Fifth Planet Page 6

  It was at one of these homey, fireside parties that the West first divulged its list of astronauts for the Achilles expedition - Fiske, Fawsett, Larson, and Reinbach. Larson was to be the leader, with Fawsett as his second in command. Kaluga carried the news back to Moscow.

  It is not known who was responsible for the Russian stroke of imagination, almost of genius. But it is pleasant to think that somewhere behind a dull grey wall of concrete somewhere in Moscow, and behind the flinty exterior of some close-cropped Russian committee man there lurks a touch of romance. The Russo-Chinese list for their expedition was announced about a month later. It was: Alexander Pitoyan, Nuri Bakovsky, Ivan Kratov and Tara Uyana.

  The United States fell slap-bang into the propaganda trap that had been prepared for the West. Once Americans had digested the incredible news that a woman was to be sent on the Russian expedition it was quickly pointed out that the performances of Russian women athletes closely approached those of men. It was broadly hinted that Miss Ilyana would turn out to be practically a man in all her essential qualities. Visions of rough, tough, Russian women breaking stones along the road to Archangel were conjured up. The remnants of the once-powerful Hearst Press even went so far as to publish the headline commies to blast THREE-HUNDRED-POUND WOMAN INTO SPACE. The editor in question was allowed twelve hours of self

  57

  Fifth Planet

  congratulation before the trap was sprung. Ilyana turned out to be a curvaceous blonde with a high I.Q.

  Somewhat more than a touch of inspiration had gone into Ilyana’s selection, however. Without the work of Nicolai Popkin, a young mathematician from Rostov, a proposal to include a woman would have been regarded as an amusing and welcome joke by the higher committees, but it would not have been taken seriously. Inevitably sex was always a difficulty where long space voyages were concerned. Young men cooped up in a space-ship for months on end naturally found themselves turning lightly to thoughts of love. The strange result proved by Popkin, subsequently to become famous as Popkin’s Theorem was, that there would be far less talk and thought about sex if a woman were included in the party. A few laymen had doubts about this result but their views were brushed aside, for mathematical rigour could not be gainsaid. Rigour there seemed to be - at least the mathematicians said so. Three Academicians, consulted as referees, found Popkin’s argument both elegant and satisfying. It was said that the shock-haired young man had used a particularly subtle lemma.

  Once decided on their course the committees proceeded with ruthless efficiency. It was immediately clear that a major propaganda victory could be scored. The thing to do was quite obviously to choose a girl who in her appearance might have been taken as an ideal representation of American womanhood. So the hunt was on. The search was of course confined to members of the Young Communists Party. It was also restricted by the requirement of an excellent educational background. But after that, the Russian authorities were only interested in vital statistics, and in those qualities that were literally superficial.

  Thousands of dossiers, in the form of neat packets of punched-cards, were sent from the provinces to Moscow, where they were analysed with the aid of a computer. The computer was of course supplied with a programme of selection, the gate of which was very narrow. Almost fifty girls

  58

  The Russian Skip

  managed to pass through the gate, Ilyana being one of them. There is no telling how she was chosen out of this short list but Tara Ilyana was certainly a pleasant young woman with a well-integrated personality.

  It would have been hard for anyone from the twentieth century to understand the shattering effect of Ilyana’s inclusion on American public opinion. Everywhere one heard the gloomy prognostication that now ‘they’ were finished. The social temperature had continued to rise in an unbroken steep curve ever since the middle of the twentieth century. By 2087 everybody lived, in the way that film stars used to live a century ago. Marriages lasted on average about a year.

  It was the discovery of how to prevent children in broken homes from becoming insecure, made about seventy years ago, that really produced the difference. It was one of the few really genuine social advances, to stop the furious fighting that used to take place in the law courts over the custody of children. No wonder they felt insecure when such things were going on. Now this was all altered. The old tribal Structure had come back with the young being thought of as members of the tribe, rather than as belonging to a particular person. But woe betide the child who didn’t belong to the tribe - who didn’t belong to the right social bracket, like young Tom Fiske. Then things were really tough, but no worse than they used to be. Anyway, with the kids getting married at thirteen or fourteen — entering the sexual parabola as the psychiatrists call it — there wasn’t much childhood to worry about.

  It is of course well known that astronauts are a great success with women. The pattern has been with us for more than a hundred years, ever since the absurd early idea of sending married men on the first trips into space was abandoned. By a like token it was clear that Ilyana was going to be a great success with men, even before she ever set her well-shaped foot into the Achilles ship.

  The second most interesting member of the Russian team

  59

  Fifth Planet

  was Alex Pitoyan. A slim dark young man, he was the only Musoovite in the team. Seven years earlier he had graduated from Moscow University with excellent marks in Physics and Mathematics. Different from other able young men of his time, he showed no taste for mathematico-psychological studies, but became interested in complex orbital calculations. The field was not a particularly difficult one, since the use of computers had largely obviated the tricky analytical work of previous centuries. Within five years Pitoyan had become a master of the subject and of the use of computers in general. Now it was perfectly clear that the orbits of the Achilles ships could not be pre-set. They would have to pass through very complex gravitational fields, and no one could say exactly what initial orbit was the correct one. The available data were not good enough for that, and were most unlikely to become good enough, even though observational measurement was becoming more and more accurate as the Helios system approached our own. Inevitably the orbit would have to be altered while the ship was in flight. The crew would have to play it by ear and make appropriate corrections as the need arose. One possibility was to send all available information back to Earth for the terrestrial laboratories to make the necessary calculations, and for the appropriate corrections to be sent back to the ship. This was precisely the Euro-American plan. The Russians on the other hand decided for safety’s sake to include a computer in the ship. They also decided to send a genuine scientist, not someone with a merely superficial training. Pitoyan was a good effective choice; medical reports showed that while he was not in the class of the normal astronaut, he could be expected to survive the rigours of take-off and landing, and from a mental point of view it was quite likely that he would more than hold his "own.

  Soon after the announcement of the composition of the

  party he decided that it would be nice to make Ilyana’s acquaintance on a rather more informal basis than had been

  60

  The Russian Ship

  possible on the occasion of their meeting at the House of Astronauts. The affair prospered for a little while but was then brought to an abrupt halt by the authorities, who warned him very sternly that if this behaviour were to continue he was out. The behaviour was sharply terminated. Alone in his tiny flat, fifty yards off Tchaikovsky Street, he shrugged and grinned to himself. It would be simpler after take-off.

  It is an old idea that there might be somebody in the world exactly and precisely like oneself. Add a sinister touch to the situation in which you happen to meet that person, and what do you do? According to tradition you are supposed to crack up. Actually nature is very prolific. Essentially the same individuals are' constantly being born, often simultaneously,
and often in widely different parts of the earth. The circumstances of birth and the different conventions of the societies in which they are brought up proceed to clothe these individuals with a facade that hides their basic similarity, but like is apt to ally itself with like if they are brought together under basically the same circumstances. No one could tell exactly where the ancestors of Tom Fiske had come from, judging from his appearance probably from Norway or Denmark via the south of England. The ancestors of Ivan Kratov and of Nuri Bakovsky hiad probably moved into Russia from the direction of the Pripet marshes about fifteen hundred years ago. Whether their forebears at a still earlier date were ever associated together must of necessity be a matter of doubt and speculation, but certain it is that all three were basically the same individual. Laid over one of them were the doubts, miseries, and uncertainties of a free society. Laid over the other two were the inflexible certainty, the pride, and the boredom of a culture that thinks it knows exactly where it is going.

  An observer from entirely outside the human race would indeed have discovered much about their respective cultures, their behaviour would have allowed him to measure the merits and demerits of the societies that had raised them.

  61

  Fifth Planet

  To the Westerner who claims that the case of Tom Fiske was not a fair one, that /Tom Fiske was not a fair representative of their culture, it must be said that if Fiske had been brought up as the Westerner imagines in theory that all children should be brought up, then he never would have made the grade, he would never have got within the remotest sighting distance of the Western party to Achilles. The comparison is of necessity a fair one. And the conclusions our imaginary observer might reach are not clear. Which system they would favour is quite uncertain.

  Suffice it then to say that Kratov and Bakovsky were basically courageous tough men. Where Fiske had been dragged up, not brought up, they had received the most careful of graduated trainings. They had both started life at a creche. They had been told that Russia was the greatest nation on earth, and because the people who told them this provided food, warmth, and shelter, they saw no reason to disbelieve it. They were not intelligent enough to think outside the carefully organized social structure in which they were embedded. They saw no reason to behave in any way differently from the other boys around them. In all respects they were exactly the same as the others, except in their ability to survive physical discomfort without appreciable mental strain. So that, at the time they were chosen for the Achilles expedition, they were undistinguished individuals, their characters essentially unformed, precisely because they were not unique and because their education had been designed to suppress, not to bring out, all small differences between one person and another. Once again, if they had not been chosen, those who were would not have differed in any sensible respect. They were the products of a system, a system that had erected a tiny gate through which only men of a very restricted type could pass. On the voyage itself their qualities might begin to mark them out as real people, not as packets of punch-cards to be fed to a computer.

  There was an ironic similarity in the design of the Rus

  62

  The Russian Ship

  sian rocket. Just as the men were essentially the same men, so the rocket was essentially the same rocket. And just as the men were overlaid by superficial differences, of no real consequence at all, so the rocket looked different to the casual eye. When mounted in its outer container, the container of the chemical fuel that was to get it into orbit around the Earth, it measured a hundred feet across the base and was five hundred feet in height. The American rocket on the other hand measured only sixty feet across the base but was a thousand feet in height. The Russian looked squat and ugly, compared to the pencilled elegance of the American machine. But basically they were exactly the same job. They were powered in the same way, and the logic of their construction was the same. It had cost the best part of a hundred thousand million pounds to produce the superficial differences. It was however, exactly these differences that everybody was proud of. They said that they were ‘essentially’ Russian or ‘all’ American as the case might be.

  Chapter Seven

  The Launching

  Mike Fawsett marched up and down the brightly lit hall as he waited for the Atlantic shuttle, which was already an hour late. The timing of really big flights was absolutely precise, to the second. Funny that they couldn’t run a three- thousand-mile hop efficiently.

  Mike himself was equally at home on either side of the Atlantic. His mother was American, his father British. His early education had been in England, but he’d come over to the States for graduate training, and had spent most of his life there since. To get himself into space school he had taken out American citizenship, and by now the difference between him and a native-born American was mainly that the law still prevented him from ever becoming President. But this scarcely worried him, for with his inclusion in the Achilles crew he had achieved the ambition of a lifetime, of more than a lifetime. He was marching up and down now not because he was nervous or impatient at the delay but because of an over-abundance of physical energy. This constant desire to be moving, to be flexing his muscles, had always been a difficulty on flights into space. It was a bit odd he thought to himself that they chose physical types for these jobs, when an armchair man might find things a lot easier.

  He hadn’t seen Cathy for three months. It had been absolutely essential to stick unswervingly to his training. The new ship was quite a bit different to anything he had ever been in before. Now that they were getting near takeoff they’d been given the green light - to make the best of their last week-end. The more he saw of Cathy the better the

  64

  The Launching

  authorities would be pleased. They’d know about it of course, they’d have her dossier. The main point was that he was in the clear.

  The speaker announced that the Atlantic ferry was in. The waiting crowd moved closer to the exit gate. Then he saw Cathy coming, one of the first out — she must have simply floated through all formalities. He kissed her, ‘Cat, darling, you’re late.’

  ‘Oh, am I ? I can never get the time right when it changes.’

  ‘I’ve got everything fixed.’

  She looked up at him, thinking that she too had got everything fixed. Hugh had gone down to the south of Florida for the big launching. This left her quite free to spend the last few days with Mike.

  They took the monorail into Manhattan. They passed high above the Triborough Bridge and above the East River. It was really much more impressive than actually flying. It was nearly 4.30 on a November afternoon, and the lights of New York were just coming on. The whole sight of it delighted Cathy. It wasn’t that she was unsophisticated, or that she hadn’t seen it before, but that her memories of the past - of her last visit to New York two years earlier — were now dim and vague. Mike’s arm around her shoulder was the reality.

  Their section of the car branched off the main line at Fifty-second Street. Within thirty seconds they were standing on the pavement of Fifth Avenue. Mike carried her bag along one of the cross streets and they were almost instantly inside a block of expensively furnished apartments.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d got a place in New York, Mike.’

  ‘I don’t have, but I’ve got a friend.’

  ‘Look what I’ve brought for you.’ Cathy was already beginning to spread her things over the bedroom. She opened up a package, and there was a large soft toy. It was a donkey with big black hoofs, a black top, and a white patch for its mouth and nose. The ears were long and sagged down the back 'like a lion’s mane. The eyes had a quizzical

  65

  T—c

  Fifth Planet

  look. ‘It’s a mascot. You can’t keep your pyjamas inside it.’

  He looked at the absurd toy with an embarrassed grin, wondering where he could get rid of it quietly.

  After the past months he had
a great desire for Cathy, but when he tried to kiss her she pushed him away quite firmly. Of course, it could be the journey that had tired her, but Mike had more than a suspicion that she was levelling the score for his neglect of her during the last few weeks.

  With the coming of night the people who thronged the streets of Manhattan during the day mostly retired to their homes, down the Jersey coast or far up the valley of the Hudson, or into Westchester and beyond to Connecticut. Those who provided services and entertainment stayed behind, apart from the very few who actually lived in the city. It had changed a good deal over the last century. Nowadays there is no land on Manhattan, not even the smallest patch, that is available for cheap living. The whole island, from the Battery in the south to its northernmost tip, is now solid with office premises. The only exceptions are the eating- houses, the theatres of Broadway, hotels, and a very few private apartments grouped around Central Park. Looking backwards over the whole history of the development of New York one notices a consistent pattern. The amount of the island developed for business administration simply depended on the state of the economy of the Union. In the very early days only the southernmost regions were used. The rest of the island was available at small cost to anyone who wished to live there. By the middle of the twentieth century, the movement to the north had reached almost to Sixtieth Street. Beyond were about thirty more streets of prosperous residences and hotels. Then came Harlem, and the cheap tenements of the Puerto Ricans. All this has long since gone. Everywhere, north to south, east to west, stand the office blocks, medium sized by New York standards. It would be easy to erect buildings of the size of the old skyscrapers, but the removal of such edifices is unduly costly.