The Throne of Saturn, page 11
“Alice and I stayed until midnight last night and almost made him late for his Washington meeting,” Pete pointed out. “Can’t overstay my welcome again.”
“Never that,” she said.
“That’s right,” Connie agreed. “Stick around. It’ll probably be hamburgers and beer, but—”
“No, thanks, really,” Pete said. “I’ve got to go.” A mischievous look came into his eyes. “Got to write out that resignation.”
“Now—” Connie began. The mischievous look faded.
“Seriously, now. What chance is there for me, anyway? You heard him: four crew members. Just where does little Petros fit in?”
“Pete,” Connie said with a certain annoyed frustration, “will you stop this guff? You have as much chance as anybody else.”
Pete smiled.
“Four, the man said. Just four, out of all us eager beavers, each one breathing hot and heavy to get on board. I repeat, what chance—”
“I’m not so sure you’re all breathing hot and heavy,” Jane said thoughtfully. “Not everybody is as anxious as my husband to leave his wife and family and go off sixty million miles on a highly dangerous mission.”
For a moment Connie studied her gravely.
“Some are less anxious,” he said finally, “and some are more. Some don’t want to get away at all, and they’re eliminated right off as possibilities because NASA isn’t in the business of forcing anybody who doesn’t want to go. And some want to get away much more because they can’t stand it at home. That isn’t why I want to get away.”
“Why do you want to get away?” she asked quietly, as Pete became very still and looked at them both with an intent and speculative expression.
Connie spread his hands in an almost hopeless way.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Why do I want to go? I don’t know. Ambition, maybe, to be honest about it? Sure. But there’s a lot more to it than that. The same things that brought me into the program in the first place, I suppose. The challenge of it. The thrill. The fact that there it is, and nobody’s ever been there before, and I’d like to be one of the first. The urge to explore and find out what it’s all about. The feeling that my country ought to do it first, and I’d like to help her. The desire to find out what I can do, stretched to my limit. All of these things, I guess.”
Again, he made the curiously frustrated gesture.
“I don’t know, it’s—I can’t give you a poet’s reasons, I’m not a poet. I’m a technician. I have a pretty good idea inside me why I want to go, but—it’s difficult to spell out …” He smiled and his tone became lighter. “One thing, though, Janie—it isn’t because I want to get away from my wife and family. Now surely you know that.”
“I guess so,” she said, and managed a small and not very convinced or convincing smile. Her voice sounded suddenly bleak. “But it’s an awfully long way and an awfully long time.”
“Well,” Pete said decisively. “I really must say good night.”
“Wait until you see the crew list before you start writing out that resignation,” Connie suggested as they started with him toward the door.
Pete turned and faced him squarely.
“Am I going to be on it?”
“You know I can’t tell you that. In the first place, it hasn’t been decided, and in the second, I couldn’t tell you if it were, until it was officially announced.”
“Surely you could tell an old buddy like me,” Pete said in an almost mocking tone.
“No,” Connie said quietly, “I could not. I will say this: you were going to be on the original twelve-man crew. But now we don’t have a twelve-man crew anymore. What happens now—”
Pete smiled.
“You and Hank and Bert will decide tomorrow morning.”
“That’s right,” Colonel Trasker said crisply.
“And somebody may blackball me.”
“That’s right,” Connie repeated in the same crisp tone.
Pete gave his quick, engaging grin, white teeth gleaming, dark eyes snapping with amusement under curly dark hair: suddenly very handsome, boyish, and engaging, as he could be when whatever weighed him down got out of the way.
“I will say you’re an honest bastard. I still think I’d better go home and draft that letter.”
“O.K.,” Connie said with an answering smile, “but don’t be in any hurry to mail it.”
“I’ll give you”—Pete glanced at his watch with an elaborate severity—“twenty-four hours. That ought to be enough.”
“For better or worse,” Connie agreed, “twenty-four hours from now the crew of Planetary Fleet One will be selected.”
“Can I sleep tonight?” Pete asked.
Jane placed her hand on his arm.
“Some won’t,” she said, “but I’m sure you will.”
“I don’t know,” Pete remarked. “Dark things move beneath this sunny surface.” He leaned down to kiss her lightly on the cheek. “But you must.”
“I’ll try,” she said, with a return of some of her normal cheerfulness.
“Good girl,” he said. He held out his hand to Connie.
“Captain Courageous,” he said with mock solemnity. “I want you to sleep well, too.”
“I will if they’ll leave me alone,” Connie said, returning the handshake with a firm pressure. He smiled somewhat ruefully. “But they may not.”
And as he and Jane came back into the softly lit, comfortable, lived-in room to watch, through the tall window looking out across the garden, the long, red Jaguar XKE of Dr. Petros Balkis disappear rapidly down the quiet, tree-lined street, the phone rang once, twice, thrice. Connie knew instinctively who it would be as he went in the study and snapped on the Picturephone.
“Hi,” Jazz Weickert said without other preliminary. “When are you picking the crew?”
“Tomorrow morning, I suppose.”
“Everything I said day before yesterday still goes.”
“Does it?” Connie asked in an ironic tone. “That’s a surprise.”
“Yes, it does!” Jazz snapped. “And I don’t want any smart-ass evasions.”
His face changed, lost its angry expression, looked for a second uncertain and much younger than his thirty-eight years. “Connie,” he said in an almost pleading voice, “can’t you be fair? Why is it so hard to be fair to me?”
“We’re trying to be fair to you, Jazz,” Colonel Trasker began uncomfortably, but Commander Weickert was having none of it. The little-boy look faded, the angry man returned.
“Oh, hell,” he said coldly. “Trying, trying, trying! You don’t have to ‘try.’ Just do it, God damn it.”
“You know I can’t promise you anything,” Connie said quietly.
Jazz uttered a short, harsh laugh.
“Except a royal shafting. Well: remember one thing, Connie. I have more right than almost anybody in the corps to be on that crew. And I intend to be.”
“We will decide tomorrow morning,” Connie said, his voice cold.
“Decide right,” Jazz suggested in an unpleasant tone.
Connie stared at him without expression for a long, thoughtful moment.
“We will decide,” he repeated, and before Jazz could reply, reached over and snapped off the machine.
“I couldn’t help but overhear,” Jane said at the door. “I suppose he does have a case.”
“He has a case,” Connie agreed shortly, “but he ruins it. When are we going to eat?”
“Well, don’t take my head off,” she said. “I’ll go get it right now.”
“Good.” He smiled. “I’m sorry. He always does that to me.”
“I hope nobody else calls,” she said. “I’d like a husband for dinner, not a bear.”
“I’ll try to be a real, nice husband,” he said, slapping her on the rump as they started to leave the den. The phone rang again. “Oh hell!” he said.
“Now, be nice to whoever it is,” she admonished as she went on into the kitchen. To his surprise the shyly smiling face of Monetta Halleck, big-eyed, high-cheekboned, patrician, appeared on the screen.
“Why, hello, Monetta,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“You’re surprised, aren’t you?” she asked, the shy smile widening.
“I am,” he admitted. “Beautiful girls don’t call me every evening.”
“That,” she said lightly, “is not the way I hear it.”
He laughed.
“It’s true, I swear. What can I do for you?”
The smile vanished, the big eyes looked solemn and twice as big. He thought again, as he had on the two or three occasions when they had met briefly at NASA receptions on the base, that she had a thoroughly nice and patrician look. And why shouldn’t she? he reproved himself automatically. Aren’t many of them just as—and then his mind ordered, Oh, stop it, and he concentrated attentively on what she was saying.
“It’s about Jayvee. I’m worried about him.”
“He isn’t there, I take it.”
“He took Rudden to the movies to see the latest Walt Disney.”
“Gramps and the Mars Buggy?” he asked with a smile. “I feel like Gramps, myself, right now.”
“That’s the one,” she said, smiling also. Then the smile faded again. “I had to do something to make him stop brooding and get out of the house, even if it did involve Mars.”
“Is Mars the problem?” he asked.
She hesitated and then said, with a formality that he found quite touching in some way he couldn’t exactly define.
“Colonel Trasker, could we meet so I could talk to you frankly?”
“Sure,” he said. “How about coming here tomorrow morning? It’ll have to be early, though. I’ve got to get over to the office to work on the crew.”
“Wouldn’t Mrs. Trasker mind? I mean, if we—I mean—”
“Honey,” he said, in a tone kindly enough so there was no sting in it, “she’d mind a lot more if we met behind her back, now, wouldn’t she?”
Monetta smiled again, her shy, generous smile.
“I guess so,” she admitted. “But I just didn’t know—”
“You come over here about 8:30, if you can.” He grinned. “Tell Jayvee Jane wants to consult you about a party she’s planning for the wives, if he catches you.”
The shy smile gave way to a laugh, a trifle cautious, he thought, but genuinely amused.
“He wouldn’t believe I’d be coming to a reception at your house.”
“I’m damned if I know why not!” he said with a genuine indignation. “Nobody I know of at NASA has ever shown any—”
“I know,” she said hastily, “I know. But you don’t know Jayvee. He broods a lot.”
“He has no cause here to brood on that subject!” Connie said sharply, looking and sounding every inch the protective astronaut.
Monetta looked deeply troubled and again she spoke quickly. “I know, I’m sorry. He really doesn’t, I know that. It’s just a part of—just everything. Maybe I could talk to you—we might be able to help him?”
“Certainly,” Connie agreed, more quietly. “I’ve said you could talk to me. And I’m flattered you say maybe ‘we’ can help him. But I can’t make any promises about crew assignments, if that’s what you—”
“Oh no,” she said quickly again, and he thought, Oh, yes, little girl. And maybe Jayvee put you up to this and knows all about it, after all.
But he didn’t say so, and his expression revealed nothing as he replied calmly,
“All right, then, come on over and I’ll be glad to talk. I repeat, though—early. O.K.?”
“8:30,” she said. “I’ll be there.”
“I’ll be looking forward to it,” he said.
She smiled again her wide, shy smile and said softly,
“So will I.”
And then looked quite embarrassed—which made him suddenly feel quite embarrassed—and faded from the screen.
Well, he thought, I’m damned. And told himself sternly, Now see here, Buster. Just see here.
“Janie!” he called as he went into the living room. “That was interesting. Do you know who that was?”
Later they watched television for a while: the factual reports of the president’s talk, the not-so-factual analyses of the president’s talk, the special programs that sought, through a careful selection of panelists and a careful slanting of questions, to tear down, derogate, and minimize the new space effort. A few of those who appeared had a good word to say for it: some of the veteran space reporters, harking back sentimentally to the days of the great triumphs at the Cape, were obviously thrilled by the return of the old excitement. But for the most part it was, like all reports on matters that arouse the hostility of the networks, a querulous, nit-picking, ill-tempered, ungracious presentation. Running through it were two constant refrains: what right did America have to spend money to challenge the Russians again when she had so many troubles right here at home? And, What was the point in going there anyway, when it was just one more barren planetary wasteland?
Finally, Connie got up, crossed over, switched off the set.
“It’s nice to know one is popular with one’s fellow countrymen,” he remarked dryly.
“The president isn’t going to like it,” Jane observed.
“Well, he isn’t going to back down at this point,” Connie said flatly. “He can’t possibly.”
“No,” she said. “He won’t back down directly.”
“He won’t back down at all!” Connie said sharply.
“I hope not, for your sake, and for all of you,” she said. “Because I don’t suppose,” she added with a kind of wistful thoughtfulness, “that you will back down, either.”
“No, I won’t,” he said calmly. “Why should I?”
“Perhaps because your wife would rather you didn’t go,” she said quietly, so quietly that they both were suddenly conscious of the stillness of the house, the hush of El Lago, the awareness that in many similar houses around Clear Lake men and women must be thinking and talking about much the same things in this late hour.
“Janie,” he said finally, sitting down beside her on the sofa, “what is this, anyway? You’ve been the prize wife of the program for fifteen years. If there was ever anybody who was gung-ho, it was Jane Trasker.” His tone became light and humorous. “‘Go get Jane Trasker,’ they cried when a visiting vice president came on the scene. ‘Go get Jane Trasker!’ they cried when they needed someone to ride in a space parade. ‘Go get Jane Trasker!’ they shouted when a new wife in the program needed consoling. And now,” he said, his voice turning serious and puzzled, “it seems to be Jane Trasker who needs the consoling. Why? What’s wrong?”
“I know it’s foolish, I know it’s stupid. I know it doesn’t make any sense at all. But anyway—I’m worried.”
“There were more dangerous things in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.”
She gave him a skeptical smile.
“Maybe. But I doubt it. And so, my boy, do you.”
He started to bluff—abandoned it—nodded.
“I’m not saying it’s not going to be a dangerous mission. I can’t say that. It’s going to be a hell of a dangerous mission. And I’m not going to say that I’m going into it completely calm and confident and without any fears of my own, because that would be stupid. Of course, I have some fears and worries. I’m human. Oh yes,” he said with a smile as she made a little movement of mock protest, “I am, believe it or not. Even old Perfect Astronaut Conrad C. Trasker is afraid once in a while. But I’m not afraid to the point where it’s going to blind my judgment, or cripple me emotionally, or destroy my confidence in my own ability, or the ability of my crew, to do what we have to do to come through safely. Because I’ve trained too long for this. I’m like most of us astronauts: I’m too good, basically, to be really, permanently scared of the job I’ve got to do. Scared once in a while, maybe, at given moments: but not scared overall. And not to the point of letting it really mess me up.”
“But you don’t know the kind of crew you’re going to have. You don’t know who else is going to be with you—and how good they are—and whether or not they’re afraid—and whether you can really depend on them.” She smiled, again almost wistfully. “I know you all right, God knows, and I know you’re just what you say you are. But I don’t know them.” She shivered. “And I don’t know Mars.”
“I don’t either,” he said, “except what JPL and the unmanned probes have told us about it. But it can’t be any worse than the Moon, and we’ve mastered that. I’ve been there a couple of times, and this’ll just be an extension. As for the crew—” He paused and stared thoughtfully into the empty fireplace.
“Yes,” she said softly. “What about the crew?”
He shrugged.
“That we’ll have to decide tomorrow morning. But it won’t be a pack of babies.”
“It ought to be the absolute best you can get, in character, in experience, in training, in ability.” Her voice became flat. “And you’re going to put Pete on it. Aren’t you?”
He gave her a quick look, genuinely puzzled.
“What’s this about Pete, all of a sudden? Why are you jealous of Pete? I’m not sleeping with him.”
“Darling,” she said with a laugh that managed to sound amused, “you can sleep with anybody you like. You can even sleep with Monetta Halleck, if that’s who you—”
“Janie!” he exclaimed with a sudden real anger. “What is this? First, you’re worried about my going to Mars and now you’re worried about my sleeping with everybody. What’s it all about? I don’t get it.”
“I,” she pointed out sweetly, “was not the one who introduced the concept of sleeping. Why did you?”
He sighed with a certain grimness.
“Now, see here. I know the wives in this program are jealous of a lot of things, and one of them is the time us little boys spend with each other—”
“And with little girls,” she said, lighting a Safecig with a hand that trembled.
“—but,” he went on calmly, “that doesn’t mean us little boys are anything but just good buddies, even though by the very nature of having to depend so completely on one another, it gets closer than a lot of friendships. But that’s all it is, and I’m ashamed you force me to defend it. As for spending time with little girls—some do and some don’t.”
