Rocket Girl

by George D. Morgan

  Tom Meyers hung up the phone, looked momentarily at the portrait of President Dwight D. Eisenhower that hung on his wall, then went back to work. No use wasting time while waiting for the US Army.

  When Mary arrived at North American that morning, she showed her ID badge, passed through the steel security door, then began the long journey to her desk. As she walked past the ranks and files of desks and files, she marveled at how many things had changed since 1946. North American had completed construction of the new Canoga Park facilities just two months before. They were ramping up for what appeared to be new ventures in ever-larger rockets and missiles. There were many new contracts, money was flowing like the Mississippi, and hundreds of new engineers were being hired.

  One thing had not changed: they were all men.

  And they all had engineering degrees. Mary had certainly paid her dues, making great advancements in rocket-propellant technology with both the NALAR and NAVAHO programs, but she couldn't help feeling inadequate. The days when it was possible to get a job in aerospace without a college degree were over. Thanks to time, and the GI Bill, America's pool of talented engineers was bulging. Mary was surrounded not just by men; she was surrounded by people who were much better educated than her. The situation did not bode well for job security in a company that routinely fired 5 percent of its workforce every year for no other reason than they could. As the least formally educated employee in the engineering department, she was highly vulnerable. The situation had gotten to the point that, every morning, she arrived at the lobby wondering if a pink slip would be waiting.

  The morning passed uneventfully. Mary got in her usual 225 calculations on new propellant specific impulse figures before lunch. When noon arrived, she set up the card table. Joe Friedman, Carl Amenhoff, and Irving Kanarek soon joined her. She dealt out four hands.

  Joe began the bidding. “Two hearts.”

  “Two spades,” said Carl.

  “Four hearts.”

  “Four spades,” said Mary. The rest of the players passed, and she played the first card.

  “I hear we're getting a visitor from White Sands.”

  “I heard it was Huntsville.”

  “No—Fort Bliss.”

  “It's all the same.”

  “Scuttlebutt says they're sending over a new contract.”

  Mary took the first trick. “I hope it's a new engine. All this theoretical stuff they have us on is fine, but it's always nice to build hardware.”

  “Just wish we could work for someone other than those government goons.”

  “Those government goons pay your salary.”

  “Ex-nay on the government-say.”

  Everyone turned to look. Coming down their aisle was a US Army colonel, decked out in uniform, medals, sunglasses and golf shoes. He was carrying a thick three-ring binder. When the officer arrived at the card table, he stopped.

  “Excuse me. I'm looking for the Engineering Department of the Office of Research and Development.”

  “You found us.”

  “This is the engineering department?” For 3.47 seconds, no one said a word. Then the colonel spoke. “Could I ask you what on earth you are doing?”

  “Playing bridge.”

  “They're playing; I'm winning.”

  “So what kind of a contract are you bringing us?”

  The colonel was stoic, expressionless. Behind the sunglasses, his eyes were a mystery.

  “My mission here is top secret.”

  “Oh, yeah—I got a question about that. What exactly is the difference between ‘secret’ and ‘top secret’?”

  “Right. How much more secret than secret is top secret?”

  “If something is top secret, can it really be any more secret than just regular secret?”

  “How exactly do you measure degrees of secrecy?”

  “If there are different degrees of secrecy, then there must be some way of measuring those degrees.”

  “Exactly. Exactly! Are there units, like meters, nanoseconds, gigahertz of secrecy?”

  The colonel's facial muscles did not budge. “I have an appointment with Mr. Tom Meyers.”

  “Up the stairs.”

  As the colonel made his way toward Tom's office, the three male engineers tried their best to stifle their laughter.

  Mary shook her head. “Gigahertz of secrecy. You boys are bad.”

  Tom returned the phone receiver to its cradle. Audra, at the receptionist desk, had called to inform him that a US Army colonel had arrived and was headed his way. Tom thanked her for the warning, then stood at the large window to watch the officer's approach. Tom cringed when the colonel made a short stop at Mary's bridge table.

  Of course the guy would arrive at lunchtime. Of all the luck.

  From his vantage point ten feet above the floor, Tom knew something big was coming; the three-ring binder Colonel Wilkins was carrying was at least four inches thick. Tom returned to his desk, pretending to look busy.

  When the knock was heard a short while later, Tom simply said, “Come in.”

  Colonel Wilkins entered, removed his sunglasses, and introduced himself. The two men shook hands.

  “I met a few of your engineers coming in,” said the colonel. “They were playing cards.”

  “It's lunchtime.”

  The colonel checked his watch. “So it is.”

  “If you'd like, we can head down to the cafeteria; have our meeting after lunch.”

  “No, no. This is urgent. I came here as fast as the Liberator could take me.”

  “A B-24. Right. I flew those in Germany. I was a bombardier.” This comment did not seem to impress the colonel. “Anyway, our main office in Downey mentioned you wanted to discuss a new contract.”

  “May I sit down?”

  “Oh, yes—please.”

  Both men sat down and the colonel opened his binder.

  “As you know, the Redstone rocket program has been a terrific success.”

  “Of course. We built the booster.”

  “Which is why I'm here. Over the last year, Dr. von Braun has been making certain modifications to the Redstone to increase its range. In order to get funding, General Medaris has been telling the bean counters these design alterations were necessary in order make the Redstone a viable ICBM. There are some technological and political hurdles that need to be overcome, but von Braun's rocket is ahead of everything else that's in the pipeline. The ICBM story, in fact, may wind up being true, but secretly the general and von Braun plan to use the Redstone to launch the world's first satellite.”

  “You won't get any argument from anyone around here. What can we do to help?”

  The colonel cleared his throat, then opened the contract folder.

  “We need to increase the Redstone's performance by at least 6.9 percent. And we need to do it without changing any more of the rocket's hardware.”

  Tom thought this over carefully. If all hardware was off-limits, that left only one other item.

  “In other words, the only things we can change are the propellants.”

  “Exactly. A better fuel, a better oxidizer, or both. The magic number is 305.”

  “Is that our specific impulse target?”

  “It is. There are some other targets that have to be reached as well.”

  Colonel Wilkins handed the contract file to Tom. “It's all in there: project requirements, expected benchmarks and milestones, deadlines, etcetera. Dr. von Braun and General Medaris, along with your superiors in Downey, have already affixed their signatures. The general says he wants it two days before yesterday. That was twenty-four hours ago, so now I suppose he needs it three days before yesterday.”

  “What's the rush?”

  “General Medaris and Dr. von Braun both want to beat the Russians into orbit.”

  Tom paged through the contract requirements, puzzled. “Von Braun's people couldn't solve this problem?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” The colonel began paging through the four-inch
binder. “I've been going over North American's list of engineers, and I notice Irving Kanarek works here. As the inventor of inhibited red fuming nitric acid—a propellant we've had great success with on the Nike—Kanarek has a blue-ribbon reputation with the army. He seems to be the most qualified candidate. I'd like you to put him in charge of this.”2

  Tom swiveled a few degrees in his chair, staring out at the engineering floor for a moment. Irving Kanarek was an intelligent and experienced chemical engineer. It would certainly be useful if the prospective project leader had prior experience in new propellant formulation. As the colonel said, Irving fit the bill. He would not be a bad choice to head up such a project.

  Tom nodded. “Yes. Irving's a very good engineer.”

  “So may I tell the general he's our man?”

  Tom did not like having to make such important personnel choices so quickly. His normal procedure involved a great deal of thought and examination. Clearly the colonel had no intention of giving him enough time for such careful analysis. In his gut Tom knew the best person to head up such a contract would need, more than anything else, experience with complex theoretical performance calculations, something that Kanarek usually farmed out to others, such as Mary. In fact, every engineer in the department sent at least some of their theoretical performance work to her. Consequently she had become the busiest person on the floor.3

  Colonel Wilkins closed the binder. “Very well—not hearing any objections…”

  “Hold it.”

  “Yes?”

  “I have someone better than Kanarek.”

  “Better than Kanarek? Excellent. Who is it?”

  “Mary Sherman Morgan.”

  The colonel seemed puzzled. “Mary? As in M-A-R-Y Mary?”

  “That's correct.”

  “You have a female engineer?”

  “Yes.”

  The colonel seemed even more puzzled. “I've studied your personnel list. I don't remember seeing anyone by that name.”

  Tom shifted uncomfortably in his chair. This was not going to be easy. It had been seven years since he had hired the unemployed weapons maker from Ohio. In those six years, she had proven herself to be highly skilled at calculating and predicting the performance from new rocket-propellant combinations. The other theoretical performance specialists had begun complaining that all the design engineers were using her exclusively and ignoring them. The reports he was getting from those engineers were all the same: Mary had some sort of “magic touch” when it came to rocket-propellant theory.

  “She's not an engineer, per se,” said Tom. “Not exactly.”

  “Not an engineer. Well, what is she?”

  “She's an analyst. She's probably in the back section of your book, under ‘Miscellaneous Personnel.’”

  “Mr. Meyers, you've got nine hundred engineers on your payroll. I've read the background bio on every one of them. I really believe Kanarek is our boy.”

  “I disagree.”

  The colonel turned to the back of his binder and soon found a short description of the analyst in question. The room became very quiet as he read her bio, which took only a few seconds.

  “According to this, Mrs. Morgan attended DeSales College in Ohio for two years, then dropped out to work in a weapons plant before being hired here. No doctorate, no masters; not even a bachelor's degree. No noteworthy successes or accomplishments—no published papers. Looks like the only thing we can say about this woman is that she has a high-school diploma from Ray, North Dakota—wherever that is.”

  “All that is true, however…”

  “Mr. Meyers, I'm sure you know much more about engineering and rocket science than I do, but my commanding officer, General Medaris, ordered me to have you put your very best man on this project, and I don't think he was speaking figuratively!”

  When his desk phone rang, Don Jenkins just assumed it was his wife calling. That was the usual case, anyway. He was surprised when he heard the voice of Tom Meyers.

  “Don, could you come up to my office for a minute?”

  “Sure, Tom. Soon as I finish…”

  “Right now.”

  Don put down the receiver, stood up, and maneuvered through the vast field of desks toward the office stairway. The word had gone out among the engineers that a “military mucky-muck” was on the prowl, and so Don went through a mental checklist of projects he might have screwed up on. The list had more than a dozen items on it by the time he turned the doorknob.

  “Yes, sir?” The first thing Don noticed was that neither man looked happy.

  Tom swiveled his chair in Don's direction. “A project involving theoretical performance calculations. Of all the people we have working for us, who would you choose to head that up?”

  “Oh that's easy: Mary.” Since she was the only woman in the building doing engineering work, Don knew a first name was all that was necessary. Still, he was unprepared for the colonel's reaction. The man stood up a little too fast, pushing his chair hard and sliding it across the office.

  “A high-school diploma! A high-school diploma—for God's sakes!”

  “Colonel Wilkins,” said Tom, “let me enlighten you. If Mrs. Morgan had a dozen PhD's, it would not make any difference. The work she is doing here is so advanced it's not taught in any university, anywhere, at any level.”

  But the colonel would not let it go.

  “Nine hundred engineers, all male, all with college degrees, and you're telling me the best person qualified for this job is not only the only female engineer in the company, but the only engineer without a degree. That's what you're telling me!?”

  Tom kept his cool. “She's not an engineer, she's…”

  “An analyst—yes, you said. She has no résumé, no track record. She's never accomplished anything noteworthy!”

  Tom slowly stood up, eyeballing the colonel.

  “Colonel, no one accomplishes anything noteworthy, until they do it for the first time.”

  For several moments, no one spoke. Then Don raised his hand.

  “I still need to take lunch.”

  “I have learned to use the word “impossible” with the greatest caution.”

  —WERNHER VON BRAUN

  Mary was in the middle of calculating the theoretical specific impulse of several mixture ratios of pentaborane and oxygen diflouride. It was a complex exercise involving exotic propellants that would take her most of the day and required intense concentration, which is why she was not happy to be interrupted.

  “Excuse me. Are you Mrs. Morgan?”

  Mary swiveled her chair around to see a man wearing a “VISITOR” badge on his short-sleeve white shirt. He was of medium build and wore a tie she was sure was brand-new. His hair was jet black, and he had a US Marine Corp tattoo on his left arm. The right arm was missing past the elbow.

  “Yes, I'm Mrs. Morgan.”

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “I have to shake with my left hand.”

  Mary stood to shake his hand.

  “My name is Nick Toby. Nice to meet you.”

  Kanarek was not at his desk, so Mary rolled Kanarek's chair over and motioned for Mr. Toby to sit down.

  “Where did you serve, soldier?”

  “I was with the 1st Parachute Battalion on Guadalcanal. Not a whole lot of jobs a man can do with only one hand. Being a sales rep I guess is one.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  Nick handed her his business card. “I work for Lansing Chemical Company. We have a promising new chemical I'd like to give you some information on—diethylenetriamine. We're searching around for some applications.”

  “What is it used for now?”

  “Well, nothing. That's what we're trying to do; build a market for it. Anyway, one of the chemical engineers in our lab thought it might have some possibilities as a rocket fuel.”

  Nick handed her a chemical product brochure.

  “I was told you're the one to talk to around here—that if anyone knew whether this could be used as a
rocket fuel, you would.”

  Mary paged through the brochure. “Well, let me look through the data, and I'll let you know. I'm kind of busy right now.”

  “From what I'm told, it has some attractive properties and characteristics. It's supposed to be highly energetic with most oxidizers and has a very good density: 0.9588 grams per cubic centimeter. Don't know much about rocket fuels, but I hear that's important.”

  “I'll get back to you.”

  “That would be great. Thank you. Thank so much.”

  They stood, shook left hands again, and then he walked away. Mary stapled the man's business card to the brochure, then threw it in the bottom drawer of her desk, where it had a lot of company. Dozens of chemical sales reps visited her every year; there was no time in her day to pay attention to every “promising new chemical” that came her way.

  As Mary prepared to go back to work, she was startled by a tap on her shoulder.

  “Got a second?” asked Tom.

  “I'm really busy,” she said, as they both sat down.

  “I know you have several pet projects you're working on that are very important.”

  “I've got to do the data reduction on the NALAR tests, then I have the propellant calculations to do on the NAVAHO engine-propellant-reformulation project, and then…”

  “I understand,” Tom interrupted. “But they're all going to have to wait. We're pulling you off everything for a special project.”

  “How special?”

  Tom smiled. This was the conversation he had been waiting two years to have. He laid the contract folder on Mary's desk.

  “How would you like to be involved in putting America's first satellite into orbit?”

  Three years after the play Rocket Girl closes at Caltech, an admirer of my mother helps me create a Wikipedia page for her. A few months go by, and on a lark I decide to look up the page and double check its accuracy. As I read through it, I discover persons unknown have edited the article, and not in a good way. Since only a handful of people in the world know as much about Mary Sherman Morgan as I do, it puzzles me to think someone thought they could improve on it. I get on the phone and call all the sources I've been working with to see if they edited the article. Most of them are so old, they've never even heard of Wikipedia. It soon becomes obvious that no one who can truthfully claim to be an expert on my mother's life has edited the article, so I go back in and correct their changes. A few months go by, and my corrections have been mysteriously re-edited by anonymous individuals. I again correct the main Wikipedia entry. But then I notice that a “Talk” tab has been added, too. I click the link and find a separate article from a Mrs. Jack Silverman. Mrs. Silverman's article attempts to refute my mother's claim to the invention of hydyne and awards credit instead to her husband, Jack.1