The glass of the viewport before him was speckled with stars; they were free—moving!
But the spread of jeweled lights was not unbroken, as it invariably had been when seen from the veranda, or seen mirrored on the Control Room walls; a great, gross, ungainly shape gleamed softly under the light of the star whose system they had entered. At first he could not account for it. Then with a rush of superstitious awe he realized that he was looking at the Ship itself, the true Ship, seen from the Outside. In spite of his long intellectual awareness of the true nature of the Ship, he had never visualized looking at it. The stars, yes—the surface of a planet, he had struggled with that concept—but the outer surface of the Ship, no.
When he did see it, it shocked him.
Alan touched him. “Hugh, what is it?”
Hoyland tried to explain to him. Alan shook his head, and blinked his eyes. “I don’t get it.”
“Never mind. Bring Ertz up here. Fetch the women, too—we’ll let them see it.”
“All right. But,” he added, with sound intuition, “it’s a mistake to show the women. You’ll scare ’em silly—they ain’t even seen the stars.”
Luck, sound engineering design, and a little knowledge. Good design, ten times that much luck, and a precious little knowledge. It was luck that had placed the Ship near a star with a planetary system, luck that the Ship arrived there with a speed low enough for Hugh to counteract it in a ship’s auxiliary craft, luck that he learned to handle it after a fashion before they starved or lost themselves in deep space.
It was good design that provided the little craft with a great reserve of power and speed. The designers had anticipated that the pioneers might need to explore the far-flung planets of a solar system; they had provided for it in the planning of the Ship’s boats, with a large factor of safety. Hugh strained that factor to the limit.
It was luck that placed them near the plane of planetary motion; luck that, when Hugh did manage to gun the tiny projectile into a closed orbit, the orbit agreed in direction with the rotation of the planets.
Luck that the eccentric ellipse he achieved should cause them to crawl up on a giant planet so that he was eventually able to identify it as such by sight.
For otherwise they might have spun around that star until they all died of old age, ignoring for the moment the readier hazards of hunger and thirst, without ever coming close enough to a planet to pick it out from the stars.
There is a misconception, geocentric and anthropomorphic, common to the large majority of the earth-bound, which causes them to visualize a planetary system stereoscopically. The mind’s eye sees a sun, remote from a backdrop of stars, and surrounded by spinning apples—the planets. Step out on your balcony and look. Can you tell the planets from the stars? Venus you may pick out with ease, but could you tell it from Canopus, if you had not previously been introduced? That little red speck—is it Mars, or is it Antares? How would you know, if you were as ignorant as Hugh Hoyland? Blast for Antares, believing it to be a planet, and you will never live to have grandchildren.
The great planet that they crawled up on, till it showed a visible naked-eye disc, was larger than Jupiter, a fit companion to the star, somewhat younger and larger than the Sun, around which it swung at a lordly distance. Hugh blasted back, killing his speed over many sleeps, to bring the Ship into a path around the planet. The maneuver brought him close enough to see its moons.
Luck helped him again. He had planned to ground on the great planet, knowing no better. Had he been able to do so they would have lived just long enough to open the air lock.
But he was short of mass, after the titanic task of pulling them out of the headlong hyperbolic plunge around and past the star and warping them into a closed orbit about the star, then into a subordinate orbit around the great planet. He pored over the ancient books, substituted endlessly in the equations the ancients had set down as the laws for moving bodies, figured and refigured, and tried even the calm patience of Chloe.
The other wife, the unnamed one, kept out of his sight after losing a tooth, quite suddenly.
But he got no answer that did not require him to use some, at least, of the precious, irreplaceable ancient books for fuel. Yes, even though they stripped themselves naked and chucked in their knives, the mass of the books would still be needed.
He would have preferred to dispense with one of his wives. He decided to ground on one of the moons.
Luck again. Coincidence of such colossal proportions that one need not be expected to believe it—for the moon-planet was suitable for human terrestrial life. Never mind—skip over it rapidly; the combination of circumstances is of the same order needed to produce such a planet in the first place. Our own planet, under our feet, is of the “There ain’t no such animal!” variety. It is a ridiculous improbability.
Hugh’s luck was a ridiculous improbability.
* * *
Good design handled the next phase. Although he had learned to maneuver the little Ship out in space where there is elbow room, landing is another and a ticklish matter. He would have crashed any spacecraft designed before the designing of the Vanguard. But the designers of the Vanguard had known that the Ship’s auxiliary craft would be piloted and grounded by at least the second generation of explorers; green pilots must make those landings unassisted. They planned for it.
Hugh got the vessel down into the stratosphere and straightened it triumphantly into a course that would with certainty kill them all.
The autopilots took over.
Hugh stormed and swore, producing some words which diverted Alan’s attention and admiration from the view out of the port. But nothing he could do would cause the craft to respond. It settled in its own way and leveled off at a thousand feet, an altitude which it maintained regardless of changing contour.
“Hugh, the stars are gone!”
“I know it.”
“But Jordan! Hugh—what happened to them?”
Hugh glared at Alan. “I—don’t—know—and—I—don’t—care! You get aft with the women and stop asking silly questions.”
Alan departed reluctantly with a backward look at the surface of the planet and the bright sky. It interested him, but he did not marvel much at it—his ability to marvel had been overstrained.
It was some hours before Hugh discovered that a hitherto ignored group of control lights set in motion a chain of events whereby the autopilot would ground the Ship. Since he found this out experimentally he did not exactly choose the place of landing. But the unwinking stereo-eyes of the autopilot fed its data to the “brain”; the submolar mechanism selected and rejected; the Ship grounded gently on a rolling high prairie near a clump of trees.
Ertz came forward. “What’s happened, Hugh?”
Hugh waved at the view port. “We’re there.” He was too tired to make much of it, too tired and too emotionally exhausted. His weeks of fighting a fight he understood but poorly, hunger, and lately thirst—years of feeding on a consuming ambition, these left him with little ability to enjoy his goal when it arrived.
But they had landed, they had finished Jordan’s Trip. He was not unhappy; at peace rather, and very tired.
Ertz stared out. “Jordan!” he muttered. Then, “Let’s go out.”
“All right.”
Alan came forward, as they were opening the air lock, and the women pressed after him. “Are we there, Captain?”
“Shut up,” said Hugh.
The women crowded up to the deserted view port; Alan explained to them, importantly and incorrectly, the scene outside. Ertz got the last door open.
They sniffed at the air. “It’s cold,” said Ertz. In fact the temperature was perhaps five degrees less than the steady monotony of the Ship’s temperature, but Ertz was experiencing weather for the first time.
“Nonsense,” said Hugh, faintly annoyed that any fault should be found with “his” planet. “It’s just your imagination.”
“Maybe,” Ertz conceded. He paused un
easily. “Going out?” he added.
“Of course.” Mastering his own reluctance, Hugh pushed him aside and dropped five feet to the ground. “Come on—it’s fine.”
Ertz joined him, and stood close to him. Both of them remained close to the Ship. “It’s big, isn’t it?” Ertz said in a hushed voice.
“Well, we knew it would be,” Hugh snapped, annoyed with himself for having the same lost feeling.
“Hi!” Alan peered cautiously out of the door. “Can I come down? Is it all right?”
“Come ahead.”
Alan eased himself gingerly over the edge and joined them. He looked around and whistled. “Gosh!”
Their first sortie took them all of fifty feet from the Ship.
They huddled close together for silent comfort, and watched their feet to keep from stumbling on this strange uneven deck. They made it without incident until Alan looked up from the ground and found himself for the first time in his life with nothing close to him. He was hit by vertigo and acute agoraphobia; he moaned, closed his eyes and fell.
“What in the Ship?” demanded Ertz, looking around. Then it hit him.
Hugh fought against it. It pulled him to his knees, but he fought it, steadying himself with one hand on the ground. However, he had the advantage of having stared out through the view port for endless time—neither Alan nor Ertz were cowards.
“Alan!” his wife shrilled from the open door. “Alan! Come back here!” Alan opened one eye, managed to get it focused on the Ship, and started inching back on his belly.
“Alan!” commanded Hugh. “Stop that! Sit up.”
Alan did so, with the air of a man pushed too far. “Open your eyes!” Alan obeyed cautiously, reclosed them hastily.
“Just sit still and you’ll be all right,” Hugh added. “I’m all right already.” To prove it he stood up. He was still dizzy, but he made it. Ertz sat up.
The sun had crossed a sizable piece of the sky, enough time had passed for a well-fed man to become hungry—and they were not well fed. Even the women were outside—that had been accomplished by the simple expedient of going back in and pushing them out. They had not ventured away from the side of the Ship, but sat huddled against it. But their menfolk had even learned to walk singly, even in open spaces. Alan thought nothing of strutting a full fifty yards away from the shadow of the Ship, and did so more than once, in full sight of the women.
It was on one such journey that a small animal native to the planet let his curiosity exceed his caution. Alan’s knife knocked him over and left him kicking. Alan scurried to the spot, grabbed his fat prize by one leg, and bore it proudly back to Hugh. “Look, Hugh, look! Good eating!”
Hugh looked with approval. His first strange fright of the place had passed and had been replaced with a warm, deep feeling, a feeling that he had come at last to his long-lost home. This seemed a good omen.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Good eating. From now on, Alan, always Good Eating.”
Afterword
Mark L. Van Name
I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone: The Man Who Sold the Moon helped save my life. Really.
That’s part of my Heinlein. More about it later.
I expect your Heinlein is different.
Over a lifetime of meeting and talking with Heinlein readers and fans, though, one commonality has surfaced: For a great many of us, our Heinlein was a writer who influenced us profoundly.
The Man Who Sold the Moon and Orphans of the Sky, the two collections in this volume, serve to illustrate why Heinlein’s influence was so strong on so many.
Passionate Certainty
Heinlein wrote with passion and certainty.
The passions that were paramount in his fiction changed over time, but you could always spot them. Most of the stories in these two books are from the early 1940s, when Heinlein began publishing. (Only “The Man Who Sold the Moon” was from much later, the end of that decade. Even the story that reads as its sequel, “Requiem,” in fact came first.) Throughout these tales, one of Heinlein’s enduring passions, the value of the ultra-competent man, shines through. This man possesses real knowledge, useful skills, and the will to attack problems with both. Engineers and scientists save the day. Though it’s tempting to chalk this up to Heinlein writing in science fiction, that answer is too easy. Heinlein’s heroes were engineers and scientists and renegade doers precisely because they had the knowledge and skills necessary to solve real problems.
By contrast, Heinlein’s passionate dislike and distrust of bureaucracy is also evident in almost all of the stories. The people who do, the ones who make things happen, the ones we need to move humanity forward, are almost always the ones who are willing to buck the system.
Larry Gaines, the protagonist of “The Roads Must Roll,” may at first appear to be a notable exception because he is the head of a bureaucratic organization. That organization, however, is one of engineers, and his enemies, those who stop the roads, are members of a union of lower-echelon workers. It’s only natural given Heinlein’s passionate support of engineers that Gaines and his organization of engineers triumph over them.
Engineers are not the only Heinlein heroes, of course. D.D. Harriman, the man who took humanity to the Moon in “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” does not for the most part play the role of engineer in this story. He did, however, make his fortune inventing things that his business partner then sold, so he brings a strong scientific background to the task he undertakes. What makes him successful, however, is his possession of another trait Heinlein passionately valued: The willingness to pursue a vision, no matter the cost or obstacle, because it is the right thing to do. Harriman manipulates friends, wreaks havoc on his marriage, breaks laws, and does whatever is necessary because he, and at times he alone, knows the truth: Humanity must go to the Moon. He pursues this vision no matter the cost, even when it becomes clear that he will most certainly not be one of the people who make the trip. What others say does not matter; Heinlein knows that greatness comes from the dedication of determined, skilled men.
Heinlein does not advance his passions or his stories or his characters timidly. No qualifications here, no authorial doubt. Heinlein wrote these tales with a surety that gave them narrative drive and great appeal. For readers seeking stability in the rough times of World War II—and in all the rough times since then—Heinlein provided a calming and appealing measure of certainty.
Clarity and Focus
Heinlein delivered these strong and certain passions with the straightforward delivery of the natural storyteller. He didn’t spend a lot of time on flourishes, preferring instead to write with a straight-ahead style that at its best brought no attention to itself and instead focused the reader squarely on what was happening in the story.
He also chose his scenes well and told just enough of each to move the story along. He trusted the reader to fill in the missing pieces, to take the bits he had provided and to make them more vivid, as readers inevitably do. In scene after scene in these stories, Heinlein gives us enough data to paint the picture and advance the plot, but no more. We supply the rest. If Heinlein didn’t consider a scene essential, he didn’t provide it.
Consider, for example, the moment in “Universe” in which Hugh Hoyland and his fellows are ambushed by the “muties.” This attack is a clear opportunity for exciting action, a battle that is sure to grab readers and spice up the story. Instead, Heinlein skips right by it with four simple sentences.
“The project of cleaning out the muties required reconnaissance of the upper levels to be done systematically. It was in carrying out such scouting that Hugh Hoyland was again ambushed by a mutie.
“This mutie was more accurate with his slingshot. Hoyland’s companions, forced to retreat by superior numbers, left him for dead.”
Most writers, certainly most writers of popular fiction, would have written that scene. We would have made it as exciting as possible, and we would have built up to the moment of Hugh’
s buddies leaving him. We might even have succumbed to the temptation of indulging in melodrama at the end, perhaps by having Hugh’s vision fade as his fellows ran off.
Heinlein gave us only this short text because the ambush was not relevant to the main point of the story he wanted to tell. The action, in fact, was not even the point of the scene. The job at that moment was to bring together Hugh and Joe-Jim, the two-headed leader of the muties, so as to advance the greater story, the discovery of what their shared universe really was and how each group evolved to become what it was. Heinlein did that by opening the next scene with Hugh the captive of Joe-Jim, and on he went with the story.
In these stories, as in this transition between scenes, Heinlein kept his sights focused squarely on the tales he wanted to tell. He wrote tightly in these early works, not wasting any scenes, each bit contributing to the story at hand.
Your Heinlein, Our Heinlein
The combination of all of these factors—passion, certainty, clarity, and focus—made Heinlein’s tales powerful. They enabled each of us to find in them the parts that resonated the most with us, to care about those parts, and to carry them with us, sometimes for years and years. Every time I’ve asked a Heinlein fan about what she or he most remembers from a favorite story or book read long ago, the answer has been broad—inspiration, sense of wonder, the impression of heroes behaving heroically—and emotionally strong. No two have ever been close to identical.
Some of that is due, of course, to the fact that many Heinlein readers discovered him first when they were quite young, when strong impressions rather than detailed memories are more common reactions to fiction than anything else. Even those who first read him later in life, however, have answered similarly.
Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky Page 42