Station in Space Read online

  Pickrell's eyebrows almost met. “You were there,” he muttered, disbelief lingering in his voice. “Fantastic! I wouldn't trust myself to come back from a trip like that."

  “Hoax!” Amos said.

  Pickrell took a deep breath and let it sigh out. “Yes,” he said, “the ship was empty. McMillen wasn't in it. He wasn't the first man into space. He didn't die there. The messages back—all planned, all taped. Why did it happen that way? To understand you'd have to be one of us, back in 1957."

  Amos didn't look at him. What Pickrell said didn't matter. There were no reasons good enough.

  “We couldn't get the money,” Pickrell said. His eyes seemed to be seeing something a long way off. “That was the only thing we needed—the money. We used all we had—government money, our own; it wasn't enough. We built a ship. We slaved on it. But we couldn't finish it. By stripping the third stage to a shell, we could put a payload of only one hundred pounds into an orbit.

  “I don't remember now who suggested the idea—maybe it was McMillen himself. But it was the answer. We all knew it We couldn't really put McMillen up here because we were the only ones with the imagination to see what space flight could mean. So we pretended.” He made a sweeping gesture that included the satellite and everything it entailed and meant. “None of us has ever regretted it"

  Amos looked at him silently.

  “But we didn't want it that way. We could have put a man out here, you see—except for the money. So we got the money the only way we knew how. And we put men out here. That's what counts. That's our justification. We didn't want it this way, but we've never been sorry we did it."

  “I'm so glad,” Amos said softly.

  Pickrell turned fierce eyes on him. “None of us is happy about it—understand that! Bo isn't. He was the last one we convinced; he was the one who really put it over, and it's killing him. McMillen isn't. Who wants to be a hero when you're only a fake hero and you're alive to know it. Do you know who was the first man into space? Me."

  Amos chuckled. “And the honor belongs to a living ghost!"

  “Who wants it?” Pickrell asked violently. Then, reflectively, “We did what we had to do, to do what had to be done. The other way was too risky. We couldn't leave it to time and chance."

  “Where's McMillen?"

  “Alive. In New York probably. He's had plastic surgery, and he's under twenty-four hour guard. Not because we don't trust him; we just can't take chances. He gets whatever he wants, within reason."

  “Except the privilege of coming out,” Amos said. “He can't come out. Ever. He'll die there, the fake hero."

  “Yes.” Pickrell's eyes snapped back to Amos. His face smoothed. “And you, poor dreamer,” he said sardonically, “you see now why I can't keep you here. Only fabulous luck kept you from killing yourself. You might have cost the Air Force a fantastic sum in futile search and lost time."

  “But I didn't"

  “Give you time,” Pickrell said confidently, “—you would. I told you to get packed.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “The ferry is due in thirteen minutes."

  Amos turned his head curiously. “Why are you so determined to get rid of me, Colonel?"

  “Out here dreamers die young,” Pickrell said flatly. “We should weed them out early—before we spend millions training them—but they won't listen to me at the Academy. To stay alive out here you have to be ruthless. We got out here by a hoax, but we can't live on illusions. I don't want to die because some fool burns a hole in the Doughnut while he's gazing at the stars. Out here is reality. You can't dream your way around it."

  The Colonel's face was no colder than Amos's.

  “We're out here on sufferance,” Pickrell continued. “We have to bring our environment with us wherever we go, and it isn't enough. The air stinks. The food is awful. The water tastes of human waste. There's no privacy. Try as we can, we never really become completely adjusted to no-weight. We live with death at our elbow: too much heat, too much cold, too much acceleration, too much ultraviolet, too little air, too thin a barrier against the night and the invisible bullets that speed through space, too many unfiltered rays and particles...

  “I've got five blind spots from heavy primaries plowing through the center of my retina. If an accident doesn't take me first, I'll die before I'm sixty."

  “Or if someone doesn't kill you,” Amos murmured.

  A tight grin slipped across the Colonel's face. “Could a dreamer take that?” he asked. “He'd crack up—if he lived that long. We need men out here, not boys. That's why you're going back."

  He stood up as straight as the overhead would allow and started for the doorway as if everything had been said.

  “Colonel,” Amos said, lifting his voice a little. “How do you get a man to go through five years of hell at the Academy and then come out here to live with discomfort and death—if you take away the dream?"

  Pickrell swung back, frowning.

  “I thought I'd tell you, Colonel: I'm not going back."

  “What did you say?” Pickrell asked slowly.

  “Send me back,” Amos said clearly, “and I'll expose the hoax."

  Pickrell grinned. “Blackmail?"

  “Call it that."

  Pickrell studied Amos as if the cadet had suddenly changed faces. “I've got a hunch I've been wrong about you. I've decided to let you stay."

  Amos accepted it as if he had expected nothing else.

  “I'll tell you the real reason,” Pickrell went on. “Not because of what you might say—who'd believe a courtmartialed officer, disgruntled, out for revenge? Or maybe a little accident—they're easy to come by out here and they're usually fatal. No—you did make that trip; there must be something of a pilot in you. And I see now that you can be ruthless, too."

  Pickrell chuckled. “Blackmail! Danton, I think I like you after all. Now that you've got this foolishness about heroes and the great adventure knocked out of you, maybe you'll be a spaceman yet. You're right—it's the best solution. We can't let you go back. Not ever. You'll be McMillen's counterpart, out here. Next shift you take over a taxi. Good night, Lieutenant. Sweet dreams."

  He stooped through the doorway: a hard, unhappy man—a dreamer who had sold his dreams for the means to make them real. When his dreams came back to haunt him, they must be bitter.

  Amos grimaced as a tiny spot of pain burned briefly in his chest. A heavy primary had passed through a pain receptor.

  He touched the button beside the viewport, and the outside cover lifted away. Out there was Mars. Somewhere was Venus and the rest. Nearer, almost within reach, was the moon.

  They weren't the same, he and the Colonel, Amos thought.

  The dreams a man absorbs from his society, as naturally as the air he breathes, aren't important. Soon or late—they die. Call it growing up.

  And when a man grows up he has to make his own dreams. His were still out there.

  The Big Wheel

  I

  Naked and anonymous, I shivered in the cold, barren corridor, my arms folded across my chest, a waiting human cipher in a line of men equally naked, equally anonymous.

  Clothes make the man, I thought. But that wasn't quite it. Clothes give us the courage to be men. Yes, that was a little better.

  There was this to be said for nudism: without their clothes all men are brothers. Rich man, poor man, beggarman, Red...

  It was appropriate that we should be standing there naked. Through some unknown sin, through some unsuspected crime against society, we had lost the right to be men. We had been stripped of our jobs, of our rightful places in society. We had been stripped of our pride and our manhood. No indignity was too great an expiation.

  Insecurity does that to a man.

  This was no different from any other government project: make haste to get here, hurry to get undressed, hurry to wait. I hoped it was inefficiency. I didn't like to think that it was policy—an indignity intended to render us properly malleable.

  But these d
ays there were many things I didn't like to think.

  The line stirred restlessly. Someone coughed. I looked at my watch. It had been only half an hour. I shivered again.

  The man in front of me turned, grinning. He was big and blond and pot-bellied. “Cold?” he asked.

  “Cold enough."

  “You should have some insulation like me,” he said. He patted his belly. “But if you think you're cold, look at the guy behind you."

  I turned, In back of me was a thin, dark-haired boy. I stared rudely, but I couldn't help it. I'd always thought the phrase “blue with cold” was hyperbole.

  “I—I w-wish they'd h-hurry up-p!” the boy said between chattering teeth.

  Behind him was a lean, saturnine man with mobile, black eyebrows over deep-set eyes. “The mills of our economic gods grind slowly,” he said in a resonant, public-speaker's voice, “but they will grind us exceeding fine."

  I grinned. “My name's Bruce Patterson,” I said to the three of them.

  “Jock Eckert,” said the pot-bellied blond, sticking out a meaty hand at the end of a massive forearm.

  “George Kendrix,” said the man behind the boy.

  “Clary Calhoun,” said the boy.

  “You're kidding!” Eckert protested.

  The boy looked sheepish. “No—that's my name."

  “Cheer up,” I said. “Maybe you'll outgrow it."

  We laughed together. It was an alchemy that made us men again.

  At the head of the line, a door opened. A crisp, authoritative voice said, “The first ten, file in.” The speaker counted them off. “That's all. We'll get to the rest of you as soon as possible."

  The line shuffled forward. I counted the heads in front of us: thirteen. “What's the job?” I asked. “Anybody know?"

  Eckert shrugged. “Who cares? It's a government job, it's a construction job, and it pays triple time for hazard. Any construction job they got, I can handle."

  “Not government exactly,” Kendrix corrected. “C.I.C. There's a difference."

  “Not in my book,” Eckert growled. “It's a boondoggle like the Hell River Job, but when they're passing it out little Jock is going to be in line. Triple time goes a long way these days."

  “That's right,” I agreed, hearing a hungriness in my voice and hating it.

  The door opened again. “Ten more. One at a time. Don't push. You'll all get in."

  The door closed. We moved up. Next time, I thought. “You didn't help us build the field?"

  “I was a foreman at Hell River,” Eckert said. “This job sounded better, so I quit and came down."

  “You aren't married then."

  “These times? Hell, no!"

  “You're lucky,” I said.

  Eckert turned on Clary. “What are you grinning at? You know something?"

  “Maybe.” Clary's grin broadened. “You'll know soon enough."

  “Listen to the kid!” Eckert shook his head. “He thinks he's grown up because he's here with the men. Bet this is his first job. How about you, Patterson? What did you do before the Crash?"

  “I was an inspector for an automated production line.” I laughed bitterly. “And then they got a hunk of metal, wire, and transistors to take my place."

  “Kendrix?"

  “Believe it or not,” Kendrix said, “I was an economics professor in a Midwestern college. I got fired for calling a spade a spade. Specifically, I said we were in the middle of the biggest depression economic man had ever known."

  “What is it when twenty million men are out of work,” Eckert asked, “if it ain't a depression?"

  Clary looked puzzled.

  Kendrix laughed and seemed genuinely amused. “Why, it's a rolling recession, a technological readjustment, a correction, a mild dip, a downswing, a return to normalcy—anything but the bogey-word. I was called to testify before a congressional committee. For the sake of my convictions, I joined the unemployables."

  The door opened. “Ten more,” said the voice of authority.

  It came from a man no older than I, but he wore the soft, gray semi-uniform of C.I.C. Take away his clothes, I thought, and where would his authority be?

  Meekly we filed into the antiseptic whiteness of a hospital ward. It had been stripped of everything except a few desks, a few chairs, and an examination table. Behind the desks and on the chairs sat doctors in their white jackets, their stethoscopes hung around their necks like identifying medallions.

  Eckert moved into the production line, responding to questions and directions with no more free will than the lowliest servomechanism.

  “Ever had any serious illnesses? Mumps? Insanity in your family? Ever been seasick? Airsick? Bend over. Spread your cheeks. Ever have a hernia...?"

  Farther down the line, men were stepping onto boxes, and down again, over and over, trying to balance themselves on one foot with their eyes closed, doing deep knee bends, adjusting cords attached to distant pegs, reading eye charts.

  I closed my eyes. Let me get the job, I thought prayerfully. Please let me get the job!

  “I'll tell you what it is,” Clary whispered in my ear.

  I turned. Clary's face was eagerly alive, his eyes bright with a secret vision.

  “We're going to build a satellite,” he whispered.

  II

  The makeshift hall was stuffy and hot with the animal heat and exhalations of five hundred men. There were at least five hundred of us sitting on the hard, folding chairs, wondering what was coming next. I started counting heads and got to 373 before I lost track and gave up.

  We sat at the back, the four of us: Eckert, Clary Calhoun, Kendrix, and me. We had all passed the physical. It was good to be dressed again, but it was even better to be that much closer to the job. Three hundred dollars a week, I thought greedily, and felt ashamed.

  “What makes you think it's a satellite?” I asked Clary.

  “If it weren't, I wouldn't be here,” Clary said confidently. “I couldn't get an appointment to the Academy, you see. I went to college, studied rocket engineering and things like that. But by the time I was graduated the Depression was in full swing and nobody was building rockets. Then I heard about this."

  I imagined myself drifting up there in the sky, in the frigid void, in the eternal night, building a satellite, and I shivered in spite of the heat.

  “Why build another satellite?” I demanded querulously.

  Hendrix arched his knowing eyebrows. “The C.I.C. has reasons—public reasons and private reasons."

  “Am I the only one who didn't get the word?"

  “I'm another,” Eckert said, and chuckled. “But I don't give a damn. If they've got a job, I'll do it for them. They pay me enough, I'll build them a satellite around Jupiter."

  “The modern Hercules—and his motive,” said Hendrix.

  “Doesn't it make your heart beat faster?” Clary asked eagerly. “To be part of the great adventure of our time?"

  “I haven't lost anything up there,” I said curtly.

  Beside the platform at the front of the hall, a door opened. Four men trouped through and up onto the rough stage: one in C.I.C. gray, one in Air Force blue, the other two in dark business suits. They sat down on four folding chairs at the back of the crude stage and talked among themselves, ignoring us.

  After I'd grown tired of looking at them, I studied the platform. It had been hastily decorated with bunting and a couple of American flags in standards at either end of the stage. A banner hung above: CAPITAL INVESTMENY CORPORATION. Two signs were tacked to the back wall: “Buy a share in the future” and “Invest in America."

  Sure, I thought. Only what will I use for money?

  But then the man in C.I.C. gray was moving to the lectern at the front of the stage. “Everybody hear me all right?” he said into the mike.

  “Hell, yes!” Eckert boomed out beside me.

  “Then let's get started. I'm John Bradley, C.I.C. project manager.” He half-turned toward the back of the platform. “The tal
l, distinguished man in the brown suit is Sam Franklin, representative of the U. S. Treasury. We call him Uncle Sam."

  We chuckled appreciatively.

  “The man built like a wrestler is Carmen Vecchio, general contractor. The Air Force officer is Captain Max Kovac, on loan to us as technical training supervisor and construction manager. You'll hear from the others later—Captain Kovac in particular. But right now it's my turn. I want to tell you something about yourselves. You're one in a hundred."

  We listened attentively, caught already in Bradley's swift, sure flow of words.

  “Fifty thousand of you filled out applications. One thousand were invited to take physical Five hundred of you were accepted. There will be more exams, psychological as well as physical, and the training will be the toughest thing you've ever done. When it's all over, less than half of you will remain."

  He paused to let it sink in and then gave us the clincher. “But starting now you are all on salary. Not triple time, understand. That doesn't start until later. But you're on salary until separated."

  We gasped and applauded. Me, too. I was up there on my feet, beating my hands together with the rest.

  “This is a C.I.C. project,” Bradley said seriously, “and from this moment you are C.I.C. employees. We like to think of every C.I.C. man as an ambassador to the public. As such it will be your duty to correct some of the strange ideas about C.I.C. that have achieved common circulation.

  “One"—he held up a finger—"C.I.C. is not a relief organization. Two. It is not a government bureau, although the Federal Government is a participant. Three—” He paused and then slammed his hand down on the lectern. “No! I'll tell you, instead, what C.I.C. is. C.I.C. is a profit-making organization set up to invest capital in long-term projects too big to be handled by a single company."

  We clapped. We were in a mood to applaud anything.

  “Almost every corporation in the country owns stock in C.I.C. Most of them contribute men and facilities upon request. But they don't control C.I.C. Like every other corporation, C.I.C. is controlled by its stockholders. C.I.C.'s motive is the only motive you can trust—the profit motive. We want to make money. And C.I.C. is the best long-term investment in the world—outside of the U.S. government, of course."