from their angle; the flight was proceeding perfectly smoothly. The research men were satisfied with the results they were getting. Naturally, the reports had not yet been fully analysed and it would be a matter of weeks rather than days after the capsule was down before the value of the marathon high orbiting could be properly assessed and all the information duly computerized and evaluated; but meanwhile the performance of the new fuel was known to have been entirely satisfactory.
No decisions were taken, but the possibility that they might have to order a premature splashdown was much on everyone’s minds. When the meeting broke up the NASA chief, Leroy Klaber, was left with the man from Washington and his own Personal Assistant. Klaber, a short, grey man, thickset and with a prematurely lined face that showed his current anxieties, walked across to a wide window, uncurtained now, from which he had a panoramic view of the base, of the gantries and the hangars and the service towers. Tonight he was on edge, his movements were jerky and nervous; he didn’t want to see anyone get hurt and he didn’t want to see a fiasco, by which he meant a panic splashdown, either. Skyprobe IV was breaking new ground and the flight had to go right… it just had to. Klaber stood with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders Slumped, drooping so that his chest seemed to slide down into his stomach, looking out and down at the lights and the activity… the activity, he thought to himself, that was constant at Kennedy, day and night, night and day, world without end, Amen.…
Harry Lutz, his PA, said suddenly, “What was that, Mr. Klaber?” and Klaber realized with a start that he’d said the last few words of his thoughts out aloud. He turned from the window and walked slowly back towards the conference table. He said, “It wasn’t worth repeating, Harry.” He passed a hand across his eyes. “General,” he said to the Air Force officer, “if anything definite comes through — if this really is a threat the British have dug up, and remember there’s been no backing, no follow-up to it yet— no-one will recommend immediate splashdown quicker than I will. You know that. But… we’ve just nothing to go on — nothing! Only what this Shaw has picked up.”
The Vice-Chief of Staff lit a cigarette. He blew a stream of smoke. He said quietly, “I told the conference, Mr. Klaber—”
“That Shaw is known to the Pentagon and he has done a job or two for us already — all right, so now I know that!” Klaber’s tone was distinctly touchy; he was a peppery man at any time. “But it does not have to cut any ice with me, General! So far as I am concerned, so far as I can be concerned, he is just an agent who has picked up something so goddam vague it almost does not signify! The sun does not shine out of the top of his head, General. He could be so wrong, you know that?” His face creased up like a monkey’s.
The general nodded. “Sure he could! I hope he is. But can we deliberately, in view of his report, leave three lives at possible risk, to say nothing of all that top secret new equipment aboard the capsule?”
Klaber made a weary gesture. “We’ve been into all that! We’re doing what we can. I told you, my boys are working right around the clock to get another spacecraft up. I know that won’t save the equipment if the worst happens, whatever the worst is and that we don’t know either, but my men are my first consideration.” Much of the activity going on below the wide window was in fact due to the frantic efforts being made to prepare a launch pad for sending up another vehicle. It could in certain circumstances become necessary to try to transfer the men in Skyprobe IV. “It takes twenty-nine days normally and the second spacecraft currently has a computer fault anyway. It’s probably hopeless and it probably won’t ever be needed if you ask me, but we’re trying all we know how, just as a precaution. Those fives are still my responsibility and I don’t want you or anybody else to think I regard that responsibility lightly, General. But I don’t need to remind you that this flight, if its successful, is going to put us a couple of decades ahead of the Russians, and maybe swing the uncommitted nations round to hitch their stars to us in the West, right?”
“That’s agreed. Militarily, we’re banking on complete success too. So we don’t want to bring the capsule down early, either. Only—”
Klaber went on as though he had scarcely heard. “The world is watching Skyprobe IV. All the world, General!” He slammed a fist into his open palm. “In this country every man, woman and child is going to be watching the TV screens for news of the capsule during all the next seven days. Or that’s what they expect to be doing. If the order goes up to ditch… well, we’re going to look so dam foolish it won't be true, if this thing, this threat, turns out to be all hooey! We’ll have to give a reason, too. You can’t interrupt a flight like this without saying a word.” He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped runnels of sweat from his face. “Look, I have to keep remembering one thing above all till we know some more and I’m going to say it again and keep on saying it: the threat, if it exists at all, could be a deliberate plant, a calculated leak as phoney as hell, just to make us bring down the capsule and finish ofi the project. Bluff us into it. And if we fall once for that particular kind of blackmail… when do we ever get back into business again?”
The airman said heavily, “I’m well aware of that risk, too. But you know my point of view on that, Mr. Klaber. It’s a lesser risk to bring the capsule down now and bring it down intact, rather than let the world see we can’t control our own space flights.” He gave a grim laugh. “Aren’t we going to look much bigger mugs if that happens, Mr. Klaber?”
Klaber threw up his arms. He said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know. All I do know is — I’m going to give it a while longer before I even think about ordering Schuster to fire the retro-rockets. And something else: I’m still clamping right down on telling those men up there what we know— or rather, what we goddam don’t know — from the British security boys!”
The general took up his briefcase, slipped in some papers and snapped it shut. “In that case,” he said, “I’ll get back to Washington.” He stood for a moment looking hard at Klaber, his heavy, dark-shadowed face sombre. “Before I go, however, I’ll remind you, Mr. Klaber, that this time it’s a Presidential decision whether or not the capsule is ordered to ditch ahead of schedule. In the last analysis… you won’t be called upon to make that decision yourself.”
Klaber nodded. “I know the President takes the final decision,” he said, “but only as a result of the advice he gets. And I’m only one of his advisers — I know that too.” He paused. “You know something, General?”
“What?” Again the Air Force officer looked hard at Klaber, frowning from beneath shaggy, overhanging brows.
“Every minute,” Klaber said, “I’m thanking God I don’t have to take that final decision by myself.”
“Sure — I know.” The general was sympathetic now. “It’s a hell of a strain, don’t imagine I don’t know that. There’s a strain on us too — the possibility of a full-scale nuclear war developing if anybody’s allowed to interfere with that capsule. And I still say it’d be a dam sight safer down, and that’s how I’m going to report.” He reached out a hand and took Klaber’s, and smiled. “Sorry. I reckon I’ll be back before long.”