PRELUDE TO SPACE

BY

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

      BOOKS BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  NONFICTION              FICTION
  Interplanetary Flight          Islands in the Sky
  The Exploration of Space       *Prelude to Space
  The Exploration of the Moon    The Sands of Mors
  Going into Space               *Childhood's End
  The Coast of Coral             *Expedition to Earth
  The Making of a Moon           *Eorthilght
  The Reefs of Toprobano         *Roach for Tomorrow
  Voice Across the Sea           The City and the Stars
  The Challenge of the Spaceship *tales from the "White Hart"
  The Challenge of the Sea       The Deep Rang*
  Profiles of the Future         The Other Side of the Sky
  Voices from the Sky            Across the Sao of Stars
  The Promise of Space           A Fall of Moondust
  Report on Planet Three         From the Ocean, From the Stars
  The First Five Fathoms         Tales of Ton Worldr
  Bay Beneath the Sea            Dolphin island
  Indian Ocean Adventure         Glide Path
  Indian Ocean Treasure          The Lion of Comarro & Against
  *The Treasure of the Great Roofthe Fall of Night
                 The Nine Billion Names of God
  VATH THE EDITORS OF "LIFE"     Prelude to Mors
  Man and SpaceThe Lost Worlds of 2001
                 The Wind from the Sun
  WITH THE ASTRONAUTS            *Rendezvous with Rama
  First on the Moon              *imperial Earth
  WITH ROBERT SILVERBERG         WITH STANLEY KUBRICK
  Into Space2001: A Space Odyssey

 WITH CHESLEY BONESTELL
 Beyond Jupiter

 Arthur Clarke has also editeds
 The Coming of the Space Age
 Time Probe
 Throe for Tomorrow

        *Published by Ballantine Books
   PRELUDE
   TO SPACE

 ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 BALLANTINE BOOKS o NEW YORK
  To my friends in the
British Interplanetary Society.~-
who by sharing this dream, helped
  to make it come true.    N*

 Prelude to Space is based upon published material originally copyrighted in
 1951 by Galaxy Publishing Corp.

 Copyright 0 1954 by Arthur C. Clarke
 Preface copyright (D 1976 by Arthur C. Clarke

 All rights reserved. Editors and reviewers may use short passages from the
 book without written permission. Published in the United States by
 Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,-and
 simultaneously in Canada by BaHantine Books of Canada, Ltd., Toronto,
 Canada. Originally published by Gnome Press, 1954.

 Quotation on page 48 is reprinted from "Me Ballad of the White Horse." by G.
 K. Chesterton. Copyright 1911 by Dodd, Mead & Co.

 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-7257

 ISBN 0-345-25113-X-150

 Printed in Canada

 First Ballantine Books Edition: March, 1954
 Second Printing: July, 1976

 Cover art by Stanislaw Fernancks
    Post-Apdo Preface

 On July 20, 1969, all the countless science-fiction stories-of the first
 landing on the Moon became frozen in time, like flies in amber. We can look
 back on them now with a new perspective, and indeed with a new interest-for
 we know how it was really done, and can judge the accuracy of the
 predictions.
  Now-contrary to a general belief-prediction is not the main purpose of
  science-fiction writers; few, if any, have ever claimed "this is how it
  will be." Most of them are concerned with the play of ideas, and the
  exploration of novel concepts in science and discovery. "What if ... ?11 is
  the thought underlying all writing in this field. What if a man could
  become invisible? What if we could travel into the future? What if there is
  intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe? These are the initial grains
  around which the writer secretes his modest pearl. No one is more surprised
  than he is, if it turns out that he has indeed forecast the pattern of
  future events.
  Yet it must be admitted that the stories of space travel form an
  exception.to this general rule. Although the earliest works, such as Cyrano
  de Bergerac's Voyages to the Moon and the Sun, were pure fantasy, most of
  the tales written in the past hundred years were based as far as possible
  upon accurate science and foreseeable technology. Their writers did befievo

                V
 vi   POST-APOLLO PREFACE

 that they were predicting the future, at least in general terms. More than
 that, the pioneers of astronautics used fiction in a deliberate attempt to
 spread their ideas to the general public. Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, and Von Braun
 all wrote space fiction at one time or another. In so doing, they were not
 merely predicting the future, they were creating it.
  I must confess that I had similar propagandistic ideas in mind when
  planning this book. It was written in July, 1947, during my summer vacation
  as a student at King's CoHege, London. The actual composition took exactly
  twenty days, a record I have never since approached. This speed was -
  largely due to the fact that I had been making notes on the book for more
  than a year; it was already well organized in my head before I set pen to
  paper. ("Pen" is correct; the original manuscript was handwritten in a
  series of school exercise books which were a relic of my Royal Air Force
  days).,
  In the twenty-two years between the writing of this book and the actual
  landing on the Moon, our world has changed almost beyond recognition. The
  following pages may serve as a useful reminder of the way in which the
  public attitude toward space travel has also been transformed, particularly
  in the United States. In 1947, it seemed quite reasonable to base an
  Interplanetary Project in London; as one of my English characters remarks,
  "You Americans have always been a bit conservative about space flight, and
  didn't take it seriously until several years after us." That statement was
  still -true a decade after I had finished the book-when Sputnik I was
  launched in October, 1957. It is now very hard to realize that right into
  the late 1950s many American engineers in the rocket field itself
  pooh-poohed the idea of space ffight. With a few notable exceptions, the
  banner of astronautics was borne by Europeans-or former Europeans like
  Willy Ley, who, alas, died only a few days before Apollo 11 vindicated his
  d-re-am of more than forty years.
          POST-APOLLO PREFACE   vii

  The modest amounts of money with which I assumed space research could be
  -conducted will now cauge some rueful amusement. No one could have
  imagined, in 1047, that within twenty years not merely millions, but
  billtons, of dollars would be budgeted annually for space flight and that
  a lunar landing would be a primary objective of the two most powerful
  nations on Earth. Back in the 1940s it seemed most unlikely that
  governments would put any money into space before private. enterprise had
  shown the way.
  I can claim a- few successes as a minor prophet. I placed the first lunar
  impact in 1959, and Luna II hit the Mare Imbrium at 21:01 GMT on September
  13, 1959. 1 was watching hopefully through my Questar telescope in Columbo
  as the Moon sank into the Indian Ocean, but saw nothing-.
  Prelude to Space was written just two years after my 1945 paper on
  synchronous communications satellites and was, therefore, the first work of
  fiction in which the idea of "comsats" was advocated. I have reason to
  believe that it had some influence on the men who turned this dream into
  reality.
  The book appeared originally as a paperback (Galaxy Novel No. 3, February
  1951) and was thus my first novel to achieve independent publication. The
  first hard-cover edition appeared in June 1953 (Gnome Press), together with
  a paperback edition by Ballantine Books. Another publisher, now deservedly
  extinct, later issued two editions with a change of title, despite my
  express orders. (For the record, these titles were Master of Space and The
  Space Dreamers.) I am now happy to see the return of the Ballantine
  imprint; the current hard-cover edition is published by Harcourt Brace
  Jovanovich.
  One prediction which gives me much pleasure is that contained in the
  sentence "Oberth-now an old man of eighty-four-had started the chain
  reaction which was to lead in his own lifetime to the cros *
 viii  POST-APOLLO PREFACE

 of space." A reviewer who discussed Oberth's proposals in a leading
 scientific journal of the 1930s once sdoffingly conceded that they might be
 realized "before the human race became extinct." I am happy to report that
 Herman Oberth, as a not-so-old man of seventy-five, watched Apollo I I being
 launched from Cape Kennedy on July 16, 1969.
 , While writing this novel, I had the, great advantage of access to
 calculations which my colleagues AN. Cleaver and L.R. Shepherd (later
 manager of the Rolls-Royce Rocket Division, and chief executive of the
 "Dragon"' High Temperature Reactor Project) were making on the subject of
 -nuclear rocket propulsion. These were published in their classic paper "The
 Atomic Rocket," in the Journal of* the British Interplanetary Society for
 September 1948-March 1949, which pioneered this field of studies.
  Fifteen years later, atomic rockets of the type they proposed were
  successfully ground-tested by the A.E.C., and although "Project Rover" was
  canceled before ffights were achieved, some form of huclear propulsion will
  be available when we are ready to go to Mars.
  In this story I assumed the use of orbital rendezvous techniques, and
  particularly of reusable boosters which could be flown over and over again.
  My imagination failed to conceive of multi-million-dollar vehicles like the
  lunar module and the Saturn-V launcher, which would be discarded after a
  single mission. But the future of space ffight lies with such concepts as
  those described here; politics, and not economics, has shaped our present
  systems, and history will soon pass them by. The Space Shuttle will,
  hopefully, be the first practical space transportation vehicle of the
  1980s; like my "Beta," it will be winged and fully reusable, capable of
  making scores of flights.
  My little jibe at the late Dr. C.S. Lewis subsequently resulted in an
  amicable* correspondence and a meeting at Oxford's famed Eastgate pub,
  where
          POST-APOLLO PREFACE   il

 Val Cleaver and I tried to demonstrate to Dr. Lewis (and his companion,
 Professor J.R.R. Tollden) that all would-be astronauts were not like the
 malevolent Weston in Out of the Silent Planet. Lewis cheerfully compromised
 with the observation that though we were probably very wicked people, the
 world would be, an awfully dull place if everyone was good.
  Although I am well aware that propaganda is the enemy of art, I am still
  proud of the fact that this novel!s main theme is the absurdity of
  exporting national rivalries beyond the atmosphere. In 1947, 1 summed up
  this concept in the phrase, "We will take no frontiers into space." Exactly
  twenty years later, the United Nations Space Treaty prohibited territorial
  claims on anv celestial bodies.
  That treaiy was signed just in time. Only two-years later, Neil Armstrong
  and Edwin Aldrin unveiled the plaque which reads:

     Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July
     1969. We came in peace for all mankind.

  Yet when, in 1947, 1 set this novel exactly thirty years in the future, I
  did not really believe that a lunar landing would be achieved even by that
  distant date; I was optimistically whistling in the dark---and perhaps
  trying to give myself a sixtieth birthday present. I would never have dared
  to imagine that by 1977 a dozen men would have walked on the Moon, and
  twentY-seven would have orbited it. Still less -could I have imagined that
  the first nation to reach the Moon would so swiftly abandon it again....
  In one sense, the Apollo Project was indeed a Prelude to Space. Now there
  will be a short interlude; and sometime in the 1980s, the real story
  will-begin.
  The hiatus does not disappoint me, for I have already seen achievements
  beyond my wildest dreams. I have shaken the hands of the first man to orbit
  the
         POST-APOLLO PREFACE

 earth, the first man to step out into space, and the first to walk upon
 the Moon.
  In the long perSpectives of history, it will not matter that two of them
  were Russian and one was American.

                    Arthur C. Clarke,
                     September 1975

 I
 Part One

 I
 I

 I
 For five miles straight as an arrow, the gleaming metal track lay along the
 face of the desert. It pointed to the northwest across the dead heart of the
 conlinent and to the ocean beyond. Over this land, once the home of the
 aborigines, many strange shapes had risen, roaring, in the last generation.
 The greatest and strangest of them all lay at the head of the launching
 track along which it was to hurtle into the sky.
  A little town had grown out of the desert in this valley between the low
  hills. It wasl,a town built for one purpose-a purpose which was embodied in
  the fuelstorage tanks and the pow& station at the end of the five-mile-long
  track. Here had gathered scientists and engineers from all the countries of
  the world. And here the "Prometheus," first of all spaceships, had been as-
  sembled in the past three years.
  The Prometheus of legend had brought fire from heaven down to earth. The
  Prometheus of the twentieth century was to take atomic fire back into the
  home of the Gods, and to prove that Man, by his own exertions, had broken
  free at last from the chains that held him to his world for a million
  years.
  No one seemed to know who had given the spaceship- its name. It was, in
  actuality, not a single ship at all but really, consisted of two separate
  machines. With

               3
 4       PRELUDE TO SPACE

 notable lack of enterprise, the designers had christened the two components
 "Alpha" and "Beta." Only the upper component, "Alpha," way a pure rocket.
 "Beta," to give it its full name, was a "hypersonic athodyd." Most people
 usually called it an atomic ramjet, which was both simpler and more
 expressive.
  It was a long way from the flying bombs of the Second World War to the
  two-hundred-ton "Beta," skimming the top of the atmosphere at thousands of
  miles an hour. Yet both operated on the same principlethe use of forward
  speed to provide compression for the jet. The main difference lay in the
  fuel. Y.1 had burned gasoline; "Beta" burned plutonium, and her range was
  virtually unlimited. As long as her air-scoops could collect and compress
  the tenuous gas of the upper atmosphere, the white-hot furnace of the
  atomic pile would blast it out of the jets. Only when at last the air was
  too thin for power or support need she inject intolhe pile the methane from
  her fuel tanks and thus become a pure rocket.
  "Beta" could leave the atmosphere, but she could never escape completely
  from Earth. Her task was two--fold. First, she had to carry up fuel tanks
  into the orbit round the Earth, and set them circling like tiny moons until
  they were needed. Not until this had been done would she lift "Alpha" into
  space. The smaller ship would then fuel up in free orbit from the waiting
  tanks, fire its motors to break* away from Earth, and make the journey to
  the Moon.
  Circling patiently, "Beta" would wait until the spaceship returned. At the
  end of its half-million-mile journey "Alpha" would have barely enough fuel
  to maneuver into a parallel orbit. The crew and their equipment would then
  b e transferred to th~-waiting "Beta," which would still carry sufficient
  fuel to bring them safety back to Earth.
  It was an elaborate plan, but even with atomic energy it was still the only
  practicable way of making the lunar round-trip with a rocket weighing not
  less than many thousands of tons. Moreover, it had many other

  I
           PRELUDE TO SPACE       5

 -advantages. "Alpha" and "Beta" could each be designed to carry out their
 separate tasks with an efficiency which no single, all-purpose ship could
 hope to achieve. It was impossible to combine in one machine the ability to
 fly through Edrth's atmosphere and to land on the airless Moon.
  When the time came to make the next voyage, "Alpha"- would still be
  circling the Earth, to be refuelled in space and used again. No later
  journey would ever be quite as difficult as the first. In time there would
  be more efficient motors, and later still, when the lunar colony had been
  founded, there would be refuelling stations on the Moon. After that it
  would be easy, and space flight would become a commercial proposition
  -though this would not happen for half a century or more.
  Meanwhile the "Prometheus," alias "Alpha" and "Beta," still lay glistening
  beneath the Australian sun while the technicians worked over her. The last
  fittings were being installed and tested: the moment of her destiny was
  drawing nearer. In a few weeks, if all went well, she would carry the hopes
  and fears of humanity into the lonely deeps beyond the sky.

 Dirk Alexson threw down his book and climbed up the short flight of stairs
 to the observation deck. It was still much too soon to see land, but the
 journey's approaching end had made him restless and unable to concentrate.
 He walked over to the narrow, curving windows set in the leading-edge of the
 great wing and stared down at the featureless ocean below.
  There was absolutely nothing to be seen: from this height the Atlantic's
  mightiest storms would have been invisible. He gazed for a while at the
  blank grayness beneath and then moved across to the passengers' radar
  display.
 6      PRELUDE TO SPACE

  The spinning line of light on the screen had begun to paint the first dim
  echoes at the limits of its range. Land lay ahead, ten miles below and two
  hundred miles away-the land that Dirk had never seen though it was
  sometimes more real to him than the country of his birth. From those hidden
  shores, over the last four centuries, his ancestors had set out for the New
  World in search of freedom or fortune. Now he was return-' ing, crossing in
  less than three hours the wastes over which they had labored- for as many
  weary weeks. And he was coming on a mission of Which they, in their wildest
  imaginings, could never have dreamed.
 ~ The luminous image of Land's End had moved halfway aqross the radar screen
 before Dirk first glimpsed the advancing coastline, a dark stain almost lost
 in the horizon mists. Though he had sensed no change of direction, he knew
 that the liner must now be falling down the long slope that led to London
 Airport, four hundred miles away. In a few minutes he would hear again,
 faint but infinitely reassuring, the rumbling whisper of the great jets as
 the air thickened around him and brought their music once more to his ears.
  Cromwall was a gray blur, sinking astern too swiftly for any details to be
  seen. For all that one could tell, King Mark might still be waiting above
  the cruel rocks for the ship that brought Iseult, while on the hills Merlin
  might yet be talking with the winds and thinking of his doom. From this
  height the land would have looked the same when the masons laid the last
  stone on Tintagel's walls.
  Now the liner was dropping toward a cloudscape so white and dazzling that
  it hurt the eyes. At first it seemed broken only by a few slight
  undulations but, presently, as it rose toward him, Dirk realized that the
  mouiltains of cloud below were built on a Himalayan scale. A moment later,
  the peaks were above him andthe m9chine was driving through a great pass
  flanked on either side by overhanging walls of snow. He ninghed
  involuntarily as the white cfiffs came racing
           PRELUDE TO SPACE       7

 toward him, then relaxed as the driving mist was all around and he could see
 no more.
  The cloud layer must have been very thick, for he caught only the briefest
  glimpse of London and was taken almost unaware by the gentle shock of
  landing. Then the sounds of the outer world came rusbinj in upon his
  mind-the metallic voices of loud-speakers, the clanging of hatches, and
  above all these, the dying fall of the great turbines as they idled to
  rest.
  The wet concrete, the waiting trucks, and the gray clouds lowering overhead
  dispelled the last impressions of romance or adventure. It was drizzling
  slightly, and as the ridiculously tiny tractor hauled the great ship away,
  her glistening sides made her seem a creature of the deep sea rather than
  of the open sky. Above the jet housings, little flurries of steam were
  rising as the water drained down the wing.
  Much to his relief, Dirk was met at the Customs barrier. As his name was
  checked off the passenger list, a stout, middle-aged man came forward with
  outstretched hand.
  "Dr. Alexson? Pleased to meet you. My name's Matthews. Im taking you to
  Headquarters at Southbank and generally looking after you while you're in
  London."
  "Glad to hear it," smiled Dirk. "I suppose I can thank McAndrews for this?"
  "That's right. I'm his assistant in Public Relations. Here-let me have that
  bag. We're going by the express tube; it's the quickest way-and the best,
  since you get into the city without having to endure the suburbs. There's
  one snag, though."
 "What's that?"
  Matthews sighed. "You'd be surprised at the number of visitors who cross
  the Atlantic safely, then disappear into the Underground and are never seen
  again.99
 Matthews never even smiled as he imparted this
 ,unlikely news. As Dirk was to discover, his impish sense of humor seemed to
 go with a complete incapac-
  8      PRELUDE TO SPACE

 ity for laughter. It was a most disconcerting combination.
  "There's one thing I'm not at all clear about," began Matthews as the long
  red train began to draw out of the airport station. "We get a lot of
  American scientists over to see us, but I understand that science isn7t
  your line."
 "No, I'm an historian."
  Matthews's eyebrows asked an almost audible question.
  "I suppose it must be rather puzzling," continued Dirk, "but it's quite
  logical. In the past, when history was made, there was seldom anyone around
  to record it properly. Nowadays, of course, we have newspapers and
  films-but it's surprising what important features get overlooked% simply
  because everyone takes them for granted at the time. Well, the project you
  people are working on is one of the biggest in history, and if it comes off
  it will change the future as perhaps no other single event has ever done.
  So my University decided that there should be a professional historian
  around to fill in the gaps that might be overlooked."
 Matthews nodded.
  "Yes, that's reasonable enough. It will make a pleasant change for us
  non-scientific people, too. We're rather tired of conversations in which
  three words out of four are mathematical symbols. Still, I suppose you have
  a fairly good technical background?"
 Dirk looked slightly uncomfortable.
  "To tell the truth," he confessed, "it's almost fifteen years since Ldid
  any science-and I never took it very seriously then. I'll have to learn
  what I need as I go along."
  "Don't worry; we have a high-pressure course for tired businessmen and
  perplexed politicians which will give you everything you need. And you'll
  be surprised to find how much you pick up, simply by listening to the
  Boffins holding forth."
 "Boffins?"
 "Good lord, don't you know that word? It goes back
           PRELUDE TO SPACE      9

 to the War, and means any long-haired scientific type with a slide-rule in
 his vest-pocket. I'd better warn you right away that we've quite a private
 vocabulary here which you'll have to learn. There are so many new ideas and
 conceptions in our work that we've had to invent new words. You should have.
 brought along a philologist as well!"
  Dirk was silent. There were moments when the sheer immensity of his task
  almost overwhelmed him. Some time in the next six months the work of
  thousands of men over half a century would reach its culmination. It would
  be his duty, and his privilege, to be present while history was being made
  out there in the Australian desert on the other side of the world. He must
  look upon these events through the eyes of the future, and must record them
  so that in centuries to come other men could recapture the spirit of this
  age and time.
  They emerged at New Waterloo station, and walked the few hundred yards to
  the Thames. Matthews had been right in saying that this was the best way to
  meet London for the first time. The spacious sweep of the fine new
  Embankment, still only twenty years old, carried Dirk's gaze down the river
  until it was caught and held by the dome of St. Paul's, glistening wetly in
  an unexpected shaft of sunlight. He followed the river upstream, past the
  great white buildings before Charing.,Cross, but the Houses of Parliament
  were invisible around the curve of the Thames.
  "Quite a view, isn't it?" said Matthews presently. "We're rather proud of
  it now, but thirty years ago this part was a horrid mass of wharves and
  mudbanks. By the way-you see that ship over there?"
  "You mean the one tied up against the other bank?"
 "Yqs, do you know what it is?"
 "I've no idea."
  "She's the Discovery, which took Captain Scott into the Antarctic back at
  the beginning of this century. I often look at her as I come to work and
  wonder what he'd have thought of the little trip we are planning."
 10     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 . Dirk stared intently at the graceful wooden hull, the slim masts and the
 battered smokestack. His mind slipped into the past in the -easy way it had,
 and it seemed that the Embankment was gone and that the old ship was
 steaming past walls of ice into an unknown land. He could understand
 Matthew's feelings, and the sense of historical continuity was suddenly very
 strong. The line that stretched through Scott back to Drake and Raleigh and
 yet earlier voyages was still unbroken: only the scale of things had
 changed.
  "Here we are," said Matthews in a tone of proud apology. "It's not as
  impressive as it might be, but we didn't have a lot of money when we built
  it. Not that we have now, for that matter."
  The white, three-story building that faced the river was unpretentious and
  had obviously been constructed only a few years before. It was surrounded
  by large, open lawns scantily covered by dispirited grass. Dirk guessed
  that they had already been earmarked for future building operations. The
  grass seemed to have realized this too.
  Nevertheless, as administrative buildings went, Headquarters was not
  unattractive, and the view over the river Was certainly very fine. Along
  the second story ran a line of letters, as clean-cut and severely practical
  as the rest of the buildings. They formed a single word, but at the sight
  of it Dirk felt a curious tingling in his veins. It seemed out of place,
  somehow, here in the heart of a great city where millions were concerned
  with the affairs of everyday life. It was as out of place as the Discovery,
  lying against the far bank at the end of her long journeying-and it spoke
  of a longer voyage than she or any ship had ever made:

         INTERPLANETARY
 2
 The office was small, and he would have to share it with a couple of junior
 draftsmen-but it overlooked the Thames and when he was tired of his reports
 and files Dirk could always rest his eyes on that great dome floating above
 Ludgate Hill. From time to time Matthews or his chief would drop in for a
 talk, but usually they left him alone, knowing that that was his desire. He
 was anxious to be left in peace until he had burrowed through the hundreds
 of reports and books which Matthews had obtained for him.
  it was a far cry from Renaissance Italy to twentieth-mutury London, but the
  techniques he had acquired when writing his thesis on Lorenzo the Ma&.
  ,nificent served Dirk in good stead now. He could tell, almost at a glance,
  what was unimportant and what must be studied carefully. In a few days the
  outlines of the story were complete and he could begin to fill in the
  details.
  The dream was older than he had imagined. Two thousand years ago the Greeks
  had guessed that the Moon was a world not unlike the Earth, and in the
  second century A.D. the satirist Lucian had written the first of all
  interplanetary romances. It had taken more than seventeen centuries to
  bridge the gulf between fiction and reality-ancT almost all the progress
  had been made in the last fifty years.
  The modem era had begun in 1923, when an obscure Transylvanian professor
  named He
 Oberth had published a pamphlet entitled The Rocket Into Interplanetary
 Space. In this he developed for the first time the mathematics of space
 flight. Leafing through the pages of one of the few copies still in
 existence, Dirk found it hard to believe that so enormous a superstructure
 had arisen from so small a beginning. Oberth-now an old man of 84-had
 started
 12     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 the chain reaction which was to lead in his own lifetime to the crossing of
 space.
  In the decade before the Second World War, Oberth's German disciples had
  perfected the liquidfuelled rocket. At first they too had dreamed of the
  conquest of space, but that dream had been forgotten with the coming of
  Hitler. The city over which Dirk so often gazed still bore the scawfrom the
  time, thirty years ago, when the great rockets had come falling down from
  the stratosphere in a tumult of sundered air.
  Less than a year later had come that dreary dawn in the New Mexico desert,
  when it seemed that the River of Time had halted for a moment, then plunged
  in foam and spray into a new channel toward a changed and unknown future.
  With Hiroshima had come the end of -a war and the end of an age: the power
  and the machine had come together at last and the road to space lay clear
  ahead.
  It had been a steep road, and it had taken thirty years to climb-thirty
  years of triumphs and heartbreaking disappointments. As he grew to know the
  men around him, as he listened to their stories and their conversations,
  Dirk slowly filled in the personal details which the reports and summari s
  could never provide.
  "The television picture wasn't too clear, but every few seconds it steadied
  and we got a good image. That was the biggest thrill of my life-being the
  first man to see the other side of the Moon. Going there will be a bit of
  an anti-climax."
  '~-most terrific explosion you ever saw. When we got up, I heard Goering
  say: 'If that's the best you can do, I'll tell the Fuehrer the whole
  thing's a waste of money., You should have seen von Braun's face---"
  "The KX 14's still up there: she completes one orbit every three hours,
  which was just what we'd intended. But the blasted radio transmitter failed
  at
           PRELUDE TO SPACE      13

 take-off, so we never got those instrument readings after all."
  "I was looking throug~ the twelve-inch reflector when that load of
  magnesium powder hit the Moon, about fifty kilometers from Aristarchus. You
  can just see the crater it -made, if you have a look around sunset.99
  Sometimes Dirk envied these men. They had a purpose in life, even if it was
  one he could not fully understand. It must give them a feeling of power to
  send their great machines thousands of miles out into space. But power was
  dangerous, and often corrupting. Could they be trusted with the forces they
  were bringing into the world? Could the world itself be trusted with them?
  Despite his intellectual background, Dirk was not altogether free from the
  fear of science that had been common ever since the great discoveries of
  the Victorian era. He felt not only isolated but sometimes a little nervous
  in his new surroundings. The few people he spoke to were invariably helpful
  and polite, but a certain shyness and his anxiety to master the background
  of his subject in the shortest time kept him away from all social
  entanglements. He liked the atmosphere of organization, which was almost
  aggressively democratic, and later on it would be easy enough to meet all
  the people he wished.
  At the moment, Dirk's chief contacts with anyone outside the Public
  Relations Department were at mealtimes. Interplanetary's small canteen was
  patronized, in relays, by all the staff from the Director General
  downwards. It was run by a very enterprising committee with a fondness for
  experimenting, and although there were occasional culinary catastrophes,
  the food was ustially'very good. For all that Dirk could tell,
  Interplanetary's boast of the best cooking on Southbank might indeed be
  justified.
  As Dirk's lunch-time, like Easter, was a movable feast, he usually met a
  fresh set of faces every day and soon grow to know most of the important
  members
 14       PRELUDE WSPACE

 of the organization by sight. No one took any notice of him: the building
 was full of birds-of-passage from universities and industrial firms all over
 the world, and he was obviously regarded as just another visiting scientist.
  His college, through the ramifications of the United States Embassy, had
  managed to find Dirk a small service flat a few hundred yards from
  Grosvenor Square. Every morning he walked to Bond Street Station and took
  the Tube to Waterloo. He quickly learned to avoid the earlymmorning rush,
  but he was seldom much later than many senior members of Interplanetary's
  staff. Eccentric hours were popular at Southbank: though Dirk sometimes
  remained in the building until midnight, there were always- sounds of
  activity around him-usually from the research s~cw tions. Often, in order
  to clear his head and get a little exercise, he would go for a stroll along
  the deserted corridors, making mental notes of interesting departments
  which he might one day visit. officially. He learned a great deal more
  about the place in this way than from the elaborate and much-amended
  organization charts which Matthews had lent him---and was always boffowmg
  back again.
 . Frequently Dirk would come across half-opened doors revealing vistas of
 untidy labs and machineshops in which gloomy technicians sat gazing at
 equipment which was obviously refusing to behave. If the hour was very late,
 the scene would be softened by a mistof tobacco-smoke and invariably an
 electric kettle and a battered tea pot would occupy places of honor in the
 near foreground. Occasionally Dirk would arrive at some moment of tedmical.
 triumph, and if he was not careful he was likely to be invited to share the
 ambiguous liquid which the engineers were continually brewing. In this way
 he became on nodding terms with a great many people, but he,knew scarcely a
 dozen well enough to address them by'name.
  At the age of thirty-three, Dirk Alexson was still somewhat nervous of the
  everyday world around him.
           PRELUDE TO SPACE

 He was happier in the past and among his books, and
 though he had traveled fairly extensively in the United
 States, he had spent almost all his life in academic
 circles. 11is colleagues recognized him as a steady,
 sound worker with an almost intuitive flair for un
 raveling complicated situations. No one knew if he
 would make a great -historian, but his study of the
 Medicis had been acknowledged as outstanding. His
 friends had never been able to unhow any.
 one of Dirk!s somewhat placid disposition could so ac
 curately have analyzed the motives and behavior of
 that flamboyant family.
  Pure chance, it seemed, had brought him from Chicago to London, and he was
  still very much conscious of the fact. A few months ago the influence of
  Walter Pater had begun to wane: the little, crowded stage of Renaissance
  Italy was losing its charm-if so mild a word could be applied to that
  microcosm of intrigues and assassinations. It had not been his first change
  of interest, and he feared it would not be his last, for Dirk Alexson was
  still, seeking a work to which he could devote his life. In a moment of
  depression he had remarked to his Dean that probably only the future held
  a subject-which would really appeal to him. That casual and half-serious
  complaint had coincided with a letter from the Rockefeller Foundation, and
  before he knew it Dirk had been on the way to London.
  For the first few days he was haunted by the spector of his own incapacity,
  but he had learned now that -this always happened when he started a new job
  and it had ceased to be more than a nuisance. After about a week he felt
  that he now had a fairly clear picture of the organization in which he had
  so unexpectedly found himself. Ifis confldence began to return, and he
  could relax a little.
  Since undergraduate days he had kept a desultory journal-usually neglected
  save in occasional crisesand he now began once more to record his
  impressions and the everyday events of his life. These notes, written for
  his own satisfaction, would enable hifia,,to mar-
   16     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 shal his thoughts and might later serve as a basis for the official history
 he must one day produce.
  "Today, May 3, 1978, I've been in London for exactly a week-and I've seen
  nothing of it except the areas around Bond Street and Waterloo. When it's
  fine Matthews and I usually go for a stroll along the river after lunch. We
  go across the "New"- bridge (which has only been built for about forty
  yearsl) and walk up or down river as the fancy takes us, crossing again at
  Charing Cross or Blackfdars. There are quite a number of variations,
  clockwise and counter-clockwise.
  "Alfred Matthews is about forty, and I've found him very helpful. He has an
  extraordinary sense of humor, but I've never seen him smile-hes absolutely
  deadpan. He seems to know his job pretty well--a good deal better, I should
  say, than McAndrews, who is supposed to be his boss. Mac is about ten years
  older: like Alfred, he graduated through journalism into public relations.
  He's a lean, hungry-looking person and ~sually speaks with a slight Scots
  accent-which vanishes completely when he's excited. This should prove
  something, but I can't imagine what. He's not a bad fellow, but I don't
  think he's very bright. Alfred does all the work and there's not much love
  lost between them. It's sometimes a bit difficult keeping on good terms
  with them both.
  '66 Next week I hope to start meeting people and going further afield. I
  particularly want to meet the crew -but I'm keeping out of the scientists'
  way until I know a bit more about atomic drives and interplanetaryorbits.
  Alfred is going to teach me all about this next week--so he says. What I
  also hope to discover is how such an extraordinary hybrid as Interplanetary
  was ever formed in the first place. It seems a typically British
  compromise, and there's very little on paper about its formation and
  origins. The whole institution is a mass of paradoxes. It exists in a state
  of chronic bankruptcy, 'yet it's responsible for spending something like
  ten millions a year (Z, not $). The Government has very little in its
  admini tration, and in
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     17

 some ways it seems as autocratic as the B.B.C. But when ifs attacked in
 Parliament (which happens every other month) some Minister always gets up to
 defend it. Perhaps, after all, Mac's a better organizer than I imaginel
  "I called it 'British,' but of course it isn't. About a fifth of the staff
  are American, and I've heard every conceivable accent in the canteen. It's
  as international as the United Nations secretariat, though the British
  certainly provide most of the driving force and the administrative staff.
  Why this should be, I doift know: perhaps Matthews can explain.
  '!Another query: apart from their accents, it's very difficult to see any
  real distinction between the different nationalities here. Is this due to
  the--to put it mildly~--supranational nature of their work? And if I stay
  here long enough, I suppose I shall get deracinated

 too.19

 3~
 "I was wondering," said McAndrews, "when you were going to ask that
 question. The answer's rather complicated."
  ,,rll be very much surprised," Dirk answered dryly, "if it's quite as
  involved as the machinations of the Medici family."
 . "Perhaps not; we've never used assassination yet, though weve often, felt
 like it. Miss Reynolds, will you take any calls while I talk with Dr.
 Alexson? Thank you.
  "Well, as you know, the foundations of astronautics -the science of space
  travel-had been pretty well laid at the~ end of the Second'World War. V. 2
  and atomic energy had convinced most people that space could be crossed, if
  anyone wanted to do it. There were several societies, in England and the
  States, actively promulgating the idea that we should go to the
 18      P"LUDE TO SPACE

 Moon and the planets. They made steady but slow progress until the 1950's,
 when things really started to get moving.
  "In 1959, as you may-er-just remember, the American Amy's guided missile
  'Orphan Annie hit the Moon with twenty-five pounds of flash-powder aboard.
  From that moment, the public began to realize that space travel wasn't a
  thing of the distant future, but might come inside a generation. Astronomy
  began to replace atomic physics as the Number One science, and the rocket
  societies' membership lists started to lengthen steadily. But it was one
  thing to crash an unmanned projectile into the Moon-and quite another to
  land a full-sized spaceship there and bring it home again. Some pessimists
  thought the job might still take another hundred years.
  "'Iliere were a lot of people in this country who. didn't intend to wait
  that long. They believed that the crossing of space was as essential for
  progress as the discovery of the New World had been four hundred years
  before. It would open up new frontiers and give the human race a goal so
  challenging that it would overshadow national differences and put the
  tribal conflicts of the early twentieth century in their true perspective.
  Energies that might have gone into wars would be fully employed in the
  colonization of the planets-which could certainly keep us busy for a good
  many centuries. That was the theory, at any rate.
 McAndrews smiled a little.
  "There were, of course, a good many other motives. You know what an
  unsettled period the early 50's was. The cynies argument for space flight
  was summed up in the famous remark: 'Atomic power makes interpjanetary
  travel not only possible but imperative.' As long as it was confined to
  Earth, humanity had too many eggs in one rather fragile basket.
  "All this was realized by an oddly assorted group of scientists, writers,
  astonomers, editors, and buindssmen in the old Interplanetary Society. With
  very small capita4 they started the publication Spacewards, which
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     19

 was inspired by the success of the American National Geographic Society's
 magazine. What the N.G.S. had done for the Earth could, it was argued, now
 be done for, the solar system. Spacewards was an attempt to make the public
 shareholders, as it were, in the conquest of space. It catered to the new
 interest in astronomy,'and those who subscribed to it felt that they were
 helping to finance the first space flight.
 , "The project wouldn't have succeeded a few years earlier, but the time was
 now ripe for it. In a few years therewere about a quarter of a million
 subscribers all over the world, and in 1961 'Interplanetary' was founded to
 carry out full-time research. into the problems of space flight. At first it
 couldn7t offer the salaries of the great government-sponsored rocket es-
 tablishments, but slowly it attracted the best scientists in the field. They
 preferred working on a constructive project, eveii at lower pay, to building
 missiles for transporting atomic bombs. In the early days, the organization
 was also helped by one or two financial windfalls. When the ~ast British
 millionaire died in 1965, he balked the Treasury of almost all his fortune
 by making it into a Trust Fund for our use.
  "From the first, Interplanetary was a world-wideorganization and it's
  largely an historical accident that its H.Q. is actually in London. It
  might very well have been in America, and a lot of our compatriots are
  still annoyed that it isn't. But for some reason, you Americans have always
  been a bit conservative about space flight, and didn't take, it seriously
  until., several years after us. Never mind: the Germans beat us both.
  "Also, you must remember that the United States is much too small a country
  for astronautical research. Yes, I know that sounds odd-but if you look at
  a population map you'll see what I mean. There are only two places in the
  world that are really suitable for longrange rocket research. One's the
  Sahara desert, and even that is a little too near the great cities of
  Europe. The other -is the West Australian desert, where the British
  Government started building its great rocket
 20     PRELUDF TO SPACE

 range in 1947. It's more than a thousand miles long, and there's another two
 thousand miles of ocean beyond it-giving a grand total of over three
 thousand miles. You won~t find any place in the United States where you can
 safely fire a rocket even five hundred miles. So it's partly a geographical
 accident that things have tamed out this way.
  "Where was I? Oh yes, up to 1960 or so. It was about then that we began to
  get really important, for two reasons which aren't widely known. By that
  time a whole section of nuclear physics had come to a full stop. The
  scientists of the Atomic Development Authority thought they could start the
  hydrogen-helium reaction-and I don't mean the tritium reaction of the old
  H-bomb-but the crucial experiments had been very wisely banned. There's
  rather a lot of hydrogen in the seal So the nuclear physicists were all
  sitting around chewing their fingernails until we could build them
  laboratories out in space. It wouldn't matter, then, if something went
  wrong. The solar system would merely acquire a second and rather temporary
  sun. ADA also wanted us to dump the dangerous fission products from the
  piles, which were too radioactive to keep on Earth but which might be
  useful some day.
  "The second reason wasn't so spectacular, but- was perhaps even more
  immediately important. The great radio and telegraph companies had to get
  out into space---it was the only way they, could broadcast television over
  the whole world and provide a universal communication service. As you know,
  the very short waves of radar and television won't bend around the
  Earth-they travel in practically straight lines, so that one station can
  send signals only as far as the horizon. Airborne relays had been built to
  get over this difficulty, but it was realized that the final solution would
  be reached only when repeater stations could be built thousands of miles
  above the Earth-artificial moons, probably traveling in twenty-four-hour
  orbits so that they'd appear stationary in the sky. No doubt
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     21

 you've read all about these ideas, so I won't go into them-now.
  "So by about 1970 we had the support of some of the world's biggest
  technical organizations, with virtwilly unlimited funds. They had to come
  to us, since we had all the experts. In the early days, I'm afraid there
  was a certain amount of bickering and the Service Departments have never
  quite forgiven us for stealing back all their best scientists. But on the
  whole we get along well enough with ADA, Westinghouse, General Electric,
  Rolls-Royce, Lockheeds, de Havillands, and the rest of them. They've all
  got offices here, as you've probably noticed. Although they make us very
  substantial grants, the technical services they provide are really beyond
  price. Without their help, I don't suppose we'd have reached this stage for
  another twenty years."
  There was a brief pause, and Dirk emerged from the torrent of words like a
  spaniel clambering out of a mountain stream. McAndrews talked much too
  quickly, bbviously repeating phrases and whole paragraphs which he had been
  using for years. Dirk got the impression that almost everything he had said
  had probably come from other sources, and wasn't ongm I at all.
  "rT no idea," he replied, "just how extensive your ramificati ns were."
  "Believe me, that's nothing!" McAndrews exclaimed. "I don't think there are
  many big industrial firms who haven't been convinced that we can help them
  in some way. The cable companies will save hundreds of millions when they
  can replace their ground stations and land-lines by a few repeaters in
  space;, the chemical industry will-21
  "Oh, I'll take your word for itl I was wondering where all the money came
  from, and now I see just how big a thing this is."
  "Don't forget," interjected Matthews, who had hitherto been sitting in
  resigned silence, "our most important contribution to industry."
 22 ,   PRELUDE TO SPACE

  "What's that?"
  "The import of high-grade vacuums for filling electric-light bulbs and
  electronics tubes."
  "Ignoring Alfred's usual facetiousness," said Mo
 Andrews severely, "ies perfectly true that physics - in
 general will make tremendous strides when we can
 build laboratories in space. And you can guess how
 the astronomers are looking forward to observatories
 which will never be bothered by clouds."
  "I know now," said Dirk, ticking off the points on his fingers, "just how
  Interplanetary happened, and also what it hopes to do. But I still find it
  very hard to define exactly what it is."
  "Legally, it's a non-profit-making ("And howl" interjected Matthews, sotto
  voce) organization devoted, as its charter says, 'to research into the
  problems of space flight.' It orginally obtained its funds from Spacewards,
  but that hasn't any official connection with us now that it's linked up
  with National Geographic-thought it has plenty of unofficial ones. Today
  most of our money comes from government grants and from industrial
  concerns. When interplanetary travel is fully established on a commercial
  basis, as aviation is today, we'll probably evolve into something
  different. There are a lot of political angles to the whole thing and no
  one can say just what will happen when the planets start to be colonized."
  McAndrews gave a little laugh, half apologetic and half defensive.
  "There are a lot of pipe-dreams floating around this place, as you'll
  probably discover. Some people have ideas of starting scientific utopias on
  suitable worlds, and all that sort of thing. But the immediate aim is
  purely technical: we must find out what the planets are like before we
  decide how to use them."
  The office became quiet; for a moment no one seemed inclined to speak. For
  the first time Dirk realized.the true importance of the goal toward which
  these men were working. He felt overwhelmed and
           PRELUDE TO SPACE `    23

 more than a little frightened. Was humanity ready to be pitchforked out into
 space, ready to face the challenge of barren and inhospitable worlds never
 meant for Man? He could not be sure, and in the deptlis of his mind he felt
 profoundly disturbed.

 4
 From the street, 53 Rochdale Avenue, S.W.5, appeared to be one of those
 neo-Georgian residences which the more successful stockbrokers of the early
 twentieth century had erected as shelters for their declining years. It was
 set well back from the road, with tastefully laid out but somewhat neglected
 lawns and flower beds. When the weather was fine, as it occasionally was in
 the spring of 1978, five, young men might sometimes be seen performing
 desultory gardening operations with inadequate tools. It was clear that they
 were doing this merely as a relaxation, and that their minds were very far
 away. Just how far, a casual passer-by could hardly have guessed.
  it had been a very well kept secret, largely because the security
  organizers themselves were exnewspapermen. As far as the world knew, the
  crew of the "Prometheus" had not been chosen, whereas in actuality its
  training had begun more than a year ago. It had continued with quiet
  efficiency, not five miles from Fleet Street, yet altogether free from the
  fierce limelight of public interest.
  At any time, there were not likely to be more than a,handful of men in the
  world who would be capable of piloting a spaceship. No other work had ever
  demanded such a unique combination of physical and mental characteristics.
  The perfea pilot had not only to be a first-class astronomer, an expert
  engineer and a specialist in electronics, but must be capable of operating
  efficiently both when he was "weightless"
 24     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 and when the rocket's acceleration made him weigh a quarter of a ton.
  ,No single individual could meet these requirements, and many years ago it
  had been - decided that the crew of a spaceship must consist of at least
  three men, any two of whom could take over the duties of a third in an
  emergency. Interplanetary was training five; two were roserves in case of
  last-minute illness. As yet, no one knew who the two reserves would be.
  Few doubted that Victor Hassell would be the ship's captain. At
  twenty-eight, he was the only man in the world who had logged over a
  hundred hours in free fall. The record had been entirely accidental. Two
  years before, Hassell had taken an experimental rocket up into an orbit and
  circled the world thirty times before he could repair a fault which had de-
  veloped in the firing circuits, and so reduce bis velocity enough to fall
  back to Earth. His nearest rival, Pierre Leduc, had a mere twenty hours of
  oribital flight to his credit.
  The three remaining men were not professional pilots at all. Arnold
  Clinton, the Australian, was an electronic engineer and a specialist in
  computers and automatic-controls. Astronomy was represented by the
  brilliant young American Lewis Taine, whose prolonged absence from Mount
  Palomar Observatory was now requiring elaborate explanations. The Atomic
  Development Authority had contributed James Richards, expert on nuclear
  propulsion systems. Being a ripe old thirty-five, he was usually called
  "Grandpop" by his colleagues~.
  Life at the "Nursery," as it was always referred to by those sharing the
  secret, combined the characteristics of college, monastery and operational
  bomber station. It was colored by the personalities of the five "pupils,"
  and by the visiting scientists who came in an endless 'stream to impart
  their knowledge or, !ometimes, to get it back with interest. It was an
  intensely busy but a happy life, for it had a purpose and a goal.
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     25

  There was only one shadow, and that was inevitable. When the time for the
  decision came, no one knew who was to be left behind on the desert sands,
  watching the "Prometheus" shrink into the sky until the thunder of its jets
  could be heard no more.
  An agtrogation lecture was in full swing when Dirk and Matthews tiptoed
  into the back of the room. The speaker gave them an unfriendly look, but
  the five men seated around him never even glanced at the intruders. As
  unobtrusively as possible, Dirk studied them while his guide indicated
  their names in hoarse whispers.
  Hassell he recognized from newspaper photographs, ,but the others were
  unknown to him. Rather to Dirk's surprise, they conformed to no particular
  type. Their only obvious points in common were age, intellir gence, and
  alertness. From time to time they shot questions at the lecturer, and Dirk
  gathered that they were discussing the landing maneuvers on the Moon.
  All-the conversation was so much above his head that he quickly grew tired
  of listening and was glad when Matthews gave an interrogatory nod toward
  the door.
 Out in the corridor, they relaxed and lit cigarettes.
  "Well," said Matthews, "now that you've seen our guinea pigs, what do you
  think of them?"
  "I, can hardly judge. What I'd like to do is meet them informally and just
  talk with them by themselves."
  Matthews blew a smoke-ring and watched it thoughtfully as it dispersed.
  "That wouldn't be easy. As you can guess, they haven't much spare time.
  When they've finished here, they usually disappear in a cloud of dust back
  to their families."
 "How many of them are married?"
  "Leduc's got two children; so has Richards. Vic Hassell was married about
  a year ago. The others are still single."
 Dirk wondered what the wives thought about the
 26     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 whole business. Somehow it didn't seem altogether fair to them. He wondered,
 too, whether the men regarded this as simply another job of work, or if they
 felt the exaltation-there was no other word for it -which had obviously
 inspired the founders of Interplanetary.
  They had now come to a door labeled "KEEP OUT-TECEMCAL STAFF ONLY1"
  Matthews pushed tentatively against it and it swung open.
  "Carelessl" he said. "There doesn't seem to be anym one around, either.
  Let's go in-I think this is. one of the most interesting places I know,
  even though I'm not a scientist."
  That was one of Matthews' favorite phrases, which probably concealed a
  well-buried inferiority complex. Actually both he and McAndrews knew far
  more about science than they pretended.
  Dirk followed him into the semi-gloom, then gasped with amazement as
  Matthews found the switch and the place was flooded with light. He was
  standing mi
 a control room, surrounded by banks of switches and meters. The only
 furniture consisted of three luxurious seats suspended in a complex gimbal
 system. He reached out to touch one of them "d it began to rock gently to
 and fro.
  "Don't touch anything," warned Matthews quickly. -"We're not really
  supposed to be in here, in case you hadn't noticed."
  Dirk examined the array of controls and switches from a respectful
  distance. He could guess the,purpose of some from the labels they bore, but
  others were quite incomprehensible. The words "Manual" and "Auto" occurred
  over and over again. Almost as popular were "Fuel," "Drive Temperature,"
  "Pressure," and "Earth Range." Others, such as "Emergency Cut-out," "Air
  Warning," and "Pile Jettison" had a distinctly ominous flavor. A third and
  still more enigmatic group provided grounds for endless speculation. "Alt.
  Trig. Sync.," "Neut. Count," and "Video
           PRELUDE TO SPACE      27

 MWI were perhaps the choicest specimens in category.
  "You'd almost think, wouldn't you," said Matthews, "that the house-was
  ready to take off at any moment. It's a complete mock-up, of course, of
  'Alpha's' control room. I've seen them training on it, and it's fascinating
  to watch even if you- don7t quite know what it's all about."
 Dirk gave a somewhat forced laugh.
  "It's a bit eerie, coming across a spaceship control panel in a quiet
  London suburb." '
  "It won't be quiet next week. We're throwing it open to the Press then, and
  we'll probably be lynched for keeping all this under cover so long."
 "Next week?"
  "Yes, if everything goes according to plan. 'Beta' should have passed her
  final full-speed tests by then, and we'll all be packing our trunks for
  Australia. By the way, have you seen those films of the first launchings?"
 "No."
  "Remind me to let you see them-they're most impressive.99
 "What's she done so far?"
  "Fo~r and a half miles a second with full load. That's a bit short of
  orbital speed, but everything was still working perfectly. It's a pity,
  though, that we can't test 'Alpha' before the actual flight."
 "When will that be?"
  "It's not fixed yet, but we know that the take-off will be when the Moon's
  entering her first quarter. The ship will land in the Mare Imbrium region
  while it's still early morning. The retum's scheduled for the late
  afternoon, so they'll have about ten Earth-days there."'
 "Why the Mare Imbrium, in particular?"
  "Because it's flat, very well mapped, and has some of the most interesting
  scenery on the Moon. Besides, spaceships have always landed there since
  Jules Verne's time. I guess that you know that the name means 'Sea of
  Rains."'
 28      PRELUDE TO SPACE

  "I did know Latin pretty thoroughly once upon a time," Dirk said dryly.
  Matthews came as near a smile as he had ever known him to.
  "I suppose you did. But let's get out of here before we're caught. Seen
  enough?"
  "Yes, thanks. It's a bit overwhelming, but not so very much worse than a
  transcontinental jetlls cockpit."
  "It is if you know what goes on behind all those panels," said Matthews
  grimly. "Arnold Clintonthat's the electronics king---once told me that
  there are three thousand tubes in the computing and control circuits alone.
  And there must be a good many hundreds on the communications side."
  Dirk scarcely heard him. He was beginning to realize, for the first time,
  how swiftly the sands were running out. When he had arrived a fortnight
  ago, the take-off still seemed a remote event in the indefinite future.
  That was the general impression in the outside world; now it seemed
  completely false. He turned to Matthews in genuine bewilderment.
  "Your Public Relations Department," he complained, "seems to have misled
  everyone pretty efficiently. What's the idea?"
 "It's purely, a matter of policy," replied the other.
 aIn the old days we had to talk big and make spectacur promises to attract
 any attention at all. Now we prefer to say as little as possible until
 everything's cut and dried. It's the only way to avoid fantastic rumors and
 the resulting sense of anticlimax. Do you remember the KY 15? She was the
 first manned ship to reach an altitude of a thousand miles-but months before
 she was ready everyone thought that we were going to send her to the Moon.
 They were disappointed, of course, when she did exactly what she'd been
 designed for. So nowaidays I sometimes call my office the 'Department of
 Negative Publicity.' It will be quite_a relief when the whole thing's over
 and we can go into forward gear again."
           PRELUDE TO SPACE      29

  This, thought Dirk, was a very self-centered outlook. It seemed to him
  that the five men he had just been watching had far better reasons for
  wishing that the, "whole thing was over."

 5
 "So far," wrote Dirk in his Journal that night, "I've only nibbled round the
 edges of Interplanetary. Matthews has kept me orbiting around him like a
 minor planet-I must reach parabolic velocity and escape elsewhere. (I'm
 beginning to pick up the language, as he promised!),
  "The people I want to meet now are the scientists and engineers who are the
  real driving force behind the organization. What makes them tick, to put it
  crudely? Are they a lot of Frankensteins merely interested in a technical
  project without any regard for its consequences? Or do 'they see, perhaps
  more clearly than McAndrews and Matthews, just where all this is going to
  lead? M. and M. sometimes remind me of a couple of real-estate agents
  trying to sell the Moon. They're doing a job, and doing it well-but someone
  must have inspired them in the first place. And in any case, they are a
  grade or two from the top of the hierarchy.
  "The Director-General seemed a very interesting personality when I met him
  for those few minutes the day I arrived-but I can hardly go and catechize
  him! The Deputy D.-G. might have been a good bet, since we're both
  Californians, but he's not back from the States.
  "Tomorrow I get the 'Astronautics Without Tears' course that Matthews
  promised me when I came. Apparently it's a six-reel instructional film, and
  I've not been able to see it before because no one in this hotbed of genius
  was able to repair a thirty-five-millimeter
 30     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 projector. When I've sat through it, Alfred swears I'll be able'to hold my
 own with the astronomers.
  "As a good historian, I suppose I should have no prejudices one way or the
  other, but should be capable of watching Interplanetary's activities with
  a dispassionate eye. It isn't working out that way. I'm beginning to worry
  more and more. about the ultimate consequences of this work, and the
  platitudes that Alfred and Mac keep bringing up don'i satisfy me at all. I
  suppose that's why I'm now anxious to get hold of the top scientists and
  hear their views. Then, perhaps, I'll be able to pass judgment-if it's my
  job to pass judgment.
  "Later. Of course it's my job. Look at Gibbon, look at Toynbee. Unless an
  historian draws conclusions (right or wrong) he's merely a file clerk.
  "Later Still. How could I, have forgotten? Tonight I came up to Oxford
  Circus in one of the new turbine buses. It's very quiet, but if you listen
  carefully you can hear it singing to itself in a faint, extremely high
  soprano. The Londoners are excessively proud of them, since they're the
  first in the world. I don't understand why a simple thing like a bus should
  have taken almost as long to develop as a spaceship, but they tell me it
  has. Something to do with engineering economics, I believe.
 I "I decided to walk to the flat, and coming out of Bond Street I saw
 a'gilded, horse-drawn van looking as if it had rolled straight out of
 Pickwick. It was delivering goods for some tailor, I believe, and the
 ornamental lettering said: 'Est. 1768.'
  "This sort of thing makes the British very disconcerting people to a
  foreigner. Of course, McAndrews would say that it's the English, not the
  British, who are crazy -but I refuse to draw this rather fine distinction."
 6
 "You'll excuse me for leaving you," said Matthews apologetically, "but
 although it's a very good film, rd scream the pJace down if I had to see it
 again. At a guess I've sat through it at least fifty times already."
  -fiat!s O.K.," laughed Dirk, from the depths of his seat in the little
  auditorium. "It's the first time Ive -ever been the only customer at a
  movie, so it will be a novel experience."
 I "Right. I'll be ' back when it's finished. If you'want any reels run
 through again, just tell the operator."
  Dirk settled back into the seat. It was, he'reffected, just not comfortable
  enough to encourage one to relax and take life easily. Which showed good
  sense on the part of the designer, since this cinema was a strictly
  functional establishment.
  The title with a few brief credits flashed on the screen.

THE ROAD TO SPACE
Technical advice and special effects by Interplanetary.
Produced by Eagle-Lion.

  The screen was dark. then, in its center, a narrow band of starlight
  appeared. It slowly widened, and Dirk realized that he was beneath the
  opening hemispheres of some great observatory dome. The star-field com-
  menced to expand: he was moving toward it. ' ,
  "For two thousand years," said a quiet voice, "men
 have dreamed of journeys to othe ' r worlds. The stones
 of interplanetary flight are legion, but not until our
 own age was the machine perfected which could make
 these dreams come true."
  Something dark was silhouetted against the starfield-something slim and
  pointed and eager to be away. The scene lightened and the stars vanished.

               31
 32     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 Only the great rocket remained, its -silver hull glistening in the sunlight
 as it rested upon the desert.
  The sands seemed to boil as the blast ate into them. Then the giant
  projectile was climbing steadily. as if along an invisible wire. The camera
  tilted upward: the rocket foreshortened and dwindled into the sky. Less
  than a minute later, only the twisting vapor-trail was lefL
  "In 1942," continued the narrator, "the first of the great modem rockets
  was launched in secret from the Baltic shore. This was V.2, intended for
  the destruction of London. Since it was the prototype of all later ma-
  chines, and of the spaceship itself, let us examine it in detail." ,
  There followed a series of sectional drawings of V.2, showing all the
  essential components-the fuel tanks, the pumping system and the motor
  itself. By means of animated cartoons, the operation of the whole machine
  was demonstrated so clearly_that no one. could fail to understand it.
  .V.2," continued the voice, "could reach Altitudes of over one hundred
  miles, and after the War was used extensively for research into the
  ionosphere."
  There were some spectacular shots of New Mexico firings in the late 1940's,
  and some even more spectacular ones of faulty take-offs and other forms of
  misbehavior.
  "As you see, it was not always reliable and it was soon superseded by more
  powerful and readily controlled machines-such as these----?'
  The smooth torpedo-shape was being replaced by long, thin needles that went
  whistling up into the sky and came floating back beneath billowing
  parachutes. One after another speed and altitude records were being
  smashed. And in 1959 ...
  "This is the 'Orphan Annie' being assembled. She consisted of four separate
  stages, or 'steps,' each dropping off wheiPits fuel supply -was exhausted.
  Her initial weight was a hundred tons-her payload only twenty-five pounds.
  But that payload of magnesium
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     33

 powder was the first object from Earth to reach another world."
  The Moon filled the screen, her craters glistening whitely and her long
  shadows lying, sharp and black, across the desolate plains. She was rather
  less than half full, and the ragged line of the terminator enclosed a great
  oval of darkness. Suddenly, in the heart of that hidden land, -a tiny but
  brilliant spark of light flared for a moment and was gone. "Orphan Annie'
  had achieved her destiny.
  "But all these rockets were pure projectiles: no human being had yet risen
  above the atmosphere and returned safely to Earth. The first manned
  machine, carrying a single pilot to an altitude of two hundred miles, was
  the 'Aurora Australis,; which was launched in 1962. By this time all
  long-range rocket research was based upon the great proving-grounds built
  in the Australian desert.
  "After the 'Aurora' came other and more powerful ships, and in 1970,
  Lonsdale and McKinley, in an American machine, made the first orbital
  flights around the world, circling it three times before landing.
  There was a breathtaking sequence, obviously speeded up many times, showing
  almost the whole Earth spinning below at an enormous rate. It made Dirk
  quite dizzy for a moment, and when he had recovered the narrator was
  talking about the force of gravity. He explained how it held everything to
  the Earth, and how it weakened with distance but never vanished completely.
  More animated diagrams showed how a body could be given such a speed that
  it would. circle the world forever, balancing gravity against centrifugal
  force just as the Moon does in its own orbit. This was illustrated by a man
  whirling a stone around his head at the end of a piece of string. Slowly he
  lengthened the string, but still kept the stone circling, more and more
  slowly.
 "Near the Earth," explained the voice,. "bodies have
 34     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 to travel at five miles a second to remain in stable orbits-but the Moon,.
 a quarter of a million miles away in a much weaker gravitational field, need
 move at only a tenth of this speed. -
  '~But what happens if a body, such as a rocket, leaves the Earth at more
  than five miles a second? Watch ... 21
  A model of the Earth appeared, floating in space. Above the equator a tiny
  point was moving, tracing out a circular path.
  "Here is a rocket, traveling at five miles a second just outside the
  atmosphere. You will see -that its path is a perfect circle. Now, if we
  increase its speed to six miles a second the rocket still travels round the
  Earth in a closed orbit, but its path has become an ellipse. As the speed
  increases still further, the ellipse becomes longer and longer and the
  rocket goes far out into space. But it aways returns.
  "However, if we increase the rocket's initial speed to seven miles a second
  the ellipse becomes a parabola -so-and the rocket has escaped for ever.
  Earth's gravity can never recapture it: it- -is now traveling through space
  like a tiny, man-made comet. If the Moon were in the right.position, our
  rocket would crash into it like the 'Orphan Annie."'
  That, of course, was the last thing one wanted'a spaceship to do. There was
  a long explanation then, showing all the stages of a hypothetical lunar
  voyage. The commentator showed how much fuel must be carried for a safe
  landing, and how much more was needed for a safe return- He touched lightly
  on the problems of navigation in space, and explained how provision could
  be made for the safety of the crew. Finally he ended:
  "With chemically propelled rockets we have achieved much, but to conquer
  space, and not merely to make short-lived raids into it, we must harness
  the limitless forces of atomic energy. At present, atomically driven
  rockets are still in their infancy: they are
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     35

 dangerous and uncertain. But within a few years we shall have perfected
 them, and mankind win have taken its first great stride along the Road to
 Space."
  The voice had grown louder; there was a throbbing background of music. Then
  Dirk seemed to be suspended motionless in space, a few hundred feet from
  the ground. There was just time for him to pick out a few scattered
  buildings and to realize that he was in a rocket that had just been
  launched. Then the sense of time returned: the desert began to drop away,
  with accelerating speed. A range of low hills came into view and was
  instantly foreshortened intor flatness. The picture was slowly rotating,
  and abruptly a coastline cut across his field of' vision. The scale
  contracted remorselessly, -and with a sudden shock he realized that he was
  now seeing the whole coast of Southern Austrailia.
  The rocket was no longer accelerating, but was sweeping away from Earth at
  a speed not far short of escape velocity. The twin islands of New Zealand
  swam into view-and then, at the edge of the picture, appeared a line of
  whiteness which for a moment he thought was a cloud.
  Something seemed to catch at Dirk's throat when he realized that he was
  looking down upon the eternal icewalls of the Antarctic. He remembered the
  Discovery,, moored not half a mile away. His. eye could encompass in a
  moment the whole of the land over which ~Scott and his companions, less
  than a lifetime ago, had struggled and died.
  And then the edge of the world reared. up before him. The wonderfully
  efficient gyro-stabilizAtion was beginning to fail and the camera wandered
  away into space. For a Iong time, it seemed, there was blackness and night;
  then, without warning, the camera came full upon the sun and the screen was
  blasted with light-
  When the Earth returned, he could see the entire hemisphere spread beneath
  him. The picture froze once, more and the music stilled, so that he had
  time
 36     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 to pick out the continents and, oceans on that remote and unfamiliar world
 below.
  For long minutes that distant globe hung there before his eyes; then,
  slowly, it dissolved. The lesson was over, but he would not soon forget
  it.

 7
 On the whole, Dirk's relations with the two young draftsmen who shared the
 office were cordial. They were not quite sure of his official position
 (that, he sometimes thought, made three of them) and so treated him with an
 odd mixture of deference and familiarity. There was one respect, however, in
 which they annoyed him intensely.
  It seemed to Dirk that there were only two attitudes to adopt towards
  interplanetary ffight. Either one was for it, or one was against it. What
  he could not understand was a position of complete indifference. These
  youngsters (he -himself, of course, was a good five years older) earning
  their living in -the very heart of Interplanetary itself, did not seem to
  have the slightest interest in the project. They drew their plans and made
  their calculations just as enthasiastically as if they were preparing
  drawings for washing machines instead of spaceships. They, were, however,
  prepared to show traces of vivacity when defending their attitudes.
  "The trouble with you, Doc," said the elder, Sam, one afternoon,- "is that
  you take life too seriously. It doesn't pay. Bad for the arteries and that
  sort of
   99
 thing.
  "Unless some people did a bit of worrying," re~ torted Dirk, "there'd be
  no jobs for lazy so-and-sos like you and Bert."
  "What's wrong with,that?" said Bert. "They ought to be grafteful. - If it
  wasn't for chaps like Sam and
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     37

 me,. they'd have nothing to worry about and would die of frustration. Most
 of 'em do, anyway."
  Sam shifted his cigarette. (Did he use glue to keep it dangling from his
  lower lip at that improbable angle?)
  "You're always agitating about the past, which is dead and done with, or
  the future, which we won't be around to see. Why not relax and enjoy
  yourself for a change?"' -
  "I am enjoying myself," said Dirk. "I don't suppose you realize that there
  are people who happen to like work."
  "They kid themselves into thinking they do," explained Bert. "It's all a
  matter of conditioning. We were smart enough to dodge it.'.'
  "I think," said Dirk admiringly, "that if you keep on devoting so much
  energy to concocting excuses to avoid work, you'll evolve a new philosophy.
  The philosophy of Futilitarianism."
  "Did you make that up on the spur of the moment?"
 "No," confessed Dirk.
  "I thought not. Sounded as if you'd been saving it UP. 99

  "Tell me," Dirk asked, "'don't you feel any intellectual curiosity about
  anything?"
  "Not particularly, as long as I know where MY next pay check's coming
  from."
  They were pulling his leg, of course, and they knew he knew it. Dirk
  laughed and went on:
  "It, seems to me that Public Relations has overlooked a nice little oasis
  of inertia right on its own doorstep. Why, I don't believe you care a hoot
  whether the 'Prometheus' reaches the Moon or not!"
  "I wouldn't say that," protested Sam. "I've got a fiver on her."
  Before Dirk could think of a suitably blistering reply, the door was thrown
  open and Matthews apPeated. Sam and Bert, with smoothly co-ordinated mo-
   38      PRELUDE TO SPACE

 tions that eluded the eye, were instantly hard at work among their drawings.
  Matthews was obviously in a hurry.
  "Want a free tea?" he said.
  "It depends. Where?"
  "House of Commons. You were saying the other day that you'd never been
  there."
  "This sounds interesting. What's it all about?"
  "Grab your things and I'll tell you on the way~"
  In the taxi, Matthews relaxed and explained.
  "We often get jobs like this," he said. "Mae was supposed to be coming, but
  he's had to go. to New York and won!t be back for a couple of days. So I
  thought you might like to come a-long. For the record, you can be one of
  our legal advisers."
  "This is very thoughtful of you," said Dirk gratofully. "Who are we going
  to seeT'
  "A dear old chap named Sir Michael Flannigan. Hes an Irish Tory-very much
  so. Some of his constituents don't hold with these new-fangled spaceships
  -they've probably never really got used to the Wright Brothers. So we have
  to go along and explain what it's all about."
  "No doubt you'll succeed in allaying his doubts,"
 said Dirk as they drove past County Hall and turned
 on to Westra ' inster Bridge.
  "I hope so; I've got a line which I think should fix things very nicely."
  They passed under the shadow of Big Ben and drove for a hundred yards along
  the side of -the great Gothic building. The entrance at which they stopped
  was an inconspicuous archway leading into a long hall which seemed very
  remote from the bustle of traffic in the square outside. It was cool and
  quiet, and to Dlrk the feeling of age and centuries-old traditions was
  overwhelming.
  Climbing a short ffight of steps, they found themselves in a large chamber
  from which corridors radiated in several directions. A small crowdwas
  milling around, and people sat in expectant attitudes along
           PRELUDE TO SPACE      39

 wooden benches. On the right a reception desk was flanked by a stout
 policeman in fuU regalia, helmet and A
  Matthews walked up to the desk, and collected a form which he filled in and
  handed to the policeman. Nothing -happened for some time. Then a uniformed
  official appeared, shouted a string of quite incomprehensible words, and
  gathered the forms from the policeman. He then vanished down one of the
  corridors.
  "What on earth did he say?" hissed Dirk in the silence that had suddenly
  descended.
  "He said that Mr. Jones, Lady Carruthers, and someone else whose name I
  couldn!t catch, aren't in the House at the moment."
  The message must have been generally understood, for groups of disgruntled
  constituents began to drift out of the chamber, foiled of their prey.
  "Now we've got to wait," said Matthews, "but it shoul(Wt be long, as we're
  expected."
  From time to time in the next ten minutes other names were called, and
  occasionally members arrived to collect their guests. Sometimes Matthews
  pointed out a notable of whom Dirk had never heard, though he did.his best
  to disguise the fact.
  Presently he noticed that the policemdn was pointing them out to a tall
  young man who was very far from his conceptions of an elderly Irish
  baronet.
  The young man came over to them.
  "How do you do?-" he, said. "My name is Fox. Sir Michael is engaged for a
  few moments, so he asked me to look after you. Pexhaps you'd care to listen
  to the debate until. Sir Michaers free?"
  "I'm suxe we would," Matthews replied, a little too heartily. Dirk guessed
  that the experience was not particularly novel to him, but he was delighted
  at the chance of witnessing Parliament in action.
  They followed their guide through interminable corridors and beneath
  numberless archways. Finally he handed them over to an ancient attendant
  who
 40                          1 PRELUDE TO SPACE I

 might very well have witnessed the signing of Magna Carta.
  "He'll find you a good seat," promised Mr. Fox. "Sir Michael will be along
  for you in~ a few minutes."
  They thanked him and followed the attendant up a winding stairway.
 "Who was that?" asked Dirk.
  "Robert Fox-Labour M.P. for Taunton," explained Matthews. "That's one thing
  about the House
  everyone always helps everybody else. Parties don't matter as muchas
  outsiders might think-,, He turned to the attendant.
 "What's being debated now?"
  'The Second Reading of the Soft Drinks (Control) Bill," said the ancient in
  a funereal-voice.
  "Oh,. dearl" said Matthews. "Let's hope it is only for a few minutesl"
  The benches high in the gallery gave them a good view of the debating
  chamber. Photographs had made his surroundings quite familiar to~Dirk, but
  he had always pictured a scene of animation with members rising to cry "On
  a point of orderl" or, better still, "Shamel" "Withdrawl" and other
  Parliamentary noises. Instead, he saw about thirty languid gentlemen draped
  along the benches while a junior minister read a not-very-enthralling
  schedule of prices and profits. While he watched, two members gimultane-
  ously decided that they had had enough and, with little curtseys to the
  Speaker, hastily withdrew-no doubt, thought Dirk, in search of - drinks
  that were not particularly soft.
  His attention wandered from the scene below and he examined the great
  chamber around him. It seemed very well preserved for its age, and it was
  wonderful to think of 'the historic scenes it had witnessed down the
  centuries, right back to--
  "Looks pretty good, doesn't it?" whispered Matthews. "It was only finished
  in 1950, you know."
 Dirk came back to earth with a bump.
 "Good heavenst I thought it was centuries oldl"
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     41

  "Oh, no: Ifitler wrote off the earlier chamber in the Blitz."
  ,Dirk felt rather annoyed with himself for not remembering this, and turned
  his attention once more to the debate. There were now fifteen members pres-
  ent on the Government side, while the Conservative and Labour parties on
  the Opposition benches could only muster a bakees dozen between them
  The paneled door against which they were sitting opened abrvptly, and a
  smiling round face beamed at them. Matthews shot to his feet as their host
  greeted them withrnany apologies. Oat in the corridor, where voices could
  be ridsed again, introductions were effected and they followed Sir Michael
  through yet more passages to the restaurant. Dirk decided that he had never
  seen so many acres of wooden paneling in his life.
  The old baronet must have been well over seventy, but he walked with a
  springy step and his complexion was almost cherubic. His tonsured pate made
  the resemblance to some medieval abbot so striking that Dirk felt he. had
  just stepped into Glastonbury or Wells before the dissolution of the
  monasteries. Yet if he closed his eyes, Sir Michael's accent transported
  him instantly to metropolitan New York. The last time he had encountered a
  brogue like that, its owner had been handing him a ticket for passiiqg a
  "Stop" sign.
  They sat down to tea and Dirk carefully declined the offer of coffee.
  During the meal they discussed trivialities and avoided the object of the
  meeting. it was only broached when they had moved out on to the long
  terrace flanking the Thames which, Dirk could not help thinking, was a.
  scene of much greater activity than the debating chamber itself. Little
  groups of people stood or sat around, talking briskly, and there was much
  coming and going of messengers. Sometimes the members would, en masse,
  disengage themselves apologetically from their guests and dash off to
  register their votes. During one of
 42     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 these lacunae, Matthews did his best to make Parliamentary procedure clear
 to Dirk.
  "You'll realize," he said, "that most of the work is done in the committee
  rooms. Except during important debates, only the specialists or the members
  who are particularly interested are actually in the Chamber. The others are
  working on reports or seeing constituents mi their little cubbyholes all
  over the building."'
  "Now, boys," boomed Sir Michael as he returned, baving collected a tray of
  drinks on the way, "tell me about this scheme of yours for going to the
  Moon."
  Matthews cleared his throat, and Dirk pictured his mind running rapidly
  through all the possible opening gambits.
  "Well, Sir Michael," he began, "ies only a logical extension of what
  mankind's been doing since history began. For thousands of years the human
  race has been spreading over the world until the whole globe has been
  explored and colonized. The time's now come to make the next step and to
  cross space to the other planets. Humanity must always have new frontiers,
  new horizons. Otherwise it will sooner or later sink back into decadence.
  Interplanetary travers the next stage in our development, and it will be
  wise to take it before it's forced upon us by shortage of raw materials or
  space. And there are also psychological reasons for space flight. Many
  years ago someone likened our little Earth to a goldfish bowl inside which
  the human mind couldn't keep circling forever with stagnation. The world
  was big enough for mankind in the days of the stagecoach and the sailing
  ship, but it's far too small now that we can round it in a couple of
  hours."
  Matthews leaned back to watch the effect of his shock tactics. For a moment
  Sir Michael looked a little dazed: then he made a quick recovery and downed
  the remainder of his drink.
 "It's all a little overwhelming," he said ruefully.
           PRELUDE TO SPACE      43

 "But what will you do when you get to the Moon, anyway?"
  "You must realize," said Matthews, pressing on r&morselessly, "that the
  Moon's only the beginning. Fifteen million square miles is quite a good
  beginning, to be sure, but we only look upon it as a steppingstone to the
  planets. As you know, there's no free air or water there, so the first
  colonies will have to be totally enclosed. But the low gravity will make it
  easy to build very large structures and plans have been drawn up for whole
  cities under great transparent domes.
  "Seems to me," said Sir Michael shrewdly, "that you're going to take your
  'goldfish bowls' with youl"
  Matthews nearly smiled.
  "A good point," he conceded, "but probably the
 Moon will be mainly -used by the astronomers and physicists for scientific
 research. It's enormously important to them, and whole new areas of
 knowledge will be opened up when they can build labs and observatories up
 there."
  "And will that make the world a better or a happier place?"
  'Mat, as always, depends on humanity. Knowledge is neutral, but one must
  possess it to do either good or ill." -
  Matthews waved his arm along the great river moving sluggishly past them
  between its crowded banks.
  "Everything you can see, everything in our modem world, -is possible
  because of the knowledge which men won in ancient times. And civilization
  isn't static: if it stands still, it will die."
  Ihere was silence for a while. Almost in spite of himself, Dirk felt deeply
  impressed. He wondered if he had been wrong in thinking that Matthews was
  merely an efficient salesman, propagating the ideals of others. Was he no
  more than a talented instrumentalist, performing a piece of music with
  complete
 44      PRELUDE TO SPACE

 technical skill but without any real feeling? He could not be sure.
 Matthews, extrovert though he was, concealed depths of reserve which Dirk
 could never plumb. In this, though, in no other respect, he filled the
 specifications of that fabulous creature, the typIcal Englishman.
  "I've had a good many letters," said Sir Michael presently, "from friends
  of mine in Ireland who don't like, the idea at all and think we were never
  intended to leave the Earth. What am I to say to them?"
  "Remind them of history," replied Matthews. "Tell them that we're
  explorers, and ask them not to forget that once upon a time someone had to
  discover Irelandl" He gave Dirk a glance as if to say: "Here it comes."
  "Imagine that it's five centuries ago, Sir Michael and that my name's
  Christopher Columbus. You want to know why I'm anxious to sail westward
  across the Atlantic, and I've tried to give you my reasons. I don't know
  whether they've convinced you: you may not be particularly interested in
  opening up alnew route to the Indies. But this is the important
  point-neither of us can imagine just how much this voyage is going to mean
  to the world. Tell your ftienA Sir Michael, to think what a diflerence it
  would have made to Ireland if America had never been discovered. The Moon's
  a bigger place than North and South America combined-and it's only the
  first and smallest of the worlds we're going to reach."

  The great reception hall was almost deserted when they said good-bye to Sir
  Michael. He still seemed a trifle dazed when they shook hands and parted.
  "I hope that settles the Irish question for a while," said Matthews as they
  walked out of the building into the shadow of the Victoria Tower. "What did
  you think of the old boy?"
 "He seemed a grand character. I'd give a lot to
           PkELUDE TO SPACE      45

hear him explaining your ideas to his constituents." .,yes,,, Matthews replied,
 "that should be- rather entertaining.19
  They walked on for a couple of yards, past the main entrance and toward the
  bridge. Then Matthews said abrupt;y:
  "What do you think of it all, anyway?"
  Dirk hedged.
  "I think I agree with you-logically," he said. "But somehow I can't feel
  about it the way you seem to do. Later, perhaps, I may-1 just can't tell."
  He looked at the great city around him, throbbing with life and commerce.
  It seemed as ageless and eternal as the hills: whatever the future brought,
  surely this could never pass awayl Yet Matthews had been right, and he of
  all people should recognize it. Civilization could never stand still. Over
  the very ground on which he was walking, the mammoth had once come
  trampling through the rushes at the river's edge. They, and not the ape-men
  watching. from their caves, had been the masters of this land. But the day
  of the ape had dawned at last: the forests and swamps had given way before
  the might of his michines. Dirk knew now that the story was merely
  beginning. Even at this moment, on far worlds beneath strange suns, Time
  and the Gods were preparing for Man the sites of cities yet to be.

 8
 Sir Robert Derwent, M.A., F.R.S., Director-General of Interplanetary, was a
 rather tough-looking character who invariably, reminded people of the late
 Winston Churchill. The resemblance was somewhat spoiled by his addiction to
 pipes, of which, according to rumor, he possessed two
 varieties-----~'Normal" and "Emergency." The "Emergency" model was always
 kept fully
   46       PRELUDE TO~SPACN

   fuelled so that it could be brought into action at once when unwelcome
   visitors arrived. The secret mixture used for this purpose was believed
   to consist largely of sulphureted tea leaves.
     Sir Robert w ' as such a striking personality that a
   host of legends had grown up around him. Many of
   these had been concocted by his assistants, who would
   have gone through Hell for their chief-and frequently
   did, since his command of language was not that nor
   mally expected of an ex-Astronomer Royal. He was
   no respecter of persons or proprieties, and some of
   his retorts to famous but not excessively intelligent
   questioners had become historic. Even Royalty had
   been glad to disengage itself from his fire on one cele
   brated occasion. Yet despite all this fagade, he was at
   heart a kindly and sensitive person. A good many peo
   ple suspected this, but very few had ever been able to
   prove it to their satisfaction.
  At the age of sixty, and three times a grandfather, Sir Robert appeared to
  be a rather well-preserved forty-five. Like his historic double, he
  attributed this to a careful neglect of all the elementary rules of health
  and a steady intake of nicotine. A brilliant reporter had once aptly called
  him "A scientific Francis Drake-one of the astronomical explorers, of the
  J Second Elizabethan Age."
    There was nothing very Elizabethan about the Director-Gene'ral -as he sat
    reading the day's mail beneath a faint nimbus of tobacco smoke. He dealt
    with his correspondence at an astonishing rate, stacking the letters in
    small piles as he finished them. From time to time he filed a communi
    ation directly into the wastepaper basket, from which his staff would
    carefully retrieve it for inclusion in a voluminou
   folder with the elegant title "NUTS." About one per cent of
   Interplanetary's incoming mail came under this category.
    He had just finished when the office door opened and Dr. Groves,
    Interplanetary's psychological ad-
               PRELUDE TO SPACE     47

 viser, came in with a Me of reports. Sir Robert looked at him morosely.
  "Well, you bird qI ill-omen-what's all this fuss about young Hassell? I
  thought that everything was under control."
 Groves looked worried as he laid down the folder.
  "So did 1, until a few weeks ago. Until then all five of the boys were
  shaping well and showing no
 of strain. Then we noticed that Vic was being worried by something, and I
 finally had it out with him Yesterday."
 "It's his wife, I suppose?"
  "Yes. The whole thing's very unfortunate. Vic's just the sort of father who
  gives trouble at the best of times, and Maude Hassell doesn't know that
  hell probably be on his way to the Moon when the boy arrives."
 The D.-G. raised his eyebrows.
  "You know ies a boy?"
  "The Weismann-Mathers treatment is ninety-five per cent certain. Vic wanted
  a son-just in case he didn't get back."
 . "I see. How do you think Mrs. Hassell will react when she knows? Of
 course, it still isn't certain that Vic is going to be in the crew."
  "I think she'll be a right. But Vic's the one who's worrying. How did you
  feel when your first kid arrived?"
 Sir Robert grinned.
  "That's digging into the past. As it happens, I was away myself-7on an
  eclipse expedition. I very nearly smashed a coronograph, so I understand
  Vic's point Of view. But it's a damned nuisance; you'll just have to reason
  with him. Tell him to have it out with his wife, but ask her not to say
  anything. Are there any other complications likely to arise?"
 "Not that I can foresee. But you never can tell."
 "No, you can't, can you?"
 The Director-Ge.neral's eyes strayed to the little
 48     PRELUDE TO SPACE
 motto in its frame at the back of his desk. Dr. Groves could,not see
 them-from where he sat, but he knew the lines by heart and they had often
 intrigued him:

      "There is always a thing forgotten
        Whenever the world goes well."

 One day, he'd have to ask where that came from.
 I Part Two
 Two hundred and seventy miles above the Earth, "Beta" was making her third
 circuit of the globe. Skirting the atmosphere like a tiny satellite, she was
 completing one revolution every ninety minutes. Unless the pilot turned on
 her motors again, she would remain here forever, on'the frontiers of space.
  Yet, "Beta" was a creature of the upper atmosphere rather than the deeps of
  space. Like those fish which sometimes clamber on to the land, she was
  venturing outside her true element, and her great wings were now useless
  sheets of metal burning beneath the savage sun. Not. until she returned to
  the air far beneath would they be of any service again
  Fixed upon "Beta's" back was a streamlined torpedo that might, at first
  glance, have been taken for another rocket. But there were no observation
  ports, no motor nozzles, no signs of landing gear. The sleek metal shape
  was almost featureless, like a giant bomb awaiting the moment of release.
  It was the first of the fuel containers for "Alpha," holding tons of liquid
  methane which would be pumped into the spaceship's tanks when it was ready
  to make its voyage.
  "Beta" seemed to be hanging motionless against the ebon sky, while the
  Earth itself turned, beneath her. The technicians aboard the ship, checking
  their in-
  
               51
 52     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 struments and, relaying their findings to the control stations on the planet
 below, were in no particular hurry. It made little difference to them
 whether they circled the Earth once or a dozen times. They would stay in
 their orbit until they were satisfied with their testsunless, as the chief
 engineer had remarked, they were forced down earlier by a shortage of
 cigarettes.
  Presently, minute pufls of gas spurted along the line of contact between
  "Beta" and the fuel tank upon her back. The explosive bolts connecting them
  had been sheared. very slowly, at the rate of a few feet a minute, the
  great tank began to drift away from the ship.
  In the hull of "Beta" an airlock door opened and two men floated out in
  their unwieldy spacesuits. With ~short bursts of gas from tiny cylinders,
  they directed themselves toward the drifting fuel tank and bqgan to inspect
  it carefully. One of them opened a little hatch and started to.take
  instrument readings, while the other began a survey of the hull with a
  portable leak detector.
  Nothing else happened for nearly an hour, apart from occasional spurts of
  vapor from "Betas" auxiliary steering jets. The pilot was turning her so
  that she pointed against her orbital motion, and was obviously taking his
  time over the- maneuver. A distance of nearly a hundred feet now lay
  between "Beta" and the fuel tank she had carried up from Earth. It was hard
  to realize that during their slow separation the two bodies had almost
  circled the Earth.
  The space-suited engineers had finished their task. Slowly they jetted back
  to the waiting ship and the airlock door closed again behind them. There
  was another long pause as the pilot waited for the exact moment to begin
  braking.
  Quite suddenly, a stream of unbearable incandescence jetted from "Beta's"
  stern. The white-hot gases seemed to form a solid bar of light. To the men
  in the ship, normal weight would have returned again as the motors started
  to thrust. Every five seconds, "Beta" was losing a hundred miles an hour of
  her speed. She
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     53

 was breaking her orbit, and would soon be falling back to Earth.
  The intolerable flame of the atomic rocket flickered and died. Once more
  the little controlling jets spurted vapor. the pilot was in a hurry now as
  he swung the ship round on.her axis again. Out in space, one orientation
  was as good as another-but in a few minutes the ship would be entering
  atmosphere and must be pointing in the direction of her motion.
  It would always be a tense moment, waiting for that flrst contact. To the
  men in the ship, it came in the form of a gentle but irresistible tugging
  of their seatstraps. Slowly it increased, minute by minute, until presently
  there came the faintest whisper of sound through the insulation of the
  walls. They were trading altitude for speed--speed which they could only
  lose against air-resistance. If the rate of exchange was too great, the
  stubby wings would snap, the hull would turn to molten metal, and the ship
  would crash in meteoric ruin down through a hundred miles of sky.
  The wings were biting again into the thin air streaming past them at
  eighteen thousand miles an hour. Although the control surfaces were still
  useless, the ship would soon be responding sluggishly to their commands.
  Even without the use of his engines, the pilot could choose a landing spot
  almost anywhere on Earth. He was flying a hypersonic glider whose speed had
  given it world-wide range.
  Very slowly, the ship was settling down through the stratosphere, losing
  speed minute by minute. At little more than a thousand miles an hour, the
  air-scoops of the ramiets were opened and the atomic furnaces began to glow
  with deadly life. Streams of burning air were being blasted from the
  nozzles and in its wake the ship was leaving the familiar reddish-brown
  tinge of nitric oxides. It was riding the atmosphere again, safely under
  power,. and could turn once more for home.
  Thefinal test was over. Almost three hundred miles above, exchanging night
  and day every forty nunutes,
 54     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 the first fuel tank was spinning in its eternal orbit. In a few days its
 companions would be launched in the same path, by the same means. They would
 be lashed together, awaiting the moment when they would pour their contents
 into the empty tanks of "Alpha" and speed the spaceship on the journey to
 the Moon...

 As Matthews put it, the "Department of Negative Publicity" had gone into
 forward gear at last-and once started, it changed rapidly into top. The
 successful lautiching of the first fuel container, and the safe retam of
 "Beta" showed that everything that could be checked was functioning
 perfectly. The now fully trained crew would be leaving for Australia in a
 few days, and the need for secrecy Was past.
  A hilarious morning was spent at Southbank as th6
 p I ress r!,ports of the first visit to the "Nursery" came in.
 The science editors of the great,dailies, had, as usual,
 produced reason;kbly accurate accounts: but some of
 the smaller papers, who had sent along sports reporters,
 dramatic critics, or anyone else who happened to be
 handy, had printed some truly marvelous stories. Mat
 thews spent most of the day in a state of mingled mirth
 and mortification, launching a telephonic barrage in
 the general direction of Fleet Street. Dirk warned him
 that it would be wise to save most of his indignation for
 the arrival of the transatlantic press reports. .
  Hassell, Leduc, Clinton, Richards and Taine promptly became the targets of
  almost unparalleled curiosity. Their life-stories (thoughtfully mimeo-
  graphed well in advance by Public Relations) were promptly serialized in
  newspapers all over the word. Offers of matrimony poured in by every post,
  descending impartially upon the married and the unmarried men alike.
  Begging letters also arrived in hordes: -as
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     55-
 Richards remarked wryly: "Everyone except lifeinsurance agents wants to-sell
 us something."
 The affairs of Inter
             ,planetary were now moving toward their climax with the
             smoothness of a military operation. In a week, the crew and all
             the higher staff would be leaving for Australia. With them would
             go everyone else who, could possibly think of a suitable excuse.
             During the next few days many preoccupied expressions were to
             be seen around the building. Junior. clerks had a habit of
             -suddenly discovering sick aunts in Sydney or impecunious
             cousins in Canberra who required their presence immediately.
  The idea of the farewell party had, it seemed, originated in the
  Director-General's mind and had, been enthusiastically taken up by
  McAndrews, who was annoyed at not having thought of it himself. All the
  headquarters staff was to be invited, as well as large numbers of people
  from industry, the press, the universities, and the innumerable
  organizations with which Interplanetary had dealings. After much whitWng of
  lists and a good deal of heartburning, just over seven hundred invitations
  had been sent out. Even the Chief Accountant, still boggling at the thought
  of a two-thousand-pound "hospitality" item, had been brought to heel by
  threats of exclusion.
  There were a few who thought that these celebrations were premature and it
  would be better to wait until the "Prometheus" returned. To these critics
  it was pointed out that many of the workers on the project would not be
  returning to London after the launch, but would be going back to their own
  countries. This was the last opportunity of getting them all together.
  Pierre Leduc summed up ~the crew's attitude when he said: "If we come back,
  we'll have enough parties then to last us the rest of our lives. If we
  don't, then you ought to give us a good send-off."
  The hotel selected for the bacchanalia was one of the best in London, but
  not one so good that only a few of the executives and practically none of
  the scientists would feel at ease. Speeches, it had been sol-
   56     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 emnly promised, would be kept to a minimum to leave as much time as possible
 for the proper business. This suited Dirk, who had a hatred for orations but
 a considerable fondness for banquets and buffets.
  He arrived ten minutes before the official time, and found Matthews pacing
  up and down the foyer, flanked by a couple of muscular waiters. He
  indicated them without a smile.
  "My strong-arm men," he said. "Look carefully, and you can see the bulges
  in their hip-pockets. We expect lots of gate-crashers, particularly from
  the section of Fleet Street we haven't invited. I'm afraid you'll have to
  look after yourself tonight, but the chaps with 'Steward' on their lapels
  will tell you who's who if there's anyone you want to meet."
  "That's all right," said Dirk, checking his hat and coat. "I hope you get
  time to have a snack now and then while you're holding the fort."
  "My emergency reserves are well organized. YouI get your drinks, by the
  way, from the chaps labeled 'Fuel Technician! We've called all the drinks
  after .some rocket fuel or other, so no one will know what they've got
  until they drink it-if then. But I'll give YOU a tip!$
 "What's that?"
 "Lay ofl the hydrazine hydratel"
  "Thanks for the warning," laughed Dirk. He was somewhat relieved to find,
  a few minutes later, that Matthews had been pulling his leg and that. no
  such disguises had been employed.
  The place filled rapidly in the next half-hour. Dirk did not -know more
  than one person in twenty, and felt a little out in the cold. Consequently
  he kept somewhat nearer the bar than was altogether good for him. From time
  to time he nodded to acquaintances, but most of them were too fully engaged
  elsewhere to join him. He was rather glad when another equally unattached
  guest settled down beside him in search of company.
 They got into conversation in a somewhat desultory
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     57

 manner, and after a while the talk came around, inevitably, to the
 approaching adventure.
  "By the way," said the stranger, -rve not seen you around Interplanetary
  before. Have you been here long?$$
  "Only three weeks or so," said Dirk. "I'm on a special job for the
  University of Chicago."
 "]Indeed?"
  Dirk felt talkative, and the other seemed to show a flattering interest in
  his affairs.
  -rve got to write the official history of the first voy~-age and the events
  leading up to it. This trip is going to be one of the most important things
  that's ever happened, and it's necessary to have a complete record for the
  future." -
  "But surely there'll be thousands of technical reports and newspaper
  accounts?"
  "Quite true: but you forget that they'll be written for contemporaries and
  will assume a background which may only be familiar to present-day readers.
  I have to try and stand outside of Time, as it were, and. produce a record
  which can be read with full understanding ten thousand years from today."
 'Phewl Some jobl"
  "Yes~ it's only become possible recently through the new developments in
  the study of language and meaning, and the perfection of symbolic
  vocabularies. But I'm afraid I'm boring you."
 To his annoyance, the other didn't contradict him.
  "I suppose," said the stranger casually, 44you've got to know the people
  round here pretty well. I mean, you're in rather a privileged position."
  "That's true: they've looked after me excellently and helped me all they
  could."
  "There goes young Hassell," said his companion. "He looks a bit worried,
  but so would I in his shoes. Have you got to know the crew at all well?"
  "Not yet, though 1 hope to do so. I've spoken to Hassell and-Leduc a couple
  of times, but that's all."
 58     PRELUDE TO SPACE

  "Who do you think!s going to be chosen for the trip?"
  Dirk was about to give his not-very-well-informed views on this subject
  when he saw Matthews frantically signaling to him from the other side of
  the room. For a moment alarming possibilities of sartorial disaster raced
  through his mind. Then a slow suspicion dawned, and with a mumbled excuse
  he disengaged himself from his companion.
 A few moments later, Matthews confirmed his fears.
  "Mike Wilkins isone of the best-we used to work together on the News. But
  for goodness' sake be careful what you say to him. If you'd murdered your
  wife he'd get it out of you by asking leading questions about the weather."
  -
  "Still, I don't think theres much I could tell him that he doesn't know
  already."
  "Don't you believe it. Before you know where you are, youll be featured in
  the paper as 'an important official of Interplanetary' and I'll be sending
  out the usual ineffective disclaimers."
 I "I see. How many other reporters have we got among our guests?"
  "About twelve were invited," said Matthews darkly. "I, should just avoid
  all heart-to-heart talks with people you don't know. Excuse me now-I must
  go back on guard duty."
  As far as he was concerned, thought Dirk, the party was hardly going with
  a swing. The Public Relations Department seemed to have an obsession about
  security, which Dirk considered they had pushed to extremes. Howev6r, he
  could understand Matthews' horror of unofficial interviews-he had seen some
  of their gruesome results.
  For quite a time after this Dirk's attention was fully occupied by an
  astonishingly pretty girl who appeared to have arrived without an escort-a
  fact somewhat surprising in itself. He had just, after much vacillation,
  decided to step into the breach when it became all too obvious that the
  escort had merely been engaged
           PRELUDE TO SPACE      59

 on convoy duties elsewhere. Dirk hadn't missed his opportunity: he had never
 had one. He turned once more to philosophical musings.
  His spirits, however, revived considerably during dinner. The meal itself
  was excellent and even the Director-General's speech (which set a limit for
  all the others) only fasted ten minutes. It was, as far as Dirk could
  remember, an extremely witty address full of private jokes which produced
  roars of laughter in some quarters and sickly smiles in others. Interplan-
  etary had always been fond of laughing at itself in private, but only
  recently could.it afford the luxury of doing so in public.
  The remaining few orations were even shorter: several speakers would
  clearly have liked more time, but dared not take it. Finally McAndrews,
  w116' had acted throughout as a very efficient Master of Ceremonies, called
  a toast for the success of the "Prometheus" and her crew.
  Afterwards there was much dancing to the gentle, nostalgic rhythms so
  popular in the late '70s. Dirk, who was a very bad dander at the best of
  times, made several erratic circuits with Mrs. Matthews and the wives of
  other officials before an increasing lack of muscular co-ordination warned
  him off the field. He then sat watching the proceedings through a benevo-
  lent glow, thinking what nice people an his friends were and tut-tutting
  slightly when he noticed dancers who had obviously taken aboard just a
  little too much "fuel."
  It must have been around midnight when he suddenly became aware that
  someone was speaking to him. (He hadn't been asleep, of course, but it was
  refreshing to close one's eyes now and then.) He turned sluggishly and
  found a tall, middle-aged man watching him with some amusement from the
  next chair. To Dirk's surprise, he was not in evening dress and did not
  seem to be worried by the fact.
  "I saw your fraternity badge," said the other by way of introduction. "I'm
  Sigma Xi myself. Only
 60     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 got'back from California this evening-too late for the dinner."
  So that explained the dress, thought Dirk, feeling rather pleased with
  himself at so brilliant a piece of deduction. He shook hands, glad to meet
  a fellow Californian-though he couldn't catch the name. It seemed to be
  something like Mason, but it didn't really matter.
  For some time they discussed American affairs and speculated on the
  Democrats' chances of returning to power. Dirk contended that the Liberals
  would once again hold the balance, and made some brilliant comments on the
  advantages and disadvantages of the three-party system. Strangely enough,
  his companion seemed unimpressed by his wit, and brought the conversation
  back to Interplanetary.
  "You haven't been here very long, have you?" he queried. "How are you
  getting on?"
  Dirk told him, at length. He explained his job, and enlarged lavishly upon
  its scope and importance. When he had finished his work, all subsequent
  eras and all possible planets would realize exactly what the conquest of
  space had meant to the age which had achieved it.
  His friend seemed very interested, though there was a trace of amusement in
  his voice about which Dirk might have to reprimand him, gently but firmly.
  "How have you got on in your contacts with the technical side?" he asked.
  "To tell the truth," sald Dirk sadly, "I've been intending to do something
  about this for the last week. But I'm rather scared of scientists, you
  know. Besides, there's Matthews. He's been very helpful, but he has his own
  ideas of what I should do and Im anxious Xot to hurt his feelings."
 ' That was a deplorably weak sort of statement, but there was a lot of truth
 in it. Matthews had organized everything a little too completely. '
  Thinking of Alfred brought back memories, and Dirk was filled with a sudden
  'grave suspicion. He
  I
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     61

 looked carefully at his companion, determined not to be caught again.
  The fine profile and the wide, intelligent brow were reassuring, but Dirk
  was now too old a hand at the game to be deceived. Alfred, he thought,
  would be proud of the way he was evading definite answers to his
  companion's queries. It was rather a pity, of course, since the other was
  a fellow American and had come a long way in search of a "scoop"; still,
  his first loyalty now was with his hosts.
  The other'must have realized that he was getting nowhere, for presently he
  rose to his feet and . gave Dirk a quizzical smile.
 - "I think," he said, as he took his leave, "that I may be able to put you
 in touch with the right people on the technical side. Ring me tomorrow at
 Extension 3-don't forget-3."
  Then he was gone, leaving Dirk in a highly confused state of mind. His
  fears, it seemed, had been groundless: the fellow belonged to
  Interplanetary after 0. Oh well, it couldn't be helped.
  His next clear recollection was saying good-night to Matthews in the foyer.
  Alfred still seemed annoyingly bright and energetic, and very pleased with
  the success of the party-though it seemed that he had suffered from qualms
  from time to time.
  "During that hom-pipe," he said, "I was quite certain that the floor was
  going to give way. Do you realize that would have delayed the conquest of
  space by at least half a century?"
  Dirk did not feel particularly interested in such metaphysical
  speculations, but as he bade a sleepy good-night he suddenly remembered his
  unknown Californian.
  "By the way," be said, "I got talking with another American-thought he was
  a journalist at first. He'd just arrived in town-you must have seen him-he
  wasn't wearing evening dress. Told me to ring him tomorrow at extension
  something-or-other. Know who he was?"
 62     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 Matthews's eyes twinkled.
  "You thought he was another journalist, did you? I hope you remembered my
  warning."
  "Yes," said Dirk proudly. "I never told him a thing. Though it wouldn't
  have mattered, would it?"
  Matthews pushed him into the cab and slammed the door. He leaned through
  the window for his parting words.
  "No, it certainly wouldn't," he said. "That was only Professor Maxton, the
  Deputy Director-General. Go home and sleep it offl"

 2

 Dirk managed to arrive at the office in time for lunch --a meal Which, he
 noticed, did not seem very popular. He had never seen so few customers in
 the canteen before.
  When he rang up Extension 3 and introduced himself sheepishly, Professor
  Maxton seemed glad to hear him and invited him round at once. He found the
  Deputy D.-G. in the next office to Sir Robert Derwent, almost surrounded
  with packing cases-holding, he explained, special test gear which was to be
  flown to Australia at once. Their conversation was frequently interrupted
  by the Professor's orders and counterorders to his perspiring assistants as
  they checked through their equipment.
  "I'm sorry if I seemed a bit offhand last night," said Dirk apologetically.
  "The fact is, I wasn't quite myself."
  "I gathered that," said Maxton dryly. "After all, you had several hours'
  start on me! M, you dope, don't carry that recorder upside down! Sorry,
  Alexson, I didn't mean you."
 He paused for breath.
  "This is an infernal business-you never know what you'll want and you can
  be pretty sure that in
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     63

the end the mosf important stuff will get left behind." "What's it all for?"
 asked Dirk, quite overcome by the arrays of glittering equipment and the
 sight of more -radio tubes than he had ever seen before at any one time in
 his life.
  "Post-mortem gear," said Maxton succinctly. " 4AI.
 phd's' main instrument readings are telemetered back
 to Earth. If anything goes wrong, at least we'll -know
 what happened."                  I
  "This isn1 very cheerful talk after last night's gaiety."
  "No, but it's practical talk and may save millions of dollars, as well as
  a good many lives. I've heard all about your project in the States, and
  thought it was a very interesting idea. Who started it?"
  "The Rockefeller Foundation-History and Records Division."
  "I'm glad the historians have finally realized that science does play quite
  a part in shaping the world. When I was a kid their textbooks were nothing
  but military primers. Then the economic determinists held the field-until
  the neo-Freudians routed them with great slaughter. We've only just got
  that lot under contiol-so let's hope we're going to get a balanced view at
  last."
  "That's exactly what I'm aiming at," said Dirk. "I realize that all sorts
  of motives must have inspired the man who founded Interplanetary. I want to
  unravel and analyze them as far as possible. On the factual side, I've been
  supplied with everything I want by Matthews.11
  "Matthews? Oh, the chap from Public Relations. They think they run the
  place-don't believe everything they tell you, especially about us."
 Dirk laughed.
  "I thought that Interplanetary was all one big, happy familyl"
  "On the whole we get along pretty well, especially at the top. At least, we
  present a united front to the o*side world, As a class, I think scientists
  work to-
   64     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 gether better than any other, especially when they have a common goal. But
 you always have clashing personalities, and there seems an inevitable
 rivalry between the technical and the non-technical grades. Sometimes it's
 just good-natured fun, but often there's a certain amount of bitterness
 behind it."
  While Maxon was speaking, Dirk had been studying him carefully. His first
  impression had been confirmed. The D.D.-G. was not only a man of obvious
  brilliance, but one of wide culture and sympathies. Dirk wondered how he
  got on with his equally brilliant but ferociously forthright colleague, Sir
  Robert. Two such contrasting personalities would either work together very
  well-or not at all.
  At the age of fifty, Professor Maxton was generally regarded as the world's
  leading atomic engineer. He had played a major part in the development of
  nuclear propulsion systems for aircraft, and the drive units of the
  "Prometheus" were based almost entirely on his designs. The fact that such
  a man, who could have demanded almost any price from industry, was willing
  to work here at a nominal salary, seemed to Dirk a very significant point.
  Maxton called out to a fair-haired young man in the late twenties who was
  just passing.
  "Come here a minute, Ray-I've got another job for youl"
 The other approached with a rueful grin.
  "I hope it's nothing tough. I've got a bit of a headache this morning."
  The D.D.-G. grinned at Dirk but refrained, after an obvious struggle, from
  making any comment.
 He introduced them briefly.
  "Dr. Alexson-Ray Collins, my personal assistant. Ray's line is
  hyperdynamics-short, but only just, for hypersonic aerodynamics, in case
  you didn't know. Ray-Dr. Alexson's a history specialist, so I guess you
  wonder what he's doing here. He hopes to be the Gibbon of astronautics."
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     65

  "Not the 'Decline and Fall of Interplanetary,' I hopel Pleased to meet
  you.99
  ,I want you to hel~ Dr. Alexson with any technical queries. I've only just
  rescued him from the clammy clutches of McAndrew's mob, so he'll. probably
  have some pretty weird ideas about things."
  He turned to survey the surrounding chaos, found that his assistants were
  undermining the precanous seat he had adopted, and shifted to another
  packing c`a! e.
  'I'd better explain," he continued, "though you probably know it already,
  that our little technical empire has three main divisions. Ray here is one
  of the airborne experts; he's concerned with getting the ship safely
  -through the atmosphere-in both directionswith the minimum of wear. and
  tear. His section used to be looked down upon by the space-hounds, who re-
  garded the atmosphere as just a nuisance. They've changed their tune now
  that we've shown them how to use the air as a free fuel supply-for the
  first part of the trip at least."
  That was one of the hundred or so points that Dirk had never properly
  understood, and he made a mental note, putting it first on his list of
  question~,. .
  "Then there are the astronomers and mathematicians, who form a tight little
  trade-union of their own -though they've suffered some pretty heavy
  infiltration from the. electronics engineers with their calculating
  machines. They, of course, have to compute orbits and do our mathematical
  donkey-work, which is very extensive indeed. Sir Robert himself is in
  charge of their affairs.
  "Finally there are the rocket engineers, bless 'em. You won't find many
  here, for they're nearly all. in Australia.
  "So that's the set-up, though I've neglected several groups like the
  communications and control people, and the medical experts. I'll turn you
  over, to Ray now, and he'll. look after you."
 Dirk winced slightly at the phrase; he felt that rather
 66     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 too many people had been "looking after him." Collins led him to a small
 office not far away where they -sat down and exchanged cigarettes. After
 puffing thoughtfully for, some time, the aerodynamicist jerked his thumb
 toward the door and remarked:
 ':What do you think of the Chief?"
  'I'm a bit biased, you know; we're from the same State. He seems a most
  remarkable man-cultured as well as technically brilliant. It's not a usual
  combination. And he's been very helpful."'
 Collins began to wax enthusiastic.
  "That's perfectly true. He's the best chap you could possibly work for, and
  I don't think he has a single enemy. That's quite a contrast to Sir Robert,
  who has dozens among people who know him only slightly."
  "I've met the Director-General only once. I dicWt know quite what to make
  of him."
 Collins laughed.
  "It takes a long time to get used to the D.-G.-he certainly hasn't
  Professor Maxton's easy charm. If you, do a job badly, the D.-G. will bum
  your ears off while the Prof. will give you a hurt look that makes you feel
  like a 'professional baby-poisoner. Both techniques work perfectly, and
  everyone's very fond of Sir Robert when they get to know him."
  Dirk examined the room with more than casual interest. It was a typical
  small drafting room with a modem internally illuminated tracing table
  occupying one comer. The walls were covered with elaborate and obscure
  graphs, interspersed with photographs of rockets removing themselves
  spectacularly to distant parts. A place of honor was given to a magnificent
  view of the Earth from a height of at least a thousand miles. Dirk guessed
  it was a still from the film that Matthews had arranged for him to see. On
  Collins's desk was a photograph of quite a different sort-a portrait of a
  very pretty girl whom Dirk thought he had seen once or twice at lunch.
  Collins must have noticed his interest, but as he didn't elucidate Dirk
  guessed that he was
            PRELUDE TO SPACE     67

 still unmarried and, like himself, an optimistic bacholor.
  "I suppose," the aerodynamicist said presently, "You've seen our film, 'The
  Road to Space'?"
  "Yes, I thought it was very good."
  "It saves a* lot of talking and puts over the basic' ideas pretty clearly.
  But of course it's rather out-ofdate now, and I guess you're still very
  much in the dark about the latest developments-particularly the atomic
  drive in the 'Prometheus.' "
  "That's true," said Dirk. "It's a complete mystery to me.p$
  Collins gave a puzzled little grin.
  "That baffles us," he complained. "From the technical point of view, iVs
  far simpler than the internal combustion engine which everyone understands
  perfectly. But for some reason, people assume that air atomic drive must be
  incomprehensible, so they won't even make an effort to understand it."
  "I'll make the effort," Dirk laughed. "It's up to you to do the rest. But
  please remember-I want to know only just enough to follow what's happening.
  I've no intention of setting myself up as a designer of spaceships199

 3
 "I suppose I can assume,', said Collins, a little doubtfully, "that you're
 quite happy about common-orgarden rockets and understand how they work in a
 vaccum?"
  "I can see," replied Dirk, "that if you throw a lot of -matter away from
  you at great speed, there's bound tobe a recoil."
  "Good. It's amazing how many people still seem to think that a rocket has
  to have 'something to push against,' as they invariably put it. You'll
  appreciate, then, that a rocket designer is always trying to got thi
 68     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 maximum possible velocityw-and a bit more-~-from
 the jet which drives his machine forward. Obviously,
 the spee ' d of the exhaust determines the velocity which
 his rocket will attain.
  "The old chemical rockets, like V.2, had jet speeds of one or two miles a
  second. With such performances, to-carry a load of one ton to the Moon and
  back would have needed several thousand tons of fuel, which wasn't
  practicable. What everyone wanted was a weightless fuel supply. Atomic
  reactions, which are a million or more times as powerful as chemical ones,
  virtually gave us this. The energy -released by the few pounds of matter in
  the first atomic bombs could have taken a thousand tons to the Moon-and
  back.
  "But though,the energy had been released, no one knew exactly how to use it
  for propulsion. That little problem has only just been solved, and it's
  taken thirty years to produce the very inefficient atomic rockets we have
  today.
  "Look at the problem from this point of view. In the chemical rocket, we
  get our driving exhaust by burning a fuel and letting the hot gases acquire
  speed by expanding through a nozzle. In other words, we exchange heat-for
  velocity-the hotter our combustion chamber, the faster the jet will leave
  it. We'd get the same result if we didn't actually bum the fuel at all, but
  heated the combustion chamber from some outside source. In other words, we
  could make a rocket by pumping any gas we liked-even air-into a, heating
  unit, and then letting it expand through a nozzle. O.K.?"
 "Yes, that's straightforward enough so far."
  "Very well. Now as you know, you chn get as much heat as you like out of an
  atomic pile by making it of richer and richer materials. If you overdo it,
  of course, the pile will melt down into a puddle of liquid uranium with
  carbon bobbing about on the surface. Long before that sort of thing
  happened, any sensible man would have got hull-down over the horizon."
 "You mean it might go up like an atomic bomb?"
           PRELUDE TO SPACE      69

  "No, it couldn't do that. But an unapproachable radioactive furnace could
  be just as nasty in its quiet way. However, don't look so alarmed-this,
  couldn't happen if the most elementary precautions were taken.
  "We had, then, to design some kind of atomic reactor which would heat a gas
  stream to a very high temperaturo indeed-at least 4,000 degrees Centigrade.
  Since all known metals melt a long way below this, the problem gave us a
  bit of a headachel
  "The answer we produced is called the 'line-focused reactor.' It's a long,
  thin, plutonium pile, and gas is pumped in at one end and becomes heated as
  it travels through. The final result is a central core of intensely hot gas
  intophich we can concentrate or foc,lus .the heat from the surrounding
  elements. In the middle the jet temperature is over 6,000 degrees-hotter
  than the sun-but where it touches the walls it's only a quarter of this.
  "So far, I haven7t said what gas we're going to use. I think you'll realize
  that the lighter it is-strictly speaking, the lower its molecular
  weight-the faster it will be moving when it comes out of the jet. Since
  hydrogen is the lightest of ~11 elements, it would be the ideal fuel, with
  helium a fairly good runner-up. I ought to explain, by the way, that we
  still use the word 'fuel,' even though we don't actually bum it but simply
  use it as a working fluid."
  "That's one thing that had me puzzled," confessed Dirk. "The old chemical
  rockets carried their own oxygen tanks, and it's a bit' disconcerting to
  find that the present machines don't do anything of the sort."
 Coffins laughed.
  "We could even use helium as a 'fuel,' " he said, "though that won't bum
  -at all-or indeed take part in any chemical reaction.
  "Now although hydrogen's the ideal working fluid, as I called it, it's
  impossible stuff to carry round. In the liquid state it boils at a
  fantastically low temperature, and it's so light that a spaceship would
  have to have fuel tanks the size of gasometers. So we carry it com-
   70      PRELUDE TO SPACE

 bined with carbon in- the form of liquid methaneCH4~-which isn't hard to
 handle and has a reasonable density. In the reactor it breaks down to carbon
 and hydrogen. The carbon's a bit of a nuisance, and tends to clog the works,
 but it can't be helped. Every so often we get rid of it by turning off the
 main jet and flushing out the motor with a draft of oxygen. It makes quite
 a pretty firework display.
  "That, then, is the principle of the spaceship's mor tors. They give
  exhaust speeds three times that of any chemical rocket, but even so still
  have to carry a tremendous amount of fuel. And there are all sorts of other
  problems I've not mentioned: shielding the crew from the pile radiations
  was the worst.
  " 'Alpha,' the upper component of the 'Prometheus,' weighs about three
  hundred tons of which two hundred and forty are fuel. If it starts from an
  orbit around the Earth, it can just make the landing on the Moon and return
  with a small reserve.
  "It has, as you know, to be carried up to that orbit by 'Beta.' 'Beta' is
  a very heavy, super-high-speed flying-wing, also powered by atomic jets.
  She starts as a ramjet, using air as Tuel,' and only switches over to her
  methane tanks when she leaves the top of the atmosphere. As you'll realize,
  not having to carry any fuel for the first stage of the journey helps
  things enormously.
  "At take-off, the 'Prometheus' weighs five hundred tons, and is not only
  the fastest but the heaviest of all flying machines. To get it airborne,
  Westinghouse have built us a five-mile-long electric launching track out in
  the desert. It cost nearly as much as the ship itself, but of course it
  will be used over and over again.
  "To sum up, then: we launch the two components together and they climb
  until the air's too thin to operate the ramjets any more. 'Beta' then
  switches over to her fuel tanks and reaches circular velocity at a height
  of about three hundred miles. 'Alpha,' of course, hasn't used any fuel at
  all-in fact, its tanks are almost empty when 'Beta' carries it up.
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     71

  "Once the 'Prbmetheus' has homed on the fuel containers we've got circling
  up there, the two ships separate, 'Alpha' couples up to the tanks with
  pipelines and pumps the fuel aboard. We've already practiced this sort of
  thing and know it can be done. Orbital refuelling, it's called, and it's
  really the key to the whole problem, because it lets us do the job in
  several stages. It would be quite impossible to build one huge spaceship
  that would make the journey to the Moon and back on a single load of fuel.
  "Once 'Alpha's' tanked up, it runs its motors until it's built up the extra
  two miles a second to get out of its orbit and go to the Moon. It reaches
  the Moon after four days, stays there a week and then returns, getting back
  into the same orbit as before. The crew transfers to 'Beta,' which is still
  patiently circling with her very bored pilot (who won't get any of the pub-
  licity) and is brought down to Earth again. And that's all there is to it.
  What could be simpler?"
 . "You make me wonder," laughed Dirk, "why it hasn't been done years ago."
  I "That's the usual reaction,,' said Collins in mock disgust. "It's not
  easy for outsiders to realize the terrific problems that had to be overcome
  in almost every stage of the work. That's where the time and money went. It
  wouldn't have been possible, even now, without the world-wide research
  that's been, going on for the last thirty years. Most of our job was
  collecting the results of other people's work and adapting them to our
  use."
  "How much," said Dirk thoughtfully, "would you say the 'Prometheus' cost?"
  "It's almost impossible to say. The research of the world's laboratories
  for two generations, right back to the 1929's, has gone into the machine.
  You should include the two billion dollars the atomic bomb project cost,
  the hundreds of millions of marks the Germans put into PeenemUnde, and the
  scores of millions of pounds the British government spent on the Australian
  range."
 72     PRELUDE TO SPACE

  "I agree, but you must have some idea of the money that actually went into
  the 'Prometheus' itself."
  "Well, even there we got quite priceless techn ical
 assistance--and equipment--e-for nothing. However,
 Professor Maxton once calculated that the ships cost
 about ten million pounds in research and five million
 in direct construction. That means, someone pointed
 out, that we're buying the Moon for a pound a square
 milel It doesn't seem a lot, and of course the later
 ships will be a good deal cheaper. Incidentally, I
 believe we're almost recovering our expenses for the
 first trip on the film and radio rightsl But who cares
 about the money, anyway?"
  His eyes wandered toward that photograph of the distant Earth, and his
  voice became suddenly thoughtful.
 . "We're gaining the freedom of the whole Universe, and all that that
 implies, I don't think it can be valued in teims of pounds and dollars. In
 the long ran, knowledge always pays for itself in hard cash-but its still
 absolutely beyond price."

 4
 Dirk's- meeting with Professor Maxton and Raymond Collins marked an
 unconscious turning point in his thinking, and indeed in his way of life. He
 felt, perhaps wrongly, that'he had now found the source of the ideas which
 McAndrews and Matthews had passed on to him at second-hand.
  No one could have been more unlike the coldly passionless scientist of
  fiction than the Deputy DirectorGeneral. He was not only a first-class
  engineer, but he was obviously fully aware of the implications of his work.
  It would be a fascinating study to discover the motives which had led him,
  and his colleagues, into-this field. The quest for personal power did not
  seem a likely explanation in the cases that Dirk had
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     73

 met. He must guard against wishful thinking, but these men seemed to have a
 disinterested outlook which was very refreshing. Interplanetary was inspired
 by a missionary zeal which technical competence and a sense of humor had
 preserved from fanaticism.
  Dirk was still only partly aware of the effects his new surroundings were
  having on his own character. He was losing much of his diffidence; the
  thought of meeting strangers, which not long ago had filled him with mild
  apprehension or at least with annoyance, no longer worried him at all. For
  the first time in his life, he was with men who were shaping the future and
  not merely interpreting the dead past. Though he was only an onlooker, he
  was beginning to share their emotions and to feel with their triumphs and
  defeats.
  "I'm quite impressed," he wrote in his Journal that evening, "by Professor
  Maxton and his staff. They seem to have a much clearer and wider view of
  Interplanetary's aims than the non-technical people I've met. Matthews, for
  instance, is always talking about -the scientific advances which will come
  when we reach the Moon. Perhaps because they take that sort of thing for
  granted, the scientists themselves seem more interested in the cultural
  -and philosophical repercussions. But I mustn't generalize- from a few
  cases which may not be typical.
  "I feel that I've now a pretty clear view of the whole organization. It's
  now mostly a matter of filling in details, and I should be able to do that
  from my notes and the mass of photostats I've collected. I no longer have
  the impression of being a stranger watching some incomprehensible machine
  at work. In fact, I now feet that I'm almost a part of the organi-
  zation-though I mustn't let myself get too involved. It's impossible to be
  neutral, but some detachment is necessary.
  "Until now I've had various doubts and reservations concernirig space
  flight. I felt, subconsciously, that it was too big a thing for man. I.Ae
  Pascal, I was
 74     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 terrified' by the silence and emptiness of infinite space. I see now that I
 was wrong.
 , "The mistake I made was the old one of clinging to the past. Today I met
 men who think as naturally in millions of. miles as I do in thousands. Once
 there was a time when a thousand miles was a distance beyond all
 comprehension, yet now it is the space we cover between one meal and the
 next. That change of scale is about to occur again-and with unprecedented
 swiftness.
  "The planets, I see now, are no further away than our minds will make them.
  It will take the 'Prometheus' a hundred hours to reach the Moon, and all
  the time she will be speaking to Earth and the eyes of the wo ' rid will be
  upon her. How little a thing interplanetary travel seems if we match it
  against the weeks and the months and the years of the great voy?tges of the
  pastl
  "Everything is relative, and the time will surely come when our minds
  embrace the Solar System as now they do the Earth. Then, I suppose, when
  the scientists are looking thoughtfully toward the stars, many will cry:
  'We don't want interstellar flightl The nine'planets were good enough for
  our grandfathers and they're good enough for us!' "
  Dirk laid his pen down with a smile and let his mind wander in the realms
  of fantasy. Would Man ever face that stupendous challenge and send his
  ships into the gulf between the stars? He remembered a phrase he had once
  read: "Interplanetary distances are a million times as great as those to
  which we are accustomed in everyday life, but interstellar distances are a
  million-fold greater still." His mind quailed before the thought, but still
  he clung to that phrase: "Everything is relative." In a few thousand,
  years, Man had come from coracle to spaceship. What might he yet do in the
  eons that lay ahead?
 5
 It would be false to suggest that the five men on whom the eyes of the world
 were now fixed regarded themselves as daring adventurers about to risk their
 lives in a stupendous scientific gamble. They were all practical,
 hard-headed technicians who had no intention of. taking part in a gamble of
 any kind-at least, where their lives were concerned. There was a risk, of
 course, but one took risks when one caught the 8. 10 to -the City.
  Each reacted in his own way to the publicity of the past week. They had
  expected it, and they hid been well prepared. Hassell. and Leduc had been
  in the public eye before and knew how to enjoy the experience while
  avoiding its more annoying aspects. The other three members of the crew,
  having fame thrust suddenly upon them, showed a tendency to huddle together
  for mutual protection. This move was fatal, as it made them easy meat for
  reporters.
  Clinton and Taine were still sufficiently unused to the experience of being
  interviewed to enjoy it, but their Canadian colleague Jimmy Richards hated
  it. His replies, none too helpful at the beginning, became progressively
  more and more brusque as time went by and he grew tired of answering the
  same questions ad nauseam. On one famous occasion, when harried by a
  particularly overbearing lady reporter, his behavior became somewhat less
  than gallant. According to the description later circulated by Leduc, the
  interview went something like this:
  "Good morning, Mr. Richards. I wonder if you'd mind answering a few
  questions for the West Kensington Clarion?"
  Richards (bored but still fairly affable): "Certainly, though I have to
  meet my wife in a few minutes."
 "Have you been married long?"

               75
 76,   PRIELUDE TO SPACE

 "About twelve years."
 "Oh: any children?"
 "Two: both girls, if I remember correctly!
"Does your wife approve of your fi i off from y1ug
 Earth like this?"
 "She'd better."
  (Pause, during which interviewer realizes that, for once, her ignorance of
  shorthand is going to be no handicap.)
  "I suppose you have always felt an urge to go out to the stars, to-er-place
  the flag of humanity upon other worlds?"
  "Nope. Never thought about it until a couple of years ago."
 "Then how did you get chosen for this flight?"
  "Because Tm. the second best atomic engineer in the world."
 "The first being9"
 "Professor Maxton, who's too valuable to risk."
 "Are you at all nervous?"
  "Oh, yes. I'm frightened of spiders, lumps of plutonium more than a foot
  across, and anything that makes noises in the night."
 "I mean-are you nervous about this voyage?"
  "I'm scared stiff. Look-you can see me trembling." (Demonstrates. Minor
  damage to furniture.)
 "What do you expect to find on the Moon?"
 "Lots of lava, and very little else."
  (Interviewer wearing a hunted look, and now clearly preparing to
  disengage.)
 "Do you expect to find any life on the Moon?"
  "Very likely. As soon as we land, I expect there'll be a knock on the door
  and a voice will say: 'Would you mind answering a few questions for the
  Selenites' Weekly?' "
  Not all interviews, of course, were anything like this flagrant example,
  and'it is only fair to say that Richards swore the whole thing had been
  concocted by Leduc. Most of the reporters who covered Interplanetary's
  affairs were science graduates who had
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     77

 migrated into journalism. Theirs was a somewhat thankless task, since the
 newspaper world frequently regarded them as interlopers while- the
 scientists looked upon them as apostates and backsliders.
  Perhaps no single point had attracted more public interest than the fact
  that two of the crew,would be reserves and would be fated to remain on
  Earth. For a time speculation about the ten possible combinations became'so
  popular that the bookmakers began to take an interest in the subject. It
  was generally assumed that since Hassell and Leduc were both rocket pilots
  one but not both of them would be chosen. As this sort of discussion might
  have bad effects on the men themselves, the Director-General made it clear
  that no such argument was valid. Because of their training, any three men
  would form an efficient crew. He hinted, without making a definite promise,
  that the final choice might have to be made by ballot. No one, least of all
  the five men concerned, really believed this.
  Hassell's preoccupation with his unborn son had now become common
  knowledge-which did not help matters. It had begun as a faint worry at the
  back of his mind which for a long time he had been able to keep under
  control. But as the weeks passed, it had come to trouble him more and more
  until his efficiency began to fall. When he realized this, it worried him
  still more and so the process had gathered momentum.
  Since his fear was not a personal one, but concerned someone he loved, and
  since it had a logical foundation, there was little that psychologists
  could do about it. They could not suggest, to a man of his temperament and
  character, that he ask to be withdrawn from the expedition. They could only
  watch: and Hassell knew perfectly well that they were watching;~-
   6
 Dirk spent little time at Southbank during the days before the Exodus. It
 was impossible to work there: those who were going to Australia were too
 busy packing and tidying up their affairs, while those who 7eren't seemed in
 a very unco-operative mood. The irrepressible Matthews had been one of the
 sacrifices: McAndrews was leaving him in charge. It was a very sensible
 arrangement, but the two men were no longer on speaking terms. Dirk was very
 glad to keep out of stheir way, especially as they had been a little upset
 over his desertion to the scientists.
  He saw equally little of Maxton and Collins, as the technical department
  was in a state of organized uproar. It had apparently been decided that
  everything might be needed in Australia. Only Sir Robert Derwent seemed
  perfectly happy amid the disorder, and Dirk was somewhat astonished to
  receive a summons from him one morning. As it happened, it came on one of
  the few days when he was at Headquarters. It was, his first meeting with
  the DirectorGeneral since their brief introduction on the day of his
  arrival.
  He entered somewhat timidly, thinking of all the tales he had heard about
  Sir Robert. The A-G. probably noticed and understood his diffidence, for
  there was a distant twinkle in his eye as he shook hands and offered his
  visitor a seat.
  The room was no larger than many other offices which-Dirk had seen at
  Southbink, but its position at a comer of the building gave it an unrivaled
  view. One could see most of the Embankment from Charing Cross to London
  Bridge.
 Sir Robert lost no time in getting to the point.
  "Professor- Maxton's been telling me about your job," he said. "I suppose
  you , ve got us all fluttering

               78
           P.RELUDE TO SPACE     79

 around in your killing-bottle, ready to be pinned down for posterity to
 examine?"
  "I hope, Sir Robert," smiled Dirk, "that the final result won't be quite as
  static as that. I'm not here primarily as a recorder of facts, but of
  influences and motives."
  The Director-General tapped thoughtfully on his desk, then remarked
  quietly: "And what motives, would you say, underlie our work?"
  The question, through its very directness, took Dirk somewhat aback.
  "They're very complex," he began defensively. "Provisionally, I'd say they
  fall into two classes-material and spiritual."
  "I find it rather difficult," said the D.-G. mildly, "to picture a third
  category."
  Dirk gave a slightly embarrassed smile.
  "Perhaps I'm a little too comprehensive," he said. "What I mean is this:
  The first men seriously to. advance the idea of interplanetary travel were
  visionaries in love with a dream. The fact that they were also technicians
  doesn't matter-they were, essentially, artists using their science to
  create something new. If space flight had been of no conceivable practical
  use, they would have wished to have achieved it just the same.
  "Theirs was the spiritual motive, as rve called it. Perhaps 'intellectual'
  is a better word. You can't analyze it any further, because it represents
  a basic human impulse-that of curiosity. On the material side, you now have
  thi vision of great new industries and enginepring processes, and the
  desire of the billion-dollar communication companies to replace their
  myriads of surfd~e transmitters by two or three stations out in space. This
  is the Wall Street side of the picture, which of course came a good deal
  later."
  "And which motive," said Sir Robert, pressing on ruthlessly, "would you say
  is predominant here?"
 Dirk was now beginning to feel completely at ease.
  "Before I came to Southbank," he said, "I thought of Interplanetary-when I
  thought of it at all-as a
 80     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 group of technicians out for scientific dividends. That's what you pretend
 to be, and you deceive a lot of people. The description may apply to some of
 the middle grades of your organization-but it isn't true at the top.
  Dirk drew back his bow, and took a long shot at that invisible target out
  there in the dark.
  "I think that Interplanetary is run-and always has been run-by visionaries,
  poets if you like, who also happen to be scientists. Sometimes the disguise
  isn't very good."
  There was gdence for a while. Then Sir Robert said, in a somewhat subdued
  voice, though with a trace of a chuckle:
  "It's an accusation that's been thrown at us before. We've never denied it.
  Someone once said that all human activity was a form of play. We're not
  ashamed' of wanting to play with spaceships."
  "And in the course of your play," said Dirk, "you will change the world,
  and perhaps the Universe."
  He looked at Sir Robert with new understanding. He no longer saw that
  determined, bull-dog head with its broad sweep of brow, for he had suddenly
  remembered Newton's description of himself as a small child picking up
  brightly colored pebbles on the shore of the ocean of knowledge.
  Sir Robert Derwent, like all great scientists, was such a child. Dirk
  believed that, in the final analysis, he would - have crossed space for no
  other reason than to watch the Earth turning from night to day above the
  glittering lunar peaks, or to see Saturn's rings, in all their unimaginable
  glory, bridging the sky of his nearest moon.
 7
 The knowledge that this was his last day in London filled Dirk with a sense
 of guilty regret. Regret, because he had seen practically nothing of the
 place; guilt, because he couldn't help feeling that this was partly his own
 fault. It was true that he had been furiously busy, but looking back on the
 past few weeks it was hard to believe thatfhe'd found it impossible to visit
 the British Museum more than twice, or St. Paul's Cathedral even once. He
 did not know when he would see London again, for he would return direct to
 America.
  It was a fair but rather cool day, with the usual possibility of rain
  later. There was no work he could do at his flat, for all his papers had
  been packed and even now were halfway round the, world ahead of him' He had
  said good-bye,to those members of Interplanetary's staff he would not see
  again: most of the others he would meet at London Airport early tomorrow
  morning. Matthews, who seemed to have grown quite attached to 'him, had
  become almost tearful, and even his sparring partners Sam and Bert had
  insisted on a little farewell celebration at the office. When he walked
  away from Southbank for the last time, Dirk realized with &pang that he was
  also saying good-bye to one of the happiest periods of his life. It had
  been happy because it had been full, because it had extended all his
  resources to the utmost-:-above all, because he had been among men whose
  lives had a purpose which they knew was greater than themselves.
  Meanwhile, he had an empty day on his hands and did not know how to occupy
  it. In theory, such a situation was impossible; but it seemed to have
  happened now.
  He went into the quiet square, wondering if he had been wise to leave his
  raincoat behind. It was only a few hundred yards to the Embassy, where he
  had a lit-
  
               8-1
 82     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 tle business to conduct, but he was rash enough to takea short cut. As a
 result he promptly lost himself n the labyrinth of side streets and
 culs-de-sac which made London such a continual source of exasperating de-
 light. Only a lucky glimpse of the Roosevelt Memorial finally gave him his
 bearings again,
  A leisurely lunch with some of his Embassy acquaintances at their favorite
  club disposed of the earlier afternoon; then he was left to his own
  resources. He could go anywhere he pleased, could see the places which
  otherwise he might always be sorry to have' missed. Yet a kind of restless
  lethargy made him feel unable to do anything but wander at random through
  the streets. The sun had finally secured its bridgehead, and the afternoon
  was warm and relaxing. It was pleasant to drift through the back streets
  and to come by chance upon buildings older than the United Statesyet
  bearing such notices as: "Grosvenor Radio and Electronic Corporation," or
  "Provincial Airways, IAO."
  Late in the afternoon Dirk emerged into what, he concluded, must be Hyde
  Park. For a full hour he circulated under the trees, always keeping within
  sight of the adjoining roads. The Albert Memorial held him paralyzed with
  frank'disbelief for many minutes, but he,finally escaped from its hypnoti6
  spell and decided to cut back across the Park to Marble Arch.
  He had forgotten the impassioned oratory for which that spot was famous,
  and it was very entertaining to wander from one crowd to another, listening
  to the speakers and their critics. What, he wondered, had ever given people
  the idea that the British were reserved and undemonstrative?
  He stood for some time enthralled by a duet between one orator and his
  heckler in which each maintained with equal passion that Karl Marx had-and
  had not-made a certain remark. What the remark was Dirk never discovered,
  and he began to suspect that the disputants themselves had long since
  forgotten it. From time to time helpful interjections were provided by the
  good-natured crowd, which obviously had
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     83

 no strong feelings on the subject but wanted to keep the pot boiling.
  The next speaker was engaged in proving, apparently with Ahe aid of
  Biblical texts, that Doomsday was at hand. He reminded Dirk of those
  apocalyptic prophets of the anxious year A.D. 999; would their successcirs,
  ten centuries later, still be predicting the Day of Wrath as the year 1999
  drew to its close? He could hardly doubt it. In many ways human nature
  changed very little: the prophets would still be there, and there would
  still be some to believe them.
  He moved on to the next group. A small but attentive audience was gathered
  around an elderly, whitehaired man who was giving a lecture-a remarkably
  well-informed lecture-on philosophy. Not all the speakers, Dirk decided,
  were by any means cranks. This lecturer might have been a retired
  schoolmaster with such strong views on adult education that he felt himself
  impelled to hold forth in the marketplace to all who would listen.
  His discourse was on Life, its origin and its destiny. His thoughts, like
  those of his listeners, were no doubt influenced by that winged thunderbolt
  lying in the desert on the far side of the world, for presently he began to
  speak of the astronomical stage upon which the strange drama of life was
  being played.
  He painted a vivid picture of the sun and its circling planets, taking the
  thoughts of his listeners with him from world to world. He had a gift for
  picturesque phrases, and though Dirk was not sure that he confined himself
  to accepted scientific knowledge, the general impression he gave was
  accurate enough.
  Tiny Mercury, blistering beneath its enormous sun, he pictured as a world
  of burning rocks washed by sluggish oceans of molten metal. Venus, Earth's
  sister planet, was forever hidden from us by those rolling clouds which had
  not parted once during the centuries in which men had gazed upon her.
  Beneath that blanket might be oceans and forests and the hum of
 84     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 strange life. Or there might be nothing but a barren wilderness swept by
 scorching winds.
  He sppke of Mars; and one could see a ripple of increased attention spread
  through his audience. Forty million miles outward from the Sun, Nature had
  scored her second hit. Here again was life: we could see the changing
  colors which on our own world spoke of. the passing seasons. Though Mars
  had little water, and his atmosphere was stratospherically thin, vegetation
  and perhaps animal life could exist there. Of intelligence, there was no
  conclusive evidence at all.
  Beyond Mars the giant outer worlds lay in a frozen twilight which grew ever
  dimmer and colder as the Sun dwindled to a distant star. Jupiters and
  Saturn were crushed beneath atmospheres thousands of miles deep-atmospheres
  of methane and ammonia, torn by hurricanes which we could observe across
  half a billion miles or more of space. If there was life on those strange
  outer planets, and the still colder worlds beyond, it would be more weird
  than anything we could imagine. Only in the temperate zone of the Solar
  System, the narrow belt in which floated Venus, Earth and Mars, could there
  be life as we knew it.
  Life as we knew it! And how little we knewl What right had we on our puny
  world to assume that it set the pattern for all the Universe? Could conceit
  go farther?
  The Universe was not hostile to life, but merely indifferent. Its
  strangeness was an opportunity and a challenge-a challenge which
  intelligence would accept. Shaw had spoken the truth, half a century ago,
  when he put these words into the mouth of Lilith, who came before Adam and
  Eve:
  "Of Life only there is no end; and though of its million starry mansions
  many are empty and many still unbuilt, and though its vast domain is as yet
  unbearably desert, my seed shall one day fill it and master it to its
  uttermost confines."
  The clear, cultured voice died away, and Dirk became once more conscious of
  his surroundings. It had
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     85

 been a remarkable performance, he would like to know more'about the speaker,
 who was now quietly dismantling his little platform and preparing to wheel
 it away in a dilapidated handcart. The crowd was dispersing around him,
 looking for fresh attractions. From time to time half-heard phrases borne
 down the wind told Dirk that the other speakers were still operating at full
 blast.
  Dirk turned to leave, and as he did so caught sight of a face which he
  recognized. For a moment he was taken completely by surprise: the
  coincidence seemed too improbable to be true.
  Standing in the crowd, only a few feet away from him, was Victor Hassell.

 8
 Maude Hassell had needed no elaborate explanations when her husband had
 said, rather abruptly, that he was "going for a stroll around the Park." She
 understood perfectly, and merely expressed a hope that he wouldn't be
 recognized, and would be back in time for tea. Both of these wishes were
 doomed to disappointment, as she was fairly sure they would be.
  Victor Hassell had lived in London for almost half his fife, but his
  earliest impressions of the city were still the most vivid and still held
  the strongest place in his affection&. As a young engineering student he
  had lodged in the Paddington area and had walked to college every day
  across Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. When he thought of London, he did
  not picture busy streets and world-famous buildings, but quiet avenues of
  trees and open fields, and the wide sands of Rotten Row along which the
  Sunday morning riders would still be cantering on their fine horses when
  humanity's first ships were turning homeward from the stars. And there was
  no need for him to remind Maude of their first encounter beside the
  Serpentine, only two
           PRELUDE TO SPACE

 years ago, but a lifetime away. From all these places he must now take his
 leave.
  He spent a little time in South Kensington, wandering past the old colleges
  which formed so large a part of his memories. They had not changed: the
  students with their folders and T-squares and slide-rules were just the
  same. It was strange to think that almost a century ago the young H. G.
  Wells had been one of that eager, restless throng.
  Acting upon impulse, Hassell walked into the Science Museum and came, as he
  had so often done before, to the replica of the Wright biplane. Thirty
  years earlier the original machine had -been hanging here in the great
  gallery, but it had long since gone back to the United States and few now
  remembered Orville Wright's protracted battle with the Smithsonian Insti-
  tution which had been the cause of its exile.
  Seventy-five years-a long lifetime, no more-lay between the flimsy wooden
  framework that had skimmed a few yards across the ground at Kitty Hawk, and
  the great projectile that might soon be taking him to the Moon. And he did
  not doubt that in another lifetime, the "Prometheus" would look as quaint
  and as primitive as the little biplane suspended above his head.
  Hassell came out into Exhibition Road to find the sun shining brightly. He
  might have stayed longer in, the Science Museum, but a number of people had
  been staring at him a little too intently. His chances of remaining
  unrecognized were, he imagined, probably lower inside this building than
  almost anywhere on Earth.
  He walked slowly across the Park along the paths he knew iso well, pausing
  once or twice to admire views he might never see again. Th6re was nothing
  morbid. in his realization of this: indeed, he could appreciate with some
  detachment the increased intensity it gave to his emotions. Like most men,
  Victor Hassell was afraid of death; but there were occasions when it was a
  justifiable risk. That, at least, had been
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     87

 true when there was merely himself to consider. He only wished he could
 prove it was still true, but in that he had so far failed.
  There was a bench not far from Marble Arch where he and Maude had often sat
  together in the days before their marriage. He had proposed to her here a
  good many times, and she had turned him down almpst-but not quite-as
  frequently. He was glad to see that it was unoccupied at the moment, and he
  dropped into it with a little sigh of satisfaction.
  His contentment was short-lived, for less than five minutes later he was
  joined by an elderly gentle an who settled himself down behind a pipe and
  the Manchester Guardian. (That anyone should wish to guard Manchester had
  always struck Hassell as baffling in the extreme.) He decided to move,
  after a sufficient interval, but before he could do this without obvious.
  rudeness there was a further interruption. -Two small boys who had been
  strolling along the pathway did a sudden turn to starboard and walked up to
  the bench. They looked at him steadily in the uninhibited way that small
  boys have, then the elder said accusingly: "Hey, Mister, are you Vic
  Hassell?"
  Hassell gave them a critical examination. They were clearly brothers, and.
  as unattractive a pair as one would meet in a day's march. He shuddered
  slightly as he realized what a hazardous business parenthood was.
  In normal circumstances, Hassell would have carefully confessed to the
  charge, since he had not forgotten many of his own schoolboy enthusiasms.
  He would probably have done so even now had he been approached more
  politely, but these urchins appeared to be playing truant from Dr. Fagin's
  Academy for Young Delinquents.
  He looked at them fixedly and said, in his best Mayfair circa 1920 voice,
  "It's half-pass three, and I haven't any change for a sixpence."
 At this masterly non sequitur the younger boy
 88      PRELUDE TO SPACA

 turned to his brother and said heatedly: "G George-I told you he weren't!"
  The other slowly strangled him by twisting his tie and continued as if
  nothing had happened.
  "You're Vic Hassell, the rocket bloke."
  "Do I look like Mr. Hassell?" said Mr. Hassell in tones of indignant
  surprise.
     V9
  "Yes.
  "That's odd-no one's ever told me so."
  This statement might be misleading, but it was the literal truth. The two
  boys looked at him thoughtfully: Junior had now been granted the luxury of
  respiration. Suddenly George appealed to the Manchester Guardian, though
  there was now a welcome note of uncertainty in his voice.
  "He's kidding us, Mister, ain't he?"
  A pair of spectacles reared- themselves over the paper, and stared at them
  owlishly. Then they focused on Hassell, who began to feel uncomfortable.
  There was a long, brooding silence.
  Then the stranger tapped his paper and said severely: "There's a photo of
  Mr. Hassell in here. The nose is quite different. Now please go away."
  The paper barricade was re-erected. Hassell looked into the distance,
  ignoring his. inquisitors, who continued to stare disbelievingly at him for
  another -minute. Finally, to his relief, they began to move away, still
  arguing with each other.
 . Hassell was wondering if he should thank his unknown supporter when the
 other folded his newspaper and removed his glasses.
  "You know," he said, with a slight cough, "there Is a striking
  resemblance."
  Hassell gave a shrug. He wondered if he should own up, but decided not to
  do so.
  "To tell the truth," he said, "it has caused me some annoyance before."
  The stranger looked at him thoughtfully, though his eyes had a misty,
  faraway look.
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     89

  "They're leaving for Australia tomorrow, aren't they?" he said
  rhetorically. "I suppose they've, got a fifty-fifty chance of coming back
  from the Moon?"
 "I should say it's a lot better than that."
  "Still, it is a chance, and I suppose at this very moment young Hassell's
  wondering if he'll ever see London again. It would be interesting to know
  what ~he's doing-you could learn a lot about him from that."
  "I guess you could," said Hassell, shifting uncomfortably in his seat and
  wondering how he could get away. The stranger, however, seemed in a
  talkative mood.
  "T;here's an editorial here," he said, waving his crumpled paper, "all
  about the implications of spaceflight and the effect it's going to have on
  everyday life. That sort of things all very well, but when are we going to
  settle down? Eh?"
  "I don't quite follow you," said Hassell, not altogether truthfully.
  "There's room for everyone on this world, and if we run it properly we'll
  not find a better, even if we go gallivanting right around the Universe."
  "Perhaps," said Hassell mildly, "we'll only appreciate Earth when we have
  done just that."
  "Humph! Then more fools us. Aren't we ever going to rest and have some
  peace?"
  Hassell, who had met this argument before, gave a little smile.
  "The dream of the Lotus Eaters," he said, "is a pleasant fantasy for the,
  individual-but it would be death for,the race."
  Sir Robert Derwent had once made that remark and it had become one of
  Hassell's favorite quotations.
  "The Lotus Eaters? Let's see-what did Tennyson say about them-nobody reads
  him nowadays. 'There is sweet music here that softer falls No, it isn't
 that bit. Ah, I have itl    I
 90     PRELUDE TO SPACE

               " 'Is there any peace
    In ever climbing up the climbing wave?'

 Well, young man, is there?"
  "For some people-yes," said Hassell. "And perhaps when space flight arrives
  they'll all rush off to the planets and leave the Lotus Eaters to their
  dreams. That should satisfy everybody."
  "And the meek shall inherit the Earth, eh?" said his companion, who seemed
  to have a very literary turn of mind.
  "You could put it that way," smiled Hassell. He looked automatically at his
  watch, determined not to become involved, in an argument which could have
  only one result.
 "Dear me, I must be going. Thanks for the talk."
  He rose to leave, thinking he'd preserved his incognito rathqr well. The
  stranger gave him a curious little smile and said quietly: "Good-bye." He
  waited until Hassell had gone twenty feet, then called after him in a
  louder voice: "And good luck-Uyssesl"
  Hassell stopped dead, then swiveled round in his tracks-but the other was
  already walking briskly in the direction of Hyde Park Comer. He watched the
  tall, spare figure lose itself in the crowd; and only then did he say to
  himself explosively: "Well I'll be damned!"
  Then he shrugged his shoulders and walked on towards Marble Arch, intending
  to listen once again to the soapbox orators who had given him so much
  amusement in his youth.

  It did not take Dirk long to realize that the coincidence was hardly so
  surprising after all. Hassell, he remembered, lived in the West London
  area. What was more natural than that he, too, should be taking his last
  look at the city? It might well be his last in a far more final sense than
  Dirk's.
  Their eyes met across the crowd. Hassell gave a little start of
  recognition, but Dirk did not suppose
           PRELUDE TO SPACE      91

 he would remember him by name. He pushed his way toward the young pilot and
 introduced himself some-, what awkwardly. Hassell would probably prefer to
 be left alone, but he could scarcely turn aside without speaking. Moreover,
 he had always wanted to meet the Englishman and this seemed far too good an
 opportunity to miss.
  "Did you hear that last talk?" asked Dirk, by way of starting the
  conversation.
  "Yes," replied Hassell. "I happened to be passing and overheard what the
  old chap was saying. I've often seen him here before; he's one of the saner
  specimens. It's rather a mixed bag, isn't it?" He laughed and waved in the
  general direction of the crowd.
  "Very," said Dirk. "But I'm glad I've seen the place in action. It's quiet
  an experience."
  As he spoke, he studied Hassell carefully. It was not easy to judge his
  age, which might have been anything from twenty-five to thirty-five. He was
  slightly built, with clearcut features and unruly brown hair. A scar from
  an early rocket crash ran diagonally across his left cheek, but was only
  visible now and then when the skin became taut.
 I "After listening to that talk," said Dirk, "I must say that the Universe
 doesn't sound a very attractive place. It's not surprising that a lot of
 people would prefer to stay at hoifie-."
 Hassell laughed.
  "It's funny you should say that; Ive just been talking to an old fellow who
  was making the same point. He knew who I was, but pretended he didn't. The
  argument I brought forward was that there are two kinds of mind-the
  adventurous, inquisitive types and the stay~at-homes who're quite happy to
  sit in their own back-gardens. I think they're both necessary, and it's
  silly to pretend that one's right and the other isn'V,
  "I think I must be a hybrid," smiled Dirk. 'I like to sit in my
  back-garden-but I also like the wander-
   92     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 ers to drop in now and then to tell me what they've seen.
  He broke off abruptly, then added: - "What about sitting down for a drink
  somewhere?"
  He felt tired and thirsty and so, for the same reason, did Hassell.
  "Just foT a moment, then," said Hassell. "I want to get back before five."
  I Dirk could understand this, though as it happened he knew nothing of the
  other's domestic preoccupations. He let Hassell navigate him to the lounge
  of the Cumberland, where they sat down thankfully behind a couple of large
  beers.
  "I don't know," said Dirk with an apologetic cough, "if you've heard of my
  job."
  "As a matter of fact I -have," said Hassell with an engaging smile. "We
  were wondering when you were going to catch up with us. You're the expert
  on motives and influences, aren't you?"
  Dirk was surprised, as well as a triffe embarrassed, to discover how far
  his fame had spread.
  "Er-yes," he, admitted. "Of course," he added hastily, "I'm not primarily
  concerned with individual cases, but it's very useful to me if I can find
  just how people got involved in astronautics in the first place."
 ~He wondered if Hassell would take the bait. After a minute, he began to
 nibble and Dirk felt all the sensations of an angler watching his float
 twitching, at long last, on the surface of some placid lake.
  "We're argued that often enough at the Nursery," said Hassell. "There's no
  simple answer. It depends on the individual."
 Dirk generated an encouraging silence.
  "Consider Taine, for example. He's the pure . scientist, looking for
  knowledge and not much interested in the consequences. That's why, despite
  his brains, he'll always be a smaller man than the D.-G. Mind you-I'm not
  criticizing. One Sir Robert's probably
 quite enough for a single generationlI -           PRELUDE TO SPACE     93

  "Clinton and Richards are engineers and love machinery for its own sake,
  though they're much more human than Tamie. I guess you've heard how Jimmy
  deals with reporters he doesn7t like-I thought sot Clinton's a queer sort
  of fellow and you never know exactly what's going on in his mind. In their
  cases, however, they were chosen for the job-they di(Wt go after it.
  "Now, Pierre's just about as different from the rest as he could be. He's
  the kind who likes adventure for itself-that's why he became a rocket
  pilot. It was his big mistake, though he didn't. realize it at the time.
  There's nothing adventurous about rocket flying: either it goes according
  to plan-or else, Bangl"
  He brought his-fist down on the table, checking it in the last fraction of
  an inch so that the glasses scarcely rattled. The unconscious precision of
  the movement filled Dirk with admiration. He could not, however, let
  Hassell's remarks go unchallenged.
  "I seem to remember," Dirk said, "a. little contretemps of yours which must
  have given you a certain. amount of-er---excitement."
 Hassell smiled disparagingly.
  "That sort of thing happens once in a thousand times. On the remaining nine
  hundred and ninetynine occasions, the pilot's simply there because he
  weighs less than the automatic machinery that could do the same job."
  He paused, looking over Dirk's shoulder, and a slow smile came across his
  face.
  "Fame has its compensations," he murmured. "One of them is approaching
  right now."
  A hotel dignitary was wheeling a little trolley toward them, wheeling it
  with the air of a high-priest bringing a sacrifice to the altar. He stopped
  at their table, and produced a bottle which, if Dirk could judge from its
  cobwebbed exterior, was considerably -older than he himself.
 "With the compliments of the, management, sir,11
 94     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 said the official, bowing toward Hassell, who made appreciative noises but
 looked a little alarmed at the attention now being concentrated on him from
 all sides.
  Dirk knew nothing of wines, but he did not see how any skill in that
  complicated art could have made the smooth liquid Alide more voluptuously
  down his throat., It was such a discreet, such a well-bred wine that
  they'had no hesitation in toasting themselves, then Interplanetary, and
  then the "Prometheus." Their appreciatioji so delighted the management that
  another bottle would have been forthcoming immediately, but Hassell
  gracefully refused and explained that he was already very late, which was
  perfectly true.
  They parted in a high good humor on the steps of the Underground, feeling
  that the afternoon had come to a brilliant finale. Not until Hassell had
  gone did Dirk realize that the young pilot had said nothing, absolutely
  nothing, about himself. Was it modestyof merely lack of time? He had been
  surprisingly willing to discuss his colleagues; it seemed almost as if he
  was anxious to divert attention from himself.
  Dirk stood worrying over this for a moment: then, whistling a little tune,
  he began to walk slowly homeward along Oxford Street. Behind him, the sun
  was g6ing down upon his last evening in England.
 Part Three
 I

 For thirty years the world had been slowly growing used to the idea that,
 some day, men were going to reach the planets. The prophecies of the early
 pioneers of astronautics had come true so many times since the first rockets
 climbed through the stratosphere that few people disbelieved them now. That
 tiny crater near Aristarchus, and the television films of the other side of
 the Moon were achievements which could not be denied.
  Yet there had been some who had deplored or even denounced them. To the man
  in'the street, interplanetary flight was still a vast, somewhat terrifying
  possibility Just below the horizon of everyday life. The general public, as
  yet, had no particular feelings about space flight except the vag~e
  realization that-"Science" was going to bring it about in the indefinite
  future.
  Two distinct types of mentality, however, had taken, astronautics very
  seriously indeed, though for quite different reasons. The practically
  simultaneous impact of the long-ra-h-ge' rocket and the atomic bomb upon
  the military mind had, in the 1950's, produced a crop of blood-curdling
  prophecies from the experts in mechanized murder. For some years there had
  been much talk of bases on the Moon or even-more appropriately~--upon Mars.
  The United States Army's belated

               97
 99-     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 discovery, at the end of the Second World War, of Oberth's twenty-year-old
 plans for "space-stations" had revived ideas which it was a gross
 understatement to call "Wellsian."
  In his classic book, Wege zur Raumschiffahrt, Oberth had discussed the
  building of great "spacemirrors" which could focus sunlight upon, the
  Earth, either for peaceful purposes or for the incineration of enemy
  cities. Oberth himself never took this last idea very seriously, and must
  have been surprised at its solemn reception two decades later.
  The fact that-it would be very easy to bombard the Earth from the Moon, and
  very difficult to attack the Moon from the Earth, had made many uninhibited
  military experts declare that, for the sake of peace, their particular
  country must seize our satellite before any war-mongering rival could reach
  it. Such arguments were common in the decade following the release of
  atomic energy, and were a typical by-product of that era's political
  paranoia. They died, unlamented, as the world slowly returned to sanity and
  order.
  A second and perhaps more important body of opinion, while admitting that
  interplanetary travel was possible, opposed it on mystical or religious
  grounds. The "theological opposition," as it was usually termed, believed
  that man would be disobeying some divine edict if he ventured away from his
  world. In the phrase of Interplanetary's earliest and most brilliant
  critic, the Oxford don C. S. Lewis, astronomical distances were "God's
  quarantine regulations." If man overcame them, he would be guilty of
  something not far removed from blasphemy.
  Since these arguments were not founded on logic, they were quite
  irrefutable. From time to time Interplanetary had issued counterblasts,
  pointing out that tke same objections might very well have been brought
  against all explorers who had ever lived. The astronomical distances which
  twentieth-century man could bridge in minutes with his radio waves were
  less of a barrier than the great oceansmust have-seemed to his
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     99

 Stone Age ancestors, No doubt in prehistoric times there were those
 who-shook their heads and prophesied disaster when the young men of the
 tribe went in search of new lands in the terrifying, unknown world around
 them. Yet it was well that the search had been made before the glaciers came
 grinding down from the Pole.
  One day the glaciers would return, and that was the least of the dooms that
  might descend upon the Earth before its course was run. Some of these could
  only be guessed, but one at least was almost certain in the ages ahead.
  There comes a time In the life of every star when the delicate balance of
  its atomic furnaces must tilt, one way or the other. In the far future the
  descendants of Man might catch, from the safety of the outermost planets,
  a last glimpse of their birthplace as it sank into the fires of the
  detonating Sun.
  One objection to space flight which these critics brought forward was, on
  the face of it, more convincing. Since Man, they argued, had caused so much
  misery upon his own world, could he be trusted to behave on others? Above
  all, would the miserable story of conquest and enslavement of one race by
  another be repeated again, endlessly and forever, as human culture spread
  from one world to the next?
 - Against this there could be no fully convincing answer: only a clash of
 rival faiths-the ancient conflict between pessimism and optimism, between
 those who believed in Man and those who did not. But the astronomers had
 made one contribution to the debate by pointing out the falseness of, the
 historical analogy. Man, who had been civilized only for a millionth of the
 life of his planet, was not likely to encounter races on other worlds which
 would be primitive enough for him to exploit or enslave. Any ships from
 Earth which set out across space with thoughts of interplanetary empire
 might find themselves, at the end of their voyage, with no greater hopes of
 conquest than a fieet of
 100    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 savage war-canoes drawing slowly into New York harbor.
  The announcement that the "Prometheus" might be launched within a few weeks
  had revived all these speculations and many more. Press and radio talked of
  little else, and for a while the astronomers made a profitable business of
  writing guardedly optimistic articles about-the Solar System. A Gallup poll
  carried out in Great Britain during this period showed that 41 per cent of
  the public thought interplanetary travel was a good thing, 26 per cent were
  against it, and 33 per cent had not made up their minds. These figures
  -particularly the 33 per cent-caused some despondency at Southbank and
  resulted in many conferences in the Public. Relations Department, which was
  now busier than it had ever been before.
  Interplanetary's usual trickle of visitors had grown to a mighty flood
  bearing upon its bosom some very exotic characters. Matthews had evolved a
  standard procedure for dealing with most of these. The people who wanted to
  go on the first trip were oflered a ride in the Medical Section's giant
  centrifuge, which could produce accelerations of ten gravities. Yery few
  accepted this offer, and those who did, when they had recovered, were then
  passed to the Dynamics Department, where the mathematicians administered
  the coup de grice by asking them unanswerable questions.
  No one, however, had found an eflective means of dealing with the genuine
  cranks-though they could sometimes be neutralized by a kind of mutual
  reaction. It was one of Matthews's unfulfilled ambitions to be visited
  simultaneously by a flat-earther and one of those still more eccentric
  people who are convinced that the world Is on the inside of a hollow
  sphere. This would, hewas sure, result in a highly entertaining debate.
  Yery little could be done about the psychic explorers (usually middle-aged
  spinsters) who were already perfectly well acquainted with the Solar System
  and all too anxious to impart their knowledge. Matthews had
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    101

 been optimistic enough to hope, now that the CrOSSing of space was so close
 at hand, that they would not be so eager to have their ideas tested by
 reality. He was disappointed, and one unfortunate member of his stag was
 employed almost full time listening to these ladies give highly colored and
 mutually incompatible accounts of lunar affairs.
  More serious'and significant were the letters and comments in the great
  newspapers, many of which demanded official replies., A minor canon of the
  Church of England wrote a vigorous and much publicized letter to The London
  Times, denouncing Interplanetary and all.its works. Sir -Robert Derwent
  promptly went into action behind the scenes and, as he put it, "trumped the
  fellow with an archbishop." It was rumored that he had a cardinal and a
  rabbi in reserve if attacks came from other quarters.
  No one was particularly surprised when a ietired brigadier, who had
  apparently spend the last thirty years in suspended animation in the
  outskirts of Aldershop, wanted to know what steps were being taken to
  incorporate the Moon into the British Commonwealth. Simultaneously, a
  long-dormant majorgeneral erupted in Atlanta and asked Congress to make the
  Moon the Fiftieth State. Similar demands were to be heard in almost every
  country in the world -with the possible exception of Switzerland and
  Luxembourg-while the international lawyers realized that a,crisis of which
  they had long been warned was now almost upon them.
  At this moment Sir Robert Derwent issued the famous manifesto which had
  been prepared many years ago against this very day.
  "Within a few weeks," the message ran, "we hope to launch the first
  spaceship from the Earth. We do 'not know whether we shall succeed, but the
  power to reach the planets is now almost within our grasp. This generation
  stands upon the brink of the ocean,of space, preparing for the greatest
  adventure in all history.
 "There are some whose minds are so rooted in the
 102    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 past that they believe the political thinking of our ancestors can still be
 applied when we reach other worlds. They even talk of annexing the Moon in
 the name of this or that nation, forgetting that the crossing of space has
 required the united efforts of scientists from every country in the world.
  "There are no nationalities beyond the stratosphere. any worlds we may
  reach will be the common heritage of all men-unless other,forms of life
  have already claimed them for their own.
  "We, who have striven to place humanity upon the road to the stars, make
  this solemn declaration, now and for the future:
 "We will take no frontiers into space."

 "I think it's hard lines on Alfred," remarked Dirk, "having to stay behind
 now that the fun's beginning."
 McAndrews gave a noncommittal grant.
  "We couldn't both go," he said. "Headquarters is being decimated as it is.
  Too many people seem to think this is just a good excuse for a holiday."
  Dirk forebore from comment, though sorely tempted. In any case, his own
  presence could not be regarded as strictly necessary. He conjured up a last
  sympathetic picture of poor Matthews, staring gloomBy over the sluggish
  Thames, and turned his mind to happier things.
  The Kentish coastline was still visible astern, for the liner had not yet
  gained its full height or speed. There was scarcely any sense of movement,
  but suddenly Dirk had an indefinable feeling of change. Others must have
  noticed it also for Leduc, who was sitting opposite, nodded with
  satisfaction.
  "The ramjets are starting to fire," he said. "They'll be cutting the
  turbines now."
            PRELUDE TO SPACE    103

  'That means," put in Hassell, "that we're doing over a thousand."
  "Knots, miles or kilometers an hour, or rods, poles or perches per
  microsecond?" asked somebody.
  "For heaven's sake," groaned one of the technicians, "don't start that
  argument againl"
  "When do we arrive?" asked Dirk, who knew the answer perfectly well but was
  anxious to create a diversion.
  "We touch down at Karachi in about six hours, get six hours' sleep, and
  should be in Australia twenty hours from now. Of course we have to add--or
  subtract -Labout half a day for time difference, but someone else can work
  that out."
  "Bit of a come-down for you, Vic," Richards laughed at Hassell. "Thie last
  time you went round the world it took you ninety minutes!"
  "One mustn't exaggerate," said Hassell. "I was way Out, and it took a good
  hundred. Besides, it was a day and a half before I could get down againl"
  "Speed's all very well," said Dirk philosophically, "but it gives one a
  false impression of the world. You get shot from one place to another in a
  few hours and forget that there's anything in between."
  "I quite agree,"-- put in Richards unexpectedly. 'Travel quickly if you
  must, but otherwise you can't beat the good old sailing yacht. When I was
  a kid I spent most of my spare time cruising around the Great Lakes. Give
  me five miles an hour-or twenty-five thousand. I've no use for
  stage-coaches or aeroplanes or anything else in between."
  The conversation then became technical, and degenerated into a wrangle over
  the relative merits of jets, athodyds and rockets. Someone pointed out that
  the airscrews could still be seen doing good work in the obscurer comers of
  China, but he was ruled out of order. After a few minutes of this, Dirk
  was- glad when McAndrews challenged him to, a game of chess on a miniature
  board.
 He lost the first game over Southeastern Europe,
           PRELUDE TO SPACE

 aild fell asleep before completing the second-probably through the action of
 some defense mechanism, as,McAndrews was much the better player. He woke up
 over Iran, just in time to land and go to sleep again. it was therefore not
 surprising that when Dirk reached the Timor Sea, and readjusted his watch
 for Australian time, he was not quite sure whether he should be awake or
 not.
  His companions, who had synchronized their sleep more efficiently, were in
  better shape and began to crowd to the observation ports as they neared the
  end of their journey. They had been crossing barren desert, with occasional
  fetile areas, for almost two hours when Leduc, who had been map-reading,
  suddenly cried out: "There it is---over on the leftl"
  Dirk followed his pointing finger. For a moment he saw nothing; then he
  made out, many miles away, the buildings of a compact little town. To one
  side of it was an airstrip, and beyond that, an almost invisible black line
  that stretched across the desert. It seemed t6 be an unusually straight
  railroad; then Dirk saw that it led from nowhere to nowhere. It began,in
  the desert and ended in the desert. It was the first five miles of the road
  that would lead his companions to the Moon.
  A few minutes later the great launching track was beneath them, and with a
  thrill of recognition Dirk saw the winged bullet of the "Prometheus"
  glistening on the airfield beside it. Everyone became suddenly silent,
  staring down at the tiny silver dart which meant so much to them but which
  only a few had ever seen save in drawings and photographs. Then it was hid-
  den by a block of low buildings as the liner banked and they came in to
  land.
  "So this is Luna Cityl" remarked someone without enthusiasm. "It looks like
  a deserted gold-rush town."
  "Maybe it is," said Leduc. "They used to have gold mines in these parts,
  didn't they?"
"Surely you know," said McAndrews pompously,
"that Luna City was built by the Briti ' sh Government
around 1950 as a rocket research base. Originally it
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     105

 had an aborigine name -something to do with spears
 or arrows, I believe."
  "I wonder what the aborigines think of these goingson? There are still some
  of them out in the hills, aren't there?"
  "Yes," said Richards, "they've got a reservation a few hundred miles away,
  well off the line of fire. They probably think we're crazy, and I guess
  they're right."
  The truck which had collected the party at the airstrip came to a halt
  before a large office building.
  "Leave your kit aboard," instructed the driver. "This is where you get your
  hotel reservations."
  No one was much amused at the jest. Accommodation at Luna City consisted
  largely of Army huts, some of which were almost thirty years old. The more
  modern buildings would certainly be occupied by the permanent residents,
  and the visitors were full of gloomy forebodings.
  Luna City, as it had been called for the last fivi years, had never quite
  lost its original military flavor. It was laid out like an Army camp, and
  though energetic amateur gardeners had done their best to brighten it up,
  their efforts had only served to emphasize the general drabness and
  uniformity.
  The normal population of the settlement was about three thousand, of whom
  the majority were scientists or technicians. In the next few days there
  would be an influx limited only by the- a-cco-mmodation-and perhaps not
  even by that. One newsr eel company had already sent in a consignment of
  tents, and its personnel were making anxious inquiries about Luna City's
  weather.
  To his relief, Dirk found that the room allocated to him, though small, was
  clean and,, comfortable. About a dozen members of the administrative staff
  also occupied the block, while across the way Collins and the other
  scientists from Southbank formed a second colony. The Cockneys, as they
  christened themselves, quickly-- enlivened the place by such notices
 106     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 as "To the Underground" and "Line-up here for 25 bus."
  The first day in Australia was, for the whole party, entirely occupied by
  the mechanics of getting settled and learning the geography of the "city."
  ne little town had one great point in its favor-it was compact and the tall
  tower of the meteorological building served as a good landmark. The
  airstrip was About two miles away, and the head of the launching -track
  another mile beyond that. Although everyone was eager to see the spaceship,
  the visit had to wait until the second day. In any case Dirk was far \too
  busy during the first twelve hours frantically trying to locate his notes
  and records, which seemed to have gone astray somewhere between Calcutta
  and Darwin. He eventually found them at Technical Stores, which was on the
  point of consigning the lot back to England as they couldn't find his name
  on Interplanetary's establishment list.
  At the end of the first exhausting day, Dirk nevertheless still had enough
  energy to record his impressions of the place.
  "Midnight. Luna City, as Ray- Collins put it, looks like 'good fun~-though
  I guess the fun would wear off after a month or so. The accommodation is
  quite reasonable, though the furniture is rather scanty and there's no
  running water in the block. I'll have to go half a mile to get a shower,
  but this is hardly 'roughing it!"
  "McA. and some of his people are in this building. I'd rather have been
  with Collins's crowd across the way, but I can't very well ask to be
  transferred.
  "Luna City reminds me of the Air Force bases I've seen in the'war films. It
  has the same bleakly efficient appearance, the same atmosphere of restless
  energy. And like an air base, it exits for a machine--the spaceship instead
  of the bomber.
  "From my window I can see, a quarter of a mile away, the dark shape of some
  office buildings which look very incongruous here in the desert under these
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    107

 strange, brilliant stars. A few windows are still Ht up and one could
 imagine that the scientists are working feverishly against time to overcome
 some last-minute difficulty. But I happen to know thai-said scientists are
 making a devil of a noise in the next block, entertaining their friends.
 Probably the burner of midnight oil is some unfortunate accountant or
 storekeeper trying to balance his books-.
  "A long way off to the left, through a gap in the buildings, I can see a
  faint smear of light low down on the horizon. The 'Prometheus' is out
  there, lying under the floodlights. It's strange to think that sheor rather
  'BeW-has been up into space a dozen times or more on those fueling runs.
  Yet 'Beta' belongs to our, planet, while 'Alpha,' which is still
  earthbound, will soon be up among the stars, never to touch the surface of
  this world again. We're all very eager -to see the ship, and won't waste
  any time tomorrow in getting out to the launching site.
  "Later. Ray hauled me out to meet his friends. I feel flattered, since I
  noticed McA. and Co. weren't invited. I can't remember the names of anyone
  I was introduced to, but it was good fun. And so to bed."

 2
 Even when first seen from ground level a mile away, the "Prometheus" was an
 impressive sight. She stood on her multiple undercarriage at the edge of the
 great concrete,apron around the launcher, the scoops of her air-intakes
 gaping like hungry mouths. The smaller and lighter "Alpha" lay in its
 special cradle a few yards away, ready to be hoisted into position. Both
 machines were surrounded with cranes, tractors and various types of mobile
 equipment.
 A rope barrier was slung round the site, and the
 108     PRELUDE TO SPACB

 truck halted at the opening in the cordon, beneath a large notice which
 read:

     WARNING-RADIOACTIVE AREA1

No unauthorized persons allowed past this point.
     Visitors wishing to examine the ship, contact Ext. 47 (Pub. Rel.
     Ila).

     THIS IS FOR YOUR PROTECTION1

  Dirk looked a little nervously at Collins as they gave their identities and
  were waved past the barrier.
 "I'm not sure I altogether like this," he said.
  "Oh," replied Collins cheerfully, "there's no need to worry, as long as you
  keep near me. We won't go near any dangerous areas. And I always carry one
  of these."
  He pulled a small rectangular box out of his coat pocket. It appeared to be
  made of plastic and had a tiny loudspeaker set into one side.
 "What is it?"
  "'Geiger alarm. Goes off like a ~iren if there's any dangerous -activity
  around."
  Dirk waved his hand toward the great machine looming ahead of them.
  "Is it a spaceship or an atomic bomb?" he asked plaintively.
 Collins laughed.
  "If you got in the way of the jet, you'd never notice the difference."
  They were now standing beneath the slim, pointed snout of "Beta" and her
  great wings, sweeping away from them on either side, made her look Eke a
  moth in repose. The dark caverns of the air-scoops looked ominous and
  menacing, and Dirk was puzzled by the strange fluted objects which
  protruded from them at various places. Collins noticed his curiosity.
 "Shock diffusers," he explained. "It's quite impos-'
           PRELiU6E TO SPACE    109

 sible to get one kind of air-intake to operate over the whole speed range
 from five hundred miles an hour at.sea level to eighteen thousand miles an
 hour at the top of the stratosphere. Those gadgets are adjustable and can be
 -moved in and out. Even so the whole thing's shockingly inefficient and only
 the fact that we've unlimited power makes it possible at all. Let's see if
 we can get aboard."
  Her stubby undercarriage made it easy to enter, the machine through the
  airlock door in her side. The rear of the ship, Dirk noticed, had been
  carefully fenced off with great movable barriers so that no one could
  approach it. He commented on this to Collins.
  "That part of 'Beta,' " said the aerodynamicist grimly, "is Strictly Out of
  Bounds until the year 2000 or so."
 Dirk looked at him blankly.
 "What do you mean?"
  "Just that. Once the atomic drive's started to operate, and the piles get
  radioactive, nothing can ever go near them again. They won't be safe to
  touch for years."
  Even Dirk, who was certainly no engineer, began to realize the practical
  difficulties this must involve.
  "Then how the devil do you inspect the motors, or put things right when
  they've gone wrong? Don't tell me that your designs are so perfect that
  there aren't any breakdowns!"
 Collins smiled.
  "That's the biggest headache of atomic engineering. You'll have a chance to
  see how it's done later."
  There was surprisingly little to see aboard "Beta," since most of the ship
  consisted of fuel tanks and motors, invisible and unappr9achable behind
  their barriers.of shielding. The long, thin cabin at the nose might have
  been the control room of any airliner, but was more elaborately appointed
  since the crew 6f pilot and maintenance engineer would be living aboard her
  for nearly three weeks. They would have a very boring time, and Dirk was
  not surprised to see that the
 110   PRELU15E TO SPACE

 ship's equipment included a microfilm library and projector. It would be
 unfortunate, to say the least, if the two men had incompatible
 personalities: but no doubt the psychologists had checked this point with
 meticulous care.
  Partly because he understood so little of what he saw, and partly because
  he was more anxious to go aboard "Alpha," Dirk soon grew tired of examining
  the control room. He walked to the tiny, thick windows and looked at the
  view ahead.
  "Beta" was pointing out across the desert, almost parallel with the
  launching track -over which she would be racing in a few days' time. It was
  easy to imagine that, even now, she was waiting to leap into the sky and to
  climb toward the stratosphere with her precious burden....
  The floor suddenly trembled as the ship began to move. Dirk felt a cold
  hand clutch at his heart and he almost overbalanced, only saving himsd1f by
  grabbing at a rail in front of him. Not until then did he see the little
  tractor fussing around the ship and realize he had made a fool of himself.
  He hoped that Ray hadn't noticed his behavior, for he must certainly have
  turned pretty green.
  "O.K.," said Collins at last-, having finished his careful inspection. "Now
  let's look at 'Alpha."'
  They climbed out of the machine, which had now been pushed farther back
  into its surrounding barriers.
  "I guess they're doing something to the motors," said Coffins. "They've
  made-let's see-fifteen runs now without any trouble. Which is quite a
  feather, in Prof. Maxton's cap."
  Dirk was still wondering how "they" were doing anything at . all to those
  terrifying inaccessible engines, but another query had crossed his mind.
  "Listen," he said, "there's one thing Ive been meaning to have out with you
  for some time. What sex is the 'PrometheusT Everyone seems to use he,
           PRELUDE TO SPACE  I ill

 she or it quite impartially. I don't expect scientists to understand
 grammar, but stUl---2'
  Collins chuckled.
  `Mat's just the kind of point we are particular about," he said. "It's been
  laid down officially somewhere. Although 'Prometheus' is, of course, 'he,'
  we call the entire ship 'she', as in nautical practice. 'Beta' is also
  '.she,' but 'Alpha,' the spaceship, is 9 'it.' What could be simpler?"
  "Quite a lot of things. However, I suppose it's O.K as long as you're
  consistent. I'll jump on you when you arentt."
  "Alpha" was an even more compact mass of motors ,and fuel tanks than the
  bigger ship. It had,, of course, no fins or aerofoils of any kind, but
  there were signs that many oddly-shaped devices had been retracted into the
  hull. Dirk asked his friend about these.
  "Those .will be the radio antennae, penscopes, and outriggers for the
  steering jets," explained Collins. "Back at the rear you'll see where the
  big shock absorbers for the lunar landing have been retracted. When
  'Alphals' out in space they can all be extended and the crew can check 'em
  over to see if they're working properly. They can then stay out for good,
  since there's no air resistance for the rest of the voym age.
  There was radiation screening around "Alpha's" rocket units, so it was
  impossible to get a complete view of the spaceship. It reminded Dirk of the
  fuselage of-an old-fashioned airliner which had lost its wings or was yet
  to acquire them. In some ways "Alpha" strongly resembled a giant artillery
  shell, with an unexpected circlet of portholes near the nose. The cabin for
  the crew occupied less than a fifth of the rocket's length. Behind it were
  the multitudinous machines and controls which would be needed on the
  half-million-mile journey.
  Collins roughly indicated the different sections of the machine.
 "Just behind the cabin," he said, "weve put the
 112    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 airlock, and the main controls which may have to be adjusted in flight. Then
 come the fuel tanks--six of thern-and the refrigeration plant to keep the
 methane liquid. Next we have the pumps and turbines, and then the motor
 itself whch extends halfway along the ship. There's a great wad of shielding
 around it, and the whole of the cabin is in the radiation shadow so that the
 crew gets the maximum protection. But the rest of the ship's 'hot,' though
 the fuel itself helps a good deal with the shielding."
  The tiny airlock was just large enough to hold two people, and Collins went
  ahead to reconnoiter. He warned Dirk in advance that the cabin would prob-
  ably be too full to admit visitors, but a moment later he emerged again and
  signaled for him to enter.
  "Everyone except Jimmy Richards and Digger Clinton had gone over to the
  workshops," he said. "We're in luck-there's bags of room."
  That, Dirk soon discovered, was a remarkable exaggeration. The cabin had
  been designed for three people living under zero gravity, when walls and
  floor were freely interchangable and its whole volume could be used for any
  purpose. Now that the machine was lying horizontally on Earth, conditions
  were decidely cramped.
  Clinton, the Australian electronics specialist, was half buried in a vast
  wiring diagram which he had been forced to wrap around himself in order to
  get it into the cabin. He looked, Dirk thought, rather like a caterpillar
  spinning Its cocoon. Richards seemed to be running through some tests on
  the controls.
  "Don't look alarmed," he said as Dirk watched him anxiously. "We won't take
  off-there's nothing in the fuel tanksl"
  -rm getting rather a complex about this," Dirk confessed. "Next time I come
  aboard, Fd like to make sure that we're tied down to a nice, fat anchor."
  "As some anchors go," laughed Richards, "it needn't be such a big one.
  'Alpha' hasn't much thrust
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    113

 -about a hundred tons. But it can keep it up for a long timel"
  "Only a hundred tons thrust? But she weighs three times thatIll
 Collins coughed delicately in the background.
  "It, I thought we decided," he remarked. However, Aichards seemed willing
  to adopt the new gender.
  "Yes, but she's in free space when she starts, and when'she takes off from
  the Moon her effective weight will be only about thirty-five tons. So
  everything's under control."
  The layout of "Alpha's" cabin seemed to be the result of a pitched battle
  between science and surrealism. The design hadbeen determined by the fact
  that for eight days the -occupants would have no gravity at all, and would
  - know nothing- of " UP it or "down" ; while for a somewhat longer period,
  when the ship was standing on the Moon, there would be a low gravitational
  field along the a7ds of the machine. As at the moment the center-line was
  horizontal, Dirk had a feeling that he should really be walking 'on the
  walls or roof.
  Yet it was a moment he would remember all his life, this visit to the first
  of all--spaceships. The little portholes through which he was now looking
  would, in a few days' time, be staring out across the lonely lunar plains;
  the sky above would not be blue, but black and studded with stars. If he
  closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was on the Moon already, and
  that if he looked through the upper portholes he would see the Earth
  hanging in the heavens. Though he went over the ship several times again,
  Dirk was never able to recapture the emotions of this first visit.
  There was a sudden scrambling noise -in the airlock and Collins said
  hastily:
  "We'd better get out before the rush starts and someone gets trampled to
  death. The boys are co i g back."
  He managed to hold off the boarding party long enough for them to make good
  their escape. Dirk saw
 114     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 that Hassell, Leduc, Taine and three other men were all preparing to enter
 the ship-several with large pieces of equipment-and his mind boggled as he
 tried to picture conditions within. He hoped that nothing or nobody got
 broken.
  Down on the concrete apron he relaxed and stretched himself again. He
  glanced up at one of the portholes to see what,, was happening in the ship,
  but was hardly surprised to find his view effectively blocked. Someone was
  sitting on the window.
  "Weil," said Collins, offering him a welcome cigarette. "What do you think
  of our little toys?"
  "I can see where all the money's gone," Dirk answered. "It seems an awful
  lot of machinery to take three men just across the road, as you put it." .
  "There's some more to see yet. Let's go over to the launcher."
  The launching track was impressive by its very simplicity. Two sets of
  rails began in the concrete apron -and went straight out to disappear over
  the horizon. It was the finest example of perspective that Dirk had ever
  seen.
  the catapult shuttle was a huge metal carriage with arms that would grasp
  the "Prometheus" until the ship had gained flying speed. It would be just
  too bad, Dirk thought, if they failed to release at the right time.
  "Laun6hing five hundred tons at as many m.p.h. must take quite a generating
  plant," he said to Collins. "Why doesn't the 'Prometheus' take off under
  her own power?"
 - "Because with that initial loading she stalls at fourfifty, and the
 ramjets don't operate until just above that. So we have to get up speed
 first. The energy for the launch comes from the main power station over
 there; that smaller building beside it houses a battery of flywheels
 which,are brought up to speed just before the take-off. Then they're coupled
 directly to the generators."
 I "I see," said Dirk. "You wind up the elastic, and-
 away she goes."I
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    115

  "That!s the idea," Collins replied. "When 'Alpha's' launched, 'Beta' isn't
  overloaded any more, and can be brought in to land at a reasonable
  speed-less than two hundred and fifty miles an hour; which is easy to
  anyone who makes a hobby of flying two-hundredton gHdersl"

 3 -
 Tber milling crowd in the little hanger became suddenly quiet as the
 Director-General climbed up on to the dais. He had spurned amplifiers, and
 his voice rang strongly between the metal walls. As he spoke, hundreds of
 stylos began to race over hundreds of pads.
  "I'd like," Sir Robert began, "to have a few words with you now that
  everyone's here. We're particularly atixious to assist you in your job, and
  to give you every opportunity of reporting the take-off, which as you know
  is in five days' time.
  "First of all, you'll realize that it's physically impossible to let,
  everyone look over the ship. We've admitted as many as we could in the last
  week, but after tomorrow we can accept no more visitors aboard. The
  engineers will be making their final adjustments then -and I might also say
  that we've already had one or two cases of-ahem!-souvenir hunting.
  "You've all had a chance of selecting observation sites along the launching
  track. There should be plenty of room for everyone in the first four
  kilometers. But remember-no one must go past the red barrier at five
  kilometers. That's where the jets start firing, and it's still slightly
  radioactive from previous launebings. When the blast opens up, it will
  spray fission products over a wide area. We'll give the all-clear as soon
  as it's safe, for. you to collect the automatic cameras you have mounted
  out there.
  "A number of people have asked when the radiation shields are being taken
  away from the ships so that
 116    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 they can be seen properly. We'll be doing this tomorrow afternoon and you
 can come and watch then. Bring binoculars or telescopes if you want to look
 at the jet units-you won't be allowed closer than a hundred yards. And if
 anyone thinks this is a lot of nonsense, there are two people in the
 hospital here who sneaked up to have a good look and now wish they hadn't.
  "If for any reason theres a last-minute hold-up, launching will be delayed
  twelve hours, twenty-f6ur hours, or, at the most, thirty-six hours. After
  that we'll have to wait for the next lunation-that is, for four weeks. It
  makes very little difference when we go to the Moon, as far as the ship is
  concerned, but we're anxious to land in daylight in the region we know
  best.
  "The two components -will separate about an hour after take-off. It should
  be possible to see 'Alpha's' blast if the rocket is above the horizon when
  it begins its powered orbit. We will be relaying any broadcast messages
  over the camp speaker system, and on our local wave-length.
  "'Alpha' should be on its way to the Moon, in free fall, about ninety
  minutes after take-off. We expect the first broadcast about then. After
  that, there will be nothing much happening for three days, when the braking
  maneuvers begin, about thirty thousand miles from the Moon. If for any
  reason the fuel consumption has been too high, there will be no landing.
  The ship will be turned into an orbit around the Moon, at. a height of a
  few hundred kilometers, and will circle it until the time for the
  precomputed return flight.
 "Now, are there any questions?"
  There was silence for a minute. Then someone from the back of the crowd
  called out:
 . "When do you we know who's going to be in the crew, sir?"
 The Director-General gave a Worried little smile.
  "Probably tomorrow. But please remember-this thing is much too big for
  personalities. It doesn't matter a damn who actually goes on the first
  flight. The journey itself is what counts."
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    117

 "Can we talk to the crew when the ship's in spaceT' "Yes, there will be
 limited opportunities for doing that. We hope to arrange a general broadcast
 once a day. And, of course, we'll be exchanging fixes and technical
 information continuously, so the ship win always be in contact with ground
 stations somewhere on Earth."
  "What about the actual landing on the Moonhow's that being broadcast?"
  "The crew will be much too busy to give running commentaries for our
  benefits. But the microphones will be live, so we'll have a good idea of
  what's happening. Also the observatories will be able to see the jet when
  it's firing. It will probably create quite a disturbance when it hits the
  Moon."
 "What's the program after the landing, sir?"
  "The crew will decide it in the light of circumstances. Before they leave
  the ship, they'll broadcast a dekription of everything they see, and the
  television camera will be set panning. So we should have some really good
  pictures-it's a full color system, by the way.'
  "That will take about an hour, and will give time for any dust and
  radiation products to disperse. Then two members of the crew will put on
  spacesuits and start exploring. They will radio back their impressions to
  the ship, and these will be relayed directly to Earth.
  "We hope it will be possible to make a fair survey of a region about ten
  kilometers across, but we're taking no risks at all. Thanks to the
  television link, anything that's discovered can be shown immediately to us
  back on Earth. What we're particularly anxious to find, of course, are
  mineral deposits from which we can manufacture fuel on the Moon. We'll
  naturally be looking for signs of life as well, but no one will be more
  surprised than us if we find any."
  "If you catch a Selenite," said someone facetiously, 46will you bringtim.
  back for the zoo?"
  "Certainly notl" said Sir Robert firmly, but with a twinkle in his eye. "If
  we start that sort of thing, we're likely to end up in zoos ourselves."
 118    PRELUDE TO SPACE

  "When will the ship be coming back?" asked another voice.
  "It will land in the early morning, and take off again in the late
  afternoon, lunar time. That means a stay of about eight of our days. The
  return trip lasts four and a half days, so the total absence will be
  sixteen to seventeen days.
  "No more questions? Right, then nl leave it at that. But there's one other
  thing. To make sure that everyone has a clear idea of the technical
  background, we've arranged three talks in the next few days. Theyll be
  given by Taine, Richards and Clinton, and each will cover his special line
  of territory-but in nontechnical language. I strongly advise you not to
  miss them. Thank youl"
  The ending of the address could not have been More perfectly timed. As the
  Director-General stepped down from the dais, a sudden, tremendous thunder
  came rolling up across the desert, setting the steel hangar reverberating
  like a drum. -
  Three miles away, "Alpha" was testing its motors at perhaps a tenth of
  their full power. It was a sound that tore at the ear drams and set the
  teeth on edge; what it would be like at full thrust was beyond imagination.
  Beyond imagination, and beyond knowledge, for no one would ever hear it.
  When "Alpha's" rockets fired again, the ship would be in the eternal
  silence between the worlds, where the explosion of an atomic bomb is as
  soundless as the clash of snowflakes beneath a winter moon.

 4
 Professor Maxton looked rather tired as he arranged the maintenance sheets
 carefully on his desk in a neat pile. Everything had been checked;
 everything was working perfectly---almost too perfectly, it seemed.
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    119

 The motors would have their final inspection tomorrow; meanwhile the stores
 could be moved into the ,two ships. It was a pity, he meditated, that one
 had to leave a stand-by crew aboard "Beta" while she circled the Earth. But
 it could not be avoided, since the instruments and the refrigeration plant
 for the fuel had to be looked after, and both machines would have to be
 fully maneuverable in order to make contact again. One school of thought
 considered that "Beta" should land and take off once more a fortnight later
 to meet the returning "Alpha." There had been much argaT ment over this, but
 the orbital view had finally been accepted. It would be introducing fewer
 additional hazards to leave "Beta" where she was, already in position just
 outside the atmosphere.
  The machines were ready; but what, thought Maxton, of the men? He wondered
  if the DirectorGeneral had yet made his decision, and abruptly &7 cided to
  go to see him.
  He was not surprised to find the chief psychologist already with Sir
  Robert. Dr. Groves gave him a friendly nod as he entered.
  "'Hello, Rupert. I suppose youre afraid rve called the whole thing off?"
  "If you did," said Maxton grimly, "I think rd get up a scratch crew from my
  staff and go myself. We'd probably manage pretty well, at that. But,
  seriously, how are the boys?"
  "They're fine. It won't be easy to choose your three men-but I hope you can
  do it soon, as the waiting puts an unfair strain on them. There's no
  further reason for delay, is there?"
  "No; they've all been reaction-tested on the controls and are fully
  familiar with the ship. We're all set to go. V,
  "In. that case," said the Director-General, "well settle it first thing
  tomorrow."
 "Hovall
  "By ballot, as we promised. It's the only way to prevent bad feeling."
 120     PRELUDE TO SPACE
  "rin glad of that," said Maxton. He turned to the psychologist again.
 "Are you quite sure about Hassell?"
  "I was coming to him. He'll go all right, and he really wants to go. He's
  not worrying so much now that the last-minute excitement has got hold of
  hirn. But theres still one snag."
 "What's that?"
  "I think this is veyy unlikely, but suppose anything goes wrong at this end
  while he's on the Moon? The baby's due just around mid-voyage, you know."
  "I see. If his wife died, to take the worst case, what effect would it have
  on him?"
  "It isn't easy to answer that, as hell already be under conditions quite
  unlike any which a human being has experienced before. He may take it
  calmly, or he may crack up. I think it's a vanishingly small risk, but it's
  there."
  "We could, of course, lie to him," said Sir Robert thoughtfully, "but rve
  always been rather particular about ends and means. rd hate to have a trick
  like that on my conscience."
  There was silence for a few minutes. Then the Director-General continued:
  "Well, thanks very much, Doctor. Rupert and I will talk it over. If we
  decide it's absolutely necessary, we might ask Hassell to step down."
 The psychologist paused at the door.
 "You might," he said,"but I'd hate to try it myself."

  The night was ablaze with stars when Professor Maxton left the
  Director-General's office and walked wearily across to the living-quarters.
  it gave him a guilty feeling to realize that he didn't know the nam6 of
  half. the constellations he could see. One night he'd get Taine to identify
  them for him. 13ut he would have to hurry; Taine might have only three more
  nights on Earth.
 Over to the left he could see the crew's quarters,
           PRELUDE TO SPACE  1 121

 blazing with rights. He hesitated for a moment, then walked swiftly toward
 the low building.
  The first room, Leduc's, was empty, though the lights were on and it had
  only just been vacated. Its occupant had already stamped his personality
  upon it and piles of books lay around the place-far more than there seemed
  any point in bringing on such a short -visit. Maxton glanced at the
  titles-mostly French-and once or twice his eyebrows rose slightly. He filed
  away one or two words to await his next contact with a really comprehensive
  French dictionary.
  A charming photograph of Pierre's two children, sitting happily in a model
  rocket, was in a place of honor upon the desk. A portrait of his very
  beautiful wife was standing on the dressing-table, but the effect of
  domesticity was somewhat spoiled by the half-dozen photographs of other
  young ladies pinned on the wall.
  Maxton moved to the next room, which happened to be Taine's. Here he found
  Leduc and the young astronomer deeply engrossed in a game of chess. He
  watched their tactics critically for a time, with the usual result that
  they accused him of ruining their play. At this he challenged the winner;
  Leduc won and Maxton polished him off in about thirty moves.,
  "That," he said, as the board was put away, "should Stop You getting
  over-confident, Dr. Groves says it's a common failing of yours."
  "Has Dr. Groves said anything else?" asked Leduc with elaborate casualness.
  "Well, I'm giving away no medical confidences when I say that you've all
  passed your tests and can go on to Ifigh School. So first thing tomorrow
  we're going to have a sweepstake to select the three guinea pigs."
  Expressions of relief came over his listeners' faces. They had been almost
  promised, it was true, that the final choice would be by ballot. But until
  now they had not been sure, and the feeling that they were all poten-
  tial'rivals had sometimes straffied their relationships.
  "Are the rest of the boys in?" asked Maxton. "I think ru go and tell them."
 122    PRFLUDE TO SPACE

  "Jimmy's probably asleep," said Taine, "but Arnold and Vic are still
  awake." -
 "Good. Be seeing you in the morning."
  Strange noises emerging from Richards! room showed that the Canadian was
  very much asleep. Maxton went on down the passage and knocked at Clinton's
  door.
 I The scene that confronted him almost ~ took his breath away: it might have
 been a fihn set showing a mad scientist's laboratory. Lying on the floor in
 a tangle of radio tubes and wiring, Clinton seemed to be hypnotized by a
 cathode-ray oscilloscope, the screen of which was filled with fantastic
 geometrical figures, continually shifting and changing. In the background a
 radio was softly playing Rachmaninofrs rightly littleknown Fourth Piano
 Concerto, and Maxton slowly 7alized that the figures on the screen were
 synchronized with the music.
  He clambered on to the bed, which seemed the safest place to be, and
  watched until Clinton finally pried himself off the floor.
  "Asoming that you know yourself," he said at last, "can you tell me what
  the heck you're trying to do?"
  Clinton tiptoed gingerly over the confusion and sat down beside him.
  "It's an idea rve been working on for some years," he explained
  apologetica.Uy.
  Well, I hope you remember what happened to the late Mr..Frankenstein."
  Clinton, who was a serious individual, failed to respond.
  "I call it a kaleidophone," he said. "The idea is that it will convert any
  rhythmical sound, such as music, into pleasing and symmetrical, but always
  changing,' visual patterns."
  I'Tbat would make an amusing toy. But would the .average nursery run to
  that number of radio tubes?"
  "It's not a toy," said Clinton, slightly hurt. "The television people, and
  the cartoon film industry, would find it very useful. it would be ideal for
  providing in-
             PRELUDE TO SPACE -- 123

 tefludes during long musical broadcasts, which alw-ays get boring. In fact,
 I was hoping to make a bit of money out of it."
  "My dear fellow," grinned Maxton, "if you're one of the first men to get to
  the Moon, I don't think you'll ever be in any real _danger of starving in
  the gutter in your old age."
 "No, I suppose not."
  "The real reason why I stopped in was to tell you that we've having a
  ballot for the crew first thing tomorrow. Don't electrocute yourself before
  then. Im going to see Hassell now--so good night."
  Hassell was lying in bed reading when Professor Maxton knocked and entered.
  "Hello, Prof,".he said. "What are you doing around at this ungodly hour?"
 Maxton came straight to the point.
  "We're having the draw,for the crew tomorrow morning. Thought you'd like to
  know."
 Hassell was silent for a moment.
  "That means," he said, in a slightly thick voice, "that we've all got
  through."
 "Good heavens, Vic," protested Maxton heartily, surely you never had any
 doubtsl"
  Hassell's eyes seemed to avoid him. They also avoided, Maxton noticed, the
  photograph of his wife on the dressing-table.
  "As you all know," Hassell said presently, 64rve been rather worried
  about-Maude."
  "That's natural enough, but I gather that everything is O.K. What are you
  going to call the boy, by the way?,$
 "Victor William."
  "Well, I guess that when he arrives Vic Junior will be about the most
  famous baby in the world. Too bad the television system's one-way. You'll
  have to wait until you get back before you can see him."
 "When and if," muttered Hassell.
  "Look here, Vic," said Maxton firmly. "You do want to go, don't you?"
 124    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 Hassell looked up in half-ashamed defiance.
 "Of course I do," he snapped.
  "Very well then. You've got three chances in five
 of being chosen, like everyone else. But if yo ' u don't
 come out of the hat this time, then you'll be on the
 second trip, which in some ways will be even more
 important, since by then wcM be making our first at
 tempt to establish a base. That's fair enough, isn't it?"
  Hassell was silent for a moment. Then he said somewhat despondently:
  "The first voyage will be the one that History will remember. After that,
  they'll all merge together."
  Now was the moment, Professor Maxton decided, to lose his temper. He could
  do this with great skin and accuracy when the occasion demanded it.
  "Listen to me, Vic," he stormed. "What about the people who built the
  blasted ship? How do you think we like having to wait until the tenth or
  the twentieth or the hundredth crossing before we have our chance? And if
  you're such a damn fool as to want fame-then good God, man, have you
  forgotten--someones got to pilot the first ship to MarsP'
  The explosion died away. Then Hassell grinned across at him and gave him a
  little laugh.
 "Can I take that as a promise, Prof?"
 "It isn't mine to make, confound you."
  "No, I don't suppose it is. But I see your argument -if I miss the boat
  this time I won't be too upset. Now I think I'll go to sleep."

 5
 The spectacle of the Director-General carefully carrying a wastepaper basket
 into Professor Maxton~s office might normaffy have caused some amusement,
 but everyone regarded. him solemnly as he entered. There were no bowler
 hats, it seemed, in the whole of Luna
          I PRELUDE TO SPACE    125

 City: the wastepaper basket would have to act as a less dignified
 substitute.
  Apart from the five members of the crew, who were painstakingly showing
  their nonchalance in the background, -the only other people in 'the room
  were Maxton, McAndrews, two members of the administrative staff-and
  Alexson. Dirk had no particular reason to be there but McAndrews had
  invited him in. The Director of Public Relations was always doing helpful
  things like this, but Dirk strongly suspected that he was trying to secure
  his foothold in the official history.
  Professor Maxton picked up a dozen small strips of paper from his desk and
  flicked them between his fingers.
  "Right-are we all'ready?" he said. "Here's a slip for each of you to put
  your name on. If anyone's too nervous to write, he can make a cross and
  we'll get it witnessed."
  This little sally did much to relieve the tension and there were some
  good-natured jibes as the slips were signed and handed back, already
  folded.
  "Good; now I'll mix them up with the blanks-so. Who'd like to do the draw?"
  There was a moment's hesitation. Then, acting on some unanimous impulse,
  the four other crew members pushed Hassell to the front. He looked rather
  sheepish as Professor Maxton held the basket out toward him.
  "No cheating, Vict" he said. "And only one at a timel Close your eyes and
  dip."
  Hassell plunged his hand into the basket and pulled out one of the slips.
  He handed it to Sir Robert, who quickly unfolded it.
 "Blank," he said.
 There was a little sigh of annoyance-or relief?
 Another slip. Again-
 '931ank."
  "'Hey, is everyone using invisible ink?" asked Maxton. "Try again, Vic."
 This time he was lucky.
 126    PRELUbE TO SPACE

 "P. Leduc."
  Pierre said something very quickly in French and looked extremely pleased
  with himself. Everyone congratulated him hastily and turned at once back to
  Hassell.
 He immediately scored a second bull's-eye.
 "J. Richards."
  Tension was now at its highest. Looking carefully, Dirk saw that Hassell's
  , hand was trembling very slightly as he pulled out the fifth strip.
 "Blank."
  "Here we go againl" groaned someone. He was right.
 "Blank."
 And yet a third time-
 "Blank.",
  Someone who had forgotten to breathe lately gavd a long, deep suspiration.
  Hassell handed the eighth slip to the DirectorGeneral.
 "Lewis Taine."
  The tension broke. Everyone crowded around the three chosen men. For a
  moment . Hassell stood perfectly still; then he turned toward the others.
  His face showed absolutely no emotion of any kind. Then Professor Maxton
  clapped him on the shoulder and said something that Dirk could not hear.
  HasseWs face relaxed and he answered with a wry smile. Dirk distinctly
  caught the word "Mars"; then, looking quite cheerful, Hassell joined the
  others in congratulating his frionds.
  "Thaell dol" boomed the Director-General, grinning all over 'his face.
  "Come across to my office-I may have a few unopened bottles around the
  place."
 I The company trooped next door, only McAndrews excusing himself on the
 grounds that he had to get hold of the press. For the next quarter of an -
 hour several sedate toasts were drunk in some excellent Australian wines
 which the Director-General had obviously obtained for this occasion. Then
 the little party
           PRELUDE TO SPACE      127

 broke-up with a general air of relieved satisfaction. Leduc, Richards and
 Taine were dragged off to face the cameras, while Hassell and Clinton
 remained for a while in conference with Sir Robert. No one ever knew exactly
 what he said to them, but they both', seemed quite cheerful when they
 emerged.
  When the little ceremony was over, Dirk attached himself to Professor
  Maxton, who also seemed very pleased with himself and was whistling
  tunelessly.
 "I bet you're glad that's over," said Dirk.
 "I certainly am. Now we all know where we stand."
  They walked together for a few yards without saying anything. Then Dirk
  remarked, very innocently: "Have I ever told you about my particular
  hobby?"
 Professor Maxton looked somewhat taken aback.
 "No; what is it?"
 Dirk gave an apologetic cough.
  Vm -supposed to be quite a good amateur conjurer.09
  Professor Maxton stopped his whistling, very abruptly. A profound silence
  fell. Then Dirk said reassuringly: "There's no need to worry. I'm quite
  sure that no one else noticed anything-particularly Hassell."
  "You," said Professor Maxton firmly, "are a confounded nuisance. I suppose
  you'll want to put this down in your infernal history?"
 Dirk chuckled.
  "Perhaps, though rm not a gossip writer. I noticed that you only palmed
  Hassell's slip, so presumably the others were chosen by chance. Or had you
  already arranged what names the D.-G. would call out? Were all those blanks
  genuine, for instance?"
  "You are a suspicious blighterl No, the others really were chosen by fair
  ballot."
 "What do you think Hassell will do now?"
  "Hell stay for the take-off, and still be home with time to spare."
 "And Clinton-how will he take it?"
 Ws a phlegmatic individual; it won't worry him.

                                   IL
 128-   PRELUDE TO SPACE

 We're getting, the pair of them working right away on the plans for the
 next trip. That should keep them from fretting and moping."
 He turned anxiously to Dirk.
 "You'll promise never to say anything about this?"
  Dirk gave a grin.
  " 'Never' is a heck of a long time. Shall we settle for the year 2000?"
  "Always thinking about posterity, aren't you? Very well then-the year
  2000 it is. But on one conditionl"
  "'What's that?"
  "I'll expect a de luxe, autographed copy of your report to read through
  in my old age!"

 6
 Dirk was making a tentative draft of his preface when the telephone rang
 noisily. The fact that he had a telephone at all was somewhat surprising,
 for many much more important people lacked one and were always coming in to
 borrow his. But it had fallen out that way during the allocation of offices,
 and although he expected to lose it at any moment no one had yet arrived to
 remove the instrument.
  "Mat you, Dirk? Ray Collins here. Weve got the screens off the 'Prometheus'
  so you can see the whole ship at last. And you remember asking me how we
  serviced the motors?"
 "Yes. 9P
 ',Come along and you can watch. It's worth seeing."
  Dirk sighed and put away his notes. One day he would really get started,
  and then the history would materialize at a terrific rate. He was not at
  all worried, for he now knew his methods of working. It was no good
  starting before he had marshaled all the facts, and as yet he had not
  finished indexing his notes and references.
 It was a very cold day, and he wrapped himself
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    129

 up thoroughly as he walked toward "Oxford Circus." Most of Luna City's
 traffic converged upon this intersection, and he should be able to get a
 lift to the launching site. Transport-was precious at the base and there was
 a continual battle between the various departments for the possession of the
 few available trucks and cars.
  He stamped around in the cold for about ten minutes before a jeep loaded
  with journalists on the same mission came roaring by. It looked somewhat
  like a traveling optician's shop, since it bristled with cameras,
  telescopes and binoculars. Nevertheless Dirk managed to find room for
  himself among the window display.
  The jeep swirled into the parking area and everyone clambered out, lugging
  his equipment. Dirk gave a hand to a very small reporter with a very large
  telescope and tripod-partly out of good nature but partly because he hoped
  he'd be able to have a look through it himself.
  The two great ships now lay bare of all coverings and screens; for the
  first time one could fully appreciate their size and proportions. "Beta"
  might, at a casual glance, have been taken for a conventional airliner of
  fairly normal design. Dirk, who knew very little about aircraft, would not
  have given her a second glance had he seen her taking off from his local
  field.
  "Alpha" no longer seemed quite so much like a giant shell. The spaceship's
  radio and- navigational equipment had now been extended, and its lines were
  completely spoiled by a small forest of masts and outriggers of various
  kinds. Someone inside must have been operating the controls, for
  occasionally a mast would retract or extend itself farther.
  Dirk followed the crowd around to the rear of the ship. A roughly
  triangular area had been roped off, so that the "Prometheus" was at one
  apex and they were at the base. The nearest they could get to the machine's
  driving units was about a hundred yards. Looking into those gaping nozzles,
  Dirk felt no particular desire to come any closer.
 130    PRELUDE TO SPACE

  Cameras and binoculars were being brought into action, and presently Dirk
  managed to get his look through the telescope. The rocket motors seemed
  only a few yards away, but he could see nothing except a metal pit full of
  darkness and mystery. Out of that nozzle would soon be coming hundreds of
  tons of radioactive gas at fifteen thousand miles an hour. Beyond it,
  hidden in shadow, were the pile elements that no human being could ever
  again approach.
  Someone was coming toward'them through the forbidden area-but keeping very
  close to the rope barrier. As he approached Dirk saw that it was Dr.
  Collins. The engineer grinned at him and said: "Thought I'd find you here.
  We're just waiting for the servicing staff to arrive. That's a nice
  telescope you~ve got-can.1 have a look?"
  "It isn7t mine," explained Dirk. "It belongs to this gentleman here."
  The little journalist would be delighted if the Professor cared to have a
  look-and still more so if he'd explain what there was to see, anyway.
  Collins stared intently for some seconds. Then he straightened up and said:
  -rm afraid there's not a lot to see at present-we should have a spotlight
  shining lip the jet to illuminate the interior. But youll be glad of that
  telescope in a minute."
 He gave a wry little smile.
  "Ifs rather a queer feeling, you know," he said to Dirk, "looking at a
  machine you've helped build yourself-and which you can never go near again
  without committing suicide."
  While he spoke, an extraordinary vehicle was approaching across the
  concrete. It was a very large truck, not unlike those which television
  companies use for outside broadcasts, and it was towing a machine at which
  Dirk could only stare in baffled amazement. As it went past, he had a
  confused impression of jointed levers, small electric motors, chain drives
  and worm wheels, and other devices he could not identify.
 The two vehicles came to a halt just inside the dan-           PRELUDE TO SPACE    131

 ger area. A door opened in the big track, and half a dozen men clambered
 out. They uncoupled the trailer, and began connecting it up to three large
 armored cables which they unwound from drums at the front of the van.
  The strange machine suddenly came to life. It rolled forward on its little
  balloon tires, as though testing its mobility. The jointed levers began to
  flex and unflex, giving a weird impression of mechanical life. A moment
  later it started to roll purposefully toward the "Prometheus," the larger
  machine following behind it at the same speed.
  Collins was grinning hugely at Dirk!s amazement and the obvious surprise of
  the journalists around him.
  "That's Tin Lizzie," he said, by way of introduction. I'Shes not really a
  true robot, as every movement she makes is controlled directly by the men
  in the van. It takes a crew of three to run her, and it's one of the most
  highly skilled jobs in the world."
  Lizzie was now within a few yards of "Alpha's" jets, and after some precise
  foot-work with her bogies she came to a gentle halt. A long, thin arm
  carrying several obscure pieces of machinery disappeared down that ominous
  tunnel.
  "Remote servicing machinery," explained COMM to his interested audience,
  "has always been one of the n;ost important side-lines of atomic
  engineering. It was first developed on a large scale for the Manhattan
  Project during the War. Since then it's become quite an industry in itself.
  Lizzie is just one of the more spectacular products. She could almost
  repair a watch --or,at least an alarm clockl"
 "Just how does the crew control her?" asked Dirk.
  "There's a television camera on that arm, so they can see the work just as
  if they were watching it directly. All movements are carried out by servo
  motors controlled through those cables."
  No one could see what Lizzie was now doing, and it was a long time before
  she slowly backed away from the rocket. She was carrying, Dirk saw, a
  curiously
 132    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 shaped bar about three feet long which she lield firmly in her metal claws.
 The two vehicles withdrew threequarters of the way to the barrier, and as
 they approached the journalists hastily retreated from that drab gray object
 in the robQt's claws. Collins, however, stood his ground, so Dirk decided it
 must be safe to remain.
  There was a sudden,-,raucous buzzing from the engineer's coat-pocket, and
  Dirk jumped a foot in the air. Collins held up his hand and the robot came
  to a halt about forty feet away. Its controllers, Dirk guessed, must be.
  watching them through the television eyes.
  Collins waved his arms, and the bar slowly rotated in the robot's claws.
  The buzzing of the radiation alarm ceased abruptly and Dirk breathed again.
  "There's usually some sort of beaming effect from an irregular object like
  that," explained Collins. "Were still in its radiation field, of course,
  but it's too weak to be dangerous."
  He turned toward the telescope, which had been temporarily deserted by its
  owner.
  "This is rather handy," he said. "I didn't intend to do a visual inspection
  myself, but this is too good, a chance to miss-that is, if we can focus at
  this distance.29
  "Exactly what are you trying to do?" Asked Dirk as his friend racked the
  eyepiece out to its fullest exteat.
  "That's one of the reactor elements from the pile.' said Collins absently.
  "We want to check it for activity. Hlm-it seems to be standing up to it all
  right. Like a peepTV
  Dirk peered through the telescope. He could see a few square inches of what
  at first sight appeared to be metal; then he decided that it was some kind
  of ceramic coating. It was so close that he could distinctly make out the
  surfacelexture.
 "What would happen," he said, "if you touched it?"
 --"YoWd cetainly get very bad delayed bums, gamma
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    133

 and neutron. If you stayed near it long enoughyou'd die."
  Dirk stared in fascinated horror at that innocent gray surface which seemed
  only a few inches away.
  "I suppose," he said, "that the bits in an atomic bomb would look very much
  Eke this."
  "Just as harmless, anyway," agreed Collins. "But there's no danger of an
  explosion here. The fissionable material we use is all denatured. If we
  went to a lot of trouble, we could get an explosion-but a very small one."
  ITVhat do you mean by that?" asked Dirk suspiciously.
  'Oh, Just a large bang," said Collins cheerfully. "I couldn't give
  tlW,figures off-hand, but it would probably be no better than a few hundred
  tons of dynamite. Nothing to worry about at alll"

 7
 The senior staff lounge always gave Dirk the impression of a slightly
 down-at-heel London club. The fact that he had never been in a London
 club-prosperous or otherwise-~Iid nothing to shake this firm conviction.
  Yet at any one time the British contingent in the lounge was likely to be
  in the minority, and almost every accent in the world could be heard here
  during the course of the day. It made no difference to the atmosphere of
  the place, which seemed to emanate from the very English barman and his two
  assistants. Despite all onslaughts, they had kept the Union Jack flying
  here in the social center of Luna City. Only once had they yielded- -any
  territory, and - even then the enemy had been swiftly routed. Six months
  ago the Americans had imported a brand-new Coca-Cola machine, which for a
  while had gleamed resplendently against the somber wooden paneling. But not
  for long: there had been some hasty consultations and much midnight
  carpentry
 134                  PRELUDE TO SPACE
 in the workshops. one morning when the thirsty di
 ents arrived, they found that the chromium plating had
 disappeared, and that they must 'low Obtain their
 drinks from what might have been one of the late W
 Chippendale's minor masterpieces- The jl,atus quo had
 been restored, but as to how it had happened the, bar
 man Confessed complete ignorance.
  Dirk always called at least once a day to collect his
 mail and read the Papers. In the evening the place
 usually became rather crowded and he Preferred to
 stay in his room, but tonight Maxton and Collins had
 dragged him out of retirement. The conversation, as
 usual, was not very far from the enterprise at hand
   461 think rIj be going to Taine's lecture tomorrow,"
 said Dirk. "Hes talking about the Moon, iWt he?"
   "Yes; I bet hell be pretty cautious now that he
 knows hi's goingi He might have to eat his words if
 hes not careful.09
  4sWeve given him a perfectly free haW9 explained
 Maxton. "Hell probably talk about long-term plans4
 and the use of the Moon as a refueling base, to reach
 the planets."
  .,That should be interesting. Richards and Clinton
 will both be taWing about engineering, I suppose,
 and rve had quite enough of that."
   Thanksl" laughed Collins. -ies nice to know that
 our efforts are appreciatedl"
  "Do you know," said Dirk suddenly, "rve~ never
 even seen the Moon through a big telescope."
  "We could fix that up any evening this week--say
 after tomorrow. The Moons only a day old at the mo
 ment. There are several telescopes here that would give
 you a pretty good view."
  , 11 wonder," said Dirk thoughtfully, "if were going
 to find life-I mean intelligent life---anYWhere in the
 solar system?"
  There was a long Pause. Then Maxton said
 abruptly: "I don't think so."
  "Why not?"
  "Look at it this way. it's taken us only ten thousand
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    135

 years to get away from stone axes to spaceships. That means that
 interplanetary travel must come pretty early in the development of any
 culture-that is, if it proceeds along technological lines at all."
 . "But it needn't," said Dirk. "And if you throw in prehistory, it's taken
 us a million years to get to spaceships."
  "MiVs still only a thousandth-or less--of the age of the solar system. If
  there was any civilization on Mars, it probably died before humanity
  emerged from the jungle. If it still flourished, it would have visited us
  long ago."
  "That!s so plausible," replied Dirk, "that rm sure it isilft true.
  Moreover, you can find plenty of incidents which make it look as if we have
  been visited in the past, by things or ships that didn't like the. look of
  us and sheered off again." -
  "Yes, I've read some of those accounts, and they're very interesting too.
  But I'm a skeptic: if anything ever has visited Earth, which I doubt, I'll
  be very surprised if it came from the other planets. Space and time are so
  big that it just doesn't seem probable that we'll have neighbors only
  across the road."
  "T'hat seems a pity," said Dirk. "I think the most exciting'thing about
  astronautics is the, possibility it opens up of meeting other types of
  minds. It won't make the human race seem quite so lonely."
  'Maes perfectly true; but perhaps it will be just as well if we can spend
  the next few centuries quietly exploring the solar system by ourselves. At
  the end of that time we'll have acquired a lot more wisdoni-and I mean
  wisdom, not mere knowledge. Perhaps we'll be ready then to make contact
  with other races. At the moment-well, we're still only forty years from
  IEtler..),
  "'Then how long do you think we'll have to wait," said Dirk, a little
  discouraged, "before we have our first contact with another civilization?"
  "Who can say? It may be as near in time as the Wright Brothers-or as far
  away as the building of
 136    PRELUDE TO SP~CR

 the pyramids. It may even, of course, happen a week from tomorrow when the
 'Promtheus' lands on the Moon. But -rm damed sure it won't."
  "Do your realfy think," asked Dirk, "that well ever get to the stars?"
 Professor, Maxton sat in silence for a moment, thoughtfully blowing clouds
 of cigarette smoke.
 "I tliinksm Some day," he said.
 "How?" persisted Dirk."
  "If we can get an atomic drive that's more than fifty per cent efficient,
  we can reach nearly the velocity of light-perhaps three-quarters of it, at
  any rate. That means it's about five years' traveling from star to star. A
  long time, but still possible even for us short-lived creatures. And one
  day, I hope, we'll live a lot longer than we do today. A heck of a lot
  longer.12
  Dirk had-a sudden vision of the three of them from the point of view of an
  outside observer. He sometimes had these moments of objectivity, and they
  were valuable in preserving his sense of proportion. Here they were, two
  men in the thirties and one in the fifties, sitting in their armchairs
  around the low table carrying their drinks. They might have been
  businessmen discussing a deal, or resting after a round of golf. Their
  background was utterly commonplace; from time to time snatches of everyday
  conversation drifted across from other groups, and there was a faint
  "clicking" of table-tennis balls from the room next door.
  Yes, they might have been discussing stocks and shares, or the new car, or
  the latest gossip. But instead, they were wondering how to reach the stars.
  ,,our present atomic drives," said Collins, "are about one hundredth of one
  per cent efficient. So it will be quite a while before we think of going to
  Alpha Centauri.-
  (In the background a plaintive voice was saying: ,'Hey, George, whaes
  happened to my gin and litne?")
            PRELUDE TO SPACE    137

  "'Another question," said Dirk. "Is it absolutely certain that we can't
  travel faster than light?"
  "In this universe, yes. It's the limiting velocity for all material
  objects. A miserable six hundred million miles an hourl"
   ("Three blitters, please, Georger)
  "Still," said Maxton slowly and thoughtfully, "there may even be a way
  around that."
  "What do you mean?" asked Dirk and Collins simultaneously.
  "In our universe, two points may be light-years apart. But they might be
  almost touching in a higher space."
  ("Wheres the Mimes? No, you ass, not the New York thingr)
  "I draw the line at the fourth dimension," said Col. lins with a grin.
  "That's a bit too fantastic for me. I'm a practical engineer-I hopel"
  (In the table-tennis room next door, it sounded as
  an absent-minded victor had just jumped the net to shake hands with his
  opponent.)
  "At . the beginning of this century," Professor Maxton retorted, "practical
  engineers felt the same way about the theory of relativity. But it caught
  up with them a generation later." He rested his elbows onthe table and
  stared into the-remote distance.
  "What," he said slowly, "do you imagine the next hundred years will
  bring?".

 .8
 The big Nissen hut was supposed to be connected to the camp's heating
 system, but no one -would have noticed it. Dirk, who had grown accustomed
 to life at Luna City, had wisely brought his overcoat with him. He felt
 sorry for the unfortunate members of the audience who had neglected this
 elementary precaution. By the end of the lecture, they would
 138    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 have ' a vivid impression of conditions on the outer planets.
  About two hundred people were already seated on the benches, and more were
  continually arriving, since it was still only five mmutes after the time at
  which the lecture was supposed to staTL In the'middle of the room a couple
  of anxious electricians were making last-minute adjustments to an episcope.
  Half a dozen armchairs had been placed in front of the speaker's dais, and
  were the targets of many covetous eyes. As clearly as if they had been
  labeled, they proclaimed to the world: "Reserved for the DirectorGeneral."
  A door at the back of the hut opened, and Sir Robert Derwent entered,
  followed by Taine, Professor Maxton, and several others whom Dirk did not
  recognize. All but Sir Robert sat down in the front row, leaving the center
  seat empty.
  The shuffling and whispering ceased as the Director-General stepped on to
  the dais. He looked, Dirk thought, like some great impresario about to ring
  up the curtain. And so, in a sense, he was.
  "Mr. Taine," said Sir Robert, "has kindly consented,
 to give us a talk on the objdcts of our first expedition.
 As he was one - of its planners, and as he will be taking
 part in it, I'm sure we'll hear his views with great in
 terest. After he's talked about the Moon, I gather
 that Mr. Taine is going to-er-let his hair down
 and discuss the plans we have for the rest of the solar
 system. I believe he has it pretty well organized all
 the way out to Pluto. Mr. Taine.'~-(Applause.)
  As he climbed on to the platform, Dirk studied the astonomer carefully. He
  had paid little attention to him until now: indeed, apart from his chance
  meeting with Hassell he had had few opportunities of studying any of the
  crew.
  Taine was a slightly plump young man who seemed scarcely in the middle
  twenties, though he was actually just under thirty. Astronautics, thought
  Dirk, certainly catches them young. No wonder that Rich-
             PPLEUME TO SPACE     139

 ards, at thirty-five, was considered quite an old crock by his colleagues.
  When he spoke, Taine's voice was dry and precise and his words carried
  c1parly throughout the hut. He was a good speaker, but had an annoying
  habit of juggling with pieces of chalk-which he frequently missed.
  "I needn't tell you very much about. the Moon as a whole," he said, "since
  you've already read or heard quite enough about it in the past few weeks.
  But I'll discuss the place where we intend to land, and say what we hope to
  do when we get there. -
  "First of all, here's a view of the whole Moon. (Slide One, please.) Since
  it's full, and the sun is shining vertically on the center of the disc,
  everything looks flat and uninteresting. The dark area here at the bottom
  right-is the Mare Imbrium, in which we'll be landing.
  "Now this is the Moon when she's nine-days oldwhich is how you'll see her
  from Earth when we arrive. As the sun's shining at an angle, you'll see
  that the mountains near the center show up very clearly-look at those long
  shadows they throw.
  "Let's go closer and examine the Mare Imbrium in detail. The name, by the
  way, means 'Sea of Rains,' but -of course it isn't a sea and it doesn't
  rain there or anywhere else on the Moon. The old astrologers called it that
  in the days before the invention of the telescope. -
  "You'll see from this close-up that the Mare is a fairly flat plain bounded
  at the top (that's the south, by the way) by this really magnificent,
  range-the lunar Apennines. To the north we have this smaller range, the
  Alps. The scale here gives you an idea of the distances: that crater, for
  example, is about fifty miles across.
  `17his area is one of the most interesting ones on
 the Moon, and certainly has the finest scenery, but
 we can only explore - a small region on our first visit.
 We shall land about here (Next Slide, please), and
 140     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 this is a drawing of the area under the greatest magnification we can use.
 it's as you'd see it with the ~aked eye from a distance of two hundred miles
 away in space.
  "The exact spot for the landing will be decided during the approach. We'll
  be falling slowly for the last hundred miles and should have time to select
  a suitable area. Since we're coming down vertically on shock absorbers, and
  holding off against the rockets until the last moment, we need only a few
  square yards of reasonably horizontar -surface. Some pessimist has
  suggested that we may depend on what turns out to be dry quicksand, but
  this doesn't seem at all likely.
  "We will leave the ship in couples, roped together, while one remains
  aboard to relay messages back to Earth. Our spacesuits carry air for twelve
  hours, and will insulate us against the whole range of temperatures
  encountered on the Moon-that is, from boiling point to a couple of hundred
  degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. Since we'll be there during the daytime, we
  won't run into the low temperatures unless we stay in shadow for long
  periods.
  "I can't hope to mention all the work we intend to do during our week on
  the Moon, so I'll merely touch on some of the highlights.
  "First of an, we're taking some compact but very powerful telescopes and
  hope to get clearer views of the planets than have ever been possible
  before. This equipment, like much of our stores, will be left behind for
  future expeditions.
  , "We are bringing back thousands of geologicalI 'should say
  'selenological'--samples for analysis. We're looking for mineral containing
  hydrogen, since once we can estabish a fuel extraction plant on the Moon,
  the cost of voyages will be cut to a tenth or even less. More important
  still, we can start thinking of trips to the other planets.
  "We're also taking a good deal of radio gear. As you know, the Moon has
  enormous pos'sibilities as a relay station and we hope to investigate
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     141

 some of these. In addition we shall be making all sorts of physical
 measurements which will be of the greatest scientific interest. One of the
 most important of these is the determination of the Moon's magnetic field in
 order-to test Blackett's theory. And, of course, we hope to get a splendid
 collection of photographs and films.
  "Sir Robert has promised you that I'm going to 'let my hair down.' Well, I
  don't know about that but you may be interested in what I, personally,
  think the lines of development will be in the next decade or so.
  "First of all, we have to establish a semi-permanent base on the Moon. If
  we're lucky in our first choice, we may be able to build it where we make
  our initial landing. Otherwise well have to try again.
  "Quite extensive plans have been drawn up for such a base. It would be
  self-contained as far as possible, and would grow its own food supplies
  under glass. The Moon, with its fourteen days continuous sunlightj should
  be a horticulturist's paradisel
  "As we learn more about the Moon's natural resources, the base will be
  expanded and developed., We expect' mining operations at an early date-but
  they will be to provide materials for use on the Moon. It will be far too
  expensive to import any but very rare substances to Earth.
  "At the present time, journeys to the Moon are extremely costly and
  difficult because we have to carry fuel for the return trip. When we can
  refuel on the Moon, we shall be able to use much smaller and more
  economical machines. And, as I remarked just now, we'll be able to go to
  the planets.
 "It sounds p,
         ~Woxical, but it's easier to make the forty-million-mile journey
         from a lunar base to Mars than it is to cross the quarter of a
         million miles between Earth and Moon. It takes much longer, of
         course-about two hundred and fifty days-but it doesn't take, more
         fuel.
  . "The Moon, thanks to its low-gravitational field, is the stepping-stone
  to the planets-the base for the
 142     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 exploration of the -solar system. If everything goes smoothly, we should be
 making plans for reaching Mars and Venus aboueten years from now.
  "I don't propose to speculate about Venus, except to say that we'll almost
  certainly make a radar, survey of her before we attempt a landing. It
  should be possible to get accurate radar maps of the hidden surface, unless
  her atmosphere is very odd indeed.
  "The exploration of Mars will be very much like the exploration of the Moon
  in some respects. We may zKot need spacesuits to go around in, but we'll
  certainly need oxygen equipment. The Martian base will be up against the
  same problems as the Lunar one, though in a much less acute form. But it
  will have one disadvantage-it will be a long way from home and will have to
  rely much more on its own resources.
 ,The almost certain presence of some kind of life will also effect the
 settlement in ways we can't predict. If -there is intelligence on Mars-which
 - I doubtthen our plans may have to be changed completely; we may not be
 able to stay there at aff. The possibilities as far as Mars is concerned are
 almost endless; that's why it's such an interesting place. ' i
  "Beyond Mars, the scale of the solar system opens out and we cannot do much
  exploring until we have faster ships. Even our 'Prometheus' could reach the
  outer planets, but she couldn't get back and the journey would take many
  years. However, by the end of the century, I believe we may be getting
  ready to go to Jupiter and, perhaps, Saturn. Very probably these
  expeditions will start from Mars.
  "We cannot of course hope to land on those two planets: --if they have
  solid surfaces at all, which is doubtful, they are thousands of miles down
  beneath an atmosphere we dare not enter. If there is any form of We inside
  those subarctic infernos, I don't see how we can ever contact it-or how it
  can ever know anything about us.
  "The chief interest on Saturn and Jupiter lies in their systems of moons.
  Saturn has at least twelve,
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    143

 Jupiter at least fifteen. What's more, many of them are fair-sized
 worlds-bigger than our Moon. Titan, Saturn's largest satellite, is half as
 big as Earth, and it's known to have an atmosphere, though not a breathable
 one. They are all very cold indeed, but that is not a serious objection now
 that we can get unlimited quantities of heat from atomic reactions.
  "The three outermost planets won't concern us for quite a long time to
  come-perhaps fifty years or more. We know very little about them at the
  moment, in any case.
  "That's all I'm going to say now. I hope Ive mad6 it clear that the journey
  we're taking next *eek, though it seems so tremendous by our present stand-
  ards, is really only the first step. It's exciting and interesting, but we
  must keep it in its true perspective. Ile Moon's a small world, and in some
  ways Aot a very promising one, but it will lead us eventually to eight
  other planets, some bigger than the Earth, and more than thirty moons of
  various sizes. The total area we're opening up for exploration in the neft
  few decades is at least ten tim6s that of the land surface of this planet.
  That should provide room for everybody.
 "Tbank YOU. 99
  Taine stopped abruptly, without any rhetorical flourishes, like a
  broadcaster caught out by the studio clock. There was dead silence in the
  hut for perhaps half a minute as his audience -came slowly back to earth.
  Then there was a polite trickle of applause, which slowly grew as more and
  more of Taine's listeners discovered that they were still standing on the
  solid ground.
  The reporters, stamping their feet and trying to restore their
  circulations, began to file out into the open. Dirk wondered how many had
  realized, for the first time, that the Moon was not a goal but a beginning-
  the first step upon an infinite road. It was a road, he now believed, along
  which all races must travel in
 144    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 the end, lest they wither and die upon their little, lonely worlds.

  For the first time one could now see the "Prometheue' as a whole. "Alpha"
  had at last been hoisted into position upon "Beta's" broad shoulders,
  giving her a somewhat ugly, hunch-backed appearance. Even Dirk, to whom all
  flying machines looked very much alike, could n6t now have confused the
  great ship with anything else that had ever ridden the skies.
  He followed Collins up the ladder of the movable gantry for his last look
  at the interior of the spaceship. It was evening and there were few people
  about. Beyond the warning ropes some photographers were trying to get shots
  of the machine with the sun going down behind it. The "Prometheus" would
  make an impressive sight silhouetted against the fading glory of the
  western sky.
  "Alpha's" cabin was as bright and tidy as an operating theater. Yet there
  were personal touches: here and there articles which obviously belonged to
  the crew had'been stowed away in niches where they were firmly secured with
  elastic bands. Several pictures and photographs had been pasted against
  convenient walls, and over the pilot's desk a plastic frame carried a por-
  trait of (So Dirk assumed) Leduc's wife. Charts and mathematical tables
  -had been secured at strategic spots where they could be quickly consulted.
  Dirk suddenly remembered-, for the first time in days, his visit to the
  training mock-up in England, where he had stood before this same array of
  instruments in a quiet London suburb. That seemed a lifetime ago, and more
  than half a world away.
  Collins walked over to a tall locker and swung open the door.
  "You haven't seen one of these before, have you?" he asked.
 I The three flaccid spacesuits 'hanging from their hooks looked like
 creatures of the deep sea, dredged up from the darkness into-the light of
 day.-Ibe thick,
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    145

 flexible covering yielded easily at Dirk's touch, and he felt the presence
 of reinforcing metal hoops. Transparent helmets like large goldfish bowls
 were secured in recesses at the side of the locker.
  "Just Eke diving suits, aren't they?" said Collins. "As a matter of fact,
  'Alpha' is more like a submarine than anything else-though our design
  problems are a lot easier, as we haven't such pressures to contend with.21
  "I'd like to sit in the pilot's position," said Dirk abruptly. "Is it all
  right?"
  "Yes, as long as you don't touch anything."
  Collins watched with a slight smile as the other settled himself down in
  the seat. He knew the impulse, having yielded to it himself more often than
  once.
  When the ship was under power, or standing vertically on the Moon, the seat
  would have swung-forward through a right angle from its present position.
  What was now the floor beneath Dirk's feet would then be the wall in front
  of him, and the periscope eyepiece which his boots now had to avoid would
  be conveniently placed for his use. Because of this rotation,so unfamiliar
  to the human mind-it was hard to capture the sensations which the ship's
  pilot would have when he occupied this seat.
  Dirk rose and turned to go. ~He followed Collins in silence to the airlock,
  but paused for a moment at the thick oval door for a last look around the
  quiet cabin.
  "Good-bye, little ship," he said in his mind. "Goodbye--and good luckl"
  It was dark when they stepped out on to the gantry, and the floodlights
  spilled pools of brilliance upon the concrete below. A cold wind was
  blowing, and the night blazed with stars of which he would never know the
  names. Suddenly Collins, standing in the gloom beside him, caught his arm
  and pointed silently to the horizon.
  Almost lost in the faint afterglow of the sunset, the two-day-old sickle of
  the New Moon was sliding down into the west. Clasped in its arms was the
  dimly lumi-
   146                          PRELUDE TO SPACE I

 nous disk which still awaited the advent of day. Dirk tried to picture the
 great mountains and the wrinkled plains stiff waiting for the sun to rise
 upon them, yet already ablaze with the cold light of the almost full Earth.
  Millions upon millions of times the Earth had -waxed and waried above the
  silent land, and only shadows had ever moved upon its face. Since the dawn
  ofterrestrial life, perhaps a dozen craters had crumbled and decayed, but
  it had known no other change than this. And now at last, after all these
  ages, its loneliness was coming to an end.

 9
 Two days before take-off, Luna City was probably one of the calmest and
 least agitated spots on Earth. All preparations had been complevid except
 the final fueling and some last-minute tests. There was nothing to do except
 wait until the Moon moved to its appointed place. -
  Ifia the great newspaper offices all over the planet, sub-editors were
  busily preparing their headlines, and writing-possible alternative stories
  which could be quickly trimmed to fit all but the most stubborn facts.
  Perfect strangers in buses and trains were liable to swap astronomical
  knowledge at the slightest provocation. Only a very spectacular murder was
  likely to receive the attention it normally commanded.
  In every continent, long-range radar sets were being tuned up to follow
  "Alpha" on- its journey into space. The little radar beacon aboard the
  spaceship would enable its position to be checked at every moment of the
  voyage.
  Fifty feet underground at Princeton University, one of the world's greatest
  electronic computers was standing by. Should it be necessary for any reason
  for the ship to change its orbit, or to delay it-s return, a new
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    147

 trajectory nmst be calculated through the shifting gravitational fields of
 Earth and Moon. An army of mathematicians would take months to do this; the
 Princeton calqWator could produce the answer, already printed, in a few
 hours.
  Every radio amateur in the world who could operater on the spaceship's
  frequency was giving his equipment -a last-minute check. There would not be
  many who could both,' receive and interpret the hyperfrequency,
  pulse-modulated signals from the ship, but there would be a few. The
  watch-dogs of the ether, the Communications Commissioners, were standing by
  to deal with any unauthorized transmitters which might try to break into
  the circuit.
 I On their mountain tops, the astronomers were preparing for their private
 rac&-4he contest to see who would get the best and clearest photographs of
 the landing. "Alpha" was far too small to be seen when it reached the
 Moon-but the Rare of the jets as they splashed across the lunar rocks should
 be visible at least a million miles away.
  Meanwhile the three men who held the ~enter of the world's stage gave
  interviews when they felt like it, slept long hours in their huts, or
  relaxed violently at table-tennis, which was about the only form of sport
  that LunaCity provided. Leduc, who had a macabre sense of humor, amused
  himself by telling his friends the useless or insulting things he had left
  them in his will. Richards behaved as if nothing of the slightest
  importance had happened, and insisted on making elaborate social
  engagements for three weeks' time. Taine was seldom seen at all; it
  transpired later that he was busily writing a mathematical treatise which
  had very little to do with astronautics. It was, in fact, concerned with
  the total possible number of games of bridge, and the length of time it
  would take to play them all.
  Very few people indeed knew that the meticulous Taine could, had he wished,
  have made much more money out of fifty-two pieces of card than he was ever
 148   PRELUDE TO SPACE '

 likely to from astronomy. Not that he would do at all badly now, if he came
 back safely from the Moon....

  Sir Robert Derwent lay completely relaxed in his Arm-chair, the room in
  darkness save for the pool of light from the reading lamp He was almost
  sorry that the two or three days' margin for last-minute hold-ups had not
  been required. It was still a night and a day and a night again before the
  take-off-and there was nothing to do but wait.
  The Director-General did not like waiting. It gave him time to think, and
  thought was the enemy of contentment. Now, in the quiet hours of the night,
  as the greatest moment of his life approached, he was revisiting the past
  in search of his youth.
  Ile forty years of struggle, of success and heart break, still lay in the
  future. He was a boy- again, at the very beginning of his university
  career, and the Second World War which had stolen six years of his fife was
  still no more than a threatening cloud on the horizon. He was lying mi a
  Shropshire wood on one of those spring mornings that had never come again,
  and the book he Was reading was the one he still held in his hands. In
  faded ink upon the. fly-leaf were the words, written in a curiously
  half-formed hand: "Robert A. Derwent. 22 June 1935.11
  The book was the same-but where, now, was the music of the singing words
  that once had set his heart on fire? He was too wise and too old; the
  tricks of alliteration and repetition could not deceive him now, and the
  emptiness of thought was all too clear. Yet ever and again there would come
  a faint echo from the past, and for a moment the blood would rush to his
  cheeks as it had done those forty years ago. Sometimes a single phrase
  would be enough:

  "0 Love's lute heard about the lands of Deatht"

 Sometimes a couplet;
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    149

   "Until God loosen over land and sea
    The thunder of the trumpets of the night."

  The Director-General stared into space. He himself was loosening such a
  thunder as the world had never heard before. Upon the Indian Ocean the
  sailors would look up from their ships as those roaring motors stormect
  across the sky; the tea-planters of Ceylon would hear them, now faint and
  thin, going westward into Africa. The Arabian oilfields would catch the
  last reverberations as they filtered down from the fringe of space.
  Sir Robert turned the pages idly, halting wherever ,the flying words caught
  his mind.

 "It is not much that a man can save
    On the sands of life, in the straits of time, Who swims in sight of
    the third great wave
    That never a swimmer shall cross or climb."

  What had he saved from Time? Far more, he knew, than most men. Yet he had
  been almost forty before he had found any aim in life. His love for
  mathematics had always been with him, but for long it had been a
  purposeless passion. Even now, it seemed that chance had made him what he
  was.

 "There lived a singer in France of old
   By the tideless dolorous midland sea.
  In a land of sand and ruin and gold
    There,Aone one woman, and none but she."

  The magic failed and faded. His mind went back to the war years, when he
  had fought in that silent battle of the laboratories. While men were dying
  on land and sea and air, he had been tracing the paths cif electrons
  through interlocking magnetic fields. Nothing could have been more remotely
  academic; yet from the work in which he had shared had come the greatest
  tactical weapon of the war-
   150    PRELUDE TO SPACE

  It had been a small step from radar to celestial mechanics, from electron
  orbits to the paths of planets round the sun. The techniques he had applied
  in the little world of the magnetron could be used again on the cosmic
  scale. Perhaps he had been lucky; after only ten years of work he had,made
  his reputation through his attack on the three-body problem. Ten years
  later, somewhat to everyone's gurprise-including his own-he had been
  Astronomer RoyaL

 "The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
The heavens that murmur,- the sounds that shine,
  The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
   The music burning at heart like wine ......

  He -might have held that post efficiently and with success for the
  remainder of his life, but -the Zeitgeist of astronautics had been too
  strong for him. His mind had told him that the crossing of space was about
  to come, but how near it was he had not at first recoghized. When that
  knowledge had finally dawned, he had known at last the purpose of his life,
  and the long years of toil had reaped their harvest.

 "Ah, had I not taken my life up and given
   All that life gives and the years let go,
  The wine and honey, the balm and leaven,
The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low?"

 ,He fficked the yellowing pages a dozen at a time, until his eyes caught the
 narrow columns of print for which he had been searching. Here at least the
 magic lingered; here nothing had altered, and the words still beat against
 his brain with the old, insistent rhythm. There had been a time when the
 verses, head to tail in an endless chain, had threaded their way through his
 mind for hour upon hour until the very words had lost their meaning:
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    151

       "Then star nor sun shall waken,
         Nor any change of light:
       Nor sound of waters shaken,
       Nor any sound or sight.
       Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
       Nor days nor things diurnal;
       Only the sleep eternal
         In an eternal night."

  The eternal night would come, and too soon for Man's liking. But at least
  before they guttered and died, he, would have known the stars; -before it
  faded like a dream, the Universe would have yielded up its secrets to his
  mind. Or if not to his, then to the minds that would come after and would
  fink-b what he had now begun.
  Sir Robert closed-the slim volume and place it back upon the shelf. His
  voyage into the past had ended in the future, and it was time to return.
  Beside his bed, the telephone began to call for attention. in angry, urgent
  bursts.

 10
 No one ever learned a great deal about Jefferson Wilkes, simply because
 there was very little indeed to know about him. He had been a junior
 accountant in a Pittsburgh factory for almost thirty years, during which
 time he had been promoted once. He did his work with a laborious
 thoroughness that was the despair of his employers. Me millions of his
 contemporaries, he had practically no understanding of the civilization in
 which he found himself. Twenty-five years ago he had married, and no one was
 surprised to discover that his wife had left him in a matter of months.
  Not even his friends-though there was no evidence that he had ever
  possessed any-would have maintained that Jefferson Wilkes was a profound
  thinker.
 152    PrtELUDE TO SPACE

 Yet there was one matter to which, after his fashion, he had given very
 serious thought.
  The world would never know what had first turned
 the pathetic lit tle mind of Jefferson Wilkes outward
 toward the stars. It was more than probable that the
 motive bad been a desire to escape from the drab real
 ity of his everyday life'. Whatever the reason, he had
 studied the writings of those who predicted the con
 quest of space. And he had decided that, at all costs, it
 must be stopped.
  As far as could be gathered, Jeffersoli Wilkes believed that the attempt to
  enter space would bring down upon humanity some stupendous metaphysical
  doom. There was even evidence that he considered the Moon to be Hell, or at
  least Purgatory. Any premature arrival by mankind in those infernal regions
  would obviously have incalculable and-to say' the least-unfortunate
  consequences.
  To gain support for his ideas, Jefferson Wilkes did
 what thousands before him had don e-. He sought to
 convert others to his beliefs by forming an organiza
 tion to which he gave the declamatory title: "The Rock
 ets Must Not Risel" Since any doctrine, however
 fantastic, will gain some adherents, Wilkes eventually
 acquired a few score supporters among the obscurer
 religious sects that flourish exotically in the wistem
 United States. Very swiftly, however, the microscopic
 movement was rent by schism and counter-schism.
 At the end of it all, the Founder was left with shat
 tered nerves and depleted finances. If one wishes to
 draw so fine a distinction, it may be said that he then
 became insane.
  When the "Prometheus" was built, Wilks decided that her departure could
  only be prevented by his own efforts. A few weeks before the take-off, he
  liquidated his meager assets and withdrew his remaining money from the
  bank. He found that he would still need one hundred and fifty-five dollars
  to take him to Australia.
  The disappearance of Jefferson Wilkes surprised and pained his employers,
  but after a hasty inspection
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    153

 of his books they made no efforts to trace him. One does not call in the
 police when, after thirty years of faithful service, a member of the staff
 steals one hundred and fifty-five dollars from a safe containing several
 thousand.
  Wilkes had no difficulty in reaching Luna City, and when he was there no
  one took any notice of him. Interplanetary's staff probably thought he was
  one of the hundreds of reporters around the base, while the reporters took
  him for a member of the staff. He was, in any case, the sort of man who
  could have walked straight into Buckingham Palace without attracting the
  slightest attention-and the sentries would have sworn that no one had
  enteredL
  What thoughts passed through the narrow gateway of Jefferson Wilkes's mind
  when he saw the "Prometheus" lying on her launching cradle, no one will
  ever know. Perhaps until that moment he had not realized the magnitude of
  the task he had set himself. He could have done great damage with a
  bomb-but though bombs may be 'come by in Pittsburgh as in all great cities,
  the ways of acquiring them are not common knowledge-particularly among
  respectable accountants.-
  From the rope barriers, whose purpose he could not fully comprehend, he had
  watched the stores being loaded and the engineers making their final tests.
  He had noticed that, when night cam6, the great ship was left unattended
  beneath the floodlights, and that even these were switched off in the small
  hours of the moming.
  Would it not be far better, he thought, to let the ship leave Earth but to
  ensure that it would never return? A damaged ship could be repaired; one
  that vanished without explanation would be a far more effective deterrent-a
  warning that might be heeded.
  Jefferson Wilkes's mind was innocent of science, but he knew that a
  spaceship must carry its own air supply, and he knew that air was kept in
  cylinders. What would be simpler than to empty them so that the loss would
 154    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 not be discovered until too late? He did not wish to harm the crew, and was
 sincerely sorry that they would come to such an end, but he saw no
 alternative.
  It would be tedious to enumerate the defects in Jefferson Wilkes's
  brilliant plan. The air supply of the "Prometheus" was not even carried in
  cylinders, and had Wilkes managed to empty the liquid oxygen tanks he would
  have had some unpleasantly frigid surprises. The routine instrument check
  would, in any case, have told'the crew exactly what had happened before
  take-off, and even without an oxygen reserve the airconditioning plant
  could have maintained a breathable atmosphere for many hours. There would
  have been time to enter one of the emergency return orbits which could be
  quickly computed for just such a calamity.
  Ust, and far from least, Wilkes had to get aboard the ship. He did not
  doubt that this could be done, for the gantry was left in position every
  night, and he had studied it so carefully that he could climb it even in
  the dark. When the crowd had been surging around the head of the ship, he
  had mingled with it and had seen no sign of locks on that curious,
  inward-opening door.
  He waited in an empty hangar at the edge of the field until the thin moon,
  had set. it was very cold, and he had not been prepared for this since it
  was summertime in Pennsylvania. But his mission had made him resolute and
  when at last the blazing floodlights died he had started to cross that
  empty sea of concrete toward the black wings spread beneath the stars.
  The rope barrier halted him and he ducked under it. A few minutes later his
  groping hands felt a metal framework in the darkness before him, and he
  made his way around the base of the gantry. He paused at the foot of the
  metal steps, listening into the night. The world was utterly silent; on the
  horizon he could see the glow of such-lights as were still burning in Lun
 City. A few hundred yards away he could just make out the dim silhouettes of
 buildings and hangars, but
           PRELUDE TO SPACIS   155

 th6y were dark and deserted. He began to climb the steps.
  He paused again, listening, at the first platform twenty feet from the
  ground, and again he was reassured. His electric torch and the tools he
  thought he might need were heavy in his pockets; he felt a little proud of
  his foresight and the smoothness with which he had carried out his plan.
  That was the last step: he was on the upper platform. He gripped his torch
  with one hand, and a moment later the walls of the spaceship were smooth
  and cold beneath his fingers.

  Into the building of the "Prometheus" had gone millions of pounds and more
  millions still of dollars. The scientists who had obtained such sums from
  governments and great industrial undertakings were not exactly fools. To
  most men-though not to Jefferson Wilkes-it would have seemed improbable
  that the fivit of all their labors should be left unguarded'and unprotected
  in the night.
  Many years ago the planning staff had foreseen the possibility of sabotage
  by religious fanatics, and one of Interplanetaiys most cherished files
  contained the threatening letters which these people had been illogical
  enough to write. All reasonable precautions had therefore been taken-and
  taken by experts, some of whom had themselves spent years during the War
  sabotaging Axis or Allied equipment.
  Tonight the watchman in the concrete bunker at the edge of. the macadam was
  a law student named Achmet Singh, who was earning a little. money during
  his vacation in a way that suited him very well. He had only to be at his
  post eight hours a day, and the job gave him ample time for study. When
  Jefferson Wilkes came to the first rope barrier, Achmet Singh was fast
  asleep -as, surprisingly enough, he was quite expected to be. But five
  seconds later, he was wide awake.
  Singh punched the alarm cut-off button, and moved swiftly across to the
  control panel, cursing fluently in
 156    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 three languages and four religions. This was the second time this had
 happened bn his watch: before, a stray dog belonging to one of the staff had
 set off the alarms. The same thing had probably happened again,
  He switched on the image converter, waiting impatiently for the few seconds
  it took the tubes to
 up. Then he grasped the projector controls and started to survey the ship.
  To Achmet Singh, it seemed that a purple search
 light was shining across the concrete -toward the
 launching platform. Through the beam of the search
 light, utterly unconscious of its presence, a man was
 cautiously feeling his way toward the "Prometheus." It
 was impossible not to laugh at his movements as he
 groped blindly along while all around him was bathed
 with light. Achmet Singh followed him steadily with
 the beam of the infra-red projector until he came to
 the gantry. The secondary alarms went into action
 then, and , again Singh switched them off. He would
 not act, he decided, until he had learned the midnight
 prowler's motives.
  When Jefferson Wilkes paused with some satisfaction on the 'first platform,
  Achmet Singh secured an excellent photograph which would be conclusive evi-
  dence in any court of law. He waited until Wilkes had reached the airlock
  itself; then he decided to act. ,
  The blast of light which pinned Wilkes against the walls of the spaceship
  blinded him as effectively as the darkness through which he had been
  feeling his way. For a moment'the shock was so paralyzing that he could not
  move. Then a great voice roared at him out of the night.
 "What are you doing there? Come down at oncel"
  Automatically he began to stumble down the steps. He had reached the lower
  platform before his mind lost,its paralysis and he looked desperately
  around for a means of escape. By shielding his eyes, he could now see a
  little; the fatal ring of floorlights around the "Pro-s metheus" was only
  a hundred yards across and beyond
 it lay darkness and, perhaps, safety. ,I
           PPXLUDE TO SPACE    157

  The' voice called again from beyond the pool of light.
  "Hurry upI Come this way-we've got you coveredl"
  The "we" was pure invention on the part of Singh, though it was true that
  reinforcements in the form of two annoyed and sleepy police sergeants were
  on the way.
  Jefferson Wilkes finished his slow descent, and stood trembling with
  reaction on the concrete, steadying himself against the gantry. He remained
  almost motionless for half a minute: then, as Achmet Singh had anticipated,
  he suddenly bolted around the ship and disappeared. He would be running
  toward the desert, and could be, rounded up easily enough, but it would
  save time if he could be scared back again. The watchman knocked down
  another loudspeaker switch.
  When that same voice roared at him again out of the darkness ahead, where
  he had thought to find safety, the terrified little spirit of Jefferson
  Wilkes finally despaired. In unreasoning fear, like some wild animal, he
  ran back to the ship and tried to hide himself in its shadow. Yet even now
  the impulse that had brought him round the world still drovelim, blindly
  on, though he was scarcely aware of his motives or his actions. He began to
  work his way along the* base of the ship, always keeping in the shadows.
  The great hollow shaft only a few feet above his head seemed to offer a
  second way into the machine ---or, at least, a chance of hiding until he
  could escape. In ordinary times, he could never have made that climb over
  the smooth metal walls, but fear and determ' ion gave him strength. Achmet
  Singh, looking into i television screen a hundred yards away,, became
  suddenly ashen. He began to speak, quickly and urgently, into his
  microphone.
  Jefferson Wilkes did not hear him; he scarcely noticcd that the great voice
  from the night was no longer peremptory, but pleading. It meant nothing to
  him now; he was conscious only of the dark tunnel ahead.
 158     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 Holding his torch in one hand, he began to crawl along it.
  The walls were made of some gray, rock-like material that was hard yet
  oddly warm to the touch. It seemed to Wilkes as if he was entering a cave
  with perfectly circular walls; after a few yards it widened and he could
  almost walk if he bent double. Around him now was-a meaningless mosaic of
  metal bars and that strange gray rock-the most refractory of all ce-
  ramics-over which he had been crawling.
  He could go no farther; the cave had suddenly divided into a series of
  branching passages too small for him to enter. Shining his torch along them
  he could see that the walls were pierced.with jets and nozzles. He might
  have done some damage here,, but they were all beyond his reach.
  Jefferson Wilkes slumped down on the hard, unyielding floor. The torch fell
  from his nerveless fingers and the darkness enfolded him again. He was too
  exhausted for disappointment or regret. He did I not notice, nor could he
  have understood, the faint onwavering glow that was burning in the walls
  around hirrL
  A long time later, some noise in the external world drew his mind back from
  wherever it had fled. He sat up and stared around him, not knowing where he
  was or how he had come here. Far away he could see a faint circle of light,
  the mouth of this mysterious cavem. Beyond that opening were voices and the
  sounds of machines moving to and fro. He knew that they were hostile and
  that he must remain here where they could not find him.
  it was not to be. A brilliant light p#ssed like a rising sun across the
  mouth of his cave, then returned to" shine full upon him. it was moving
  down the tunneL and behind it was something strange and huge which his mind
  could not grasp.
  He screamed in terror as those metal claws came full into the light and
  reached forward to grasp hinL
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    159

 Then he was being dragged helplessly out into the open where his unknown
 enemies were waiting.
  There was a confusion of light and noises all around him. A great machine
  that seemed to be alive was holding him in its metal arms and rolling away
  from a tremendous winged shape that should have aroused memories, but did
  not. Then he was lowered to the ground in a circle of waiting men.
  He wondered why they did not come near, why they kept so far away and
  looked at him so -strangely. He did not resist when long poles carrying
  shining instruments were waved around him as if exploring his body. Nothing
  mattered now; he felt only a dull sickness and an overwhelming desire for
  sleep.
  Suddenly a wave of nausea swept over him and he crumpled to the ground.
  Impulsively, the men standing in that wide circle moved a pace toward him-
  and then drew back.
  Ile twisted, infinitely pathetic figure lay like a broken doll beneath the
  glaring lights. There was no sound or movemint anywhere; in the background,
  the great wings of the "Prometheus" brooded above their pools of shadow.
  Then the robot glided forward, trailing its armored cables across the
  concrete. Very gently, the metal arms reached down and, -the strange hands
  unfolded.
  Jefferson Wilkes had reached the end of his journey.

 Dirk hoped that the crew had spent a better night than he had. He was still
 sleepy and confused, but he had a distinct impression of being awakened
 morethan once by the sounds of cars driven recklessly through the night.
 Perhaps there had been a fire somewhere, but he had heard no aIarnL
 He was sbaving when McAndrews came into his
 160     PRELUDE TO SPACE

 room, obviously bursting with news. The Director of Public Relations looked
 as if he had been up half the.night, which indeed was very nearly the case.
 "Have you heard the news?" he said breathlessly.
  "What news?" asked Dirk, switching off his shaver
 with some annoyance.           I
 "Theres been an attempt to sabotage the ship."

  "It happened about one o'clock this morning. The detectors spotted a man
  trying to get aboard 'Alpha.' When the watchman challenged him the damn
  fool tried to hide himself-in 'Beta's' exhaust!"
  It was some seconds before the full meaning of the words dawned. Then Dirk
  remembered what Collins had told him when he had looked through the
  telescope into that deadly pit.
 "What happened to him?" he said thickly.
  "They called to him through loudspeakers, but he took no notice. So they
  had to get him out with the servicing robot. He Was still alive, but too
  hot to go near. He died a couple of minutes later. The doctors say he
  probably never knew what had happened to him-you don't when you get a dose
  like that."
  Feeling a little sick, Dirk slumped down on his bed.
 :'Did he do any damage?" he asked at length.
  'We don't think so. He never got into the ship, and there was nothing he
  could do to the jet. They were afraid he might have left a bomb, but
  luckily he badn't.11
 "He must have been crazy! Any idea who he was?"
  "Probably a religious maniac of some kind. We get a lot of them after us.
  The police are trying to trace him from the contents of his pockets."
  There wa& a gloomy pause before Dirk spoke again.
 "Not a very good send-off for the 'Prometheus,' is
 itT9
  McAndrews -shrugged his shoulders, somewhat callously.
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    161

  "I don't think anyone round here's likely to be superstitiousl Are you
  coming out to watch.the fueling? It's scheduled for-two o'clock. IT give
  you a lift down in the car.."
 Dirk was not enthusiastic.
  "Thanks- all the same," he said, "but rve got rather a lot to do. And
  anyway, there won't be much to see., will there? I mean, pumping a few
  hundred tons of,fuel isn't going to be very exciting. I suppose it could
  be-but in that event I'd rather not be therel"
  McAndrews seemed slightly annoyed, but Dirk couldn't help that. At the
  moment he felt singularly little desire to go near the "Prometheus" again.
  It was an irrational feeling, of course; for-why should one blame the great
  ship if it protected itself against its enemies?
  Throughout the day Dirk could hear the roar of helicopters arriving in a
  continual stream from the great Australian cities, while from time to time
  a transcontinental jet would come whistling down into the airport. Where
  these early arrivals expected to spend the night he could not imagine. It
  was none too warm in the centrally heated huts, and the news reporters
  unlucky enough to bi~ under canvas had told terrible stories of hardship,
  many of which were very nearly true. I
  Late in the afternoon he met Collins and Maxton in the lounge and heard
  that the fueling had been carried out with no difficulty. As Collins said:
  "We have now only to light,the blue touch-paper and retire.to
  "By the way," remarked Maxton, "didn't you say the other night that you'd
  never seen the Moon through a telescope? We're going over to the Observ-
  atory in a minute. Why not come along?"
  "I'd love to-but don't say that you've never looked at her, eitherl"
 Maxton grinned.
  "That would be a 'very poor show,' as Ray would put it. I happen to know my
  way around the Moon
 162    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 quite well, but I doubt if more than half the people in interplanetary have
 ever used a telescope. The D.-G.'s the best example of that. He spent ten
 years on astronomical research before he ever went near an observatory."
  "Don't say I told you," said Coffins with great seriousness, "but I've
  found that astronomers are divided into two species. The first is purely
  nocturnal and spends its working hours taking photos of objects so far away
  that they probably don't exist any more. They're not interested in the
  solar system, which they consider a very odd and almost inexcusable acci-
  dent. During the daytime they may be found sleeping under large stones and
  in warm, dry places.
  "Members of the second species work more normal hours and inhabit offices
  full of calculating machines and lady computors. This hinders them a lot;
  nevertheless they manage to produce reams of mathematics about
  the.-probably non-existent--objects photographed by their colleagues, with
  whom they communicate through little notes left with the nightwatchman.
  "Both species have one thing in common. They are never known, except in
  moments of extreme mental aberration, actually to look through their
  telescopes. Still, they do get some very pretty photographs.99
  "I think," laughed Professor Maxton, "that the nocturnal species should be
  emerging any moment now. Let's go."
  The "Observatory" at Luna City had been erected
 largely for the amusement of the technical staff, which
 included far more amateur astronomers than profes
 sionals. It consisted of a group of wooden huts which
 had been drastically modified to hold about a dozen
 instruments of all sizes from three to twelve inches'
 aperture. A twenty-inch reflector was now under
 construction, but would not be completed for some
 we ek s- .
 The visitors had, it seemed, already discovered
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     163

 the Observatory and were making fall use of it. Some scores of people were
 lining up hopefully in front of the various buildings, while 'the thwarted
 owners of the telescopes were giving them two-minute peeks accompanied by
 impromptu lectures. They had not bargained for this when they had gone out
 to have a look at the four-day-old Moon, and they had now given up all hope
 of having a view themselves.
  "It's a pity they can't charge a pound a head," said Collins thoughtfully
  as he looked at the queue.
  "]Perhaps they are," answered Professor Maxton. "We might at least put up
  a collecting box for impecunious atomic engineers."
  The dome of the twelve-inch reflector-the only instrument which was not
  privately owned and which actually belonged to Interplanetary-was closed
  and the building was locked. Professor Maxton drew out a bunch of master
  keys and tried them one by one until the door opened. The n9arest in line
  immediately broke ranks and started to pour toward them.
  "Sorry," shouted 'the Professor, as he slammed the door behind theta, "it's
  out of orderl"
  "You -mean it will be out of order," said Collins darkly. "Do you know how
  to use one of these things?"
  "We should be able to figure it out," answered Maxton, with just a shade of
  uncertainty in his voice.
  Dirk's very high opinion' of the two scientists began to fall abruptly.
  "Do you mean to.tell me," he said,."that you're going, to risk using an
  instrument as complicated and expensive as this without. knowing anything
  about it? Why, it would be like someone who didn't know how to drive
  getting into an automobile and trying to start itl"
  "Goodness, gracious," protested Collins, though with a slight twinkle in
  his eye. "~You don't think this thing 4 complicated, do you? Compare it
  with a bicycle, if yowlike-but not a carl"
 164    PRELUDE TO SPACE

  "Very well," retorted Dirk, "just try and dide a bicycle without any
  practice beforehand!"
  Collins merely laughed and continued his examination of the controls. For
  some time he and the Professor exchanged technical conversation which no
  longer impressed Dirk, since he could see that they knew very little more
  about the telescope than he did himself.
  After some experimenting, the instrument was swung round to the Moon, now
  fairly low in the southwest., For a long time, it seemed to Dirk, he waited
  patiently in the background while the two engineers looked to their full.
  Finally he got fed UP.
  "You did invite me, you know," he remonstrated. "Or have you forgotten?"
  "Sorry," apologized Collins, giving up his position with obvious
  reluctance. "Have a'look now-focus up with this knob."
  At first Dirk could see only a blinding whiteness with darker patches here
  and there. He slowly tamed the focusing knob, and suddenly the picture
  became clear and sharp, like some-brilliant etching.
  He could see a good half of the crescent, the tips of the homs being out of
  the field. 'The edge of the Moon was a perfect arc of a circle, without any
  sign of unevenness. But the line dividing night and day was ragged, and
  broken in many places by mountains and uplands which threw long shadows
  across the plains below. There were few of the great craters he had
  expected to see, and he guessed that most of them must lie in the part of
  the disk that was still unlit.
  He focused his attention upon a great oval plain bordered with mountains,
  which reminded him irresistibly of a dried-up ocean bed. It was, he
  supposed, one of the Moon's so-called seas, but it was easy to tell that
  there was no water anywhere in that calm, still landscape spread out
  beneath him. Every detail was sharp and brilliant, save when a ripple like
  a heat-haze made the whole picture trem-
             PRELUDE TO SPACE    165

 ble for a moment. The'Moon was sinking into the horizon mists, and the image
 was being disturbed by its slanting, thousand-mile passage through the
 Earth's atmosphere.
  At one point just inside the darkened area of the disk a group of brilliant
  lights shone like beacon fires blazing in the lunar night. They puzzled
  Dirk for a'moment, until he realized that he was looking -upon
  greatmountain peaks which had caught the sun hours before the dawning light
  had struck into the lowlands around their bases.
  He understood now why men had spent their.lives watching the shadows come
  and go across'the face of that strange world which seemed so near yet
  which, until his generation, had been the symbol of all that could never be
  attained. He realized that in a lifetime one could not exhaust its wonders;
  always there would be something fresh to see as the eye grew more skilled
  in tracing out that wealth of almost infinite detail.
  Something was blocking his view and he looked. up in annoyance. The Moon
  was descending below the level of the dome; he could lower the telescope no
  farther. Someone switched on the lights again and he saw that Collins and
  Maxton were grinning at him.
  "I hope you've seen all you want to," said the Professor. "We had ten
  minutes apiece-you have been there for twenty-five and I'm darned glad the
  Moon set when it did!"

 1
 12
 "Tomorrow we launch the 'Prometheus.' I say 'we,' because I find it no
 longer possible to stand aside and play the part of a disinterested
 spectator. No one on Earth can do that; the events of the next few hours
 -166   PRELUDE TO SPACE

 will shape the lives of ~ all men who will ever be born, down to the end of
 time.
  $'Someone once pictured humanity as a race of islanders who have not yet
  learned the art of making ships. Oat across the ocean we can see other
  islands about which we have wondered and speculated since the beginning of
  history. Now, after a million years, we have made our first primitive
  canoe; tomorrow we will watch it sail through the coral reef and vanish
  over the horizon.
  "This evening I saw, -for the first time in my life, the Moon's glittering
  mountains and great dusky plains. The country over which Leduc and 'his
  companions will be walking in less than a week was still invisible, waiting
  for the sunrise which will not come for another three of our days. Yet its
  night must be brilliant beyond imagination, for the Earth win be more than
  half-full in its sky.
  "I wonder how Leduc, Richards and Taine are spending their last night on
  Earth? They will, of course, ,.have put all their affairs in order, and
  therell be nothing left for. them to do. Are they relaidng, listening to
  music, reading-or just sleeping?"
  James Richards was doing none of these things. He was stated in the lounge
  with his friends, driaing very slowly and carefully, while he regaled them
  with entertaining stories of the tests he had been given by crazy
  psychologists trying to decide if he was normal, and if so, what could be
  done about it. The psychologists he was libeling formed the largest-and
  most appreciative-part of his audience. They let him talk until midnight;
  then they put him to bed. It took six of them to do it.
  Pierre Leduc had spent the evening out at the ship, watching some fuel
  evaporation tests that were being cairied out on "Alpha." There was very
  little point in his being present, but although gentle hints had been
  dropped from time to time, no one could get rid of him. Just before
  midnight the Director-General ar-
             PRELUDE TO SPACE     167

 rived, exploded goodnaturedly and sent him back in his own car with strict
 orders to get some sleep. Whereupon Leduc spent the next two hours in bed
 reading La ConWdie Humain~.
  Only Lewis Taine-the precise, unemotional Taine -had used his last night on
  Earth in ways that might have been expected. He had sat for hours at his
  desk preparing drafts and destroying them one by one. Late in the evening
  he had finished; in careful long-hand he transcribed the letter which had
  cost him so much thought. Then he sealed it and attached a formal little
  note:

 DEAR PROFESSOR MAXTON,
   ft I do not return, I should be obliged if you
would arrange for this letter to be delivered. Sincerely,
                        L. TAwE.

  Letter and note he placed in a large envelope which he addressed to Maxion.
  Then he picked up the bulky file of alternative flight orbits and began to
  make pencil notes in the margins.
 He was himself again.

 13
 The message which Sir Robert had been expecting arrived soon after dawn by
 one of the high-speed mailplanes which, later in the day, would be carrying
 the films of the launching back to Europe. It was a brief official Ininute,
 signed only with a pair of initials which the whole world would have
 recognized even without the help of the words: "10 ' Downing Street" which
 ran along the head of the paper. Yet it was not entirely a formal document,
 for beneath the initials the same hand-had written: "Good luckI
 168     PRELUDE TO SPACE

  When Professor Maxton arrived a few minutes later, Sir Robert handed him
  the paper without a word. The American read it slowly and gave a sigh of
  relief.
  "Well, Bob," he said, "we've done our share. Ws up to the politicians
  now-but we'll keep pushing them from behind."
  "It's not been as difficult as I feared; the statesmen have learned to pay
  attention to us since Hiroshima."
  "And when will the plan come up before the General Assembly?"
  ,"In about a month, when the British and American governments will formally
  propose that 'all planets or celestial bodies unoccupied or unclaimed by
  nonhuman forms of life, etc. etc., be deemed international areas freely
  accessible to all peoples, and that no sovereign state be permitted to
  claim any such astronomical bodies for its exclusive occupation or develop-
  ment ... and so on."
  "And what about the proposed Interplanetary Commission?"
  "That will have to be discussed later. At the mo
 ment the important thing is to get agreement on the
 first stages. Now that our governments have,formally
 adopted the plan-it will be on the radio by the after
 noon-wo can start lobbying like hell. You!re best at
 this sort of thing --- can you write a little speech on the
 lines of our first Manifesto-one that Leduc can
 broadcast from the Moon? Emphasize the astronomir
 cal viewpoint, and the stupidity of even attempting to
 carry nationalism into space. Think you can do it be
 fore take-off? Not that it matters if you can't, except
 that it may leak out too soon if we have to radio the
 script.,,
  "O.K.-rll get the rough draft checked over by the political experts, and
  then leave you to put in the adjectives as usual. But I don't think it will
  need'any purple passages this time. As the first message to come from the
  Moon, it will have quite enough psychologi-cal. punch by itselft"
           PRELUDE TO SPACE     169

  Never before had any part of the Australian desert known such a population
  density. Special trains from Adelaide and Perth had been arriving
  throughout the night, and thousands of cars and private aircraft were
  parked, on either side of the launching track. Jeeps were continually
  patrolling up and down the kilometerwide safety zones, shooing away too
  inquisitive visitors. No one at all was allowed past the five-kilometer
  mark, and at this point the, canopy of circling aircrafts also came to an
  abrupt end.
  The "Prometheus" lay glittering in the low sunlight, throwing a fantastic
  shadow far across the desert. Until now she had seemed only a thing of
  metal, but at last she was alive and waiting to fulfill the dreams of her
  creators. The crew was already aboard when Dirk and his companions arrived.
  There had been a little ceremony for the benefit of the newsreels and
  television cameras, but no formal speeches. These could come, if they were
  needed, in three weeks' time.
  In quiet, conversational tones the loud-speakers along the track were
  saying: "Instrument check completed: launching generators running at half
  speed: one hour to go."
  The words came rolling back across the desert, muffled by distance, from
  the further speakers: "One hour to go-hour to go-go-go-go ... " until they
  had died away into the northwest.
  "I think we'd better get into position," said Professor Maxton. "It's going
  to take us some time to drive through this crowd. Take a good look at WpW-
  it's the last opportunity you'll have."
  The announcer was speaking again, but this time his words were not intended
  for them. Dirk realized that he was overhearing part of a world-wide
  'sequence of instructions.
  "All sounding, stations should be ready to fire. Sumatra, India, Iran-let
  us have your readings within the next fifteen minutes."
  Many miles away in the desert, something went screaming up into the sky,
  leaving behind it a pure
 170    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 white vapor trail that might have been drawn with a ruler. While Dirk
 watched, the long milky column began to writhe and twist as the winds of the
 stratosphere dispersed it.
  "Met rocket," said Collins, answering his unspoken question. "We've got a
  chain of them along the Ilight path, so we'll know pressures and
  temperatures all the way up to the top of the atmosphere. Just before the
  take-off, the pilot of 'Beta' will be warned if there's anything unusual
  ahead of him. That's one worry that Leduc won't have. There's no weather
  out in spacel"
  Across Asia, the slim rockets with their fifty kilograms of instruments
  were climbing through the stratosphere on their way to space. Their fuel
  had been exhausted in the first few seconds of Ilight, but their speed was
  great enough to carry them a hundred kilometers from the Earth. As they
  rose-some in sunlight, others still in darkness--they sent back to the
  ground a continual stream of radio impulses, which would be caught and
  translated and passed on to Australia. Presently they would fall back to
  Earth, their parachutes would blossom, and most of them would be found and
  used again. Others, not so fortunate, would fall into the sea or, perhaps,
  end their days as tribal gods in the jungles of Borneo.
  The three-mile drive along the crowded and very primitive road took them
  nearly twenty minutes, and more than once Professor Maxton had to make a
  detour into the no-man's-land which he himself had put out of bounds. The
  concentration of cars and spectators was greatest when they came to the
  five kilometer mark-and ended abruptly at a barrier of red-painted poles.
  A small platform had been erected here fiom old packing cases, and this
  improvised stand was already occupied by Sir Robert Derwent and several of
  his staff. Also present, Dirk noticed with interest, were Hassell and
  Clinton. He wondered what thoughts were passing through their minds.
  From time to time the Director-General made com-           PRELUDE To SPACE    171

 ments Into a microphone, and there were one or two portable transmitters
 around. Dirk, who had vaguely expected to see batteries of instruments, was
 a little disappointed. He realized that all the technical opera.tions were
 being carried out elsewhere, and this was merely an observation post.
  "Twenty-five minutes to go," said the loud-speakers. "Launching generators
  will now run up to full operating speed. All radar-tracking stations and
  observations in the main network should be standing by."
  From the low platform, almost the whole of the launching track could be
  seen. To the right were the -passed crowds and beyond them the low
  buildings of the airport. The "Prometheus" was clearly visible on the
  horizon, and from time to. time the sunlight caught her sides so that they
  glittered like mirrors.
  "Fifteen minutes to go."
  Leduc and his companions would be lying in thosF carious seats, waiting for
  them to tilt under the first surge of acceleration. Yet it was strange to
  think that they would have nothing to do for almost an hour, when the
  separation of the ships would take place high above the Earth. All the
  initial responsibility lay upon the pilot of "Beta," who would get very
  little credit for his share in the proceedings-though in any case he was
  merely repeating what he had done a dozen times before.
  "Ten minutes to go. All aircraft are reminded of their safety
  instructions."
  The minutes were ticking past: an age was dying and a new one was being
  born. And suddenly the impersonal voice from the loud-speakers recalled to
  Dirk that morning, thirti-three yqars ago, when another group, of
  scientists had stood waiting in another desert, preparing to unleash the
  energies that power the suns.
  "Five minutes to go. All heavy electrical loads must be shed. Domestic
  circuits will be cut immediately."
  A great silence had come over the crowd;'alt eyes were fixed upon those
  shining wings along-the skyline
 172    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 Somewhere close at hand a child, frightened.by the stillness, began to cry.
 "One minute to go. Warning rockets away."
  There was a great "Swooshl" from the eQpty desert over on the left, and a
  ragged line of crimson flares began to drift slowly down the sky. Some
  helicopters which had been edging forward minute by minute went hastily
  into reverse. . .
  "Automatic take-off controller now in operation. Synchronized timing
  signal-Nowl"
  There was a "click" as the circuit was changed, and the faint rushing of
  long-distance static came from the speakers. Then there boomed over the
  desert a sound which, through its very familiarity, could not have been
  more unexpected.
  In Westminster, half way round the world, Big Ben was preparing to strike
  the hour.
  Dirk glanced at Professoi Maxton, and saw that he too was completely taken
  aback. But there was a faint smile on the Director-General's lips, and Dirk
  remembered that for a half a century Englishmen all over the world had
  waited beside their radios for that sound from the land which they might
  never see again. He had a sudden vision of other exiles, in the near or far
  future, listening upon strange planets to those same bells ringing out
  across the deeps of space.
  A booming silence seemed to fill the desert as the chimes of the last
  quarter died away, echoing in the distance from one loud-speaker to the
  next. Then the first stroke of the hour thundered over the desert, and over
  the waiting world. The speaker circuit was suddenly cut.
  Yet nothing ~ad changed: the "Promethus" still lay brooding on the horizon
  like a great metal moth. Then Dirk sow that the space between her wings and
  the skyline was a little less than it had been, and a moment later he could
  tell quite clearly that the ship was expanding as it moved toward him.
  Faster and faster, in an absolute and uncanny silence, the "Prometheus"
  came racing down the track. It seemed-only a moment
           PRELUDE TO SPACE    173

 before it was abreast of him, and for the very last time he could see
 "Alpha," smooth and pointed and glittering upon its back. As the ship rushed
 past to the left out into the empty desert, he could just hear the "swishl"
 of the air split by its passage. Even that was very faint, and the electric
 catapult made no sound at all. Then the "Prometheus" was shrinking silently
 into the distance.
  Seconds later, that silence was shattered by a roar as of a thousand
  waterfalls plunging down the face of mile-high cliffs. The sky seemed to
  shake and tremble around them; the "Prometheus" itself had vanished from
  sight behind a cloud of whirling dust. In the heart of that cloud something
  was burning with an intolerable brilliance that the eye could not have
  borne for a moment without the intervening haze.
  The dust cloud thinned, and the thunder of the jets was softened by
  distance. Then Dirk could see that the fragment of sun he had been watching
  through half-shut eyes no longer followed the surface of the Earth, but was
  lifting, steadily and strongly, up from the horizon. The "Prometheus" was
  free from her launching cradle, was climbing on the world-wide circuit that
  would lead her into space.
  The fierce white flare dwindled and shrank to nothingness against the empty
  sky. For a while the mutter of the departing jets rumbled around the
  heavens until it too was lost, drowned by the noise of circling aircraft.
  Dirk scarcely noticed the shouting of the crowds as life returned to the
  desert behind him. Once again there had come into his mind the picture he
  was never wholly to forget-that image of the lonely island lost in a
  boundless and untraveled sea.
  Boundless it was, infinite it might be-but it was untraveled no longer.
  Beyond the lagoon, past the friendly shelter of the coral reef, the first
  frail ship was sailing into the unknown perils and wonders of the open sea.
            Epilogue

 Dirk Alexson, sometime Professor of Social History at the University of
 Chicago, opened the bulky package on his desk with fingers that trembled
 slightly. For some minutes he struggled with the elaborate wrappings; then
 the book lay before him, clean- and,bright as it had left the printers three
 days ago.
 'He looked at it silently for a few minutes, running his fingers over the
 binding. His eyes strayed to the shelf where its five companions 'rested.
 They had waited years, most of them, to be joined-by this last volume.
  Professor Alexson rose to his feet and walked over to the bookshelf,
  carrying the new arrival with him.
--A careful observer might have noticed s6mething very odd about his walk:
 it,had a curious springiness that one would not have expected from a man who
 was nearing sixty. He placed the book beside its five companions, and stood
 for a long time, completely motionless, staring at the little row of
 volumes.
  The binding and lettering were well matched-he had been very particular
  about that-and the set was, pleasing to the eye. Into those books had gone
  the greater part of his working life, and now that the task was ended he
  was well content. Yet it brought a great
 -emptiness of spirit to realize that his work was done.

                175
 176    PIMLUDE TO SPACE

  He took down the sixth volume again and walked back to his desk. He had not
  the heart to begin at once the search for the misprints, the infelicities
  which he knew must exist. In any case, they would be broughtto his notice
  soon enough.
 - The binding protested stiffly as he opened the volume and glanced down the
 chapter headings, wincing slightly as he came to "Effata-Vols. IN." Yet he
 had made few avoidable mistakes-and above all, he had made no enemies. At
 times in the last decade that had been none too easy. Some' of the hundreds
 of men whose names were in the final index had not been flattered by his
 words, but no one had ever accused him of undue partiality. He did not
 believe that any~ one could have guessed which 'of the men in the long and
 intricate story had been his personal friends.
  He turned to the frontispiece-and his mind went back through more than
  twenty years. There lay the "Prometheus," waiting for the moment of her
  destiny. Somewhere in that crowd away to the left he himself was standing,
  a young man with his life's work still before him. And a young man; though
  he did not know it then, under sentence of death.
  Professor Alexson walked over to the window of his study and stared out
  into the night. The view, as yet, was little obstructed by buildings, and
  he hoped it would remain that way, so that he could always watch the slow
  sunrise on the mountains fifteen miles beyond the city. -
 I It was midnight, but the steady white radiance spilling down those
 tremendous slopes made the scene almost as bright as day. Above the
 mountains, the stars were shining with that unwavering light that still
 seemed strange to him. And higher still .
  Professor Alexson threw back his h;ad and stared through half-closed
  eyelids at the blinding white world on which he could never walk again. It
  was very brilliant tonight, for almost all the northern hemisphere was
  wreathed in dazzling clouds. Only Africa and the Mediterranean regions were
  unobscured. He remem-
             PRELUDE To SPACE'   177

 b6red that it was wi nter beneath those clouds; though
 they looke-d so beautiful and so brilliant across a
 quarter of a million miles of space, they would seem
 a dull and somber gray to the sunless lands they cov
 er.ed.
  Winter, summer, autumn, spring-they meant nothing here. He had taken leave
  of them all when he -made his bargain. It was a hard bargain, but a fair
  cFne. He had parted from waves and clouds, from winds and rainbows, from
  the blue skies and the long twilight of summer evenings. In exchange, he
  had received an inaefinite stay of execution.
 I He remembered, across the years, thcAse endless arguments with Maxton,
 Collins and the rest about the value of space Ilight to the human race. Some
 of their predictions had come true, others had not-but as far as he was
 concerned, they had proved their. case up to the hilt. Matthews had been
 speaking the truth when he said, long ago, that the greatest benefits which
 the crossing of space would bring were those which could never have been
 guessed beforehand.
  More than a decade ago the heart specialists had given him three years to
  live, but the great medical discoveries made at the lunar base had come
  just in time to save him. Under a sixth of a gravity, where a man weighed
  less than thirty pcxunds, a heart which would have failed on Earth could
  still beat strongly for years. There was even a possibility-almost
  terrifying in its social impIications-that the span of human life might be
  greater on the Moon than upon the Earth.
  Far sooner than anyone had dared to hope, astronautics had paid its
  greatest and most unexpected dividend. Here within the curve of the
  Apennines, in the first of all cities ever to be built outside the Earth,
  five thousand exiles were living useful and happy lives, safe from the
  deadly gravity of their own world. In time they would rebuild all that they
  had left behind them; even now the avenue of cedars along Main Street was
  a brave symbol of the beauty that would be born in the years to come.
  Professof Alexson hoped he
 179    PRELUDE TO SPACE

 would live to see the building of the Park when he second and much larger
 Dome was constructed three miles away to the north. over the moon, life
 was stirring again. It had
  All           million years ago;
 flickered once, and died, a thousand
 this time it would not fail, for it was part of a rising
 fjoOd that in a few centuries would have surged to the
 outermost planets. on ran his fingers, as he had so often
 . Professor Alexs done before, over the piece of Martian sandstone that
 victor Hassell had gi him years ago. one dayq if
            iven he wished, he might 90 to that strange little world;
            therer-Would soon be ships that could make the Crossinp in three
            weeks when the planet was at its nearest. ke- had changed worlds
            once; he might do so a second time if he ever became obsessed by
            the sight of the unattainable Earth.
Beneath its turban of cloud, Earth was taking leave
of the twentieth century. In the shining cities, as mid
night- moved around the world, the c'rowds would be
waiting for the first stroke of the hour which would
sunder them forever from the old year and the old
 century.                     and
  Such a hundred years had never been before, could scarcely come again. One
  by one the dams had burst, the last frontiers of the mind had been swept
  away. When the century dawned, Man had been preparing for the conquest of
  the air; when it died, he 'was gathering his strength upon Mars-for the
  leap to the outer planets. only Venus still held him at bay, for no ship
  had yet been built which could descend through the convection gales raging
  perpetually between the sunlit hemisphere and the darkness of the Night
  Side.
                 -s away, the radar screens
 From only five hundred mile
        - pattern of continents and seas beneath
 had shown the those racing clouds-and Venus, not Mars, had become the great
 enigma of the solar system.
  As he saluted the dying century, Professor AIM= felt no regrets: the future
  was too full of wonder and promise. Onc
        ,e more the proud ships were sailing for
           PliELUDE TO SPACE   179

 unknown lands, bearing the seeds of new civilization which in the ages to
 come would surpass the old. The rush to the new worlds would destroy the
 suffocating restraints which had poisoned almost half the century. The
 barriers had been broken, and men could turn ,their energies outward to the
 stars instead of -striving among themselves.
  Out of the fears and miseries of the Second Dark Age, drawing free---oh,
  might it be forevefl-from the shadows of Belsen and Hiroshima, the world
  was moving toward its most splendid sunrise. After five hundred years,,the
  Renaissance had come again. The dawn that would burst above the Apennines
  at the end of the long lunar night would be no more brilliant than the age
  that had now been born.
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