Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Dead Jensen, wandering Millard in California, brittle Chris in trouble with the police, he loved them all. He wanted to grapple them to his heart, and through his tears he prayed for others: God, watch over Claggett and Pope, for these are good men.

  Mott’s recovery from his breakdown coincided with the completion of his reading, and when Claggett and Pope returned to pick up the books, he told them, ‘It was fun, this course of study you set me. Are you interested in my reactions?’

  ‘Blaze away,’ Claggett said, imitating a machine gun. ‘Shoot ’em down.’

  ‘First the negatives. Some of your best writers sound like real fascists. I suppose you know that.’

  ‘Some of the critics have been saying so,’ Claggett conceded.

  ‘And some of them really despise women.’

  ‘So do some astronauts,’ Claggett said. ‘So do some bullfighters.’

  ‘And they despise the world they’re forced to live in, this imperfect Earth.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  ‘And all of them except Weinbaum—You know, Claggett, I thank you for bringing him to my attention. That man had something.’

  ‘I guessed you’d like him. I find him too sentimental. My type is more “Bang-bang, let’s atomize the planet Oom.” ’

  ‘I was about to say they’re all extremely militaristic. Real gunslingers.’

  ‘A lot of good men are. Look how easy it is for the National Rifle Association to maintain membership.’

  ‘And they have almost no patience with the less fortunate. They’re elitist.’

  ‘So were you, when you sat on the selection committee.’

  ‘Worst of all, they’re strongly antidemocratic. Their first choice would be a one-man dictatorship, a Hitler or a Mussolini or a Stalin, cleaned up a bit. Second choice would be a benevolent king. Our kind of democracy would be far, far down the line.’

  ‘Science fiction is popular,’ Claggett said, ‘because a whole lot of people are beginning to think along those lines.’

  ‘Final negative, the novels particularly, and many of the stories, are no more than good American westerns rewritten. Instead of a cowboy loving his horse, you fellows love your space machines.’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘But the virtues of these books,’ Mott said, touching them with his fingers, ‘are many, and I can see why fellows like you, Claggett, find such enjoyment. They’re very well written. Wonderful touches. Strong insights. You know, when you brought these books in here I expected juvenile junk. But these are well done, at least as good as some of the novels I used to read when I had spare time.

  ‘And to a gratifying degree, they all had something substantial to say. They really grappled with ideas … concepts … the things about to happen. In that respect they were damned refreshing. But now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.’

  ‘Yes,’ Claggett said, ‘I knew all you’ve said so far twenty years ago.’

  ‘These men were far out on the frontier. They saw things that not even the NACA engineers at Langley were ready to accept as impending realities. I’m stirred by how clearly the best of these writers could visualize what was about to happen. Nothing we’ve been doing the last six years went unanticipated.’

  ‘That’s why I was so excited by these smoke dreams,’ Claggett said. ‘I was far out in space, and my teachers were futzing around with one hundred miles up. I’ve been one hundred miles up and it’s not even a beginning. The Moon? Nothing. Send me to Mars. That’s the first real step. These men were doing my thinking for me.’

  ‘But in the midst of this praise we have to remember one thing. These men had a free ride. They never had to lay their lives or their reputations on the line. Men like me did not have that indulgence. We had to get a specific instrument weighing a given number of pounds to a given altitude and bring it back with all its telemetry functioning. We have to bring you two back with your telemetry in order.’

  ‘But the books were fun, weren’t they?’ Claggett asked.

  ‘They were. But I suspect it was only a childish sort of fun.’

  ‘Isn’t that the spirit we’re trying to keep alive?’ Claggett asked, and when he grinned the gap between his broken front teeth appeared as if in the face of a delighted child reading one of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books about the glamorous princesses on Mars.

  Gemini, the flight of the Twins, was best seen as a provisional program halfway between the exploratory one-man flights of Mercury and the culminating three-man flights of Apollo. It had five obligations which had to be discharged before the more important Moon flights could be attempted: 1) to prove that two men could survive extended flights; 2) to compile information on the effect of weightlessness; 3) to prove that man could walk in space and perform specific operational tasks of importance; 4) to demonstrate that one spacecraft could rendezvous and dock with another; and 5) when these jobs were completed, to bring the capsule down very close to the designated rescue ship.

  Each of these desiderata had been handled more or less successfully by one or another of the previous Gemini flights, but the tour planned for Claggett and Pope would endeavor to bring them all together in one master demonstration. It would, for example, cover sixteen days of fairly constant experimentation. The spacecraft would seek out and dock with two different target ships left orbiting in space from previous docking attempts, Agena-A in low orbit, Agena-B in one much higher, and when docking was completed with the latter, the Agena’s rocket would be fired in an attempt to soar higher than man had ever gone before. John Pope would spend seventeen hours walking in space, doing repair jobs on the two Agenas. And Claggett vowed that he would bring his Gemini to splashdown within a quarter of a mile of the USS Tulagi waiting west of Hawaii.

  The important flight had another overtone of which the two astronauts were especially aware. The six tremendously exciting flights of the one-man Mercury so far had been conducted by astronauts from the original Sacred Seven, while the two-man Gemini had been dominated by men from the charismatic Second Group—Armstrong, Borman, Lovell, Young—with some help from three of the Sacred Seven, Cooper, Schirra and Grissom. The adventurous work had been handled by the old-timers, and many thought that it should continue to be.

  But Dr. Mott had argued strenuously, before his attack, that the less-dramatic men from the Solid Six should also be given a chance, along with a few from the Third Group, like Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins. Randy Claggett had performed well in the right-hand seat of one flight, which had accomplished almost nothing because of parts failures, and his report on that mission was already a classic:

  Commander and pilot had accumulated a total of seven hundred hours in simulators and were as well prepared as they could normally have been. But at Allied Aviation in Los Angeles the people responsible for assembling the fuel tank ran into bad luck. I found that Mr. Bassett, who was responsible for the nonflammable lining, caught cold and was not on the job when the lining was inspected. His assistant, Mr. Krepke, was well prepared to stand in, but his wife went into labor pains three days early and he left. His assistant, Mr. Colvin, was in Seattle that day, consulting with Boeing, so the job was left to Mr. Swinheart, whose regular responsibility was the electrical wiring, and because he was so concerned about doing a good job on the lining, which he did backward, he forgot to check the wiring. His assistant, Mr. Untermacher, was absent that day because his eleven-year-old son was playing in a championship Little League game, so no word was passed to his assistant, a Mr. Sullivan, whom I did not see.

  As a result of the unfortunate omissions, the lining of the fuel tank was not secured and the electrical wiring was not given the final inspection which would have shown even a high-school science teacher that the control switch would not work when activated. For these good reasons the three-hundred-million-dollar flight could not go forward, and only because the commander had iron balls did the crew land safely in the Pacific.

  The crew for this culminating flight had been put together with
studied care. Randy Claggett was a known factor, an unflappable test pilot who could bring to safety a seagull with two broken wings, and John Pope had the most reliable and solid record in the corps. He said little, always did twice as much as was required, and would have been voted by his fellow astronauts as the man they would prefer to have in the cockpit as their copilot, always assuming that it was they who sat in the left-hand seat. If the Solid Six could field a team with every chance of success, this was it, and everyone was pleased with the choice except Tucker Thompson, who had not even yet decided how to play these two difficult wives, Debby Dee and Penny. Debby Dee had stated that she would not come to Cocoa Beach and eat those sonnombeechin’ oysters at the Bali Hai, while Penny said quietly that she would of course stay in Washington and follow the launch on the television set in her office.

  Before the flight could be launched the two astronauts had to master one final skill, a most beautiful and intricate exercise, and the scholars whose job it was to drill them in it now appreciated the fact that NASA had required superior intelligence in the men who would go into space. Claggett and Pope would be required to project themselves into universes which could be perceived only intellectually.

  Dr. Mott, in charge of this indoctrination, called the two men out to those vast salt flats surrounding Edwards Air Force Base, where he started with a simple two-dimensional experiment. Placing each man in a Jeep, with Pope well in front and Claggett trailing off to one side, he instructed them over headphones: Tope, maintain your heading without deviation in direction or speed. Steady fifty mph. Claggett, keep your eyes left and watch Pope’s Jeep until you have a sure sense of what it’s doing. Then accelerate to sixty-five mph and calculate a straight line that will carry you to a point where you feel sure you’ll intercept him.’

  They did this a dozen times, until Claggett became expert in calculating in his head the trajectory which would probably enable him to intersect; also, he could identify in advance the spot where the intersection would occur. In fact, he became a human computer, feeding into the kinesthetic part of his brain the relevant data and almost intuitively getting the answer.

  Then Pope was placed in the pursuing Jeep, and in somewhat longer time than it had taken Claggett, he, too, converted himself into a computer.

  ‘You’re really quite remarkable,’ Mott told them. ‘You’ve acquired a very subtle coordination of eye, hand and foot for seeing, for steering and for acceleration. Both of you, in your last runs, achieved rendezvous in a straight line. But nothing you’ve learned on these salt flats applies in space.

  ‘Because when you transpose this problem into space, you add the complicating factor of altitude, and everything you’ve learned changes. If you try by your own physical perceptions to bring your Gemini into rendezvous with your Agena, you’ll fail every time. Oh, you can make a coincidence. You can come quite close. But at that moment you’ll be in an entirely different orbit—you going one way, Agena another, and you’ll pass slowly, beautifully, just out of range.’

  He took the astronauts back to Edwards, and on a very big blackboard, drew a diagram which magically unlocked the system; it was a perfect demonstration of how one intelligent man can convey to another arcane facts that might never be comprehended without the aid of a drawing: ‘This big circle is the Earth. This is its center. This first blue circle outside the Earth is your initial orbit in Gemini. This red circle farther out is the orbit of Agena-A. The green circle way out is the orbit of Agena-B. Now watch.’

  From the center of the Earth he drew radii, not too far apart, which intersected the four circles: Earth’s surface, Gemini orbit, the two Agena orbits, and with a very heavy line he emphasized on each circle the distance between the radii.

  ‘The crucial fact to master is that the farther away from Earth you move, the slower your vehicle goes. When you’re a hundred miles up in this blue circle, your speed will be about seventeen thousand five hundred mph. In the red circle, at two hundred miles, about seventeen thousand two hundred fifty. And the Moon, which is also a spacecraft far off the diagram, has an orbital speed of only two thousand three hundred mph. Remember, if you stay low, you go faster. But also, if you stay down here in the blue circle closest to Earth, the total length of an orbit is much shorter. So if you stay low, you gain two ways, speed and distance covered.’

  He paused, reviewed what he had been saying, and added, ‘I want you to burn this diagram into your brains. Because successful rendezvous depends upon understanding it.’

  After they had analyzed every aspect of it, and had imagined themselves in their Gemini above the Earth but well below the orbits of the two target craft, Mott resumed. At the points where the left-hand radius cut the three circles he placed little magnetic simulations of the three spacecraft, and began his extraordinary explanation: ‘Let’s say that I am Agena-B way up here, Dr. Stanhope is Agena-A in middle position, and you two men are Gemini close in. You want to make rendezvous with me, all of us traveling at eighteen thousand miles an hour. What would you normally do, Claggett?’

  ‘I’d eyeball it, calculate where the point of interception was, and burn my engines to get to it.’

  ‘In other words, you’d burn your fuel to ascend toward Agena-B?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Completely wrong. Look at the diagram. If you climb, you slow down as you move into a higher orbit. You’re bound to wind up far, far behind your target and then waste fuel trying to catch up. By going faster, you actually go slower.’

  ‘That sounds insane.’

  ‘Let’s take another example. You’re in the same orbit as Agena-B, but trailing. How will you catch up?’

  ‘I’m afraid to give you a sensible answer.’

  ‘To catch up, you slow down. Drop into a lower orbit, where you acquire a faster speed, and you gain rapidly on your target in the higher orbit.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Claggett said, but Pope, who had continued his study of astronomy and celestial mechanics, cried, ‘Hey! At the lower orbit, we’d be on the circumference of a much smaller circle.’

  ‘Right,’ Mott said, ‘and going faster, to boot.’

  ‘I’ll take that on faith,’ Claggett said. ‘But how in hell do I ever get hooked up with that flyin’ sonnombeech? If I burn toward it, I always miss.’

  Mott clapped his hands. ‘Randy, you’ve learned the big lesson,’ and he drew other diagrams to illustrate the mysterious relationships of two hurtling spacecraft on near but different orbits, and Claggett asked, ‘How will I ever find the proper orbit?’ and Mott replied, ‘You never would, not in a million years. But the computer will.’

  The next maneuver that Mott proposed for his pupils was most complicated: ‘Randy, you’re in Gemini down here and you must intercept Agena-B up here. Don’t go for the target. Burn straight ahead. Go faster to go slower.’

  ‘Doc, I understand that part. But what in hell do I do next?’

  ‘As you move to a higher orbit, your speed will begin to drop off, and believe it or not, if you obey the figures your computer will be feeding you, you’ll bring your Gemini right in behind the target. The computer will time it so that when you’re about a hundred feet apart, your speeds will be identical, and so will your orbit. Then your twelve-year-old son could dock the two vehicles, because you can make the Gemini move a quarter of a mile an hour faster than the Agena, ease it into a docking.’

  Claggett and Pope looked at each other, and the former said, with his bright Texas grin, ‘Like the pretty girl said in My Fair Lady, “I think I got it.” ’

  ‘I believe the professor said that,’ Mott said. ‘And to protect you,’ he added, ‘we always time the docking so it occurs in the daylight part of the orbit.’

  ‘Real thoughtful,’ Claggett said.

  ‘So think about the orbits tonight. Memorize the diagram. And keep telling yourself, “To go faster, I must go slower.” ’

  Next day he placed them again in their Jeeps, taking them to a remote part of the s
alt flats, where he had marked three concentric roadways. ‘Claggett, you’re in Gemini orbit on the inside track. Pope, you’re Agena-A next out. I’ll be Agena-B farthest out. If we all start from the same radius, Gemini will drift far ahead, so Claggett must start from behind you.

  ‘Remember, there’s a specific speed associated with each orbit. You, Claggett, on the inside, have to drive at sixty mph, Pope at fifty-five, and me at fifty. When I tell you over the headphones “Burn engines,” accelerate to sixty-five, but as you drift outward toward Pope’s orbit, your speed will decrease well below Pope’s, say to fifty. And that should put you in perfect position right behind him, which is what we want, isn’t it?’

  Under radio communication the three Jeeps started forth, and when they were in position Mott instructed: ‘Claggett, burn engines, but when you have speed, try moving directly up at Pope, in the old way.’ In three attempts, using the system that would have worked on land, Claggett failed miserably, so on the fourth try Mott suggested: ‘Now try it the way we talked about. Burn straight ahead, pick up speed, then drift quietly up to Pope’s orbit.’

  With exquisite precision Randy Claggett accelerated to sixty-five mph, drifted up, slowed down as he had been taught, and with a final adjustment, matched his speed to Pope’s in a perfect intercept. ‘It can be done!’ he shouted over the intercom, so for three hours the Jeeps moved back and forth in obedience to the new rules, until both Claggett and Pope could achieve rendezvous and docking while moving either up to a slower orbit or down to a faster.

  For two days the men repeated these maneuvers, after which Mott astonished them by saying, ‘Now you must forget everything I’ve taught you, because in space you’re not on a flat surface where ordinary rules apply. You’re in space, where eyeballing a problem does no good at all. The Russians have tried five times to make rendezvous and have failed every time, even though they show us photographs of their spaceships only a few leagues apart. They were on different orbits and they might as well have been ten thousand leagues apart, for they were never going to meet. Today when we go out to the circles, Claggett, you must imagine yourself not going across a salt flat to catch Pope, but on a diagonal right up into the sky, and your eyes will not be reliable judges of where you are.’