The Throne of Saturn, page 52
“Few concerned Americans who saw the extravaganza in the Astrodome—complete, naturally, with a tipsy Texas mayor—can have failed to be appalled by the very obvious rabble-rousing indulged in by the flight’s commander, Colonel Trasker. It was a performance that roused sinister echoes of other military figures who have sought to use temporary public fame as a springboard to political power.
“Not only did Colonel Trasker deliberately drag up long-buried controversies such as the fantastic bugaboo of a possible Russian ‘attack’ on the mission, but he also sought to revive the battle between NASA and its critics over the merits and value of the flight itself. This was unwise, since it must by now be clear to all involved citizens that this disaster-plagued project has even less justification today than it did six months ago when it was first inaugurated by a president whose desire for political advantage is as great as that of Colonel Trasker.
“Affront to the Soviet Union, with which we must cooperate, in space as elsewhere; futile and foredoomed pursuit of the bauble of ‘national prestige,’ a concept as old-fashioned and outdated as ‘patriotism’ itself; wasteful robber of funds that had much better be spent on America’s domestic needs—such is Planetary Fleet One. Nothing has changed what this magazine said two months ago:
“It is not too late to stop the flight.
“And it must be done.
“It is true, admittedly, that the protests launched in these past several weeks by CAUSE (the Committee Against Unilateral Space Exploration) have not been entirely successful. Two moratoriums have been held. The turnout, though substantial and worthy of praise for the fine efforts of many involved and dedicated citizens, has been disappointingly small. Much smaller, in fact, than is warranted by the grave nature of the offense to mankind’s hopes for peaceful cooperation that all thoughtful citizens of this troubled globe see in Planetary Fleet One.
“Now the mission is in its final days prior to launch. There is time and there is opportunity for at least one more massive nationwide protest which will impress upon the Administration the utter folly it has embarked upon.
“Should this for some reason prove ineffective, then there should be held on the day of launch a peaceful but emphatic demonstration at Kennedy Space Center which will convey to all mankind the deep misgivings, and the apologies, of the American people for what is being done in their name.
“This is the least, it seems to this magazine, that concerned citizens, conscious of their own dignity and responsibility to all mankind, can do.”
Informed of all these stern journalistic twitterings later, after they had practiced all day on dockings, landings, and finally their return to Earth (“You’re coming home after eighteen months, and you only have to practice these things two hundred more times before launch,” Stu Yule told them. “Act excited.” “I am,” Jazz said. “I’ve got a ten-foot beard and a permanent hard-on.”), it was Jazz, again, who summed up the feelings of at least three of them in a flat, disgusted tone:
“Oh, Christ, that crap. What relation does that have to us, and the job we have to do?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
T minus one week, and in the steadily mounting tempo of the Cape, Jazz appeared to be right: it really did not seem that the fulminations of Percy and his friends had much relation to the crew of Planetary Fleet One and the job they had to do. Nor did the righteous outcries from certain famous editorial offices appear to have affected the majority of the working reporters who flocked in from all over the world in new hundreds every day. Nor did they affect the general excitement that began to grip Kennedy Space Center, Cocoa Beach, and all their contiguous and outlying areas.
While the crew remained in isolation practicing, practicing, and practicing again, in Orlando, Melbourne, Titusville, and in fact all over the country, the standard and inevitable headlines appeared:
HOTELS, MOTELS REPORT CAPACITY BOOKINGS FOR LAUNCH. KSC OFFICIALS WARN TWO MILLION MAY CLOG ROADS TO SEE LIFTOFF. HINT PRESIDENT MAY ATTEND AS WORLD V.I.P.S GATHER. CREW WIVES ‘TRY TO KEEP NORMAL’ IN HOUSTON. PRE-LAUNCH SOCIAL FRENZY MOUNTS AT CAPE.
And along with them came those other headlines that always seem to accompany a launch:
HYDROGEN “ANOMALY” MAY DELAY LAUNCH. SPACE CREWS WORK AROUND CLOCK TO CORRECT “GLITCHES.” COUNTDOWN PROCEEDS DESPITE WORRY OVER TANK FISSURE. TINY WIRE COULD HOLD KEY TO BLAST-OFF. CREW DOCTORS FEAR COLDS, MEASLES, SCARLET FEVER, PLAGUE.
Followed inevitably, after a couple of days of worldwide attention, by:
HYDROGEN “ANOMALY” CORRECTED. SPACE CREWS CONQUER “GLITCHES.” COUNTDOWN ON SCHEDULE AS TANK FISSURE HEALED. TINY WIRE IN PROPER PLACE. DR. BERRY GIVES CREW CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH FOR LAUNCH.
At the News Center, at the north end of Cocoa Beach opposite the Hilton, where Marlon Holloway and his colleagues from the KSC news staff tried to maintain some kind of order in the midst of nearly three thousand clamoring newsmen, reporters, broadcasters, commentators, cameramen, still photographers, and general press work-crews, excitement and tension mounted almost literally by the minute. Percy and Walter Dobius were there, as were their colleagues from the Times, the Post, and every other newspaper and magazine of any size and pretension in the United States. AP and UPI had crews of fifty each, NBC, CBS, and ABC were equally prevalent. And in the big bright room where the rows of desks and typewriters were separated from the mimeographs and question-answerers by a long counter to which a constant stream of inquisitive newsmen came with their queries, the foreign contingent was also well represented.
Shaggy Englishmen like supercilious, unmade beds wandered about with pipes. Blond Germans exchanged their guttural confidences. Neat little Japanese festooned with cameras stood at the bank of telephones along the wall, shouting across the globe to Tokyo. Fortunata and her Italian colleagues made wittily nasty comments about the Americans in their liquid-lightning tongue. A group of burly Russians smiled broadly and turned aside all queries with a practiced ease. (“I say, old boy, is it true that your government is trying to beat this launch?” Ha, ha. “There isn’t anything to this stupid American rumor that the Russians might attack Planetary Fleet One, is there?” Chuckle, chuckle.) From Luxembourg, South Africa, India, and Israel, from Sweden, Algeria, Brazil, and Jamaica, from all the realms and all the climes, they converged upon the Cape. If America succeeded, they wanted to report it, and if America failed, they wanted to be there.
If the tone of their comments and their writing was in general mocking, sarcastic, critical, and snide, that was reflective of envy, jealousy, and, in some cases, hate; and their hosts fortunately did not see or understand one-tenth of what they said and wrote. So, they were made at home with a warm and generous fellowship, given every consideration, treated with every kindness and courtesy, and all was well.
Upstairs on the second floor, walls had been knocked through and a greatly expanded press conference room had been created for the regular ritual of briefings and press conferences that always accompany a launch: the briefing on guidance and control, the briefing on scientific experiments, the briefing on MLM procedures, the press conference on health, the joint press conference held by the administrator, the director of the Argosy program and the directors of KSC, MSC and Huntsville.
Aided by much reportorial standing along the walls, sitting on the floor and in the aisles, the expanded conference room could just handle the 500 or so who wished to attend each conference. For the biggest conference of them all, the one that would occur this afternoon at 3 with the crew, the room would not be large enough. Special buses would run up to KSC to the training auditorium there. More than 1000 were expected to attend.
Along the Strip in this final seven days, the social pace roared into high gear as it had for all the Apollo launches: an exhausting but enjoyable routine which sometimes prompted the thoughtful and philosophic (usually when they were a little tight) to pause in the midst of some cocktail party at the Hilton or some contractor’s bash at the Ramada Inn, and muse: “You know, it somehow doesn’t seem right, does it? Those guys up there by themselves at the Space Center getting ready to lay their lives on the line, and us down here eating and drinking and carrying on?”
But nobody ever stopped or stayed home, of course, and in a way, this was entirely fitting: Connie and Jazz and Pete, and even Jayvee on a couple of occasions, had all come to the Cape for launches when they hadn’t been flying, and many a cocktail party and exclusive administrator’s dinner had known the pleasure of their sometimes well-lubricated company. Up at KSC in their quiet quarters they knew very well what was going on five miles south in Cocoa Beach: to them it seemed perfectly fitting and not at all offensive or upsetting. And so, after those few introspective moments that now and then intruded in the midst of noisy gaiety, the thoughtful and philosophic relaxed. Those moments were a necessary conscience-prodded genuflection to the Serious Side of Things. But they never lasted long, at the Cape.
And how could they, with so much excitement and so many important and fascinating people coming in from all over the world for this most spectacular of all man’s assaults upon the galaxy? The roster of the media glittered with names as prominent, and in quite a few instances as powerful, as Percy and Walter. Added to them were all the doggedly surviving veterans of the Cape who had covered space in its fat days and its lean days and were now more deeply thrilled and excited than they trusted themselves to say by this renascence of their beloved program. Mingling with them at the parties, in the restaurants, in the night clubs and bars, were many other veterans of the program: John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and Frank Borman; Pete Conrad, John Young, Rusty Schweickart, Gene and Barbara Cernan; Tom and Faye Stafford, Wally Schirra, Walt and Lo Cunningham, Al and Sue Beane, Al and Peggy Bishop; Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins; Chris Kraft, George Mueller, Jim Webb, Tom Paine, Wernher von Braun; and many others famous in the great days of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, come to lend support to their friends and colleagues of the crew. Government and politics made their contributions also: more than 150 members of the House and fifty-six members of the Senate were scheduled to be on hand. Virtually all foreign governments were sending official observers, more than 100 represented by ambassadors, presidents, or vice presidents, members of royal families. The president himself, though it had not yet been officially announced, would attend.
Society, too, had its representatives: the heiress to this, the heir to that, were there with their friends and hangers-on. From Hollywood came stars and starlets, In directors and Out directors. From industry came presidents and board chairmen, top managers and top public relations men. It was even rumored that Howard Hughes was there, although, as usual, no one could be sure.
So, the flood of the media grew, the flood of VIPs grew, the flood of parties grew; and as T minus 7 days raced swiftly into T minus 6 days, T minus 5, T minus 4 and so down to T minus 3 days, the pace mounted steadily along the Strip. By the morning of T minus 2 days the traffic was so heavy that it sometimes took reporters as much as 45 minutes to negotiate the three miles from the Holiday Inn, the Ramada, or the Sheraton Colony in lower Cocoa Beach to the News Center in north Cocoa Beach. Regular press buses traveled the route, but even they had heavy going; and now, on this early afternoon of T minus 2 days, with the crew press conference scheduled for 3 pm, the atmosphere was becoming slightly hectic as most of the news corps tried to get on board at once. The scenes at the motels and the News Center trembled between slapstick and mayhem as distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the media pushed and shoved and fought for advantage in fifty-eight different languages, including the Tonganese.
In due course, however, as it always does on such occasions, everything got itself sorted out somehow, and by 2:45 everyone who was anyone, and everyone who really wanted to be there, which was almost everyone who was anyone, had found a place in the auditorium at KSC. By some miracle of overcrowding, the total count came to something in the neighborhood of twelve hundred publishers, broadcasters, columnists, commentators and working reporters, plus operators and crews to man the bank of ten television cameras that stood on a raised platform in the center of the room. The hum of conversation, the cries of greeting, the babble of thoughts in a multitude of tongues, raised the decibels to an almost deafening level as the clock moved toward 3. Behind the curtain in the glass cage that NASA had provided for them at the insistence of the doctors, who wanted no chances taken with possible last-minute infections, the targets for today exchanged ironic glances.
“Well, Daniels,” Connie inquired, “are we ready for the lions?”
“I feel like eating a few,” Jazz said. “Bring ’em on.”
“Me, too,” Pete agreed. “I hope we won’t get into the kind of needling nonsense we did last time. But if we do, I’m ready.”
“I hope we won’t either,” Connie observed, and turned to the silent figure on his left. “How about it, Jayvee?”
Jayvee shrugged.
“Can’t prove anything by me. I’m just going to play it by ear and see what comes.”
“I hope we won’t rake up a lot of things.”
Jayvee shrugged again.
“You did, in Houston.”
“I said,” Connie repeated evenly, “I hope we won’t rake up a lot of things. It would be nice if the crew could depart with an impression of reasonable unity, it seems to me.”
“I said, we’ll have to play it by ear,” Jayvee remarked blandly. “I guess that’s about all we can do.”
“Hmph,” Jazz said. “That’s a damned cooperative statement.”
“It’s all you’re going to get,” Jayvee told him with a dry little smile.
Pete started to respond but just then Marlon Holloway appeared and moved to the microphone that had been placed to the right of the stage.
“Chins up, guts in and smile, smile, smile, boys,” he said cheerfully. “Here—we—g-o-o-o-o.”
The curtains parted, the lights went down, the hum abruptly ceased.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “in response to many, many requests, the crew has agreed to appear today for this final press conference before launch. We have allotted approximately an hour, and as usual, there are no restrictions on the kinds of questions you may want to ask. Please raise your hand, wait for the portable mikes which will be brought to your seat, state your name and affiliation, and address your question to whichever crew member you wish, or to all of them … Yes, Mary,” he said, picking out a familiar face from behind the hundred hands that immediately shot up.
“Mary Bubb, Fairchild Publications. Colonel Trasker, do you feel the crew is in a sufficiently good psychological condition, toward the mission and toward each other, to fly this mission?”
Connie smiled, leaned forward, tapped humorously on the glass, which brought a laugh, gave himself a little time.
“Well, Mary,” he said easily, his voice amplified by the microphone in front of him, “I think we’re in excellent psychological shape as regards the mission. I think we’re all of us trained—and practiced—and dedicated—and ready. How we feel toward one another is something each of us will have to answer for himself. If you wish to poll us, go ahead. As far as I’m concerned, and I think this is a fair statement for all of us, I don’t see any basic psychological problems that will affect the mission. After all, we’re trained for this, you know. We’re not prima donnas”—he grinned suddenly—“at least, not to that extent.”
“Jay Barbaree, NBC. Do you agree with that, Dr. Halleck?”
For a deliberate moment, just long enough to create the effect he desired, Jayvee hesitated. Then he too smiled, a somewhat different type of smile, and answered in a tone as easy as Connie’s.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of agree or don’t agree. He has his way of looking at it, I have mine. No doubt the others have theirs. We’ll get along, I guess.”
“Just ‘guess’?”
“Who knows?” Jayvee inquired blandly. “It’s a big galaxy.” He leaned forward, dropped the smile, spoke solemnly. “I believe we’ll get along all right, yes. After all, we have to, don’t we?”
“I don’t know, Dr. Halleck. I wanted you to tell us.”
Jayvee shrugged and sat back.
“Over there on the right,” Marlon Holloway said quickly. “Howard?”
“Howard Benedict, Associated Press. Commander Weickert, do you anticipate any difficulty working with your colleagues on this flight?”
Jazz snorted.
“You guys never give up, do you? Stop one of you coming in the back door and another comes in the front. Connie said we’ll all get along. Jayvee’s just said the same thing. What more do you want?”
“We’d just like to hear it from you, Jazz.”
“By George, they do want to poll us, Conn. O.K., I’ll say it for you: Yes, we’ll get along. Provided everybody—” He hesitated and of course was pounced upon.
“Everybody what?”
“Everybody gets along,” he said blandly and turned to his colleague on the right. “Petey, you’d better say your say, too.”
“Sure,” Pete agreed comfortably. “We’ll get along. O.K., everybody?”
There was a general ripple of laughter, a tacit concession of defeat. Jules Bergman held up his hand.
“Jules Bergman, ABC. Connie, can you give us some general idea of the mission? I know we’ve got it all in the handouts, but it might be interesting for the television audience to get it from you direct.”
Connie nodded.
“Sure, Julie … As you all know, the mission really breaks down into two sections—what might be called the practice section and the actual mission. It’s been decided by NASA, by all of us working on it together, here and in Washington and in Houston and Huntsville and JPL and Goddard and so on, that it would be advisable to have a very detailed run-through of all phases of the mission before we actually kick off on the flight to Mars. Obviously, nobody has ever done what we’re going to do before, so we want to be absolutely sure everything is right.
