Another Roadside Attraction (42 page)

BABOONS ARE SPACE AGE MAN'S BEST FRIEND

Tampa, Fla.—(AP)—When America's gigantic solar balloon lifts off from nearby Palm Castle Naval Air Station later this month, the “crew” of the significant atmospheric probe will consist of five baboons, animals that in the Space Age seem destined to replace the faithful dog as man's best friend.

An African native once told a British naturalist, “Baboons can talk but they won't do it in front of white men for fear you will put them to work.” The ape's silence has been in vain, for man is putting baboons to work in large numbers and in a variety of fields.

In South Africa, baboons have been used for centuries as goatherds and shepherds, and a few human mothers have entrusted their children to the care of baboon babysitters. Recently, baboons upon whom frontal lobotomies have been performed to curb the surly tendencies the apes sometimes develop as they grow older, were employed as golf caddies, tractor drivers and as redcaps in South African rail and bus depots. (Tipping presumably is no problem, although conceivably a baboon porter might perform more diligently if rewarded with a banana or a fresh ear of corn.)

Baboons also have been used in testing auto safety devices at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico and by workers in Detroit. The Ford Motor Company's autotesting site in Birmingham, Mich., was picketed by animal-lovers a few years ago as a result of publicity arising from the use of baboons as passengers in crash cars there.

By far the most extensive use of baboons has been by the medical profession. Baboons by the hundreds are being used in medical experiments in South Africa. The long-faced apes are paving the way toward conquest of the problems involved in transplanting organs from one human to another, medical men say.

Baboons are common in South Africa's mountains, and research centers buy them for 10 rands, or $14. The same animals cost $200 in the United States.

“The only primate available in unlimited numbers is the baboon. Gorillas and chimpanzees are almost extinct,” says Prof. J. J. van Zyl of Stellenbosch University.

Baboons are also the most intelligent of all monkeys. They are almost manlike in their social organization. They can count, reason within limits, and use mechanical gadgets.

The availability of baboons contributed to Dr. Christaan Barnard's pioneer heart operations. Dogs, used in other countries, were not nearly so satisfactory, scientists say.

More than 250 baboon-to-baboon kidney transplants have been done at Karl Bremer Hospital in Cape Town. A Bremer spokesman said they “accumulated a vast amount of data on the physiology of the baboon and his blood types, which are the same as human blood types.”

Dr. Barnard has suggested that baboons be used as living storage units for human organs. Organs would be transplanted as they became available into the animals and later implanted in human recipients as needed.

“There is a chance that we will be able to store hearts in baboons for several days,” he explained.

Whatever the baboon's past or future contributions to medical science, his most dramatic moment will come in mid-October when five specially trained baboons will ride to the outer edge of the earth's gravitation field in a transparent gondola suspended from the largest balloon ever built.

The purpose of the flight is to test effects of solar radiation. The latest Icarus XC experiment will be the most thorough thus conducted, spokesmen at the Florida test site claim. The baboon crew will be wired to instruments designed to measure their reactions to what will undoubtedly be the strongest blast of direct sunlight ever experienced by a living creature.

The Icarus baboons have been trained to operate closed-circuit TV transmitters and other devices to aid man in his quest for knowledge of the sun.

While the heat-resistant plastic from which the gondola is constructed will act as a partial shield, it will not protect the baboons once they near the outer limits of the atmosphere, Palm Castle researchers say. The latest crop of baboon heroes will not survive their space adventure.

"The baboon launch, was it today?” Amanda asked. She struck a match and held it to the clipping.

“No, I don't think so,” I said. “I overheard something about it on the agents' radio and I think the announcer said it would be tomorrow. Yes, I'm sure of it; it's tomorrow morning.”

The clipping burned quickly, as newsprint does. Amanda said nothing. Her lower lip quivered simply and nobly as if it were an insect wing held in the strands of a web.

“Do you want to try to do anything about it?” I asked. I should have known better.

Convinced that nothing need be done, she took her tears to bed, leaving me to drum upon my machine just as outdoors in the Skagit darkness the rain is drumming upon the great sausage, the whopper hot dog that is shaped, I note suddenly, like a zeppelin, a balloon.

The fear of death is the beginning of slavery, Amanda has said. If she is right, then I was enslaved at an early age. It started with a little prayer my mother helped me memorize when I was four or five.

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.

If I should die before I wake.
Until I learned that macabre line it had never occurred to me that one morning I might not get up to play. The thought of death creeping into the covers with me shaded my young soul and marked me with an existential dread that has lingered, embellished through the years, into manhood. How many other Christian children have lost their purchase on life and liberty while on their bunny-suit knees repeating the chilling words of that nursery-room plea for immortality? I wonder.

This morning I awoke as I have awakened each morning since learning that terrible prayer twenty-five years ago: relieved, and a little surprised, to be alive. If the feeling was particularly keen today, surely the reader understands why.

For the first time in days, I had no typing to do, so I spent the morning with Amanda. She was sorrowful but entertaining. She showed me seven ways to peel an orange, each method more elaborate and aesthetic than the last. Amanda has amazing information about the orange, but she does not know an English word to rhyme with it. Only Mon Cul knows that. And he's not telling.

Often the things that pop out of my typewriter regale me, especially when I am trying to say something else and in a different way only to have a kind of metamorphosis take place during the act of typing and—whammo!—a concept I hadn't counted on is strutting its vaudeville on the page. But like love and art, you can't force it to happen. For example, out of that business about fear and oranges I had hoped would gel a profound preamble to the news I am about to relate. It didn't work, obviously, so let me get down to it and tell it straight and without fanfare, just the way it happened.

About an hour ago, about 2
P.M
., an agent came upstairs. It was the moon-headed, cleft-chinned agent with whom Amanda had argued. There was a quality very close to civility in his manner. Perhaps he felt sorry for us or perhaps he was simply overwhelmed by the turn of events. Maybe it was a combination of the two. At any rate, he handed Amanda a long sheet of thin white paper, stamped “Top Secret,” and motioned that he did not object to me reading over her shoulder. This is what we read:

Informal statement by Commander Newport W. Pleet, USN, Director of the joint civilian-military solar research program at Palm Castle Naval Air Station near Tampa, Fla.

At approximately 0345 hours (3:45
A.M
.) Wednesday, Oct. 21, a party of persons unknown released from its moorage an Icarus XC high-altitude research balloon and ascended with it. A man believed to be connected with the theft was shot on the ground by guards as he attempted to escape.

The balloon was filled with helium in preparation for an 0700 lift-off which would have taken five baboons to what we call the outer “edge” of the earth's atmosphere (while the actual atmosphere extends many times higher, 99 per cent of the matter making up the atmosphere is confined to within 20 miles of the earth's surface) in an experiment to measure effects of solar radiation on living tissue. The experiment, which was also to have photographed the oxygen spectrum and the sun's corona, was to have been one in a continuing series originating at the Palm Castle site to probe the upper atmosphere for information needed for space flights and manned space stations.

The Icarus XC, when fully inflated, is 1,020 feet in height. More than 15 acres of polyethylene film reinforced with dacron fibers were used in its construction. It supported a transparent gondola of heat-resistant plastic resins, 22 feet in length and elliptically shaped. The gondola contained measuring devices and life-supporting equipment of various types. The entire apparatus was valued at approximately $980,000.

The Icarus XC series is not classified and most of the information obtained is to be shared with other nations including, presumably, the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, stringent security was in effect. Visitors are not allowed beyond the gates of Palm Castle Naval Air Station without a pass. Additional permission is required to enter the test site vicinity. Ten naval enlisted men armed with carbines stood watch at strategic posts near the balloon pad this morning.

We now believe the thieves entered the main gate with stolen passes. At least one naval officer, Ensign Goober Clooney, was robbed of his wallet in the men's room of a Tampa cocktail lounge late Tuesday night. Ensign Clooney's identification papers were found on the person of the man shot by guards. In addition, an automobile belonging to a Navy enlisted man and bearing a sticker which permitted it to enter the test area was stolen during the night. It was abandoned on base a quarter of a mile from the balloon pad.

Three guards were knocked unconscious by the thieves as they made their way to the balloon. The Palm Castle sick bay reports that the men were struck on their necks, presumably by some sort of karate blows. Even with three guards indisposed, the thieves must have worked with incredible stealth to unmoor the balloon and enter its gondola.

The balloon was 100 feet in the air before the remaining guards noticed it had been launched. Initially, they thought it had been released accidentally, but hasty investigation proved the moorage lines to have been cut. At least four guards testified that they saw a man or men moving about in the gondola as it ascended.

I was telephoned at the BOQ and reached the test site at 0410 hours. By then the balloon had entered the overcast and was not visible to the eye, although it was easily fixed by radar. We attempted to contact the Icarus XC by radio but received no response except for what seemed like laughter and the sound of a flute.

In the Icarus system we are able to control altitude of flights by a feeding device that can increase or decrease the balloon's helium supply. That device was not operative this morning. Other equipment was functioning properly.

By 0435 hours, the balloon had obtained an altitude of 12,000 feet. Air-to-air rescue of the abductors seemed unlikely. The gondola was fogged with condensation, and the observation plane that I had ordered aloft had little to report. I considered, at that time, requesting fighter interceptors to shoot down the Icarus XC, if for no other reason than that appeared to be the only way we might learn who was aboard and why.

While I awaited permission for an air attack, the slain man was brought to the control building. He had been shot three times in the back by guards at the outer perimeter of the test area at approximately 0350 hours. Security personnel reported that he was running and ignored commands to halt. He proved a difficult target and eluded 20 to 25 rounds before being hit. In addition to Ensign Clooney's wallet, the man carried papers identifying him as L. Westminster Purcell III.

Purcell is a former football star at Duke University who created some scandal about eleven years ago when he absconded with his coach's wife. He is said to have later engaged in criminal activities. As a naval officer prior to dishonorable discharge, he underwent jet pilot's training at Palm Castle. If the man is indeed Purcell, he would have had firsthand knowledge of the base. That might partly explain the success of the theft.

Among the dead man's effects was a note scrawled on the inner side of a cigar pack. It was blood-soaked and much of it was obscured. However, I recorded the following paragraph:

“. . . I have reached the conclusion that the Second Coming would have no real impact on our society. It would simply be absorbed and exploited by our economic system (even I was tempted to use the C. as a springboard to wealth and power). Our society gives its economy priority over health, love, truth, beauty, sex and salvation; over life itself. Whatsoever is given precedence over life will
take
precedence over life, and will end in eliminating life. Since economics, at its most abstract level,
is
the religion of our people, no noneconomic happening, not even one as potentially spectacular as the Second Coming, can radically alter the souls of our people. Therefore, I have temporarily abandoned my dream in order to help fulfill the dream of Z. Meanwhile, Marx, I can only hope with all my baggy heart, that the white magic of A.—and of others like her—will in time ace out the black magic of . . .” (rest illegible).

These are the words of an atheistic Communist or of a madman. In my opinion, he was both.

At any rate, permission to shoot down the Icarus XC was granted at 0500 hours by Admiral Stacy Horowitz, Commander, Third Naval District. Shortly after our interceptors were airborne, however, the order was rescinded by the White House. No explanation was offered. Our aircraft were called back and I was ordered to let the balloon proceed without interference. I was ordered further to desist from radio or television contact with the balloon. Later, personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency dismantled our transmitters.

At this time, the Icarus XC is at approximately 70,000 feet. It will travel to well over twice that altitude. The gondola, fully pressurized, is equipped with a self-contained oxygen supply; enough oxygen is aboard to keep three persons alive for a week. However, the illicit passengers will not live for a week. They will perish after less than 24 hours from the effects of solar radiation. Acute dehydration will reduce their bodies to almost nothingness and they will decompose at an accelerated rate. By the time next month when the balloon begins to lose altitude and subsequently to disintegrate, only their bones will remain, and should the balloon stay aloft long enough, even the bones will turn to dust. The gondola will be nearly as empty as if it never contained life at all.