Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [8]
When it was unknown what would happen if a space ship went into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, and Rumfoord steered a course straight for the middle of one—that was gallantry indeed.
To contrast Malachi Constant of Hollywood with Winston Niles Rumfoord of Newport and Eternity:
Everything Rumfoord did he did with style, making all mankind look good.
Everything Constant did he did in style—aggressively, loudly, childishly, wastefully—making himself and mankind look bad.
Constant bristled with courage—but it was anything but un-neurotic. Every courageous thing he had ever done had been motivated by spitefulness and by goads from childhood that made fear seem puny indeed.
Constant, having just heard from Rumfoord that he was to be mated to Rumfoord’s wife on Mars, looked away from Rumfoord to the museum of remains along one wall. Constant’s hands were clasped together, tightening on each other pulsingly.
Constant cleared his throat several times. Then he whistled thinly between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. In all, he was behaving like a man who was waiting for a terrible pain to pass. He closed his eyes and sucked in air between his teeth. "Loo dee doo, Mr. Rumfoord," he said softly. He opened his eyes. "Mars?" he said.
"Mars," said Rumfoord. "Of course, that isn’t your ultimate destination—or Mercury either."
"Mercury?" said Constant. He made an unbecoming quack of that lovely name.
"Your destination is Titan," said Rumfoord, "but you visit Mars, Mercury, and Earth again before you get there."
It is crucial to understand at what point in the history of punctual space exploration it was that Malachi Constant received the news of his prospective visits to Mars, Mercury, Earth, and Titan. The state of mind on Earth with regard to space exploration was much like the state of mind in Europe with regard to exploration of the Atlantic before Christopher Columbus set out.
There were these important differences, however: the monsters between space explorers and their goals were not imaginary, but numerous, hideous, various, and uniformly cataclysmic; the cost of even a small expedition was enough to ruin most nations; and it was a virtual certainty that no expedition could increase the wealth of its sponsors.
In short, on the basis of horse sense and the best scientific information, there was nothing good to be said for the exploration of space.
The time was long past when one nation could seem more glorious than another by hurling some heavy object into nothingness. Galactic Spacecraft, a corporation controlled by Malachi Constant, had, as a matter of fact, received the very last order for such a showpiece, a rocket three hundred feet high and thirty-six feet in diameter. It had actually been built, but the fire order had never come.
The ship was called simply The Whale, and was fitted with living quarters for five passengers.
What had brought everything to such an abrupt halt was the discovery of the chrono-synclastic infundibula. They had been discovered mathematically, on the basis of bizarre flight patterns of unmanned ships sent out, supposedly, in advance of men.
The discovery of the chrono-synclastic infundibula said to mankind in effect: "What makes you think you’re going anywhere?"
It was a situation made to order for American fundamentalist preachers. They were quicker than philosophers or historians or anybody to talk sense about the truncated Age of Space. Two hours after the firing of The Whale was called off indefinitely, the Reverend Bobby Denton shouted at his Love Crusade in Wheeling, West Virginia:
" ’And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech."