Fifth Planet Page 7

  Strangely enough the stresses to which the modem New

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  Yorker is subject in his daily life are probably less than they were a hundred years ago. For nowadays nobody living there conceives that life could be in any way different from what it is. To the great mass of commuters it seems entirely natural that one should spend the whole of one’s life in commuting. The very first memories almost are of the daily routine of making the school bus. The alarm bell at seven o’clock, the hurried shower and breakfast, the short walk to the end of the street to join the others. This was now the universal pattern. Nowhere was a child to be found who ambled along alone, happy in a world of his own imagination, content to arrive late at school and not thinking it important. The psychologists said it was a good thing that there were no such children, for they would have lived unhappy lives themselves and produced tensions and unrest in others.

  Fifteen hundred miles away to the south, Conway was standing looking out over sandy land-locked pools towards the sea. He was dressed in shirt and slacks, the shirt open at the neck, the November night pleasantly warm with a slight wind blowing from the sea. The count-down was on. If everything went well the first of the two gigantic rockets would take off in two hours’ time. There had to be two of them, one for an emergency. Both would be put in orbit around the Earth, engineers would strip away the outer covering - the sardine tin as they called it - and both would be given thorough final tests. If both passed these tests then he supposed that some committee or other would spend a half-day deciding which was to be used for the actual flight. Both would not be used, for one must be kept in reserve in case of a disaster. He had driven out from the launching area to get away from the rising tension. It was an amazing phenomenon, some ten thousand men - engineers, electricians, electronics experts, service personnel, scientists and mathematicians - all of them gripped by one single complex of thoughts, the launching. Not a single one of

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  them could think outside that pattern. Not even to save their lives. If danger was to threaten, men would risk their lives without even knowing that they were doing so. Conway decided that it must have been a bit like this in the old battles. It was a common thought process that simply took Charge and directed a man towards an end that was not his own personal one. Conway shivered as he wondered whether it would ever be possible to control in a pre-directed way these cooperative thought structures. They grew only by chance now, by trial, sometimes they developed, like this launching business, and sometimes they didn’t - but suppose you could control whether they developed or not. Then you really would have an ant-heap. He turned round and looked towards the aura of light where the work was now going on. Was there any real difference between an ant- heap and what was going on over there?

  Conway drove back to the control area. Up to a certain point the lights ahead of him seemed to brighten, but after a certain stage, through some physiological quirk, they appeared to reach a constant level, even though he was drawing nearer to them all the time. He could now see the lights glinting on the thousand-foot-high metallic outer casing of the first rocket. He glanced briefly at his watch. Within little more than an hour this great flashing needle would be streaming upwards on the first stage of its journey into space. He braked the oar to a standstill by the roadside and got out for a moment to stare across at the thing.

  Could one doubt that this was a magnificent achievement? It was a question that Conway had often asked himself before. He had never been able to give a satisfactory reply, and now as he looked across at the shining streak of light, still three miles away, he found himself as far away as ever from an answer.

  When you came down to the bare bones of it there was no denying that here was a magnificent expression of the abilities of the human race. It wasn’t just the ideas, it was

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  the organization too. Then why somewhere deep in himself did he revolt against it? Perhaps he himself had a malfunction. He knew that that was what the psychologists thought about him. He knew that in the files he was said to be badly adjusted and unstable, he knew that no one at the top would take the slightest notice of any sociological pronouncements he might make. They would listen to him on technical issues, but that figured. It was well known that a brain suffering from abnormality was more likely than the normal to show streaks of brilliance. In fact it was well known that thorough analysis of the lives of all those whom Conway himself would have placed as great men showed them up as socially sick men. Perhaps they were right and perhaps they were not. Perhaps it was an attempt of little men of small consequence to devalue their betters.

  This in a way was the root of the matter. It was really the contrast between the frenzied importance that was attached to this rocket here, and the systematic devaluation of achievements of comparable magnificence when they happened to come from one or two people. For the great achievement by an individual was always harder to understand and conceive of and to appreciate, whereas this rocket business was obvious to everybody. It was really the mentality of the society that had produced the thing, rather than the thing itself, to which he objected. It was because they did it all so seriously. The decision to go to Achilles had been taken as a matter of policy, not of adventure. Policy should never have been allowed to cross the threshold into the world of ideas.

  Somehow it was all there in the things that were around him now. The millions of kilowatts that were being burned in the launching-field away to the west, the glint of metal in the distance, the smell of gasoline from the road, the beer cans that also glinted near his feet, and the star Helios that was now rising to the east. Soon it would dim the lights of the launching-field.

  The guard checked very carefully through Conway’s

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  papers - he couldn’t understand why anyone with Conway’s priority status wouldn’t be already on the field.

  ‘You’re kinda late, aren’t you, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not due up for another hour or more, is it?’

  The guard shrugged and allowed him to go on. Conway wondered how in the middle of all this hysteria they managed to get the damned thing off the ground at all.

  He parked and walked very deliberately towards the spot where he knew the senior engineers would be assembled. When he found Cadogan he saw that the burly Californian was in one hell of a temper. Conway would have given heavy odds that Cadogan was suffering from a bad headache. He couldn’t understand why, for the development engineers had long since been out of the active side of the job. First it was the turn of the development engineers, then of the production team, and now, at the actual launching itself, of the operational engineers. Cadogan wasn’t allowed even the slightest of decisions at this stage. Perhaps that was what was making him mad.

  Conway turned away lest they should see him grinning in the grey light that now suffused the whole area. The pattern was consistent, the way every profession despised the others. The theoreticians, the chaps who worked with mathematics on paper, despised them all. The observers and experimentalists despised the engineers, and the development engineers despised every other form of engineer, and so on along the whole chain. Yet society couldn’t get along for five minutes without the whole bunch of them. It was really that they were all like children, perplexed and apprehensive of what they didn’t understand.

  ‘How about a drink ?’ he asked Cadogan.

  ‘Best idea we’ve heard around here.’

  ‘What’ll it be?’

  ‘Straight Scotch.’

  It took Conway ten minutes to find the bar, and he had to assure the bartender that the drinks were not for anyone on ops. He carried them back across the compound in a

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  small hand refrigerator. He glanced at his watch. Cathy would be in New York by now, probably dining somewh
ere about West Forty-seventh Street. He wished he had doubled the size and strength of his drink.

  In place of the. electronic signals coming over the loudspeakers a human voice began to count off the last seconds. A flicker of light developing instantly into a ring of fire appeared at the base of the rocket. As always, Conway had the sickening feeling that it was never going to move. It seemed to stand there for an eternity. When he had almost given up hope it began to move very slowly upwards. Suddenly it accelerated away from them leaving a patch of yellow flame in the sky. It seemed a miracle that such an enormous thing could be moved without toppling over.

  The roar lessened to a less painful level. They waited without moving, dreading that the speakers might announce some malfunction. But when the announcement came it was to say that the ship was already in orbit; it was in the right orbit, and within an hour the team of five hundred engineers would be stripping away the now obsolete outer casing. Conway looked once again towards Helios, but only for a flash. For although Helios was not overly bright, he knew that if he looked at that fiercely blue point of light for too long it would bum out a spot on his retina.

  None of them had eaten, so they made their way to the restaurant. They began by ordering a long row of ice-cold double Martinis.

  ‘God, how I hate that old-fashioned chemical stuff,’ said Cadogan. ‘I was all goose-pimples as it went up.’

  ‘It’s a pity one of the old-timers couldn’t have seen it,’ someone said.

  ‘That’s right. They didn’t know what they were starting.’

  By morning the whole world knew that both the first rocket and the second reserve were safely in their parking orbits. Fawsett and Cathy heard it over breakfast.

  ‘How long does that mean we’ve got?’ she asked.

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  ‘Another day, Baby.5 He saw Cathy wince and realized that his transatlantic switch was a mistake.

  ‘I don’t know exactly when we shall be taking off, but certainly within three or four days after that.’

  ‘But why can’t they tell you when you’ll be taking off?5

  This was the sort of question that Cathy was always asking! It defied an answer, it was the way that things were done.

  ‘They’ll be giving us our final briefing.5

  ‘But they’ve been briefing you, or whatever it is they do to you, for months now, haven’t they?’

  Mike sighed, ‘Well, something unexpected might have turned up.’

  ‘But it hasn’t. I don’t see why you shouldn’t go straight to the place. I do if I want to go anywhere.’

  Fawsett really couldn’t see either, but he knew he wasn’t going to start breaking new ground now. Besides, he was doubtful if he could stand up to another three days with Cathy. He found himself wondering how Conway managed it.

  ‘Well, we’d better make the best use of the time we’ve got,5 she said.

  By now he was coming to realize that Cathy was using him, not the other way round. It had never happened to him before. He began to wonder how it came about that her marriage to Conway seemed to go on and on for ever without breaking up.

  ‘We could always have stayed in bed,’ he said.

  *You said there wasn’t any breakfast service. So we had to get up,5 answered Cathy, taking a long drink of orange juice. He noticed that whereas she had an aversion to fattening foods she always managed to maintain a hearty appetite. This seemed typical of her.

  ‘I’m ready now.5

  He felt it would be unmanly and unmasculine not to lead the way back to the bed. But when they got there it was she who pulled him down on to her. With her arms round his

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  neck she whispered, ‘We must get the most out of every single minute, darling.’

  The light was greying dawn. During the night there had been an early snowfall. For the most part the flakes had simply melted as they reached the ground, except that there were two inches of wet brownish slush everywhere along the side of the pavements. Mike slowly dressed himself. He had about two hours before he must report. And he had a headache, not the thick fuzzy headache of a hang-over either. Cathy was still sleeping peacefully. He moved about the room making more noise than he need have done. Still she slept on, almost without moving. God, he thought, does she do nothing but eat, sleep, and fornicate.

  If Cathy had been awake and if she could have read his thoughts, she would have told him that if one wanted to be vulgar there were words that one could use more tastefully. And she might have added, if she had managed to formulate the thought, that in a man’s world what else was there for a woman to do.

  Eventually he shook her by the shoulders. When she opened her eyes they were quite blank for a moment. Then they seemed to focus, she put her arms around him and said, ‘Oh, Mike.’

  ‘No, no, not now, Sugar.’

  This made her let him go.

  ‘I’ve got to move very soon. I wanted to say good-bye.’

  The thought that Mike really had to go rushed in upon Cathy. She jumped quickly out of bed and cried, ‘I’ll have my clothes on in a moment.’

  Again he took her by the shoulders, ‘No, for God’s sake, no. I hate that sort of good-bye. Let’s make it now, here.’

  Cathy’s face was alive with emotion, ‘Promise me Mike, promise me that you’ll come back safely.’

  As if he could promise anything of the sort, as if he wouldn’t do his damnedest to come back. ‘I-t’s all going to be very simple. You know I’ve been out there scores of times before.’

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  ‘But this isn’t really the same, is it Mike?’

  ‘It isn’t exactly the same, but it’s the same sort of thing. It’s going to be maraschino cherry,’ he added.

  She clung to him at the door, and there were tears in her eyes as he waved across to her from inside the elevator. On the way down he knew that Cathy had not been acting a part. It was just that she was - well, he’d better face it - a bit physical. It was a cold, raw morning outside. A lousy morning to be beginning such an adventure, and he still had the headache.

  Cathy sat for perhaps an hour after he had gone, staring vacantly in front of her. Then she went to her bag and found to her relief that she hadn’t forgotten her little red address book. She found the number and began one of her usual battles with the telephone company. It worked out all right in the end; eventually she was put through to Hugh, ‘Gan you meet me if I come down today?’ she asked.

  Conway used every ounce of influence he could muster to find a good place near Miami. His luck was in, a friend turned out to be a friend of the President of Reactors Incorporated, who had a bungalow on a private strip of beach. The key to it was sent down to the rocket base by helicopter. It was mid-afternoon when he met Cathy at the Miami airport. As usual she kissed him as if absolutely nothing had happened. In the car she moved across the seat towards him. It seemed incredible but she really behaved as if she had forgotten the whole business. When they reached the bungalow he took a shower and then busied himself mixing drinks. He found Cathy outside, changed into slacks and a shirt, sitting in a deckchair looking down at the slope of the beach towards the sea. ‘It’s nice to be here,’ she said, ‘it was horribly cold and wet in New York.’

  They kept them waiting around for the best part of two days. There was absolutely nothing for them to do at the assembly sector, except to drink endlessly, and to talk about the girls they’d spent the last two days with, Reinbach had

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  spent them with an actress in her cabin on Malibu Beach. She’d been hot stuff, but not quite so hot as she thought she was. Still, he hadn’t had a bad time, not when he reckoned what they were in for, except that he’d had to go into some big surf to pull out a young kid and had got himself a belly full of salt water, which he could still taste in his mouth. Larson had spent his leave with a co
uple of sisters and made a big point of the need for recovery. The first day he slept for fifteen .hours, the second day he did three sessions in the gymnasium. Fiske and Fawsett were more reticent. Fiske •had been with his girl from the Rand Corporation. She had tried to pressure him into marriage, having a shrewd suspicion that he was an easier proposition now than he would be on his return. When he pointed out that there was a rule against married men she said they could get married secretly. But Fiske wasn’t falling for that one at this stage of the game. He wasn’t going to risk losing at the last round. Mike listened to the chatter about girls, said as little as he could, and thought that they didn’t know what they were talking about.

  After the fourth Scotch, the night before take-off, he suddenly had a big idea. It would be worth millions if he could exploit it - just his luck to be off into space at this moment. For he’d discovered the secret of sex appeal. When you considered what girls were willing to pay to cosmetic manufacturers, mere pedlars of daubs and rose-water, what would they be prepared to pay for the real thing? The trouble was that the real answer was too simple, once you saw it it was obvious. He realized it from thinking about Cathy. What was it that made it for her? Her looks - yes, partly. But even without her looks she’d still have been dynamite. It was this that gave him the answer. Sex appeal wasn’t a mysterious quality, a subtle alchemical conjuring trick, it came just from being interested in sex, as simple as that, genuinely interested in sex. A pretence, however cunningly disguised, could never compete with the real thing. This cleared up a point that had always puzzled him.

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  He’d often wondered why so many of his friends with the marriages that worked best were married to quite plain girls. He saw it now. The plain girls had discovered the same answer. 1

  The space shuttle had them out in orbit in half an hour. Several hours’ manoeuvring followed as they made small corrections to their orbit. The idea was to bring them alongside the ship that was to carry them into the depths of space. It is strange to recall how the first orbits of the Earth, around the year i960, were greeted with world-wide excitement. For now not one of the four astronauts deigned even to look outside. Larson, the leader, was concerned with a mass of official papers, Reinbach and Fawsett read paper-backed novels, while Fiske concerned himself with the sporting press. Yet when they were brought alongside, all four crowded to the viewing tube.