Hang on, Rev! Don’t give up!
Fifty-six minutes. That was how long we had to wait. Fifty-six minutes from the takeoff until the ship was in its orbit. After that, the party would need time to match speeds, to send a space-suited crewman drifting across the emptiness between, over the vast, eerily turning sphere of the Earth beneath.
In imagination, we followed them.
Minutes would be lost while the rescuer clung to the ship, opened the airlock cautiously so that none of the precious remnants of air would be lost, and passed into the ship where one man had known utter loneliness.
We waited. We hoped.
Fifty-six minutes. They passed. An hour. Thirty minutes more. We reminded ourselves—and were reminded—that the first concern was Rev. It might be hours before we would get any real news.
The tension mounted unbearably. We waited—a nation, a world—for relief.
At eighteen minutes less than two hours—too soon, we told ourselves, lest we hope too much—we heard the voice of Captain Frank Pickrell, who was later to become the first commander of the Doughnut.
“I have just entered the ship,” he said slowly. “The airlock was open.” He paused. The implications stunned our emotions; we listened mutely. “Lieutenant McMillen is dead. He died heroically, waiting until all hope was gone, until every oxygen gauge stood at zero. And then—well, the airlock was open when we arrived.
“In accordance with his own wishes, his body will be left here in its eternal orbit. This ship will be his tomb for all men to see when they look up toward the stars. As long as there are men on Earth, it will circle above them, an everlasting reminder of what men have done and what men can do.
“That was Lieutenant McMillen’s hope. This he did not only as an American, but as a man, dying for all humanity, and all humanity can glory for it.
“From this moment, let this be his shrine, sacred to all the generations of spacemen, inviolate. And let it be a symbol that Man’s dreams can be realized, but sometimes the price is steep.
“I am going to leave now. My feet will be the last to touch this deck. The oxygen I released is almost used up. Lieutenant McMillen is in his control chair, staring out toward the stars. I will leave the airlock doors open behind me. Let the airless, frigid arms of space protect and preserve for all eternity the man they would not let go.”
Good-by, Rev! Farewell! Good night!
Rev was not long alone. He was the first, but not the last to receive a space burial and a hero’s farewell.
This, as I said, is no history of the conquest of space. Every child knows the story as well as I and can identify the make of a spaceship more swiftly.
The story of the combined efforts that built the orbital platform irreverently called the Doughnut has been told by others. We have learned at length the political triumph that placed it under United Nations control.
Its contribution to our daily lives has received the accolade of the commonplace. It is an observatory, a laboratory, and a guardian. Startling discoveries have come out of that weightless, airless, heatless place. It has learned how weather is made and predicted it with incredible accuracy. It has observed the stars clear of the veil of the atmosphere. And it has insured our peace…
It has paid its way. No one can question that. It and its smaller relay stations made possible today’s worldwide television and radio network. There is no place on Earth where a free voice cannot be heard or the face of freedom be seen. Sometimes we find ourselves wondering how it could have been any other way.
And we have had adventure. We have traveled to the dead gypsum seas of the Moon with the first exploration party. This year, we will solve the mysteries of Mars. From our armchairs, we will thrill to the discoveries of our pioneers—our stand-ins, so to speak. It has given us a common heritage, a common goal, and for the first time we are united.
This I mention only for background; no one will argue that the conquest of space was not of incalculable benefit to all mankind.
The whole thing came back to me recently, an overpowering flood of memory. I was skirting Times Square, where every face is a stranger’s, and suddenly I stopped, incredulous.
“Rev!” I shouted.
The man kept on walking. He passed me without a glance. I turned around and stared after him. I started to run. I grabbed him by the arm. “Revl” I said huskily, swinging him around. “Is it really you?”
The man smiled politely. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.” He unclamped my fingers easily and moved away. I realized then that there were two men with him, one on each side. I felt their eyes on my face, memorizing it.
Probably it didn’t mean anything. We all have our doubles. I could have been mistaken.
But it started me remembering and thinking.
The first thing the rocket experts had to consider was expense. They didn’t have the money. The second thing was weight. Even a medium-sized man is heavy when rocket payloads are reckoned, and the stores and equipment essential to his survival are many times heavier.
If Rev had escaped alive, why had they announced that he was dead? But I knew the question was all wrong.
If my speculations were right, Rev had never been up there at all. The essential payload was only a thirty-day recording and a transmitter. Even if the major feat of sending up a manned rocket was beyond their means and their techniques, they could send up that much.
Then they got the money; they got the volunteers and the techniques.
I suppose the telemetered reports from the rocket helped. But what they accomplished in thirty days was an unparalleled miracle.
The timing of the recording must have taken months of work; but the vital part of the scheme was secrecy. General Finch had to know and Captain—now Colonel—Pickrell. A few others—workmen, administrators—and Rev…
What could they do with him? Disguise him? Yes. And then hide him in the biggest city in the world. They would have done it that way.
It gave me a funny, sick kind of feeling, thinking about it. Like everybody else, I don’t like to be taken in by a phony plea. And this was a fraud perpetrated on all humanity.
Yet it had led us to the planets. Perhaps it would lead us.beyond, even to the stars. I asked myself: could they have done it any other way?
I would like to think I was mistaken. This myth has become part of us. We lived through it ourselves, helped make it. Someday, I tell myself, a spaceman whose reverence is greater than his obedience will make a pilgrimage to that swift shrine and find only an empty shell.
I shudder then.
This pulled us together. In a sense, it keeps us together. Nothing is more important than that.
I try to convince myself that I was mistaken. The straight black hair was gray at the temples now and cut much shorter. The mustache was gone. The Clark Gable ears were flat to the head; that’s a simple operation, I understand.
But grins are hard to change. And anyone who lived through those thirty days will never forget that voice.
I think about Rev and the life he must have now, the things he loved and can never enjoy again, and I realize perhaps he made the greater sacrifice.
I think sometimes he must wish he were really in the cave of night, seated in that icy control chair 1,075 miles above, staring out at the stars.
THE HOOFER
by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
There is nothing I can say about Walt Miller’s work that I haven’t already said (enthusiastically) in several previous anthologies; nothing except that there has been far too little of it published recently—and that, like Abernathy, he has become an (anthology) editor’s nightmare. Of the four stories that appeared this year, one (“The Darfstellar”) took the Novelette Award at the annual S-F Convention, and two more have already appeared in other anthologies.