The Past Through Tomorrow Page 21

  Harriman nodded. “You know, Bob, we’re going to have to get away from the step rocket idea before we set up a scheduled run to the Moon.”

  “I don’t see how you can avoid it with chem-powered rockets.”

  “If you had a decent catapult you could put a single-stage chem-powered rocket into an orbit around the Earth, couldn’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s what we’ll do. Then it will refuel in that orbit.”

  “The old space-station set-up. I suppose that makes sense—in fact I know it does. Only the ship wouldn’t refuel and continue on to the Moon. The economical thing would be to have special ships that never landed anywhere make the jump from there to another fueling station around the Moon. Then—”

  LeCroix displayed a most unusual impatience. “All that doesn’t mean anything now. Get on with the story, Bob.”

  “Right,” agreed Harriman.

  “Well, this model should have done it. And, damn it, it still should do it.”

  Harriman looked puzzled. “But, Bob, that’s the approved design, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve got two-thirds built right out there on the field.”

  “Yes.” Coster looked stricken. “But it won’t do it. It won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve had to add in too much dead weight, that’s why. Mr. Harriman, you aren’t an engineer; you’ve no idea how fast the performance falls off when you have to clutter up a ship with anything but fuel and power plant. Take the landing arrangements for the fifth-stage power ring. You use that stage for a minute and a half, then you throw it away. But you don’t dare take a chance of it falling on Wichita or Kansas City. We have to include a parachute sequence. Even then we have to plan on tracking it by radar and cutting the shrouds by radio control when it’s over empty countryside and not too high. That means more weight, besides the parachute. By the time we are through, we don’t get a net addition of a mile a second out of that stage. It’s not enough.”

  Harriman stirred in his chair. “Looks like we made a mistake in trying to launch it from the States. Suppose we took off from someplace unpopulated, say the Brazil coast, and let the booster stages fall in the Atlantic; how much would that save you?”

  Coster looked off in the distance, then took out a slide rule. “Might work.”

  “How much of a chore will it be to move the ship, at this stage?”

  “Well… it would have to be disassembled completely; nothing less would do. I can’t give you a cost estimate off hand, but it would be expensive.”

  “How long would it take?”

  “Hmm… shucks, Mr. Harriman, I can’t answer off hand. Two years— eighteen months, with luck. We’d have to prepare a site. We’d have to build shops.”

  Harriman thought about it, although he knew the answer in his heart. His shoe string, big as it was, was stretched to the danger point. He couldn’t keep up the promotion, on talk alone, for another two years; he had to have a successful flight and soon—or the whole jerry-built financial structure would burst. “No good, Bob.”

  “I was afraid of that. Well, I tried to add still a sixth stage.” He held up another sketch. “You see that monstrosity? I reached the point of diminishing returns. The final effective velocity is actually less with this abortion than with the five-step job.”

  “Does that mean you are whipped, Bob? You can’t build a Moon ship?”

  “No, I—”

  LeCroix said suddenly, “Clear out Kansas.”

  “Eh?” asked Harriman.

  “Clear everybody out of Kansas and Eastern Colorado. Let the fifth and fourth sections fall anywhere in that area. The third section falls in the Atlantic; the second section goes into a permanent orbit—and the ship itself goes on to the Moon. You could do it if you didn’t have to waste weight on the parachuting of the fifth and fourth sections. Ask Bob.”

  “So? How about it, Bob?”

  “That’s what I said before. It was the parasitic penalties that whipped us. The basic design is all right.”

  “Hmmm… somebody hand me an Atlas.” Harriman looked up Kansas and Colorado, did some rough figuring. He stared off into space, looking surprisingly, for the moment, as Coster did when the engineer was thinking about his own work. Finally he said, “It won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Money. I told you not to worry about money—for the ship. But it would cost upward of six or seven million dollars to evacuate that area even for a day. We’d have to settle nuisance suits out of hand; we couldn’t wait. And there would be a few die-hards who just couldn’t move anyhow.”

  LeCroix said savagely, “If the crazy fools won’t move, let them take their chances.”

  “I know how you feel, Les. But this project is too big to hide and too big to move. Unless we protect the bystanders we’ll be shut down by court order and force. I can’t buy all the judges in two states. Some of them wouldn’t be for sale.”

  “It was a nice try, Les,” consoled Coster.

  “I thought it might be an answer for all of us,” the pilot answered.

  Harriman said, “You were starting to mention another solution, Bob?”

  Coster looked embarrassed. “You know the plans for the ship itself—a three-man job, space and supplies for three.”

  “Yes. What are you driving at?”

  “It doesn’t have to be three men. Split the first step into two parts, cut the ship down to the bare minimum for one man and jettison the remainder. That’s the only way I see to make this basic design work.” He got out another sketch. “See? One man and supplies for less than a week. No airlock—the pilot stays in his pressure suit. No galley. No bunks. The bare minimum to keep one man alive for a maximum of two hundred hours. It will work.”

  “It will work,” repeated LeCroix, looking at Coster.

  Harriman looked at the sketch with an odd, sick feeling at his stomach. Yes, no doubt it would work—and for the purposes of the promotion it did not matter whether one man or three went to the Moon and returned.

  Just to do it was enough; he was dead certain that one successful flight would cause money to roll in so that there would be capital to develop to the point of practical, passenger-carrying ships.

  The Wright brothers had started with less.

  “If that is what I have to put up with, I suppose I have to,” he said slowly.

  Coster looked relieved. “Fine! But there is one more hitch. You know the conditions under which I agreed to tackle this job—I was to go along. Now Les here waves a contract under my nose and says he has to be the pilot.”

  “It’s not just that,” LeCroix countered. “You’re no pilot, Bob. You’ll kill yourself and ruin the whole enterprise, just through bull-headed stubbornness.”

  “I’ll learn to fly it. After all, I designed it. Look here, Mr. Harriman, I hate to let you in for a suit—Les says he will sue—but my contract antedates his. I intend to enforce it.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Mr. Harriman. Let him do the suing. I’ll fly that ship and bring her back. He’ll wreck it.”

  “Either I go or I don’t build the ship,” Coster said flatly.

  Harriman motioned both of them to keep quiet. “Easy, easy, both of you. You can both sue me if it gives you any pleasure. Bob, don’t talk nonsense; at this stage I can hire other engineers to finish the job. You tell me it has to be just one man.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  They both stared.

  “Shut your jaws,” Harriman snapped. “What’s funny about that? You both knew I meant to go. You don’t think I .went to all this trouble just to give you two a ride to the Moon, do you? I intend to go. What’s wrong with me as a pilot? I’m in good health, my eyesight is all right, I’m still smart enough to learn what I have to learn. If I have to drive my own buggy, I’ll do it. I won’t step aside for anybody, not anybody, d’you hear me?”

  Coster got his breath first. �
��Boss, you don’t know what you are saying.”

  Two hours later they were still wrangling. Most of the time Harriman had stubbornly sat still, refusing to answer their arguments. At last he went out of the room for a few minutes, on the usual pretext. When he came back in he said, “Bob, what do you weigh?”

  “Me? A little over two hundred.”

  “Close to two twenty, I’d judge. Les, what do you weigh?”

  “One twenty-six.”

  “Bob, design the ship for a net load of one hundred and twenty-six pounds.”

  “Huh? Now wait a minute, Mr. Harriman—”

  “Shut up! If I can’t learn to be a pilot in six weeks, neither can you.”

  “But I’ve got the mathematics and the basic knowledge to—”

  “Shut up I said! Les has spent as long learning his profession as you have learning yours. Can he become an engineer in six weeks? Then what gave you the conceit to think that you can learn his job in that time? I’m not going to have you wrecking my ship to satisfy your swollen ego. Anyhow, you gave out the real key to it when you were discussing the design. The real limiting factor is the actual weight of the passenger or passengers, isn’t it? Everything—everything works in proportion to that one mass. Right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Right or wrong?”

  “Well… yes, that’s right. I just wanted—”

  “The smaller man can live on less water, he breathes less air, he occupies less space. Les goes.” Harriman walked over and put a hand on Coster’s shoulder. “Don’t take it hard, son. It can’t be any worse on you than it is on me. This trip has got to succeed—and that means you and I have got to give up the honor of being the first man on the Moon. But I promise you this: we’ll go on the second trip, we’ll go with Les as our private chauffeur. It will be the first of a lot of passenger trips. Look, Bob—you can be a big man in this game, if you’ll play along now. How would you like to be chief engineer of the first lunar colony?”

  Coster managed to grin. “It might not be so bad.”

  “You’d like it. Living on the Moon will be an engineering problem; you and I have talked about it. How’d you like to put your theories to work? Build the first city? Build the big observatory we’ll found there? Look around and know that you were the man who had done it?”

  Coster was definitely adjusting himself to it. “You make it sound good. Say, what will you be doing?”

  “Me? Well, maybe I’ll be the first mayor of Luna City.” It was a new thought to him; he savored it. “The Honorable Delos David Harriman, Mayor of Luna City. Say, I like that! You know, I’ve never held any sort of public office; I’ve just owned things.” He looked around. “Everything settled?”

  “I guess so,” Coster said slowly. Suddenly he stuck his hand out at LeCroix. “You fly her, Les; I’ll build her.”

  LeCroix grabbed his hand. “It’s a deal. And you and the Boss get busy and start making plans for the next job—big enough for all of us.”

  “Right!”

  Harriman put his hand on top of theirs. “That’s the way I like to hear you talk. We’ll stick together and we’ll found Luna City together.”

  “I think we ought to call it ‘Harriman,’” LeCroix said seriously.

  “Nope, I’ve thought of it as Luna City ever since I was a kid; Luna City it’s going to be. Maybe we’ll put Harriman Square in the middle of it,” he added.

  “I’ll mark it that way in the plans,” agreed Coster.

  Harriman left at once. Despite the solution he was terribly depressed and did not want his two colleagues to see it. It had been a Pyrrhic victory; he had saved the enterprise but he felt like an animal who has gnawed off his own leg to escape a trap.

  8

  STRONG WAS ALONE in the offices of the partnership when he got a call from Dixon. “George, I was looking for D. D. Is he there?”

  “No, he’s back in Washington—something about clearances. I expect him back soon.”

  “Hmmm… Entenza and I want to see him. We’re coming over.”

  They arrived shortly. Entenza was quite evidently very much worked up over something; Dixon looked sleekly impassive as usual. After greetings Dixon waited a moment, then said, “Jack, you had some business to transact, didn’t you?”

  Entenza jumped, then snatched a draft from his pocket. “Oh, yes! George, I’m not going to have to pro-rate after all. Here’s my payment to bring my share up to full payment to date.”

  Strong accepted it. “I know that Delos will be pleased.” He tucked it in a drawer.

  “Well,” said Dixon sharply, “aren’t you going to receipt for it?”

  “If Jack wants a receipt. The cancelled draft will serve.” However, Strong wrote out a receipt without further comment; Entenza accepted it.

  They waited a while. Presently Dixon said, “George, you’re in this pretty deep, aren’t you?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Want to hedge your bets?”

  “How?”

  “Well, candidly, I want to protect myself. Want to sell one half of one percent of your share?”

  Strong thought about it. In fact he was worried—worried sick. The presence of Dixon’s auditor had forced them to keep on a cash basis—and only Strong knew how close to the line that had forced the partners. “Why do you want it?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t use it to interfere with Delos’s operations. He’s our man; we’re backing him. But I would feel a lot safer if I had the right to call a halt if he tried to commit us to something we couldn’t pay for. You know Delos; he’s an incurable optimist. We ought to have some sort of a brake on him.”

  Strong thought about it. The thing that hurt him was that he agreed with everything Dixon said; he had stood by and watched while Delos dissipated two fortunes, painfully built up through the years. D. D. no longer seemed to care. Why, only this morning he had refused even to look at a report on the H & S automatic household switch—after dumping it on Strong.

  Dixon leaned forward. “Name a price, George. I’ll be generous.”

  Strong squared his stooped shoulders. “I’ll sell—”

  “Good!”

  “—if Delos okays it. Not otherwise.”

  Dixon muttered something. Entenza snorted. The conversation might have gone acrimoniously further, had not Harriman walked in.

  No one said anything about the proposal to Strong. Strong inquired about the trip; Harriman pressed a thumb and finger together. “All in the groove! But it gets more expensive to do business in Washington every day.” He turned to the others. “How’s tricks? Any special meaning to the assemblage? Are we in executive session?”

  Dixon turned to Entenza. “Tell him, Jack.”

  Entenza faced Harriman. “What do you mean by selling television rights?”

  Harriman cocked a brow. “And why not?”

  “Because you promised them to me, that’s why. That’s the original agreement; I’ve got it in writing.”

  “Better take another look at the agreement, Jack. And don’t go off half-cocked. You have the exploitation rights for radio, television, and other amusement and special feature ventures in connection with the first trip to the Moon. You’ve still got ‘em. Including broadcasts from the ship, provided we are able to make any.” He decided that this was not a good time to mention that weight considerations had already made the latter impossible; the Pioneer would carry no electronic equipment of any sort not needed in astrogation. “What I sold was the franchise to erect a television station on the Moon, later. By the way, it wasn’t even an exclusive franchise, although Clem Haggerty thinks it is. If you want to buy one yourself, we can accommodate you.”

  “Buy it! Why, you—”

  “Wups! Or you can have it free, if you can get Dixon and George to agree that you are entitled to it. I won’t be a tightwad. Anything else?”

  Dixon cut in. “Just where do we stand now, Delos?”

  “Gentlemen, you can take it for granted that the Pionee
r will leave on schedule—next Wednesday. And now, if— you will excuse me, I’m on my way to Peterson Field.”

  After he had left his three associates sat in silence for some time, Entenza muttering to himself, Dixon apparently thinking, and Strong just waiting. Presently Dixon said, “How about that fractional share, George?”

  “You didn’t see fit to mention it to Delos.”

  “I see.” Dixon carefully deposited an ash. “He’s a strange man, isn’t he?”

  Strong shifted around. ‘Yes.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Let me see—he came to work for me in—”

  “He worked for you?”

  “For several months. Then we set up our first company.” Strong thought back about it. “I suppose he had a power complex, even then.”

  “No,” Dixon said carefully. “No, I wouldn’t call it a power complex. It’s more of a Messiah complex.”

  Entenza looked up. “He’s a crooked son of a bitch, that’s what he is!”

  Strong looked at him mildly. “I’d rather you wouldn’t talk about him that way. I’d really rather you wouldn’t.”

  “Stow it, Jack,” ordered Dixon. “You might force George to take a poke at you. One of the odd things about him,” went on Dixon, “is that he seems to be able to inspire an almost feudal loyalty. Take yourself. I know you are cleaned out, George—yet you won’t let me rescue you. That goes beyond logic; it’s personal.”

  Strong nodded. “He’s an odd man. Sometimes I think he’s the last of the Robber Barons.”

  Dixon shook his head. “Not the last. The last of them opened up the American West. He’s the first of the new Robber Barons—and you and I won’t see the end of it. Do you ever read Carlyle?”

  Strong nodded again. “I see what you mean, the ‘Hero’ theory, but I don’t necessarily agree with it.”