What Need of Man? Read online

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  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Amazing Stories, February, 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  WHAT NEED of MAN?

  By HAROLD CALIN

  Illustrated by SUMMERS

  Bannister was a rocket scientist. He started with the premise of testing man's reaction to space probes under actual conditions; but now he was just testing space probes--and man was a necessary evil to contend with.

  * * * * *

  When you are out in a clear night in summer, the sky looks very warmand friendly. The moon is a big pleasant place where it may not be sohumid as where you are, and it is lighter than anything you've everseen. That's the way it is in summer. You never think about spacebeing "out there". It's all one big wonderful thing, and you can neverreally fall off, or have anything bad happen to you. There is justthat much more to see. You lie on the grass and look at the sky longenough and you fall into sort of a detached mood. It's suddenly as ifyou're looking down at the sky and you're lying on a ceiling by somereverse process of gravitation, and everything is absolutely pleasant.

  In winter it's quite another thing, of course. That's because the skynever looks warm. In winter, if you are in a cold climate, the skydoesn't appear at all friendly. It's beautiful, mind you, but neverfriendly. That is when you see it as it really is. Summer has a way ofmaking it look friendly. The way you see it on a winter night is onlythe merest idea of what it is really like. That's why I can't feel toobad about the monkey. You see, it might have been a man, maybe me.I've been out there, too.

  * * * * *

  There are two types of classified government information. One is thetype that is really classified because it is concerned with effortsand events that are of true importance and go beyond publicevaluation. Occasional unauthorized reports on this type ofinformation, within the scope that I knew it at least, are written offas unidentified flying objects or such. The second type of classifiedinformation is the kind that somehow always gets into the newspapersall over the world ... like the X-15, and Project Dyna-Soar ... andProject Argus.

  Project Argus had as its basis a theory that was proven completelyunsound six years ago. It was proven unsound by Dennis Lynds. He gotkilled doing it. It had to do with return vehicles from capsulestraveling at escape velocity, being oriented and controlled completelyby telemetering devices. It didn't work. This time, the monkey wasused for newspaper consumption. I'm sure Bannister would havepreferred it if the monkey had been killed on contact. It would havebeen simpler that way. No mass hysteria about torturing a poor,ignorant beast. A simple scientific sacrifice, already dead uponannouncement, would have been a _fait accompli_, so to speak, andnothing could overshadow the success of Project Argus.

  But Project Argus was a failure. Maybe someday you'll understand why.

  Because of the monkey? Possibly. You see, I flew the second shot afterLynds got killed. After that, came the hearing, and after that no menflew in Bannister's ships anymore. They proved Lynds nuts, and got ridof me, but nobody would try it, even with manual controls, where thereis no atmosphere.

  When you're putting down after a maximum velocity flight, you feed aset of landing coordinates into the computer, and you wait for thecomputer to punch out a landing configuration and the controls setthemselves and lock into pattern. Then you just sit there. I haven'tyet met a pilot who didn't begin to sweat at that moment, and sweatall the way down. We weren't geared for that kind of flying. We stillaren't, for that matter. We had always done it ourselves, (even oninstruments, we interpreted their meaning to the controls ourselves)and we didn't like it. We had good reason. The telemetry circuits wereno good. That's a bad part of a truly classified operation: they don'thave to be too careful, there aren't any voters to offend. About thecircuits, sometimes they worked, sometimes not. That was the way itwent. They wouldn't put manual controls in for us.

  It wasn't that they regarded man with too little faith, and electronicequipment with too much. They just didn't regard man at all. Theylooked upon scientific reason and technology as completely infallible.Nothing is infallible. Not their controls, not their vehicles, and nottheir blasted egos.

  * * * * *

  Lynds was assigned the first flight at escape velocity. They could notbe dissuaded from the belief that at ultimate speed, a pilot operatingmanual controls was completely ineffectual. Like kids that have to runelectric trains all by themselves, playing God with a transformer.That was when I asked them why bother with a pilot altogether. Theytalked about the whole point being a test of man's ability to survive;they'd deal with control in proper order. They didn't believe it, andneither did we. We all got very peculiar feelings about the wholebusiness after that. The position on controls was made pretty final byBannister.

  "There will be no manuals in my ships," he said. "It would negate theprimary purpose of this project. We must ascertain the successfulcompletion of escape and return by completely automatic operation."

  "How about emergency controls?" I asked. "With a switch-off fromautomatic if they should fail."

  "They will not fail. Any manual controls would be inoperative by thepilot in any case. No more questions."

  I feel the way I do about the monkey, Argus, because, in a way, we allquit about that time. You don't like having spent your life in arather devoted way with purposes and all that, and then being placedin the hands of a collection of technologists like just so many whitemice ... or monkeys, if you will. Lynds, of course, had little choice.The project was cleared and the assignment set. He hated it wellenough, I know, but it was his place to perform the only way one does.

  It ended the way we knew it would. I heard it all. It wasn'tgruesome, as you might imagine. I spoke with Lynds the whole time. Itwas sort of a resigned horror. The initial countdown went off withouta hitch and the hissing of the escape valves on the carrier rocketchanged to a sound that hammered the sky apart as it lifted off thepad.

  "Well, she's off," somebody said.

  "Let's don't count chickens," Bannister said tautly. Wellington G.Bannister worked for the Germans on V-2s. He is the chief executive oftechnology in the section to which we were assigned at that time. Heis the world's leading expert on exotic fuel rocket projectilesystems, rocket design, and a brilliant electronic engineer as well.High enough subordinates call him Wellie. Pilots always called himProfessor Bannister. I issued the report that was read in closedsession in London in which I accused Bannister of murdering Lynds.That's how come I'm here now. I was cashiered out, just short of ageneral court martial. That's one of the nice parts about trulyclassified work. They can't make you out an idiot in public. Living ona boat in the Mediterranean is far nicer than looking up at the earththrough a porthole in a smashed up ship on the moon, you must admit.

  Well, Bannister could have well counted chickens on that launching.The first, second and third stages fired off perfectly, and withinfourteen minutes the capsule detached into orbit just under escapevelocity. The orbit was enormously far out. They let Lynds complete asingle orbit, then fired the capsule's rockets. He ran off tangentialto orbit at escape velocity on a pattern that would probably run in astraight path to infinity. In fact, the capsule is probably still onits way, and as I said, it's six years now. After four minutes, thereturn vehicle was activated and as it broke away from the capsule,Lynds blacked out for twenty seconds. That was the only time I was outo
f direct contact with him after he went into orbit.

  * * * * *

  "Now do you understand about the manual controls?" Bannister said.

  "He'll come out of it in less than a minute."

  "One can never be sure."

  "There's still no reason why you can't use duplicate control systems."

  "With a switch-off on the automatic, if they fail?"

  "Yes. If for nothing more than to give a man a chance to save his ownneck."

  "They won't fail."

  "The simplest things fail, Bannister. Campbell was killed in a farless elaborate way."

  He looked at me. "Campbell? Oh, yes. The landing over the reef. I hadnothing to do with