Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky (31 page)
Read Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky Online
Authors: Robert A Heinlein
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Science Fiction, #Space Opera, #Action & Adventure
Harriman leaned back and clasped his hands back of his head. “George, how can you talk that way on a day like this? Is there no poetry in your soul? Didn’t you hear what I said when I came in?
The rendezvous worked.
Tankers one and two are as close together as Siamese twins. We’ll be leaving within the week.”
“That’s as may be. Business has to go on.”
“You keep it going; I’ve got a date. When did Dixon say he would be over?”
“He’s due now.”
“Good!” Harriman bit the end off a cigar and went on, “You know, George, I’m not sorry I didn’t get to make the first trip. Now I’ve still got it to do. I’m as expectant as a bridegroom—and as happy.” He started to hum.
Dixon came in without Entenza, a situation that had obtained since the day Dixon had dropped the pretense that he controlled only one share. He shook hands. “You heard the news, Dan?”
“George told me.”
“This is it—or almost. A week from now, more or less, I’ll be on the Moon. I can hardly believe it.”
Dixon sat down silently. Harriman went on. “Aren’t you even going to congratulate me? Man, this is a great day!”
Dixon said, “D.D., why are you going?”
“Huh? Don’t ask foolish questions. This is what I have been working toward.”
“It’s not a foolish question. I asked why
you
were going. The four colonists have an obvious reason, and each is a selected specialist observer as well. LeCroix is the pilot. Coster is the man who is designing the permanent colony. But why are
you
going? What’s your function?”
“My function? Why, I’m the guy who runs things. Shucks, I’m going to run for mayor when I get there. Have a cigar, friend—the name’s Harriman. Don’t forget to vote.” He grinned.
Dixon did not smile. “I did not know you planned on staying.”
Harriman looked sheepish. “Well, that’s still up in the air. If we get the shelter built in a hurry, we may save enough in the way of supplies to let me sort of lay over until the next trip. You wouldn’t begrudge me that, would you?”
Dixon looked him in the eye. “Delos, I can’t let you go at all.”
Harriman was too startled to talk at first. At last he managed to say, “Don’t joke, Dan. I’m going. You can’t stop me. Nothing on Earth can stop me.”
Dixon shook his head. “I can’t permit it, Delos. I’ve got too much sunk in this. If you go and anything happens to you, I lose it all.”
“That’s silly. You and George would just carry on, that’s all.”
“Ask George.”
Strong had nothing to say. He did not seem anxious to meet Harriman’s eyes. Dixon went on, “Don’t try to kid your way out of it, Delos. This venture is you and you are this venture. If you get killed, the whole thing folds up. I don’t say space travel folds up; I think you’ve already given that a boost that will carry it along even with lesser men in your shoes. But as for this venture—our company—it will fold up. George and I will have to liquidate at about half a cent on the dollar. It would take sale of patent rights to get that much. The tangible assets aren’t worth anything.”
“Damn it, it’s the intangibles we sell. You knew that all along.”
“You are the intangible asset, Delos. You are the goose that lays the golden eggs. I want you to stick around until you’ve laid them. You must not risk your neck in space flight until you have this tiling on a profit-making basis, so that any competent manager, such as George or myself, thereafter can keep it solvent. I mean it, Delos. I’ve got too much in it to see you risk it in a joy ride.”
Harriman stood up and pressed his fingers down on the edge of his desk. He was breathing hard. “You can’t stop me!” he said slowly and forcefully. “You knew all along that I meant to go. You can’t stop me now. Not all the forces of heaven or hell can stop me.”
Dixon answered quietly, “I’m sorry, Delos. But I can stop you and I will. I can tie up that ship out there.”
“Try it! I own as many lawyers as you do—and better ones!”
“I think you will find that you are not as popular in American courts as you once were—not since the United States found out it didn’t own the Moon after all.”
“Try it, I tell you. I’ll break you and I’ll take your shares away from you, too.”
“Easy, Delos! I’ve no doubt you have some scheme whereby you could milk the basic company right away from George and me if you decided to. But it won’t be necessary. Nor will it be necessary to tie up the ship. I want that flight to take place as much as you do. But you won’t be on it, because you will decide not to go.”
“I will, eh? Do I look crazy from where you sit?”
“No, on the contrary.”
“Then why won’t I go?”
“Because of your note that I hold. I want to collect it.”
“What? There’s no due date.”
“No. But I want to be sure to collect it.”
“Why, you dumb fool, if I get killed you collect it sooner than ever.”
“Do I? You are mistaken, Delos. If you are killed—on a flight to the Moon—I collect nothing. I know; I’ve checked with every one of the companies underwriting you. Most of them have escape clauses covering experimental vehicles that date back to early aviation. In any case all of them will cancel and fight it out in court if you set foot inside that ship.”
“You put them up to this!”
“Calm down, Delos. You’ll be bursting a blood vessel. Certainly I queried them, but I was legitimately looking after my own interests. I don’t want to collect on that note—not now, not by your death. I want you to pay it back out of your own earnings, by staying here and nursing this company through till it’s stable.”
Harriman chucked his cigar, almost unsmoked and badly chewed, at a waste basket. He missed. “I don’t give a hoot if you lose on it. If you hadn’t stirred them up, they’d have paid without a quiver.”
“But it did dig up a weak point in your plans, Delos. If space travel is to be a success, insurance will have to reach out and cover the insured anywhere.”
“Confound it, one of them does now—N.A. Mutual.”
“I’ve seen their ad and I’ve looked over what they claim to offer. It’s just window dressing, with the usual escape clause. No, insurance will have to be revamped, all sorts of insurance.”
Harriman looked thoughtful. “I’ll look into it. George, call Kamens. Maybe we’ll have to float our own company.”
“Never mind Kamens,” objected Dixon. “The point is you can’t go on this trip. You have too many details of that sort to watch and plan for and nurse along.”
Harriman looked back at him. “You haven’t gotten it through your head, Dan, that
I’m going!
Tie up the ship if you can. If you put sheriffs around it, I’ll have goons there to toss them aside.”
Dixon looked pained. “I hate to mention this point, Delos, but I am afraid you will be stopped even if I drop dead.”
“How?”
“Your wife.”
“What’s she got to do with it?”
“She’s ready to sue for separate maintenance right now—she’s found out about this insurance thing. When she hears about this present plan, she’ll force you into court and force an accounting of your assets.”
“You put her up to it!”
Dixon hesitated. He knew that Entenza had spilled the beans to Mrs. Harriman—maliciously. Yet there seemed no point in adding to a personal feud. “She’s bright enough to have done some investigating on her own account. I won’t deny I’ve talked to her—but she sent for me.”
“I’ll fight both of you!” Harriman stomped to a window, stood looking out—it was a real window; he liked to look at the sky.
Dixon came over and put a hand on his shoulder, saying softly, “Don’t take it this way, Delos. Nobody’s trying to keep you from your dream. But you can’t go just yet; you can’t let us down. We’ve stuck with you this far; you owe it to us to stick with us until it’s done.”
Harriman did not answer; Dixon went on, “If you don’t feel any loyalty toward me, how about George? He’s stuck with you
against
me, when it hurt him, when he thought you were ruining him—and you surely were, unless you finish this job. How about George, Delos? Are you going to let him down, too?”
Harriman swung around, ignoring Dixon and facing Strong. “What about it, George? Do you think I should stay behind?”
Strong rubbed his hands and chewed his lip. Finally he looked up. “It’s all right with me, Delos. You do what you think is best.”
Harriman stood looking at him for a long moment, his face working as if he were going to cry. Then he said huskily, “Okay, you rats. Okay. I’ll stay behind.”
XIV
It was one of those glorious evenings so common in the Pikes Peak region, after a day in which the sky has been well scrubbed by thunderstorms. The track of the catapult crawled in a straight line up the face of the mountain, whole shoulders having been carved away to permit it. At the temporary spaceport, still raw from construction, Harriman, in company with visiting notables, was saying good-bye to the passengers and crew of the
Mayflower.
The crowds came right up to the rail of the catapult. There was no need to keep them back from the ship; the jets would not blast until she was high over the peak. Only the ship itself was guarded, the ship and the gleaming rails.
Dixon and Strong, together for company and mutual support, hung back at the edge of the area roped off for passengers and officials. They watched Harriman jollying those about to leave: “Good-bye, Doctor. Keep an eye on him, Janet. Don’t let him go looking for Moon Maidens.” They saw him engage Coster in private conversation, then clap the younger man on the back.
“Keeps his chin up, doesn’t he?” whispered Dixon.
“Maybe we should have let him go,” answered Strong.
“Eh? Nonsense! We’ve got to have him. Anyway, his place in history is secure.”
“He doesn’t care about history,” Strong answered seriously. “He just wants to go to the Moon.”
“Well, confound it—he can go to the Moon . . . as soon as he gets his job done. After all, it’s his job. He made it.”
“I know.”
Harriman turned around, saw them, started toward them. They shut up. “Don’t duck,” he said jovially. “It’s all right. I’ll go on the next trip. By then I plan to have it running itself. You’ll see.” He turned back toward the
Mayflower.
“Quite a sight, isn’t she?”
The outer door was closed; ready lights winked along the track and from the control tower. A siren sounded.
Harriman moved a step or two closer.
“There she goes!”
It was a shout from the whole crowd. The great ship started slowly, softly up the track, gathered speed, and shot toward the distant peak. She was already tiny by the time she curved up the face and burst into the sky.
She hung there a split second, then a plume of light exploded from her tail. Her jets had fired.
Then she was a shining light in the sky, a ball of flame, then—nothing. She was gone, upward and outward, to her rendezvous with her tankers.
The crowd had pushed to the west end of the platform as the ship swarmed up the mountain. Harriman had stayed where he was, nor had Dixon and Strong followed the crowd. The three were alone, Harriman most alone for he did not seem aware that the others were near him. He was watching the sky.
Strong was watching him. Presently Strong barely whispered to Dixon, “Do you read the Bible?”
“Some.”
“He looks as Moses must have looked, when he gazed out over the promised land.”
Harriman dropped his eyes from the sky and saw them. “You guys still here?” he said. “Come on—there’s work to be done.”
Requiem
On a high hill in Samoa there is a grave. Inscribed on the marker are these words:
“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig my grave and let me lie
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I lay me down with a will!
“This be the verse which you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
These lines appear in another place
—
scrawled on a shipping tag torn from a compressed-air container, and pinned to the ground with a knife.
It wasn’t much of a fair, as fairs go. The trottin’ races didn’t promise much excitement, even though several entries claimed the blood of the immortal Dan Patch. The tents and concession booths barely covered the circus grounds, and the pitchmen seemed discouraged.
D.D. Harriman’s chauffeur could not see any reason for stopping. They were due in Kansas City for a directors’ meeting, that is to say, Harriman was. The chauffeur had private reasons for promptness, reasons involving dark-town society on Eighteenth Street. But the Boss not only stopped, but hung around.
Bunting and a canvas arch made the entrance to a large enclosure beyond the race track. Red and gold letters announced:
This way to the MOON ROCKET!!!!
See it in actual flight!
Public Demonstration Flights
Twice Daily
This is the ACTUAL TYPE used by
the First Man to Reach the MOON!!!
YOU can ride it!!—¢.50
A boy, nine or ten years old, hung around the entrance and stared at the posters.
“Want to see the ship, son?”
The kid’s eyes shone. “Gee, mister. I sure would.”
“So would I. Come on.” Harriman paid out fifty cents for two pink tickets which entitled them to enter the enclosure and examine the rocket ship. The kid took his and ran on ahead with the single-mindedness of youth. Harriman looked over the stubby, curved lines of the ovoid body. He noted with a professional eye that she was a single-jet type with fractional controls around her midriff. He squinted through his glasses at the name painted in gold on the carnival red of the body.
Care Free.
He paid another quarter to enter the control cabin.
When his eyes had adjusted to the gloom caused by the strong ray filters of the ports he let them rest lovingly on the keys of the console and the semi-circle of dials above. Each beloved gadget was in its proper place. He knew them—graven in his heart.
While he mused over the instrument board, with the warm liquid of content soaking through his body, the pilot entered and touched his arm.
“Sorry, sir. We’ve got to cast loose for the flight.”
“Eh?” Harriman started, then looked at the speaker. Handsome devil, with a good skull and strong shoulders—reckless eyes and a self-indulgent mouth, but a firm chin. “Oh, excuse me, Captain.”
“Quite all right.”
“Oh, I say, Captain, er, uh—”
“McIntyre.”
“Captain McIntyre, could you take a passenger this trip?” The old man leaned eagerly toward him.
“Why, yes, if you wish. Come along with me.” He ushered Harriman into a shed marked OFFICE which stood near the gate. “Passenger for a check over, doc.”
Harriman looked startled but permitted the medico to run a stethoscope over his thin chest, and strap a rubber bandage around his arm. Presently he unstrapped it, glanced at McIntyre, and shook his head.
“No go, doc?”
“That’s right, Captain.”
Harriman looked from face to face. “My heart’s all right—that’s just a flutter.”
The physician’s brows shot up. “It is? But it’s not just your heart; at your age your bones are brittle, too brittle to risk a take-off.”
“Sorry, sir,” added the pilot, “but the Bates County Fair Association pays the doctor here to see to it that I don’t take anyone up who might be hurt by the acceleration.”
The old man’s shoulders drooped miserably. “I rather expected it.”
“Sorry, sir.” McIntyre turned to go, but Harriman followed him out.
“Excuse me, Captain—”
“Yes?”
“Could you and your, uh, engineer have dinner with me after your flight?”
The pilot looked at him quizzically. “I don’t see why not. Thanks.”
“Captain McIntyre, it is difficult for me to see why anyone would quit the Earth-Moon run.” Fried chicken and hot biscuits in a private dining room of the best hotel the little town of Butler afforded, three-star Hennessey and Corona-Coronas had produced a friendly atmosphere in which three men could talk freely.
“Well, I didn’t like it.”
“Aw, don’t give him that, Mac—you know it was Rule G that got you.” McIntyre’s mechanic poured himself another brandy as he spoke.
McIntyre looked sullen. “Well, what if I did take a couple o’drinks? Anyhow, I could have squared that—it was the dern persnickety regulations that got me fed up. Who are you to talk?—Smuggler!”
“Sure I smuggled! Who wouldn’t with all those beautiful rocks just aching to be taken back to Earth. I had a diamond once as big as . . . But if I hadn’t been caught I’d be in Luna City tonight. And so would you, you drunken blaster . . . with the boys buying us drinks, and the girls smiling . . .” He put his face down and began to weep quietly.
McIntyre shook him. “He’s drunk.”
“Never mind.” Harriman interposed a hand. “Tell me, are you really satisfied not to be on the run anymore?”
McIntyre chewed his lip. “No—he’s right of course. This barnstorming isn’t what it’s all cracked up to be. We’ve been hopping junk at every pumpkin doin’s up and down the Mississippi valley—sleeping in tourist camps, and eating at greaseburners. Half the time the sheriff has an attachment on the ship, the other half the Society for the Prevention of Something or Other gets an injunction to keep us on the ground. It’s no sort of a life for a rocket man.”
“Would it help any for you to get to the Moon?”
“Well . . . Yes. I couldn’t get back on the Earth-Moon run, but if I was in Luna City, I could get a job hopping ore for the Company—they’re always short of rocket pilots for that, and they wouldn’t mind my record. If I kept my nose clean, they might even put me back on the run, in time.”
Harriman fiddled with a spoon, then looked up. “Would you young gentlemen be open to a business proposition?”
“Perhaps. What is it?”
“You own the
Care Free?”
“Yeah. That is, Charlie and I do—barring a couple of liens against her. What about it?”
“I want to charter her . . . for you and Charlie to take me to the Moon!”
Charlie sat up with a jerk. “D’joo hear what he said, Mac? He wants us to fly that old heap to the Moon!”
McIntyre shook his head. “Can’t do it, Mr. Harriman. The old boat’s worn out. You couldn’t convert to escape fuel. We don’t even use standard juice in her—just gasoline and liquid air. Charlie spends all of his time tinkering with her at that. She’s going to blow up some day.”
“Say, Mr. Harriman,” put in Charlie, “what’s the matter with getting an excursion permit and going in a Company ship?”
“No, son,” the old man replied, “I can’t do that. You know the conditions under which the U.N. granted the Company a monopoly on lunar exploitation—no one to enter space who was not physically qualified to stand up under it. Company to take full responsibility for the safety and health of all citizens beyond the stratosphere. The official reason for granting the franchise was to avoid unnecessary loss of life during the first few years of space travel.”
“And you can’t pass the physical exam?”
Harriman shook his head.
“Well—if you can afford to hire us, why don’t you just bribe yourself a brace of Company docs? It’s been done before.”
Harriman smiled ruefully. “I know it has, Charlie, but it won’t work for me. You see, I’m a little too prominent. My full name is Delos D. Harriman.”
“What?
You
are old D.D.? But you own a big slice of the Company yourself—you practically
are
the Company; you ought to be able to do anything you like, rules or no rules.”
“That is a not unusual opinion, son, but it is incorrect. Rich men aren’t more free than other men; they are less free, a good deal less free. I tried to do what you suggest, but the other directors would not permit me. They are afraid of losing their franchise. It costs them a good deal in—uh—political contact expenses to retain it, as it is.”
“Well, I’ll be a—Can you tie that, Mac? A guy with lots of dough, and he can’t spend it the way he wants to.”
McIntyre did not answer, but waited for Harriman to continue.
“Captain McIntyre, if you had a ship, would you take me?”
McIntyre rubbed his chin. “It’s against the law.”
“I’d make it worth your while.”
“Sure he would, Mr. Harriman. Of course you would, Mac. Luna City! Oh, baby!”
“Why do you want to go to the Moon so badly, Mr. Harriman?”
“Captain, it’s the one thing I’ve really wanted to do all my life—ever since I was a young boy. I don’t know whether I can explain it to you, or not. You young fellows have grown up to rocket travel the way I grew up to aviation. I’m a great deal older than you are, at least fifty years older. When I was a kid practically nobody believed that men would ever reach the Moon. You’ve seen rockets all your lives, and the first to reach the Moon got there before you were a young boy. When I was a boy they laughed at the idea.
“But I believed—I believed. I read Verne, and Wells, and Smith, and I believed that we could do it—that we
would
do it. I set my heart on being one of the men to walk on the surface of the Moon, to see her other side, and to look back on the face of the Earth, hanging in the sky.
“I used to go without my lunches to pay my dues in the American Rocket Society, because I wanted to believe that I was helping to bring the day nearer when we would reach the Moon. I was already an old man when that day arrived. I’ve lived longer than I should, but I would not let myself die . . . I will not!—until I have set foot on the Moon.”
McIntyre stood up and put out his hand. “You find a ship, Mr. Harriman. I’ll drive ’er.”
“ ’Atta boy, Mac! I told you he would, Mr. Harriman.”
Harriman mused and dozed during the half-hour run to the north into Kansas City, dozed in the light, troubled sleep of old age. Incidents out of a long life ran through his mind in vagrant dreams. There was that time . . . oh, yes, 1910 . . . A little boy on a warm spring night:
“What’s that, Daddy?”
“That’s Halley’s comet, Sonny.”
“Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know, Son. From way out in the sky somewhere.”
“It’s beyooootiful, Daddy. I want to touch it.”
“ ’Fraid not, Son.”
“Delos, do you mean to stand there and tell me you put the money we had saved for the house into that crazy rocket company?”
“Now, Charlotte, please! It’s not crazy; it’s a sound business investment. Someday soon rockets will fill the sky. Ships and trains will be obsolete. Look what happened to the men that had the foresight to invest in Henry Ford.”
“We’ve been all over this before.”
“Charlotte, the day will come when men will rise up off the Earth and visit the Moon, even the planets. This is the beginning—”
“Must you shout?”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“I feel a headache coming on. Please try to be a little quiet when you come to bed.”
He hadn’t gone to bed. He had sat out on the veranda all night long, watching the full Moon move across the sky. There would be the devil to pay in the morning, the devil and a thin-lipped silence. But he’d stick by his guns. He’d given in on most things, but not on this. But the night was his. Tonight he’d be alone with his old friend. He searched her face. Where was Mare Crisium? Funny, he couldn’t make it out. He used to be able to see it plainly when he was a boy. Probably needed new glasses—this constant office work wasn’t good for his eyes.
But he didn’t need to see, he knew where they all were; Crisium, Mare Fecunditatis, Mare Tranquilitatis—that one had a satisfying roll!—the Apennines, the Carpathians, old Tycho with its mysterious rays.
Two hundred and forty thousand miles—ten times around the Earth. Surely men could bridge a little gap like that. Why, he could almost reach out and touch it, nodding there behind the elm trees.
Not that he could help. He hadn’t the education.
“Son, I want to have a little serious talk with you.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I know you had hoped to go to college next year—” (Hoped! He had lived for it. The University of Chicago to study under Moulton, then on to the Yerkes Observatory to work under the eye of Dr. Frost himself)—”and I had hoped so too. But with your father gone, and the girls growing up, it’s harder to make ends meet. You’ve been a good boy, and worked hard to help out. I know you’ll understand.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Extra! Extra! STRATOSPHERE ROCKET REACHES PARIS. Read aaaaallllll about ’t.” The thin little man in the bifocals snatched at the paper and hurried back to the office.
“Look at this, George.”
“Huh? Hmm, interesting, but what of it?”
“Can’t you see? The next stage is to the Moon!”
“God, but you’re a sucker, Delos. The trouble with you is you read too many of those trashy magazines. Now I caught my boy reading one of ’em just last week, Stunning Stories, or some such title, and dressed him down proper. Your folks should have done you the same favor.”
Harriman squared his narrow, middle-aged shoulders. “They will so reach the Moon!”
His partner laughed. “Have it your own way. If baby wants the Moon, papa bring it for him. But you stick to your discounts and commissions; that’s where the money is.”
The big car droned down the Paseo, and turned off on Armour Boulevard. Old Harriman stirred uneasily in his sleep and muttered to himself.
“But Mr. Harriman—” The young man with the notebook was plainly perturbed. The old man grunted.