nearly a hundred feet now lay between “Beta” and the fuel tank she had carried
up from Earth. It was hard to realize that during their slow separation the two bodies
had almost circled the Earth
.

The space-suited engineers had finished their task. Slowly they jetted back to the
waiting ship and the airlock door closed again behind them. There was another long
pause as the pilot waited for the exact moment to begin braking
.

Quite suddenly, a stream of unbearable incandescence jetted from “Beta’s” stern. The
white-hot gases seemed to form a solid bar of light. To the men in the ship, normal
weight would have returned again as the motors started to thrust. Every five seconds,
“Beta” was losing a hundred miles an hour of her speed. She was breaking her orbit,
and would soon be falling back to Earth
.

The intolerable flame of the atomic rocket flickered and died. Once more the little
controlling jets spurted vapor: the pilot was in a hurry now as he swung the ship
round on her axis again. Out in space, one orientation was as good as another—but
in a few minutes the ship would be entering atmosphere and must be pointing in the
direction of her motion
.

It would always be a tense moment, waiting for that first contact. To the men in the
ship, it came in the form of a gentle but irresistible tugging of their seatstraps.
Slowly it increased, minute by minute, until presently there came the faintest whisper
of sound through the insulation of the walls. They were trading altitude for speed—speed
which they could only lose against air-resistance. If the rate of exchange was too
great, the stubby wings would snap, the hull would turn to molten metal, and the ship
would crash in meteoric ruin down through a hundred miles of sky
.

The wings were biting again into the thin air streaming past them at eighteen thousand
miles an hour. Although the control surfaces were still useless, the ship would soon
be responding sluggishly to their commands. Even without the use of his engines, the
pilot could choose a landing spot almost anywhere on Earth. He was flying a hypersonic
glider whose speed had given it world-wide range
.