Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘That’s hard to believe … sometimes.’

  ‘But we always seem to be you here, me in Korea. You here, me at Pax River … or the Moon.’

  ‘You trained me to be a Navy wife, John. You did a great job.’

  ‘So it’s still you in Washington, me in Fremont?’

  ‘During these good years of our lives, yes. But we can handle it.’

  ‘I intend to,’ John said.

  To honor John Pope’s return to his hometown, the citizens and the university united in organizing a gala celebration worthy of a national hero, but the community itself was far from united on anything else; in fact, it was riven into warring segments.

  Religious fundamentalists who believed in the literal truth of every word in the Old Testament had some time before launched a crusade in the state of Fremont to expunge from the school curriculum, elementary through university graduate work, any reference to Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the movement might have died under the scorn of editorials and expert testimony had not the Reverend Leopold Strabismus of the United Scripture Alliance of Los Angeles seen the situation as a heaven-sent opportunity to lead a publicity campaign against godless humanism: ‘We have a statewide arena, Marcia. We have a new area which has never heard our preachments before. And I think we can command a national audience.’

  He therefore moved into his wife’s state with great force: tents for rural meetings, sound systems to amplify his thundering voice, choirs to provide music, and local enthusiasts to keep the excitement moving. Fremont had never seen the like, and people who normally might not have bothered with a revivalist’s meeting flocked to hear Dr. Strabismus excoriate science, Communism, false prophets and Yale University. It was an excellent side show, at first, but it quickly degenerated into a searing attack on the general intellectual establishment.

  The most popular member of the Strabismus troupe was not Strabismus himself, huge and hefty in his white suit, nor his very attractive wife, who nodded vigorously when he made his major points, but the appealing little animal, quite tame now and hungry for applause and bananas, who participated in the lectures as Chimp-Champ-Chump:

  ‘Do you good folks really believe that this here monkey was your grandfather? Do you accept the teaching of the atheistic humanists at Yale University that this here monkey lived two million years ago, breeding a nest of half-animals, half-men, when the Bible itself says God made this Earth about six thousand years ago, and we have proof to prove it?’

  His assault became so powerful and his logic so persuasive that the voters of Fremont placed a referendum on the ballot so that the citizens of the entire state could vote on whether Genesis was correct or Darwin, whether God was supreme or some Communist atheistic humanists at Yale University.

  Men and women defending each point of view stormed into the state, and the air was filled with acrimony. In a rousing revival for rural communities in the western half of the state, Strabismus spelled out the goals of his campaign:

  ‘I got me on’y five points, and they’re taken straight from the Bible. First, in no tax-supported institution in this state, elementary school through the university, can anyone teach Darwin’s atheistic theory as a fact. Second, in every institution, God’s creationism has got to be taught as the fact that all sensible people believe. Third, we have got to erase from our textbooks any reference to millions and billions of years. This Earth came into bein’ about six thousand years ago, and that’s that. Fourth, we have got to stop talkin’ about dinosaurs and the like as havin’ lived a very long time ago and died out for some confused geologic reason. They died in the Flood, that’s how they died. Five, we don’t want no more geology of any kind pollutin’ our kids’ minds.’

  When the full force of his crusade was appreciated and it was seen that his side had a chance of winning the referendum, scholars from other states and textbook publishers from New York and Boston streamed into the state to try to restore reason, but they were powerless to quench the firestorm he had ignited.

  He based his persuasive reasoning on two books which a Mississippi clergyman of some erudition had brought to his attention. The first was by Philip Gosse, an English writer, who argued simply that there were fossils, yes, and there were dinosaur bones, and there were geological strata, and everything was exactly as Darwin and the geologists described it. The secret was that in the year 4004 B.C. God had created the world exactly as Genesis said, and had hidden all these bits of evidence in the rocks and in the dinosaur bones as a kind of temptation to man’s intellectual presumptions. Gosse explained everything in such simple and beautiful terms that Strabismus said, ‘No further discussion is necessary. The record is exactly what the atheistic professors at Yale say. It has to be, because God placed it there on the day of Creation.’

  The second book was extremely useful when arguing with people from the universities who had a smattering of knowledge. It was George McCready Price’s The New Geology, which Marcia Strabismus sold for ten dollars a copy, to those who sought the truth. It was a formidable essay, well founded in scientific jargon and difficult to rebut. Its major thesis appealed to all who suffered from the tyranny of science, and when Strabismus translated this into his own terms it made a persuasive argument:

  ‘These here scientists try to tell us that fossils found in rocks always grow from primitive forms to complex forms like you and me. And to prove this they show us that the primitive forms always appear in the earliest rocks, and the complex forms in later rocks. But how do they date the layers of rock? You stop right now and tell me how they date the layers of rock.

  ‘They do it by seem’ that primitive forms are in what they call the older layers. And the complex forms in the younger. Don’t you see that they’s arguin’ in a great big circle. It’s jest like a boy tellin’ his girl, “You ought to kiss me because it’s Valentimes Day, and Valentimes Day became special because that’s when girls kissed boys.”

  ‘That’s crazy reasonin’ and the boy knows it, and the scientists know it, and they’s pullin’ the wool over the eyes of the public. I say it’s time to stop.’

  Several professors of geology volunteered to debate Strabismus, but he would meet them only in his tent, where the choir, the charm of Mrs. Strabismus, the cheers of his supporters and the antics of Chimp-Champ-Chump put the scientists to rout.

  Leopold Strabismus was a most formidable adversary, much better educated than most of his opponents, and as the time for voting in the referendum approached, it became obvious that the citizens of a great state were going to throw evolution, geology, anthropology and paleontology out of the state curriculum. Two hundred years of the most painstaking accumulation of data and understanding were to be tossed overboard.

  Why did Strabismus pursue this campaign so frenetically and with such diabolic effectiveness? He made no money from the crusade, since everything that reached him in the nightly collection was spent on rentals of the tent and the sound system. He could not have done so because of ignorance of the subject matter, for he had written Ph.D. theses on both evolution and Devonian geology. And he certainly did not act from deep religious conviction, for he had none.

  He was driven by two great compulsions: a desire for power, and a longing for revenge against the academic community which had refused to accept him on his own dubious terms. Sooner than most, he had sensed that America was becoming surfeited with science and longed for simpler explanations, and very early in his crusade he had discovered that people in the hinterlands enjoyed listening to attacks on places like Yale University and institutions like the New York Times.

  But most of all, his antennas, those remarkably sensitive probers of the national consciousness, reported to him that America was preparing itself for a major swing to the right, and he proposed to help lead that swing.

  What were his own inclinations? His Italian grandparents would have been Christian democrats had such a party existed in Mount Vernon, and his Jewish grandparents were still avowed socialists. H
is parents on each side had softened these beliefs, becoming standard Democrats who voted now and then for really good Republicans like General Eisenhower and Jacob Javits. In the normal unfolding of events, Martin Scorcella should have been a moderate liberal, which is exactly what he was until his expulsion from New Haven.

  Then he began to wonder, falling into the habit of telling jokes on himself in public: ‘I came from a family of eleven Democrats, but I learned to read.’ And what did he read? Eugene Lyons, Igor Gouzenko and, especially, Ayn Rand, and gradually he came to see that liberalism with its state-social approach was horribly wrong.

  His next decision was vital, one often made by brilliant young men since the days of Greece: If society is rotten, I shall manipulate society. He had started with little green men, moved on to the founding of a bogus university and now to a religious temple, but what not even his wife Marcia had detected, he planned soon to surrender his basilica in Los Angeles and acquire several thousand acres in the suburbs to house a temple and a real university based on the Bible. In the meantime, he had the Fremont plebiscite to win, for he hoped that if he could encourage even one state to outlaw evolution, a groundswell would develop, and as its champion in state after state, he would inevitably become a man of considerable power.

  When the vote was counted, the people of Fremont had elected to rescind most of modern science, and the educators of the state began the painful process of weeding out from their libraries any books which spoke well of Darwin, geology or dinosaurs. The task was easier than it sounded because avid citizens volunteered for the job, and there was a general cleansing.

  It was into this heated atmosphere that John Pope returned, and there was general apprehension when the university announced that its most beloved professor emeritus, Karl Anderssen, who had taught John Pope his astronomy, would give the major address at the celebration. Anderssen was now a very old man and there was cause to fear that he might ramble on, and a possibility that although he had not participated in the fight against Strabismus, he might speak unguardedly and open old wounds. The officials were relieved, therefore, when Anderssen said, ‘I’ll give my speech honoring John in the planetarium.’

  ‘The place is small enough,’ the president of the university assured his board, ‘so that the rabble can’t force their way in.’

  They convened at eight in the evening, the intellectual cream of the community, many of whom had voted to outlaw evolution and geology, but they were not fanatics and they wanted to hear what the old man had to say.

  ‘Tonight is the twenty-second of June 1976, and when the lights go down we shall see the heavens as they are outside this planetarium. Now, I’m going to turn the sky-clock back 922 years. It is again June 22 in A.D. 1054. The sky looks almost the same as it does tonight, a few planets in different positions, but that’s about all.

  ‘I’m going to speed through eighteen days, and here we have the heavens as they appeared at sunset on the night of 10 July 1054. Let’s go to midnight in Baghdad, where Arabic astronomers are looking at the sky, as they always did. Nothing unusual. Now it’s 11 July 1054, toward three in the morning. Still nothing exceptional. But look! There in the constellation Taurus!’

  In the silence of the planetarium the audience watched in awe as an extremely brilliant light began to emerge from the far tip of the Bull’s horn. It exceeded anything else in the heavens, infinitely brighter even than Venus, and increasing in brilliance each moment.

  ‘It was a supernova, in the constellation Taurus, and we know the exact date because Arabic astronomers in many countries saw it and made notes which confirmed the sightings in China. Indians in Arizona saw it and marveled. In the South Pacific natives marked the miracle. And watch as daylight comes in 1054! The new star is so bright it can be seen even against the rays of the Sun, which was not far off in Cancer.

  ‘For twenty-three days, the astronomers of Cathay and Araby tell us, this supernova dominated the sky, almost as bright as the Sun, the most incandescent event in recorded history. No other nova ever came close to this one. Look at it! Challenging even the Sun! And watch how it commandeered the night sky, this flaming beacon.’

  He allowed his planetarium to run rather slowly, re-creating the cycle of those twenty-three unequaled days, when watchers throughout the world had been stunned by this miracle. By day, by night, it filled the planetarium so that John and Penny Pope could see each other in its radiance, and the faces of all around them. And then, on the evening of the second day of August 1054 the great new star diminished, fading with a speed more precipitous than that with which it had arisen, until Taurus looked as it had for a thousand years and would look for a thousand years thereafter.

  ‘Why do I tell you these things on the night we honor our cherished son John Pope? For one simple reason. This great star, which must have been the most extraordinary sight in the history of the heavens during mankind’s observation, was noted in China, in Arabia, in Alaska, in Arizona and in the South Pacific, for we have their records to prove it. But in Europe nobody saw it. From Italy to Moscow, from the Urals to Ireland, nobody saw it. At least, they made no mention of it. They lived through one of the Earth’s most magnificent spectacles and nobody bothered even to note the fact in any parchment, or speculate upon it in any manuscript.

  ‘We know the event took place, for with a telescope tonight we can see the remnants of the supernova hiding in Taurus, but we have searched every library in the western world without finding a single shred of evidence that the learned people of Europe even bothered to notice what was happening about them.

  ‘An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.’

  Never had NASA’s planning been more delicate. In the great orbiter mission to Mars in 1971 there had been no attempt to land on the planet itself, and since the Mariner remained aloft, taking from a distance those remarkable photographs which delighted the scientific world, there was no worry about safe landing sites. But on this flight the Viking was going to land on the actual surface of Mars and send its photographs from there. In 1971 Mars had been 75,000,000 miles away. This time it would be 199,000,000, and that, too, made a difference.

  But what gave the exploration a touch of elegance was the time chosen for the landing. Starting back in 1961, when the trip was first contemplated, with little apparent chance of success at that time, skilled mathematicians had laid out a timetable which could deposit the machine on Mars at three o’clock Eastern Daylight Saving Time on the afternoon of the Fourth of July 1976. This daring, intricate, wonderful, imaginative feat would thus serve as capstone to our nation’s two-hundredth birthday.

  Year by year NASA leaders had asked their experts: ‘Are we keeping to schedule? Will it land on the Fourth of July?’ In 1975 they began asking monthly, and after the Viking was launched in August of that year, they checked week by week. Now, in the centennial year itself, with the landing date looming ahead, they verified their figures daily, and always they received the same answer: ‘We’re on schedule to land at three in the afternoon on the Fourth of July.’

  Since the government lacked any other spectacular event to use as the highlight of its two-hundredth birthday, the politicians fastened upon the Mars landing as the apex of their celebration. President Ford would make a nationwide broadcast congratulating the scientists who had achieved this miracle. The three television networks would relay photographs as they reached the Earth. And the entire world would celebrate with us this exquisite intellectual victory. Thousands of Americans in all parts of the nation geared their lives to bringing this stupendous adventure to a successful conclusion.

  The NASA high command asked Dr. Stanley Mott to fly out to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to ensure that there would be no housekeeping glitches in a performance that would be watched by millions, and when he arrived three weeks before the Fourth he was pleased to find that leading scientists were gathering to study the data Viking would be sending back; e
ngineers worked around the clock to keep the spacecraft on target; the Landing Site Selection Team would choose the exact spot for touchdown; the Image Processing Team would determine which of the thousands of photographs would be released to the media; the Inorganic Chemistry Team would analyze the data sent down by sensors; the Surface Sampler Team would concentrate on the actual composition of the planet; and at least three teams would try to collect any evidence which would prove that life had previously existed on Mars … or that it did now in some minute, unfamiliar form.

  It was a dazzling concentration of brilliant minds, made more so when NASA flew in a group of distinguished civilians, not connected with the project but deeply interested in Mars, to conduct a seminar establishing an intellectual framework in which to understand the landing. Jacques Cousteau, lean and magisterial, spoke of the inner forces which goad men to explore, whether on Mars or in the ocean deeps. Ray Bradbury, the science-fiction giant, exploded into poetry to convey his feelings, while crippled little Philip Morrison of MIT, one of the subtlest brains in the world, shared his reflections as Viking sped silently into orbit.

  On the third of July, with President Ford preparing his notes to inform the world that we had landed on Mars and with television cameras crowding the room in which Dr. Mott and his men would make their scientific disclosures, a small group of NASA scientists, the ultimate wizards of this project, studied the latest close-up photographs of the site chosen for landing six years earlier and were shocked by what the scanner was revealing.

  ‘We can’t land in that nest of craters!’

  ‘Look! The President of the United States is standing by. All those television cameras are waiting out there.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn. You can’t land a fragile machine in terrain like that.’

  ‘You don’t give a damn for the President of the United States?’