Title: The First
Author: Ludwig, Edward W.
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The First" ***


                               THE FIRST

                           By EDWARD LUDWIG

                     _"Man will need signposts to
                  guide the way to infinity." That's
                  a quotation from--and a description
                       of--this inspiring story_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
               Infinity Science Fiction, November 1955.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The city was enchanted. It was a colossal music box blaring forth a
thousand chants of victory. It was a rainbow torn down from the sky and
poured over the earth. It was a magic nursery through which eager-eyed
children swarmed to behold a sparkling new toy.

Three spacemen, three conquerors-to-be, sat stiffly in the back seat
of a blue-bannered convertible. The car moved snail-like toward the
Capitol steps, escorted by a hundred bands, eight hundred flowered
floats, and ten thousand marching men.

In its front seat, standing, waving to the crowd, was Captain George
Everson. Everson--the legless man. Everson--the bronzed giant whose
first rocketship had exploded at take-off, and yet who had lived to
walk on artificial legs, to build a second rocket, and to infect all
the world with his square-jawed determination.

It was barely eight o'clock on this April morning of the year 1982, yet
the onslaught against the spacemen had begun. Confetti rained on them.
Breeze-filled flags dazzled them. Band music deafened them. The flow
of shouting spectators dizzied them. It was a day when holiday hats
and mathematicians' formulae, roasted peanuts and ancient dreams were
blended in a fury of joy.

The magic wand that had enchanted the city was Everson's _Lunar Lady_.
And it _was_ like a wand--1,000 tons of it, poised on the take-off
field on the outskirts of the city, its needle-point nose turned
skyward and shining silver in the morning sunlight.

Tonight, at sunset, when the city was saturated with speeches and music
and popcorn and prayer, the great rocket would rumble and belch flame
and rise. Mankind would begin its first flight to the moon!

So it seemed that the people of all the earth were basking in joy and
hope, every man, woman and child--with one exception.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jeffrey Simon rose from his bed, awakened by the rhythm of march music
outside his small apartment. He shuffled sleepily to a window. He
blinked at the array of flags and bunting that lined the street.

The music became louder.

He ran a shaky, withered hand over his wizened face, brushed stringy
white hair back from his forehead. His lips curved in a grim
half-smile.

"It's starting," he murmured, "--the day that should have been yours."

He realized that he was talking to himself again. But although he was
only fifty-six, talking aloud seemed natural to him. It not only eased
his loneliness; it also helped him to clarify his muddled thoughts.

"Today is your last chance. Not tomorrow or the next day. It _has_ to
be today."

The thump-thump of a base drum was like a gigantic heart-beat shaking
all the land. The blare of trumpets was a victory song, strong enough
to live in the mind of a man forever, strong enough to silence forever
the voices of fear and loneliness that might haunt a spaceman.

"That's the music," Jeffrey Simon muttered, "that should have been
yours."

A crimson-lettered banner said: EVERSON--THE FIRST.

What a mockery those words were! It was like worshiping an evil,
false-faced goddess. The illusion should and must be destroyed.

He jerked erect. He must move quickly. He must put an end to this
cosmic lie.

He dressed in a freshly-cleaned, single-breasted tweed suit. His tie
was hastily knotted. There was no time for breakfast.

He strode to a drawer of his bureau, yanked it open, dug away a layer
of under-clothing. He smiled as he beheld two objects.

His hands moved gently. His hands were like those of a florist
arranging a garland of delicate blossoms. They were like the hands of a
surgeon fearful of a fatal error. They were like the hands of a father
upon his first-born.

He picked up the stone.

It was a bright, phosphorescent green, mottled with flecks of gold and
no larger than an apple. Its glow seemed to fill all the room. Jeffrey
remembered the cave at the base of Luna's Mount Pico from where he'd
chipped it. The cave's eerie glow had almost seemed alive, quivering
and pulsing with alien energy. Jeffrey, in his space-suit and half
blinded, had staggered when he left with his specimen.

Next, he touched the photograph.

It was a moment of eternity captured long ago and still imprisoned
in a wrinkled, yellowed paper. On it was the rocket, the _Marilyn_,
which had been his home for fifteen years. Behind it, on a rise in the
pock-marked Lunar terrain, was one of the launching stations which
had never been used. In the background loomed the nightmarish Tenerife
Mountains. And hovering above all in a sky of black velvet was a
shining, blue-green ball--the earth.

Carefully, Jeffrey placed the photograph in a large envelope and slid
it, with the stone, into his coat's inner pocket.

"They'll believe now," he murmured. "They ignored the letters, the
telegrams. Now, with proof, they'll believe. They'll learn what is a
lie and what is the truth. They'll learn who was _really_ first."

A moment later he was on the street, struggling to filter through the
crowd. For a few seconds he knew terror, because those in the crowd
had surrendered all individuality. They had become a single, automatic
entity, hypnotized by the tapestry of color and sound and responding
to it alone. The crowd closed in upon him like the tentacles of an
octopus, imprisoning him and thrusting him forward and back.

At last, panting, he broke free. He found a side street--one that would
not be invaded by the parade. He walked swiftly. Then, although breath
came hard, he ran.

       *       *       *       *       *

Carved above the entrance of the huge stone building were the words:

                         UNITED STATES BUREAU
                           OF INTERPLANETARY
                               RESEARCH

Jeffrey stopped to catch his breath. How many of his letters had
passed over that mountainous series of steps? How many, like those to
Congress, to the Pentagon and to the President, had been crumpled,
torn, tossed into waste baskets?

It didn't matter. He was doing now what he should have done a month
ago--appearing in person with his proof.

He lumbered up the stone steps. His watery eyes widened at the bright
murals in the vast foyer--murals of stars and planets, of rockets and
spacemen, all centered about a gigantic and symbolic pair of human
hands reaching upward.

Jeffrey squinted down the white, clean, cool halls.

So this was where spacemen of today lived, studied, worked,
experimented. How different from that battered quonset hut in the hot,
wind-burnt New Mexican desert.

"May I help you, sir?"

The voice snapped him back to reality.

He turned and saw a young man seated at a desk a short distance away.
The man was sleepy-eyed, with black, close-cropped hair and ears that
were too big. On the desk was a placard that said: _Officer of The Day:
Lieutenant Andrews_.

The lieutenant drummed his fingers on the desk. "Speak up, old timer.
What is it? If you want information on today's flight, just help
yourself to these folders."

"No, no." Jeffrey walked up to the desk, brushed away the folders.
"I--I want to see someone in authority. There's something I have to
tell them."

"I'm in charge. Go ahead and tell it to me."

Jeffrey trembled. "It's going to sound crazy. You might not believe--"

"Go ahead and tell it. Then I'll decide whether to believe."

Confidence came to Jeffrey. He touched the reassuring bulge of the
stone and the photograph in his pocket. Then he began to speak.

"Well, you've read how things were back in 1957. The world cut in half.
Communism on one side, Democracy on the other. Both sides threatening
the other. Both building faster and faster jets and bigger and bigger
H-bombs. People felt like they were walking on tight-ropes.

"In August of '57 the Russians announced that they had the biggest
H-bomb ever made. The President and his cabinet and the top brass met.
The Army Chief of Staff was already on record in saying there was no
perfect defense against an H-bomb attack. Radar nets, anti-aircraft
and fighter planes would take care of a lot of attacking bombers
or missiles, but some would probably get through. There had to be
something else--something as daring as the first A-bomb project back in
World War II.

"The answer was obvious: a _manned_ artificial satellite."

The lieutenant stiffened. He made a sucking noise with his lips.

"Yep," Jeffrey continued, "a manned satellite. Our scientists had
developed the tiny, unmanned 'mouse.' A full-scale version was
tougher--but possible.

"And a nation in control of such a satellite would watch over all
the world. From its near-zero gravity it could launch guided atomic
missiles to any point on the earth."

Jeffrey cleared his throat. His listener was still attentive.

"So Project Pandora began. Like the Manhattan Project, it was top
secret, because we didn't want the Russians to start like crazy on
their own Project. I never learned how many men were involved--probably
about 100,000. But all except maybe a hundred or so thought they were
working on new types of jets or fuels.

"A new town--Pandora City--sprang up in New Mexico for general
research. Really top secret stuff, like the construction of our
rockets, was handled in Hell Canyon, which probably still isn't on your
maps. You couldn't get there except by cargo-carrying helicopter.

"I was a guided missile man transferred from Point Mugu to the Canyon.
Entering that hell-hole was like being sentenced for life. We had our
movies and beer, but the sun and mountains were still there. I used to
look at those mountains and wonder if I dared try to escape. Then I
thought of the desert on the other side. There _was_ no escape--except
through death or by finishing the damn project.

"By the fall of '58 we had our fuel. Dilute monatomic
hydrogen--powerful as the guts of an H-bomb, but controllable, suitable
for atomic engines. Powered with that fuel, a rocket could rip through
the old seven-mile-a-second barrier like a knife cutting through tissue
paper.

"Then a new question came up. Was the artificial satellite the ideal
solution to our problem? Even at a height of a thousand miles, it could
be visible to Russian astronomers. Russian knowledge of our secret
could start off a Third World War. And, if the Russians developed their
own guided missile program, the satellite might be vulnerable.

"We'd developed an alloy of rare earths for our jet tubes, so there was
no reason why we couldn't hit the moon direct. A Lunar station could be
camouflaged, and launching platforms for missiles could be scattered.
Most important, the moon would give us utter secrecy."

Jeffrey's voice trailed. A cloud of memory seemed to drift before his
vision. "And--and I guess there was something else, too. We didn't want
to stop with just a satellite. We had the power to take space by the
nose and pull it around like a whipped dog. The first men to leave our
planet--think of those words. The first, the very first. The thought
makes you a little drunk."

He smiled. "The President, his cabinet, the top brass okayed our ideas.
So the moon it was!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Lieutenant Andrews rose, his mouth a tight, white line.

"Afraid we'll have to call it a day," he muttered. "It's time for me to
go off duty. Sorry."

"But--but your relief isn't here. You can't--"

"Sorry." The man's gaze avoided Jeffrey's face.

He moved swiftly, his tall body easing around the desk, then striding
down the hall.

Jeffrey was like a statue, an absurd, bulging-eyed statue with right
hand still raised in a climactic, melodramatic gesture.

"But I haven't finished!" he cried. "You haven't heard--"

The lieutenant marched away, oblivious to Jeffrey's pleading voice.
Abruptly, his bright uniform disappeared into one of the labyrinth's
many rooms.

Jeffrey was a fragile leaf mauled by winds of desperation. He dug
furiously into his coat's inner pocket.

"You haven't seen my proof!" he screamed.

There was no reply save the cold, hollow, hundred-tongued echo of his
own words.

Jeffrey looked down at his outstretched hands. They were holding the
faded photograph and the shining stone, offering them to the silence.

       *       *       *       *       *

Outside, the city was like a merry-go-round whirling faster and faster.
Music had swelled to a dizzying crescendo. Colors were brighter in the
noon sunlight. Voices were louder, prayers stronger.

"Ten to one they don't make it," said a rat-faced man. "I'll take _all_
bets."

"They will not be alone," the solemn man in the black robe intoned to
his congregation. "For yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death...."

"Why must Daddy go up into the sky, Mama? Why?" asked the child.

"He's going to be a pioneer, dear. He's going to be one of the first to
go to the moon."

"But why, Mama? Why?"

The bearded man shouted, "The wrath of God will fall upon us and upon
our children and our children's children. Man was not meant--"

"We have our Marco Polo, our Columbus, our Wright Brothers and our
Lindbergh. Now, by the grace of God, we have our George Everson!"

"Step right up, folks! Get your souvenir programs here! And don't
forget your dark glasses for the take-off. Special today--only one
dollar!"

       *       *       *       *       *

A clock struck one.

"No," said the stiffly polite girl, "the city editor isn't in. No, our
reporters are covering the flight. Sorry."

A clock struck two.

"Sorry."

Jeffrey sighed. What else was there? The Research Bureau. The
Department of Defense, the Pentagon. _The Times_, _The Herald_, _The
Post_. He hadn't wanted to take his story to the newspapers, but they
had given him a last, futile hope. Now, even they had refused to listen.

There was still _The Mirror_. The twilight news. The love nests, the
exposés, the screaming headlines that most papers were saving for the
second coming of Christ.

Jeffrey found himself walking up dark, thinly carpeted stairs, pushing
a faded swinging door. Then someone was leading him forward. Sounds of
clacking typewriters and rustling papers filled the air.

The photograph and the moon-stone were in his hands. He was thrusting
them forward.

"This is my proof," he mumbled automatically.

For a long time his surroundings were like the terrain in a dimly
remembered dream. Then hands helped him into a chair.

A deep voice grunted at him. "Okay, proof of what?"

Jeffrey blinked. His brain fought to break through the wall of
weariness that enclosed it. He saw that the man before him was
middle-aged, balding, small-eyed. His trace of a smile was not
unpleasant.

"What's it all about, fellow?" the man asked, leaning back in his chair.

_Thank you, God_, thought Jeffrey, _that I have another chance._

He began again. 1957, the H-bomb, Project Pandora. Lord, if he could
only show this man the images that still hung in his memory!

But how could you capture the dizzying blackness of space, the hypnotic
silver of stars, and recreate their magic in mere words? How feeble
were words. They were like broken fingers trying to carry sand.

Nevertheless, the man listened. Jeffrey came to the words, "So the moon
it was!" And even then the man said nothing. Jeffrey went on:

"Our first rocket was ready by the summer of '59. We named it the
_Marilyn_--after Marilyn Monroe, the top glamour gal of those days.
And I was in the ship's first crew.

"Our take-off wasn't like this circus today. No music, no speeches, no
parades. We had a shot of brandy in the morning. We shook hands with
our friends and puffed on cigarettes and the C.O. said a prayer. Then
we took off."

Jeffrey weighed words and memories in his mind. "It'd take me a year to
tell about how space looks and how the moon is; and how you feel when
all the things you love are in a cloud-wrapped ball 240,000 miles away.
Or how it feels to see your buddies slip through the paper-thin crust
that covers parts of the moon and go down into nothingness, just as if
the hand of God wiped them out of the universe.

"Anyway, we hit the moon. The ship stayed long enough for us to build
a dome. Then we split the crew in half. Five stayed, the rest shuttled
back to Earth for more supplies. Three months later the second rocket,
the _June Randy_, was ready, and life got a little easier. We began
to get an occasional case of beer and mail from home. Our families
thought they were writing to Pandora City. To think that those little
three-cent letters would go all the way to Luna would have seemed a
lunatic's dream to them.

"By the summer of '61 Project Pandora was completed. We had two domes
and four launching stations, each a hundred miles apart. The missiles
on the launching platforms were like those beds of nails the yogis are
supposed to lie on--only a hundred times bigger. And each nail was a
uranium-lithium-tritium-headed rocket.

"1961 slipped by, and '62 and '63. There were a few aborted revolutions
on earth, a few moments of tension, but no war."

A veil of loneliness seemed to fall over his vision, separating him
from his listener.

"Go ahead," the man prompted him.

"Well, new faces appeared in our crews. The older fellows were given
memory-washes so they wouldn't start blabbing when they returned to
Earth. Psychiatry was pretty primitive in those days. The treatment
wasn't much more than hypnosis, creating an artificial psychic block in
their minds. After a while, it seemed like men were coming and going
like figures on a treadmill--but, me, I stayed on."

"You stayed on? Why?"

Jeffrey thought for an instant. "Because there were two kinds of
loneliness for us. One was being on the moon, in silence and emptiness.
The other was being on Earth, in the midst of life and knowing the
biggest secret in the world and not being able to talk about it. And of
the two kinds of loneliness, to me, the last was the worst. So I stayed
on the _Marilyn_."

       *       *       *       *       *

Jeffrey tried to keep his voice calm, his manner confident.

"Then came the Russian Revolution of '74, the rise of democracy behind
the crumbling Iron Curtain. The rest of the world watched and waited.
We kept those launching platforms ready--just in case. But by '76,
there was no doubt about it. Communism was over and done. The world was
at peace.

"And with the arrival of peace, man's energies had to be directed into
new channels. Till now, the government had quietly discouraged any talk
about space flight. But now man craved adventure. Newspapers and public
opinion began to beat the drum for that first flight to the moon."

He chuckled softly. "The President must have been tearing his hair out.
What the hell was he going to do with Project Pandora? The Russians
mustn't know that for fifteen years our missiles had been ready to
blast them to eternity. The old hates had been buried. They couldn't be
allowed to rise again.

"So Project Pandora became Project Garbage. The domes and platforms
were dismantled and carried back to Pandora City. The moon was the
biggest garbage dump in the Solar System, but it had to be cleaned up
to the last beer can and cigarette butt. It had to become virgin again,
ready to receive what Earth would later call the first pioneers of
space. And it was then, when discipline was low, that I smuggled out
the moon-stone and the photo.

"Everybody got the memory-wash--from the President on down. I was a
civilian again with a nice pension. For the first couple of years I
couldn't remember a thing. I only knew I'd done secret work for the
government. I'd look at my photo and stone and wonder where I got them.

"But gradually my memory came back. Maybe it was because of the photo,
or maybe because I'd been on Luna and the _Marilyn_ so much longer than
the others.

"Last year I got mad when Everson announced plans to hit the moon.
His name was in headlines every day. He was becoming a hero without
even leaving the ground. And there were a hundred men whose bodies were
already lost on Luna. They were the real heroes, the real pioneers.
This celebration today--it's a mockery. I want the world to know the
truth."

       *       *       *       *       *

For the space of a minute the small-eyed man was silent. His fingers
toyed with the stone and the photograph.

Finally he murmured, "Suppose I publish your story. How much do you
want for it?"

To Jeffrey, the words were like April sunshine streaking into a
cobwebbed winter attic.

"You--you want to use the story? You believe me?"

"I didn't say I believe it. I don't give a damn whether it's true or
not. My job is to sell newspapers. I asked how much you want for it."

"Nothing," Jeffrey said softly.

The small-eyed man grunted. "We could flood the city with the afternoon
edition. People are buying anything with a moon angle. The Russians
wouldn't shout for joy, but there shouldn't be any harm done at this
late date."

His eyes brightened. "We might get away with it. We've got your stone.
We could demand that Everson locate the place where you got it and
either prove or disprove your story. Why, that'd be good for months!"

He laughed. "What a damper we'll put on _this_ celebration! We'll make
the city seem like a morgue. It's a dirty, lousy trick, but by God
it'll sell papers!"

Jeffrey leaned forward, squinting. "A dirty, lousy trick? What do you
mean?"

"Skip it." The man's enthusiasm was rising. He was like fizzing soda in
a thumb-stoppered, shaken bottle. "We got to get this story in print.
Hey, Marty! Get the dicto-typer over here! I've been waiting all my
life to yell stop those presses. Marty! _Stop those goddamn presses!_"

"What did you mean?" Jeffrey insisted. "How can telling people the
truth be a dirty, lousy trick?"

The small-eyed man laughed again. "You don't think folks'll _like_ this
story, do you? You don't think they'll feel like celebrating when they
read this, do you? It's a cinch they won't start cheering _you_ for
what you did almost twenty years ago! Say, wait'll Everson sees that
moon pic plastered on my front page. _There's_ an angle! A pic of
Everson's expression! Hey, Marty! Get me--"

       *       *       *       *       *

Restlessly, Jeffrey rose and shuffled to a window. One of the city's
myriad parades, like a battalion of colored ants, was streaming down
the street.

The small-eyed man yelled, "Come on, let's have that story again! This
time it's for publication."

Jeffrey didn't answer. Odd thoughts were stirring in deep recesses of
his mind.

"Come on! Let's have that story!"

Jeffrey stared out the window, a far-away gaze in his eyes. "Do--do
you suppose I was the only one who remembered? There must be others. I
couldn't be the only one."

"Sure, there could be others--if your yarn is true. Maybe they've tried
to tell and nobody believed 'em. Or maybe they're keeping quiet. Maybe
they don't want to make dopes out of Everson and his men. Maybe they
want to keep 'em heroes. Now, gimme that story!" He flicked a switch on
the dicto-typer.

Words echoed in Jeffrey's brain. _Maybe they don't want to make dopes
out of Everson and his men. Maybe they want to keep 'em heroes. It's
a cinch they won't start cheering you for what you did almost twenty
years ago._

The world has need of heroes, he thought. There's Luna, and then there
are Venus and Mars and Jupiter and all the others; and, always, there
are the stars. And, between, there are miles and years of darkness and
loneliness, and courage is a candle flame too easily extinguished.
Mankind will need songs of daring and tales of heroes and signposts to
guide the way to infinity. You can't make heroes out of men whose very
names are forgotten. You can't make heroes out of tired old bones.

Jeffrey frowned as the hum of presses echoed in his ears.

The great headlines would descend upon the enchanted city like a black
tidal wave. They would swirl through the streets, devour the bright
color, absorb the gay sound, suck the joy into dark waters of doubt and
suspicion.

The small-eyed man was shouting at him. He did not hear.

_After all_, Jeffrey told himself, _this is for you. It's not for
Everson and his men, really. It's for the pioneers, for those who dare
to be first. The eyes are not on you, and the voices do not speak to
you. Yet all this, really, is for you--for you were the first. Would
you destroy this day that is yours?_

A voice was swearing at him.

What a day it was! Why, it must be the greatest in the history of
Earth. It was a day for all history books everywhere, always. It was a
shame that the minutes were piling one upon the other so rapidly. How
wonderful if they could be bottled and sealed like sweet perfume, to be
dispensed slowly, a scent a month, a drop a year.

Hands were tugging at his arm. He shook himself free. He turned back to
the desk, seized the moon-stone and the photograph, replaced them in
his pocket.

Silently, head high, he strode past the naked, astonished faces.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dusk. A silence blanketed the take-off field. The seconds hung in the
air like bits of fire and ice.

Captain George Everson, the man with no legs, waved to the multitude
as he entered his silver rocket.

Presently there was a sound of thunder, and the land trembled. Flame
belched from the stern of the _Lunar Lady_. Slowly, the rocket began to
rise. The multitude drew back, like frightened red ghosts in the fiery
glare from the grumbling jets.

A greater avalanche of flame spewed from the rocket. A furnace-hot wind
shrilled over the field, lashing at hair and clothing, at banner and
flag.

And suddenly the _Lunar Lady_ was gone. It was a needle of fire high in
the twilight sky, a vanishing target for a million narrowed eyes.

A hushed, reverent murmur rose from the field.

A small girl in a pink party dress tugged at her mother's skirt.

"Look, Mommy," she whispered. "Look at that funny old man. He keeps
saying, 'This is for you,' and he's crying and laughing at the same
time!"



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The First" ***

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