Hearing voices suddenly raised from nearby, Skid paused on the ladder to gaze at the other end of the building. Several men stood before an open door leading through the thick concrete wall that divided the building in half. On the other side of the wall was another machine that had been making his life so interesting lately: a rotary centrifuge, with another mock-up of the X-1 cockpit at the end of its twenty-foot boom.
The centrifuge was a bit more fun—Skid enjoyed riding the thing even when it was squashing him back in his seat at seven g’s—but not everyone shared his opinion. Joe McPherson stood in front of the door, arguing with the scientists who operated the machine. Skid couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he knew what it was about: money. Joe had reached a compromise agreement with Colonel Bliss when he was hired to be the backup pilot: a flat fee, plus hazard pay for any training beyond what professional test pilots usually had to endure, the rate dependent upon the amount of time and the risk factor. None of this was graven in stone, though, so every time Joe climbed into the simulator, the centrifuge, the rocket sled, or any of the other devices being used to train him and Skid, there was always another argument about how much more he’d get on his next paycheck.
Skid shook his head in disgust as he continued down the tower. Like everyone else involved in the project, he was sick and tired of McPherson’s attitude. He needed a backup pilot, though, and there was no time to find and train someone else. Joe knew this, so he was milking it for all it was worth. Grab the dough while you can, he’d privately told Skid over drinks in the officers’ club. That crazy thing will never get off the ground, so you might as well make some bucks off it while you can.
Skid had said nothing. He was doing this for reasons that Joe would never understand, and money was the least of his concerns.
Jack Cube was waiting at the bottom of the tower. Over the past few months, Skid had gradually gotten used to the fact that, regardless of whatever mood he was in—pleased, angry, confused, irritated, anxious—Jack’s expression rarely changed. Skid had known that Lieutenant Jackson was a cool customer the very first day they met, but Jack Cube raised stoicism to a kind of art. You had to look at his eyes to figure out where he was coming from… and just then, he wasn’t happy at all.
“You want to tell me what you were trying to pull in there?” the chief trainer asked.
“Umm… coming up with a way to kill Silver Bird?” Skid unzipped a breast pocket of his flight suit and pulled out a pack of Camels. “That’s what I’m supposed to do, ain’t it?”
“You’re supposed to be learning how to fly something no one else has ever flown before.” Jack impatiently shook his head when Skid offered him a smoke. “It’s not helping that you won’t get over the idea that this isn’t an airplane, and all those slick dogfight maneuvers you know won’t work here.”
“Jack, it’s got wings…”
“How many times do I have to tell you? You’re not going to use ’em until you’re on your way home. Which will be as a meteor if you don’t listen to what I…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Skid lit his cigarette with a Zippo lighter.
Jack sighed, then stepped closer. “Rudy, look,” he went on, a little more quietly now, “this is serious business. See Mutt and Jeff over there?”
Skid looked past him. The two military physicians who’d been assigned to Blue Horizon as his medical team were standing near the control station at the base of the platform. They had proper names, of course, but Skid, Joe, and Jack had started calling them Mutt and Jeff because of their resemblance to the comic-strip characters. But the nicknames were a private joke and nothing more: The doctors outranked both Jack and Skid, and they didn’t appear to have a sense of humor.
“How could I miss ’em?” Jack muttered. “They’ve used so much Vaseline on me, I could use it to lubricate the centrifuge.”
Jack Cube showed no outward sign of amusement, but the twinkle in his dark eyes told Skid that, deep down inside, he was cracking up. “Yeah, well… look, they were behind me during that last run, and I could hear them talking, and apparently Mutt’s got some harebrained idea that zero gravity may cause you to lose your mind…”
“What?”
“Shh… keep it down.” Jack made a shushing motion with his hands. “He has a theory that someone who experiences extended periods of free fall might lose his equilibrium because he won’t be able to tell left from right or up from down, and that could lead to a mental breakdown.”
“Oh, for the love of…” Smoke jetted from Skid’s nostrils. “Please take this guy up in a plane and do a few power dives. He’ll blow his lunch, but he won’t go crazy.”
“Well, he’s got Jeff half-convinced that his theory might be correct, and Jeff even thinks it might be possible that you’ll have a cardiac arrest because your heart won’t function in…” Jack stopped himself. “Never mind. The point is, when you pull stunts like that in there, that makes them wonder if you could go nuts up there and put the whole mission at risk.” He paused. “I’m almost liable to agree although for different reasons.”
Skid glared at him. “You think I’m crazy?”
“No… just reckless. And if you keep screwing around like this, they’ll pull you from the number one slot and put McPherson in there instead.”
“Aw, c’mon, Jack… Joe doesn’t even believe X-1 can fly!”
“I know he doesn’t. But he’s managed to impress Mutt and Jeff, and they’ve got a vote over who gets certified. So a word to the wise… cut the crap and get serious.”
Skid didn’t respond at once. As he dropped his cigarette and ground it out beneath his bootheel, his gaze wandered to the centrifuge entrance. Apparently, Joe McPherson had reached some sort of agreement with the operators because they were no longer standing there. But the centrifuge chamber door was still open, and Mutt and Jeff were strolling in that direction, with Jeff writing something on his clipboard. Probably another evaluation to be added to Skid’s medical folder. What was it going to say this time?
“Okay, all right,” he said quietly. “No more monkey business… I promise.”
“Good. I’m going to hold you to that.” A momentary smile that vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. “C’mon… we’ve got a couple of new members on our team, guys I knew in Worcester. I want you to meet them.”
Skid let Jack lead him over to the control station, where two men in civilian clothes were studying the simulator’s pen-scroll from the most recent session. One was a wiry little dude with a Groucho Marx mustache, the other a Chinese guy. Both turned to him and Jack as they walked up to the station.
“This is Lloyd Kapman,” Jack said, “and this is Harry Chung. I worked with them in the 390 Group before I was sent down here… and now they’ve been assigned here, too.” He laid a hand on Skid’s shoulder. “This is Lieutenant Rudy Sloman, also known as Skid. If he’ll grow up and stop horsing around, he might become the first man in space.”
“The first American, at least,” Skid added as he shook hands with first Lloyd, then Harry.
“Either way, we’ll make sure you’ll come back alive.” Lloyd gestured to the giant sphere looming above them. “We watched that last test. Very impressive, Lieutenant… a good performance, if I may say so.”
Jack coughed in his fist, and Skid had to fight to keep from grinning. “Thanks, but… um, I think I can do better.”
“We can talk about this over lunch,” Jack said. “Once Lieutenant Sloman changes out of his flight suit, I’m sure he’d be only too happy to buy you some.”