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PART TWO

TMA-1

Chapter 7

Special Flight

No matter how many times you left Earth, Dr. Heywood Floyd told himself, the excitement never really palled. He had been to Mars once, to the Moon three times, and to the various space stations more often than he could remember. Yet as the moment of takeoff approached, he was conscious of a rising tension, a feeling of wonder and awe — yes, and of nervousness — which put him on the same level as any Earthlubber about to receive his first baptism of space.

The jet that had rushed him here from Washington, after that midnight briefing with the President, was now dropping down toward one of the most familiar, yet most exciting, landscapes in all the world. There lay the first two generations of the Space Age, spanning twenty miles of the Florida coast. To the south, outlined by winking red warning lights, were the giant gantries of the Saturns and Neptunes, that had set men on the path to the planets, and had now passed into history. Near the horizon, a gleaming silver tower bathed in floodlights, stood the last of the Saturn V’s, for almost twenty years a national monument and place of pilgrimage. Not far away, looming against the sky like a man-made mountain, was the incredible bulk of the Vehicle Assembly Building, still the largest single structure on Earth.

But these things now belonged to the past, and he was flying toward the future. As they banked, Dr. Floyd could see below him a maze of buildings, then a great airstrip, then a broad, dead-straight scar across the flat Florida landscape — the multiple rails of a giant launching track. At its end, surrounded by vehicles and gantries, a spaceplane lay gleaming in a pool of light, being prepared for its leap to the stars. In a sudden failure of perspective, brought on by his swift changes of speed and height, it seemed to Floyd that he was looking down on a small silver moth, caught in the beam of a flashlight.

Then the tiny, scurrying figures on the ground brought home to him the real size of the spacecraft; it must have been two hundred feet across the narrow V of its wings. And that enormous vehicle, Floyd told himself with some incredulity — yet also with some pride — is waiting for me. As far as he knew, it was the first time that an entire mission had been set up to take a single man to the Moon.

Though it was two o’clock in the morning, a group of reporters and cameramen intercepted him on his way to the floodlit Orion III spacecraft. He knew several of them by sight, for as Chairman of the National Council of Astronautics, the news conference was part of his way of life. This was neither the time nor the place for one, and he had nothing to say; but it was important not to offend the gentlemen of the communications media.

“Dr. Floyd? I’m Jim Forster of Associated News. Could you give us a few words about this flight of yours?”

“I’m very sorry — I can’t say anything.”

“But you did meet with the President earlier this evening?” asked a familiar voice.

“Oh — hello, Mike. I’m afraid you’ve been dragged out of bed for nothing. Definitely no comment.”

“Can you at least confirm or deny that some kind of epidemic has broken out on the Moon?” a TV reporter asked, managing to jog alongside and keep Floyd properly framed in his miniature TV camera.

“Sorry,” said Floyd, shaking his head.

“What about the quarantine,” asked another reporter. “How long will it be kept on?”

“Still no comment.”

“Dr. Floyd,” demanded a very short and determined lady of the press, “what possible justification can there be for this total blackout of news from the Moon? Has it anything to do with the political situation?”

“What political situation?” Floyd asked dryly. There was a sprinkle of laughter, and someone called, “Have a good trip, Doctor!” as he made his way into the sanctuary of the boarding gantry.

As long as he could remember, it had been not a “situation” so much as a permanent crisis. Since the 1970s, the world had been dominated by two problems which, ironically,