Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

Pope did not ask in what ways, for he often felt the same way about himself.

  On the sixth day Pope’s time of testing approached, for he was required to climb into a special suit, strap cumbersome gear to his back, leave the capsule, and retrieve from the flank of Agena-A a dosimeter (dose meter) which had been left there a year earlier to monitor the amount of radiation accumulated by men voyaging in space. While walking, he would be attached to the mother craft by an umbilical which would bring him oxygen and he would carry a small kit of tools with which to work on the Agena.

  It required more than an hour, with constant help from Claggett, to don the suit, and an unexpected fifteen minutes to wrestle open the door to the hatchway from which he would exit, but before this could be completed, Randy had to get into his spacesuit also, for once the hatch was opened, it would remain that way, which meant that the capsule would afford no oxygen. Both men would be in space, the difference being that Randy would remain inside the shell of the capsule.

  This preliminary part of the exercise required much more time and energy than Pope had calculated, because in the simulators on Earth, things had gone rather more smoothly, and for a simple reason: the simulator existed in one G, so that by merely leaning an elbow against something, one gained stability; but in null gravity, if one pushed his elbow against a wall, even slightly, one sent his body spinning across the room and he could not stop his aimless flight until he succeeded in grasping something, which was why every astronaut who returned from space told those who debriefed him: ‘More handholds. More footclamps.’

  At last both astronauts were suited and the hatch opened. Outside waited the boundless reach of space, that colorless, weightless, formless medium in which the universe exists with all its stars and galaxies and mighty conformations as yet unknown to man. How majestic it was, how inviting, and as Pope hesitated in the doorway, he was like an infant about to leave the womb which had been so pleasant and enter the world which would be so infinitely more exciting.

  To the east, as he calculated his position, although this term meant little, blazed the incredible Sun, wasting energy at a rate which must imperil it after another fifteen or twenty billion years, poor fated thing. It stood at the margin between Capricornus and Aquarius and thus obliterated Pope’s guardian star, Altair, and its bright associate Vega. To the west, or away from the Sun, shone the dark night with the glorious winter constellations in view: Orion, the Lion and the one that watched over this flight, Gemini. No astronaut who went into space would know more about the stars than Pope, and now as he prepared to walk among them he greeted them as if they had always been his counselors, and took quiet delight in the fact that he would see those southern constellations which his first professor, Anderssen of Fremont State, had never been allowed to see: ‘I’ll say hello for him to Achernar and Miaplacidus.’

  Most impressive of all, below rode the planet Earth, its features ascertainable when in daylight, barely suggested when its spinning carried one-half the surface into darkness. How big it seemed at times, how small now as Pope looked down upon it from a distance: ‘Hey, Randy. It really is a planet.’

  ‘Jump, you chicken.’ And he was off into space.

  He moved with all four extremities slightly extended, like a falling parachute diver, but he did not fall, for there was no gravity to command him, or rather, as he had phrased it to himself so many times: There is gravity from every item in the universe, even my wife’s teacup exerts its gravity upon the Galaxy Andromeda, but it doesn’t factor very much. Of course, the Earth’s mass, slightly less than two hundred miles distant, continued to exert enormous gravitational pull, but it was so delicately counterbalanced by the centrifugal force generated by the spacecraft’s forward velocity that Pope was effectively free of any detectable gravitational effects.

  He was aware that he had started the EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) rather tired, so he moved cautiously in his approach to the waiting Agena, and he supposed that when he reached the monster he would find time to rest, but when he got there he found himself confronted by an entirely new problem. There was nothing he could grab hold of, and when he endeavored to fasten himself to the huge, slippery target he merely drifted about, bruising his knees and elbows as he struggled vainly to hold fast.

  After a half-hour of this he was sweating so furiously that his face mask began to steam, so he slowed down, but then he remembered that he was supposed to detach the dosimeter from the Agena and bring it back to Earth, so he moved awkwardly along the hulk till he reached the three bolts holding it. And then he faced a new problem, for when he took from his kit the special monkey wrench and fitted it to one of the nuts, he found he could accomplish nothing. If he applied pressure to the wrench handle, hoping thus to apply torque to the nut, he found that since he had no purchase, it was he and not the nut that revolved. No matter how simple the task he attempted, whenever he exerted force in one direction, his body flew off in the opposite.

  For twenty minutes he tried vainly to perform the planned task, and accomplished nothing. Tears of frustration came to his eyes and fogged his visor, and all the joy of walking free in space was dissipated; what was worse, he was becoming so dangerously debilitated that he must in common prudence pull himself back to the capsule before he became so totally exhausted that Claggett would have to undertake the impossible task of maneuvering an inert mass.

  ‘I’m coming in,’ he told his partner.

  ‘You’re scheduled for thirty-four more minutes.’

  ‘I’m coming in or you’ll have to come out and get me,’ and when he reached the hatchway to the capsule he was much too tired to climb in, and he rested there for nearly half an hour until he recovered his strength.

  ‘It’s no picnic out there,’ he said when he got his helmet off in the repressurized capsule.

  ‘Next time better luck,’ Claggett said. As commander of this flight he refused to accept defeat on any point, but he also knew that Pope had been near collapse.

  He devised an interesting amusement for the next flight walk. When the astronauts accumulated a body of refuse, including bags of urine, they vented it through an ingenious system of locks, and in doing so one morning—Houston time, because in this orbit a kind of morning occurred every hour and twenty-six minutes—some of the ejecta had smeared Claggett’s window and he complained about it so constantly that on the spur of the moment Pope said, ‘I’ll go out and give it a wash,’ which was what Claggett had intended.

  This time the space walk was a huge success, for it pertained only to the Gemini itself, which, being the last in the series, had been modified by McDonnell to provide some sixteen extra handholds and footclamps. Now Pope had something to wedge himself against so that he could use the flattened expanse of his body to counterbalance the return thrust of whatever he was working upon, and in this way he was able to apply torque without having it spin him around. Also, by moving himself to the opposite side of the craft, he could give Claggett’s window an effective cleaning.

  That night the two men talked at length with Houston to see if anyone could devise some way that would enable Pope to retrieve the dosimeter, and CapCom said quietly, ‘Dr. Feldman is most eager for you to retrieve it. Data are badly needed on the accumulation of radiation in space,’ and Pope replied, ‘Give me some guidance,’ so three astronauts hurried to the deep swimming pool at Huntsville, and after suiting up and applying weights to their belts, achieved the sensation of null gravity and went underwater to work on a mock-up of the Agena hull. They suggested that Pope try establishing leverage by hooking his left foot in a hold he had overlooked, by approaching the nuts from a different angle, and by keeping his belly, one leg and one elbow disposed so as to distribute his weight differently: ‘We think this will allow you to apply torque.’ He went to sleep at what they had agreed to call night, swearing to Claggett, ‘If I have to use my teeth, I’m going to loosen those bolts,’ but Claggett had a better idea: ‘I think we stowed a tiny can of oil somewhere in here, and I
want you to go over one hour early and soup ‘em up.’

  Next morning the two men dressed extremely slowly, allowing no perspiration to accumulate, and then they opened the hatch with a minimum of effort, and Pope, taking very slow breaths to control his respiration, left the capsule carrying almost nothing except the tiny can of oil, which he applied to the bolts before returning to the capsule. He did not try to climb back in, but simply held on, drifting across Africa and Australia, to whose communicators he spoke.

  ‘I feel great,’ he assured Claggett, and when the latter handed him the tool kit, he set off for the Agena with real enthusiasm. Positioning himself astride the huge craft as the Houston men had advised, he found that by grasping it with one foot, one knee, one elbow and gut, he could achieve a kind of leverage, so that when he began to twist the lubricated nuts, they moved and not he.

  ‘Semper fidelis!’ he called to Claggett as he unbolted the dosimeter, stowing it carefully in a pouch attached to his belt, but when it worked free, one bolt fell away … well, it certainly didn’t fall away, for there was no gravity to attract it, but it slid out of his control and moved away from the Agena, impelled by his futile attempt to retrieve it, and there it drifted like a minute planet, circling the Earth at an altitude of 149.3 miles above the surface, 4,108.9 miles above the molten center.

  Six days had now passed, and the next three were spent uneventfully discharging tasks which had been set by the ground experts, especially the space scientists. This series required the most exact timing, collection of data and attention:

  … Study the effects of weightlessness on neurospora to see if any genetic damage is done by extended voyages in space.

  … Make 149 photographs of different Earth terrains using the Maurer camera.

  … Make 36 photographs of gegenschein, the faint nebulosity which appears opposite the Sun in certain conditions.

  … Investigate the L-4 and L-5 equilibrium points of the Earth-Moon system to determine whether clouds of particulate matter have collected as predicted by LaGrange in 1772.

  … Check UHF-VHF polarization as it affects radio transmission through the atmosphere.

  … Accumulate data on frog-egg growth in space.

  … Do bioassays of body fluids, which meant urinating into a special bag. (But this study failed because Claggett broke his bag twice. The medics were sure he did it on purpose.)

  On the tenth day they rose early, stowed every piece of movable gear, fastening pens and cups to the walls with Velcro, against the violent shock which they would soon receive. Checking with Houston, they reassured themselves that Agena-B, the one with ample fuel and good engines, was about twenty miles behind them, so they speeded up sharply in order to fall back, and as soon as they attained a higher orbit, the Agena, below them, started moving ahead. When it was well in the lead, they slowed down so that their relative speed would increase, and sure enough, they came right in on target, making a docking so perfect they could not feel the join.

  ‘Houston, we’re ready for fire.’

  ‘Everything is go,’ CapCom said, and with that vote of confidence, Claggett fired the powerful main engine of the Agena, which the Twins were facing, and for a full twenty-nine seconds a wild explosion of fire and flying fragments engulfed the capsule as the men felt six G’s knocking them about. At an additional speed of 469 miles per hour, the whole assembly shot away from Earth until it reached an orbit of 748.3 miles, higher than any man had gone before.

  ‘Holy cow!’ Claggett cried into the mike. ‘Houston, that was some sleigh ride.’ And then, with the world listening, he added a most unfortunate afterthought: ‘If God was a golfer and made an approach shot like that with a niblick, He would be cheering.’ Thousands of religious listeners felt that he had blasphemed, and NASA would spend hours and days denying that that had been his intention. ‘God is not a golfer,’ one of the journals said in harsh rebuke, and Thompson would have difficulty preventing Claggett from responding, ‘Well, if He is, He made a great niblick shot on that one.’

  Pope was more restrained, and his enthusiastic words were piped eagerly into the worldwide communications system, to be heard instantaneously in the very parts of Earth about which he was speaking: ‘Oh, how magnificent the Earth is from here! I can see its edge as it starts on the way back. The line between night and day down there is as clean as a knife edge. Oh! Oh! There’s Africa exactly as it should be. And the oceans are blue and I see Asia coming up. Oh, the Himalayas. You should see the beauty of our Earth.’

  It was his casual, tourist photographs, more than two hundred of them made at this great height, that first showed the people of Earth what their planet looked like and what majestic colors it commanded, and the precious thing it was. And at the apogee of their flight, when the Agena was shuddering into permanent orbit, Claggett cried to all the Earth: ‘I wish we could go on forever.’

  The Twins landed in the Pacific Ocean, 781 yards downstream of the Tulagi, where they had been ordered to land sixteen days and 7,000,000 miles ago, and at the debriefing the men voiced only two complaints. Pope: ‘Claggett took country music on his tapes, and I never again want to hear women singing through their noses.’ Claggett: ‘John took what he claimed was Bach and Bartok, and I don’t never want to hear no more of that spaghetti music’

  The Claggett-Pope flight was so successful in every detail, except the collection of urine, that the Gemini program was allowed quietly to phase out. It had served its purposes splendidly, and its cost of $1,147,300,000 had been amply repaid, for Gemini proved that men could survive handsomely in zero G if they exercised their legs, that they could take two monster craft aloft and join them as gently as if they were baby carriages, that they could walk in space and complete tasks if, like Archimedes, they could only find a fulcrum, and that a trip to the Moon was only an extension of the flight that Claggett had contemplated when he cried, ‘I wish we could go on forever.’

  And then the goodies began falling into the laps of the Twins. They addressed a joint session of Congress, had ticker-tape parades, were sent to seven foreign countries as ambassadors and counterthrusts to Yuri Gagarin and his cosmonauts, and were offered free automobiles and enticing real estate deals. But what was really significant, having proved their professionalism, they found it much easier to get T-38s when they wanted them, and in these sleek, swift jets they sped from one part of the country to another, making practical suggestions for the Apollo program that would soon carry them to the Moon.

  The Greek word is hubris, the central theme of the great tragedians. It designates that pride and insolence which infuriates the gods and causes them to strike men down at the height of their success. Hubris had invaded the NASA program, and on the afternoon of 27 January 1967, when three astronauts were running through a routine drill in their capsule atop a Saturn rocket at Canaveral, an unguarded electrical wire threw a spark into the pure oxygen of the cabin, and the resulting fire cremated the men.

  The surviving Solid Six were at the Bali Hai when this occurred, and as the news spread through the community the families clustered automatically together, and Penny Pope was flown to the Cape in a NASA plane, and the ten young people sat in the Dagger Bar—the Claggetts, the Lees, the Bells, the Caters, the Popes—reflecting on the inexorable movement of which they were a part, while in a corner Rhee Soon-Ka sat, unobserved, taking notes, for this was the kind of day she had long anticipated: as a modern Aeschylus, she knew what hubris was.

  Only once did the four families so intricately involved in America’s space program meet together in one place at one time, and that occurred in the Longhorn Motel in a dusty suburb of Houston, Texas, during the climactic July in 1969 when astronauts finally walked on the Moon.

  In preceding years, of course, the men had met one another but never in concert. For example, Senator Grant had known John Pope as a boy in his hometown and had helped get him into Annapolis; he had often consulted with Stanley Mott, sometimes on personal matters; and he had twice su
mmoned Kolff to his Washington offices for reports on what was happening in Alabama, but he had never seen the three together.

  No one of the wives had ever seen all of the other three, not even Penny Pope, who might have been expected to. She had certainly met with the senator’s wife, for the two women had grown up in the same town, and she’d had many occasions for meeting Rachel Mott, but she had never gone down to Alabama to meet Liesl Kolff, who had never ventured into Washington. In fact, the only wife Liesl Kolff knew was Rachel Mott, whom she loved like a younger sister.

  The families should have met a few days earlier at the Cape Canaveral launch of Apollo II; the four men had of course been there to discharge official duties, but two of the wives, Elinor Grant and Liesl Kolff, had preferred staying home. The meeting between Stanley Mott and Dieter Kolff, after seven years of strained separation during which each man had concentrated on his own unique problems, was an emotional one, for Dieter, in a surrender of his old prejudice against manned flight, ran forward to embrace the man who had saved him. ‘Stanley, what an hour of triumph for you!’ Mott clasped the engineer and said, The triumph is yours, old fellow! That day I found you in Germany you promised: “I’ll send a rocket to the Moon.” And in a few hours we’ll be there, your rocket and my man.’

  The bitterness returned, and Dieter said, ‘Not my rocket. It won’t get there. You chose the other solution, the wrong one.’

  Mott, not wishing to reopen that old wound, asked brightly, ‘Where’s Liesl?’ and Dieter said, ‘She was afraid to come.’

  For many years Liesl Kolff had wanted to see the installations in which her husband spent so much of his time, but she had been apprehensive of participating in the gala celebrations which attended the launch in Florida: ‘I’d be out of place. All those expensive wives in their expensive clothes.’ Now, with an opportunity to visit Houston, the very center of space activity, she still demurred. She would have preferred Boston, where her son Magnus had been offered a summer job with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Symphony Pops, with the promise that if he passed rigid tests, he would be given the position of second trumpet for the winter season of 1970 and those to follow. Magnus had known of his mother’s dilemma and over the telephone from Boston had told her: ‘Go to Texas, Mom. You can see me anytime the next ten years. I’m determined to win the permanent job.’ On the night when the astronauts were supposed to land on the Moon he would face his major test: solo part in Stradella’s lyric Concerto in D Major for Trumpet. ‘Please, Mom, go to Houston with Father.’ She complied, and was delighted with the Longhorn Motel and the respect shown her husband.