Prelude to Space Read online

  Matthews leaned back to watch the effect of his shock tactics. For a moment Sir Michael looked a little dazed: then he made a quick recovery and downed the remainder of his drink.

  “It’s all a little overwhelming,” he said ruefully. “But what will you do when you get to the Moon, anyway?”

  “You must realize,” said Matthews, pressing on remorselessly, “that the Moon’s only the beginning. Fifteen million square miles is quite a good beginning, to be sure, but we only look upon it as a stepping-stone to the planets. As you know, there’s no free air or water there, so the first colonies will have to be totally enclosed. But the low gravity will make it easy to build very large structures and plans have been drawn up for whole cities under great transparent domes.”

  “Seems to me,” said Sir Michael shrewdly, “that you’re going to take your ‘gold-fish bowls’ with you!” Matthews nearly smiled. “A good point,” he conceded, “but probably the Moon will be mainly used by the astronomers and physicists for scientific research. It’s enormously important to them, and whole new areas of knowledge will be opened up when they can build labs and observatories up there.”

  “And will that make the world a better or a happier place?”

  “That, as always, depends on humanity. Knowledge is neutral, but one must possess it to do either good or ill.”

  Matthews waved his arm along the great river moving sluggishly past them between its crowded banks.

  “Everything you can see, everything in our modern world, is possible because of the knowledge which men won in ancient times. And civilization isn’t static: if it stands still, it will die.”

  There was silence for a while. Almost in spite of himself, Dirk felt deeply impressed. He wondered if he had been wrong in thinking that Matthews was merely an efficient salesman, propagating the ideals of others. Was he no more than a talented instrumentalist, performing a piece of music with complete technical skill but without any real feeling? He could not be sure. Matthews, extrovert though he was, concealed depths of reserve which Dirk could never plumb. In this, though in no other respect, he filled the specifications of that fabulous creature, the typical Englishman.

  “I’ve had a good many letters,” said Sir Michael presently, “from friends of mine in Ireland who don’t like the idea at all and think we were never intended to leave the Earth. What am I to say to them?”

  “Remind them of history,” replied Matthews. “Tell them that we’re explorers, and ask them not to forget that once upon a time someone had to discover Ireland!” He gave Dirk a glance as if to say: “Here it comes!”

  “Imagine that it’s five centuries ago, Sir Michael, and that my name’s Christopher Columbus. You want to know why I’m anxious to sail westward across the Atlantic, and I’ve tried to give you my reasons. I don’t know whether they’ve convinced you: you may not be particularly interested in opening up a new route to the Indies. But this is the important point—neither of us can imagine just how much this voyage is going to mean to the world. Tell your friends, Sir Michael, to think what a difference it would have made to Ireland if America had never been discovered. The Moon’s a bigger place than North and South America combined—and it’s only the first and smallest of the worlds we’re going to reach.”

  The great reception hall was almost deserted when they said good-bye to Sir Michael. He still seemed a trifle dazed when they shook hands and parted.

  “I hope that settles the Irish question for a while,” said Matthews as they walked out of the building into the shadow of the Victoria Tower. “What did you think of the old boy?”

  “He seemed a grand character. I’d give a lot to hear him explaining your ideas to his constituents.”

  “Yes,” Matthews replied, “that should be rather entertaining.”

  They walked on for a couple of yards, past the main entrance and towards the bridge. Then Matthews said abruptly:

  “What do you think of it all, anyway?”

  Dirk hedged.

  “I think I agree with you—logically,” he said. “But somehow I can’t feel about it the way you seem to do. Later, perhaps, I may—I just can’t tell.”

  He looked at the great city around him, throbbing with life and commerce. It seemed as ageless and eternal as the hills: whatever the future brought, surely this could never pass away! Yet Matthews had been right, and he of all people should recognize it. Civilization could never stand still. Over the very ground on which he was walking, the mammoths had once come trampling through the rushes at the river’s edge. They, and not the ape-men watching from their caves, had been the masters of this land. But the day of the ape had dawned at last: the forests and swamps had given way before the might of his machines. Dirk knew now that the story was merely beginning. Even at this moment, on far worlds beneath strange suns, Time and the Gods were preparing for Man the sites of cities yet to be.

  7

  Sir Robert Derwent, M.A., F.R.S., Director-General of Interplanetary, was a rather tough-looking character who invariably reminded people of the late Winston Churchill. The resemblance was somewhat spoiled by his addiction to pipes, of which, according to rumor, he possessed two varieties—“Normal” and “Emergency.” The “Emergency” model was always kept fully fuelled so that it could be brought into action at once when unwelcome visitors arrived. The secret mixture used for this purpose was believed to consist largely of sulphureted tea leaves.

  Sir Robert was such a striking personality that a host of legends had grown up around him. Many of these had been concocted by his assistants, who would have gone through Hell for their chief—and frequently did, since his command of language was not that normally expected of an ex-Astronomer Royal. He was no respecter of persons or proprieties, and some of his retorts to famous but not excessively intelligent questioners had become historic. Even Royalty had been glad to disengage itself from his fire on one celebrated occasion. Yet despite all this facade, he was at heart a kindly and sensitive person. A good many people suspected this, but very few had ever been able to prove it to their satisfaction.

  At the age of sixty, and three times a grandfather, Sir Robert appeared to be a rather well-preserved forty-five. Like his historic double, he attributed this to a careful neglect of all the elementary rules of health and a steady intake of nicotine. A brilliant reporter had once aptly called him “A scientific Francis Drake—one of the astronomical explorers of the Second Elizabethan Age.”

  There was nothing very Elizabethan about the Director-General as he sat reading the day’s mail beneath a faint nimbus of tobacco smoke. He dealt with his correspondence at an astonishing rate, stacking the letters in small piles as he finished them. From time to time he filed a communication directly into the wastepaper basket, from which his staff would carefully retrieve it for inclusion in a voluminous folder with the elegant title “NUTS.” About one per cent of Interplanetary’s incoming mail came under this category.

  He had just finished when the office door opened and Dr. Groves, Interplanetary’s psychological adviser, came in with a file of reports. Sir Robert looked at him morosely.

  “Well, you bird of ill-omen—what’s all this fuss about young Hassell? I thought that everything was under control.”

  Groves looked worried as he laid down the folder.

  “So did I, until a few weeks ago. Until then all five of the boys were shaping well and showing no signs of strain. Then we noticed that Vic was being worried by something, and I finally had it out with him yesterday.”

  “It’s his wife, I suppose?”

  “Yes. The whole thing’s very unfortunate. Vic’s just the sort of father who gives trouble at the best of times, and Maude Hassell doesn’t know that he’ll probably be on his way to the Moon when the boy arrives.”

  The D.-G. raised his eyebrows.

  “You know it’s a boy?”

  “The Weismann-Mathers treatment is ninety-five per cent certain. Vic wanted a son—just in case he didn’t get back.”


  “I see. How do you think Mrs. Hassell will react when she knows? Of course, it still isn’t certain that Vic is going to be in the crew.”

  “I think she’ll be all right. But Vic’s the one who’s worrying. How did you feel when your first kid arrived?”

  Sir Robert grinned.

  “That’s digging into the past. As it happens, I was away myself—on an eclipse expedition. I very nearly smashed a coronograph, so I understand Vic’s point of view. But it’s a damned nuisance; you’ll just have to reason with him. Tell him to have it out with his wife, but ask her not to say anything. Are there any other complications likely to arise?”

  “Not that I can foresee. But you never can tell.”

  “No, you can’t, can you?”

  The Director-General’s eyes strayed to the little motto in its frame at the back of his desk. Dr. Groves could not see them from where he sat, but he knew the lines by heart and they had often intrigued him:

  “There is always a thing forgotten Whenever the world goes well.”

  One day, he’d have to ask where that came from.

  PART TWO

  Two hundred and seventy miles above the Earth, “Beta” was making her third circuit of the globe. Skirting the atmosphere like a tiny satellite, she was completing one revolution every ninety minutes. Unless the pilot turned on her motors again, she would remain here forever, on the frontiers of space.

  Yet, “Beta” was a creature of the upper atmosphere rather than the deeps of space. Like those fish which sometimes clamber on to the land, she was venturing outside her true element, and her great wings were now useless sheets of metal burning beneath the savage sun. Not until she returned to the air far beneath would they be of any service again.

  Fixed upon “Beta’s” back was a streamlined torpedo that might, at first glance, have been taken for another rocket. But there were no observation ports, no motor nozzles, no signs of landing gear. The sleek metal shape was almost featureless, like a giant bomb awaiting the moment of release. It was the first of the fuel containers for “Alpha,” holding tons of liquid methane which would be pumped into the spaceship’s tanks when it was ready to make its voyage.

  “Beta” seemed to be hanging motionless against the ebon sky, while the Earth itself turned beneath her. The technicians aboard the ship, checking their instruments and relaying their findings to the control stations on the planet below, were in no particular hurry. It made little difference to them whether they circled the Earth once or a dozen times. They would stay in their orbit until they were satisfied with their tests—unless, as the chief engineer had remarked, they were forced down earlier by a shortage of cigarettes.

  Presently, minute puffs of gas spurted along the line of contact between “Beta” and the fuel tank upon her back. The explosive bolts connecting them had been sheared: very slowly, at the rate of a few feet a minute, the great tank began to drift away from the ship.

  In the hull of “Beta” an airlock door opened and two men floated out in their unwieldy spacesuits. With short bursts of gas from tiny cylinders, they directed themselves towards the drifting fuel tank and began to inspect it carefully. One of them opened a little hatch and started to take instrument readings, while the other began a survey of the hull with a portable leak detector.

  Nothing else happened for nearly an hour, apart from occasional spurts of vapor from “Beta s” auxiliary steering jets. The pilot was turning her so that she pointed against her orbital motion, and was obviously taking his time over the maneuver. A distance of nearly a hundred feet now lay between “Beta” and the fuel tank she had carried up from Earth. It was hard to realize that during their slow separation the two bodies had almost circled the Earth.

  The space-suited engineers had finished their task. Slowly they jetted back to the waiting ship and the airlock door closed again behind them. There was another long pause as the pilot waited for the exact moment to begin braking.

  Quite suddenly, a stream of unbearable incandescence jetted from “Beta’s” stern. The white-hot gases seemed to form a solid bar of light. To the men in the ship, normal weight would have returned again as the motors started to thrust. Every five seconds, “Beta” was losing a hundred miles an hour of her speed. She was breaking her orbit, and would soon be falling back to Earth.

  The intolerable flame of the atomic rocket flickered and died. Once more the little controlling jets spurted vapor: the pilot was in a hurry now as he swung the ship round on her axis again. Out in space, one orientation was as good as another—but in a few minutes the ship would be entering atmosphere and must be pointing in the direction of her motion.

  It would always be a tense moment, waiting for that first contact. To the men in the ship, it came in the form of a gentle but irresistible tugging of their seat-straps. Slowly it increased, minute by minute, until presently there came the faintest whisper of sound through the insulation of the walls. They were trading altitude for speed—speed which they could only lose against air-resistance. If the rate of exchange was too great, the stubby wings would snap, the hull would turn to molten metal, and the ship would crash in meteoric ruin down through a hundred miles of sky.

  The wings were biting again into the thin air streaming past them at eighteen thousand miles an hour. Although the control surfaces were still useless, the ship would soon be responding sluggishly to their commands. Even without the use of his engines, the pilot could choose a landing spot almost anywhere on Earth. He was flying a hypersonic glider whose speed had given it world-wide range.

  Very slowly the ship was settling down through the stratosphere, losing speed minute by minute. At little more than a thousand miles an hour, the air-scoops of the ramjets were opened and the atomic furnaces began to glow with deadly life. Streams of burning air were being blasted from the nozzles and in its wake the ship was leaving the familiar reddish-brown tinge of nitric oxides. It was riding the atmosphere again, safely under power, and could turn once more for home.

  The final test was over. Almost three hundred miles above, exchanging night and day every forty minutes, the first fuel tank was spinning in its eternal orbit. In a few days its companions would be launched in the same path, by the same means. They would be lashed together, awaiting the moment when they would pour their contents into the empty tanks of “Alpha” and speed the spaceship on the journey to the Moon….

  1

  As Matthews put it, the “Department of Negative Publicity” had gone into forward gear at last—and once started, it changed rapidly into top. The successful launching of the first fuel container, and the safe return of “Beta” showed that everything that could be checked was functioning perfectly. The now fully trained crew would be leaving for Australia in a few days, and the need for secrecy was past.

  A hilarious morning was spent at Southbank as the Press reports of the first visit to the “Nursery” came in. The science editors of the great dailies had, as usual, produced reasonably accurate accounts: but some of the smaller papers, who had sent along sports reporters, dramatic critics, or anyone else who happened to be handy, had printed some truly marvelous stories. Matthews spent most of the day in a state of mingled mirth and mortification, launching a telephonic barrage in the general direction of Fleet Street. Dirk warned him that it would be wise to save most of his indignation for the arrival of the transatlantic Press reports.

  Hassell, Leduc, Clinton, Richards and Taine promptly became the targets of almost unparalleled curiosity. Their life-stories (thoughtfully mimeographed well in advance by Public Relations) were promptly serialized in newspapers all over the world. Offers of matrimony poured in by every post, descending impartially upon the married and the unmarried men alike. Begging letters also arrived in hordes: as Richards remarked wryly: “Everyone except life-insurance agents wants to sell us something”

  The affairs of Interplanetary were now moving towards their climax with the smoothness of a military operation. In a week, the crew and all the higher staff would
be leaving for Australia. With them would go everyone else who could possibly think of a suitable excuse. During the next few days many preoccupied expressions were to be seen around the building. Junior clerks had a habit of suddenly discovering sick aunts in Sydney or impecunious cousins in Canberra who required their presence immediately.

  The idea of the farewell party had, it seemed, originated in the Director-General’s mind and had been enthusiastically taken up by McAndrews, who was annoyed at not having thought of it himself. All the Headquarters staff was to be invited, as well as large numbers of people from industry, the Press, the universities and the innumerable organizations with which Interplanetary had dealings. After much whittling of lists and a good deal of heartburning, just over seven hundred invitations had been sent out. Even the Chief Accountant, still boggling at the thought of a two-thousand-pound “hospitality” item, had been brought to heel by threats of exclusion.

  There were a few who thought that these celebrations were premature and it would be better to wait until the “Prometheus” returned. To these critics it was pointed out that many of the workers on the project would not be returning to London after the launch, but would be going back to their own countries. This was the last opportunity of getting them all together. Pierre Leduc summed up the crew’s attitude when he said: “If we come back, we’ll have enough parties then to last us the rest of our lives. If we don’t, then you ought to give us a good send-off.”

  The hotel selected for the Bacchanalia was one of the best in London, but not one so good that only a few of the executives and practically none of the scientists would feel at ease. Speeches, it had been solemnly promised, would be kept to a minimum to leave as much time as possible for the proper business. This suited Dirk, who had a hatred for orations but a considerable fondness for banquets and buffets.