Prelude to Space Read online

  Acting upon impulse, Hassell walked into the Science Museum and came, as he had so often done before, to the replica of the Wright biplane. Thirty years earlier the original machine had been hanging here in the great gallery, but it had long since gone back to the United States and few now remembered Orville Wright’s protracted battle with the Smithsonian Institution which had been the cause of its exile.

  Seventy-five years—a long lifetime, no more—lay between the flimsy wooden framework that had skimmed a few yards across the ground at Kitty Hawk, and the great projectile that might soon be taking him to the Moon. And he did not doubt that in another lifetime, the “Prometheus” would look as quaint and as primitive as the little biplane suspended above his head.

  Hassell came out into Exhibition Road to find the sun shining brightly. He might have stayed longer in the Science

  Museum, but a number of people had been staring at him a little too intently. His chances of remaining unrecognized were, he imagined, probably lower inside this building than almost anywhere on Earth.

  He walked slowly across the Park along the paths he knew so well, pausing once or twice to admire views he might never see again. There was nothing morbid in his realization of this: indeed, he could appreciate with some detachment the increased intensity it gave to his emotions. Like most men, Victor Hassell was afraid of death; but there were occasions when it was a justifiable risk. That, at least, had been true when there was merely himself to consider. He only wished he could prove it was still true, but in that he had so far failed.

  There was a bench not far from Marble Arch where he and Maude had often sat together in the days before their marriage. He had proposed to her here a good many times, and she had turned him down almost—but not quite—as frequently. He was glad to see that it was unoccupied at the moment, and he dropped into it with a little sigh of satisfaction.

  His contentment was short-lived, for less than five minutes later he was joined by an elderly gentleman who settled himself down behind a pipe and the Manchester Guardian. (That anyone should wish to guard Manchester had always struck Hassell as baffling in the extreme.) He decided to move, after a sufficient interval, but before he could do this without obvious rudeness there was a further interruption. Two small boys who had been strolling along the pathway did a sudden turn to starboard and walked up to the bench. They looked at him steadily in the uninhibited way that some small boys have, then the elder said accusingly: “Hey, Mister, are you Vic Hassell?”

  Hassell gave them a critical examination. They were clearly brothers, and as unattractive a pair as one would meet in a day’s march. He shuddered slightly as he realized what a hazardous business parenthood was.

  In normal circumstances, Hassell would have carefully confessed to the charge, since he had not forgotten many of his own schoolboy enthusiasms. He would probably have done so even now had he been approached more politely, but these urchins appeared to be playing truant from Dr. Fagin’s Academy for Young Delinquents.

  He looked at them fixedly and said, in his best Mayfair circa 1920 voice, “It’s half-past three, and I haven’t any change for a sixpence.”

  At this masterly non sequitur the younger boy turned to his brother and said heatedly: “Garn, George—I told you he weren’t!”

  The other slowly strangled him by twisting his tie and continued as if nothing had happened. “You’re Vic Hassell, the rocket bloke.”

  “Do I look like Mr. Hassell?” said Mr. Hassell in tones of indignant surprise. “Yes.”

  “That’s odd—no one’s ever told me so.” This statement might be misleading, but it was the literal truth. The two boys looked at him thoughtfully: Junior had now been granted the luxury of respiration. Suddenly George appealed to the Manchester Guardian, though there was now a welcome note of uncertainty in his voice. “He’s kidding us, Mister, ain’t he?” A pair of spectacles reared themselves over the paper, and stared at them owlishly. Then they focused on Hassell, who began to feel uncomfortable. There was a long, brooding silence.

  Then the stranger tapped his paper and said severely: “There’s a photo of Mr. Hassell in here. The nose is quite different. Now please go away.”

  The paper barricade was re-erected. Hassell looked into the distance, ignoring his inquisitors, who continued to stare disbelievingly at him for another minute. Finally, to his relief, they began to move away, still arguing with each other.

  Hassell was wondering if he should thank his unknown supporter when the other folded his newspaper and removed his glasses.

  “You know,” he said, with a slight cough, “there is a striking resemblance.”

  Hassell gave a shrug. He wondered if he should own up, but decided not to do so.

  “To tell the truth,” he said, “it has caused me some annoyance before.”

  The stranger looked at him thoughtfully, though his eyes had a misty, faraway look.

  “They’re leaving for Australia tomorrow, aren’t they?” he said rhetorically. “I suppose they’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of coming back from the Moon?”

  “I should say it’s a lot better than that.”

  “Still, it is a chance, and I suppose at this very moment young Hassell’s wondering if he’ll ever see London again. It would be interesting to know what he’s doing—you could learn a lot about him from that.”

  “I guess you could,” said Hassell, shifting uncomfortably in his seat and wondering how he could get away. The stranger, however, seemed in a talkative mood.

  “There’s an editorial here,” he said, waving his crumpled paper, “all about the implications of space flight and the effect it’s going to have on everyday life. That sort of thing’s all very well, but when are we going to settle down? Eh?”

  “I don’t quite follow you,” said Hassell, not altogether truthfully.

  “There’s room for everyone on this world, and if we run it properly we’ll not find a better, even if we go gallivanting right around the Universe.”

  “Perhaps,” said Hassell mildly, “we’ll only appreciate Earth when we have done just that.”

  “Humph! Then more fools us. Aren’t we ever going to rest and have some peace?”

  Hassell, who had met this argument before, gave a little smile.

  “The dream of the Lotus Eaters,” he said, “is a pleasant fantasy for the individual—but it would be death for the race.”

  Sir Robert Derwent had once made that remark, and it had become one of Hassell’s favorite quotations.

  “The Lotus Eaters? Let’s see—what did Tennyson say about them—nobody reads him nowadays. ‘There is sweet music here that softer falls …’ No, it isn’t that bit. Ah, I have it!

  ” ‘ Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave ?’ Well, young man, is there?”

  “For some people—yes,” said Hassell. “And perhaps when space flight arrives they’ll all rush off to the planets and leave the Lotus Eaters to their dreams. That should satisfy everybody.”

  “And the meek shall inherit the Earth, eh?” said his companion, who seemed to have a very literary turn of mind.

  “You could put it that way,” smiled Hassell. He looked automatically at his watch, determined not to become involved in an argument which could have only one result.

  “Dear me, I must be going. Thanks for the talk.”

  He rose to leave, thinking he’d preserved his incognito rather well. The stranger gave him a curious little smile and said quietly: “Good-bye.” He waited until Hassell had gone twenty feet, then called after him in a louder voice: “And good luck—Ulysses!”

  Hassell stopped dead, then swiveled round in his tracks—but the other was already walking briskly in the direction of Hyde Park Corner. He watched the tall, spare figure lose itself in the crowd; and only then did he say to himself explosively: “Well I’ll be damned!”

  Then he shrugged his shoulders and walked on towards Marble Arch, intending to listen once again to the soapbox orators who had given him
so much amusement in his youth.

  It did not take Dirk long to realize that the coincidence was hardly so surprising after all. Hassell, he remembered, lived in the West London area. What was more natural than that he, too, should be taking his last look at the city? It might well be his last in a far more final sense than Dirk’s.

  Their eyes met across the crowd. Hassell gave a little start of recognition, but Dirk did not suppose he would remember him by name. He pushed his way towards the young pilot and introduced himself somewhat awkwardly. Hassell would probably prefer to be left alone, but he could scarcely turn aside without speaking. Moreover, he had always wanted to meet the Englishman and this seemed far too good an opportunity to miss.

  “Did you hear that last talk?” asked Dirk, by way of starting the conversation.

  “Yes,” replied Hassell. “I happened to be passing and overheard what the old chap was saying. I’ve often seen him here before; he’s one of the saner specimens. It’s rather a mixed bag, isn’t it?” He laughed and waved in the general direction of the crowd.

  “Very,” said Dirk. “But I’m glad I’ve seen the place in action. It’s quite an experience.”

  As he spoke, he studied Hassell carefully. It was not easy to judge his age, which might have been anything from twenty-five to thirty-five. He was slightly built, with clear-cut features and unruly brown hair. A scar from an early rocket crash ran diagonally across his left cheek, but was only visible now and then when the skin became taut.

  “After listening to that talk,” said Dirk, “I must say that the Universe doesn’t sound a very attractive place. It’s not surprising that a lot of people would prefer to stay at home.”

  Hassell laughed.

  “It’s funny you should say that; I’ve just been talking to an old fellow who was making the same point. He knew who I was, but pretended he didn’t. The argument I brought forward was that there are two kinds of mind—the adventurous, inquisitive types and the stay-at-homes who’re quite happy to sit in their own back-gardens. I think they’re both necessary, and it’s silly to pretend that one’s right and the other isn’t.”

  “I think I must be a hybrid,” smiled Dirk. “I like to sit in my back-garden—but I also like the wanderers to drop in now and then to tell me what they’ve seen.”

  He broke off abruptly, then added: “What about sitting down for a drink somewhere?”

  He felt tired and thirsty and so, for the same reason, did Hassell.

  “Just for a moment, then,” said Hassell. “I want to get back before five.”

  Dirk could understand this, though as it happened he knew nothing of the other’s domestic preoccupations. He let Hassell navigate him to the lounge of the Cumberland, where they sat down thankfully behind a couple of large beers.

  “I don’t know,” said Dirk with an apologetic cough, “if you’ve heard of my job.”

  “As a matter of fact I have,” said Hassell with an engaging smile. “We were wondering when you were going to catch up with us. You’re the expert on motives and influences, aren’t you?”

  Dirk was surprised, as well as a trifle embarrassed, to discover how far his fame had spread.

  “Er—yes,” he admitted. “Of course,” he added hastily, “I’m not primarily concerned with individual cases, but it’s very useful to me if I can find just how people got involved in astronautics in the first place.”

  He wondered if Hassell would take the bait. After a minute, he began to nibble and Dirk felt all the sensations of an angler watching his float twitching, at long last, on the surface of some placid lake.

  “We’ve argued that often enough at the Nursery,” said Hassell. “There’s no simple answer. It depends on the individual.” Dirk generated an encouraging silence. “Consider Taine, for example. He’s the pure scientist, looking for knowledge and not much interested in the consequences. That’s why, despite his brains, he’ll always be a smaller man than the D.-G. Mind you—I’m not criticizing. One Sir Robert’s probably quite enough for a single generation!

  “Clinton and Richards are engineers and love machinery for its own sake, though they’re much more human than Taine. I guess you’ve heard how Jimmy deals with reporters he doesn’t like—I thought so! Clinton’s a queer sort of fellow and you never know exactly what’s going on in his mind. In their cases, however, they were chosen for the job—they didn’t go after it.

  “Now, Pierre’s just about as different from the rest as he could be. He’s the kind who likes adventure for itself—that’s why he became a rocket pilot. It was his big mistake, though he didn’t realize it at the time. There’s nothing adventurous about rocket flying: either it goes according to plan—or else, Bang!”

  He brought his fist down on the table, checking it in the last fraction of an inch so that the glasses scarcely rattled. The unconscious precision of the movement filled Dirk with admiration. He could not, however, let Hassell’s remarks go unchallenged.

  “I seem to remember,” Dirk said, “a little contretemps of yours which must have given you a certain amount of—er—excitement.”

  Hassell smiled disparagingly.

  “That sort of thing happens once in a thousand times. On the remaining nine hundred and ninety-nine occasions, the pilot’s simply there because he weighs less than the automatic machinery that could do the same job.”

  He paused, looking over Dirk’s shoulder, and a slow smile came across his face.

  “Fame has its compensations,” he murmured. “One of them is approaching right now.”

  A hotel dignitary was wheeling a little trolley towards them, wheeling it with the air of a high-priest bringing a sacrifice to the altar. He stopped at their table, and produced a bottle which, if Dirk could judge from its cob-webbed exterior, was considerably older than he himself.

  “With the compliments of the management, sir,” said the official, bowing towards Hassell, who made appreciative noises but looked a little alarmed at the attention now being concentrated on him from all sides.

  Dirk knew nothing of wines, but he did not see how any skill in that complicated art could have made the smooth liquid slide more voluptuously down his throat. It was such a discreet, such a well-bred wine that they had no hesitation in toasting themselves, then Interplanetary, and then the “Prometheus.” Their appreciation so delighted the management that another bottle would have been forthcoming immediately, but Hassell gracefully refused and explained that he was already very late, which was perfectly true.

  They parted in a high good humor on the steps of the Underground, feeling that the afternoon had come to a brilliant finale. Not until Hassell had gone did Dirk realize that the young pilot had said nothing, absolutely nothing, about himself. Was it modesty—or merely lack of time? He had been surprisingly willing to discuss his colleagues; it seemed almost as if he was anxious to divert attention from himself.

  Dirk stood worrying over this for a moment: then, whistling a little tune, he began to walk slowly homewards along Oxford Street. Behind him, the sun was going down upon his last evening in England.

  PART THREE

  For thirty years the world had been slowly growing used to the idea that, some day, men were going to reach the planets. The phophecies of the early pioneers ofastronautics had come true so many times since the first rockets climbed through the stratosphere that few people disbelieved them now. That tiny crater near Aristarchus, and the television films of the other side of the Moon were achievements which could not be denied.

  Yet there had been some who had deplored or even denounced them. To the man in the street, interplanetary flight was still a vast, somewhat terrifying possibility fust below the horizon of everyday life. The general public, as yet, had no particular feelings about space flight except the vague realization that “Science” was going to bring it about in the indefinite future.

  Two distinct types of mentality, however, had taken astronautics very seriously indeed, though for quite different reasons. The practically si
multaneous impact of the long-range rocket and the atomic bomb upon the military mind had, in the 1950 s, produced a crop of blood-curdling prophecies from the experts in mechanized murder. For some years there had been much talk of bases on the Moon or even—more appropriately—upon Mars. The United States Army’s belated discovery, at the end of the Second World War, of Oberth’s twenty-year-old plans for “space-stations” had revived ideas which it was a gross understatement to call “Wellsian.”

  In his classic book, Wege zur Raumschiffahrt, Oberth had discussed the building of great “space-mirrors” which could focus sunlight upon the Earth, either for peaceful purposes or for the incineration of enemy cities. Oberth himself never took this last idea very seriously, and must have been surprised at its solemn reception two decades later.

  The fact that it would be very easy to bombard the Earth from the Moon, and very difficult to attack the Moon from the Earth, had made many uninhibited military experts declare that, for the sake of peace, their particular country must seize our satellite before any war-mongering rival could reach it. Such arguments were common in the decade following the release of atomic energy, and were a typical by-product of that era’s political paranoia. They died, un-lamented, as the world slowly returned to sanity and order.

  A second and perhaps more important body of opinion, while admitting that interplanetary travel was possible, opposed it on mystical or religious grounds. The “theological opposition,” as it was usually termed, believed that man would be disobeying some divine edict if he ventured away from his world. In the phrase of Interplanetary’s earliest and most brilliant critic, the Oxford don C. S. Lewis, astronomical distances were “God’s quarantine regulations.” If man overcame them, he would be guilty of something not far removed from blasphemy

  Since these arguments were not founded on logic, they were quite irrefutable. From time to time Interplanetary had issued counterblasts, pointing out that the same objections might very well have been brought against all explorers who had ever lived. The astronomical distances which twentieth-century man could bridge in minutes with his radio waves were less of a barrier than the great oceans must have seemed to his Stone Age ancestors. No doubt in prehistoric times there were those who shook their heads and prophesied disaster when the young men of the tribe went in search of new lands in the terrifying, unknown world around them. Yet it was well that the search had been made before the glaciers came grinding down from the Pole.