The Trouble with Telstar Read online

would be hanging close at hand in space. Well,we hoped it would work. I could do pretty fair work with the leakygloves, and all we could hope was that the vapor would be dry enoughas it seeped out through the gloves to prevent formation of a foggycloud all around me, or the formation of frost on the gloves. That wecould not test under any conditions easy to simulate.

  Each team spent ninety days. They tell me that's right quick work forpointing up a launch. But at the end of three months I had assembledenough stuff to do the job, and still well within the weight limitthey had to set. I wasn't a walking machine shop, but there was a lotI could do if I had to.

  * * * * *

  Ninety days had been enough for several dates with Sylvia. Out of theoffice she wasn't quite the protective harpy about Paul Cleary thatshe had been in the office, although the thought was never far fromher mind.

  We spent my final night in New York before leaving for the Cape atSweets, a real old fashioned seafood house down on Fulton street.After the obligatory oysters, we had broiled bluefish, and otherwiselived it up. They serve a good piece of apple pie, and we had thatwith our coffee.

  "Are you scared?" Sylvia asked me.

  "Of what?" I lied innocently.

  "Of being out in space--just floating around?"

  "Yes," I told her honestly. "I'm scared to death. What if I have aqueasy stomach? They say a good half of the men who have been in orbithave chucked up or gotten dizzy or something. What if they go to allthis trouble and I get spacesick?"

  "What if you drift away and can't get back?" she said. "It isn't likeswimming back to shore."

  "There's always a way," I said, my stomach tightening as I thought ofwhat she said.

  That was the night she kissed me good night. It wasn't much of a kiss,because we were standing in the lobby of her apartment house, and shewasn't going to invite me up, because she never did. But she said:"Hurry back."

  "Just you know it, Shouff," I said, bitter inside.

  I'd have been a lot more bitter if I had known what was in store forme at the Cape. COMCORP flew me down in one of our private prop-jets,with only Paul Cleary for company. He introduced me to the brass, andwe sat through a couple conferences while the idea was spelled out toa group of sure-enough spacemen. Then they turned that mob loose onme.

  I was emotionally unprepared. First off, Cleary and Fred had beenbuilding me up all through the three months, and I had actually gottento the point where I thought I knew what I was doing. Thesespace-jockeys spent most of their time deflating my ego.

  My tormentor-in-chief was a wise punk from Brooklyn named Sid Stein."How have you made out in your centrifuge tests?" he asked me atbreakfast the first morning after I had reached the Cape.

  "I have never done any of that stuff, Mr. Stein," I said.

  "Well, how many gees can you pull?"

  I shrugged. "Same as you, I suppose. How many is that?"

  "Brot_her_!"

  The space medic wasn't any better. The mission chief insisted that itwasn't safe to put anybody in a satellite who couldn't pass thephysical. I guess you know that about one man in a thousand canqualify. This was supposed to wash me out.

  "Remarkable shape." The space medic kept saying. "You must takeconsiderable exercise, doctor."

  "Oh, no," I said. "Just jog a mile or so before breakfast. Nothingspectacular."

  "No other formal activity?"

  "Well," I snarled, "just swimming, fencing and weight lifting. I'vegiven up the boxing and handball."

  "Kept in excellent shape, nevertheless," he said. "You'll be adisappointment to them."

  "Look," Stein said to me after a week of tests and countertests."Don't be deceived by these tests. All they show is that your heart isstill beating. The big thing is emotional. Doc, I think you shouldreconsider this idea of flopping around out there in the void. We'vegot experienced men here, and none of them is ready to try it."

  "Fools rush in, eh, Mr. Stein."

  "Precisely."

  In the meantime I got a daily phone call from Paul Cleary. That Icould have snarled off, but Sylvia always came on the line first, andthere was a minute or so of chit-chat before she cut her boss in onthe line. I'm sure she listened to all the calls. But her first wordswere deadly. For example:

  "Mike! Hi, Mike. Mr. Cleary wants to see how you're doing."

  "Good. Put him on."

  "In a minute. I think it's so wonderful you passed the final physical,Mike. You're really so deceptive. I never had imagined you had such asteely physique."

  "Clean living," I said. "No girls."

  "There'd better not be!"

  "Don't worry. How could I get to see any girls down here? Every time Ilook away from my work all I can see is Bikini swim suits."

  "Cut that out!" she snickered, and put Cleary on the line.

  * * * * *

  There came a final day when the mission chief called me in to hisoffice.

  "Come in, Mike. Come in," he said shortly. "Sit down." He leaned backagainst his desk and started talking to me, like they say, straightfrom the shoulder:

  "I'll give it to you straight, Mike. We've tried every legal way towash you out of this mission. There isn't a one of us here at the Capethat wants any part of taking an armchair theorist and slapping himinto space--into the kind of a mission you've cooked up. Somebody'sgoing to get hurt out there, because you aren't fit for the job. Now,physically, yes, you have the capacity. But emotionally andenvironmentally, you simply don't add up. You're looking at this thingas an extension of your laboratory, and instead it is an enormousphysical and mental hazard that you are undertaking. This country hasnever lost a man in space--and you'll be the cause of our firstcasualty, as well as being one yourself. I'm asking you man to man todisqualify yourself."

  "And put an end to this mission?"

  "We'll train one of our men," he said.

  "In two or three years your best man might be barely capable," I said."I don't think COMCORP is prepared to waste that much time. Afterall," I said ingratiatingly, "all you have to do is refuse themission. Say I'm a built-in hazard and let it go at that." I grinnedat him. I was learning from Paul Cleary. I _figured_ how space-jockeyswould react to that.

  He told me: "Do you think any of these men would admit they are not upto a mission a mere technician is ready to try? No! I can't get themto beg off, either!"

  "When do we go?" I asked.

  Sid Stein was assigned as my pilot. He had made the trip into orbitand back four times with the Dyna-Soar rocket, and was considered thebest risk to get me there and get me back. He was also the leastconvinced I had any right to sit beside him in the cabin.

  His final briefing was a beaut: "This is a spaceship, doctor," he saidfrigidly. "And I want you to remember the 'ship' part of it. I'm incommand, and my every word, my every _belch_, has got to be law. Doyou understand that? This is my mission, and I'll tell you where toput your feet."

  "Sure," I said. "Who wants it?"

  "Can't figure out why you do!"

  "I'm just paying somebody back," I said. "Is it tomorrow?"

  * * * * *

  The start was a drag. Eighteen hours before blast-off Sid and I wentinto a tank so that we would get rid of our nitrogen. We breathed thestandard helium-oxygen mix at normal pressure until about four hoursbefore H-hour. They wouldn't even let me smoke. Then we suited up andwere lifted by a crane and stuck in the control room of _Nelly Bly_,as I had named our Dyna-Soar rocket-glider. The hatch stayed open, butwe were buttoned up tight in our suits. They had a couple of mods thatwere supposed to fit them better for the mission. Instead of the usualmetal helmet with face plate, we had full-vision bubble helmets ofclear plastic. The necks were large enough so that we could, intheory, drag our arms out of our suits and clean the inside of thebubbles. That was in case I sicked up out in space, which allexperience said was a real enough hazard. They figured that filling mefull of motion sickness pills was partial pre
vention.

  These space-jockeys have their own vocabulary, and their own oh, socool way of playing it during the countdown. I'm pretty familiar withcomplex components, but they were checking off equipment I never heardof. We had gyros--hell, our _gyros_ had gyros. And we had tanks, andpressures and temperatures and voltages and who-stuck-John. It was allvery impressive.

  There were suited men up on the gantry unplugging our air feed andclosing our hatch. Sid was straining up from where he lay on his backto dog it down tight.

  "Roger," Sid was saying to somebody, as he had been all morning.

  The white vapor from our umbilical stopped, which let me know ourtanks had been topped off and sealed, and that we were about to blastoff.

  "This is it, Seaman," Sid Stein said. "Now for Pete's sake don't move,don't speak, just lie there. I've got the con."

  That was a bunch of baloney. He really had nothing to do until we werein orbit. The delicate accelerometers and inertial guidance componentsdid all the piloting until the second stage kicked us loose. But Ikept my mouth shut. He'd have some work to do before the ride wasover, and I might need him.

  * * * * *

  When the lift-off came, it was gentle as a dove's wing. But as weburned off fuel, the twenty-million pound thrust of our Apollo boosterbegan to tell, and my vision started to go black. The gee-meter saidwe were pulling about ten gees when I could no longer read it, and Ilearned later we peaked out at eleven gees in the final seconds beforefirst-stage burn-out. I didn't like it a little bit.

  The liquid hydrogen second stage kicked in like a hopped up mule, andwe pulled ten gees, right at the limit of my vision, for its wholefour minutes of burning. My earphones were talking now as Sid gave itthe A-OK and Roger bit all the way. This was the stuff, kid!

  Our Dyna-Soar had been modified to some degree for this mission. It'sessentially a big delta-winged glider with a squarish fuselage in thecenter. The mods had consisted of tying a third rocket stage outbehind, so that Sid could move us around the orbit from one Telstar tothe next if my work on the first one proved out. The retro-rockets hadseveral times their normal complement of fuel, so that he could stopafter he got started. The same was true of our steering jets.

  The ship was not pressurized on the lift off. Cabin pressure fellrather quickly, as we could feel from the inflation of our suits, totheir three and a half-pound pressure. No bends for either of us,because of the helium substitution for nitrogen. Because there weretwo of us, we could chuck and unchuck airtanks for each other as weneeded fresh supplies. We had enough air and water for forty-eighthours. Together with our low-residue diet for the final week, theyfigured we could sweat it out in our suits for two days. We had suitradios, of course, and could talk with each other for a distance of amile or so.

  Burnout of the second stage came suddenly, and we heaved slightlyagainst our belts as the springs in our seats pushed back out. Andthen I got my first taste of free fall. Each veteran astronaut I hadtalked to at the Cape had a different way of trying to scare me withthe idea of falling endlessly, and each had different ideas about howto lick it. In spite of all the talk, I grabbed the arms of my seat tokeep from falling. I turned my head and in the glow from ourinstruments could see Sid sneering across at me through histransparent bubble helmet.

  "How you like them apples?" his voice came from my earphone.

  "That first step is a killer, Sid," I said, trying to sound chipper. Ifelt horrible.

  "Let me know when you've had enough," he suggested. "I've got thingsto do."

  I knew he did. We had dry-run it a hundred times. If we had beeninserted correctly in orbit, the _Nelly Bly_ was right in the paththat three of the Telstars were now following, and catching up withNumber One at several hundred miles an hour. On the ground, radars allaround the world were taking fixes on us, and Sid was talking shopover his long-range radio with the radar crews.

  By the time my stomach had made up its mind that it would stick withme, he had a report.

  "It could be worse," he said. "We've got a lot more velocity than I'dlike, but we're on course. Our orbit would differ quite some, Seaman.Because of this speed we'd be somewhat more eccentric--maybe swing outa hundred miles beyond the birds we're chasing. Are you making it?"

  "Easy, Sid. Do we slow down yet?"

  "I'll fire the retros and retard us to the speed of what we'rechasing," he said. "That will equalize our orbits very nearly. Getbusy on that scope if you're up to it. I'll compute my retro."

  * * * * *

  They had made an amateur radar operator out of me, because it was easyto do, and gave Sid more time for actual rocket valving. My belt cutme hard as he braked for several seconds.

  "There," Sid's voice said in my ear. "We should still be catching upabout fifty miles an hour. Let's not ram that thing. See any blip?"

  "Not yet. How close are we supposed to be?"

  He lit the cabin light and tapped at the calculator that he swung outfrom its rack. "Still got a hundred miles to go, I'd judge." He movedawkwardly in his suit to finger a switch on his neck and I heard himspeaking to the ground again, and heard in my earphones the answerthat came up from Woomera. We had eighty miles to go, and were now alittle below the orbit of the bird we were chasing.

  "Can't have both ends of the stick, Mike," Sid explained, calling meby name for the first time. "As soon as we slowed down we had to droplower." He fooled around with the steering jets, which werehydrazine-nitric acid rockets much like the tiny motors on my suit,and re-oriented _Nelly Bly_. A little burst from the nose, and I gotmy first blip.

  "There!" I said, putting a finger on the PPI. "Turn out the light,Sid, so I can see the 'scope'."

  He switched off the cabin light and followed my directions with tinyshoves, sometimes from the rockets, sometimes from the steering jets,while I conned us closer.

  Our radar would only read within about half a mile. When we got thatclose I got the searchlight going and took my first real look throughthe forward port out into space.

  It's black. Nothing--nothing you have ever seen will persuade you howdark it is out there. That was my first big shock. Oh, I had practicedin the dark, with only my helmet light to guide my tests andassemblies, but this was a different kind of dark. Our light had novisible beam--you couldn't even tell it was working. At first I hadthe idea we'd see the satellite occulting some stars, but a littlemental arithmetic told me that an object six or eight feet in sectionwould not subtend much of an angle of vision at half a mile.

  We had chosen, I decided, much too narrow a beam of light for thesearchlight, but just at that moment I got a flash from out in space,and worked the light back on to our objective.

  "Got it," I said.

  "Yoicks!" Sid said, and went back to the fine controls. After a longtime, and lots of patience, we were hanging about fifty feet out fromour bird. We were farther out in space so that the dark bulk of thesatellite was silhouetted against the crescent light of Earth. Iturned off the spot and switched on the floodlight.

  "Here goes nothing, Sid," I said, and undid the dogs that held thecanopy above our heads.

  My earphone spoke to me: "This is Cleary. Do you read me, Mike?"

  I fumbled around to find the right jack and plugged myself into theradio. "Yes, Paul. Loud and clear."

  "Watch yourself. Think first. You've got all the time in the world."

  "Sure."

  "Sylvia would miss you," he added.

  I hoped he was right.

  * * * * *

  Clinging carefully to the handholds that had been specially providedon the outside of _Nelly Bly_, I clambered through the hatch and hungin the darkness, looking down at South America. The world was turningvisibly under me, although I knew that in fact we were skimmingrapidly about three thousand miles over its surface. I got myselflined up nice and straight with the bird and did my first bit ofnon-thinking. I pushed off good and proper with my feet, the way you'ddive
into a swimming pool. It was a fool stunt for my first act. I wasdoing a good five or six feet a second. You may not think that is veryfast, but before I could gulp twice I had zipped past that bird andwas headed for Buenos Aires.

  I know I screamed. That was the first time I realized I really wasfalling. Earth looked awfully close, and seemed to be rushing up tomeet me.

  My orientation was all wrong for stopping. By diving head first I hadneither my back nor my belly rocket lined up to stop me.

  My training failed completely. I tried to squirm straight, and byproper swinging of my arms out to full length, and kicking the sameway with my feet, I got turned around to where my belly was facing thefloodlight on _Nelly Bly_. That's not how I was supposed to do it.

  The glider had disappeared--all I could see was the floodlight. It wasstill by far the brightest thing in the sky, but if I drifted muchlonger, I would have to use radio direction-finding to get back. Itriggered the motor on my back and felt its gentle push against myspine.

  "Sid!" I called.

  "Roger, Mike!"

  "Light the tip lights. I've got to get a fix on my velocity. I wentway past and I'm trying to get back."

  Two new stars winked into being, on either side