«And we’ve been working hard and we’re sure we’ll get it and without waiting any longer.
«So that you won’t be distracted these last few days, spending all your time watching the viddy tor news, count on a telephone call from me the minute we know for sure. My call will be made before you’ll get even a flash in the viddy, because it’s not a big enough deal—to the commentators—for them to put on a flash until the vote is final, but I’ll phone you as soon as we know it’s in the bag and not wait for the exact count or the last few votes.
«The bill won’t be voted on before ten in the morning nor after five in the afternoon, Washington time, and that’s 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. your time, so be within reach of a telephone between those hours on Thursday and Friday if you want the news as quickly as I can get it to you. If the call is before nine (your time) I’ll try your apartment first, after that I’ll call you at the port.
«It’s going to be good news, darling, believe me. And here’s another item of good news. I was at the White House yesterday, with two other senators and talking to the President on another matter, but I managed to get a few minutes alone with him after we’d finished what, to everybody else concerned, was the main order of business. I brought up the Jupiter project and reminded him of his assurance to us that he’d sign the bill if Congress passed it. He remembered and reassured me that he would.
«And he said he’d heard about it when it had passed the Senate and had been surprised at the fact that the appropriation figure was only twenty-six million, that he didn’t remember the exact figure that had been mentioned when the bill had first been discussed with him but he had the impression that it had been a lot more than twenty-six million.
«That gave me a perfect opportunity, Max, to start laying my groundwork for your appointment. I told him something about you and gave you full credit—except that I told him Klockerman had checked your prospectus and figures—for working out the less expensive way of doing the job.
«And while the iron was hot I did a little more ironing with it then and there. I told him that thought you should be, and deserved to be, director of the project. I admitted, though, that it might be wiser to have a politician for that job, one who knows the ropes and the red tape, as the nominal director, but that whoever got the directorship should get it with the understanding that he should make you his next in command, with the title of project superintendent, and let you handle the actual construction of the rocket.
«He agreed with me, darling! He said that any man who could figure how to cut a three hundred million dollar project down to less than a tenth of that amount certainly deserved to work on that project if he wanted to, and in the highest ranking job he was capable of filling.
«In fact I had to fast-talk him out of deciding then and there to make you director instead of superintendent. And that wouldn’t have worked, darling, and here’s why: his appointee to the directorship will have to be approved by the Senate and there’s too much of a chance for a wheel to come off in that deal. You’re not a known political figure and so there’d be sniping at you by some senator or other who wanted to get the job for someone he owed a political obligation to.
«And the sniping would take the form of questioning your qualifications and you know where that would lead. It would bring out the fact that your engineering degree is less than a year old and that until only a year and a half ago you’d had no experience in administrative work at all. And that would mean to the Senate, and to the President too when the word got back to him, that you’re not qualified to direct a multimillion dollar project. It’s much too big a risk to take. And your being suggested for the directorship and turned down would make it awfully rough for me in getting you the job of project superintendent, if I could do so at all.
«So I told Jansen I didn’t think you’d even want the directorship; I told him you’d be much more interested in the actual engineering and construction, that you cared more about rockets than about paper work. I told him you’d been both a spaceman and a rocket mech and knew rockets from the ground up to as high as Mais and that, anyway, a politically known figure ought to front for the project as director.
«He asked if I had anybody in mind for the top spot and I said I’d thought of several good possibilities but that I’d rather not make a specific suggestion until after passage of the bill by the House, and I told him when that was scheduled.
«He asked if its passage was certain and when I told him that it was, he called in his secretary and his appointment calendar and made a date for me to see him at two o’clock Wednesday, a week from tomorrow.
«By that time I’ll have picked out the stuffed shirt I’m going to recommend for director and also have a second-string one in reserve in case Jansen makes any objection to the first. And I’ll have talked to both of them, with cards on the table, and will have told each that if I recommend him for the job it’s going to be in exchange for the promise to name the man I suggest as his project superintendent and that if he won’t promise I won’t recommend him for the directorship.
«He’ll promise all right; I worked out that bill so that the directorship is a plump political plum (How’s that for alliteration?) with good pay. And the prospects I have in mind are going to want it badly enough not to quibble about the single condition I attach to recommending them for it.
«Things are snowballing to a fast finish, darling. Hold thumbs.»
I held thumbs. Ellen’s letter had come by rocket mail and special delivery; it reached me early afternoon of the day she’d written it, Tuesday.
So I had two days of thumb-holding to face if the bill came to a vote on Thursday, three if it held over till Friday.
And I really held thumbs. I was getting scared again, now that it was so close.
So many things could go wrong.
What if there was another rocket crash? There hadn’t been, since the Deimos one which had come so close to wrecking the passage of the bill through the Senate. I’d caught a late roundup newscast every night so I was sure. But what if there’d be one now, in the last few days before the bill was passed? It would stall things till next session for sure and might even change the whole picture. At the best, almost a year’s delay. And I wasn’t getting any younger; I’d just passed my fifty-ninth birthday. Sixty coming up.
Those last few days I kept a pocket viddy on my desk at work, catching every newscast that came on. Especially Thursday, while I was expecting a call from Ellen. After all, she might have trouble getting a call through and the viddy might beat her to the news. I didn’t stir out of my office without first making sure my secretary would know exactly where to reach me if a call came from Washington. But none came.
I waited until I got back to my apartment to phone Ellen; it would be nine in Washington then and she’d be sure to be home. She was.
«Everything okay, darling?» I asked her.
«Everything’s fine. Bill’s scheduled for tomorrow, third on the agenda. The first two are pretty routine matters so it ought to come up by eleven o’clock; that’s eight a.m. your time. You’ll still be home then, won’t you?»