The Throne of Saturn, page 16
Early, however, they had begun to discover their differences on the matter of race. The years at the Manned Spacecraft Center had only served to exacerbate them. Monetta, he thought now with something close to contempt, was really nothing better than an ordinary Aunt Jemima, always rationalizing, always excusing, always forgiving. She could see slights and think that perhaps they weren’t all deliberate, she could see failures of generosity and communication and find it in her heart to excuse many of them on the ground that his colleagues and their wives were rushed and hurried and harried by their own lives in the voracious maw of the all-domineering program. She took the world as it came, hoped it would improve, was grateful when it did, and did not let it destroy her when it did not.
She remained, for the most part, serene, even when his own frustrations goaded him into bitter arguments that left them both exhausted. She just went along, he thought, again with an impatience that edged contempt, bringing up little Rudden as best she knew how and meeting life with dignity and character.
He was, he realized suddenly, quite tired of her. Maybe he should resign from Monetta, too, after he got through resigning from the program.
He picked up the oars and began to row slowly back to the cove where he had left the car. With each stroke, the chaos in his mind seemed to lessen, his resolve became more firm. He wasn’t really sure about Monetta—you didn’t cut off half your life quite that summarily—but he had no doubts about NASA. They deserved to be left and he was going to leave them, with one big blast they could hear from Houston to D.C. and back again.
It was not until he got back to his office and returned the call that was waiting for him that he began to change his mind. But this perhaps was excusable, for the vistas that were opened up might well have confused a much steadier man than Jayvee Halleck.
They were not, however, enough to confuse Commander Alvin S. Weickert III, who was a much steadier man than Jayvee Halleck, and who had been waiting for years for just such a day. Now it had come to him and he intended to respond to it as effectively as he knew how. The two pompous faces confronting him on the little screen were apparently about to advise him. For what it might be worth, he was willing to listen.
“First of all,” Percy Mercy said with a sort of primly disapproving indignation, “we just want you to know how very sorry we are that your colleagues should have seen fit to subject you to this kind of public humiliation. It is absolutely inexcusable.”
“That’s right, Jazzbo,” Senator Williams said, annoying Jazz intensely by using a form of his nickname that he only permitted old friends. But he was prudent enough to refrain from comment. “They had no right to do that, and we think they should be punished.”
“Well,” Jazz said slowly, to give himself time to think—because, while they were on his side at the moment, he was basically as leery of these two as was everyone else in NASA—“that’s very nice of you, to be so concerned. Of course, in a technical sense, they had the right. Maybe in a moral sense, considering my time in the program and my abilities as an astronaut, they didn’t.”
“I question that they even had the technical right,” Percy Mercy said. Kenny Williams nodded vigorously.
“Absolutely. Doesn’t the administrator have the final say on crew selection? And doesn’t the president have the right to overrule him?”
“It’s almost never been done,” Jazz said cautiously.
“Any reason why it can’t be?” Senator Williams demanded.
Jazz smiled and shook his head.
“I think maybe you’d have to ask Andy and the president.”
“We intend to do so,” Percy said with a certain grimness. “Both directly, and through the various channels open to us.”
“There’s going to be one hell of a stink,” Kenny Williams promised with some satisfaction.
Jazz shrugged.
“What can you do? The decision’s been made. About all that’s left now is for me to resign, as I see it.”
Percy Mercy looked shocked.
“Indeed, you should not!”
“That’s right,” Senator Williams agreed with an equal vehemence. “That would be absolutely the worst thing you could possibly do.”
Jazz looked skeptical.
“Why? You don’t think having me mope around the corridors is going to change any minds in the Astronaut Office, do you?” He smiled a grim little smile. “God knows they’ve known how I feel about things for a long time. It hasn’t made any difference.”
“It may now,” Percy said with a grimness of his own. “If the president intervenes, minds in the Astronaut Office really won’t matter, will they?”
Again, Jazz looked skeptical.
“What makes you so sure he will? He’s got better things to do than worry about a personality clash in Houston.”
“Not this time, he hasn’t,” Senator Williams said flatly. “Not this time, Jazzbo. Things are riding on this that you don’t even dream of.”
“What?” Jazz demanded. “The forgotten astronaut vote? The neurotic Black vote?”
Percy looked offended and quite severe.
“I would think that you would not so cavalierly categorize a fellow astronaut who finds himself in the same unjust and inexcusable position as yourself.”
“Jayvee?” Jazz asked with a contemptuous grin. “Neurotic is what he is and neurotic is what he’s always been. I hope you don’t put me on the same level with that?”
“You’re together this time, Jazzbo,” Kenny Williams told him, “so you might as well make up your mind to that. You stand or fall together, each for each and all for all.”
“I don’t blame Connie a bit for not wanting him on the crew,” Jazz said tartly. “I wouldn’t want him on it myself.”
“Nonetheless,” Percy Mercy said calmly, “if you want us to continue to organize pressure on the White House on your behalf, you must reconcile yourself to the fact that we are also going to be organizing it for Dr. Halleck. The two of you go, or neither of you goes. I should not,” he added with a righteous air, “be true to a lifetime of battling for the cause of the Black American, were I to abandon this most distinguished Black American now.”
“You’re talking politics,” Jazz said bluntly. “Here in Houston we talk facts. The facts are that he is not fully competent to fly—or at any rate, he is no more competent than thirty others who might have been chosen—and in a personal sense, he does not possess the mental and emotional stability, or the cooperative spirit, necessary to function as a completely reliable member of the crew.”
“Good old American teamwork, eh?” Senator Williams asked with a sarcastic smile. “Old razzmatazz and hoooray for the team, eh? Can’t be on it unless you’re one of the boys, eh? Is that it, Jazzbo?”
“That’s it.”
“Is that why they didn’t pick you?” Kenny Williams asked cruelly, and for a moment Commander Weickert looked at him with real anger. Then he shrugged with a deliberate contempt.
“Why don’t you shove off?” he asked, and reached over and snapped off his Picturephone. But in a second, of course, they rang back.
“Apparently,” Percy said when a picture had been reestablished, his face flushed, his voice quivering, “you have no comprehension at all of the factors involved here. This, I suppose, is typical of the rather parochial approach you people take in Houston. This is not just a personal squabble within NASA. It affects the whole of domestic politics, as well as America’s international image, to boot. It is not something about which we on our side can afford to indulge in individual hostilities: too much is at stake. The fact that this crew does not contain a Black, representative of America’s most downtrodden and oppressed minority—”
“Bull,” Jazz said. “Jayvee has had the red-carpet treatment since the day he got here, and what good has it done us?”
“Not only,” Percy repeated firmly, “does it not contain a representative of America’s most downtrodden and oppressed minority, but it also deliberately excludes one of America’s most supremely able astronauts, in a petty and vindictive action which poses a glaring question concerning the very foundations of NASA’s reputation for honor and integrity.”
“Maybe he thinks that’s bull, too,” Senator Williams suggested in an unpleasant tone.
Jazz snorted.
“You’re a lovable son of a bitch.”
“You damned astronauts are all alike,” Kenny Williams retorted angrily. “Damned arrogant, high-riding, obnoxious, insufferable bastards.”
“Only when we’re treated that way,” Jazz said with a deliberately annoying blandness. “Treat us right and we’re absolute dolls.”
“Be that as it may,” Percy Mercy said sharply, “we are going to get absolutely nowhere if we allow personal antagonisms to get in our way. I have already organized, as you know, the Committee Against Unilateral Space Exploration—CAUSE—and I have already received pledges of vigorous and enthusiastic support from a broad spectrum of the press, television, and the academic, literary, theological, and theatrical worlds. Our first full-page ad in the New York Times will appear tomorrow morning. We plan to run others just as soon as the money comes in. We also have an appointment tomorrow morning with the president, at which time we will convey our sentiments in person. Finally, the Senator here will speak in the Senate tomorrow afternoon.”
“It sounds as though you have everything pretty well covered,” Jazz said. “What’s going to be in your ad?”
“A demand that you and Dr. Halleck be assigned to the crew, replacing Commander Gaudet and Dr. Wacker,” Percy said. “A demand that the United States extend a formal invitation to the Soviet Union to participate jointly in the flight.”
“It will never happen,” Jazz said flatly.
“My contacts,” Percy Mercy replied, “assure me that there is an excellent chance that it will.”
“Your contacts must be better than the president’s.”
“In many areas,” said Percy serenely, “I believe they are.”
Jazz grunted.
“And to guarantee your support I have to stay here and take it, and also pretend that I have a high regard for the astronautical abilities of a man for whose astronautical abilities I do not have a very high regard. Is that it?”
“That’s it, Jazzbo,” Senator Williams told him with a certain relish. “That’s the ball game. Want to play?”
Jazz frowned.
“Have you talked to Jayvee?”
“We have,” Kenny Williams said.
“Did he give you any trouble?”
“I think we may safely say,” Percy replied, “that Dr. Halleck, after a few moments’ thought, was wholeheartedly in favor of our plans.”
“I’ll bet he was,” Jazz said softly. “Yes, I’ll bet he was.”
“I’m damned if I understand you, Jazzbo,” Senator Williams remarked, and he sounded genuinely puzzled. “Here we’ve been talking about just this sort of situation off and on for the past several months, and every time you’ve sounded all enthused about the idea of getting some outside support to help you. Now we come right down to it and you don’t sound very enthused at all. Do you want to be on that crew or not?”
Jazz gave him an impatient look.
“Of course, I want to be on it!”
“Well, then, what’s the problem?” Kenny Williams demanded. “We’re here, we’re ready—”
“Do I have to issue some kind of statement?”
“Not necessarily,” Percy said, “though we might wish to hold that in reserve for later, if it seemed advisable.”
“I thought you’ve always wanted to issue a statement blasting NASA all to hell,” Kenny Williams said, still puzzled. “Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts on that, too?”
“I wouldn’t mind issuing one at the proper time,” Jazz said slowly. “If it wouldn’t hurt the corps.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Senator Williams exclaimed. “You make it damned difficult to help you, I must say.”
Jazz smiled and looked as though he was rather puzzled himself, at the moment.
“I’m still an astronaut,” he said finally. “Maybe that’s what you don’t understand.”
“I sure don’t,” Kenny Williams admitted. “I surely do not. Do you, or don’t you, want us to go ahead with this?”
“You’re going to anyway, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” Kenny said.
“But it would be more effective with your support,” Percy told him. “If we are to advocate your assignment to the crew. Which we assume you want us to do.”
For several seconds he and Jazz stared at one another without expression. Finally, Commander Weickert nodded.
“Of course, I want to be on the crew.” He shrugged. “I suppose a few ads and speeches might help, and they probably can’t hurt anything.”
But that assumption, though he did not know it at the moment their solemnly determined faces faded from the screen, was made in a more innocent age; before the whole thing turned ugly.
The first indication that it might came an hour or so later, and it came first to the administrator, after what he could only regard as a quite unsatisfactory talk with the president.
Not that there had been any overt hostility, of course, or even any open criticism, when he was first shown into the Oval Office. Nor was there any when he left. But there was no doubt that he faced a disturbed and very thoughtful Executive who was obviously considering many things and not revealing his hand on any of them.
“Andy,” he had said cordially, rising and shaking hands when the administrator approached his desk, “sit down and let’s chew the fat a bit about this situation in Houston. Frankly”—and he smiled the sudden, intimate, just-between-us smile that always lighted up his face so pleasantly—“it’s got me in a hell of a bind.”
“I’m sorry for that, Mr. President,” Dr. Anderson said cautiously. “But I’m not sure what we can do to—”
“Oh, yes, you are,” the president interrupted calmly. “You know perfectly well what we can do, Andy. We can overrule your boys and force them to take Jazz Weickert and Jayvee Halleck on that crew.”
“We can,” Dr. Anderson agreed, less cautiously and more bluntly. “We can do that, in legal terms. What can we do in human terms that won’t tear Houston and the program apart?”
“Now, there,” the president said in a delighted tone, “is exactly why I made an awfully good decision when I decided to appoint you administrator. You get to the heart of things and you aren’t afraid to say so. That’s good, Andy. I like that.”
“I’m glad you do, Mr. President,” the administrator said. “I hope I have justified the confidence you had in my judgment when you appointed me.”
“You have,” the president agreed promptly. “You have.”
“Good,” Dr. Anderson said. “Then my judgment now is that we had best not interfere too openly and directly with this decision in Houston.”
“Ah—ha!” the president said with the triumphant little laugh he liked to utter when he thought he had scored a point, “I notice you don’t say we shouldn’t interfere at all. Just not openly and directly—‘too’ openly and directly, I believe you said. That’s a change from yesterday, when I was being threatened with mass resignations on all sides if I so much as raised an eyebrow in disapproval. How come, Andy? Why the retreat?”
“I’m not retreating,” the administrator said. “I’m just taking into account the possibility that you may go right ahead in spite of my advice and try to do something that could only have the most devastating effect on morale in Houston.”
“What about morale in a lot of other places, Andy?” the president asked quietly. “Am I supposed to forget that?”
“Obviously, you haven’t, Mr. President.”
“And obviously I can’t.”
Dr. Anderson nodded.
“That’s why I’m beginning to adjust myself to the thought that you may find yourself forced to take steps I wouldn’t want to see you take.”
“And you won’t resign if I do? You said you would, yesterday.”
The administrator sighed.
“I don’t know. Probably not. I wasn’t actually faced with it, yesterday. Now I am, and I have to stop thinking of a handful of men and their reactions.”
“You have to think of the whole program,” the president suggested. Dr. Anderson sighed again.
“Yes.”
“As I,” the president said gravely, “have to think of the whole country, and the whole world.”
There was a silence while he swung around to stare out across the beautiful lawn to the street where the endless cars rushed by. The commanding head and shoulders loomed against the bright spring sunshine, massive, dominant, hard to challenge. Then he swung back and leaned forward.
“Andy,” he said thoughtfully, “just what is the situation with that crew, anyway? Do you know?”
“There’s always been a feeling,” Dr. Anderson said frankly, “that Jazz is too arrogant and too ambitious and too self-confident and too independent—”
“Qualities,” the president interrupted with a smile, “which are of course necessary to make a good astronaut.” The smile increased. “Or a good president, for that matter. Why do they hold that against him? Because they’re all alike?”
The administrator smiled in his turn.
“Most of them,” he said, “are pretty adept at smoothing out the rough edges. They are, in fact, pretty smooth all around. Jazz has never really bothered. He thinks he’s damned good, and he is, and you can like it or lump it. Well, when you put him up against colleagues who are equally good but manage to refrain from rubbing your nose in it, you can imagine what the reaction has been from them. He deserves a lot of what he’s received.”
