—Rus—
—Bingo. Do you realize what that means, Leonard?
—What?
—It means they are trying to leave!
—Leave where?
—It doesn’t matter!
—I don’t know, Charles. That seems a bit—
—Why else would they be working on rockets? I think they want to get off this rock and leave us behind with these… apes. We’ll never find the device if they do.
—Maybe.
—What do you mean maybe?
—I mean I don’t know! All I know is the daughter’s dead. She’s not going anywhere. Call me crazy, but I don’t think the mother’s going to build a fucking spaceship all by herself.
—Not now, she won’t. But that is how we’ll find her. She will go where the rockets are.
—She’s alone, Charles. If it were me, I’d find the smallest shithole in the middle of nowhere. I think—
—Don’t think. Just pack up your things. You’re coming with me.
—What? I thought—
—What did I just say about thinking? Don’t make me repeat myself.
—Fine. Where are we going?
—The land of the free, Brother. We are going to the land of the free.
—America? We were just there!
—We were, but they weren’t. That’s… kind of a big deal when you think about it. As I recall, the goal is to be in the same place, at the same time. Now, when we find the mother, you have to promise me you won’t kill her before she talks like you did with the daughter.
—I told you I didn’t—
—Just tell me you won’t kill her, Leonard.
—I won’t. I swear.
—Good. I would hate to have to hurt you, my brother.
—Charles?
—Yes.
—What then?
—You mean after we find the device? We call home.
—Then what?
—Then they come, if it’s not too late. Our people have a home.
—What happens to us?
—There is no us. Us was one man three thousand years before we were born and he got beat by a girl. You and I are cheap copies of something that wasn’t that great to begin with. You do what you want, Brother. I’ll buy myself a boat, drink plenty of wine, and wait to die, like we should have a long time ago.
55
Come On, Let’s Go
Mia did it. It took thirteen years, lots of eviscerated American pride, and a dead dog flying over our heads, but mankind is heading to space. Von Braun launched Explorer I as promised using the Redstone rocket he built for the army. The air force built the Atlas, the Titan, and the Thor. Those rockets have become more than weapons, much more. Eisenhower passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act in September and handed control over all nonmilitary activity in space to a new agency. Science for science’s sake. One of the first missions they approved is to orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth. Von Braun thinks he can do it first. Good for him. I know Korolev is pursuing the same goal. Whoever wins, I will get my wish. I will see a man in space before…
—You should hurry, Mia. It is almost noon.
—Noon? JPL is twenty minutes away!
—I know, but you don’t want to be late for your interview.
—Fine, Mother. I’m going. I’m going.
—You never told me what the job was, by the way.
—The ad was for a computer.
—Mathematics, really?
—They have these giant IBM machines that can do thousands of calculations per second, but no one trusts them. They want human computers to double-check everything. I’m supposed to perform trajectory computations for rocket launches by hand. It’s a far cry from the work I was doing with Korolev, but there’s a certain purity in numbers you don’t get with a clunky engine. Oh, and no degree required.
—You can have all the degrees you want, Mia.
—I gave myself two, but I think that just means women can apply. It’s peacetime, Mother. They won’t give someone like me an engineering job, even with the ridiculous résumé I gave myself. It’s okay. I like math.
She can do the work. I am more worried about a tap on the shoulder from von Braun. I can picture his face. Lili? What are you doing here? I suppose she can call in sick whenever he visits. He works in Alabama, so that should not be too often.
—Do you know what you’ll be working on?
—They didn’t tell me. I think I might work on the Ranger program. I could help send something to the moon. Wouldn’t that be great?
—Do you think you can beat the Soviets to it?
—Not a chance. They came this close to the moon in January already and they have another launch in September. They’ll get there long before the Americans, but I need to work on something and we don’t know anyone at NASA to start something new.
—Not yet, but we will. I only meant you should not waste your skills on something others are doing already.
—I like math, Mother. To be honest, I’m just happy to get out of the house. What about you? What are you going to do?
—I have my research. They just drilled a new three-hundred-meter ice core in Antarctica. There will be lots of data to look at.
—Who did? Your Danish guy?
—No, the US Army.
—You don’t even know these people, Mother. There is zero data for you to look at. What are you not telling me?
I cannot bring myself to say it. It is not her judgment I dread, it is for her that I wish for a new life. I fear the verdict of the dead, a jury of ninety-eight of my peers. What would my sentence be if my mother were alive? What would she have done if I had fallen to near death? I thought my daughter was gone. I thought I had lost her and it nearly killed me. I will not go through that pain again.
Take them to the stars…. We have taken them this far. We have done our part. They can take themselves the rest of the way.
56
Wonderful World
—You don’t need my permission to do anything, Mia. I just want you to think it through before you come to a decision.
—Mother, I know! At some point, we’ll need to make calculations even I can’t do. I really have a knack for programming these things, Mother!
—They are making computers better and better already. I am only asking if this is the best use of your time.
—They’re also making them bigger and bigger. The air force has a new guidance computer for the Titan. Do you want to know how big it is?
—I assume it is very large.
I know nothing of computers. I really want to put an end to this conversation. I feel a hundred years old at the moment.
—It takes about three hundred square feet of floor space. The whole thing weighs twenty-one thousand pounds.
That is heavy, for anything. Mia has a point. We are in the infant stages of space exploration, but someday, when people leave Earth’s orbit, they will need to determine a ship’s position, calculate trajectories, et cetera, et cetera. They will need machines that can perform these calculations in an instant, and preferably not the size of a small apartment.
—I trust you, Mia. I was only asking.
I know I am looking for ways to justify myself, but if this “programming” proves useful to space exploration, then we are not truly abandoning our past if we make a new life for ourselves. Mia working on computers would also serve my personal interests, if I decide to pursue my research. Information is coming faster and faster, from everywhere. Telescopes are more powerful than ever. We have even observed greenhouse effects on Venus, raising the atmospheric temperature above the boiling point of water. In Russia, Mikhail Budyko proposed a physical model of Earth’s heat input and output. Groundbreaking work. He helped turn climatology from educated guesswork to quantitative science. His work will pave the way for complex, increasingly accurate models of Earth’s atmosphere, but we will not get there with the machines we have today. Computing power is the cornerstone of this war, and if Mia wants to help speed up the process, who am I to stand in her way?