Blish, James - Cities in Flight

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Originally published under the title YEAR 2018!

Published by arrangement with the author.

For information address Avon Books.

Title page selection from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF

By permission of New Directions.

A Life for the Stars

Published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-14388.

For information address G. P. Putnam's Sons,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10022.

Earth man Come Home

Published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam's Sons The material upon which this novel is

form whatsoever. For information address Avon Books.

ISBN: 0-380-41616-6

First Avon Printing, February, 1970

Eighth Printing

AVON TRADEMARK BEG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND

FOREIGN COUNTRIES, REGISTERED TRADEMARK

MARCA REGISTRADA, HECHO EN CHICAGO, U.S.A.

Printed in the U.S.A.

by Richard U. Mullen 597

THEY

SHALL

HAVE

STARS

And death shall have no dominion

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot...

DYLAN THOMAS

"...While Vegan civilization was undergoing this peculiar decline in influence, while at the

height of its political and military power, the culture which was eventually to replace it was be-

ginning to unfold. The reader should bear in mind that at that time nobody had ever heard of

the Earth, and the planet's sun, Sol, was known only as an undistinguished type G0 star in the

Draco sector. It is possible-although highly unlikely-that Vega knew that the Earth had devel-

oped space flight some time before the events we have just reviewed here. It was, however,

Five Cultural Portraits

BOOK ONE

PRELUDE: Washington

We do not believe any group of men adequate enough-pr wise enough to operate without

scrutiny ot without cri~i~. cism. We know that the only way to avoid error is tO detect it, that

the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will.'

flourish and subvert. -

-J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER

Tun sii~nows flickered on the walls to his left and right, just inside the edges of his vision,

like shapes stepping quickly back into invisible doorways. Despite his bone-deep weariness,

they made him nervous, almost made him wish that Dr. Corsi would put out the fire. Never-

theless, he remained staring into the leaping orange ~1ight, feeling the heat tightening his

cheeks and the skin around his eyes, and soaking into his chest.

"I suppose you know what a chance you're taking, coming to see me," Corsi said in his dry,

whispery voice. "I wpuldn't be in Washington at all if I didn't think the

interests of the AAAS required it. Not after the drubbing I've taken at MacHinery's hands.

Even outside the government, it's like living in an aquarium-in a tank labeled 'Piranha.' But you

know about all that."

"I know," the senator agreed. The shadows jumped forward and retreated. "I was followed

here myself. MacHinery's gumshoes have been trying to get something on me for a long time.

But I had to talk to you, Seppi. rye done my best to understand everything I've found in the

committee's files since I was made chairman-but a non-scientist has inherent limitations. And I

didn't want to ask revealing questions of any of the boys on my staff. That would be a sure way

to a leak-probably straight to MacHinery."

"That's the definition -of a government expert these days," Corsi said, even more dryly. "A

man of whom you don't dare ask an important question."

"Or who'll give you only the answer he thinks you want to hear," Wagoner said heavily. "I've

hit that too. Working for the government isn't a pink tea for a senator, either. Don't think I have-

n't wanted to be back in Alaska more than once; I've got a cabin on Kodiak where I can en joy

an open fire, without wondering if the shadows it throws carry notebooks. But that's enough

self-pity. I ran for the office, and I mean to be good at it, as good as I can be, anyhow."

"Which is good enough," Côrsi said unexpectedly, taking the brandy snifter out of

Wagoner's lax hand and replenishing the little amber lake at the bottom of it. The vapors came

used against me, and thank God that's over. But I was wrong about you. You've done a whale

of a good job; you've learned like

magic. So if you want to cut your political throat by asking me for advice, then by God I'll

give it to you."

Corn thrust the suifter back into Wagoner's hand with something more than mock fury.

"That goes for you, ad for nobody else," he added. "I wouldn't tell anybody else in government

the best way to pound sand-not -unless th~ AAAS asked me to." -

"I know you wouldn't, Seppi. That's part of our trouble. Thanks, anyhow." He swirled the

brandy reflectively. "All right, then, tell me this: what's the matter with space ifight?"

'~The army," Corsi said promptly.

"Yes, but that's not all. Not by a long shot. Sure, the Army Space Service is graft-ridden,

shot - through with jealousy and gone rigid in the brains. But it was far worse back in the days

when a half-dozen branches of government were working on space flight at the same time-the

weather bureau, the navy, your bureau, the air force and so on. I've seen some documents

dating back that far. The Earth Satellite Program was announced in 1944 by Stuart Symington;

we didn't actually get a manned vehicle up there until 1962, after the army was given full juris-

diction. They couldn't even get the damned thing off the drawing boards; every rear admiral

insisted that the plans include a parking place for his pet launch. At least now we have space

flight.

"But there's something far more radically wrong now. If space flight were still a live proposi-

tion, by now some of it would have been taken away from the army again. There'd be some

dation would have wanted to go there. It has a big fat moon that would make a fine base-no

weather exists at those ternperatures-there's no sun in the sky out there to louse up

photographic plates-it's only another zero-magnitude star-and so on. That kind of thing

used to be meat and drink to pris~ate explorers. Given a millionaire with a thirst for science,

like old Hale, and a sturdy organizer with a little grandstand in him-a Byrd-type--and we should

have had a Proserpine Two station long ago. Yet space has been dead since Titan Station

was set up in 1981. Why?"

He watched the flames for a moment.

"Then," he said, "there's the whole question of invention in the field. It's stopped, Seppi.

Stopped cold."

Corsi said: "I seem to remember a paper from the boys

on Titan not so long ago-" -

"On xenobacteriology. Sure. That's not space ifight, Seppi; space flight only made it possi-

ble; their results don't update space flight itself, don't improve it, make it more attractive. Those

guys aren't even interested in it. Nobody is any more. That's why it's stopped changing.

"For instance: we're still using ion-rockets, driven by an atomic pile. It works, and there are

a thousand minor variations on the principle; but the principle itself was described by Coupling

in i954! Think of it, Seppi-not one single new, basic engine design in fifty years! And what

about hull design? That's still based on von Braun's work-older even than Coupling's. Is it

really possible that there's nothing better than those frameworks of hitched onions? Or those

"There's one more Top Secret I'm not supposed to know," Corsi said. "Luckily it'll be no

trouble to forget."

'~ right, try this one. We have a new water-bottle for ships' stores. It's made of aluminum

foil, to be collapsed

from the bottom like a toothpaste tube to feed the water into the mati's mouth." -

"But a plastic membrane collapsed by air pressure is handier, weighs less---"

"Sure it does. An~ this foil tube is already standard for paste rations. All that's new abotit

this thing is the proposal that we use it for water too. The proposal came to us from a lobbyist

for CanAm Metals, with strong endorsements by a couple of senators from the Pacific North-

west. You can guess what we did with it." -

"I am beginning to see your drift." -

"Then I'll wind it up as fast as I can," Wagoner said. "What it all comes to is that the whole

Structure of space ifight as it stands now is creaking, obsolescent, over-elaborate, decaying.

The field is static; no, worse than that, it's losing ground. By this time, our ships ought to be

sleeker and faster, and able to carry bigger payloads. We ought to have done away with this

dichotomy between ships that can land on a planet, and ships that can fly from

one planet to another. -

"The whole question of using the -planets for something..-. something, that is, besides re-

search-ought to be within sight of settlement. Instead, nobody even discusses it any more. And

our chances to settle it grow worse every year. Our appropriations are dwindling, as it gets

harder and harder to convince the Congress that space ffight is really good for anything. You

rocket compared to a Coupling engine, but with the principle visible. But we don't. As a matter

of fact, we've written off the stars. Nobody I can talk to thinks we'll ever reach them."

Corsi got up and walked lightly to the window, where he stood with his back to the room, as

though trying to

look through the light-tight blind down on to the deserted street. -

To Wagoner's fire-dazed eyes, he was scarcely more than a shadow hip~self. The senator

found himself thinking, for perhaps the twentieth time in the past six months, that Corsi might

even be glad to be out of it all, branded unreliable though he was. Then, again for at least the

twentieth time, Wagoner remembered the repeated clearance hearings, the oceans of dubious

testimony and gossip from witnesses with no faces or names, the clamor in the press when

Corsi was found to have roomed in college with a man suspected of being an ex-YPSL~ mem-

ber, the denunciation on the senate floor by one of MacHinery's captive solons, more hearings,

the endless barrage of vilification and hatred, the letters beginning "Dear Doctor Corsets, You

bum," and signed "True American." To get out of it that way was worse than enduring it, no

matter how stoutly most of your - fellow scholars stood by you afterwards.

"I shan't be the first to say so to you," the physicist said, turning at last. "I don't think we'll

ever reach the stars either, Bliss. And I am not - very conservative, as physicists go. We just

don't live long enough for us to become a star-traveling race. - A mortal man limited to speeds

below that of - light is as unsuited to interstellar travel as a moth would be to crossing the At-

lantic. I'm sorry to believe that, certainly; but I do believe it."

doesn't work any more. What do you mean?"

Corsi smiled sourly. "Perhaps I was overdramatic. But it's true that, under present condi-

tions, scientific method is

a blind alley. It depends on freedom of information, and we deliberately killed that. In my

bureau, when it was mine, we seldom knew who was working on what project

at any given time; we seldom knew whether or not somebody else m the bureau was dupli-

cating it; we never knew whether or not some other department might be duplicating it. All we

could -be sure of was that many men, working in similar fieIds~ -- were - stamping their resuib

Secret because that was the~easy way-not only to keep the work out of Russian hands, but lo

keep the workers in the clear -if their own government should investigate them. How can you

apply scientific method - to a problem when you're forbidden to see the data? -

"Then there's the caliber of scientist we have working for the government now. The few

first-rate men we have are so harassed by the security set-up--and by the constant suspicion

that's focused on them because they are top men in their fields, and hence anything they might

leak would be particularly valuable-that it takes them years to solve what used to be very sim-

ple problems. As for the rest-well, our staff at Standards consisted almost entirely of third-

raters: some of them were very dogged and patient men indeed, but low on courage and even

lower on imagination. They spent all their time operating mechanically by the cook-book-the

routine of scientific method-and had less to show for it every year."

"Everything you've said could be applied to the spaceifight research that's going on now,

without changing a comma," Wagoner said. "But, Seppi, if scientific. method used to be sound,

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OriginallypublishedunderthetitleYEAR2018!Publishedbyarrangementwiththeauthor.ForinformationaddressAvonBooks.TitlepageselectionfromTHECOLLECTEDPOEMSOFDYLANTHOMAS,Copyright1953,byDylanThomas,BypermissionofNewDirections.(c)1957byNewDirections.ALifefortheStarsCopyright(c)1962byJamesBlish.Publishedbyarra...

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Blish, James - Cities in Flight

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