“I agree.” Looking at the book fondly, Goddard chuckled. “Not long after we met, Esther tried to replace it by giving me a nice new copy for my birthday. She meant well, of course, but… well, she was rather upset when she caught me reading this copy instead, with the one she’d given me still untouched on the shelf. I thought I’d given her a reason to divorce me that day.”
Henry grinned. Bob was exaggerating, of course; Esther wouldn’t leave her husband if a gun were pointed to her head. “How’s she doing?” he asked. “Heard from her lately?”
“Talked to her on the phone just the other day. I told her I’d try to get out to the ranch sometime soon.” Although Esther had followed Bob from New Hampshire, the Army hadn’t permitted her to join him on the base, or even enter Alamogordo as a visitor; so far as the military was concerned, she was a civilian with no security clearance at all. So she’d moved back to Mescalero Ranch, where her husband visited her on weekends. When he had time, that is… which wasn’t very often.
Again, Goddard’s gaze drifted toward the window. “I hope they’re being careful with that thing,” he said quietly. “It’s not like we’ve got a spaceship assembly line.”
Henry leaned forward to peer past him. The truck had parked alongside the gantry tower, and servomotors were slowly tilting its carriage upward, raising the Lucky Linda to a vertical position upon the launch ring. Ham and Taylor were overseeing this part of the operation. Deciding that three chiefs were too many, Henry had deliberately stayed away, but there was no reason why Bob had to do the same.
“I’m sure no one would mind if you went out to…” he began.
“No. I’d rather not, thank you.” Catching a querying look from the younger man, Goddard let out his breath. “Y’know, there are times when I don’t know whether I love that thing or hate it.” Henry raised an eyebrow, and Goddard shook his head. “No, no… don’t misunderstand me. I’m proud of what we’ve done, really. We’ve done something here no one else… well, maybe the Germans… has ever done, and built the first manned space vehicle. We’re far ahead of everything anyone thought might be possible, even your science fiction magazines. But…”
His voice trailed off. “But what?” Henry asked.
Goddard hesitated. “This wasn’t what I intended,” he said after a moment. “When I set out to build a spacecraft, it wasn’t to make a military vehicle… it was to go to Mars. Making something that we’d use to wage war was the last thing on my mind.”
“Yes, well… unfortunately, the Germans had different ideas.”
“Really? I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I heard from the German Rocket Society before the war, when they tried to get technical information from me about my first engines. Whatever else he might have become since then, I know for a fact that Wernher von Braun’s main interest was going to the Moon, not dropping bombs on New York. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t get pushed into this by the Nazis.”
Henry glanced over his shoulder. The hallway outside was vacant, but nonetheless he leaned back in his chair to push the door shut. No sense in getting unwanted attention. Secrecy at Alamogordo was such that even an offhand remark like that could be misconstrued as a possible security breach, even if it came from Blue Horizon’s technical director.
Goddard didn’t notice; his eyes were still turned toward the window, his thoughts even further than that. “When this is over, I hope the X-1 goes into a museum somewhere and never flies again. I want the next spaceship we build to be for peaceful purposes only, that it won’t have any missiles or guns. That’s the future I want, Henry. The exploration of space, not…”
From somewhere outside, an interruption: the earsplitting jangle of an ambulance siren, getting louder and closer by the moment.
The two men had barely glanced at one another when a van with a red cross on its side raced past the window, raising a cloud of sand that obscured the distant rocket. Henry stood up from his chair and craned his neck to see which direction it was going, and just then the phone on Goddard’s desk rang.
The professor snatched up the receiver. “Yes? What did…? Who? Oh, my God… yes, we’ll be there right away!” He dropped the receiver and jumped up from his chair. “C’mon, Henry,” he snapped as he headed for the door, “there’s been an accident!”
“Where?” he asked.
Goddard didn’t seem to hear him. He was already trotting down the hall. Following him out the side door, Henry let the professor lead him across the compound. Another emergency vehicle, a fire truck, roared by, but Henry didn’t see any signs of smoke. So why was…?
Then he saw a small crowd gathered in front of the training facility, and suddenly he understood. There had been an accident inside, possibly in the simulator or…
The centrifuge.
He and Goddard had just reached the building when its door swung open and the two ambulance medics emerged, carrying a stretcher between them. One of the flight doctors—the tall one, Dr. Wysocki, whom the pilots had nicknamed Jeff—strode alongside them, holding the wrist of the man on the stretcher. A couple of MPs were doing their best to hold back the crowd, but Goddard managed to push through, with Henry right behind him. Henry gazed over Goddard’s shoulder and saw who was being carried out:
Joe McPherson, the backup pilot.
The medics reached the ambulance and loaded the stretcher aboard, but then Dr. Wysocki scrambled into the back before they could get going. He clamped his stethoscope against his chest, listened for a moment, then he and one of the medics turned McPherson over on his stomach and elevated the test pilot’s elbows while the doctor gently, repetitively pushed down on the upper part of his back. The other medic stood on the other side of the stretcher, holding his fingers against McPherson’s neck while keeping an intent eye on his wristwatch.
Standing outside the ambulance’s open rear gate, everyone watched quietly as the doctor struggled to save McPherson’s life with the Holger-Nielsen cardiac-resuscitation technique. From deep within the crowd of scientists, soldiers, and technicians, Henry heard a woman praying in a low and solemn voice.
A couple of minutes went by, then Dr. Wysocki straightened up and let out his breath. He looked at the medics and shook his head. The one across from him didn’t reply but instead reached down to pull the stretcher’s top sheet over McPherson. The other medic closed the tailgate, then went around to the cab, climbed in, and started the engine.
The ambulance had just driven away when Henry heard Goddard ask someone what had happened, and he looked around to Jack Cube and the other flight surgeon—Dr. Sinclair, aka Mutt—standing behind them. Both were in shock, and it was obvious that neither of them wanted to be there just then, yet they couldn’t refuse a question from Blue Horizon’s technical director. Not when a fatal accident had just occurred.
“He shouldn’t have gotten in that thing.” Jack kept swinging his head back and forth, as if denying what he’d just seen. “He shouldn’t have… I mean, I shouldn’t have let him, but…”
“Nonsense, Lieutenant. It’s not your fault.” Sinclair stared at him. “McPherson was reckless. He told the operator to keep him at seven g’s for as long as he could take it, and there was no reason for that except that he was trying to prove something… and you and I both know what that was.”
Goddard shot a look at Jack. “Oh, for God’s sake, are you telling me he was…?”
“Trying to top Skid’s time in the centrifuge, yes, sir.” Jack Cube looked even more miserable than before. “Skid set the record at three minutes, thirty-four seconds at seven g’s, and Joe somehow figured that…” Again, he shook his head. “I don’t know what he was thinking, really. Maybe he thought that if he could stand launch acceleration for a longer period of time, we’d bump Skid and move him into the pilot’s seat.”