Tales of the Flying Mountains (2 page)

“So would you like to open the discussion?”

“Well … well, uh—” I haul my brain cells together. “All right,” I respond, “you have to select and you have to judge. You have to state, ‘This was bad and must never be allowed to happen again; that was magnificent and something you ought to emulate.' Agreed.

“But what's the difficulty here? The conventional issues on Earth and in the Solar System—they're abstractions out among the stars. Oh, I suppose we'd better give the kids horrible examples of things like war and slavery, to try and make sure those won't revive among them. And good examples, naturally, like the Magna Carta or the American Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Liberties, to make them appreciate what they've got.

“As for inspiration, though—good Lord!” I exclaim, warming to my theme. “What's wrong with the conquest of space for your central motif? Tell them about Goddard, Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, EsnaultPelterie, Ley. Tell them about Sputnik, about Mercury-Gemini-Apollo, about Emett and how he wouldn't listen when they laughed at his gyrogravitics, about Rotmistrov on Mars and Shuhara on Venus—about their own ancestors, who turned cold, airless, lifeless rocks into the Asteroid Republic! What better can you do?”

Another silence follows. I become embarrassed. Their gazes upon me are not unkindly, but some have grown sardonic. At length Missy shakes her wise old head.

“No, I'm sorry, Winston,” she says. “That won't work. Too many other facts are floating around in our libraries, and a percentage of students will get interested enough to do a little research. If we've told them about the wonderful space rockets, and nothing about the nuclear warheads that most of those rockets were meant to deliver—in effect, we'll have lied to them, and they'll find that out and distrust everything else we've tried to teach them. Likewise for the interplanetary era. Maybe Joe Amspaugh is right and no such thing as absolute historical truth exists. But we must try to pass on as much reality as we're able.”

“I'm not sure about that,” says Conchita Montalvo. Like Luis Echevaray and myself, she is of a younger generation. A slight insecurity forces seriousness and a professorial style of talking upon her. (Alone, we laugh a great deal.) “As Mr. Orloff just reminded us, this is going to be an utterly isolated group. Isolated also from the turbulent, complicated, often cruel and crooked mass of humanity. Our children won't have much chance to develop antibodies, so to speak. Facts too gross could appall them in their innocence, could throw them over into cynicism or rebellion. Quite frankly, I don't know if we dare do anything but suppress certain data.”

That startles the rest of us. We're asterites; our loathing of censorship is as automatic as it is for every other kind of officiousness. Lindgren opens and closes his mouth a time or two before he manages to ask, “What episodes are you thinking about?”

“Many,” Conchita replies. “Someone mentioned Emett and the origin of the truly interplanetary age. How can you explain to an unsophisticated youngster what brought on
that
beginning?”

Nothing Succeeds Like Failure

“Oh, no!” Junius Harleman turned from the door-scanner. “It's him!”

“Who?” His wife looked into the screen. It showed a small, thin, unkempt man in a lurid aloha shirt, tentatively prodding the chime button on their porch.

“Quentin Emett,” Harleman groaned. “You've heard me talk about him. That crank who's been besieging my office this past year. Now he's tracked me down to my home.”

“We don't have to let him in, do we?”

“I'm afraid so. I can't simply brush him off. He's Senator Lamphier's cousin.”

“Pity.” Martha gestured at the television set which dominated the outmoded Neo-Sino décor of their living room. “And just when the Kreemi-Rich Hour is due on.”

Harleman brightened a trifle. There might be worse fates than listening for a while to Q. Emett, Scientechnist. Like most middle-aged husbands, he had resigned himself to many things, privately admitting that his wife doubtless did likewise. “Well, I'm sorry,” he said, “but an administrator's lot is not a happy one. Will you make some coffee? I'll get rid of him as fast as I can.”

His paunch preceded him down the hall. When he opened the door, a street light gleamed off his scalp, between strands of gray hair. The summer evening of Silver Spring, Maryland, rolled pitilessly over him. You could boil in that air, he thought, if you didn't drown first. The neighborhood was quiet, the only traffic at the moment one of the armored patrol cars which kept it in that state.

“Why, hello,” said the chief of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “What brings you here?”

“I, uh, I think you know,” answered his visitor.

“Well, this is hardly the hour for business discussions, Mr. Emett.”

“On the contrary, uh, it, it is. You, uh, you're supposed to testify in Congress tomorrow, aren't you? And you expect a, a, a hard time, don't you?”

Harleman winced. Emett pressed his advantage with the fierceness of timidity that has at last nerved itself up: “You only hope your budget won't be cut further. Your whole agency might be dismembered. True? Well, I believe I, uh, I can help you. Mr. Harleman, I know you c-c-consider me a crackpot. All right. I won't try again to, uh, prove my ideas are sound
per se
. But it's occurred to me, uh, whatever your opinion of them as engineering, uh, well, they may have very practical uses in p-p-politics. If you'll hear my suggestion?”

Something went
click
inside Harleman. A tingle followed it, up and down his spine. “You know,” he said, “you might barely have something there. I can't give you any promises, but—come in, come in.”

Air conditioning enfolded them like a blessing as he closed the door. After introducing Emett to his wife, Harleman declared solemnly, “We have a confidential matter to discuss. Would you bring us coffee in my study, please?”

Thirty years before, a writer in the
New Republic
had called Congressman Ashley Stanhope (R.-S.C.) “Uncle Scrooge.” The swear word stuck. He was in truth fanatically tight-fisted with what he described as the taxpayer's hard-earned dollar, except, of course, for always vital undertakings in his district. Before long, he started gleefully using the nickname himself. After seniority gave him the chairmanship of the House Committee on Space and Science, it became generally known as Murderers' Row. Every good liberal wondered, often aloud, when he would have the decency to die.

Though the room over which Stanhope presided was duly cooled, Junius Harleman sweated. He was almost glad of the absence of spectators—not because this hearing was secret, merely because news media and public alike were monumentally uninterested. The men who sat around the long table looked equally bored; all except Stanhope. Uncle Scrooge saw a chance to kill a federal agency. His ears virtually quivered.

After the oath had been gabbled, the old man spoke. Magnolia blossoms dripped from his lips. “Welcome, suh. Ah'm sure you're tired of appearin' befoah this group, and others, each yeah. Ah sympathize. We'll try and make this a short, easy session, ri-ight?”

“Thank you, sir.” Since two others were already smoking, Harleman dared start a cigarette. Drawing the pungency into his lungs, he remembered he was overdue for an anticancer shot. “I quite understand that NASA must explain its plans and justify its requests for appropriations like any other bureau. I am prepared to do so.”

“Well, now, that's mighty good of you, Mr. Harleman.” Stanhope bridged the fingers of his liver-spotted hands. The wattles wagged beneath his chin. “Ah'm mighty pleased to see such cooperation. Believe me, it's a seldom thing. Too many of these bureaucrats seem to believe they have a divine right to their jobs and their projects.”

“I have been a civil servant throughout my working life, sir,” Harleman answered, and added automatically, “The entire thrust of my action orientation has been toward a meaningful decision-making dialogue.”

Stanhope cocked one bushy eyebrow.
You're an incompetent hack
, he refrained from saying,
as witness the fact that you allowed yourself to be maneuvered into the directorship of NASA, a wretched blind alley where no one wants to be and which I intend to brick off
.

“Dialogue,” he did say. “Ye-es, Ah think we might just do a little talkin' today. A little down-to-earth conversation. Down to Earth,” he repeated with an audible capital. “Ah do believe it's past time we spoke about fundamentals. Ah mean, suh, the reason why NASA should be continued at all.”

“Mr. Chairman,” said the gentleman from Nebraska. “Point of order. Did not the same act which commanded this agency to dispose of its oversized Houston facilities and headquarter itself in Washington … did not that act specifically extend its life for a minimum of twenty years?”

“Why, yes, Mr. Bryan, it did,” Stanhope purred. “But legislation can be amended or repealed, can't it, now? And Ah do feel this committee should consider whether it oughtn't to put moah emphasis on the ‘science' part of its function and distract itself less with the ‘space' part.”

I knew this was coming
, Harleman thought, and braced himself.

“Let us be frank, suh,” Stanhope said in his direction. “It's no service to you, either, to preetend that the space program's not in deep trouble. And not only our space program; the Russians, the West Europeans, the Asian League, ever'body's is falterin'. Befoah we go into such matters as the budget you propose to propose, why don't we take an hour or two and ask ourselves what produced this situation?”

And get your oratory into the Record and mail copies to your constituents … franked
, Harleman dared not say. Aloud: “I am at your service, Congressman. I am as much in favor as you are of generating escalation of focus on multilinked problem-complexes.”

Stanhope smiled tigerishly. “Thank you, suh. Now let's pree-tend foah about five minutes that Ah'm one of yoah agency's outright foes. You know it's very possible that Mr. Ruysdale will be a candidate in the next presidential election, and you know he openly advocates abolishin' NASA. Suppose Ah take the position of one of the many people who agree with him. A hypothetical position only, you realize, Mr. Harleman. Only foah the purpose of hearin' youah counterarguments, which Ah'm sure are good.”

As a matter of fact
, Harleman thought,
they're lousy, and you know it and I know it and I don't really want to save NASA, just my own career, and you know that and I know that
.

For a moment he locked eyes with the old man. It was almost like telepathy.
If we go through the motions, in the next three or four years we can help each other achieve our ends. You can kill the further development of astronautics; I can get the directorship of a viable agency. But the motions include a ritual combat
.

“I'm familiar with the position you describe, Congressman,” he said. “Naturally, I consider it untenable. But if you would like me to refute it for your minutes, please do set it forth.”

“Thank you, suh.” Stanhope glanced at a bescribbled sheet of paper on the table before him. “The points are really quite simple, as you know.

“Let's admit the o-riginal impetus of the various national space programs was military and political rivalry. Well, that's fadin' out, foah a while at least, along with the twentieth century itself. We'll soon be enterin' a whole new millennium with its special problems. Those problems are so serious they're partly responsible for the decline of international tensions. Everybody's got too much to do at home—what with overpopulation, poverty, unrest, exhaustion of resou'ces, pollution of environment, and growin' sho'tage of chemical fuels. Ah might remark that the giant rockets have contributed a good share to those sho'tages and that pollution. And what have they given us in exchange?”

Harleman drew breath. Stanhope gestured for silence. “Oh, yes,” he continued, “weather satellites, communication relays, knowledge in biology and astronomy and stellar physics and planetary structures.… Ah'm not a yut, suh, in spite of the image certain people project of me. Ah'm aware of the benefits. But Ah'm also aware that we're long past the point of diminishin' returns.

“No place but Earth is habitable without the most ee-laborate life support systems. No natural resou'ces out yonder are worth the cost of transportation heah. Each expedition we send out brings back less new knowledge; and the knowledge it does bring has less impo'tance; but the price tag hasn't been lessened any, no, suh. I have testimony from moah than one authority; we're about at the end of the line as far as improvin' the rocket goes. They talk and talk about ‘break-throughs,' but the last one was the reusable booster, and that was a generation ago.

“We don't want to discontinue the useful programs, like relays and monitors. But those have long since become so standard that they've gone under the jurisdiction of othah agencies, like the FCC or the Weather Bureau. What's left foah NASA? A rare interplanetary exploration. The Lunar base, the orbital stations—but if we can get othah countries to close down theirs, and it looks like we can, then we'll be closin' down ours, at a mi-ighty big annual savin'.

“The fact is, except foah work in the immediate neighborhood of Earth, space is costin' us too much and givin' us too little. We can't affo'd that any longer, what with so many domestic problems cryin' out foah an answer, not least the problem the o'dinary citizen's got, keepin' enough money after taxes to suppo't his children.

“And let's be blunt, Mr. Harleman, maybe impolitely blunt, but we're talkin' as friends today, aren't we? Isn't it a fact that NASA's own personnel are aware of this? Aren't they quittin' in droves, not simply because of reduced appropriations, but because nothin' is left that appeals to any ambitious young man?