«But don’t,» Ellen had told me, «let the ‘instructor’ part fool you. He can have a full professorship any time he wants one. It’s just that he doesn’t want the responsibility and doesn’t want to put in that much time; he’d rather be an instructor because he can put in less time at it, have more time for his own work.»
«In that case,» I said, «why would he be interested in coaching me?»
«He might not, Max. For purely monetary considerations I’m sure he wouldn’t. But if you got to know him first and the two of you liked one another—»
The two of us liked one another.
God knows why. Except for one thing—and that one thing was something I didn’t learn about until I’d known M’bassi a long time—we seemed to have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common. Mysticism bored me to tears. Science, except for the pure realms of higher mathematics, held no interest for him.
But somehow we became friends.
In October I took my degree in rocket engineering.
We had dinner and a party, quite a party, in a suite at the Beverly. Rory and Bess Bursteder flew down from Berkeley for it, Bill and Merlene from Seattle. Klockerman and his wife. Chang M’bassi, stag. Ellen of course. Nine of us.
Bill enjoyed himself, but I think he was a little baffled at most of the conversation. Still, he was pleased and happy to be there. Pleased not so much by the degree I was celebrating as by the fact that I’d finally got the dirt and grease off my hands, that I finally was holding down a responsible position and getting somewhere. Klockerman’s little speech announcing that arrangements had been made for me to become assistant director at the rocket port got a big hand from Bill. But I caught Merlene looking at me curiously and I winked at her to make her even more curious. It does a woman good to be curious and it served her right for being smart enough to realize that a leopard doesn’t change its spots without reason.
Christmas eve alone with Ellen, at her place. I’d shot the works on a present for her, a pearl necklace. I’d been, for almost a year now, earning more money than I’d ever earned before. And behaving myself, with little chance to spend much of it. Money piling up in the bank had begun to worry me and this was a wonderful excuse to get rid of a chunk of it.
Ellen gave me a beautiful cigarette case, a black one studded with chip diamonds in a random design. Random? I looked again and it was a familiar pattern. The Big Dipper, Ursa Major, pointing to Polaris, the North Star.
She said, «The only way, darling, I could find to give you the stars.»
I wanted to cry. Maybe I did cry a little; my vision blurred.
1999
From Ellen in Washington, late January: «Oh, my darling, my darling, I wish you were here with me tonight. Or that I were there with you.
«Then this tiredness and this dull headache would go away. Then I’d be happy and relaxed. But headache or no, I’ve got to tell you what I accomplished today.
«I picked my victim and my timing perfectly. The victim: the Gentleman from Massachusetts who is the leader of the conservationists and the head of the appropriations committee, Senator Rand. The timing: a tete-a-tete lunch for which I cleverly lured him to a spot where neither of us was known, so there would be no interruptions.
«And while we ate I bored him stiff, telling him the advantages to science and humanity of a close-up look-see at big Jupiter. But that was just the surface subject. Underneath it I kept dropping stronger and stronger hints that I could and would push that bill through despite opposition. I intimated that I already had enough votes lined up to carry it—not true, but he’ll never find out now—and that his opposing it wasn’t going to do him any good. I watched him get sourer and sourer about it while I kept mentioning how small a figure three hundred and ten million dollars was for such a project. To keep that figure fresh in his mind, I mentioned it half a dozen times.
«I waited till we’d finished lunch and were sipping brandy; Rand always tops off a meal, even lunch, with a brandy so I did too this time. While he was savoring the warmth and flavor of his first taste of it, I mentioned casually that there was another way of getting a rocket to Jupiter, much more cheaply and with the additional advantage of a landing on one of the moons. I took your prospectus, the one you and Klocky did together, from my purse and showed it to him. He didn’t look at anything but the figures, but he really stared at their total, only twenty-six million. And then he stared at me. ‘Senator Gallagher,’ he said, ‘if it can be done this cheaply, why on Earth or Jupiter did you introduce a bill based on a figure twelve times as high?’
«I’d known that would come, of course, and had my answer ready—that the technique for doing it more cheaply had not been worked out at the time I presented the bill now in the hopper and that the step-rocket covered in the original bill had the advantage of being a two-man rocket and provided more space and comfort for the spacemen who would man it. But that in spite those factors I would be willing to withdraw the original bill and substitute one based on the inexpensive one-man rocket if, but only if, I had his personal word that the conservationists would let the substitute bill go through without delay and without opposition. They wouldn’t have to vote for it, I pointed out; they could abstain or take a walk in the corridor while the bill was being voted on.
«He stalled a while, trying to tell me that he could promise nothing more than that he himself would not oppose the bill, but I pooh-poohed that and flattered him a bit by telling him I knew how much influence he had with the conservationists in both houses and telling him I knew they all looked to him for leadership. He still demurred and I got on my high horse; I told him that if we were going to have a fight on our hands anyway we’d make the fight on the basis of the original and more expensive proposal, and fall back on the alternative only if the original bill lost out. He saw the light, finally. He promised to do his best to see that there was no active conservationist opposition if I withdrew the original bill and introduced the substitute. And Senator Rand, whatever you may think of him otherwise, is a man of his word.
«The bill is practically passed, Max. It was already drafted and I turned it in this afternoon. It’ll be reported out of committee next Monday. We’ll get it voted on in the Senate within a few days, get it through the House of Representatives within a month at the outside.
«And it won’t be vetoed. We have President Jansen’s private assurance of that, and given on the basis of the original bill. He’ll sign the substitute one like a shot. And be so pleased to get off so cheaply that I’m sure he’ll agree to appoint whoever I suggest, provided he’s politically qualified, for project director. And before I suggest anyone for the appointment, Max, I’ll have the suggested one’s private promise to make you his assistant director.
«So in about a month, say around the first of March, I suggest you have Klocky start that vacation of his and leave you in charge. A three months’ leave should be ample time; your appointment should be made and confirmed by then, although the project itself isn’t likely to get started, even on the drafting board, until fall. The boys at White Sands are going to have to vet the plans and that will take time. There is, there had to be, a provision in the bill that makes the feasibility of the rocket subject to their approval before the appropriation is actually made and the project set up for operation.