Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  JOHN: Then why don’t you accept that judgeship they keep talking about?

  PENNY: It was the Carter administration that did the talking. Glancey convinced them I was a Democrat.

  JOHN: What are you, really?

  PENNY: In 1982 I’d be dumb if I wasn’t a Republican.

  JOHN: You know, Penny, when NASA got the six families together that first time at Cocoa Beach, I had a strong feeling that you and I had the best marriage of all. I love you very much. More every year as we grow older. You have a lot of pizazz.

  PENNY: I’m so proud of you I could burst. You’ve really hewn your log to a very straight line, John. Ain’t many like you, kiddo. That’s why I want to see you senator.

  JOHN: Impossible.

  Their incessant arguing slowed down their driving, so they slept that night in eastern Missouri, where they had Mexican food, made some phone calls, and went to a movie, but as they drove through the early morning on the last day, Penny returned to her basic theme:

  PENNY: John, I’m asking you for the last time. Will you declare for the United States Senate?

  JOHN: I cannot.

  PENNY: This is dreadfully serious, John. I must repeat. Will you run?

  JOHN: No.

  She swung the car abruptly off the main highway, sought a gas station, and went inside to make a series of phone calls. When she returned, a handsome, strong-willed lawyer of fifty-five, well versed in the ways of Washington, she announced calmly as she swung the car back onto the road: ‘I have asked my people to inform the papers and the television immediately. I’m entering the Republican primary for the Senate.’

  Captain John Pope, USN (retired), slumped in the right-hand seat of the Buick as it sped toward the Fremont state line and wondered what he should say. If Penny had authorized her people to release the announcement, she would not be deterred now, and his mind twisted and turned, trying vainly to hit upon the right comment. That he would support her, there could be no doubt; she was his wife and he was extremely proud of her accomplishments. He knew her to be one of the best women in America, forceful but loving, hard as nails where principle was concerned but gentle in her personal relationships, and very bright. Both Glancey and Grant had told him at different times, ‘Pope, your wife is just as important to our space program as you are. Because she knows where the bodies are buried.’

  And yet, as a man of honor he would have to make his apologies to Norman Grant, and if asked, state in public that he knew Grant to be a splendid citizen and a good public servant worthy of reelection. It was going to be a difficult spring in the state of Fremont during the Republican primaries.

  His mind then turned to the matter of living arrangements, and he concluded that practically nothing would change—he would remain in Clay and she in Washington, or wherever. They were a Navy family, accustomed to prolonged separations, and he knew they could hack it, as enlisted men said when unpleasant jobs lay ahead, for they always had. And then, smiling quietly as he glanced sideways while Penny roared down the highway, chin forward, he thought of the perfect thing to say: ‘Penny, when I flew Gemini with Claggett, I sat in the right-hand seat. I can do so again.’

  They arrived in Clay at eleven in the morning, and Penny drove directly to the home of the man who had been working quietly in behalf of John Pope for Senator, and there John received a lesson in practical politics, for a committee of nine awaited Penny’s arrival. They had before them some sixteen nominating petitions covering all parts of the state, and all signed on behalf of John Pope, who was refusing to run. The chairman’s wife had carefully typed in a Mrs. before the original candidate’s name, then, following it: (Penny Hardesty).

  ‘That’s illegal as hell,’ John exclaimed. ‘They signed for one person, and you change it to another.’

  ‘Not without permission,’ the chairman said. ‘We spent all last night calling every signer and getting permission to switch.’

  When he looked at Penny, standing erect in the doorway, smiling, neat, suit presentable after three days of travel, he had for the first time a fleeting suspicion that she might really carry this thing off, and when he left the meeting, alone, to report to Senator Grant at the big house on the edge of town he received another jolt—two, in fact.

  The first concerned Mrs. Grant, who appeared at the door to let him in. She did not recognize him, even though he was probably the best-known man in town and one she saw frequently, and when she led him toward her husband’s study it was as if she were in an unknown house. She asked him if she could count on his support in the referendum regarding evolution, which was a pernicious theory destructive of human dignity, and he did not bother to remind her that the vote had been taken months ago and that her side had won.

  The second shock came after Senator Grant had listened courteously to the explanation of how Penny had come to file for his seat and why Pope had told her that he could not in decency oppose a man who had done so much for him, who had been, indeed, a kind of father.

  Grant laughed almost raucously. ‘Pope! You miss the whole point. Penny’s not got a chance of beating me this year. But she’ll get her name known. She’ll show the central committee she’s a real contender. I think the world of that girl, and in 1988, when I certainly won’t run again, she’ll be in the front row. The very front row. And unless this nation falls to hell, she’ll be United States Senator from Fremont. You go out there with my blessing, John, and give her every support. Because when I do step down, six years from now, I’ll want somebody good in my place, and she’s the one I’d choose.’

  Exactly what Penny told me in Illinois, Pope thought. But I’d better not tell Grant she’d had him figured out so neatly. Also, there was the unsettled question: Did Penny mean it when she said so vehemently that Grant could be defeated? Was this primary to be the real thing?

  There was another election which intruded before the Fremont primary. In the Colorado ski resort of Skycrest, the business promoters, the shopkeepers and the lodge managers wanted a shift in the political governance of the place: ‘We have special needs which require special solutions. We’re not dryland farmers raising Herefords.’ By common consent they settled upon Millard Mott as their level-headed candidate: ‘He knows business. He knows what it is to pay taxes. And look what he’s done with his own shop.’

  In a town that had once been mainly Democratic, the conservative Republicans offered Millard as their candidate, and although there was minor talk about the way his brother had been killed in Florida, it was agreed in the community that this should not be held against him. Also, the fact that he lived with this chap Roger, who had been a draft dodger, was ignored. Nor did the opposition make much headway with the charge that Millard had himself been a Canadian goose: ‘Didn’t he fly north?’

  ‘He did, but everyone knows the Vietnam war was a shitty affair. Maybe he was just brighter than us stupid sonsabitches who went.’

  He was elected by a huge majority, and at his thank-you party, catered by Roger and the college girls at the ski shop, he promised Skycrest: ‘What everybody wants—more services, more police, more ski patrols, better roads and lower taxes. I hope somebody here will tell me how to do it.’

  In June 1982 Professor John Pope heard with pleasure that NASA was thinking of assigning his friend Hickory Lee, last of the Solid Six, to command the fourth flight of the Shuttle. He would carry it to heights not attempted before, where various scientific instruments would be placed in orbit and checked during an extended extravehicular activity. The Shuttle was now a workhorse, and Lee would join that restricted group of astronauts who had flown in three radically different types of craft—in his case, Apollo, Skylab and Shuttle. None had flown in four different types, and as the program was working out, none ever could.

  A much more personal surprise came on a bright morning when Senator Norman Grant, in the heat of his campaign for renomination to the Senate, announced that he would hold a press conference at noon sharp, and he telephoned Pope to ask if he wo
uld attend. John supposed that the surprising closeness of the primary, with Penny doing much better than predicted, had frightened the senator into a last-minute spurt, and that Grant was going to ask him for an endorsement.

  Penny was in the southern part of the state, where she was amassing unexpected support, but he was able to reach her by phone: ‘Darling, the damned pullets have come back to roost. Senator Grant is pressuring me for an endorsement.’

  ‘We decided long ago you’d give it.’

  ‘I’ll have to. I’ll simply have to. But it’ll be very guarded. And, darling, I’ll fly out to Calhoun this afternoon, Phil will take me in his plane. I’ll appear on the platform with you tonight, and I’ll speak. If you want to win this primary, I want you to win it, too.’

  ‘I do want to win. And I do want your help.’ Then she said brightly, ‘Don’t you see, John? If Grant feels he needs your endorsement, he knows he’s in trouble.’

  Satisfied that he had cleared this ticklish problem with his wife, Pope went to his university office, where a tough politico from Webster was awaiting him: ‘Professor, does your wife really want to win this primary?’

  ‘She sure does!’

  ‘She’s not just goin’ through the motions?’

  ‘Penny never goes through motions.’

  ‘My wife is a trained nurse.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with the primary?’

  ‘Plenty. She works with doctors. She listens.’

  ‘Where’s she work? Sit down, please.’

  ‘She works in Webster General. But one of her doctors, a Dr. Schreiber, is a specialist who flies about the West on heavy missions.’ He paused to allow this to take its effect, then said, ‘Three days ago he flew here to Clay Municipal.’ Another pregnant pause. ‘His patient was Senator Grant’s wife.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s in dreadful shape, according to the doctor. He treated her sickness and wouldn’t say anything about that. But he did talk about her other behavior. The forgery. Signing the senator’s name to a check. She’s pumping money into the Strabismus crusade, the one in Alabama against Darwin and abortions and all that.’

  ‘Forgery? Why would she commit forgery?’

  ‘I don’t know why. All my wife knows is that Senator Grant had to intervene to prevent the police—’

  ‘Why did you come here to tell me this?’

  ‘Because it makes Grant vulnerable. If your wife wants to really puncture that bag of wind …’

  Pope did not lose his temper. This man was suggesting behavior that neither of the Popes would countenance or even remotely consider, but John had learned that politics produced all sorts of aberrations and the honorable man or woman looked at each as it was presented, accepting those that stood within limits, rejecting those that were outside the pale of decent behavior. Rising and placing his arm about the visitor’s shoulder, he said quietly, ‘My wife and I appreciate your interest, but this isn’t the kind of private information that she would use. Thank your wife, and I hope you both continue to support Mrs. Pope.’

  It was now forty-five minutes before the press conference, and Pope needed to clarify his thinking as to what exactly he could say in support of the man he still held to be a notable citizen, and this was difficult, for the campaign had proved that Grant really was doddering, lacking in focus and without any clear vision of the future. There had been a most painful night in the capital city of Benton, where the senator and Penny were to debate major issues; before the session Penny learned that Tim Finnerty was bringing Gawain Butler from his important job in California and Larry Penzoss from Alabama, and she went directly to Finnerty’s hotel to confront him.

  ‘Surely, Tim, you’re not trotting out those miserable uniforms again?’

  ‘They’re the heart of his campaign. Voters love them.’

  ‘Tim, that day is past. Believe me, if you three clowns get up on that stage—’

  ‘The other two are not clowns. They’re considerable heroes. Their stories—’

  ‘Will make people yawn.’

  ‘Why are you protesting? If it’s a bad idea, as you say, you profit.’

  ‘Nobody profits. Tim, if you do this, I’m going to have to rebut. I’ll have to point out how silly the whole thing is.’ Her jaw firmed. ‘And I will, believe me, Tim, I will.’

  The debate had not gone well for the senator, but Penny remembered that he was always best in his closing statements, when he drew upon patriotism, heroism and love of country to make telling points, the only ones that would be remembered when the night was over and the serious discussion forgotten. And sure enough, at the beginning of his peroration he signaled Finnerty, who marched out with Butler and Penzoss in their old uniforms. Unfortunately for Grant, the city of Benton contained three colleges, and students in the audience began to laugh, one black activist shouted ‘Uncle Tom,’ and suddenly the stage became a place of ridicule, and the heroic memory of those days adrift in October of 1944 seemed as remote as the Battle of Thermopylae.

  Grant was confused. He had encountered student opposition during the bad days of Vietnam, when values were contorted, but now these young people were laughing at him and Gawain Butler and the heroic days when all values hung in the balance, and it was shocking. His opponent, Mrs. Pope, seemed to have tears in her eyes, and it was she who spoke:

  ‘Students, stop that laughter. These four men, Senator Grant and his crew, were sensational heroes. The safety of our nation depended upon them, and I for one salute them. But I suspect you are right in believing that the day is past when we can rely only upon old memories … old ideas … old ways of doing things. We need fresh spirit, fresh drives. Please try to get these conflicting good things straight in your mind. This nation needs some straight thinking.’

  In her hotel room later that night she confided to her husband: ‘I’m not proud of what I did tonight. What I should have done was machine-gun those little bastards for making fun of a profound idea. But I must say that I warned Finnerty not to carry his broken jugs back to that pathetic pump.’ Tears came to her eyes. ‘I was so sorry for Norman Grant. Did you see the shock on his face? He was facing a new generation, a whole new set of decades, and he hadn’t a clue. John, he hasn’t a clue and it will be God’s mercy if I defeat him.’

  Reluctantly, Pope left his office, and walked slowly to the campus building in which the press conference was to be held, still unsure of what he should say in view of the fact that later in Calhoun he was going to neutralize it. But when he entered the building and saw Norman Grant, big and handsome and very American, his heart went out to him: Best man this town ever produced. I’ll help him win one more time. Penny can afford to wait.

  But when Grant took the podium and adjusted the microphones, Pope received a shock: ‘I am sorry that my talented opponent, Penny Pope, could not be here this morning. She’s at work lambasting me in the southern part of the state, but I’m most pleased that her husband, our great hero John Pope, is with us.’

  There was applause and someone nudged Pope, getting him to stand, and as he rose to acknowledge the cheers he thought: In for a penny, in for a pound. What a lousy pun.

  ‘I’ve asked you here this morning,’ Grant continued, ‘to inform you that personal matters of the most urgent kind make it necessary for me to withdraw from the primary campaign. Those who know me will understand that this action does not come from fear of my worthy opponent, because I have faced others just as resolute. I am retiring from the fight for personal reasons which I can no longer ignore.

  ‘I am relieved in this moment of great stress to know that I leave the field to one of the ablest people in America and one of the finest associates I have ever had, Penny Pope. We have worked together for thirty-six years, and no one in America is better qualified to give her a character reference than me.

  ‘Mrs. Pope, you’ve won the Republican primary. Without question you’ll win the November general, in which you’ll have my fullest support. Astron
aut John Pope, go out and help your wife get elected. She’s worth it.’

  When Pope finally reached his wife in a small town near the Kansas border, her first words were: ‘John, get hold of Tim Finnerty before he leaves town. I want him for my campaign manager.’ And when she was senator, she would want him as her chief of staff, because that crazy, Democrat, liberal, Boston-Irish-Catholic manipulator knew how the Senate operated and where the votes were. He had almost succeeded in making Norman Grant a first-rate senator; with better material, he might have better luck.

  Stanley Mott was retired now, sixty-four years old and covered with the honors that came normally to a man of his competence; he had four honorary doctorates, awards from six learned societies, and invitations from across the country to speak on issues confronting the space program.

  In his final days with NASA he had helped supervise two tremendous achievements: the launching of the Shuttle and the Voyager 2 fly-by of Saturn, and of the two, he had no hesitation in concluding that the latter was the more important, for it threw the mind of man forward to new horizons, and he had not interrupted when Dieter Kolff telephoned from Alabama:

  ‘See what I told you, Stanley? The future of man in space is to build ever more capable machines and ever bigger rockets to launch them. We can go anywhere, you and I, and we don’t need astronauts to clutter up the hardware. You devise a whole new family of instruments, marvels that can do anything. I’ll build anew family of rockets that will land on Uranus and Neptune, and we can do this before we die.’

  But he had also listened when Grant called from Clay:

  ‘See what I told you, Mott? Practically no one noticed the Saturn thing. No men in the machine. But that Shuttle business with those two fine young men at the throttle … [Mott interrupted to remind Grant that John Young had been fifty-one.] Did you see how the world ate that up? Man is still the measure of all things, Mott, and you better remind your old buddies at NASA of that fact.’