Harriman stirred in his chair. "Looks like we made a mistake in trying to launch it from the States. Suppose we took off from someplace unpopulated, say the Brazil coast, and let the booster stages fall in the Atlantic; how much would that save you?"
Coster looked off in the distance, then took out a slide rule. "Might work."
"How much of a chore will it be to move the ship, at this stage?"
"Well... it would have to be disassembled completely; nothing less would do. I can't give you a cost estimate off hand, but it would be expensive."
"How long would it take?"
"Hmm...shucks, Mr. Harriman, I can't answer off hand. Two years- eighteen months, with luck. We'd have to prepare a site. We'd have to build shops."
Harriman thought about it, although he knew the answer in his heart. His shoe string, big as it was, was stretched to the danger point. He couldn't keep up the promotion, on talk alone, for another two years; he had to have a successful flight and soon-or the whole jerry-built financial structure would burst. "No good, Bob."
"I was afraid of that. Well, I tried to add still a sixth stage." He held up another sketch. "You see that monstrosity? I reached the point of diminishing returns. The final effective velocity is actually less with this abortion than with the five-step job."
"Does that mean you are whipped, Bob? You can't build a Moon ship?"
"No, I-"
LeCroix said suddenly, "Clear out Kansas."
"Eh?" asked Harriman.
"Clear everybody out of Kansas and Eastern Colorado. Let the fifth and fourth sections fall anywhere in that area. The third section falls in the Atlantic; the second section goes into a permanent orbit-and the ship itself goes on to the Moon. You could do it if you didn't have to waste weight on the parachuting of the fifth and fourth sections. Ask Bob."
"So? How about it, Bob?"
"That's what I said before. It was the parasitic penalties that whipped us. The basic design is all right."
"Hmmm... somebody hand me an Atlas." Harriman looked up Kansas and Colorado, did some rough figuring. He stared off into space, looking surprisingly, for the moment, as Coster did when the engineer was thinking about his own work. Finally he said, "It won't work."
"Why not?"
"Money. I told you not to worry about money-for the ship. But it would cost upward of six or seven million dollars to evacuate that area even for a day. We'd have to settle nuisance suits out of hand; we couldn't wait. And there would be a few diehards who just couldn't move anyhow."
LeCroix said savagely, "If the crazy fools won't move, let them take their chances."
"I know how you feel, Les. But this project is too big to hide and too big to move. Unless we protect the bystanders we'll be shut down by court order and force. I can't buy all the judges in two states. Some of them wouldn't be for sale."
"It was a nice try, Les," consoled Coster.
"I thought it might be an answer for all of us," the pilot answered.
Harriman said, "You were starting to mention another solution, Bob?" Coster looked embarrassed. "You know the plans for the ship itself-a three-man job, space and supplies for three."
"Yes. What are you driving at?"
"It doesn't have to be three men. Split the first step into two parts, cut the ship down to the bare minimum for one man and jettison the remainder. That's the only way I see to make this basic design work." He got out another sketch. "See? One man and supplies for less than a week. No airlock- the pilot stays in his pressure suit. No galley. No bunks. The bare minimum to keep one man alive for a maximum of two hundred hours. It will work."
"It will work," repeated LeCroix, looking at Coster.
Harriman looked at the sketch with an odd, sick feeling at his stomach. Yes, no doubt it would work-and for the purposes of the promotion it did not matter whether one man or three went to the Moon and returned. Just to do it was enough; he was dead certain that one successful flight would cause money to roll in so that there would be capital to develop to the point of practical, passenger-carrying ships.
The Wright brothers had started with less.
"If that is what I have to put up with, I suppose I have to," he said slowly. Coster looked relieved. "Fine! But there is one more hitch. You know the conditions under which I agreed to tackle this job-I was to go along. Now Les here waves a contract under my nose and says he has to be the pilot."
"It's not just that," LeCroix countered. "You're no pilot, Bob. You'll kill yourself and ruin the whole enterprise, just through bull-headed stubbornness."
"I'll learn to fly it. After all, I designed it. Look here, Mr. Harriman, I hate to let you in for a suit-Les says he will sue-but my contract antedates his. I intend to enforce it."
"Don't listen to him, Mr. Harriman. Let him do the suing. I'll fly that ship and bring her back. He'll wreck it."
"Either I go or I don't build the ship," Coster said flatly.
Harriman motioned both of them to keep quiet. "Easy, easy, both of you. You can both sue me if it gives you any pleasure. Bob, don't talk nonsense; at this stage I can hire other engineers to finish the job. You tell me it has to be just one man."
"That's right."
"You're looking at him."
They both stared.
"Shut your jaws," Harriman snapped. "What's funny about that? You both knew I meant to go. You don't think I went to all this trouble just to give you two a ride to the Moon, do you? I intend to go. What's wrong with me as a pilot? I'm in good health, my eyesight is all right, I'm still smart enough to learn what I have to learn. If I have to drive my own buggy, I'll do it. I won't step aside for anybody, not anybody, d'you hear me?"
Coster got his breath first. "Boss, you don't know what you are saying." Two hours later they were still wrangling. Most of the time Harriman had stubbornly sat still, refusing to answer their arguments. At last he went out of the room for a few minutes, on the usual pretext. When he came back in he said, "Bob, what do you weigh?"
"Me? A little over two hundred."
"Close to two twenty, I'd judge. Les, what do you weigh?"
"One twenty-six."
"Bob, design the ship for a net load of one hundred and twenty-six pounds."
"Huh? Now wait a minute, Mr. Harriman-"
"Shut up! If I can't learn to be a pilot in six weeks, neither can you."
"But I've got the mathematics and the basic knowledge to-"
"Shut up I said! Les has spent as long learning his profession as you have learning yours. Can he become an engineer in six weeks? Then what gave you the conceit to think that you can learn his job in that time? I'm not going to have you wrecking my ship to satisfy your swollen ego. Anyhow, you gave out the real key to it when you were discussing the design. The real limiting factor is the actual weight of the passenger or passengers, isn't it? Everything-everything works in proportion to that one mass. Right?"
"Yes, but-"
"Right or wrong?"
"Well... yes, that's right. I just wanted-"
"The smaller man can live on less water, he breathes less air, he occunies less space. Les goes." Harriman walked over and put a hand on Coster's shoulder. "Don't take it hard, son. It can't be any worse on you than it is on me. This trip has got to succeed-and that means you and I have got to give up the honor of being the first man on the Moon. But I promise you this: we'll go on the second trip, we'll go with Les as our private chauffeur. It will be the first of a lot of passenger trips. Look, Bob-you can be a big man in this game, if you'll play along now. How would you like to be chief engineer of the first lunar colony?"