Prelude to Space Read online

  There were some spectacular shots of New Mexico firings in the late 1940’s, and some even more spectacular ones of faulty take-offs and other forms of misbehavior.

  “As you see, it was not always reliable and it was soon superseded by more powerful and readily controlled machines—such as these—”

  The smooth torpedo-shape was being replaced by long, thin needles that went whistling up into the sky and came floating back beneath billowing parachutes. One after another speed and altitude records were being smashed. And in 1959…

  “This is the ‘Orphan Annie’ being assembled. She consisted of four separate stages, or ‘steps,’ each dropping off when its fuel supply was exhausted. Her initial weight was a hundred tons—her payload only twenty-five pounds. But that payload of magnesium powder was the first object from Earth to reach another world.”

  The Moon filled the screen, her craters glistening whitely and her long shadows lying, sharp and black, across the desolate plains. She was rather less than half full, and the ragged line of the terminator enclosed a great oval of darkness. Suddenly, in the heart of that hidden land, a tiny but brilliant spark of light flared for a moment and was gone. “Orphan Annie” had achieved her destiny.

  “But all these rockets were pure projectiles: no human being had yet risen above the atmosphere and returned safely to Earth. The first manned machine, carrying a single pilot to an altitude of two hundred miles, was the ‘Aurora Australis,’ which was launched in 1962. By this time all long-range rocket research was based upon the great proving-grounds built in the Australian desert.

  “After the ‘Aurora’ came other and more powerful ships, and in 1970, Lonsdale and McKinley, in an American machine, made the first orbital flights around the world, circling it three times before landing.”

  There was a breathtaking sequence, obviously speeded up many times, showing almost the whole Earth spinning below at an enormous rate. It made Dirk quite dizzy for a moment, and when he had recovered the narrator was talking about the force of gravity. He explained how it held everything to the Earth, and how it weakened with distance but never vanished completely. More animated diagrams showed how a body could be given such a speed that it would circle the world forever, balancing gravity against centrifugal force just as the Moon does in its own orbit. This was illustrated by a man whirling a stone around his head at the end of a piece of string. Slowly he lengthened the string, but still kept the stone circling, more and more slowly.

  “Near the Earth,” explained the voice, “bodies have to travel at five miles a second to remain in stable orbits—but the Moon, a quarter of a million miles away in a much weaker gravitational field, need move at only a tenth of this speed.

  “But what happens if a body, such as a rocket, leaves the Earth at more than five miles a second? Watch…”

  A model of the Earth appeared, floating in space. Above the equator a tiny point was moving, tracing out a circular path.

  “Here is a rocket, traveling at five miles a second just outside the atmosphere. You will see that its path is a perfect circle. Now, if we increase its speed to six miles a second the rocket still travels round the Earth in a closed orbit, but its path has become an ellipse. As the speed increases still further, the ellipse becomes longer and longer and the rocket goes far out into space. But it always returns.

  “However, if we increase the rocket’s initial speed to seven miles a second the ellipse becomes a parabola—so—and the rocket has escaped for ever. Earth’s gravity can never recapture it; it is now traveling through space like a tiny, man-made comet. If the Moon were in the right position, our rocket would crash into it like the ‘Orphan Annie.’ “

  That, of course, was the last thing one wanted a spaceship to do. There was a long explanation then, showing all the stages of a hypothetical lunar voyage. The commentator showed how much fuel must be carried for a safe landing, and how much more was needed for a safe return. He touched lightly on the problems of navigation in space, and explained how provision could be made for the safety of the crew. Finally he ended:

  “With chemically propelled rockets we have achieved much, but to conquer space, and not merely to make short-lived raids into it, we must harness the limitless forces of atomic energy. At present, atomically driven rockets are still in their infancy: they are dangerous and uncertain. But within a few years we shall have perfected them, and mankind will have taken its first great stride along the Road to Space.”

  The voice had grown louder; there was a throbbing background of music. Then Dirk seemed to be suspended motionless in space, a few hundred feet from the ground. There was just time for him to pick out a few scattered buildings and to realize that he was in a rocket that had just been launched. Then the sense of time returned: the desert began to drop away, with accelerating speed. A range of low hills came into view and was instantly foreshortened into flatness. The picture was slowly rotating, and abruptly a coastline cut across his field of vision. The scale contracted remorselessly, and with a sudden shock he realized that he was now seeing the whole coast of Southern Australia.

  The rocket was no longer accelerating, but was sweeping away from Earth at a speed not far short of escape velocity. The twin islands of New Zealand swam into view—and then, at the edge of the picture, appeared a line of whiteness which for a moment he thought was cloud.

  Something seemed to catch at Dirk’s throat when he realized that he was looking down upon the eternal ice-walls of the Antarctic. He remembered the Discovery, moored not half a mile away. His eye could encompass in a moment the whole of the land over which Scott and his companions, less than a lifetime ago, had struggled and died.

  And then the edge of the world reared up before him. The wonderfully efficient gyro-stabilization was beginning to fail and the camera wandered away into space. For a long time, it seemed, there was blackness and night; then, without warning, the camera came full upon the sun and the screen was blasted with light.

  When the Earth returned, he could see the entire hemisphere spread beneath him. The picture froze once more and the music stilled, so that he had time to pick out the continents and oceans on that remote and unfamiliar world below.

  For long minutes that distant globe hung there before his eyes; then, slowly, it dissolved. The lesson was over, but he would not soon forget it.

  6

  On the whole, Dirk’s relations with the two young draftsmen who shared the office were cordial. They were not quite sure of his official position (that, he sometimes thought, made three of them) and so treated him with an odd mixture of deference and familiarity. There was one respect, however, in which they annoyed him intensely.

  It seemed to Dirk that there were only two attitudes to adopt towards interplanetary flight. Either one was for it, or one was against it. What he could not understand was a position of complete indifference. These youngsters (he himself, of course, was a good five years older) earning their living in the very heart of Interplanetary itself, did not seem to have the slightest interest in the project. They drew their plans and made their calculations just as enthusiastically as if they were preparing drawings for washing machines instead of spaceships. They were, however, prepared to show traces of vivacity when defending their attitudes.

  “The trouble with you, Doc,” said the elder, Sam, one afternoon, “is that you take life too seriously. It doesn’t pay. Bad for the arteries and that sort of thing.”

  “Unless some people did a bit of worrying,” retorted Dirk, “there’d be no jobs for lazy so-and-sos like you and Bert.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” said Bert. “They ought to be grateful. If it wasn’t for chaps like Sam and me, they’d have nothing to worry about and would die of frustration. Most of ‘em do, anyway.”

  Sam shifted his cigarette. (Did he use glue to keep it dangling from his lower lip at that improbable angle?)

  “You’re always agitating about the past, which is dead and done with, or the future, which we won’t be arou
nd to see. Why not relax and enjoy yourself for a change?”

  “I am enjoying myself,” said Dirk. “I don’t suppose you realize that there are people who happen to like work.”

  “They kid themselves into thinking they do,” explained Bert. “It’s all a matter of conditioning. We were smart enough to dodge it.”

  “I think,” said Dirk admiringly, “that if you keep on devoting so much energy to concocting excuses to avoid work, you’ll evolve a new philosophy. The philosophy of Futilitarianism.”

  “Did you make that up on the spur of the moment?”

  “No,” confessed Dirk.

  “I thought not. Sounded as if you’d been saving it up.”

  “Tell me,” Dirk asked, “don’t you feel any intellectual curiosity about anything?”

  “Not particularly, as long as I know where my next pay check’s coming from.”

  They were pulling his leg, of course, and they knew he knew it. Dirk laughed and went on:

  “It seems to me that Public Relations has overlooked a nice little oasis of inertia right on its own doorstep. Why, I don’t believe you care a hoot whether the ‘Prometheus’ reaches the Moon or not!”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” protested Sam. “I’ve got a fiver on her.”

  Before Dirk could think of a suitably blistering reply, the door was thrown open and Matthews appeared. Sam and Bert, with smoothly co-ordinated motions that eluded the eye, were instantly hard at work among their drawings.

  Matthews was obviously in a hurry.

  “Want a free tea?” he said.

  “It depends. Where?”

  “House of Commons. You were saying the other day that you’d never been there.”

  “This sounds interesting. What’s it all about?”

  “Grab your things and I’ll tell you on the way.”

  In the taxi, Matthews relaxed and explained.

  “We often get jobs like this,” he said. “Mac was supposed to be coming, but he’s had to go to New York and won’t be back for a couple of days. So I thought you might like to come along. For the record, you can be one of our legal advisers.”

  “This is very thoughtful of you,” said Dirk gratefully. “Who are we going to see?”

  “A dear old chap named Sir Michael Flannigan. He’s an Irish Tory—very much so. Some of his constituents don’t hold with these new-fangled spaceships—they’ve probably never really got used to the Wright Brothers. So we have to go along and explain what it’s all about.”

  “No doubt you’ll succeed in allaying his doubts,” said Dirk as they drove past County Hall and turned on to Westminster Bridge.

  “I hope so; I’ve got a line which I think should fix things very nicely.”

  They passed under the shadow of Big Ben and drove for a hundred yards along the side of the great Gothic building. The entrance at which they stopped was an inconspicuous archway leading into a long hall which seemed very remote from the bustle of traffic in the square outside. It was cool and quiet, and to Dirk the feeling of age and centuries-old traditions was overwhelming.

  Climbing a short flight of steps, they found themselves in a large chamber from which corridors radiated in several directions. A small crowd was milling around, and people sat in expectant attitudes along wooden benches. On the right a reception desk was flanked by a stout policeman in full regalia, helmet and all.

  Matthews walked up to the desk, and collected a form which he filled in and handed to the policeman. Nothing happened for some time. Then a uniformed official appeared, shouted a string of quite incomprehensible words, and gathered the forms from the policeman. He then vanished down one of the corridors.

  “What on earth did he say?” hissed Dirk in the silence that had suddenly descended.

  “He said that Mr. Jones, Lady Carruthers, and someone else whose name I couldn’t catch, aren’t in the House at the moment.”

  The message must have been generally understood, for groups of disgruntled constituents began to drift out of the chamber, foiled of their prey.

  “Now we’ve got to wait,” said Matthews, “but it shouldn’t be long, as we’re expected.”

  From time to time in the next ten minutes other names were called, and occasionally members arrived to collect their guests. Sometimes Matthews pointed out a notable of whom Dirk had never heard, though he did his best to disguise the fact.

  Presently he noticed that the policeman was pointing them out to a tall young man who was very far from his conception of an elderly Trish baronet.

  The young man came over to them.

  “How do you do?” he said. “My name is Fox. Sir Michael is engaged for a few moments, so he asked me to look after you. Perhaps you’d care to listen to the debate until Sir Michael’s free?”

  “I’m sure we would,” Matthews replied, a little too heartily. Dirk guessed that the experience was not particularly novel to him, but he was delighted at the chance of witnessing Parliament in action.

  They followed their guide through interminable corridors and beneath numberless archways. Finally he handed them over to an ancient attendant who might very well have witnessed the signing of Magna Charta.

  “He’ll find you a good seat,” promised Mr. Fox. “Sir Michael will be along for you in a few minutes.”

  They thanked him and followed the attendant up a winding stairway.

  “Who was that?” asked Dirk.

  “Robert Fox—Labour M.P. for Taunton,” explained Matthews. “That’s one thing about the House—everyone always helps everybody else. Parties don’t matter as much as outsiders might think.” He turned to the attendant.

  “What’s being debated now?”

  “The Second Reading of the Soft Drinks (Control) Bill,” said the ancient in a funereal voice.

  “Oh, dear!” said Matthews. “Let’s hope it is only for a few minutes!”

  The benches high in the gallery gave them a good view of the debating chamber. Photographs had made his surroundings quite familiar to Dirk, but he had always pictured a scene of animation with members rising to cry “On a point of order!” or, better still, “Shame!”

  “Withdraw!” and other Parliamentary noises. Instead, he saw about thirty languid gentlemen draped along the benches while a junior minister read a not-very-enthralling schedule of prices and profits. While he watched, two members simultaneously decided that they had had enough and, with little curtseys to the Speaker, hastily withdrew—no doubt, thought Dirk, in search of drinks that were not particularly soft.

  His attention wandered from the scene below and he examined the great chamber around him. It seemed very well preserved for its age, and it was wonderful to think of the historic scenes it had witnessed down the centuries, right back to—

  “Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” whispered Matthews. “It was only finished in 1950, you know.”

  Dirk came back to earth with a bump.

  “Good heavens! I thought it was centuries old!”

  “Oh no: Hitler wrote off the earlier chamber in the Blitz.”

  Dirk felt rather annoyed with himself for not remembering this, and turned his attention once more to the debate. There were now fifteen members present on the Government side, while the Conservative and Labour parties on the Opposition benches could only muster a baker’s dozen between them.

  The paneled door against which they were sitting opened abruptly, and a smiling round face beamed at them. Matthews shot to his feet as their host greeted them with many apologies. Out in the corridor, where voices could be raised again, introductions were effected and they followed Sir Michael through yet more passages to the restaurant. Dirk decided that he had never seen so many acres of wooden paneling in his life.

  The old baronet must have been well over seventy, but he walked with a springy step and his complexion was almost cherubic. His tonsured pate made the resemblance to some medieval abbot so striking that Dirk felt he had just stepped into Glastonbury or Wells before the dissolution of the monast
eries. Yet if he closed his eyes, Sir Michael’s accent transported him instantly to metropolitan New York. The last time he had encountered a brogue like that, its owner had been handing him a ticket for passing a “Stop” sign.

  They sat down to tea and Dirk carefully declined the offer of coffee. During the meal they discussed trivialities and avoided the object of the meeting. It was only broached when they had moved out on to the long terrace flanking the Thames which, Dirk could not help thinking, was a scene of much greater activity than the debating chamber itself. Little groups of people stood or sat around, talking briskly, and there was much coming and going of messengers. Sometimes the members would, en masse, disengage themselves apologetically from their guests and dash off to register their votes. During one of these lacunae, Matthews did his best to make Parliamentary procedure clear to Dirk.

  “You’ll realize,” he said, “that most of the work is done in the committee rooms. Except during important debates, only the specialists or the members who are particularly interested are actually in the Chamber. The others are working on reports or seeing constituents in their little cubbyholes all over the building.”

  “Now, boys,” boomed Sir Michael as he returned, having collected a tray of drinks on the way, “tell me about this scheme of yours for going to the Moon.”

  Matthews cleared his throat, and Dirk pictured his mind running rapidly through all the possible opening gambits. “Well, Sir Michael,” he began, “it’s only a logical extension of what mankind’s been doing since history began. For thousands of years the human race has been spreading over the world until the whole globe has been explored and colonized. The time’s now come to make the next step and to cross space to the other planets. Humanity must always have new frontiers, new horizons. Otherwise it will sooner or later sink back into decadence. Interplanetary travel’s the next stage in our development, and it will be wise to take it before it’s forced upon us by shortage of raw materials or space. And there are also psychological reasons for space flight. Many years ago someone likened our little Earth to a goldfish bowl inside which the human mind couldn’t keep circling forever with stagnation. The world was big enough for mankind in the days of the stagecoach and the sailing ship, but it’s far too small now that we can round it in a couple of hours.”