The Right Stuff (34 page)

"Okay," he said into his microphone, "switching to manual pitch."

And the capsule nosed up and then down.

"Pitch is okay," he said. "Switching to manual yaw."

All this he seemed to have said a hundred, a thousand times before, in the procedures trainer. And the capsule yawed from side to side, and he had
felt
it a thousand times before—on the ALFA trainer. Only the sound was different. Every time he turned the manual control handles, hydrogen-peroxide jets discharged outside the capsule. He knew it was happening, because the capsule would pitch, roll, yaw, just as it was supposed to, but he couldn't hear the jets. On the ALFA trainer he had always been able to hear the jets. The real thing was not nearly so realistic as that. The capsule pitched and yawed just like the ALFA…
no difference
… but he couldn't hear the jets at all because of the humming, moaning, and whining of the inverters and gyros and fans… the busy little kitchen.

Whuh?—before he knew it the ride was practically over. It was time to prepare himself for re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. He was descending the arc… just like a mortar shell on the way down… The ground was starting the countdown for the firing of the retro-rockets that would slow the capsule down for re-entry through the atmosphere. There was no need for them on this flight, because the capsule was going to come back down in any event like a cannonball, but they would be essential in orbital flights, and this flight was supposed to test the system. The retro-rockets fired automatically. He didn't have to move a finger. There was another muffled rocket firing, not a loud noise at all… The little kitchen kept humming and whining away… He was riding backward, still facing Florida. The rocket firing drove him backward into his seat with a force of about five g's. It was much more sudden than the transition from six g's to zero-g on the way up.
Man, that wasn't like the centrifuge
. The centrifuge jerked you around at this point. In the next instant he was weightless again, as he knew he would be. The retrofire was like pumping the brakes once. But it had slowed down the capsule, and soon the g-forces would start building up. They would build up gradually, however. He knew the interval exactly… At this point an explosive device was supposed to go off and jettison the rigs that held the retro-rockets. He heard the little dull explosions outside the capsule and then he saw one of the straps of the rig go by his window. He could feel the twist from the torque of the retro-rocket nozzles, but it corrected itself automatically. Now he was supposed to practice controlling the attitude of the capsule while it was slowing down. So he swung it this way and that way… like a Ferris-wheel seat… Oh, shit! The dial showed the g-forces were building up slightly… One-half g… This meant he had about forty-five seconds to check out the
stars
… He was supposed to look at the stars and the horizon and see if he could get a fix on particular constellations. Eventually this would have some bearing on space navigation. But mainly there would be millions down there wanting to know that the first American in space had been up there in the neighborhood of the stars… Oh, they would all want to know how the stars looked from outside the earth's atmosphere. They weren't supposed to twinkle when you looked at them from up here. They would just be little shining balls in the blackness of space… Except that it wasn't black, it was blue… The
stars
, man!… He kept staring out the windows trying to make out the stars… He couldn't see a damned thing, not one goddamned star. If the capsule were pitched up this way or rolled over that way, he would get zaps of sunlight in his face. If he pitched it or rolled it this way—he still couldn't see a damned thing. The light in the interior of the capsule was too bright. All he could make out was the navy-blue sky. He couldn't even see the horizon. There were supposed to be spectacular color bands at the horizon when viewed from above the atmosphere. But he couldn't see them out the portholes. He could see them through the periscope—but the periscope was a black-and-white movie.

What inna namea—the g-forces were building up too fast! This wasn't the way it happened on the centrifuge! The g-forces were coming up so fast, driving him back so deep into his seat, he knew he couldn't complete the maneuvers he was supposed to make on the fly-by-wire system. Whether he did them or not on this flight would make no difference as far as his own safety was concerned. This was practice for orbital flights. In orbital flights the one thing the astronaut would be able to
do
would be to hold the capsule at the proper attitude, the proper angles, if the automatic system malfunctioned. Nevertheless—he was behind on the checklist!
Falling behind
put you on the threshold of
fucking up
… Soon he wouldn't be able to control the capsule's attitude with the manual controls or the fly-by-wire. The g-forces would be too severe for him to use his arms. So he switched back to automatic, forgetting to shut off one of the manual buttons when he did so… He was behind on the checklist! The simulation had crossed him up! He was supposed to have more time than this! He was in no danger whatsoever—but how could real life vary this much from the simulation! Looking for those motherless
stars
and
color bands
had thrown him off!—eaten up time! But even so, the buildup of the g-forces came smoothly. The capsule began to swing from side to side as it came through the denser and denser layers of atmosphere, but it was not nearly as rough a ride as the same interval in the centrifuge. He was lying on his back again. If he looked up, he looked straight toward the sky. He tensed his calves and the muscles of his abdomen to counteract the g-forces… just as he had a thousand times on the centrifuge… He forced his breath out in grunts as the g's pressed down on his chest… He grunted out the g readings as they rose on the dial… "Uhhsix… uh seven… uhh eight… uhh nine…" Then he kept repeating, kept grunting out the word "Ohhkay… Ohhkay… Ohh-kay… Ohhkay… Ohhkay… Ohhkay… Ohhkay"… to let the ground know that the g-forces were on top of him but that he was all right. He could see nothing except indigo out the portholes. He didn't even bother looking. He kept staring at the instrument panel at the big lights that would show the parachutes were coming out. They would come out automatically. The first green light came on. The drogue chute, the parachute that pulled the main chute out, had deployed. Now Shepard could see it through the periscope. He could see the needle pass 20,000 on his altimeter.
Why doesn't it—
At 10,000 feet the main chute came out, as he could see through the periscope. Then it filled and the jolt slammed him back into his seat once more.
A kick in the butt! For reassurance
! He knew he had it made. The capsule swayed from side to side under the parachute, but there was nothing to it. He was lying on his back. The landing bag was right underneath his back. He started undoing his knee straps. Get out of all these goddamned straps, hoses, and wires. That was the main thing. He took his face seal hose and oxygen exhaust hoses off his helmet. Through the periscope he could see he was coming closer and closer to the water. It was sunny out there. He was near Bermuda. The ships were all nearby. He could hear them clearly on the radio. Then the blunt end of the capsule hit the water. It was right under his back. The impact drove him back into his seat yet again.
It was just like they said it would be
! It was about the same jolt you get when you land on the deck of an aircraft carrier. No more than that. The capsule keeled over to the right. The right-hand window was underwater. But he could look out the other one and see his yellow dye marker on the surface of the water. It was released automatically. It made a big yellow stain, so that the rescue helicopters could spot the capsule better. Shepard was busy trying to get himself out of the rest of the rig.
Get free
! He broke the neck ring seal off his helmet so that he could get the helmet off. He kept looking at the window that was underwater. The capsule was supposed to right itself. The goddamned window stayed underwater. Gurgling! He kept looking all around it for signs of water seeping in. He couldn't see any but he could hear it. It had finally started seeping in on the ape's flight. The goddamned capsule was not made for the water. What a way to blow the whole thing this would be. Bobbing around in the goddamned water in a bucket. The capsule slowly came up vertical. The helicopter was already overhead radioing for instructions. He had it made as long as he didn't fuck it up getting out of the capsule. He opened the door at the top of the capsule, the neck, with a cable device and pulled himself up. A tremendous burst of sunlight hit him, sunlight on the open sea. It was barely quarter of ten in the morning. He was forty miles from Bermuda on a sunny day out in the Atlantic. The noise of the helicopter overhead obliterated every other sound. The crewmen were lowering a rescue sling, which looked like an old-fashioned horse collar, the kind they used to put on dray horses. It was a big helicopter, an industrial type. It had already hooked onto the capsule and pulled it up out of the water. There were some Marine Corps crewmen inside the helicopter. The noise was overwhelming. They kept staring at him and smiling. It was that glistening look.

It took only seven minutes to reach the helicopter's mother ship, the aircraft carrier
Lake Champlain
. The capsule swayed back and forth below the helicopter. It was very sunny. It was a perfect day in May out near Bermuda. The helicopter began descending to the flight deck of the carrier. Shepard looked down and he could see hundreds of faces. They were all looking up toward the helicopter. The entire crew of the ship seemed to be on the deck. Their faces were all turned up toward him in the sunlight. Hundreds of faces turned up in the sun. They covered the whole aft section of the deck. They were massed in between the moored airplanes. They were all looking up toward the helicopter and moving, surging toward the spot where the helicopter would come down. He could make out a whole force of masters-at-arms down there trying to hold them back behind the ropes. As the helicopter came close to the deck, he could see the faces more clearly, and they had that look. Hundreds of faces already had that glistening look.

Glenn and the others now watched from the sidelines as Al Shepard was hoisted out of their midst and installed as a national hero on the order of a Lindbergh. That was the way it looked. As soon as his technical debriefings had been completed, Shepard was flown straight from Grand Bahama Island to Washington. The next day the six also-rans joined him there. They stood by as President Kennedy gave Al the Distinguished Service Medal in a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House. Then they followed in his wake as Al sat up on the back of an open limousine waving to the crowds along Constitution Avenue. Tens of thousands of people had turned out to watch the motorcade, even though it had been arranged with barely twenty-four hours' notice. They were screaming to Al, reaching out, crying, awash with awe and gratitude. It took the motorcade half an hour to travel the one mile from the White House to the Capitol. Al sometimes seemed to have transistors in his solar plexus. But not now; now he seemed truly moved. They adored him. He was on… the Pope's balcony… Thirty minutes of it… The next day New York City gave Al a ticker-tape parade up Broadway. There was Al on the back ledge of the limousine, with all that paper snow and confetti coming down, just the way you used to see it in the Movietone News in the theaters. Al's hometown, Deny, New Hampshire, which was not much more than a village, gave Al a parade, and it drew the biggest crowd the state had ever seen. Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force, and National Guard troops from all over New England marched down Main Street, and acrobatic teams of jet fighters flew overhead. The politicians thought New Hampshire was entering Metro Heaven and came close to renaming Derry "Spacetown U.S.A." before they got hold of themselves. In the town of Deerfield, Illinois, a new school was named for Al, overnight, just like that. Then Al started getting tons of greeting cards in the mail, cards saying "Congratulations to Alan Shepard, Our First Man in Space!" That was already printed on the cards, along with NASA's address. All the buyers had to do was sign them and mail them. The card companies were cranking these things out. Al was that much of a hero.

Next to Gagarin's orbital flight, Shepard's little mortar lob to Bermuda, with its mere five minutes of weightlessness, was no great accomplishment. But that didn't matter. The flight had unfolded like a drama, the first drama of
single combat
in American history. Shepard had been the tiny underdog, sitting on top of an American rocket—
and our rockets always blow up
—challenging the omnipotent Soviet Integral. The fact that the entire thing had been televised, starting a good two hours before the lift-off, had generated the most feverish suspense. And then he had gone through with it. He let them light the fuse.
He hadn't resigned
. He hadn't even panicked. He handled himself perfectly. He was as great a daredevil as Lindbergh, and he was purer: he did it all for his country. Here was a man… with the right stuff. No one spoke the phrase—but every man could feel the rays from that righteous aura and that primal force, the power of physical courage and manly honor.

Even Shorty Powers became famous. "The voice of Mercury Control," he was called; that, and "the eighth astronaut." Powers was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, a onetime bomber pilot, and all during Shepard's flight he had come on the air from the flight control center at the Cape saying, "This is Mercury Control…" and reporting the astronaut's progress with a baritone coolness of the combat pilot's righteous sort, and people loved it. After the capsule splashed down, Powers had quoted, or seemed to have quoted, Shepard as saying everything was "A-Okay." In fact, this was a Shorty Powers paraphrase borrowed from NASA engineers who used to say it during radio transmission tests because the sharper sound of
A
cut through the static better than
O
. Nevertheless, "A-Okay" became shorthand for Shepard's triumph over the odds and for astronaut coolness under stress, and Shorty Powers was looked up to as the medium who communicated across the gulf between ordinary people and star voyagers with the right stuff.