by Jerry
PROFESSOR HILLIER came in to dinner. His eyes were quite bloodshot but he didn’t stagger. He shook hands affably with Merritt.
“If I remember correctly,” he said, “you came out and had a look at me. My daughter and her—ahem—I believe they’re going to get married, but you never can tell about these moral young men—believe in letting visitors form their own conclusions. A very poor policy if you ask me. This world is too full of infidels and other non-drinkers.”
Merritt wasn’t sure just what he ought to say.
Before he could speak Drusilla said, smiling, “Father still lives in the era in which young people, when thrown together, automatically fall for each other. Norman and I have our own friends and personally I have yet to meet the young man I am going to marry.”
Merritt glanced at his friend. Lowery was staring straight ahead with studied indifference and Merritt had his first realization of the situation that existed here. Boy loves girl but girl does not love boy. And the ass was making his situation hopeless by aging under the strain.
They sat down to dinner. The professor said, “Who’s going to fly VB-Two?”
Merritt parted his lips to answer, then stopped himself, and looked at his host narrow-eyed. He couldn’t have asked for a better question but after what he had heard of this man he’d have to take care not to let himself be drawn into a trap. He replied cautiously:
“The choice is between two men.”
He went on to explain the tests that had been given every member of the Rocket Club. The important thing was the ability to withstand acceleration. The army had several wonderful men whose anti-acceleration capacities were almost miraculous. Several of these had offered privately to perform the flight. But it had been decided not to use them for fear of arousing the ire of the high command.
“So,” Merritt concluded, “we’ll have to do it ourselves. A salesman, named John Errol, is the most likely man.” He saw that it would be unnecessary to name the second in line.
“What,” asked Professor Hillier, “are your plans for getting to the President?”
Merritt was surer of himself now. At least he was getting a chance to explain. He said, “The route is rather complicated. We have selected key men whose support we feel we must get before we can even approach the President. We want to interest a top brass hat in both the army and the navy.
“It happens that one of our members knows a high naval official who has practically guaranteed us support. But if the army should turn thumbs down it might stop us for years.
“However, all that is still more than a month away. We all agree that we must first obtain the support of Professor Hillier. Unless some famous scientist will say that space flight is possible it will be difficult to convince the so-called hard-headed businessmen.”
Professor Hillier was scowling. “Businessmen!” he snarled. “Yaah!”
Merritt thought: “Oh-oh, here it comes.”
The professor had been eating with the concentrated intentness of a hungry man. Now he paused. He looked up. His scarlet eyes gleamed.
“This desire to go to the planets,” he said, “is the neurotic ambition of supreme escapists from life.”
His daughter looked at Merritt, then said quickly, “That sounds odd, doesn’t it, coming, from a man who has made a fortune out of exploring the frontiers of science and who, moreover, has hung onto his money with the skill of a hard-headed businessman.”
She added, addressing her father directly, “Don’t forget, darling, you’re committed to space travel. You’re going to write a letter.”
“I haven’t written it yet,” said Professor Hillier grimly. “And I am toying with the idea of not writing it. The thought that a scientist in his cups might stop man from reaching the stars fascinates me.”
The conversation had taken a turn that Merritt did not like. He recognized in the professor a man who had tossed aside his inhibitions late in life. Such people always overdid their freedom. And that was a danger.
“Don’t you think, sir,” Merritt said quietly, “that it would be more fascinating if—uh, a scientist in his cups were the key figure in reaching the planets. Fact is, that’s the only way it would ever get into the history books. It isn’t history if it doesn’t happen.”
Professor Hillier showed his teeth. “You’re one of these bright young men with an answer for everything,” he said. He made it sound offensive. “Your attitude toward life is too positive to suit me.”
He put up a hand. “Wait,” he thundered.
“Father, really.”
The professor scowled at his daughter. “Don’t give me any of that really stuff. Here’s a young man who rather fancies himself. And I’m going to show him up. Imagine,” he said viciously, “pretending that he’s an expert on space travel.”
He turned toward Merritt. He said in a silken voice, “You and I are going to play a little game. I’m going to be a sweet old lady and you be yourself. You’re cornered, understand, but very gallant. My first question is—”
He changed his tone. He was not a very good actor, so his tone was a burlesque and not very funny. “But my dear Mr. Merritt,” he said, “how will it fly? After all, there’s no air out there for the explosions to push against.”
MERRITT told himself that he had to hold back his anger. He said, “Rocket tubes, Mrs. Smith, work on the principle that action and reaction are equal and opposite. When you fire a shotgun there is a kick against your shoulder.
“That kick would occur even if you were standing in a vacuum when you pulled the trigger. Actually, the presence of air slows a rocket ship. At the speeds a rocket can travel air pressure rises to thousands of pounds per square inch. In free space, away from the pull of gravity, a rocket will travel at many miles per second.”
“But,” mimicked Professor Hillier, “wouldn’t such speeds kill every living thing aboard?”
Merritt said, “Madam, you are confusing acceleration with speed. Speed never hurt anybody. At this moment you are traveling on a planet which is whirling on its axis at more than a thousand miles an hour.
“The planet itself is following an erratic course around the sun at a speed of nineteen and a fraction miles a second. Simultaneously the sun and all its planets are hurtling through space at a speed of twelve miles a second. So you see, if speed could affect you, it would have done so long ago.
“On the other hand you have probably been in a car on occasion when it started up very swiftly and you were pressed into the back of your seat. In short you were affected by the car’s acceleration. Similarly, when a car is braked all of a sudden, everybody in it is flung forward. In other words it has decelerated too swiftly for comfort.
“The solution is a slow gathering of speed. Let us imagine that an automobile is traveling at a speed of ten miles an hour, a minute later at twenty miles an hour and so on, ten miles an hour faster each minute.
“The driver would scarcely notice the acceleration but, at the end of a hundred minutes, he would be moving along at a thousand miles per hour. And he would have attained that speed by an acceleration of ten miles an hour per minute.
“Actually, human beings have survived decelerations—(crash landings)—approximating fifteen gravities. But it is recognized that the average person will be pretty close to death at six gravities and very few could survive nine gravities of acceleration.”
“What,” said the scientist, “do you mean by gravities?”
“One gravity,” Merritt began, “is the normal pull of earth upon an object at ground level. Two gravities would be twice—”
At that moment he happened to glance at Drusilla, and he stopped short. She was white and Merritt realized that she thought he was following the wrong tack. He straightened.
He said, “Really, sir, don’t you think this is a little silly?”
“So you’ve got it all down like a parrot,” Professor Hillier sneered. “Simple answers for simple people. Now the morons are going to learn about space and the
planets and you’re going to be the starry-eyed teacher.”
“The notion that everybody should automatically know all about your subject,” Merritt said, “is a curious egotism in so great a man.”
“Aha,” said the professor, “the young man is warming up at last. I suppose,” he said, “you’re also one of those who believe that the dropping of the atomic bomb was justified.”
Merritt hadn’t intended to become angry but he was tired of the ranting of high and mighty moralists on the subject of the atomic bomb. And he was very tired indeed of the childishness of Professor Hillier.
“Well, sir,” he said, “man lives partly with himself, partly with his fellows. Personally, I was an army pilot, and I’m assuming the dropping of the bomb saved my life. But in the meantime I have interested myself in the non-destructive aspects of atomic energy.” He shrugged. “Materialistic. That’s me.”
He took it for granted that he had lost the letter. But even if he had thought otherwise he was too wound up now to stop.
“Professor,” he said, “you’re a fraud. I’ve had a good long look at you and I’m willing to bet that you’re never quite as drunk as you pretend. That business of spending half your time hanging onto the grass so you won’t fall off the Earth is so fishy that I wonder you have the nerve to look anybody in the eye.
“As for all this nonsense about you having been strongly affected by the dropping of the bomb, you know very well that that was merely an excuse for you to turn your ego loose and—”
The professor had been stiffening. Abruptly, he glared at his daughter.
“Drusilla, you little Roman puritan, where’s that letter you typed out for me to sign?”
“I’ll get it,” she said hastily, rising.
“I’m going to sign it,” the scientist said to Merritt, “and then I want you to get out of here before you ruin my reputation.”
A few minutes later, as Lowery was getting the car out of the garage, Professor Hillier came to the door where Merritt was waiting.
“Good luck,” he said, “and happy planets to you, Mr. Merritt.”
CHAPTER III
Mountainous Molehills
THE partial victory had a heady effect on Merritt. By the time he got back to Los Angeles he was convinced that a letter was all he could have hoped for. He had Pete Lowe make fifty photostats and the huge pile that resulted made him glow. He phoned up Grayson, president of the Rocket Club, and reported his success.
He finished: “. . . and I’m leaving for New York tonight.”
“Oh, no, you’re not,” said Mike Grayson. “I was just going to call you and see if you were home.”
“What’s up?”
It was a potential new member. Annie the superjet would have to be flown for his benefit and only Merritt and John Errol could fly the fast plane. Errol was out of town, so—Grayson’s voice lowered in awe as he gave the final, important fact:
“It’s for Rod Peterson, Bob.”
“The movie star?”
“None other.”
“What do you expect from him?”
They expected a ten-thousand-dollar contribution. “You know our policy. Each man according to his income. And our set-up is such that he can put it down as a bad investment on his tax declaration. Need I say the idea appeals to him?”
“What about our income tax?”
Grayson was complacent. “We’ll be on the moon before they discover that we’re not paying any. Of course, in a kind of a way they recognize us as a non-profit organization but they’re getting more and more suspicious, the silly asses.” Merritt grinned. Contact with certain members of the Rocket Club always exhilarated him. The members in general moved through life as if they had wings in their hair, and a few of them imparted a special aura of the kind of intoxication that he himself had felt overseas.
Of all the millions of men who had built up an appetite for excitement they were the lucky ones who would be able to satisfy their desires. Without exception they had a conviction of high destiny.
Grayson finished, “If we get the ten grand we’ll give you one of them for your job. So you’d better be around.”
Ilsa merely sniffed when Merritt told her who would be at the barns. But later he found her dressing with minute care.
“It’s time,” she said, “that I took an interest in your work. And listen, you chump, when you climb out of the plane come over to me first. Then I’ll be the starry-eyed wife hanging onto your arm when you’re congratulated by Rod Peterson.”
Merritt always considered the drive over Cahuenga Pass into the valley where the club barns were located as one of the scenic treats of Los Angeles. He sniffed the air appraisingly, and found it satisfactorily dry and warm.
“Annie’s built for that. I’ll be able to push her up to eighty percent of the speed of sound and stay pretty near the ground. We’re going to turn on all her lights, you know, and make quite a night show.”
There were preliminaries. Merritt, who had endless patience, spent the evening tuning Annie for her flight. He saw Peterson’s arrival from a distance, but the details were reported to him from time to time.
The star arrived in three cars, two of which were filled with friends. The lead car contained Peterson and a female who was more dazzling than all the rest put together. It was she who delayed the tour by asking scores of questions. When they came to the unfinished frame of VB-2, she peered at length into the drive nozzles.
“You mean to tell me,” she asked finally, “that you make a rocket drive by having a narrow hole for the gases to escape through?”
“That’s the general idea,” Grayson explained, “though there’s a design that’s slightly different for each type of explosive.”
“Well, damme,” said the young woman, “if life isn’t getting simpler all the time.”
She fascinated the entire membership but it was half past nine before Merritt (or anyone else apparently) learned her name. She was Susan Gregory, a new star, just arrived from Broadway. Beside her Rod Peterson was a cold fish. At a quarter to ten her enthusiasm began to wane notably.
“What’s next?” she asked, in a let’s-go-home-now-Roddy-darling voice.
ANNIE was wheeled out—Annie the sleek, the gorgeous—Annie of the high tail. Susan Gregory stared with dulled eyes.
“I’ve seen one of those before,” she said.
It was dismissal. The evening was over. Ennui had descended upon the spirit of Susan Gregory and, watching the descent, Rod Peterson showed his first real emotion.
“Tired, sweetheart?”
Her answer was a shrug which galvanized him. “Thank you very much,” he said hastily to Grayson. “It’s all been very interesting. Good-by.”
They were gone before most of the members grasped what was happening.
On the way home, Ilsa was as tense as drawn wire. “The nerve of her,” she raged. “Coming there like a goddess bearing gifts and then pulling that stunt.” Bitterly. “You’ve heard the last of the ten thousand, I’ll wager.”
Merritt held his peace. He felt himself at the beginning, not the end of temporary setbacks. And he had no intention of being gloomy in advance. By the time they reached their apartment Ilsa was deep in mental depression.
“You made a mistake marrying me,” she sobbed. “I’m too old for insecurity and ups and downs.”
“At twenty-eight,” Merritt scoffed. “Don’t be a nut.”
But when he boarded the plane the following night she had still not snapped out of her mood. The memory flattened his ego. He arrived in New York in a drab state of mind. If Grayson hadn’t suggested the Waldorf-Astoria he would have gone uptown to a cheaper place.
The first businessman he contacted, a nationally known railway executive, listened to him as to a child, patted him on the back and promised to get in touch with him.
A textile giant, physically small and plump, kept him waiting for two days, then threw him out of the office verbally—“Wasting my time with such non
sense!” An airline president offered him a job in his publicity department.
Merritt returned to his hotel room from the final failure, more affected than he cared to admit. He had expected variations of failure but here was a dead-level indifference. Here were men so wrapped up in their own day-to-day certainties that he had not even penetrated the outer crust of their personalities. At 6 o’clock that evening he phoned Grayson in Hollywood.
“Before you say anything,” Grayson said, when he came on the line, “You may be interested to know that we have received $10,000 from—guess who?”
Merritt refused to hazard a guess.
“Susan Gregory.”
That startled Merritt. But his mood remained cynical. “Have you got a check or a promise?”
“A check. But with a string attached.”
“Huhuh!”
“She wants VB-TWO named after her. And we thought-well, what the heck, ten G’s is ten G’s. You can’t beat that kind of logic. One thousand of it is on its way to you by air. How does that sound?”
It was like a shot in the arm. With a fervor approaching animation, Merritt described his new plan of action. He had made a mistake in approaching the men cold. What was needed was an intermediary, either incident or human being, to bridge the gap.
Human beings lived in separate worlds. Business executives lurked behind special concrete-like barriers, where they hid themselves from commercially minded people like themselves. The problem was to get to the human being inside. In every man there was a spark of wonderful imagination. There he kept his dreams, his castles in the air, his special self.
Grayson interrupted at that point, “That sounds beautiful theoretically. But what have you got in mind?”
Merritt hesitated but only for a moment. “I’ll need the help of the local branch of the club.”
“Oh!”
THERE was silence. Merritt waited patiently. No one knew why the New York branch of the U.S. Spaceship Society had never amounted to anything. It was one of those things. A synthesis of discordant personalities, a dividing into cliques tending to stultify and infuriate the brighter brains.