Prelude to Space Read online

  One day the glaciers would return; and that was the least of the dooms that might descend upon the Earth before its course was run. Some of these could only be guessed, but one at least was almost certain in the ages ahead.

  There comes a time in the life of every star when the delicate balance of its atomic furnaces must tilt, one way or the other. In the far future the descendants of Man might catch, from the safety of the outermost planets, a last glimpse of their birthplace as it sank into the fires of the detonating Sun.

  One objection to space flight which these critics brought forward was, on the face of it, more convincing. Since Man, they argued, had caused so much misery upon his own world, could he be trusted to behave on others? Above all, would the miserable story of conquest and enslavement of one race by another be repeated again, endlessly and forever, as human culture spread from one world to the next?

  Against this there could be no fully convincing answer: only a clash of rival faiths—the ancient conflict between pessimism and optimism, between those who believed in Man and those who did not. But the astronomers had made one contribution to the debate by pointing out the falseness of the historical analogy Man, who had been civilized only for a millionth of the life of his planet, was not likely to encounter races on other worlds which would be primitive enough for him to exploit or enslave. Any ships from Earth which set out across space with thoughts of interplanetary empire might find themselves, at the end of their voyage, with no greater hopes of conquest than a fleet of savage war-canoes drawing slowly into New York harbor.

  The announcement that the “Prometheus” might be launched within a few weeks had revived all these speculations and many more. Press and radio talked of little else, and for a while the astronomers made a profitable business of writing guardedly optimistic articles about the Solar System. A Gallup poll carried out in Great Britain during this period showed that 41 per cent of the public thought interplanetary travel was a good thing 26 per cent were against it, and 33per cent had not made up their minds. These figures—particularly the 33 per cent—caused some despondency at Southbank and resulted in many conferences in the Public Relations Department, which was now busier than it had ever been before.

  Interplanetary’s usual trickle of visitors had grown to a mighty Hood bearing upon its bosom some very exotic characters. Matthews had evolved a standard procedure for dealing with most of these. The people who wanted to go on the first trip were offered a ride in the Medical Section s giant centrifuge, which could produce accelerations often gravities. Very few accepted this offer, and those who did, when they had recovered, were then passed to the Dynamics Department, where the mathematicians administered the coup de grace by asking them unanswerable questions

  No one, however, had found an effective means of dealing with the genuine cranks—though they could sometimes be neutralized by a kind of mutual reaction. It was one of Matthews s unfulfilled ambitions to be visited simultaneously by a flat-earther and one of those still more eccentric people who are convinced that the world is on the inside of a hollow sphere. This would, he was sure, result in a highly entertaining debate.

  Very little could be done about the psychic explorers (usually middle-aged spinsters) who were already perfectly well acquainted with the Solar System and all too anxious to impart their knowledge. Matthews had been optimistic enough to hope, now that the crossing of space was so close at hand, that they would not be so eager to have their ideas tested by reality. He was disappointed, and one unfortunate member of his staff was employed almost full time listening to these ladies give highly colored and mutually incompatible accounts of lunar affairs.

  More serious and significant were the letters and comments in the great newspapers, many of which demanded official replies. A minor canon of the Church of England wrote a vigorous and much publicized letter to The London Times, denouncing Interplanetary and all its works. Sir Robert Derwent promptly went into action behind the scenes and, as he put it, “trumped the fellow with an archbishop.” It was rumored that he had a cardinal and a rabbi in reserve if attacks came from other quarters.

  No one was particularly surprised when a retired brigadier, who had apparently spent the last thirty years in suspended animation in the outskirts of Alder shot, wanted to know what steps were being taken to incorporate the Moon into the British Commonwealth. Simultaneously, a long-dormant major-general erupted in Atlanta and asked Congress to make the Moon the Fiftieth State. Similar demands were to be heard in almost every country in the world—with the possible exception of Switzerland and Luxembourg—while the international lawyers realized that a crisis of which they had long been warned was now almost upon them.

  At this moment Sir Robert Derwent issued the famous manifesto which had been prepared many years ago against this very day.

  “Within a few weeks” the message ran, “we hope to launch the first spaceship from the Earth. We do not know whether we shall succeed, but the power to reach the planets is now almost within our grasp. This generation stands upon the brink of the ocean of space, preparing for the greatest adventure in all history.

  “There are some whose minds are so rooted in the past that they believe the political thinking of our ancestors can still be applied when we reach other worlds. They even talk of annexing the Moon in the name of this or that nation, forgetting that the crossing of space has required the united efforts of scientists from every country in the world.

  “There are no nationalities beyond the stratosphere: any worlds we may reach will be the common heritage of all men—unless other forms of life have already claimed them for their own.

  “We, who have striven to place humanity upon the road to the stars, make this solemn declaration, now and for the future:

  “We will take no frontiers into space.”

  1

  “I think it’s hard lines on Alfred,” remarked Dirk, “having to stay behind now that the fun’s beginning.”

  McAndrews gave a noncommittal grunt.

  “We couldn’t both go,” he said. “Headquarters is being decimated as it is. Too many people seem to think this is just a good excuse for a holiday.”

  Dirk forbore from comment, though sorely tempted. In any case, his own presence could not be regarded as strictly necessary. He conjured up a last sympathetic picture of poor Matthews, staring gloomily over the sluggish Thames, and turned his mind to happier things.

  The Kentish coastline was still visible astern, for the liner had not yet gained its full height or speed. There was scarcely any sense of movement, but suddenly Dirk had an indefinable feeling of change. Others must have noticed it also for Leduc, who was sitting opposite, nodded with satisfaction.

  “The ramjets are starting to fire,” he said. “They’ll be cutting the turbines now.”

  “That means,” put in Hassell, “that we’re doing over a thousand.”

  “Knots, miles or kilometers an hour, or rods, poles or perches per microsecond?” asked somebody.

  “For heaven’s sake,” groaned one of the technicians, “don’t start that argument again!”

  “When do we arrive?” asked Dirk, who knew the answer perfectly well but was anxious to create a diversion.

  “We touch down at Karachi in about six hours, get six hours’ sleep, and should be in Australia twenty hours from now. Of course we have to add—or subtract—about half a day for time difference, but someone else can work that out.”

  “Bit of a come-down for you, Vic,” Richards laughed at Hassell. “The last time you went round the world it took you ninety minutes!”

  “One mustn’t exaggerate,” said Hassell. “I was way out, and it took a good hundred. Besides, it was a day and a half before I could get down again!”

  “Speed’s all very well,” said Dirk philosophically, “but it gives one a false impression of the world.

  You get shot from one place to another in a few hours and forget that there’s anything in between.”

  “I quite agree,”
put in Richards unexpectedly. “Travel quickly if you must, but otherwise you can’t beat the good old sailing yacht. When I was a kid I spent most of my spare time cruising around the Great Lakes. Give me five miles an hour—or twenty-five thousand. I’ve no use for stage-coaches or aeroplanes or anything else in between.”

  The conversation then became technical, and degenerated into a wrangle over the relative merits of jets, athodyds and rockets. Someone pointed out that the airscrews could still be seen doing good work in the obscurer corners of China, but he was ruled out of order. After a few minutes of this, Dirk was glad when McAndrews challenged him to a game of chess on a miniature board.

  He lost the first game over Southeastern Europe, and fell asleep before completing the second—probably through the action of some defense mechanism, as McAndrews was much the better player. He woke up over Iran, just in time to land and go to sleep again. It was therefore not surprising that when Dirk reached the Timor Sea, and readjusted his watch for Australian time, he was not quite sure whether he should be awake or not.

  His companions, who had synchronized their sleep more efficiently, were in better shape and began to crowd to the observation ports as they neared the end of their journey. They had been crossing barren desert, with occasional fertile areas, for almost two hours when Leduc, who had been map-reading, suddenly cried out: “There it is—over on the left!”

  Dirk followed his pointing finger. For a moment he saw nothing; then he made out, many miles away, the buildings of a compact little town. To one side of it was an airstrip, and beyond that, an almost invisible black line that stretched across the desert. It seemed to be an unusually straight railroad; then Dirk saw that it led from nowhere to nowhere. It began in the desert and ended in the desert. It was the first five miles of the road that would lead his companions to the Moon.

  A few minutes later the great launching track was beneath them, and with a thrill of recognition Dirk saw the winged bullet of the “Prometheus” glistening on the airfield beside it. Everyone became suddenly silent, staring down at the tiny silver dart which meant so much to them but which only a few had ever seen save in drawings and photographs. Then it was hidden by a block of low buildings as the liner banked and they came in to land.

  “So this is Luna City!” remarked someone without enthusiasm. “It looks like a deserted gold-rush town.”

  “Maybe it is,” said Leduc. “They used to have gold mines in these parts, didn’t they?”

  “Surely you know,” said McAndrews pompously, “that Luna City was built by the British Government around 1950 as a rocket research base. Originally it had an aborigine name—something to do with spears or arrows, I believe.”

  “I wonder what the aborigines think of these goings-on? There are still some of them out in the hills, aren’t there?”

  “Yes,” said Richards, “they’ve got a reservation a few hundred miles away, well off the line of fire. They probably think we’re crazy, and I guess they’re right.”

  The truck which had collected the party at the airstrip came to a halt before a large office building.

  “Leave your kit aboard,” instructed the driver. “This is where you get your hotel reservations.”

  No one was much amused at the jest. Accommodation at Luna City consisted largely of Army huts, some of which were almost thirty years old. The more modern buildings would certainly be occupied by the permanent residents, and the visitors were full of gloomy forebodings.

  Luna City, as it had been called for the last five years, had never quite lost its original military flavor. It was laid out like an Army camp, and though energetic amateur gardeners had done their best to brighten it up, their efforts had only served to emphasize the general drabness and uniformity.

  The normal population of the settlement was about three thousand, of whom the majority were scientists or technicians. In the next few days there would be an influx limited only by the accommodation—and perhaps not even by that. One newsreel company had already sent in a consignment of tents, and its personnel were making anxious inquiries about Luna City’s weather.

  To his relief, Dirk found that the room allocated to him, though small, was clean and comfortable. About a dozen members of the administrative staff also occupied the block, while across the way Collins and the other scientists from Southbank formed a second colony. The Cockneys, as they christened themselves, quickly enlivened the place by such notices as “To the Underground” and “Line-up here for 25 bus.”

  The first day in Australia was, for the whole party, entirely occupied by the mechanics of getting settled and learning the geography of the “city.” The little town had one great point in its favor—it was compact and the tall tower of the meteorological building served as a good landmark. The airstrip was about two miles away, and the head of the launching track another mile beyond that. Although everyone was eager to see the spaceship, the visit had to wait until the second day. In any case Dirk was far too busy during the first twelve hours frantically trying to locate his notes and records, which seemed to have gone astray somewhere between Calcutta and Darwin. He eventually found them at Technical Stores, which was on the point of consigning the lot back to England as they couldn’t find his name on Interplanetary’s establishment list.

  At the end of the first exhausting day, Dirk nevertheless still had enough energy to record his impressions of the place.

  ‘‘Midnight. Luna City, as Ray Collins puts it, looks like being ‘good fun’—though I guess the fun would wear off after a month or so. The accommodation is quite reasonable, though the furniture is rather scanty and there’s no running water in the block. I’ll have to go half a mile to get a shower, but this is hardly ‘roughing it’!

  “McA. and some of his people are in this building. I’d rather have been with Collins’s crowd across the way, but I can’t very well ask to be transferred.

  “Luna City reminds me of the Air Force bases I’ve seen in the war films. It has the same bleakly efficient appearance, the same atmosphere of restless energy. And like an air base, it exists for a machine—the spaceship instead of the bomber.

  “From my window I can see, a quarter of a mile away, the dark shape of some office buildings which look very incongruous here in the desert under these strange, brilliant stars. A few windows are still lit up, and one could imagine that the scientists are working feverishly against time to overcome some last-minute difficulty. But I happen to know that said scientists are making a devil of a noise in the next block, entertaining their friends. Probably the burner of midnight oil is some unfortunate accountant or storekeeper trying to balance his books.

  “A long way off to the left, through a gap in the buildings, I can see a faint smear of light low down on the horizon. The ‘Prometheus’ is out there, lying under the floodlights. It’s strange to think that she—or rather ‘Beta’—has been up into space a dozen times or more on those fueling runs. Yet ‘Beta’ belongs to our planet, while ‘Alpha,’ which is still earthbound, will soon be up among the stars, never to touch the surface of this world again. We’re all very eager to see the ship, and won’t waste any time tomorrow in getting out to the launching site.

  “Later: Ray hauled me out to meet his friends. I feel flattered, since I noticed McA. and Co. weren’t invited. I can’t remember the names of anyone I was introduced to, but it was good fun. And so to bed.”

  2

  Even when first seen from ground level a mile away, the “Prometheus” was an impressive sight. She stood on her multiple undercarriage at the edge of the great concrete apron around the launcher, the scoops of her air-intakes gaping like hungry mouths. The smaller and lighter “Alpha” lay in its special cradle a few yards away, ready to be hoisted into position. Both machines were surrounded with cranes, tractors and various types of mobile equipment.

  A rope barrier was slung round the site, and the truck halted at the opening in the cordon, beneath a large notice which read:

  WARNTNG—RADTOA
CTTVE AREA!

  No unauthorized persons allowed past this point.

  Visitors wishing to examine the ship, contact Ext. 47 (Pub. Rel. lla).

  THIS IS FOR YOUR PROTECTION!

  Dirk looked a little nervously at Collins as they gave their identities and were waved past the barrier.

  “I’m not sure I altogether like this,” he said.

  “Oh,” replied Collins cheerfully, “there’s no need to worry, as long as you keep near me. We won’t go near any dangerous areas. And I always carry one of these.”

  He pulled a small rectangular box out of his coat pocket. It appeared to be made of plastic and had a tiny loudspeaker set into one side.

  “What is it?”

  “Geiger alarm. Goes off like a siren if there’s any dangerous activity around.”

  Dirk waved his hand towards the great machine looming ahead of them.

  “Is it a spaceship or an atomic bomb?” he asked plaintively.

  Collins laughed.

  “If you got in the way of the jet, you’d never notice the difference.”

  They were now standing beneath the slim, pointed snout of “Beta” and her great wings, sweeping away from them on either side, made her look like a moth in repose. The dark caverns of the air-scoops looked ominous and menacing, and Dirk was puzzled by the strange fluted objects which protruded from them at various places. Collins noticed his curiosity.