At the top, as they stepped out of the elevator, they looked down on the concrete apron far below, and away beyond it to the huge Vehicle Assembly Building in the High Bay Area of America’s Moonport a few miles northwest of Cape Kennedy itself. Searchlights played— there was light everywhere, and noise — above all, noise… demoniac, fearful — noise that drummed and reverberated against the ears, the shriek of pipes channelling in the liquid oxygen, the raised voices of the men still at work around the capsule, somewhere below them a siren wailing like a banshee in the night, even the sound of their own heartbeats and the blood pounding in their ears. Around them now and again through the steam vapour they could see the men in their white coveralls, checking and re-checking.
Now they were level with the entry-hatch to the capsule, waiting for them in its neat plastic sheath. The doctor put a hand on the shoulder of one of the men. “Okay, Greg,” he said. “Let’s have you aboard now. You’re fine.”
“Sure we are, doc.” The astronauts moved on towards the steps leading to the hatch. They climbed in stiffly, awkwardly, and settled themselves into the contour seats.
“Good luck,” the aeromedic said, smiling for the first time. He looked into the capsule. “It’s luxury,” he remarked, “when you think of the early space vehicles, the museum pieces. You’ve got all the room you want.”
Talk… easy, meaningless talk, as always at the last moment. They looked back at the aeromedic through the transparency of their visors.
“Don’t forget the fitness checks. Be seeing you.”
The hatch was closed on them.
Thirty minutes later the inertial guidance system hummed into life and there was a hissing sound as the pressurization gas forced its way into the capsule; soon after this the umbilical connection that carried the power and air feeders — the last link with earth — fell away beneath.
Seconds later the blast-off came. Orange-yellow smoke burst from the rocket’s tail. Skyprobe IV climbed from the Kennedy base to its orbiting position 900 miles up in space, climbed fast and steady to the dark, high arch of the heavens, carrying with it, besides its human cargo and a
massive amount of new and highly secret equipment, the prestige of the United States and an expenditure of around 780 million dollars.
They were given a ‘go’ and a few seconds over forty minutes from blast-off, the spacecraft, using a brand-new fuel that was also under an experimental try-out, entered its first orbit at 27,000 m.p.h., then turned around to keep station on the 60-foot second stage of the launching rocket that had followed it into space.
TWO
“A dead Pole — and Rudolf Rencke.” Latymer rolled a round ebony ruler in his well-kept hands and looked at Shaw through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “The fact Rencke’s involved gives this thing a very nasty ring of truth. And I say nasty with a careful eye to my choice of words.”
Shaw said, “I gather you know him.”
“I know of him. I’ve never met him.”
Shaw lifted an eyebrow.
Latymer put down the ruler and arranged the various objects on his desk carefully and then spoke with precision. “Rencke,” he said, “is a bastard — in our sense of the word, that is. I know nothing of his birth. He’s a big, bald, square-headed bastard with a surplus of gleaming white teeth — I’ve seen photographs. If he’s in this country, it’ll certainly be under an alias. Rencke — he’s a Swiss, by the way — is an international manipulator, known to be ready and willing to sell his services, and they’re pretty unsavoury, to anyone who makes it worth his while. He’s also other things…
“Such as?”
Latymer stubbed out his cigarette in a jade ash-tray and took another from a silver box. He passed the box to Shaw. Shaw flicked his lighter. Latymer said, “He’s a murderer several times over. And a rapist. And a sadist… but he’s also a man of great intelligence, even if you wouldn’t think so from his photographs. Possibly cunning would be a better word than intelligence.” His hard green eyes stared shrewdly at Shaw. “Didn’t this Pole give you any clue at all as to how Rencke might be involved?”
“No, sir. Nothing apart from the fact he might do him in.”
“And you’ve no idea who the Pole was? He didn’t ring any bells at all?”
“None — as I said, it was obvious he’d been in someone’s army. Judging by his age, I’d say he could have been in the war, probably one of the Poles who came over here to carry on after Hitler went into Poland. That’s all I can offer.”
“H’m… Latymer sat back, running a hand over the skin grafts in his face. After a moment he took up the ruler again and aimed it revolverwise at Shaw’s head. “I’m taking this report seriously — and not just because of Rencke. Your Pole died to try to pass his message on, and the very fact someone thought him worth killing before he said too much, lends his words a certain additional weight! Now: if anything does happen to Skyprobe IV the future of space exploration will begin to look pretty bleak. Quite apart from the fact there are men up there in space, we have to remember there’s never yet been any kind of threat to the space programmes of either East or West. There’s any number of nasty implications in this for the future, Shaw. Retaliation’s just one of them.” He paused, leaned back, looked up at the ceiling for a few moments, then returned to the vertical and stared unblinkingly at Shaw. He asked suddenly, “What the devil could a threat to an orbiting spacecraft consist of? What’s your theory?”
“I haven’t one,” Shaw answered. “It has me beaten.” He blew smoke thoughtfully. “Unless someone means to send up something to meet Skyprobe IV head on!”
Latymer gave a cold, sardonic smile. “Somehow I doubt that.” He leaned forward. “Tell me, Shaw — what do you know of Skyprobe IV? Don’t bother — I’ll tell you, to make sure of covering any gaps in your space education. To start with, as you’ll know from the Press and television, the capsule was blasted off thirteen days ago from Cape Kennedy and it has another eight to go, orbiting at a far higher level than has ever yet been attempted, and at a higher speed too. But that’s not the whole story. Briefly, and this is classified information, the Skyprobe project was planned as an exploration flight — and the underlying object is, to open up possibilities of establishing staging posts for interplanetary travel beyond the moon. These staging posts would naturally extend far beyond the manned orbital space stations belonging to the moonprobe boys. If the flight’s successful, and so far it has been, then the West is going to be put firmly ahead of Russia for many years to come. It could be revolutionary in terms of space exploration. And there’s something else, Shaw.”
“Yes, sir?”
“How many men,” Latymer asked slowly, “do you suppose that capsule contains?”
Shaw said, “Why, two, sir. Majors Schuster and Morris of the US Air Force.”
“That,” Latymer said flatly, “is where you’re so wrong. There are three men aboard.”
Shaw stared. “Three!”
“That’s what I said. It doesn’t go beyond this room, I need hardly say. The Press boys never got a smell of the third man. Both NASA and CIA did a first-class security job on that. Naturally, a biggish number of technicians and so on had to know there would be a third man aboard, but mostly they don’t know his identity. The reason for the secrecy is simple: the very name alone of the third man would have given away something of the nature of the flight’s objectives. So apart from the heads of NASA and CIA and the men directly concerned with the flight — aeromedics and so on — the third man’s identity is known only to the President, the Secretary of State and the Chiefs of Staff in the United States, and over here by the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and myself. Also, of course, his wife. The reason we in Britain were told is because he happens to be a British subject by birth. He’s a naturalized American citizen now, but because of who he is, we were still informed.” Latymer paused. “Is that enough to give you a clue?”