They agreed to allow a representative cross-section of the media to have a look at, although not to photograph, Commander Richard Stiles and Major Philip Webber.
I was among the seven men and three women chosen for the visit to the Virginia-based, government-maintained medical facility in which the astronauts were undergoing “interim treatment.” The selection was supposedly made at random, but, in truth, it was only those of us with upper echelon clout who were invited. I had to call in two favors and make half a dozen promises, and even then I wasn’t sure I was going to be included until the day before the visit was scheduled.
It was on a morning exactly five weeks after the return of Exploration V that NASA personnel, operating under tight security measures, escorted the ten of us to the medical facility. Once inside, we were met by Doctor Benjamin Fuller, a government psychologist and Ph.D. who specialized in mental disorders and who was in charge of the care and treatment of Stiles and Webber. He allowed us a brief question-and-answer period, but his responses were just as noncommittal as General Meadows’ had been earlier.
No, he was not prepared to say whether or not either astronaut was responding to treatment, or if any information had been gleaned from them on the Venus landing.
No, he had no opinion at this time as to whether or not a complete or partial cure could be gained in either case.
No, he was not at liberty to divulge the nature of the treatments being used on the two men.
Yes, the official view as to the cause of their disability was still the same: undefined spatial stresses.
Doctor Fuller then conducted us through a maze of sterile hallways, peopled with sterile, plastic-featured medical types. At length we came to a large room which had a kind of drapery drawn across one wall. Fuller asked that we maintain silence and that we line up to file past one at a time; then he went to the wall and opened the drapery.
Behind it was a window — or, rather, a two-way glass which was a window from our side. Through the glass, when my turn came, I saw an oblong white room containing a bed and two tubular chairs and a tubular nightstand. On the bed, motionless, lay Major Philip Webber.
If I had not known he was thirty-six years old, I would have thought he was a man in his sixties. His hair had turned almost white and the skin of his face was loose, wattled; his eyes were blank and fixed, sunken deep in their sockets. He might have been dead except for the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest.
I felt my stomach constrict as I looked at him. A man in superb physical condition, who had undergone rigorous training and test conditioning in preparation for the Exploration V mission. A shell, a vegetable.
As soon as the last of us had had his turn at the glass, Fuller reclosed the drapery and gestured us out into the corridor again. None of us spoke; there was nothing to say. We followed him to another room similar to the first. Here, now, we would see Commander Richard Stiles — the most qualified man in America to captain Man’s first landing on Venus, an accomplished logician, a technological genius.
We queued up near the wall and Fuller opened the cloth.
I was last in line this time; but from the faces of the others as they turned away I could tell that, if anything, Stiles was in worse shape than Webber. And he was. When I finally stepped up to the glass, I saw him sitting on a white chair, in profile at the foot of his bed. His hands were clasped so tightly together in his lap that the straining tendons in both wrists were visible. Only his lips moved, as if he were muttering to himself. Like Webber, his eyes stared at nothing — and like Webber, he looked at least twenty years older than his age of forty-one.
My stomach knotted again. I wanted suddenly to get out of that room, out of that building and into the sunlight. I started to turn aside.
Stiles moved.
He came to his feet with startling abruptness, spun out of profile, and took four long steps toward the glass. From his side it was only a mirror returning his own image to him, and yet it was as if he had sensed that someone was there, watching him. A glimmer of intelligence seemed to come into his eyes.
And his mouth opened and framed a word.
If he spoke that word aloud, I couldn’t hear it; the room was probably soundproofed. But I saw clearly the movement of his lips, and I understood — was sure I understood — what the word was. It brought chills to my back, made me take an involuntary step backward.
Grim-faced, Doctor Fuller brushed past me and pulled the drapery shut. When I caught his eye, he met my gaze with an expression that revealed nothing. I looked at the others then, but none of them had understood what Stiles had said; I would have seen it in their faces if they had.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Fuller said in the corridor outside, “I must ask you to confine your reports of what you’ve witnessed here today to factual impressions. Irresponsible speculation of any kind, particularly that based on uncertain visual interpretation, will not be tolerated.” He was looking straight at me as he said it.
Once we had been returned to our point of departure in downtown Washington, I left the others, and went to the nearest bar and drank two double bourbons. I was shaken, badly shaken. Fuller had made it clear that there would be severe repercussions if I printed what I thought I’d heard Stiles say; but his warning was unnecessary. I had no intention of printing it.
The public had a right to know, yes; they were desperate to know. Scare hell out of us, we can take it. But could they? I wasn’t so sure. The implications in that single word were enough to sow the seeds of panic...
I was about to order a third drink when Joe Anders came into the place. He was another newsman, a UPI correspondent whom I knew on a first name basis. He sat down next to me and called for a draft beer.
“Little early in the day for you, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Not today it isn’t.”
“That bad, huh?”
“What?”
“Seeing Stiles and Webber.”
“Yes,” I said. “Very bad.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, and shrugged. “Latest poop on the Venus situation is bigger news, anyway.”
I sat up straight. “What latest poop?”
“You mean you haven’t heard?”
“I haven’t checked in with my office. What is it?”
“Well, it’s not official yet, but NASa’s expected to make the announcement within a week. Plans are under way for Exploration Six, to confirm or deny the Venus life question. Six-man crew this time, including a biologist and a linguist. Just in case.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
Anders said something else, but I didn’t hear it. Six more men, I was thinking. Six more just like Stiles and Webber? And how many after that? How many others before they accepted the truth?
If it was the truth.
NASA didn’t think it was; they knew what I knew, of course, but the possibility was beyond their collective scientific minds. Maybe they were right. I prayed to God they were.
But the image of Stiles’ face was sharp and terrible in my mind, and so was that word I believed I had seen him speak. The one word that told nothing and yet may have told everything about what had happened to him and Webber, about what awaited all men who landed on Venus.
The word “Medusa.”