The Throne of Saturn, page 29
“Be careful,” the vice president suggested. “Don’t want to talk like a spy novel—seems ridiculous to suggest it—but the stakes are big, here. The bigger they get, the more ruthless some people become.”
“I’ll start with golf,” Jim Matthison said. “I understand he loves it. So, do I. I’ll get a confession on the nineteenth green.”
“Nothing sensational required,” the vice president told him. “Just keep in touch with the situation … Do you anticipate any mechanical difficulties out there? Any manufacturing problems that we can help you with from here?”
“Thanks very much,” Jim Matthison said, “but I don’t think so. The other boys may have a few, but I expect we’re all in pretty good shape. As you know, NASA still has two Saturns in storage at the Michoud assembly facility just outside New Orleans. They’re already getting them ready to send out here, probably within the week. Then we’ll get to work and make whatever modifications Houston and Huntsville tell us are necessary. Meanwhile we’re already tooling up again to produce the third—and very likely three more, if headquarters gives us the go-ahead.”
“They will,” the vice president promised. “Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy—it’s the great NASA theme song.”
“And sometimes a damned good thing, too.”
“Sometimes,” the vice president agreed, “a damned good thing. There’s another mission coming, and of course we have to have backups for this one, just in case.”
“There won’t be any ‘just in case,’” Jim Matthison said comfortably, “but it’s good to know they’ll be there, anyway.”
“Correct. I’ll try to get out and see you in a couple of weeks, as soon as I get back from Geneva.”
“That’ll be a couple of hours, won’t it?” Jim Matthison inquired with a smile.
The vice president chuckled.
“Probably. But we’re taking it very seriously, around here.”
“Really?” Jim Matthison inquired with some skepticism. “Just between you and me, I hope you fail abysmally.”
“I will,” the vice president said comfortably. “The Russians will help me.”
“I’ll be as disappointed as you are,” Jim Matthison said.
“I expect that’s a rather common sentiment around NASA,” the vice president said.
But he did not find it common with Clete O’Donnell, whose initial expression of surprise when the vice president came on the Picturephone yielded instantly to a comfortably patronizing air. It was obvious that Clete thought he was concealing this, but the vice president was accustomed to this sort of thing from a certain element whose members thought they were smarter than he was. They weren’t, but it often served his purposes to let them think so. He decided a respectful dumbness would be the best way to open the conversation.
“Good morning, Clete,” he said with a smile. “How are things in Miami Beach?”
“Hot,” Clete O’Donnell said with a smile. “How are they in Washington?”
“Hotter,” the vice president said. He shook his head with a baffled amiability. “Especially where I sit right now.”
“How’s that?”
“The Russians, and all. It’s quite a responsibility the president’s given me. I don’t know whether I can handle it.”
“I’m sure the country has no doubts, Mr. Vice President. Obviously, the president hasn’t.”
“He flatters me, I’m afraid,” the vice president confessed with a sigh. “It’s a big job, dealing with those people. I’m not sure I—” he broke off and frowned thoughtfully. “Clete, how would you handle them? Could you give me a little advice? I’d certainly appreciate it.”
“Is that why you called?” Clete asked, and the vice president got the impression that he was relaxing from some inner tension. “I didn’t know—”
“Oh, that wasn’t the only reason,” the vice president said comfortably. He was intrigued to see Clete almost visibly tensing up again. “I wanted to talk to you a little about the trouble at the Cape, of course. That’s part of my responsibility as chairman of the Space Council.”
“Did the president ask you to talk to me about it?” Clete asked sharply.
“Nope,” the vice president said. “I just thought I’d raise it on my own. It seemed a curious little episode and I thought I’d like to get the story from the man who was responsible and find out whether we can expect the same sort of thing again. Any objections?”
“Certainly not,” Clete said. “I don’t really consider myself responsible, however. If Dr. Freer hadn’t seen fit to put it on such a personal basis, if he hadn’t attempted to attack my loyalty and smear me as—a—I don’t know what—then we might have been able to avoid the unpleasantness.”
“I wonder why he did that?” the vice president asked thoughtfully. “Can you imagine why he would say such a thing?”
“Senility, perhaps,” Clete O’Donnell suggested coldly. “Or hysteria brought on by too much obsession with space.”
“Apparently he did have some grounds to think you might be trying to interfere with the mission,” the vice president suggested mildly. “You did call a strike to try to stop it, after all.”
“Only under provocation,” Clete pointed out with a certain smugness. “Only after he put on extra guards and attacked me personally as being hostile to the United States.”
“Which you aren’t,” the vice president said gently.
“No, sir!” Clete said with a harsh indignation that sounded genuine.
“But you did threaten a strike,” the vice president said. “You evidently had some conversation with him and you did threaten a strike. And you apparently gave him some reason to think your motives might be not quite as disinterested as the public was subsequently given to understand.”
“Are you charging me with disloyalty, Mr. Vice President?” Clete asked with a dangerous quietness.
“Oh, no,” the vice president said. “Oh, dear, no. But I’m a little bit puzzled by Al Freer, nonetheless. It hasn’t been my experience of him that he’s either senile or obsessed with space—at least to the point where the obsession would lead him to make what is really quite a grave allegation about a loyal fellow American. I heard your talk on CBS, incidentally. I thought it was a fine statement of your point of view.”
“Thank you,” Clete said, somewhat mollified. “If you want my explanation of Al Freer, it’s that he’s been around space too long and he’s seeing ghosts under the bed. It’s the only sensible conclusion I’ve been able to come up with.”
“Except, of course,” the vice president insisted gently, “that you did call the strike you had threatened to call. And it did get very nasty.”
“Not my doing,” Clete said blandly. “I didn’t know the old man and his astronaut would get in the way.”
For a second the vice president had all he could do to keep his tone impersonal. But he managed.
“Do you feel any sorrow about that?” he inquired presently. “Any regret for Al Freer? Any compunction about Stuart Yule?”
“Mr. Vice President,” Clete said, “I’m not really a monster. I’m not really cold-blooded. Naturally I regret the old man got hurt, and I think it’s most unfortunate that Stu Yule had such bad luck. But still—they were attempting to interfere with a perfectly legitimate protest.”
“They were trying to stop a fire, as near as we can determine up here,” the vice president remarked. “Was that perfectly legitimate protest’?”
“Oh,” Clete said comfortably, “one or two of the boys may have been a little careless. But after all, Mr. Vice President, they weren’t responsible for the climate that surrounds the project. It was just something that happened in the heat of the moment”—he grinned cheerfully—“if you’ll excuse the pun.”
“It was unfortunate,” the vice president said, permitting a certain acid in his voice for the first time. “What’s going to happen next? Another strike?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Clete said with an earnest slowness, ignoring his tone. “There wouldn’t be much point now, would there? I mean, the essential things we were striking for, we’ve achieved, haven’t we? The crew’s been changed, and now that the president’s invited the Russians—well, it’s just going to be a much finer, more sensible, and more worthwhile thing, that’s all. We don’t have any objections to cooperating with that. On the contrary, we’re going to show you some real production records at the Cape. When are you coming down to see us?”
“I think I’ll make a swing around after I get back from Geneva. But you still haven’t told me how you think I should approach them.”
“You didn’t let me,” Clete pointed out with a smile. “You got me off on this other thing. I thought you’d forgotten it.”
“No,” the vice president said, “I don’t forget things. What kind of concessions do you think they ought to make if we’re to let them participate?”
“They ought to make!” Clete said, and he sounded quite genuinely shocked. “We’re issuing the invitation. Why should they make concessions?”
“Well, we can’t have it just an open-end invitation to come in and take over the mission, can we? It ought to be a partnership, or it will be meaningless.”
“Mr. Vice President,” Clete said earnestly, “speaking for myself, and I think for all the many thousands who have been flocking to join the Committee Against Unilateral Space Exploration in these past few days, I think that right there you have illustrated what we are all afraid of in the next stages of this. If the United States goes in with a whole set of preconceived notions and impossible demands, then we’re going to blow it, Mr. Vice President. You’re going to come home without an agreement and without a space partner, and we’re going to be right back where we’ve been all these weary decades of wasteful and futile competition.”
“Wasteful sometimes, maybe,” the vice president conceded, “but not futile. After all, we do have a lot of firsts to our credit, don’t we?”
“It depends on how you interpret ‘credit,’” Clete said. “If you use it in the old-fashioned, imperialistic sense, then maybe, yes, we do have some historical firsts. But if you speak in the broader sense of what has been best for the world and for mankind, then I’m not so sure. It’s just been naked competition, and often bitter competition, at that. What good has it done? It’s only made the Communists more suspicious and more hostile, hasn’t it? It hasn’t made the world any safer.”
“The world isn’t any safer,” the vice president agreed. “Then what would be a good partnership agreement, in this situation? Should we ask them to make any concessions at all?”
“I think you’d be both wise and enlightened, Mr. Vice President,” Clete said earnestly, “if you didn’t ask for a single one. Just make it an honest, straightforward, goodfaith bid to them to join in. They’re not fools, Mr. Vice President. They’re very smart people and great space technicians—we have to admit that. They’ll know what’s needed and how to go about it.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“As far as our unions are concerned,” Clete went on earnestly, again ignoring the irony in his voice, “we don’t have any doubts at all about our ability to work with their people. Just let them come in, freely and without hindrance—and also, I might suggest, without a lot of stupid interference by the Immigration Service and the FBI—and we’ll take it from there. That’s how to make it a truly great mission for all mankind, Mr. Vice President. Don’t hold back. It’s been the curse of America in her relations with the Communists for as long as the world can remember. We’ve always been afraid to meet them as brothers. Now we must.”
“Must?”
“If this mission is to succeed,” Clete O’Donnell said calmly, “and if it is not to encounter further unpleasant difficulties along the way.”
“I see,” the vice president said.
“I hope so, sir,” Clete said, looking his most intent and solemn, “because we look to you as our agent to do what is right.”
“Oh, I’m going to try,” the vice president said. “And I do thank you for your suggestions. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
And so, he had, the vice president thought a few moments later while he waited for his secretary to get the channels cleared to Dr. Freer’s bedside in Orlando. Clete had obviously been prepared for an attack and the vice president had to admit his defenses were good. He had been the alert, intelligent, earnest, and responsible citizen his friends and supporters liked to describe. Only once or twice had there been any indication of inner tensions, only once or twice a word or turn of phrase that didn’t ring quite true. No one who was not suspicious, the vice president admitted to himself, would have sensed a thing. But he was suspicious. And he had.
He was not going to forgive Clete O’Donnell for the strike, he promised himself stubbornly, despite the fact that somehow there seemed to have been a general consensus of forgiveness in the media, on the Hill, and possibly—though he did not like to think so—in the White House. It was almost as though the strike had come and gone so fast that no one found time to really absorb its implications. It had been so brief that everyone could almost pretend that it had never happened—could almost forget that Al Freer had raised a question of loyalty that could be most serious—that Clete’s official excuse for the strike was a blatant and deliberate attack upon the entire concept and success of Planetary Fleet One. The strike had begun in an hour, ended in an hour. It was easy to forget.
But not for him, the vice president thought, deciding that he would continue to reflect upon it patiently, add little bits and pieces together as he found them, and keep an eye on Mr. Clete O’Donnell. He had an ally in Jim Matthison and he knew he had one in Dr. Freer. He was pleased to find the Director of Kennedy Space Center in relatively good shape and relatively good spirits when his face appeared on the screen against the antiseptic background of his hospital room.
“Al,” he said cordially, “my good old friend of space—how are you?”
“I have been better,” Dr. Freer said, managing a small smile which, peeking out from among the bandages that swathed his head from crown to chin, made him look rather like a pinched, but amiable, Santa Claus.
“How soon are they going to let you go back to the Cape?”
“They say a week. It will be two days.”
“Come on, now,” the vice president said. “Take it easy. There’s no point in being foolish.”
“The foolishness,” Albrecht Freer said somberly, “lies with those who did not protect us when we needed protection.”
“I’m sorry I was out of the country when that occurred,” the vice president said gravely. “I might have been able to help you.”
“Not without the president’s support. He was against us.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I asked for his assistance,” Dr. Freer said, “and he refused it.” His eyes darkened, Santa Claus disappeared in a surge of indignation. “He refused it!”
“Why would he do a thing like that?” the vice president asked, though he suspected he knew.
“He refused to believe me when I said Mr. O’Donnell was not a friend to the United States. Mr. O’Donnell,” Dr. Freer remarked with a spiteful air that was quite unlike him, “has many votes in this country.”
“Do you think that was the reason,” the vice president asked, “or was it something more fundamental than that?”
“That is not fundamental?” Albrecht Freer demanded scornfully. Then his expression softened. “I may not be fair,” he said, sounding more like himself. “He simply did not believe me. He simply could not imagine that Mr. O’Donnell is what I said he was.”
“What’s that?”
“A Communist,” Dr. Freer said. “Yes,” he repeated defiantly, “a Communist. He told me so. He said no one would believe me if I told them.” His face became bitter. “He was right.”
“He seems to be a popular man,” the vice president observed.
“He is false, vicious, completely amoral, and completely worthless,” Dr. Freer said.
“But he is a popular man. How do you think we could convince anyone that he is not what he appears to be?”
“You believe me, then.”
“Oh yes,” the vice president said. “But this, you know, is very old-fashioned. It’s a tired old cliché. Communists aren’t bad men anymore. They’ve reformed. They’re good. They’re kindly. They’re enlightened. It’s absurd to worry about them. It’s a sad old reactionary hobgoblin, this Communist myth. They are no longer a major threat in Europe, Asia, South America, or any other damned place you can name. They’re our buddies. They’re the salt of the earth. They’re great guys. You know that, Al.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Freer bleakly. “And so does Stuart Yule.”
“Yes, not to mention a good many millions of others. But not our great thinkers here at home, you know. That’s our problem, as far as Clete is concerned. He is so deliciously in, so perfectly One Of The Bunch. You haven’t been in shape to notice, but he’s had quite a strong defense against your attack from some pretty powerful sources.”
“He told me he would,” Dr. Freer said. “I am not surprised.”
“Do you think he will attempt anything further at the Cape?”
“Not if the Soviets come to this country to destroy the mission for themselves. He will not have to. If they do not, he will be active for them again.”
“Why, do you suppose?”
“God knows why some Americans do the work of those who wish to destroy them,” Dr. Freer said, “and He turns His head away in fear and disgust of them.”
“So should we,” the vice president said, “but many of us, being fools, do not. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the rest of us to be on guard against them.”
“How can we break his union?” Dr. Freer inquired with a tired shrug. “He is entrenched across the path of Project Argosy.”
“We will simply have to convince the president of it. Then there will be action.”
