Skyprobe (12 page)

Mary Schuster, who had got up late after a mostly sleepless night, picked up the newspapers that had been thrown into the porch and went inside with them, reading as she went, her face dead white and her eyes deeply circled. In spite of Klaber’s telephone call warning the families about the fault, in spite of the television news flashes, it was still a renewed shock to see it in black and white.

The children were waiting for her. She had had to tell them; they would only have heard about it at school and that would have been unthinkable. Jane, the eldest, was the spokeswoman now for the three of them. She asked, as Mary came into the room where they were having their breakfast, “Is there anything about pop, mummy?”

Mary said quietly, “Yes, of course, Jane. Everybody’s going to help get him down . . . that’s what it says.”

“Oh.” Jane scooped up a spoonful of creamy cereal. She looked as drawn now as her mother. On her instructions the boys were not bothering their mother but their faces were filled with the unasked questions. “Will he be all right, mummy?” she couldn’t help asking. “They will get him down, won’t they?”

“Yes, darling, of course they will,” Mary answered firmly. “You’re just not to worry about daddy, any of the three of you. It’s . . . nothing really bad. Just a technical fault he and Major Morris will put right just as soon as they can. They know all about it.”

With a child’s directness Jane asked, “Why haven’t they put it right already, then?”

“I don’t know, Janey.” There was a crack in the façade now; Mary’s voice shook and tears pricked at her eyes, threatening to spill over in front of the children. “Let’s just trust daddy, shall we . . . he knows best. He wouldn’t want us to be worrying, Janey. Hurry and eat your breakfast, dear. You’re going to be terribly late for school as it is.”

Jane didn’t comment; she went back to her cereal and ate without appetite. Mary couldn’t face food at all. Instead she read the papers, hungry for news, for reassurance. There wasn’t a great deal of that. The banner headlines leaped at her: FAULT DEVELOPS IN SKYPROBE IV. . . . CAPSULE UNABLE TO DITCH. And in smaller print,
Spacemen unworried says NASA Chief.
Then, lower down, the story itself; the failure of the retro-rockets on both systems each time they had tried to fire them and Gregory Schuster’s complete inability to find a fault anywhere. After the facts, which were so bare and stark and simple, the speculators moved in—and they didn’t all follow the optimism of the NASA handout. If the men in space, the speculators suggested, couldn’t locate the fault, how could they hope to put it right? There was no real way of helping them from the ground either, they said bluntly—and Mary knew enough to realize the truth of this. Plenty of advice had been passed up to them but evidently it hadn’t helped. Nor could the manned space stations in their fixed permanent orbits help; they had no means of making physical contact with a vehicle like Skyprobe IV, in her exploratory orbit so far out in space, so far beyond their own positions. It was now known that at Kennedy work was going on around the clock, had been for the last two or three days, to prepare a launch pad for blasting off another spacecraft to go into docking procedure. But even if they could get it up in the time available, which was highly doubtful according to the experts, it couldn’t really be much help—unless the idea was to take the men off and jettison the capsule itself. But it was a curious thing, the speculation-mongers further suggested, that the men at Kennedy had thought it necessary to prepare the second launch at all before the fault had occurred. Had the fault been expected, they asked now—or had it first happened some days earlier? Had the news been suppressed?

Soon after breakfast Klaber arrived at the Schuster home and was given a cup of coffee by the coloured help while he waited for Mary to return from the school round. She was grateful for his visit and he was as reassuring as he felt he could be, but when he left he knew he had failed to convince Mary Schuster that her man was in anything but the gravest danger of a complete non-return to earth. He left her dry-eyed but tense with anxiety and wondering how she was to go on explaining things to the children as time, ran out. She knew very well that the newspapers would' never leave this thing alone and every time she picked one up she would be bombarded with palliatives from the official NASA spokesmen and pessimistic forecasts from the opinion columns.

Klaber found things much the same with Linda Morris when he drove over, and the best he was able to do, by an exchange of telephone calls, was to arrange for the two wives to live out the spell of waiting in each other’s company, both together in the Schuster home. This done, he drove flat out back for Kennedy.

* * *

Irritably Schuster said, “What the heck!” The radio had started crackling out Morse—from Washington of all places; Schuster had recognized the orginator’s code group. He listened a moment before giving the acknowledgement of his call-sign. “Coded groups . . . why in hell do they start sending messages all wrapped up at this stage of the flight? And what’s the Pentagon on about, for heaven’s sake? Let’s have the decode tables, Wayne.”

Up to this time both Schuster and Morris had still been busy trying to track down the fault on the retro-systems. Danvers-Marshall had made a pretence of helping. The checks and doublechecks had been endless, going on ever since the failure. All had seemed to be in perfect order on both systems; that indeed was the unnerving part of this business.
There simply was no apparent fault.
And they were quite unable to tie in the failure with the stress fault said to have been found by the ground computers. On the face of it there just was no reason in the world why the rockets shouldn’t fire next time Schuster pressed the button, but now, as the total outside dark of the space-night through which they were currently passing emphasized the utter alone-ness of their situation, Wayne Morris at any rate was convinced that they were doomed to remain orbiting the globe until their oxygen was exhausted and they died up there in space.

In an absent tone as Morris passed across the US decode tables Schuster said, “Thanks. . . .” The decoding took a little time. When Schuster had written down the first few words of the plain-language version he stiffened, rigid with shock and an utter disbelief that he could possibly be reading correctly . . . something must have gone haywire with the transcription. He went on to finish the decoding, then without a word he passed the sheet of paper to Morris, whose lips shaped a whistle that never came. The two men sat motionless, side by side, as the capsule headed on its high track around the world, passing once again out of the brief space-night into the brilliance of the day. Behind them Danvers-Marshall’s heart was pumping fast; neither of the astronauts had been able to see the tight, grey look that had come into the scientist’s face when he had heard about the message from Washington. He had assessed accurately and without much difficulty what that message contained. Now he slid a finger into a loop of material in his spacesuit, and ripped away some stitches in the lining. He brought out a small-calibre automatic and pointed it at Schuster’s back. Before Schuster could begin to collect his thoughts and react decisively, Danvers-Marshall said, “Greg, believe me, I’m terribly sorry, but this is where I take over.”

Schuster, feeling the blood drain from his face, but conscious now of no particular surprise, looked over his shoulder and saw the gun. Bleakly he said, “Is that so, Professor.”

“I’m afraid it is. . . ."

“You know what it says in the message?”

“I have a pretty good idea, Greg.”

“It’s right—what it says?”

“Yes . . . it’s right, if it says—”

“It says you’re a goddam traitor . . . a Red.” Danvers-Marshall didn’t react to that directly. He said, “I can’t explain now, Greg. It’s . . . because of my wife. They put pressure on me, and then later they were able to threaten me with—revealing certain things. I’m sorry, but from now on out you must do just as I say. Carry on flying, Greg. And remember, there’s nothing whatever they can do now, from the ground.”

“You’ll have to keep awake a godalmighty long time... you Red bastard. We have five days to go. The orders say we stay up after all . . . right through till the last possible minute.”

“Greg, that’s not going to be any problem,” Danvers-Marshall said quietly. He patted at a section of space-suit. “I have tablets that take care of that. I’ll have no difficulty at all keeping awake and on the ball right through to splashdown.”

Schuster said between his teeth, “Where do we splash down, then? The message said the Corns may interfere with our control system by radio, divert us on re-entry. If that’s true, where do they divert us to?”

“Greg, I can’t tell you that because I don’t know, and I wouldn’t say if I did, would I? That’s just what the people down below want to know, isn’t it? Don’t ask me any more questions, Greg, and don’t give any trouble, either you or Wayne. If I have to use this gun, you know what happens. The chances are we’d all die. But I want you to understand one thing very clearly, Greg, and that is, I’m quite ready myself to face that. No-one’s taking me back to America now.” He added, “You needn’t worry any more about the retro-rockets. They’ll fire next time, all right.”

“So Washington’s right you fixed that too?” Schuster asked. He felt profound relief on one point—at least the trouble hadn’t been due to any defect in the spacecraft. “All that worry ... all the checking ... all that was unnecessary?”

Danvers-Marshall said, “Yes, Greg. You see, I had orders not to allow the capsule to ditch too far ahead of schedule if there were any leaks—just to be sure they were all ready for us at the base . . . where we’re going to splash down.” He shifted his position, making himself more comfortable for keeping the gun covering the two men. “From now on out, Greg, there’s to be no more talk with mission control. I’m going to play this very safe, and I’m not taking any chances at all . . . even though, as I said, there’s nothing anyone can do now to stop the plan going through.”

“Don’t speak too soon,” Schuster said grimly.

It was just a few minutes after that when mission control came up again, this time vocally and in plain language. It was Klaber, talking from Kennedy. Schuster was forced to sit in helpless silence under Danvers-Marshall’s gun as the NASA chief tried vainly to raise an acknowledgement. Klaber kept repeating, “Can’t you hear me, Greg? What’s gone wrong with your communication?” until he said in a high, cracked voice that showed his mounting anxiety, “All right, Greg, maybe you just can’t answer, so I’ll just pass the message and hope you receive me.” There was a pause. “We’re doing our best to get another spacecraft up to you, a vehicle that can accommodate five men . . . Skyprobe V. She’s being prepared for orbit and docking on to you for transfer of personnel. I’ll repeat that. . . .”

When Schuster had listened to the repetition Danvers-Marshall said, “I don’t believe they can ever do it in the time, Greg, it’ll be a miracle, but if they do it’s not going to help. You’re never going to open up the hatch.”

* * *

Next day the world’s Press had moved closer to the truth. Mary Schuster and Linda Morris read it together. Klaber read it and his apprehension mounted. Harry Lutz looked utterly horrified, but not surprised. Grant, the man from CIA, read it and swore viciously and grabbed for a couple of telephones simultaneously; for amongst other things true and untrue, the news had leaked that Professor Danvers-Marshall was aboard the spacecraft.

Right across the world Shaw, too, read some of the papers.

Shaw did his reading when the BOAC jetliner touched down at Bangkok on the last-but-one leg of the Hong Kong flight. The headlines were all about Danvers-Marshall and there was almost feverish speculation as to what his presence aboard Skyprobe IV meant and why the news had been kept so quiet. Typical of the secondary headlines was EARLY SPLASHDOWN CANCELLED—SKYPROBE TO ORBIT ON. That was innocuous enough, but another fresh slant came in the smaller print which said,
American and British Security Concerned
. In the airmail edition of one London newspaper the scientific correspondent wrote:
The American CIA are believed to be investigating the possibility of some outside interference with the capsule. It is probably not entirely impossible for a radio signal from earth to be used in such a way that it could cut out the control system of a spacecraft in orbit. If this is on the cards, it would naturally point to some act of a hostile Power, for what purpose one can only guess. It could be merely to prove that such a signal is effective, in which case one would assume the capsule is being used as an experimental guinea-pig. This, however, seems a totally unacceptable theory when one considers the virtual certainty of retaliation against any Power using another nation’s space vehicle in such a fashion. In the light of the recent leak, one is bound to wonder whether the presence of British-born Professor Danvers-Marshall aboard Skyprobe has attracted the interest of some Power who wishes to gain access to Western space data. The news columns of the same paper reported: It is understood that certain movements of United States sea, land and air forces are taking place in the North Pacific, but official spokesmen in Washington deny strongly that there is any connection between these movements and the possibility of the failure aboard Skyprobe IV being due to circumstances outside the control of the crew.
Other newspapers carried similar reports and speculation; every one Shaw read carried a leader on the spacemen’s predicament. The thoughts of all the world were centered on them now. . . .

Shaw looked up from the
New York Times
soon after take-off from Bangkok to see the hostess hovering over him. She was a tall brunette with blue eyes and an inviting smile. She asked, “Would you like breakfast, sir?”

“Sounds a good idea.” He smiled back at her and took the menu. “Grapefruit, bacon and eggs, and coffee.”

“Thank you, sir.” The girl hesitated by his seat, seeming reluctant to leave him, and looking down at his newspaper. “Isn’t it dreadful. . . about those men?”