THE PROBLEM PROFESSOR

A. E. Van Vogt

‘The Problem Professor’ was originally published as ‘Problem Spaceship’ in Thrilling Wonder Stories Magazine, August 1949. Copyright © 1949 by Standard Magazines Inc.

Published in the short story compilation ‘The Gryb’ (1976)

v0.9 by Daj. This is a pre-proof release. Scanned, page numbers removed, paragraphs joined, formatted and common OCR errors have been largely removed. Full spell check and read-through still required.

THE PROBLEM PROFESSOR

Chapter 1 TEST RUN

Merritt recognized the crisis when VA-2 attained a speed of 4000 miles an hour.

Modelled on the German V-2 bomb, the rocket climbed towards the noonday sun on a column of crooked fire, as its gyroscopic stabilizers worked in their spasmodic fashion to balance the torpedo stucture.

Loaded with instruments instead of a warhead it shot up 764 miles. It topped the highest peak of the planet’s 500-mile-deep atmosphere. It broke into the emptiness of space and, for a few moments on the television screen near the launching rack, the stars showed as bright pinpoints against a background of black velvet.

In spite of its velocity it was never in danger of leaving Earth’s gravitational field. It came down. And, after they had exhumed the scarred shell from the desert sands, there was a meeting at which Merritt was appointed a committee of one. He was charged with the positive duty of persuading the government of the United States ‘to finance and build a spaceship capable of transporting human beings in and through the airless void above the atmosphere of this planet.’

The sum of one thousand dollars was voted him for initial expenses.

Merritt tiptoed into his apartment about two o’clock. His excitement, now that he was home and near Ilsa, subsided rapidly. As he undressed in the living room, using only one dim light, he wondered what Isla would think of his mission.

‘Bob, is that you ?’

Merritt hesitated.

‘What time is it, Bob?’

Merritt, carrying his shoes, trousers, coat and shirt, walked into the bedroom. Isla was sitting up, lighting a cigarette. She was a dark-haired olive-complexioned young woman with passionate lips. She put out her hand and Merritt handed her the cheque and, while she studied it, he climbed into his pyjamas and explained what it was for. She began to laugh before he finished, a staccato laugh.

‘With one thousand dollars,’ she said finally, controlling herself, ‘you expect to persuade a political government to build a machine more expensive than any battleship ever constructed. My dear, I was married to a Washington lobbyist and I assure you it isn’t done on the cheap.’

It was the first time in the four years since their marriage that she had mentioned her first husband. Merritt glanced at her sharply. He saw that her cheeks were flushed, that she was furious with him.

‘Really,’ she said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t waste your time with that bunch of dreamers. Spaceships! Such nonsense. Besides, what good is it? I wish you’d get busy and make some money for us.’

Merritt did not answer. He had a theory about money-making. But it was not one he could expound to a woman whose first husband had amassed a fortune after she divorced him.

He climbed into his bed. ‘You have no object, I hope,’ he said, ‘to my spending the thousand before I come around to your way of thinking?’

Ilsa shrugged. ‘It’ll give you a trip. But it’s so silly. What are you going to do first ?’

‘Go see a schoolmate of mine named Norman Lowery. He’s secretary to Professor Hillier, the mathematician and physicist. We have to build up to the President by degrees, you know.’

‘I’ll bet you do,’ said Ilsa.

She began to laugh again. She was still at it when Merritt made his first attempt to kiss her. She pushed him away.

‘Don’t try to get around me,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’m just beginning to realize that I’m doomed to be the wife of a low-salaried husband. You’ll have to be gentle with me while I get used to the idea.’

Merrit said nothing. Life had become progressively tense of recent months.

Almost, he had come to believe that men with obsessions shouldn’t marry. It was too hard on the w.man.

‘The trouble with you,’ said Ilsa, her voice softening, ‘is that you’re a living misrepresentation. You give the impression that you’re bound for the top but you don’t even try to get started.

‘Maybe I’m further along than you think,’ Merritt ventured.

‘Nuts!’

She finally let him kiss her - on the neck, not the lips. ‘I feel as if I would poison you after what I’ve said. And I’m not quite prepared for that yet.’

Norman Lowery met Merritt at the station. He looked older by at least ten years than when Merritt had seen him two years previously. He led Merritt towards an imposing Cadillac and, after they had started, said, ‘Don’t be too surprised when you see Professor Hillier.’

That was Merritt’s first inkling that something was wrong. ‘What do you mean?’ Sharply.

‘You’ll see.’

Merritt studied his friend’s profile in narrow-eyed thoughtfulness but he asked no questions. The big car was out of the town now, bowling along a paved highway at sixty miles an hour.

After about ten minutes it turned off into a valley and came presently to a little dream village. Several large buildings dominated the scene. And there were about two dozen houses in all, scattered along the banks of a pretty winding stream.

As Lowery turned up the driveway of the largest bungalow he said, ‘Prefessor Hillier is independently wealthy -luckily for him - and all this is his property. Those buildings over there are his labs. His assistants and their families live in the houses.’

He added, ‘Notice how we’re closed in by steep hills. That’s in case of an atomic bomb attack on the big dam twenty-five miles south. All the buildings, including the residences, are steel and concrete under their stucco exteriors and panelled interiors, though the professor only laughs at that in his sensible moments.’

Merritt did not like the reference to ‘sensible moments.’ As the car parked in the driveway he climbed out slowly and took another look along the valley.

He thought, ‘To me atomic energy is open sesame to the future. To these people - ‘

He wasn’t sure just what was wrong. But there was a pressing negativeness here as if a man had built himself a mausoleum and was waiting for death to step closer. Long before, Merritt had rejected headlong retreat from the vulnerable cities, had aligned himself with the hundred million whose only hope of escape was that their leaders would have the common sense to solve the problem of the doomsday bomb.

Merrit asked finally, ‘Has this place got a name ?’

‘Hillier Haven.’

At least it fitted.

They entered the house through french windows, which opened into a spacious living-room. There was a bar in one corner. Lowery ducked through an opening in its side and popped up behind it.

‘I’ll mix you a drink,’ he said, ‘then go look for the professor. This is his house, you know, or did I say that before? He and his daughter and Hive here. Very cosy.’ He laughed grimly. ‘What’ll you have ?’

Merritt had a whisky and soda. He sat down in an easy chair and watched Lowery disappear into the garden beyond the french windows. The minutes passed. After about half an hour he climbed to his feet and walked over to a half-open door that had been intriguing him for some time. It was a library lined with books. Merritt returned to his chair. He was an avaricious reader but not today - not this month.

Another half-hour went by. He could feel himself growing tenser. He had already paced the length of the room several times. Now he did it again but without any sense of relaxation.

He had a vision of himself during the next few months, waiting for men like Professor Hillier to condescend to give him a hearing. He began to realize the massiveness of the task he had set himself. He was going to try to push an idea into, men who had hacked their own way to success through the equivalent of granite.

Men whose characters were as different and inflexible as their achievements. Men of great talent and great power. He, Robert Merritt, who could scarcely pay his bills every month, was going to do all that.

‘We’re nuts!’ he thought. ‘The whole bunch of us. Imagine - a few hundred fanatics trying to push America into a spaceship! Ilsa was right.’

But he stayed where he was.

A door opened, and a girl came in. She was slim and blonde with grey eyes. She paused as she saw Merritt. She came forward, smiling.

‘You must be Robert Merritt,’ she said. ‘Norman told me about you. I’m Drusilla Julia, Professor Hillier’s daughter.’

She looked cool and refreshing and sane. Merritt answered her smile and said, ‘Your father must be a student of ancient Rome.’

‘Oh, you recognize the origin of my names.’ She was pleased.

After a moment however she frowned. ‘Norman has been telling me about what your club is trying to do. Just what are your plans ?’

Merritt told her what VA-2 had accomplished. He went on, ‘VB-Two is now under construction. It will be somewhat different from the first ship - ‘ he hesitated - ‘in that its acceleration will never be above six gravities.’

He watched her face to see if she had any inkling of what that meant. For a moment she didn’t seem to. And then her eyes lighted up.

She said in a low, intense tone, ‘You’re going to put a human being into it. You wonderful men! You wonderful young men! The future really does belong to you, doesn’t it?’

Chapter II THE PROBLEM PROFESSOR

She didn’t look so old herself. About twenty-two, Merritt estimated sardonically. If the young people of this age were destined to explore the planets, then she could be right in there pitching. But he liked her for knowing something. The question most often asked him by people was, ‘But how can a ship fly in space where there’s no air for the explosions to push against.’ He saw that her enthusiasm was subsiding.

She said, ‘Actually, that isn’t what I meant when I asked you about your plans. What I want to know is what do you expect of Father ?’

Merritt explained that they wanted the famous Professor Hillier, atomic bomb scientist, to be ready to go to Washington at the proper time to help persuade President Graham to support Project Spaceship. When he had finished, the expression on the girl’s face was distinctly unhappy.

‘Can’t you,’ she asked, ‘obtain the support of some other scientist?’

Merrit said simply, ‘We need a household name. Years ago there was Edison, then it was Einstein, now it’s Hillier. You can’t fight a thing like that. It’s just so. Besides, some of the more famous atomic scientists will have nothing to do with the government since atomic energy was virtually placed under military control.’

He shrugged, ‘Naturally, since no secret is involved, our members basically support the scientists. But we’re willing to work with the material we have. We’ve found individual military men absolutely co-operative. They’ve given us German V-One and V-Two bombs.

‘Jet and other planes have been turned over to us in almost any quantity we could ever hope to need. The armed forces are full of young eager officers and men who are only too anxious for somebody to reach the planets.’

His voice was warming to the level of enthusiasm. He realized suddenly that he was being boyish. He stiffened.

He said quietly, ‘The world is as full as ever of the spirit of adventure. But people have to be cajoled and set on the right path to the future.’

‘My father,’ said Drusilla Julia Hillier, ‘is going to be difficult. I’ll be frank about that.’ She went on earnestly, ‘Mr Merritt, as you know, he was one of the atomic bomb scientists. After “the war he visited Hiroshima and - well, it affected him.

‘Norman and I have prepared a letter which we have already shown father, and which we are trying to persuade him to sign. So far he has not done so. I’m afraid it will be up to you to persuade him.’

The french windows opened and Lowery strode in. ‘ ‘Lo Dm,’ he said. He looked at Merritt. ‘Sorry, I’ve been so slow but it’s taken me all this time to locate the professor.’ His voice had a peculiar note in it, as he added, ‘will you come this way, and meet him in one of his favourite poses.’

The girl said, her colour high, ‘Be seeing you at dinner, Mr Merritt.’

Merritt went out, puzzled. Outside he began in an irritated tone, ‘For heaven’s sake, Norman, what’s going on here? This mystery is—’

He stopped. They had rounded a line of shrubs and there was a man lying on the grass under the trees. He was a gaunt old fellow with white hair, and a distinctively long head. His face was partly hidden by one arm. His expensive clothes were dishevelled and his posture twisted and ungainly.

As Merritt gaped in a gathering comprehension, Lowery said, ‘Liquor has been unfair to Professor Hillier. It just wasn’t meant for him. One or two glasses of the mildest concoctions and his whole system backfires like that. He’s very determined, though. He’s going to lick it yet, he says. Well, shall we go back into the house?’

Merritt went without a word. But he was thinking that getting a full-grown spaceship into the air was going to be more difficult than he had dreamed.

Professor Hillier came in to dinner. His eyes were quite bloodshot but he didn’t stagger. He shook hands affably with Merritt.

‘If I remember correctly,’ he said, ‘you came out and had a look at me. My daughter and her - ahem -1 believe they’re going to get married, but you never can tell about these moral young men - believe in letting visitors form their own conclusions. A very poor policy if you ask me. This world is too full of infidels and other non-drinkers.’

Merritt wasn’t sure just what he ought to say.

Before he could speak Drusilla said, smiling, ‘Father still lives in the era in which young people, when thrown together, automatically fall for each other. Norman and I have our own friends and personally I have yet to meet the man I am going to marry.’

Merritt glanced at his friend. Lowery was staring straight ahead with studied indifference and Merritt had his first realization of the situation that existed here. Boy loves girl but girl does not love boy. And the ass was making his situation hopeless by ageing under the strain.

They sat down to dinner. The professor said, ‘Who’s going to fly VB-Two?’

Merritt parted his lips to answer, then stopped himself, and looked at his host narrow-eyed. He couldn’t have asked for a better question but after what he had heard of this man he’d have to take care not to let himself be drawn into a trap. He replied cautiously:

‘The choice is between two men.’

He went on to explain the tests that had been given every member of the Rocket Club. The important thing was the ability to withstand acceleration. The army had several wonderful men whose anti-acceleration capacities were almost miraculous. Several of these had offered privately to perform the flight. But it had been decided not to use them for fear of arousing the ire of the high command.

‘So,’ Merritt concluded, ‘we’ll have to do it ourselves. A salesman, named John Errol, is the most likely man.’ He saw that it would be unnecessary to name the second in line.

‘What,’ asked Professor Hillier, ‘are your plans for getting to the President?’

Merritt was surer of himself now. At least he was getting a chance to explain. He said, ‘The route is rather complicated. We have selected key men whose support we feel we must get before we can even approach the President. We want to interest a top brass hat in both the army and the navy.

‘It happens that one of our members knows a high naval official who has practically guaranteed us support. But if the army should turn thumbs down it might stop us for years.

‘However, all that is still more than a month away. We all agree that we must first obtain the support of Professor Hillier. Unless some famous scientist will say that space flight is possible it will be difficult to convince the so-called hard-headed businessmen.’

Professor Hillier was scowling. ‘Businessmen!’ he snarled, ‘Yaahr

Merritt thought: ‘Oh-oh, here it comes.’

The professor had been eating with the concentrated intentness of a hungry man.

Now he paused. He looked up. His scarlet eyes gleamed.

‘This desire to go to the planets,’ he said, ‘is the neurotic ambition of supreme escapists from life.’

His daughter looked at Merritt, then said quickly, ‘That sounds odd, doesn’t it, coming from a man who has made a fortune out of exploring the frontiers of science and who, moreover, has hung on to his money with the skill of a hard-headed businessman.’

She added, addressing her father directly, ‘Don’t forget, darling, you’re committed to space travel. You’re going to write a letter.’

‘I haven’t written it yet,’ said Professor Hillier grimly. ‘And I am toying with the idea of not writing it. The thought that a scientist in his cups might stop man from reaching the stars fascinates me.’

The conversation had taken a turn that Merritt did not like. He recognized in the professor a man who had tossed aside his inhibitions late in life. Such people always overdid their freedom. And that was a danger.

‘Don’t you think, sir,’ Merritt said quietly, ‘that it would be more fascinating if-uh, a scientist in his cups were the key figure in reaching the planets. Fact is, that’s the only way it would ever get into the history books. It isn’t history if it doesn’t happen.’

Professor Hillier showed his teeth. ‘You’re one of these bright young men with an answer for everything,’ he said. He made it sound offensive. ‘Your attitude towards life is too positive to suit me.’

He put up a hand. ‘Wait,’ he thundered.

‘Father really.’

The professor scowled at his daughter. ‘Don’t give me any of that really stuff. Here’s a young man who rather fancies himself. And I’m going to show him up. Imagine,’ he said viciously, ‘pretending that he’s an expert on space travel.’

He turned towards Merritt. He said in a silken voice, ‘You and I are going to play a little game. I’m going to be a sweet old lady and you be yourself. You’re cornered, understand, but very gallant. My first question is - ‘

He changed his tone. He was not a very good actor, so his tone was a burlesque and not very funny. ‘But my dear Mr Merritt,’ he said, ‘how will it fly ? After all, there’s no air out there for the explosions to push against.’

Merritt told himself that he had to hold back his anger. He said, ‘Rocket tubes, Mrs Smith, work on the principle that action and reaction are equal and opposite. When you fire a shotgun there is a kick against your shoulder.

‘That kick would occur even if you were standing in a vacuum when you pulled the trigger. Actually, the presence of air slows a rocket ship. At the speeds a rocket can travel air pressure rises to thousands of pounds per square inch. In free space, away from the pull of gravity, a rocket will travel at many miles per second.’

‘But,’ mimicked Professor Hillier, ‘wouldn’t such speeds kill every living thing aboard ?’

Merritt said, ‘Madam, you are confusing acceleration with speed. Speed never hurt anybody. At this moment you are travelling on a planet which is whirling on its axis at more than a thousand miles an hour.

‘The planet itself is following an erratic course around the sun at a speed of nineteen and a fraction miles a second. Simultaneoulsy the sun and all its planets are hurtling through space at a speed of twelve miles a second. So you see, if speed could affect you, it would have done so long ago.

‘On the other hand you have probably been in a car on occasion when it started up very swiftly and you were pressed into the back of your seat. In short you were affected^ by the car’s acceleration. Similarly, when a car is braked all of a sudden, everybody in it is flung forward. In other words, it had decelerated too swiftly for comfort.

‘The solution is a slow gathering of speed. Let us imagine that an automobile is travelling at a speed of ten miles an hour, a minute later at twenty miles and hour and so on, ten miles an hour faster each minute.

‘The driver would scarcely notice the acceleration but, at the end of a hundred minutes, he would be moving along at a thousand miles per hour. And he would have attained that speed by an acceleration on ten miles an hour per minute.

‘Actually, human beings have survived decelerations -crash landings - approximating fifteen gravities. But it is recognized that the average person will be pretty close to death at six gravities and very few could survive nine gravities of acceleration.’

‘What,’ said the scientist, ‘do you mean by gravities?’

‘One gravity,’ Merritt began, ‘is the normal pull of earth upon an object at ground level. Two gravities would be twice - ‘

At that moment he happened to glance at Drusilla, and he stopped short. She was white and Merritt realized that she thought he was following the wrong tack. He straightened.

He said, ‘Really, sir, don’t you think this is a little silly?’

‘So you’ve got it all down like a parrot,’ Professor Hillier sneered. ‘Simple answers for simple people. Now the morons are going to learn about space and the planets and you’re going to be the starry-eyed teacher.’

‘The notion that everybody should automatically know all about your subject,’ Merritt said, ‘is a curious egotism in so great a man.’

‘Aha,’ said the professor, ‘the young man is warming up at last. I suppose,’ he said, ‘you’re also one of those who believe that the dropping of the atomic bomb was justified.’

Merritt hadn’t intended to become angry but he was tired of the ranting of high and mighty moralists on the subject of the atomic bomb. And he was very tired indeed of the childishness of Professor Hillier.

‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘man lives partly with himself, partly with his fellows. Personally, I was an army pilot, and I’m assuming the dropping of the bomb saved my life. But in the meantime I have interested myself in the non-destructive aspects of atomic energy.’ He shrugged. ‘Materialistic. That’s me.’

He took it for granted that he had lost the letter. But even if he had thought otherwise he was too wound up now to stop.

‘Professor,’ he said, ‘you’re a fraud. I’ve had a good long look at you and I’m willing to bet that you’re never quite as drunk as you pretend. That business of spending half your time hanging on to the grass so you won’t fall off the Earth is so fishy that I wonder you have the nerve to look anybody in the eye.

‘As for all this nonsense about you having been strongly affected by the dropping of the bomb, you know very well that that was merely an excuse for you to turn your ego loose and - ‘

The professor had been stiffening. Abruptly, he glared at his daughter.

‘Drusilla, you little Roman puritan, where’s that letter you typed out for me to sign ?’

‘I’ll get it,’ she said hastily, rising.

‘I’m going to sign it,’ the scientist said to Merritt, ‘and then I want you to get out of here before you ruin my reputation.’

A few minutes later, as Lowery was getting the car out of the garage, Professor Hillier came to the door where Merritt was waiting.

‘Good luck,’ he said, ‘and happy planets to you, Mr Merritt.’

Chapter III MOUNTAINOUS MOLEHILLS

The partial victory had a heady effect on Merritt. By the time he got back to Los Angeles he was convinced that a letter was all he could have hoped for. He had Pete Lowery make fifty photostats and the huge pile that resulted made him glow. He phoned up Grayson, president of the Rocket Club, and reported his success.

He finished:’… and I’m leaving for New York tonight.’

‘Oh, no,, you’re not,’ said Mike Grayson. ‘I was just going to call you and see if you were home.’

‘What’s up?’

It was a potential new member. Annie the superjet would have to be flown for his benefit and only Merritt and John Errol could fly the fast plane. Errol was out of town, so -Grayson’s voice lowered in awe as he gave the final, important fact:

‘It’s for Rod Peterson, Bob.’

‘The movie star?’

‘None other.’

‘What do you expect from him?’

They expected a ten-thousand dollar contribution. ‘You know our policy. Each man according to his income. And our set-up is such that he can put it down as a bad investment on his tax declaration. Need I say the idea appeals to him?’

‘What about our income tax ?’

Grayson was complacent. ‘We’ll be on the moon before they discover that we’re not paying any. Of course, in a kind of a way they recognize us as a non-profit organization but they’re getting more and more suspicious, the silly asses.’

Merritt grinned. Contact with certain members of the Rocket Club always exhilarated him. The members in general moved through life as if they had wings in their hair, and a few of them imparted a special aura of the kind of intoxication that he himself had felt overseas.

Of all the millions of men who had built up an appetite for excitement they were the lucky ones who would be able to satisfy their desires. Without exception they had a conviction of high destiny.

Grayson finished, ‘If we get the ten grand we’ll give you one of them for your job. So you’d better be around.’

Ilsa merely sniffed when Merritt told her who would be at the barns. But later he found her dressing with minute care.

‘It’s time,’ she said, ‘that I took an interest in your work. And listen, you chump, when you climb out of the plane come over to me first. Then I’ll be the starry-eyed wife hanging on to your arm when you’re congratulated by Rod Peterson.’

Merritt always considered the drive over Cahuenga Pass into the valley where the club barns were located as one of the scenic treats of Los Angeles. He sniffed the air ap-praisingly, and found it satisfactorily dry and warm.

‘Annie’s built for that. I’ll be able to push her up to eighty per cent of the speed of sound and stay pretty near the ground. We’re going to turn on all her lights, you know, and make quite a night show.’

There were preliminaries. Merritt, who had endless patience, spent the evening tuning Annie for her flight. He saw Peterson’s arrival from a distance, but the details were reported to him from time to time.

The star arrived in three cars, two of which were filled with friends. The lead car contained Peterson and a female who was more dazzling than all the rest put together. It-was she who delayed the lour by asking scores of questions. When they came to the unfinished frame of VB-2, she peered at length into the drive nozzles.

‘You mean to tell me,’ she asked finally, ‘that you make a rocket drive by having a narrow hole for the gases to escape through ?’

‘That’s the general idea,’ Grayson explained, ‘though there’s a design that’s slightly different for each type of explosive.’

‘Well, damme,’ said the young woman, ‘if life isn’t getting simpler all the time.’

She fascinated the entire membership but it was half past nine before Merritt (or anyone else apparently) learned her name. She was Susan Gregory, a new star, just arrived from Broadway. Beside her Rod Peterson was a cold fish. At a quarter to ten her enthusiasm began to wane notably.

‘What’s next?’ she asked, in a let’s-go-home-now-Roddy-darling voice.

Annie was wheeled out - Annie the sleek, the gorgeous -Annie of the high tail. Susan Gregory stared with dulled eyes.

‘I’ve seen one of those before,’ she said.

It was dismissal. The evening was over. Ennui had descended upon the spirit of Susan Gregory and, watching the descent, Rod Peterson showed his first real emotion.

‘Tired, sweetheart?’

Her answer was a shrug which galvanized him. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said hastily to Grayson. ‘It’s all been very interesting. Goodbye.’

They were gone before most of the members grasped what was happening.

On the way home, Ilsa was as tense as drawn wire. ‘The nerve of her,’ she raged. ‘Coming there like a goddess bearing gifts and then pulling that stunt.’ Bitterly. ‘You’ve heard the last of the ten thousand, I’ll wager.’

Merritt held his peace. He felt himself at the beginning, not the end of temporary setbacks. And he had no intention of being gloomy in advance. By the time they reached their apartment Ilsa was deep in mental depression.

‘You made a mistake marrying me,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m too old for insecurity and ups and downs.’

‘At twenty-eight,’ Merritt scoffed. ‘Don’t be a nut.’

But when he boarded the plane the following night she had still not snapped out of her mood. The memory flattened his ego. He arrived in New York in a drab state of mind. If Grayson hadn’t suggested the Waldorf Astoria he would have gone uptown to a cheaper place.

The first businessman he contacted, a nationally known railway executive, listened to him as to a child, patted him on the back and promised to get in touch with him.

A textile giant, physically small and plump, kept him waiting for two days, then threw him out of the office verbally - ‘Wasting my time with such nonsense!’ An airline president offered him a job in his publicity department.

Merritt returned to his hotel room from the final failure, more affected than he cared to admit. He had expected variations of failure but here was a dead-level indifference. Here were men so wrapped up in their own day-to-day certainties that he had not even penetrated the outer crust of their personalities. At six o’clock that evening he phoned Grayson in Hollywood.

‘Before you say anything,’ Grayson said, when he came on the line, ‘you may be interested to know that we have received ten thousand dollars from - guess who ?’

Merritt refused to hazard a guess.

‘Susan Gregory.’

That startled Merritt. But his mood remained cynical. ‘Have you got a cheque or a promise ?’

‘A cheque. But with a string attached.’

‘Huhuh!’

‘She wants VB-Two named after her. And we thought -well, what the heck, ten Gs is ten Gs. You can’t beat that kind of logic. One thousand of it is on its way to you by air. How does that sound?’

It was like a shot in the arm. With a fervour approaching animation, Merritt described his new plan of action. He had made a mistake in approaching the men cold. What was needed was an intermediary, either incident or human being, to bridge the gap.

Human beings lived in separate worlds. Business executives lurked behind special concrete-like barriers, where they hid themselves from commercially minded people like themselves. The problem was to get to the human being inside. In every man there was a spark of wonderful imagination. There he kept his dreams, his castles in the air, his special self.

Grayson interrupted at that point, ‘That sounds beautiful theoretically. But what have you got in mind ?’

Merritt hesitated but only for a moment. ‘I’ll need the help of the local branch of the club.’ ‘Oh!’

There was silence. Merritt waited patiently. No one knew why the New York branch of the US Spaceship Society had never amounted to anything. It was one of those things. A synthesis of discordant personalities, a dividing into cliques tending to stultify and infuriate the brighter brains.

In history, when such divisive elements attained national power, civilization stood still for a generation or more. How to break artificially induced immobility or retrogression ? Sometimes one man had been known to do it.

The trouble was that the Los Angeles branch was annoyed at New York and was not too eager to share the fruits of its efforts. Grayson’s reluctant voice came on the wire.

‘All right and I’ll back you. Now what’s your plan?’

‘What I want,’ said*Merritt, ‘is all the available information about these men. Then I’d like the use of an old jet plane. I’m going after Mantin first, since he actually kicked me out of his office, and this time I’m using imagination.’

The fortification that was Textile’s Mantin was stormed that weekend when a jet plane apparently crash-landed within a hundred yards of his hunting lodge. The pilot, discovering that it would require twenty-four hours to repair the machine, was invited to remain overnight.

Bayliss, the air corporation man, was bombarded with ceramic and metal miniatures of various rocket bombs, each one accompanied by a message stressing the pure motives of the club. An ardent collector, he recognized some of the items as rare and valuable.

In Washington Senator Tinker, that sardonic glutton, finding himself the surprised recipient of a daily shipment of imported foods obtainable only in New York, grew curious and granted an interview to a persistent caller, named Robert Merritt.

And so it came to pass that a young man attended a certain very exclusive poker session, where the avergae age of the players was nearly forty years above draft requirements. Senator Tinker introduced him.

‘Gentlemen, this is Robert Merritt.’

There was a grunted response. Merritt sat down and watched the cards being dealt. He did not look immediately at General Craig. He received two cards, an ace down and an eight up. The ace in the hole decided him to stay, though it cost him five dollars before everybody had stopped raising. His third card was an ace. He himself raised thirty dollars before the belligerent colonel next to the general stopped backing a jack and a nine with raises of his own. His fourth card was a nine, his fifth another ace.

Three aces was not a bad hand for stud poker. In spite of one of the aces not showing no one bet against him. Merritt raked in the chips. He estimated just a bit shakily that he had won about $275, and that these men played a game that was miles out of his class financially.

His first two cards in the next hand were the two of spades and the seven of hearts. He folded and for the first time took a good though cautious look at General Craig. The great man’s publicized face was as rugged in real life as his pictures showed him.

The shaggy eyebrows were shifting as he studied the cards of his opponents. His gaze came to Merritt’s cards, flashed up, then down again. It was as swift as a wink but Merritt retained an impression of having been studied by eyes as bright as diamonds.

As the hand ended, the general said casually, ‘So it’s me you’re here to contact, Merritt?’

Merritt was shocked but he caught himself. ‘General,’ he said, ‘you’re a smart man.’

The older man said thoughtfully, ‘Robert Merritt. Where have I heard that name before? Hmmmmm, Robert Merritt, Captain Air Force, nineteen Jap planes, Congressional Medal of Honour.’ He looked shrewdly at Merritt. ‘Am I getting warm?’

‘Uncomfortably,’ said Merritt.

He was not altogether displeased but he was also impressed. He recognized that he was in the presence of a man with an eidetic memory. He lost nearly six hundred dollars in the three hands that followed, most of it in the third hand when, in a sort of desperation, he tried to make two eights do the work of three.

When that hand was finished, General Craig said, What are you doing now, Merritt?’

It was direct but welcome. ‘I’m secretary,’ Merritt answered, ‘of the Spaceship Society, LA branch.’

‘Oh!’ The general’s eyebrows went up. Then he looked at Senator Tinker. ‘You old Ssstinker you,’ he said. ‘Do you realize what you’ve done, bringing this young man up here ?’

‘Well, general,’ drawled the senator, ‘they tell me that your army boys have been putting the pressure on you from all directions about this spaceship business. I thought I’d slip somebody in the back door. What are you holding up the parade for anyway ? Is the idea too big for you ?’

The commander in chief growled, ‘That kind of stuff is all right for young men but an old artillery man like myself can’t afford to come out into the open until the time is ripe.’

‘When will the time be ripe ?’

‘Let me think,’ said the general. ‘VA-Two went four thousand miles an hour. VB-Two is now under construction, and will be completed shortly. It is destined to carry the first human being ever to attempt to reach space itself.

‘I would suggest you accept the secret offer made you by Lieutenant Turner. That young fellow’s a physical whiz. If anybody can stand the extreme acceleration of your crude machine he can.’

The senator’s grin was broader. ‘General,’ he said, ‘you so and so. You’re an old spacehound yourself. I repeat, when would you consider the time ripe?’

‘When I’m called in. Under such circumstances I could prepare a report and read it to the President. He’s not interested in printed material. Bad eyes, I suppose.’

“Then we’ve still got to convince the President ?’

‘Exactly. That’s your problem. And now, Merritt, there’s one question I want to ask you.’

‘Yes, sir?’

The general was scowling. ‘How in - can a ship fly in space where there’s no air for the explosions to push against?’

Chapter IV OUT AND BACK

Said Serkel, ‘Print is nothing but a painful sensation on the iris. Print convinces nobody of anything. If you want to influence nobody have your words published in memo, magazine or book form.’

He was a bright-eyed, dried-up little old man and Merritt stared at him in fascination. He sent a quick look towards Senator Tinker, found no help in the big man’s sardonic smile and so he faced the old fellow again across the poker table.

‘Don’t you think, sir, it depends on whether or not your favourite critic recommends the book ?’

‘The critics,’ said Gorin Serkel, ‘are like mounds of shifting sand on top of which publishers pile books. If they acclaim a book one week you can be certain that they will give their accolade the following week to another book of diametrically opposite viewpoint. Undoubtedly the two books together will fail to influence more people than they failed to influence separately.’

It seemed to Merritt that he had better produce his letter quickly. But he hesitated. They had found Serkel on the veranda of his country home and they were still standing halfway up the steps. Like salesmen, Merritt thought, with no prospect of being invited to sit down.

A little uncertain, Merritt took out the letter, and extended it. Serkel shrank back.

‘Writing!’ he said. He shrugged. ‘You might as well start unbuilding your ship right now.’

‘This letter,’ Merritt urged, ‘is from Professor Hillier.’

‘The President,’ said Serkel, ‘cannot even be influenced by his own speeches once they are made and available only in printed form.’

‘But how does the country continue to run?’ Merritt protested. ‘Surely, a mountain of documents crosses his desk every day.’

‘Details, yes,’ said Serkel. ‘Administrative necessities and acts of Congress - that he tolerates in the same fashion that he accepts the American dollar as good money. But nothing new.’

He added with asperity, ‘The President expects of his friends that they will not embarrass him by peddling schemes which he will almost assuredly have to turn down.’

He looked at Senator Tinker, then at Merritt. ‘The solution seems very simple to me. Professor Hillier is a world-famous scientist. His name will get you a hearing. His presence will safeguard you from a quick exit.’

Merritt and Senator Tinker looked at each other. There was no question that Serkel was now giving them his most earnest counsel. The only thing they could do was to explain the impossibility of using Professor Hillier as a safeguard for anything.

It was a dangerous form of disillusionment because Serkel might avail himself of the opportunity to fade out of the picture finally and forever. Serkel was thoughtful when Merritt had finished describing the professor.

‘So the publicized Hillier is a figment of the imagination, deadly to his own purposes when paraded in person and a flop at everything but adding and subtracting on a level approximating infinity.’

He straightened. He said curtly, ‘Under the circumstances, gentlemen, I do not feel inclined to entertain your proposition. I - ‘

Merritt had watched it coming. As he stood looking at the former presidential adviser, a kaleidoscopic memory of the two months just passed flashed through his mind. Slowly the remembrance stiffened him.

He felt no sense of egotism but Serkel didn’t seem to understand that the men who wanted his help were not just ordinary human beings. They were men with a mission. They couldn’t back down or withdraw permanently from any forward position. Merritt gathered himself.

‘I think, sir,’ he said, ‘that I have not made clear the potentialities of a letter. Professor Hillier, clothed in his ivory-tower reputation, verbally produced by an experienced persuader, can accomplish more than any stranger named Professor Hillier meeting a stranger named President Graham.

‘It is my belief, furthermore, that you have not clearly realized the possibilities of a final great achievement to climax your long and famous career. So that you might better understand the situation I invite you to attend two weeks from now the most exciting experimental flight ever attempted by men. I think you owe it to the future of human kind to ensure that you at least see the first man to fly into space.’

Serkel’s expression was suddenly more intent, thoughtful.

‘One personality on the scene,’ Merritt pressed on, ‘funnelling the convictions of many minds through his own voice, might conceivably capture the attention of the President for the necessary minutes without requiring him to read a line.’

He saw that he had an audience again. Serkel sat down. He looked even more thoughtful. At last he said, ‘You and your friend and the letter are invited to stay for the weekend/ He raised his voice. ‘Mrs Ess.’

There were footsteps. A pleasant looking woman came out on to the porch. Serkel said, ‘Gentlemen, my wife. Mrs Ess, tell Jane two extra dinners until further notice. Make yourselves at home, everybody.’

He stood up and disappeared into the house, mumbling something to the effect that, ‘The economic aspects of the Keynes taxation theory do not merit the contempt they undoubtedly deserve. I must tell the President.’

At least that was the way it sounded to Merritt.

Merritt’s purely personal crisis came like an atomic bomb out of the blue on the day of the test. At twenty minutes to two, with the flight scheduled to begin at two, a pale Mike Grayson hurried out of the barns and approached Merritt.

He said, ‘Bad news! Lieutenant Turner just phoned. His superior officer, not knowing General Craig privately gave his permission to fly VB-Two, has refused him leave because of some miserable manoeuvres they’re beginning tomorrow. I phoned John Errol but his office says they can’t locate him-he’s out somewhere on business. You were always the only other choice, Bob, so - ‘

Merritt’s first thought was of Ilsa. Ilsa who would not understand, who would think that he had once more lightly placed her future in jeopardy.

‘We could postpone it,’ said Grayson, anxiously.

Merritt knew better. There were men waiting in the observation hut who had come to this test for a variety of reasons. It was almost a miracle that they were present at all. No one was so aware as he that that miracle would not be easily repeated.

‘No,’ he said quietly… ‘Naturally, I’ll’do it. But first I want to call my wife.’

His call went unanswered. He let the phone ring for several minutes, then hung up, disturbed. Ilsa had decided not to come to the test.

‘Somebody’s going to get killed,’ she had said, ‘and I don’t want to be around when they bring in the body.’

It was an unfortunate remark.

The four-jet carrier plane, which was to take the rocket on the first leg of its journey, took off without incident. It climbed like a shooting star but it was only about halfway up when the pilot’s voice sounded from the earphones which were embedded in the cushions beside Merritt’s head:

‘Grayson wants to talk to you, Bob.’

Grayson was exultant. ‘Bob, Serkel just phoned from Washington. As you know, he decided not to come to the test because he doesn’t believe in melodramatic shows. Well, he had lunch with the President today. And he’s done it, Bob. He’s done it.’

The other man’s enthusiasm seemed remote to Merritt. He listened to the details with half his mind, agreed finally that it was more important than ever now that the test be successful, and then put the matter out of his mind.

The pilot’s voice said, ‘Ready, Bob?’

‘Ready,’ said Merritt.

The ship turned downward into a power dive. All four of its jet engines thundering, gathering speed, it went down to twenty-five thousand feet, then twisted and zoomed upward at more than five hundred miles an hour.

‘Now,’ said the pilot tensely.

Merritt didn’t see the door in the rear of the plane opening. But he felt the movement as the rocket slid backward through the opening. Then he was in bright sunlight. Through the treated, tinted plexiglass of the tiny cabin he had a glimpse of the dark sky above.

For two seconds the long shiny tube continued to fall. It was not really falling. Its upward speed was about three hundred miles an hour. It was falling, however, with respect to the carrier ship and the time gap was designed to let the big machine get away.

The process was electronically timed. Tick, tock, tick, tock - WHAM! He had tensed for it and that was bad. It was like being hit in every bone and muscle and organ, that first titanic blow of the rockets.

Merritt crumpled into the cushions and the springs below and around him. He had a dizzy glimpse of the big converted bomber falling away into the distance. In one jump it retreated from gianthood to a tiny dot barely visible in the haze of sky below. It vanished.

WHAAAAMM! The second blow was more sustained.

His head started to ache violently. His eyes stung. His body felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. // did. The second set of explosions was designed to exert peak acceleration. But the speed of the rocket was probably still under 2000 miles an hour.

‘Bob!’ Grayson’s voice. On the radio.

‘Yeah!’ The word came hard.

‘Shall we go on?’

It hadn’t struck him that they might abandon the flight if he didn’t react well. Curiously that brought fury.

‘Blast you,’ he shouted. ‘Get going.’

The explosions were radio-controlled and the third was a duplicate of the second. His body took it hard, harder than anything he had ever imagined.

He found himself puzzling blurrily about what had happened to the cushions and the springs. He seemed to be standing on a slab of metal with steel-hard metal braces pressing on to his arms and legs. Was that what happened to cushions under pressure?

It was tremendously dark outside. His vision was not clear but he could see dots of stars and, over to one side, a fiery blob. It took a moment to realize that it was the sun. He waited, cringing, for the fourth and last series of explosions.

He thought, ‘Oh, Lord, I can’t take it! / can’t!’

But he did. And, strangely, the blow seemed less severe as if in some marvellous fashion his being had adjusted to its environment of violence. The series of blows pulsed rhythmically through his bones and attuned to his nerves.

‘Bob!’

He was so intent on his own thoughts and feelings that it didn’t strike him right away that he was being addressed.

‘Bob - ‘ earnestly - ‘are you all right?’

‘Bob,’ he thought. Bob?, that’s me. Impatience came.

‘Why, of course I’m all right.’

‘Thank goodness!’ The words were a whisper. And in the background, behind Grayson’s voice, there was a murmur of other voices.’… Good man!’… ‘Oh, wonderful…’ Then once more, Grayson.

‘Bob.’

‘Yes?’

‘According to the duplicate instruments down here, you’re now six hundred miles up, and going higher at the rate of seventy miles a minute. How do you feel ?’

He began to feel fine. There was no sense of movement now. His stomach felt kind “of hollow but that was the only sensation. He floated in emptiness, in silence and darkness.

The stars were pinpoints of intense brightness that did not twinkle or glitter. The sun, far to his left, was only super-fically round. Streamers of flame and fire mist made it appear lopsided and unnatural.

As Merritt blinked at it the sun came past him and turned away to the right. He watched it amazed, then realized what was happening. The rocket had reached its limit. Held by Earth’s gravity, it was turning slowly, twisting gradually, falling back towards Earth.

Merritt said quickly, ‘How high am I ?’

‘Eight hundred and four miles.’

It was not bad. He had topped the farthest limits of the atmosphere by more than three hundred miles. He had looked out at empty space - through protected plexiglass to be sure - but looked. Soon he would have to start thinking of getting clear of the tube, which was destined to fall into the ocean.

At forty thousand feet above sea level he set off the explosion that knocked the cabin free of the main tube. At fifteen thousand feet he bailed out of the cabin. His parachute opened at five thousand feet. He came down in an orange grove and walked to a filling station. The attendant charged him fifty cents for using the phone to call Grayson.

He was back on Earth all right.

The physical check-up at the field was extremely thorough and it took a long time. When it was over there were toasts and congratulations. It was nearly seven when Merritt reached the apartment.

He came in, carrying a bag of groceries, but it was evident that Ilsa had been shopping too. The pleasant odour of roast beef came from the kitchen.

A paper with screamer headlines about the flight lay on a French chair. The sight relieved Merritt. She knew.

Ilsa came out of the kitchen. She was smiling. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been pronounced one hundred per cent.’

She clung tightly to him as she kissed him but that was her only show of emotion. ‘I’ll have dinner ready in a minute/ she said.

While they were eating Merritt told her, With more excitement than he had originally felt, about Serkel’s success.

‘The President,’ he said, ‘has assigned six thousand dollars for the development of an atomic drive for spaceships.’

‘Six thousand dollars!’ said Ilsa.

The colour went out of her cheeks. ‘It that all he got. Six thousand dollars!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why, in Congress, members each session vote hundreds of thousands of dollars for each other’s pet schemes without even knowing what they are.

‘And you people are getting a wretched six thousand dollars to build a spaceship, a tribute no doubt -‘ furiously -‘to the fame of Professor Hillier. That’s about the smallest amount the government has ever used for the brush-off.’

Merritt protested, amazed, ‘But you don’t understand.’

‘I understand only too well. It’s the same story all over again - no money.’ She was so agitated she couldn’t go on. Tears started to her eyes. She shook her head in frustration and hurried out of the room.

Merritt thought, ‘Well, I’ll be a -‘

He went on under his breath, ‘But you don’t understand, Ilsa. According to Serkel the President was aware that it was a historic occasion. So he symbolized it. He assigned exactly the same amount of money that the atomic energy project had first received. It was like saying unlimited funds would be available.’

Merritt sat, eyes closed, tremendously disturbed. If he told her now it would be a case of buying back her love. He remembered suddenly that she had divorced her first husband just before the man struck it rich. He had a vision of her doing it again - and knew that he couldn’t let it happen.

Footsteps sounded. Ilsa came back into the room, straight over to him. She buried her face against his knees.

‘Bob, I couldn’t help it. When I thought of you taking that terrible risk for nothing - ‘

She climbed to her feet and sat down on his lap. ‘This will sound melodramatic,’ she said, ‘but this afternoon I swore to myself I would never again mention money to you.’

Merritt hugged her. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is silly. There’s something wrong about a woman who doesn’t drive her husband.’

‘You’re a wretch,’ Ilsa said cosily. ‘But I still love you.’

‘Good,’ Merritt said.

He kissed her neck to hide his broadening smile.

Later, he would tell her that men would soon fly in atom-powered spaceships, first to the planets, then to the far stars.