Wondering what was going on, Henry let go of the door and walked out from beneath the awning to see what had stopped Jack. In the window was a handwritten sign: NO COLOREDS.
“Oh, hell,” Lloyd muttered. “Jack, I’m sorry. I didn’t see…”
Everyone stopped except Gerry, who’d taken hold of the door handle. He was about to walk in even though the older men had suddenly become reluctant. Jack Cube was embarrassed; the sign was a reminder that racial barriers existed even outside the South.
“That’s okay,” he said quietly. “You fellows go on in. Maybe I can find a coffee shop somewhere.”
He started to walk back up the sidewalk, heading toward Main Street. Henry hesitated, then raised a hand. “Hey, wait up!” he called. “I think I’ll join you for that coffee!”
Harry Chung glared at the window sign. “Y’know, I bet they won’t let me in either,” he murmured, then turned to follow Henry and Jack.
“They probably don’t like Jews,” Lloyd said, as he fell in behind the other three.
Ham shook his head. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got something against second-generation French-Canadians.” Then he walked away from the bar.
“Coffee works for me.” Taylor joined the exodus.
“Place looks like a dump anyway,” Mike added. Stepping away from the door, he looked back at Gerry. “What about you, kid? Still want to try your luck?”
Seeing that it was hopeless, Gerry let his hand fall from the door handle and hurried to catch up with the others. “They would’ve just thrown me out,” he said with an indifferent shrug.
Henry clapped him on the shoulder, then something caught his eye that made him stop. Within the glow of the bare lightbulb dangling from the newsstand’s ceiling were the magazines on its racks. Argosy, Life, Collier’s, Detective, The Shadow, The New Yorker, Doc Savage, Western Romance, and so forth… and in their midst, the current issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
On impulse, Henry dug a quarter out of his pocket, dropped it on the counter, and picked up the pulp. The old man grunted as he scooped up the quarter with a gloved hand. “Never miss an issue,” he said, as the others watched with amusement. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll give us some ideas.”
They didn’t find a coffee shop, but neither did they have to settle for one. A couple of blocks down Main was another bar. It was considerably less fancy than the one on the Commons, with a flickering Pabst Blue Ribbon sign in the window and a stale beer stench in the air, but at least the bartender didn’t seem to care who came in so long as they paid cash. The group pushed together a couple of tables in the back of the room, and Lloyd made good on his promise by ordering three pitchers of beer. The waitress brought them a couple of bowls of peanuts as well, then went back to the newspaper she’d been reading when they came in.
“Nice place.” Taylor examined the dimly lit barroom with a critical eye. It was nearly empty, the inevitable wino slumped over the bar the only other patron. “When do you think the city health inspector last set foot in here?”
“Look at the bright side… O’Connor probably won’t find us either.” Mike poured a glass of beer for himself, then passed the pitcher to Henry. “Put down the magazine and have a drink. You can read it later.”
Henry closed the issue of Astounding he’d just bought and placed it on the table. Curious, Harry reached over to pull it a little closer. On its cover was an illustration of a sleek silver craft descending through a grove of tall sequoias. “Beyond This Horizon” by Anson MacDonald was the featured story.
“You know,” Harry murmured as he studied the magazine, “there may be something to this.”
“A spaceship?” Ham gave him a disbelieving smirk. “You can’t be serious.”
“Well, maybe not this spaceship, but still…”
“This isn’t a science fiction story. We’ve got to come up with something real.”
“Why not?” Henry passed the pitcher to Taylor. “You heard what Bob said this morning. Even if we manage to build a missile capable of reaching Silver Bird’s altitude, making a direct hit would be a crapshoot… unlikely at best. The only way we’re going to get something accurate enough to bring that thing down is to put a pilot aboard. And that means building a manned spacecraft of our own.”
“But putting something into orbit…” Ham began.
“It could be done,” Lloyd said. “Henry will tell you… down in New Mexico, we’ve built rockets that have broken altitude records.”
“Besides, who’s talking about reaching orbit?” Henry asked. “All we need, really, is a craft capable of making a suborbital jaunt. Launch from New Mexico, intercept over North America, land somewhere on the East Coast. If it can reach an apogee of just forty to fifty miles, then we’ve got it licked.”
“But the thrust we’d need…” Ham shook his head. “Besides, we’d have to build a step-rocket for something like this. Two stages, at least.”
“No… no step-rockets.” Jack Cube tapped a finger against the table. “A two-stage rocket means we’d have to design, build, and test two different engines. I don’t think we have time for that.”
“You’ve got a point there.” Harry absently leafed through Henry’s magazine. “But I think Ham’s right, too. I doubt a single-stage rocket would do the trick. Besides, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with relying on just one engine. If it cuts out during launch…”
“What about solid-fuel rockets?” Gerry asked. “For boosters, I mean.”
Everyone stopped to look at the end of the table where the teenager was seated. “Come again?” Henry asked.
“Umm…” Gerry appeared nervous by the attention he’d suddenly drawn. “What I mean is, you build a single-stage rocket with a liquid-fuel engine, then strap on some solid rockets as boosters during launch. When they burn out, you just throw ’em away.” He hesitated. “Oh, maybe that’s a dopey idea.”
“No… no, it isn’t.” Taylor looked at the others. “Really, he might have something there.” He glanced down at Gerry. “Nice thinking there, kid,” he added, and Gerry grinned.
“Yeah, Harry and I were working with solid-fuel rockets at Caltech.” Mike played with his beer glass, absently sliding it back and forth across the battered tabletop. “You don’t have much control over them once they’ve ignited… you can’t throttle them up or down, or even shut them off… but they’re simple to make, and you can get a high impulse-per-second thrust ratio from them.”
“What sort of propellant?” Jack asked.
“Ammonium nitrate would be my guess.”
Harry nodded. “Yeah, we’ve had good results with the ammonium nitrate–black powder compound we tested for our jet-assisted takeoff project. Of course, we’d have to make something a lot bigger than that, but it could work.”
“Which leaves us with the liquid-fuel main engine.” Taylor shook his head. “I don’t even want to think about what a monster that would be.”
“You’re going to have to if we’re going to get anywhere with this.” Henry pulled out a pack of Camels and shook one loose. “Besides, that’s not all that hard to figure. We’ve done pretty well with the turbopump system we’ve developed at Mescalero. All we’d need to do, really, is build much the same thing on a larger scale.”
“Are you listening to what you’re saying?” Ham was incredulous. “You’re talking as if getting something forty or fifty miles into space is simple as”—he pointed to the magazine Harry was still skimming—“as this stupid stuff.”