Space

by James A. Michener

  When $3,000 more of their savings fled to California, Grant realized that he must enlist the help of someone outside his family to convince Elinor of her folly, for he was obviously powerless to do so, and he asked Mrs. Pope if she knew any reliable scientist in the NACA community with whom he might talk on a matter of extreme importance. “I want a stable man of excellent background and wide knowledge of the space field.”

  She suggested several names but could recommend none without reservation, for some were too old to be informed on recent developments, and some were too specialized, but at this point a visitor from the Virginia headquarters arrived in Washington with a report on what the experts at Ames in California had decided about the problem of ablation, and Mrs. Pope decided on the spur of the moment that he was precisely the man required. “I’ve never seen him, Senator, but I do know his record, and it’s superb.”

  When she slipped into the meeting room in which General Funkhauser and Stanley Mott were demonstrating to the committee the qualities of the material they had confected, she saw, standing behind the lectern, a slim, youngish man with glasses, and when she whispered to a staff scientist she knew, he assured her that that was Mott. She listened to Mott’s complete presentation, his precise, clipped New England manner of speech, always finishing every sentence, and it was easy to believe that he was as capable as her informants had said.

  She listened to his difficult vocabulary, both as an intelligent layman and as an employee of the Space Committee, and what she heard was pleasing: “I believe that with this material, which is expensive per cubic inch but [254] not excessively so, we have solved the problem of reentry.”

  “Any practical use in everyday life?” Senator Glancey asked.

  “It’s very light. It could be used to insulate airplane engines, I would think.”

  “Who will own the patent?” Glancey asked.

  “Allied Aviation,” General Funkhauser said.

  “I should think that if the government, through NACA ...”

  “Senator,” the general said, “we have paid most of the developmental costs.”

  “But who provided the basic concepts?”

  While the discussion continued, Mrs. Pope signaled to Professor Mott that she wished to see him, and he left the podium to join this attractive brunette, who said, “Senator Grant would like to speak with you in his office.”

  “Me?” He followed her, wondering what kind of error he might have made, and was completely unprepared for what followed when he was alone with the senator, whom he had never before seen.

  Grant was now a heavyset man, but very straight in bearing and military in manner. “Sit down, please. Mrs. Pope tells me that you have an excellent record in NACA. He pronounced each of the letters separately rather than as an acronym, the way others often did.

  “I’m grateful for the chance to work with such an exciting organization.”

  “Mrs. Pope tells me you know a great deal about space ... outer space, I think they call it.”

  “Others know more.”

  “But you are keyed in? I mean, you do know what you’re talking about?”

  “I’ve studied.”

  “Good.” The senator rose and stalked about his office for some minutes, then stopped before Mott and asked abruptly, “You will swear to keep what I say confidential?”

  Since most of what Mott heard these days was confidential, he found no trouble in nodding.

  “Professor Mott, tell me the truth. Are there any little green men?”

  Mott was stunned. He had often read with contempt newspaper stories of people who saw ordinary things like the planet Venus or an escaped balloon and called the police to report a ship from space. Whenever his rockets [255] were active at Wallops, he could depend upon someone’s having seen a UFO that had landed just down the road to unload little men who had fanned across the countryside. He was perplexed as to why the invaders were always little, always men: “If you consider our Galaxy, our Sun is rather small, so there’s about a sixty-forty chance that if some planet did have people, it would be attached to a very large sun and might be quite large itself. The chances are therefore better than fifty-fifty that newcomers would be not smaller than us, but larger.” But always, he went on, the invaders were little, because the first postwar reports had said so, and as for the green, that description came not from observers who met the little people, but from the eager imagination of the first newspaper reporters who had recognized a good story when they heard one.

  “So far as we know, Senator Grant, no living human being has seen a visitor from another planet, and we have no believable record that anyone in past ages saw such visitors, either.”

  The senator breathed deeply. “My wife says she has seen them, landing on a mesa in Arizona, and she’s talked with a man in California who has met and spoken with them.”

  Mott was trapped. If he laughed, he might infuriate a senator of paramount importance to NACA, and if he supported the crazy wife, other scientists would hear of it and brand him a fraud. As an engineer he favored blunt speech, and as a scientist he had to respect evidence and condemn fraud; he could not bewilder this troubled man who had sought his advice. “Senator, your wife is being hoodwinked. Has she given this man good money ...”

  “Nearly half our savings.”

  “Definitely fraud.”

  “No. The postal department says the man makes no criminal claims. And it isn’t extortion because she gives him the money willingly.” He produced a small bundle of material from California, much of it bearing the charismatic bearded countenance of the great scientist. One quick glance assured Mott that this was typical pseudo-science rubbish.

  “This would be amusing, Senator Grant, if it weren’t so persuasive ... so capable of doing damage. Could I meet your wife?”

  [256] “She’s back home. Doesn’t like Washington too much.”

  “She’s fallen into rather ugly hands, Senator. When I return to California, I’ll look into this.”

  “No scandal, Mott.”

  “It’s already a scandal if this man is persuading your wife to hand over your savings.”

  “I mean, no publicity.”

  “I would never tangle publicly with a man like this. But I’d like to see what he’s up to. Gives science a bad name.” When Mott returned to Ames, and the clean-up work on ablation, he excused himself for several days, and with travel orders provided by Mrs. Pope, dropped down to Los Angeles, where he located in a nondescript suburb the national headquarters of Universal Space Associates, only to learn that Dr. Strabismus was absent, giving a lecture in Boulder. His questions about the intellectual research projects of the Associates were neatly fended off by the secretary, a bright young woman, and those dealing with finances by Mr. Ramirez, who seemed especially quick with figures. However, Mr. Ramirez could not recall what bank USA used for the deposit of the funds: “That’s all left to Dr. Strabismus, and he’s on a lecturing trip.”

  “When will he return?”

  “Not till Thursday,” the secretary said.

  “Good. I’ll be working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and I’ll be back Thursday.”

  “Are you government?” the secretary asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I just remembered, he’ll be heading directly to Seattle.

  “I shall meet him in Seattle, and if you and Dr. Strabismus play tricks on me you’ll go to jail.”

  “Have you any credentials?” the young woman asked brazenly.

  “I do,” and he produced his NACA identification.

  “He’s at home,” she said evenly. “If you can wait ...”

  “I’ll wait.” And within a few minutes the distinguished head of USA appeared, tall, well-dressed and shrewd.

  “Come into my office,” he said, and when he led Mot.” into the second room, Ramirez disappeared. It was a messy place with a large flat table on which Strabismus worked on the printed materials which provided his fortune. “Who sent y
ou?” he asked.

  “A gentleman high in government,” Mott said, and he [257] expected his words to have a sobering effect on the scientist, but Strabismus laughed.

  “Isn’t it obvious, Mr. Mott, that if you take any intemperate steps, Senator Grant will be hurt much more than I will?”

  Mott swallowed. This was going to be much more difficult than he had foreseen. “There are ways to investigate men like you ...”

  “The postal department, the FBI investigate me regularly. I’m completely clean.”

  “You’re stealing from gullible women.”

  “Half my members are men, Mr. Mott. Some are men just like yourself who are sick and tired of the pretensions of established science. I advise you to go back to your duties in Virginia. Don’t be tricked into doing the dirty work of a befuddled senator whose brilliant wife sees the new light.”

  Indicating the brightly colored pamphlets on the table, Mott asked, “How many contributors do you have?”

  “Fellow explorers? Mr. Ramirez would know that ... he’s out.”

  Mott proved unable to unnerve Strabismus, for the doctor had learned at New Paltz and Yale that the law protects the abuser much more than the man abused, and since he had been ultra careful never to transgress the laws of solicitation by mail, there was little the government could do about him. He was selling dreams to bewildered persons, and that was no crime.

  “Don’t you see?” he asked Mott as he engineered him toward the exit. “I depend on you. It’s the explorations you men at NACA conduct, the pronouncements you make, that agitate my clients and send them running to me. The more you succeed, the more confused the world becomes, and the more I’ll be needed. Now you go back to your test tubes and rockets and do my work for me.”

  Mott was so angered by the man’s insolence that he left California determined to combat the fraud, and when Mrs. Grant next returned to Washington he hurried up from NACA to show her how callously the California guru was abusing her. For reasons he could not have explained, he insisted that Senator Grant be present at the interview, but when he stood before these two leading citizens he felt quite out of place, a rather small man with eyeglasses [258] confronting a handsome senator and his well-coiffed wife, but he had work to do.

  “Mrs. Grant,” he began hesitantly, “I’ve looked into Universal Space Associates and I must advise you that it’s a cheap operation of three irresponsible people in a pair of dirty rooms. I have photographs of the place.”

  When he produced his snapshot of the mean quarters, Mrs. Grant refused to look at it; instead she smiled slightly, her lips primly together, as if she held a secret that these two men could never comprehend. And as he proceeded with his deflation, introducing more and more evidence, her smile persisted. No matter what he said, she had anticipated it and erected her defenses against it; in the end he accomplished nothing.

  He was flabbergasted, for he was in the presence of an intelligent college-trained woman who simply refused to accept evidence. But this was not the heart of the matter, for when he finished-humiliated by this woman’s calm belief-she clarified her reactions by handing him two publications from Dr. Strabismus. The first was entitled If They Try to Attack Me and was as clever a bit of writing as anything Mott had ever encountered; in beautifully phrased paragraphs with the shrewdest headings possible, the California charlatan had refuted in advance every line of reasoning an ill-spirited critic might advance, and Mott blushed to see how completely Dr. Strabismus had forestalled him:

  They will say I was arrested at Yale University.

  They will tell you that the Air Force has never seen a Flying Saucer.

  They will try to convince you that Visitors have never been seen by reliable witnesses.

  They will say that we do not do reputable research.

  They will deny that Visitors are among us right now.

  They will abuse you if you tell them that Visitors are participating in President Eisenhower’s Cabinet meetings.

  After Mott read this masterful pamphlet, he laughed and said, “I wish NACA had writers this good.” But when he looked at Mrs. Grant she was not laughing. She merely [259] showed that complacent smile, phased that she had routed her two enemies.

  It was the second publication which shocked the two men, for Elinor had never previously shown her husband the kind of frenetic letter Dr. Strabismus mailed at the start of each month to his $52 subscribers:

  Alert! We have learned definitely from a meeting of Visitors held aboard a spaceship in the South Atlantic to which they invited two of our associates, that the Visitors have grown distrustful of the behavior of the Eisenhower Administration and are going to reveal themselves and take over the United States government next Tuesday.

  The historical event will occur at eleven o’clock EST and you will find in every community, and especially in your own, citizens whom you have known favorably who will disclose themselves as Visitors who have been working among you to test you. Be as cooperative as humanly possible, for upon their good opinion of us in these early hours will depend the safety and continuance of this nation.

  LEOPOLD STRABISMUS

  Universal Space Associates

  When the two men finished the communication, Mott reading over Grant’s shoulder, they looked up to see Elinor smiling triumphantly. “It all ends Tuesday,” she said, “This charade you’ve been playing.”

  “Are you one of the Visitors?” her husband asked gravely.

  “You will be astonished,” she said. “In every community en will step forward and disclose their true character. You will be astonished.”

  “Elinor ...”

  “You and your silly little Senate. You, Professor Mott, and your make-believe investigations at NACA. One snap of a finger and the Visitors will reveal more wonders than you could dream of in a thousand years.”

  The men kept close watch on Mrs. Grant over the weekend, and saw that by Sunday she was in a state of euphoria, for the old world had only one more complete day [260] to run, and she was preoccupied in planning for the new. She speculated aloud as to who in the Senate and Cabinet would step forward at eleven o’clock EST to reveal himself as having been an agent of the Visitors, and she could think of only a few Republicans worthy of that role and no Democrats. Never for a minute did she consider her husband a possibility: he had condemned himself through his love affair with Mrs. Pope.

  And then, about noon, on the fatal Monday before the changeover, she received a telegram from Dr. Strabismus:

  Reprieve. At a last-minute meeting aboard the spacecraft I and my assistants were able to persuade the Visitors to grant President Eisenhower additional time to get the affairs of this nation organized in accordance with the dictates laid down by the superior planets.

  The Visitors will not repeat not take over at eleven tomorrow. The Visitors working among us will not repeat not reveal themselves. They have agreed to be patient and watch how we handle this extra time. Everything now depends on Washington.

  LEOPOLD STRABISMUS

  Universal Space Associates

  When she showed the telegram to the men they could not believe that she accepted such transparent nonsense, month after month, but after she gave them time to digest the tremendous news, and its implications for the future, she retrieved the message and clutched it to her, smiling gently at her critics as if she were privy to some profound secret denied them.

  PAX RIVER

  NEITHER John Pope nor randy Claggett won assignments to Patuxent River with their 1952 applications, and after the Korean War ended they lost contact, Claggett going to a Marine squadron at El Toro in California, Pope to the Navy installation at Jacksonville, on the opposite side of the continent.

  But the Navy command had spotted Pope as one of their most promising straight arrows, and after he had served at Jacksonville for only seven months he received orders to report to the University of Colorado in Boulder to try for a Ph.D. in engineering, with minor attention to astronomy. Naval officer
s, if they wished to progress in the service, had to have three entries on their record: combat experience if a war was under way, advanced education, and command of a fighting unit. Pope had performed his combat duty with medals, and it was now assumed that he would do the same with his next obligation.

  But when he reported to Colorado’s dean of engineering, that scholar said, “They’ve proposed a schedule for you that looks impossible.”

  “I’m not afraid of work.”

  “Engineering alone’s a full-time program. So’s astronomy.”

  “I already know a little of each. I’m ready to try.”

  The dean gave him an impromptu quiz, then telephoned [262] for a professor from the astronomy department to do the same, and Pope rattled off his answers so confidently, not being afraid to say “I don’t know anything about that” when the questions became too difficult, that the men agreed: “You can attempt it, if you wish.”

  Like many successful men, Pope believed that whatever was required of him to do at the moment represented the happiest experience of his life. When he was playing football in Clay at age seventeen and first felt the power in his body, he thought: This is the best thing I’ve ever known. The four years at Annapolis, when he was courting Penny, “were maybe the happiest years I’ll ever have.” The flying days at Pensacola, when 45 percent of his associates dropped out because of deficiencies and nine men died because of faulty judgment, “were maybe the most exciting days of my life, because it was then that I learned I could fly with the best.” Korea would be unforgettable because it tested his courage, and no man is entitled to an armchair opinion about that. Of the forty-three fliers most closely associated with him, eleven had perished and three were crippled so badly they had to leave the service. “They were precious days,” he told Penny. “Days like that come only once in a lifetime.” He rarely spoke about his experiences in battle, but one autumn night when he was touring Fremont, he sat in a Webster bar with Finnerty and his wife and said, “Got a letter today from this Texan Randy Claggett. When I was downed in North Korea and the Slopes were closing in on me ...”