“Science fiction isn’t stupid.” Henry glared at him, a lit match halfway to his mouth.
“You don’t hear Bob talking about it, do you?”
Henry lit his cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. “Ever read Buck Rogers?”
“Sure. Who doesn’t?”
“Ever notice that Dr. Huer… y’know, Buck’s pal, the inventor who builds all those rocket ships… looks a lot like Bob?” Henry grinned. “It’s not a coincidence. Dr. Huer is based on Bob.” Ham snorted in disbelief. “You think I’m joking,” Henry went on, “but I’m not. You should see Bob’s notebooks sometime. He’s got things in there that make everything in Buck Rogers look like kid stuff. Rockets that use atomic engines and ion-propulsion systems, plans for spaceships that could land like airplanes… he was thinking this stuff up years ago.”
“Think he’d let us look at them?” Jack asked. “They might give us a head start on what we need to do.”
“So long as you’re careful how you ask.” Lloyd frowned as he reached for the beer pitcher. “He’s kept this stuff hidden for years. He’s been afraid that, if the wrong people saw it, they’d just call him a crackpot. He caught a lot of flak when he wrote that Smithsonian monograph. As if the newspaper stories weren’t bad enough, he also had other university profs coming up to him to ask when he was going to build a moon rocket.”
“Another reason why he moved to New Mexico,” Henry added. “He got tired of taking crap from idiots. He… hey, Harry, what are you doing?”
Unnoticed until then, Harry Chung had pulled out a pencil and begun sketching something on a cocktail napkin. Looking up from his work, he gave Henry a shy smile. “Just an idea.”
“Okay if I see?” Henry asked, and when Harry nodded, he reached across the table to turn the napkin around. On it was a crude drawing of a slender ellipsoid, sharp at one end and blunt at the other, with three smaller cylinders positioned around its blunt end.
“Just an idea,” Harry said with an offhand shrug.
“Umm… yeah, okay, but there’s something missing.” Taking the pencil from Harry, Taylor slid the napkin away from Henry and added a pair of long, swept-back wings to either side of the fuselage. “Something like this, for its launch and descent phase.”
“A rocket plane.” Mike leaned over to study the drawing. “Sort of like what the Germans are building.”
“Guys, maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this.” Jack Cube dropped his voice as he glanced over his shoulder at the bartender and waitress. “Not here, at least. You heard what you-know-who said about secrecy.”
“You kidding? They don’t care what we’re saying.” Henry started to reach for the nearest pitcher, then saw that it was empty. They’d gone through the beer pretty quick. “I’ll get the next round.” He twisted around in his chair to raise a hand to the waitress. “Hey, miss? Another… oh, hell.”
The door had just opened and someone else had come in: Frank O’Connor. The FBI agent spotted them at once. Not bothering to take off his hat and coat, he walked across the barroom. No one said anything as he stopped at the end of the tables and glared at them, his mood as black as the night outside.
“It figures,” he murmured. “Third bar I check…”
“Hello, Frank,” Henry said. “Pull up a chair. I was just about to order another round.”
“Don’t bother. It’s last call so far as you’re concerned.” Pulling out his wallet, he produced a couple of dollars. When the waitress came over, he handed the money to her. “This will cover the tab, I presume.” She nodded and walked away, and he turned to the scientists again. “Get your coats…”
“Aw, c’mon, Frankie,” Lloyd said, “you can’t be serious. All we did is…”
“If you’d let me know that you just wanted to step out for a drink, I wouldn’t be so upset. I might have even joined you. But this whole business of creeping out of the house…” He shook his head in dismay. “Max dropped in, started wondering why you guys were so quiet. That’s why we went upstairs to see what you were doing. When we found your beds were empty…”
Gerry couldn’t help it. He sniggered under his breath. He tried to cover it with his hand, but the infection began to spread. Jack Cube choked on a mouthful of beer, and Lloyd was turning blue trying not to laugh; when everyone else saw their faces, the breakdown was inevitable. Within seconds, the group was roaring, tears leaking from their eyes as they slapped the tables with their hands.
“Out!” Agent O’Connor was furious. “Get your butts outta those chairs now!” He grabbed the back of Gerry’s chair, yanked it out beneath him. “You’re not even supposed to be here!” he yelled at the kid as he spilled out onto the floor. “You’re not old enough to drink!”
“What did you say?” Hearing this, the bartender shot up from his stool. “What are you clowns tryin’ to do, make me lose my liquor license?” He jabbed a finger at the door. “Get out!”
“Hey, hey…” Mike raised his hands. “Take it easy…”
“Out!” The bartender wasn’t about to be placated. He grabbed a baseball bat from beneath the counter and started to come around the bar. It only made the scene more hysterical. They were out of their chairs, still laughing despite themselves. A pitcher fell over and splashed beer across Henry’s magazine, and Gerry slammed his head against the bottom of the table as he scrambled to his feet.
“And don’t come back!” the bartender roared, as the eight men tumbled through the door and out onto the sidewalk, still pulling on their hats and coats.
Two cars were at the curb, headlights on, fumes drifting from their exhaust pipes. Half the group reluctantly piled into the one where Max Hillman was waiting, the other half joining O’Connor for the ride back to the boardinghouse. The FBI agent put the Plymouth in gear and pulled out into the just-plowed street.
No one said anything for a couple of minutes, then Taylor coughed. “Sorry, Frank,” he said quietly, no longer laughing. “We didn’t know this would piss you off so much.”
“Yeah, what he said.” Mike was just as apologetic. “We weren’t trying to be smart-alecks. Just wanted to get a drink, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well…” By then, Frank had calmed down a little. “The colonel doesn’t have to know about this, I don’t reckon. He wants you guys to stay focused on the job.”
Beneath the wan glow of the passing streetlights, Harry Chung gazed at the rumpled napkin he’d managed to snatch up from the table. “Believe me,” he murmured, a wry smile on his face, “we’ve thought of nothing else.”
X-1
MARCH 15, 1942
“This is impressive,” Colonel Bliss said, “but do you really think it’s possible?”
Standing at the workbench in the Physics 390 lab, he studied the blueprints spread out before him. Seven pages of preliminary designs for a manned rocket ship, detailing every major feature from the radar array in the nose to the engine bell aft of the twenty-eight-foot wings and the horizontal stabilizer. The craft looked like nothing in the sky. It didn’t even look like anything on the cover of a science fiction magazine; it was more sophisticated than that.
“We’ve been working on this for the last five weeks.” Robert Goddard stood beside him, fondling an unlit cigar. The team had made him promise not to smoke in the lab; his cheroots reeked, and security precautions prohibited them from opening the windows. “There’s still a lot of work to be done, of course, but it’ll give you an idea of where we’re at just now.”