Space

by James A. Michener

  He and Marcia often speculated on what the purchasers did with their degrees, and just as his instincts had warned him to prepare the pamphlet which Senator Grant’s wife had used to refute Dr. Mott when he tried to attack USA, so he now had his staff compile a reassuring publication about the university, which was sent in response to inquiries from any institution whose administrators were becoming suspicious that one of its faculty who offered as his proof of education a degree from USA in Los Angeles was committing fraud.

  The pamphlet was a masterpiece, showing a complete faculty with distinguished degrees from all over the world, including Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and a list of recent publications written by these scholars. Dr. Strabismus himself wrote the bibliography, and it included papers on splitting genes, synthesizing a new drug that would replace insulin in the treatment of diabetes, and a cost-time analysis of assembly work at a General Motors plant. His knowledge was so encyclopedic, and his interests so broad, that he was able to dash off these titles in correct phraseology without consulting any books, and as he dictated each one he thought: I wish I had time to write that paper. Now. It’s needed: Theory of Tumbling Bodies Entering Planetary Atmospheres with Application to Probe Vehicles and Australian Tektites.

  Once, when a full professor from the University of Wisconsin came out to investigate the credentials of an applicant who had landed a job using fraudulent degrees, Strabismus told him frankly, “Your man’s a fake. Fire him. His check bounced.”

  “How do you get away with this, Strabismus?”

  “In California, so many churches and colleges want to crank up that the state has little energy left over to supervise us, once we get started. We’re free to do about what we want, so long as we don’t steal state funds. We [480] pay our registration fee, our yearly renewals. We keep our nose clean and we delude nobody.”

  “How about this faculty list?”

  “Does it hurt anybody? Does it fool anybody like you?”

  “Don’t you feel like a criminal?”

  “I certainly do not. I’ve been bucking the system all my life, and I think I’ve performed a useful service.” He was so frank that the Wisconsin man actually liked him, and they talked for a long time.

  “Tell me, at Wisconsin do you detect the beginnings of a falling away from science?”

  “We certainly do. The flood of money pumped by the federal government into the science faculties has caused a lot of resentment among the rest of us.”

  “What’s your field?”

  “Humanities. And we’re hurting. I’m philosophy, principally.”

  Strabismus wanted to know his specialty, and when the visitor said the Nature of Truth, the president of USA surprised him with a flow of names associated with that subject and an accurate summary of the positions of many: Hobbes, Kant, Bradley, Brand Blanshard of Yale.

  “You think the antiscience movement will continue to grow?” Strabismus asked.

  “I do. I see it in my students, most clearly.”

  “Tell me, are your young people big with tarot cards? I-Ching?”

  The professor snapped his fingers and said, “Strange you should ask that. There’s a real movement toward the occult.”

  “Astrology?”

  “Very big.” The man from Wisconsin stroked his chin, then stared at the floor. “It’s quite confusing, really. In space we’re having our greatest scientific triumphs. On the ground our young people are turning sharply away from science.”

  “How much of it is mere youthful rebellion?” Strabismus asked. At this moment he heard his dean of faculty at the door. As she walked into the hall he called out and invited her to join them. “This is Dr. Grant, my dean.” He brought her up to date on the science-antiscience rebellion and restated his question.

  “Clearly,” she said, “many young people rebel against [481] science, any kind of order, just to gig their parents.

  “Excuse me?” the professor said.

  “Gig their parents. Make them uneasy. More important, gig their professors.”

  “You mean that if the university goes over heart and soul to science ...”

  “Then to hell with science,” Marcia said.

  Success in charlatanism had produced subtle and pleasing changes in the administrators of USA: Dr. Strabismus was somewhat heavier from continued good eating; his beard was more neatly trimmed and his face more rounded and benevolent; in fact, he looked like a contented university president whose football team had just been invited to play in the Rose Bowl. Marcia’s handsome face had lost its perpetual pout, for she was no longer angry at anyone, and her body had lost a good deal of its baby fat, so that while the president grew stouter, she grew slimmer, and she was so attractive, with her warm smile and her hair in neat braids, that when she suggested to the professor that he join them for dinner, he accepted eagerly.

  “Tell me,” he asked over the wine, “how did you two ever get involved in these rackets?”

  “Did Leopold tell you who I am?” she asked. “Senator Grant’s daughter. I just grew tired of hearing his patriotic bullshit.”

  The professor winced. “So you’re part of the rebellion?”

  “I sure am.” When he asked if she had finished college, she said, “Freshman year, almost. C-minus. You see, I got tired of your bullshit, too. You professors, I mean.”

  “What do you foresee as the next big mania?” Strabismus asked.

  “Something antiscientific, that’s for sure.”

  “I did most of the talking before. Now you tell us why you think that.”

  The professor of philosophy said that when a democracy responds totally to an imagined outside threat, the way America did to Russia’s Sputnik, the intellectuals quickly see that this is spurious and rebel against it, but in this particular case the situation was further confused by anxiety among college students over the military draft and among the lower middle classes by the fact that the nation was spending so much on space when things close at hand [482] required attention. “The blacks, you know, are quite opposed to the space program. They’re cut out of it.”

  “The blacks are cut out of everything,” Strabismus said. “Do you know that in my Universal Space Associates, one of the hottest movements ever, I have not a single black enrolled, so far as I know. But in the diploma thing, quite a few put down their dollars for that degree. They believe the framed diploma will make the difference.”

  As they spoke, Marcia turned on the television, and a news program refuted what they had been saying, for at a gala press conference officials of NASA were presenting the next two heroes who would fly in the Gemini program, and the junior member, who would sit in the right-hand seat, was Randy Claggett from Texas. He was most appealing as he smiled, gap-toothed, into the camera and allowed as how his success so far had been pretty much due to the support of his beautiful wife, Debby Dee, and their three fine children.

  “One more step on our way to the Moon,” the spokesman said as the camera zoomed in on Randy and Debby Dee.

  “There’s a lot of fascination left in space,” Strabismus said. “And it’ll increase when they actually attack the Moon. But believe me, Professor, the drop-off is going to be sensational ...”

  “And you want to be in first when the next racket starts?”

  “I do. The diploma thing adds nice extra money, but I doubt that it could finance our big building. You need something big, some big, swinging movement. All I know is, it’s going to be antiscience, antispace. But what form it’s going to take ... I wish you could tell me.”

  The five Earthbound members of the Solid Six were proud that Claggett had been chosen so early for a ride in space, and they haunted the control rooms at Cape Canaveral to follow his progress. The center had been redesignated Cape Kennedy in honor of the President slain less than two years earlier, but none of the professionals ever used that name; to them it would always be Canaveral.

  They were living, as usual on their eastern trips, at the Bali Hai in Cocoa
Beach, and when it appeared assured that Claggett and his teammate were going to make a success of their flight, Ed Cater suggested that they all drive back to the Dagger Bar for a celebration at which [483] he and Gloria would provide the beer, and Hickory Lee the oysters. All the astronauts, especially those from land-bound states, relished Florida seafood, particularly the oysters, because they could be consumed in great quantities without producing fat. As Claggett and his partner were now learning, even one extra ounce of fat in that Gemini capsule meant added problems, so that the young pilots had a phobia about pies and cakes: “They can wait till we’re retired.”

  There were three routes by which a car could travel the twenty miles from the space center to the motel: it could stay on A1A and, keep to the fringing islands, or it could come down the middle on Route 3 and make better time, or it could move sharply west onto the mainland and come speeding down U.S. 1, a well-kept double highway. The last way was longer but much quicker.

  General Motors had presented each astronaut with a Corvette, and the men loved these sleek, swift cars. Lee, Cater and Bell drove theirs down A1A to enjoy the relaxing scenery along the shore. Pope and young Harry Jensen, having been held up by consultations with Dr. Mott, left late, and they elected to drive over to U.S. 1 and then to speed south to the town of Cocoa, then east on Route 520 to the island at Cocoa Beach.

  It was a gala afternoon; everything was going right and their team was at last in the air, which meant that quite soon the rest of them would be entering space, too. Jensen, who was better with a car than Pope, led the way in his specially painted gray Corvette, and Pope, trailing in the aged Mercury convertible, which he still preferred, admired the manner in which the South Carolinian handled his car, never making a foolish move, always prepared to ease sideways, left or right, to enter a spot left open by the slower traffic. It was like flying, really, riding tail gunner to Harry Jensen.

  Pope, peering ahead, spotted the heavy old Buick coming from the opposite direction when it was a good distance away, and casually muttered to himself, “That one doesn’t know how to drive.” As the big black car neared, he thought: He’s weaving. Is his front wheel funny? Instinctively, Pope took maneuvers which would provide him maximum escape room if the Buick really was in trouble, and noticed with some dismay that Jensen was not doing so.

  [484] Then he uttered a wild cry as the Buick leaped across the median strip and plowed directly into Jensen’s Corvette, knocking it clear across the roadway in such a manner that Pope had great difficulty maneuvering his Mercury past the two tangled cars. Only his moments of anticipation saved him.

  When he elbowed his way through the crowd he found the driver of the Buick unscathed and very drunk. Harry Jensen was so completely mashed he was barely recognizable through the blood and scattered brains.

  Restraining himself from killing the murderer, Pope spoke to no one, returned quietly to his Mercury and sped off before the police arrived, for he had work to do. He roared down U.S. 1, spun his car east on Route 520, then swiftly south on A1A, grinding his wheels into the parking lot of the Bali Hai.

  He did not run through the entrance lobby, but as soon as Cynthia Rhee saw his ashen face she knew something terrible had happened, and she supposed it had to do with Claggett’s flight: “John, what is it?” Because he had come to think of her as a member of the team, he grabbed her left arm and pulled her along as he sought for Cater and Lee in the bar. When he saw them, he beckoned them into a corner and said bluntly, “Harry Jensen’s just been killed.”

  “How?”

  “Drunk driver came across the median on U.S. 1. Wiped him out.”

  “You sure?”

  “Brains across the highway.”

  “Oh Jesus!” The two men who had intended to host the party stood silent for a moment, then Cater said, “Where’s Tim Bell? See if you can find him, Hickory.” And when Bell joined them, shaking and pale, Cater said, “Anybody know where Inger is?”

  “I saw her at the pool,” Bell said.

  “We can’t tell her there,” Cater said.

  “I’ll take her to her room,” Cynthia suggested, but Cater grabbed her firmly: “I think not.” The men knew that Jensen and the Korean girl had been sleeping together at odd opportunities and they suspected that Inger also knew.

  Cater went to the pool, and in his gentle Deep South drawl, said, “Inger, we’re having a blowout tonight, and Harry said he’d be a bit late. The girls are dressing ...”

  [485] When she reached her room she found the three astronauts waiting-Pope, Bell, Hickory Lee-standing very straight, their distress clear in their eyes as they looked at her.

  “Oh God!” she gasped.

  “On the highway,” Cater said. “Totally wiped out.”

  “Oh God!”

  In her presence Cater went to the phone and called Deke Slayton: “This is Ed Cater. Astronaut Harry Jensen has just been killed in a highway accident on U.S. 1 between the Cape and Cocoa Beach. No word of this must be sent aloft to Claggett. Call the police for verification.”

  Miss Rhee had alerted the other wives, and now they streamed into the motel room, composed, tight-lipped and beautiful. Sandy Lee, the tough-minded girl from Tennessee, took command, ordering the men from the room. Cool, determined, she pushed the other women away when they wanted Inger to lie down, said brusquely, “Walk it off, kid.” When the phone started to ring she answered the first two calls, then left the receiver off the hook. She would not allow the others to turn on the television, but she did order drinks and suggested that Inger have a Jack Daniels straight.

  Through that long night the five women sat together, talking, now and then laughing as they recalled some scandalous thing that had happened to them, weeping more often. And in the course of the night each woman called Texas to ask about her children. At about two-thirty Inger said, “If she wants to come in, let her.”

  And Debby Dee found Cynthia Rhee in a corner of the Dagger Bar, transcribing notes. The men stayed in the bar, drinking, except that Pope and Cater ducked out to accompany the police to the morgue to identify the corpse, but this they could barely do, for Jensen had no face.

  “When Randy Claggett splashed down after his Gemini flight, the first thing he heard aboard the rescue carrier was that his good buddy Harry Jensen had been killed by a drunk driver, and as soon as he returned to Canaveral he stormed into the police station, demanding to know who the killer was. He learned that the man had accumulated six citations for drunken driving and had once caused a woman to lose a leg. His license had not been [486] taken away because his lawyer pleaded that “it would be unfair to deprive this fine young man of his means of earning a living.” He had never gone to jail; he had never been penalized; he just kept driving that big Buick when he was dead drunk, and nobody gave a damn.

  “Fifty thousand people killed a year,” the police chief said. “We have good reason to believe that more than half are because of drunk driving.”

  “Can’t you do anything?” Claggett asked in seething anger.

  “Automobile people won’t let us. Whiskey people won’t let us. And the courts abuse us if we arrest them. I’ve arrested your man three times. Told the judge he was an accident looking for a place to happen.”

  Randy studied the dossier: Melvin Starling, 28. Married. Arrest 1: Drunk driving. Arrest 4: Drunk driving hitting a woman. Arrest 6: Drunk driving. He pointed to that last entry: “That was only three weeks ago.”

  “America wants it that way,” the policeman said, folding the file and jamming it into his desk.

  And then a familiar miracle of military life occurred. Older officers-Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, it made no difference-who had lost their wives began flying in to Canaveral to talk with Inger Jensen and take her two children on picnics. Younger officers not yet married, who had served with Harry at some remote base, turned up to see how she was doing, and three men who had tested planes with him at Edwards stopped by.

  It was as if signals had been flas
hed through the military establishment: “One of our women has been left a widow with two kids.” In other walks such a woman with two rambunctious flaxen-haired children might be at a serious disadvantage where remarriage was concerned, but in the military a young woman with children became especially attractive, as if she brought with her a ready-made family. So like white corpuscles hastening toward a wound to purify it, officers unmarried or widowed leaped forward to protect Harry Jensen’s widow.

  To the surprise of the five astronaut families who vetted the suitors, she would have none of them. Bundling her children into a secondhand station wagon bought with [487] Harry’s insurance, she started across country to a small college in Oregon, where she had been offered a job as librarian. When Debby Dee kissed her goodbye, the big Texan woman said, “You’re a horse’s ass, Inger, but God, I love you,” and the little Swedish girl replied, “It’s as if he was in the seat beside me. He’ll always be.”

  When Stanley Mott’s younger son, Christopher, was arrested for selling marijuana to grammar-school students in suburban Washington, his father spent three nights, after daylong meetings of his committee on the Moon, pleading with police and district attorneys not to send his boy to a house of correction, and on the afternoon of the fourth day, during a heated debate on whether the surface of the Moon might be composed of deep dust into which a landing vehicle might sink never to be seen again, he leaned forward onto the table, collapsed, and slipped sideways to the floor.

  When Rachel Mott was informed, she was sure it was a heart attack, but after NASA doctors had examined him they assured her that it was mere exhaustion: “Even geniuses have to rest some time. Keep him in bed. Don’t let him worry.”

  As soon as word of his collapse circulated among the Solid Six, now Five, each of the astronauts wrote personally to Mott, attesting to their appreciation of what he had done for them, from the days of the selection committee to his supportive work at the time of Claggett’s flight, and the five wives did the same with Mrs. Mott, but the most surprising outcome was a personal visit to the sickroom by Cynthia Rhee: “I’m here for two reasons, Dr. Mott. To express my hopes for your speedy recovery, for you are a good man and you’re needed, and to see firsthand what penalties a scientist pays for his dedication to space.”