It was a very cold day, and he wrapped himself up thoroughly as he walked towards “Oxford Circus.” Most of Luna City’s traffic converged upon this intersection, and he should be able to get a lift to the launching site. Transport was precious at the base and there was a continual battle between the various departments for the possession of the few available trucks and cars.
He stamped around in the cold for about ten minutes before a jeep loaded with journalists on the same mission came roaring by. It looked somewhat like a traveling optician’s shop, since it bristled with cameras, telescopes and binoculars. Nevertheless Dirk managed to find room for himself among the window display.
The jeep swirled into the parking area and everyone clambered out, lugging their equipment. Dirk gave a hand to a very small reporter with a very large telescope and tripod—partly out of good nature but partly because he hoped he’d be able to have a look through it himself.
The two great ships now lay bare of all coverings and screens; for the first time one could fully appreciate their size and proportions. “Beta” might, at a casual glance, have been taken for a conventional airliner of fairly normal design. Dirk, who knew very little about aircraft, would not have given her a second glance had he seen her taking off from his local field.
“Alpha” no longer seemed quite so much like a giant shell. The spaceship’s radio and navigational equipment had now been extended, and its lines were completely spoiled by a small forest of masts and outriggers of various kinds. Someone inside must have been operating the controls, for occasionally a mast would retract or extend itself farther.
Dirk followed the crowd around to the rear of the ship.
A roughly triangular area had been roped off, so that the “Prometheus” was at one apex and they were at the base. The nearest they could get to the machine’s driving units was about a hundred yards. Looking into those gaping nozzles, Dirk felt no particular desire to come any closer.
Cameras and binoculars were being brought into action, and presently Dirk managed to get his look through the telescope. The rocket motors seemed only a few yards away, but he could see nothing except a metal pit full of darkness and mystery. Out of that nozzle would soon be coming hundreds of tons of radioactive gas at fifteen thousand miles an hour. Beyond it, hidden in shadow, were the pile elements that no human being could ever again approach.
Someone was coming towards them through the forbidden area—but keeping very close to the rope barrier. As he approached Dirk saw that it was Dr. Collins. The engineer grinned at him and said: “Thought I’d find you here. We’re just waiting for the servicing staff to arrive. That’s a nice telescope you’ve got—can I have a look?”
“It isn’t mine,” explained Dirk. “It belongs to this gentleman here.”
The little journalist would be delighted if the Professor cared to have a look—and still more so if he’d explain what there was to see, anyway.
Collins stared intently for some seconds. Then he straightened up and said: “I’m afraid there’s not a lot to see at present—we should have a spotlight shining up the jet to illuminate the interior. But you’ll be glad of that telescope in a minute.”
He gave a wry little smile.
“It’s rather a queer feeling, you know,” he said to Dirk, “looking at a machine you’ve helped build yourself—and which you can never go near again without committing suicide.”
While he spoke, an extraordinary vehicle was approaching across the concrete. It was a very large truck, not unlike those which television companies use for outside broadcasts, and it was towing a machine at which Dirk could only stare in baffled amazement. As it went past, he had a confused impression of jointed levers, small electric motors, chain drives and worm-wheels, and other devices he could not identify.
The two vehicles came to a halt just inside the danger area. A door opened in the big truck, and half a dozen men clambered out. They uncoupled the trailer, and began connecting it up to three large armored cables which they unwound from drums at the front of the van.
The strange machine suddenly came to life. It rolled forward on its little balloon tires, as though testing its mobility. The jointed levers began to flex and unflex, giving a weird impression of mechanical life. A moment later it started to roll purposefully towards the “Prometheus,” the larger machine following behind it at the same speed.
Collins was grinning hugely at Dirk’s amazement and the obvious surprise of the journalists around him.
“That’s Tin Lizzie,” he said, by way of introduction. “She’s not really a true robot, as every movement she makes is controlled directly by the men in the van. It takes a crew of three to run her, and it’s one of the most highly skilled jobs in the world.”
Lizzie was now within a few yards of “Alpha’s” jets, and after some precise foot-work with her bogies she came to a gentle halt. A long, thin arm carrying several obscure pieces of machinery disappeared down that ominous tunnel.
“Remote servicing machinery,” explained Collins to his interested audience, “has always been one of the most important side-lines of atomic engineering. It was first developed on a large scale for the Manhattan Project during the War. Since then it’s become quite an industry in itself. Lizzie is just one of the more spectacular products. She could almost repair a watch—or at least an alarm clock!”
“Just how does the crew control her?” asked Dirk. “There’s a television camera on that arm, so they can see the work just as if they were watching it directly. All movements are carried out by servo motors controlled through those cables.”
No one could see what Lizzie was now doing, and it was a long time before she slowly backed away from the rocket.
She was carrying, Dirk saw, a curiously shaped bar about three feet long which she held firmly in her metal claws. The two vehicles withdrew three-quarters of the way to the barrier, and as they approached the journalists hastily retreated from that drab gray object in the robot’s claws. Collins, however, stood his ground, so Dirk decided it must be safe to remain.
There was a sudden, raucous buzzing from the engineer’s coat-pocket, and Dirk jumped a foot in the air. Collins held up his hand and the robot came to a halt about forty feet away. Its controllers, Dirk guessed, must be watching them through the television eyes.
Collins waved his arms, and the bar slowly rotated in the robot’s claws. The buzzing of the radiation alarm ceased abruptly and Dirk breathed again.
“There’s usually some sort of beaming effect from an irregular object like that,” explained Collins. “We’re still in its radiation field, of course, but it’s too weak to be dangerous.”
He turned towards the telescope, which had been temporarily deserted by its owner.
“This is rather handy,” he said. “I didn’t intend to do a visual inspection myself, but this is too good a chance to miss—that is, if we can focus at this distance.”
“Exactly what are you trying to do?” asked Dirk as his friend racked the eyepiece out to its fullest extent.
“That’s one of the reactor elements from the pile,” said Collins absently. “We want to check it for activity. H’m—it seems to be standing up to it all right. Like a peep?”
Dirk peered through the telescope. He could see a few square inches of what at first sight appeared to be metal; then he decided that it was some kind of ceramic coating. It was so close that he could distinctly make out the surface texture.
“What would happen,” he said, “if you touched it?”
“You’d certainly get very bad delayed burns, gamma and neutron. If you stayed near it long enough, you’d die.”
Dirk stared in fascinated horror at that innocent gray surface which seemed only a few inches away.
“I suppose,” he said, “that the bits in an atomic bomb would look very much like this.”
“Just as harmless, anyway,” agreed Collins. “But there’s no danger of an explosion here. The fissionable material we use is all denatured. If
we went to a lot of trouble, we could get an explosion—but a very small one.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Dirk suspiciously.
“Oh, just a large bang,” said Collins cheerfully. “I couldn’t give the figures off-hand, but it would probably be no better than a few hundred tons of dynamite. Nothing to worry about at all!”
7
The senior staff lounge always gave Dirk the impression of a slightly down-at-heel London club. The fact that he had never been in a London club—prosperous or otherwise—did nothing to shake this firm conviction. Yet at any one time the British contingent in the lounge was likely to be in the minority, and almost every accent in the world could be heard here during the course of the day. It made no difference to the atmosphere of the place, which seemed to emanate from the very English barman and his two assistants. Despite all onslaughts, they had kept the Union Jack flying here in the social center of Luna City. Only once had they yielded any territory, and even then the enemy had been swiftly routed. Six months ago the Americans had imported a brand-new Coca-Cola machine, which for a while had gleamed resplendently against the somber wooden paneling. But not for long: there had been some hasty consultations and much midnight carpentry in the workshops. One morning when the thirsty clients arrived, they found that the chromium plating had disappeared, and that they must now obtain their drinks from what might have been one of the late Mr. Chippendale’s minor masterpieces. The status quo had been restored, but as to how it had happened the barman confessed complete ignorance.
Dirk always called at least once a day to collect his mail and read the papers. In the evening the place usually became rather crowded and he preferred to stay in his room, but tonight Maxton and Collins had dragged him out of retirement. The conversation, as usual, was not very far from the enterprise at hand.
“I think I’ll be going to Taine’s lecture tomorrow,” said Dirk. “He’s talking about the Moon, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I bet he’ll be pretty cautious now that he knows he’s going! He might have to eat his words if he’s not careful.”
“We’ve given him a perfectly free hand,” explained Maxton. “He’ll probably talk about long-term plans and the use of the Moon as a refueling base to reach the planets.”
“That should be interesting. Richards and Clinton will both be talking about engineering, I suppose, and I’ve had quite enough of that.”
“Thanks!” laughed Collins. “It’s nice to know that our efforts are appreciated!”
“Do you know,” said Dirk suddenly, “I’ve never even seen the Moon through a big telescope.”
“We could fix that up any evening this week—say after tomorrow. The Moon’s only a day old at the moment. There are several telescopes here that would give you a pretty good view.”
“I wonder,” said Dirk thoughtfully, “if we’re going to find life—I mean intelligent life—anywhere in the solar system?”
There was a long pause. Then Maxton said abruptly: “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Look at it this way. It’s taken us only ten thousand years to get away from stone axes to spaceships. That means that interplanetary travel must come pretty early in the development of any culture—that is, if it proceeds along technological lines at all.”
“But it needn’t,” said Dirk. “And if you throw in prehistory, it’s taken us a million years to get to spaceships.”
“That’s still only a thousandth—or less—of the age of the solar system. If there was any civilization on Mars, it probably died before humanity emerged from the jungle. If it still flourished, it would have visited us long ago.”
“That’s so plausible,” replied Dirk, “that I’m sure it isn’t true. Moreover, you can find plenty of incidents which make it look as if we have been visited in the past, by things or ships that didn’t like the look of us and sheered off again.”
“Yes, I’ve read some of those accounts, and they’re very interesting too. But I’m a skeptic: if anything ever has visited Earth, which I doubt, I’ll be very surprised if it came from the other planets. Space and time are so big that it just doesn’t seem probable that we’ll have neighbors only across the road.”
“That seems a pity,” said Dirk. “I think the most exciting thing about astronautics is the possibility it opens up of meeting other types of minds. It won’t make the human race seem quite so lonely.”
“That’s perfectly true; but perhaps it will be just as well if we can spend the next few centuries quietly exploring the solar system by ourselves. At the end of that time we’ll have acquired a lot more wisdom—and I mean wisdom, not mere knowledge. Perhaps we’ll be ready then to make contact with other races. At the moment—well, we’re still only forty years from Hitler.”
“Then how long do you think we’ll have to wait,” said Dirk, a little discouraged, “before we have our first contact with another civilization?”
“Who can say? It may be as near in time as the Wright Brothers—or as far away as the building of the pyramids. It may even, of course, happen a week from tomorrow when the ‘Prometheus’ lands on the Moon. But I’m darned sure it won’t.”
“Do you really think,” asked Dirk, “that we’ll ever get to the stars?”
Professor Maxton sat in silence for a moment, thoughtfully blowing clouds of cigarette smoke.
“I think so. Some day,” he said.
“How?” persisted Dirk.
“If we can get an atomic drive that’s more than fifty per cent efficient, we can reach nearly the velocity of light—perhaps three-quarters of it, at any rate. That means it’s about five years traveling from star to star. A long time, but still possible even for us short-lived creatures. And one day, I hope, we’ll live a lot longer than we do today. A heck of a lot longer.”
Dirk had a sudden vision of the three of them from the point of view of an outside observer. He sometimes had these moments of objectivity, and they were valuable in preserving his sense of proportion. Here they were, two men in the thirties and one in the fifties, sitting in their armchairs around the low table carrying their drinks. They might have been businessmen discussing a deal, or resting after a round of golf. Their background was utterly commonplace; from time to time snatches of everyday conversation drifted across from other groups, and there was a faint “clicking” of table-tennis balls from the room next door.
Yes, they might have been discussing stocks and shares, or the new car, or the latest gossip. But instead, they were wondering how to reach the stars.
“Our present atomic drives,” said Collins, “are about one hundredth of one per cent efficient. So it will be quite a while before we think of going to Alpha Centauri.”
(In the background a plaintive voice was saying: “Hey, George, what’s happened to my gin and lime?”)
“Another question,” said Dirk. “Is it absolutely certain that we can’t travel faster than light?”
“In this universe, yes. It’s the limiting velocity for all material objects. A miserable six hundred million miles an hour!”
(“Three bitters, please, George!”)
“Still,” said Maxton slowly and thoughtfully, “there may even be a way around that.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dirk and Collins simultaneously.
“In our universe, two points may be light-years apart. But they might be almost touching in a higher space.”
(“Where’s the Times? No, you ass, not the New York thing!”)
“I draw the line at the fourth dimension,” said Collins with a grin. “That’s a bit too fantastic for me. I’m a practical engineer—I hope!”
(In the table-tennis room next door, it sounded as if an absent-minded victor had just jumped the net to shake hands with his opponent.)
“At the beginning of this century,” Professor Maxton retorted, “practical engineers felt the same way about the theory of relativity. But it caught up with them a generation later.” He rested his elbows on the ta
ble and stared into the remote distance.
“What,” he said slowly, “do you imagine the next hundred years will bring?”
8
The big nissen hut was supposed to be connected to the camp’s heating system, but no one would have noticed it. Dirk, who had grown accustomed to life at Luna City, had wisely brought his overcoat with him. He felt sorry for the unfortunate members of the audience who had neglected this elementary precaution. By the end of the lecture, they would have a vivid impression of conditions on the outer planets.
About two hundred people were already seated on the benches, and more were continually arriving, since it was still only five minutes after the time at which the lecture was supposed to start. In the middle of the room a couple of anxious electricians were making last-minute adjustments to an episcope. Half a dozen armchairs had been placed in front of the speaker’s dais, and were the targets of many covetous eyes. As clearly as if they had been labeled, they proclaimed to the world: “Reserved for the Director-General.”
A door at the back of the hut opened, and Sir Robert Derwent entered, followed by Taine, Professor Maxton, and several others whom Dirk did not recognize. All but Sir Robert sat down in the front row, leaving the center seat empty.
The shuffling and whispering ceased as the Director-General stepped on to the dais. He looked, Dirk thought, like some great impresario about to ring up the curtain. And so, in a sense, he was.
“Mr. Taine,” said Sir Robert, “has kindly consented to give us a talk on the objects of our first expedition. As he was one of its planners, and as he will be taking part in it, I’m sure we’ll hear his views with great interest. After he’s talked about the Moon, I gather that Mr. Taine is going to—er—let his hair down and discuss the plans we have for the rest of the solar system. I believe he has it pretty well organized all the way out to Pluto. Mr. Taine.” (Applause.)
Prelude to Space Page 13