The Right Stuff (36 page)

Both Gus and Joe had knocked back a few, it being after dark, after all, and Joe starts in with a little Yeager-style country-boy banter about how Gus and his pals had better hurry up or him and his boys would pass them on the way up. Oh, yeah, says Gus, how's that? Well, says Joe Walker, we've got a 57,000-pound rocket engine now, and the Redstone that shoots your little peapod up there only puts out 78,000, so we're almost up with you—and we
fly
the damn thing. We actually
fly
it and we
land
it. Joe Walker meant to keep it light and just rag Grissom a little bit, but he couldn't hold back a note in his voice concerning where things actually stood in the true scheme of things, on the
real
pyramid of flying competition. Everybody is looking at Grissom, the astronaut, to see what he's going to say. Grissom, who is a tough little nut when he wants to be, stares at Walker… and then he breaks into a grin and starts a kind of gruff-gus chuckle. Oh, I'll be looking over my shoulder the whole time, Joe, and if you come by, I swear I'll wave.

And so much for Joe Walker and the True Brothers! It was all right there in that scene, the
new
simple truth. Grissom didn't even
feel
angry. There was nothing that Joe Walker could say or do—and nothing that even Chuck Yeager himself could say or do—that would change the new order. The astronaut was now at the apex of the pyramid. The rocket pilots were already… the old guys, the eternal remember-whens… Oh, it didn't even have to be
said
! It was in the air, and everyone knew it. Hell, when they started flying jets and rocket planes at Muroc, somewhere there must have been the old guys, the bitter old bastards, the remember-whens, who could just fly the hell out of a propeller plane and were still insisting that that was what it was all about. Flying wasn't a competition like baseball or football. No, in flying any major advance in technology could change the rules. The Mercury rocket-capsule system—the word "system" was now on everybody's lips—was the new cutting edge. No, Gus had no need to get excited any more over Joe Walker or anybody else at Edwards.

Gus seemed like a pretty relaxed man all the way around. He would get a little irritated at the engineering sessions he sat in on during the last couple of weeks before the flight and would give them a few gus-gruff growls if they seemed to want to tinker with this and that at the last minute, but that seemed to be sheer eagerness to get on with the flight. There was even a bit of the old boondock Edwards broomstick-and-baling wire spirit about the whole thing. Just two nights before the flight it dawned on one of the doctors that they had never made provisions for a urine receptacle for Gus, to avoid the sort of thing Shepard had experienced. That was a hell of a note. They figured they could make do with an ordinary rubber condom for the receptacle. But what would hold it in place and keep it from coming off? Dee O'Hara, the nurse, helped out. She drove into Cocoa Beach and bought a panty girdle, and they rigged that up with the condom. The goddamned girdle gave you a hell of a tight grip on the groin, but Gus figured he could get by with it. All in all, he seemed pretty loose, a test pilot of the old school. He even had a foretaste of the mental atmosphere of the real thing, just as Shepard had. On July 19 he was inserted into the capsule, and the hatch was sealed, when the flight was canceled because of bad weather. The flight finally took place on July 21. Judging by his pulse rate and respiration, which was transmitted via his body sensors, Gus was more nervous than Shepard during the countdown. These rates, taken by themselves, didn't mean a great deal, however, and no one would have thought twice about it except for what happened at the end of the flight. The flight itself was very nearly a duplicate of Shepard's, except that Grissom's capsule had a window, not just a periscope, giving him a much better view of the world, and he had a more sophisticated hand controller. His pulse stayed up around 150 throughout the five minutes he was weightless—Shepard's pulse had never reached 140, not even during lift-off—and went up to 171 during the firing of the retro-rockets before the re-entry through the earth's atmosphere. The informal consensus among the program's doctors was that if an astronaut's pulse rate went above 180, the mission should be aborted. The capsule splashed down almost precisely on target, just as Shepard's had, within three miles of the recovery ship, the carrier
Randolph
. The capsule hit the water, then keeled over on one side, just as Shepard's had, and took its own sweet time righting itself. Grissom thought he heard a gurgling noise inside the capsule—as had Shepard—and began looking for water seeping in, but didn't see any. The recovery helicopter, designated Hunt Club 1, was over the capsule within less than two minutes. Grissom was still in the seat, resting on his back, as he had been at the outset of the flight, and the capsule was bobbing around in the water.

Over his microphone Grissom said, "Okay, give me how much longer it'll be before you get here."

The helicopter pilot, a Navy lieutenant named James Lewis, said, "This is Hunt Club 1. We are in orbit now at this time, around the capsule."

Grissom said, "Roger, give me about another five minutes here, to mark these switch positions here, before I give you a call to come in and hook on. Are you ready to come in and hook on any time?"

Lewis said, "Hunt Club 1, roger, we are ready any time you are."

There was a chart on which the astronaut was supposed to record the switch positions (on or off) with a grease pencil.

Five and a half minutes later Grissom radioed Lewis in the helicopter again:

"Okay, Hunt Club, this is Liberty Bell. Are you ready for the pickup?"

Lewis said, "This is Hunt Club 1, this is affirmative."

Grissom said, "Okay, latch on, then give me a call and I'll power down and blow the hatch, okay?"

"This is Hunt Club 1, roger, will give you a call when we're ready for you to blow."

Grissom said, "Roger, I've unplugged my suit so I'm kinda warm now… so…"

Lewis said, "One, roger."

"One, roger."

"Now if you tell me to, ah, you're ready for me to blow, I'll have to take my helmet off, power down, and then blow the hatch."

"One, roger, and when you blow the hatch, the collar will already be down there waiting for you, and we're turning base at this time."

"Ah, roger."

As the helicopter pilot, Lewis, looked down on the capsule, it shaped up as a routine retrieval, such as he and his co-pilot, Lieutenant John Reinhard, had practiced many times. Reinhard had a pole with a hook on it, like a shepherd's crook, that he was going to slip through a loop at the neck of the capsule. The crook was attached to a cable. The helicopter could hoist up to 4,000 pounds in this fashion; the capsule weighed about 2,400 pounds. Lewis had swung out and was making a low pass toward the capsule when suddenly he saw the capsule's side hatch go flying off into the water. But Grissom wasn't supposed to blow the hatch until he told him he had hooked on! And Grissom—there was Grissom scrambling out of the hatch and plopping into the water without even looking up at him. Grissom was swimming like mad. Water was pouring into the capsule through the hatch and the damned thing was sinking! Lewis wasn't worried about Grissom, because he had practiced water egress with the astronauts many times and he knew their pressure suits were more buoyant than any life preserver. They even seemed to enjoy playing around in the water in the suits. So he gunned the helicopter down to the level of the water to try to snare the capsule. By now only the neck of the thing is visible above the water. Reinhard goes to work with the shepherd's crook, leaning out of the helicopter, desperately trying to hook on. He finally hooks on, as the capsule disappears under the water and starts sinking like a brick. Lewis is now down so low all three wheels of the helicopter are in the water. The helicopter is like a fat man squatting over a tree stump, trying to pull it out of the ground. Full of water, as it is, the capsule weighs 5,000 pounds, 1,000 over the helicopter's capacity. Lewis already has a red-light warning of impending engine failure—so he signals for a second helicopter, which is already nearby, to pick up Grissom. He finally pulls the capsule up out of the water, but he can't make the helicopter move forward toward the carrier. He's just hanging there in the air like a hummingbird. Red lights are lighting up all over the panel. He's about to lose the ship as well as the capsule. So he cuts the capsule loose. It drops and disappears forever. The water is three miles deep at that point.

They turn away finally. Grissom is still in the water. He's waving. He seems to be saying, "I'm okay." The second helicopter is moving in to lower the horse collar.

In fact, Gus's waves were saying, "I'm drowning!—you bastards—I'm drowning!"

As soon as Gus scrambled out of the hatch, he had begun swimming for his life. The goddamned capsule's going under! His suit caught momentarily on some sort of strap outside the capsule, probably leading to the dye canister. It was like a parachute!—it would pull him under!—He'd drown! The drowning man… No question about it… By this point he was neither an astronaut nor a pilot. He was the drowning man. Get away from the death capsule!—that was the idea. Then he calmed down a little. He was swimming around in the ocean under the roar of the helicopter blades. He wasn't sinking, after all. The pressure suit kept him bobbing in the water, as high as his armpits. He looked up. The horse collar was hanging out of the helicopter. The horse collar that gets him out of this! But they were pulling away from him!—they were going to the capsule! He could see the man named Reinhard leaning out of the helicopter trying to snag the loop of the capsule. Only the neck of the capsule was out of the water. He started swimming back to the capsule. It was hard swimming in the pressure suit, but it kept him up. He bobbed right up to his armpits when he stopped swimming. Little swells kept breaking over his head and he swallowed some water. He felt out of control. He was floundering around in the middle of the ocean. He looked up again and there was another helicopter. He kept waving and waving, but nobody seemed to pay any attention. And now he wasn't bobbing up so high any more. The pressure suit was losing its buoyancy. It was getting heavier… starting to drag him down… The suit had a rubber diaphragm that rolled up around his neck like a turtleneck sweater to keep the water from seeping down inside the suit. It didn't fit tight enough… air was escaping… No!—it was the oxygen inlet valve! He had completely forgotten! The valve allowed oxygen into his suit while he was in flight. He had unhooked the tube but forgotten to close the valve. The oxygen was bubbling out down there somewhere… the suit was becoming dead weight, pulling him down… He reached down and closed the valve underwater… But now his head kept going under and he had to fight to get to the surface and then the swells broke over his head and he swallowed more water and he'd look up at the helicopters and wave and they'd just wave back—the bastards!—how could they not know! In the window of one of the helicopters was a man with a camera, merrily taking pictures of him—they were waving and taking snapshots! The stupid bastards! They were going crazy over the goddamned capsule and he was drowning before their very eyes… He kept going under. He'd fight his way back up and swallow some more water and wave. But that drove him back under. The suit—he seemed to be packed in two hundred pounds of wet clay… The
dimes
!—and all that other shit! Christ, the dimes and those goddamned trinkets! Down there in his knee pocket… He'd had the bright idea of carrying a hundred one-dollar bills on the flight as souvenirs, but he didn't have a spare hundred dollars to his name—so he decided on two rolls of fifty dimes each—and he had put in three one-dollar bills for good measure and a whole bunch of little models of the capsule—and now this big junkheap of travel sentiment stuffed in his knee pocket was taking him under…
Dimes!… Silver deadweight
!

Deke!
… Where was Deke!… Surely Deke would be here!… He had done as much for Deke. Somehow Deke would materialize and save him. Deke and Wally and him had been down at Pensacola practicing water egress, and somehow Deke, in his whole pressure suit, with his helmet on, had fallen off his raft and was going under and couldn't do a goddamn thing about it, but he and Wally had been nearby with their swimming flippers on, and they had swum straight to him and held him up until one of the Navy swabbos could reach them with the raft, and it was no sweat, because they had been by his side, and surely…
Deke!… Or somebody! Deke
!

Cox… That face up there!—it's Cox… Deke wasn't here and wasn't going to be here. But Cox!—Cox, whom he hardly knew, was his sole redeemer now. Cox was a Navy man in the second helicopter. Gus knew that face. Cox wasn't a stupid bastard. Cox had picked up Al Shepard! Cox had picked up the goddamned chimpanzee! Cox knew how to get people out of here!…
Cox!
… He could see Cox leaning out of the helicopter lowering the horse collar. There was a hell of a roar everywhere from the two helicopters. But Cox! Cox and his helicopter were just suspended there. They weren't coming any closer, and Gus's head kept going under. The wash from the helicopter propellers was driving him back. The closer his redeemer came in the helicopter, the farther he was driven back.
The sharks
—
they can smell panic
! And he was sheer panic, 160 pounds of it, plus a hundred pounds of death dimes! Lost at last at 2,800 fathoms in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean! But helicopters can drive off sharks with their prop wash! Cox would rout the sharks and save him—but Cox got no closer, even though the horse collar was now touching the water. He was still about ninety feet away, across the billows. Now he could see it, now he couldn't. The swells kept washing over him. But it was the only thing left. He swam for it. He couldn't get his legs to come up. So he fought toward the horse collar with his arms. He had no strength left. Everything pulled him down. He couldn't get enough breath. There was nothing but furious noise… blazing water… The water kept getting in his mouth. He would never make it. But the horse collar! Cox was up there! There was the horse collar. It was in front of him. He grabbed it and hung on. He was supposed to sit in it as if he were sitting on a swing. The hell with that. He flopped through the hole like a dead flounder landing on the fish-market scales. He hung on with his arms. He felt as if he weighed a ton. The suit was full of water. And it had already dawned on him:
I lost the capsule
.