Trip One by EDWARD GRENDON When this story was first published in July, 1949, the idea of interplanetary flight was as fantastic as interstellar flight is today. Then the news of the first Sputnik was flashed around the world. In that moment the fictional problem discussed in this story became an actual one—as anyone following the news of our space program will realize. WHEN SHE WAS all ready to go we were afraid to send her. Sometimes it's like that; you have problems and you worry about them for years. Then they are all solved for you and it's the big chance. It's what you have been waiting for—and then it falls apart. It wouldn't be so had except for the letdown. They build you up and knock you down. The ship was beautiful. A hundred and ten feet long and shaped like a hammerhead shark. She was named the Astra. One problem after another had been settled. Propulsion was the first big one to be put away. Ingeline took care of that. Ingeline was the fuel that Walther developed in Germany just at the end of the war. He developed it so that a submarine could outrun a destroyer. Thank God the Nazis never had a chance to use it, but plenty of uses were developed later. The second problem we solved was cosmic rays. We had sent up rocket after rocket carrying sheep and monkeys until we figured out how to protect them. The other problems went fast— oxygen, navigation, landing, and the rest. We had the backing of the United Nations Science Foundation and those boys were good. We had sent the ship around the Moon as a test under gyroscope control, full of chimpanzees and orangutans as test freight. Every one of them came back in perfect condition. The automatic cameras got some photographs of the moon's other side. The photographs looked just like this side of the moon to everyone but the astronomers, but we didn't care. We were looking forward to the big one—Mars Trip One. Everything had been checked and set and now it was all off. When Jerrins over at the Research Council phoned me I had an idea it was bad news. Jerrins and I knew each other pretty well and I knew from the tone of his voice that something was wrong. "I'm coming over, Jake," he said. "Just hold everything until I get there." We were set to pull out for Mars in twenty-nine hours so we were pretty busy. "What do you mean, hold everything?" I asked him. "Hold what?" "Just that. Hold everything. You might as well stop loading supplies because you ain't goin' nowhere. Be over in an hour," and he hung up on me. I didn't get it. Ten years' work, twenty million bucks spent, and we weren't going. I figured I'd better not tell the boys and just let them go on loading up. It couldn't do any harm to wait an hour. Fifty minutes later Jerrins pulled in. I knew he'd flown from Washington rather than try to explain by phone, but I couldn't think about anything. I yanked him into the office, slammed the door, opened it, and yelled, "No visitors or calls," in the general direction of the switchboard, and slammed the door again. "O.K., Warren, what's the dope?" I asked. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and said: "The trip's off for good. It's final, irrevocable and that's all there is to it. I've been with the U.N. Subcommittee on Interplanetary Travel all afternoon. There is no question about it. Finis. Period. Stop." Finally he told me the whole story. "It's this way, Jake," he said, "it's not a question of not wanting to go. Everyone wants the trip to be a success. It's a question of being afraid to go. And I agree. There's too much risk." He stopped for a moment. "You didn't know it and I didn't know it until now, but a lot of the biology boys have been worrying themselves sick ever since the planning really got started. We haven't thought much about their problems and they have one big one. The U.N. has let us go on beating our brains out because they wanted space travel and they hoped a solution would be found. They wanted space travel so bad that they were willing to put all this money and energy into it in the hope that something could be done; some answer would be found at the last minute. But the Bio boys report no can do." He stopped, lit a cigarette, leaned across the desk, and shoved it into my mouth. Then he leaned back, lit himself another, and went on. "They let the moon trip go because we weren't landing anywhere. That's O.K. with them. "As long as the ship just stays in space it can come back and land, but once it's landed on another planet, it can't ever come back here. That's final. The U.N. is agreed on it and we work for them. As a matter of fact, I agree with them myself." I started to sputter, thought better of it, leaned back, and tried to focus my mind. A: Jerrins was a good man and wasn't crazy. He was sorry for me. Come to think of it, I was sorry for him. This must have nearly killed him. B: Our bosses weren't crazy. They were bright, trained men whom the U.N. had selected. Space travel was strictly a U.N. proposition. It was too explosive for any single nation to get to Mars first and the U.N. had the power now to take over. Ergo there must be a good reason why we couldn't go. Also I knew it concerned the microscope and dissection gang. That was all I knew and I was chief engineer in charge of building and was going to be—would have been—chief engineer and captain on Mars Trip One. So—I relaxed, stamped out my cigarette butt, and said to Jerrins: "Well?" He grinned. "You collected yourself fast. It's this way. Do you remember what happened to the Incas? They were a pretty big gang until the Spaniards came in with European diseases. The Spaniards had built up a fairly good immunity to them but the Incas died like flies. They had no immunity. By the same token the Spaniards died of yellow fever, dengue, and what-not, stuff the Incas had some immunity to." He was speaking very slowly now. "There were diseases in Europe and diseases in South America and they killed people from the opposite continent. People who hadn't built up immunities by selective breeding and by little doses of the disease when they were children. If there were diseases on two different continents that were deadly, what about diseases on two different planets? Suppose you can land on Mars. Suppose you can get back. How will you know you're not carrying something that will kill you six months later? Or sterilize you? Or kill off the whole human race? When can you ever be sure something isn't incubating inside the crew that will make them ten thousand times worse than Typhoid Mary ever was?" He stopped and didn't say anything for three or four minutes. Neither did I. Outside, the sounds of loading still went on. What he said made sense. Good sense. You couldn't come back. Not ever. A trip to Mars was potential death for every human being. You couldn't risk the human race. I'd always assumed the biologists could handle their end of the job and had left it to them. But I could see now why my medics had seemed worried lately. There didn't seem to be any answer to this problem. "So, Jake," he said finally, "I ain't goin' nowhere and it can be conjugated as a regular verb. You ain't goin' nowhere, we ain't goin' nowhere, and they ain't goin' nowhere. It will be on the radio in a little while. You better tell the boys before that. They'll have their chance at trips later. The U.N. has O.K.'d research trips so long as they just float around. The astronomers will want more photographs of the other face of the moon, some close-ups of Mars, and so forth. But the ship—she stays on the ground for the present." He got up, patted me on the shoulder, and walked out. Sixty seconds later I heard his helicopter taking off. After twenty minutes of sitting there silently by myself, I stood up and went over to the mirror. I looked at myself in it and thought, Look here, Jake, you're a big boy now and can take a disappointment. Call the gang in and get it over with. I walked out to the switchboard and patted the operator on the shoulder. "Hook me up to the loudspeaker, Evie. Entire plant and grounds. Give it to me in my office and then get me some extra chairs in there. About twelve will do." Three minutes later my voice was booming out over the grounds and shops: "Attention, attention. Chief Engineer Weinberg speaking. I want all crew personnel, all chiefs of departments, and all chiefs of sections in my office immediately. All other loading personnel take a thirty-minute break. All crew personnel, department, and section chiefs in my office immediately. All others take a thirty-minute break. That is all." The men who crowded into my office were a widely varying lot. They were all shapes, sizes, ages, and colors. They had three major factors in common. Each was intelligent, each was highly trained in his own field, and each wanted the Mars trip to be a success, with a desire that was passionate and devoted. They filed in, tense, laughing, joking, worried. They distributed themselves on the chairs, lit cigarettes or pipes, and waited. They knew me and knew that if I called them at this late hour something important was up. It was too early for formal speeches and they all knew I would never dream of making one in any case. It was too late for instructions, they all knew their jobs perfectly by this time. They hoped it was nothing but they knew better. Twenty minutes later they understood. The medical section had understood as soon as I had started to talk. They had known about this for a long time but were under orders from their U.N. chief to keep their mouths shut and wait. It took the others a little longer to get it. They listened silently, thought, asked a few questions, and finally just sat there looking at me. I looked at them for ...
widez2