Of a Fire on the Moon (9780553390629) (6 page)

Since the astronauts were being guarded against infection, they were seen next behind the protection of a glass wall in the visitors’ room at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. An entire building had been constructed to quarantine them on their return, a species of hospital dormitory, galley and laboratory for the moon rocks. Since for twenty-one days after their return they would not be able to be in the same room with their families, or with the NASA technicians and officials who would debrief them, a chamber like the visitors’ room in a prison had been built with a plate-glass partition hermetically sealed from floor to ceiling running down the middle. Dialogue through the glass wall proceeded through microphones.

Now, for the rest of the day, the astronauts would receive the other media layers here: TV, radio, wire service, magazines, etc. Now the magazine writers could sit within a few feet of their subjects, and yet—as if suggesting some undiscovered metaphysical properties of glass—they were obliged at the same time to feel a considerable distance away. Perhaps the full lighting on the astronauts and the relative gloom on the writers’ side of the enclosure may have suggested the separation of stage and audience, but probably the effect was due most to the fact that laying-on of hands through that glass, so certainly shatterproof, could never occur, and so there was a dislocation of the sense of space. The astronauts were near enough to sit for a portrait, but—through the glass—they were as far away as history.

There was a new intimacy to the questions however. The setting was of aid, and besides, the magazine writers were in need of more. One of them took up immediately on the question which had bothered Aquarius, but the approach was practical now. How indeed would the astronauts spend their time if they found they could not get off the moon? Would they pray, would they leave messages for their family, or would they send back information on the moon? Such were the alternatives seen by the questioner.

Aldrin had the happy look of a linebacker who is standing right in the center of a hole in the line as the runner tries to come through. “I’d probably spend it working on the availability of the ascent engine.”

That brought a laugh, and there would be others to follow, but the twenty or so magazine writers had the leisure to ask their questions out of a small group, and so there was not the itch of the newspaperman to look for a quick lead and therefore ask brutal or leading or tendentious questions. Indeed there was no need to ask any question whatever just so that the journalist and his newspaper could be identified as present at the conference. (Such identifications give smaller newspapers and their reporters a cumulative status over the years with public relations men.) No, here the magazine writers could take their time, they could pursue a question, even keep after the astronaut. Covertly, the mood of a hunt was on. Since they would have more time to write their pieces, by severer standards would they be judged. So they had to make the astronauts come to life whether the astronauts wished to exhibit themselves or not.

Will you take personal mementos? Armstrong was asked.

“If I had a choice, I guess I’d take more fuel,” he said with a smile for the frustration this might cause the questioner.

The magazine writers kept pushing for personal admission, disclosure of emotion, admission of unruly fear—the astronauts looked to give replies as proper and well-insulated as the plate glass which separated them. So Armstrong replied to a question about his intuition by making a short disclaimer, which concluded, “Interpret
the problem properly, then attack it.” Logical positivism all the way was what he would purvey. Don’t make predictions without properly weighted and adequate inventories of knowledge. Surely he trusted his intuitions, the questioner persisted. “It has never been a strong suit,” said Armstrong in a mild and honest voice. Obviously, the natural aim of technology was to make intuition obsolescent, and Armstrong was a shining knight of technology. But, in fact, he had to be lying. A man who had never had strong intuitions would never have known enough about the sensation to disclaim its presence in himself.

Would he at least recognize that his endeavor was equal in magnitude to Columbus’ adventure?

He disclaimed large reactions, large ideas. “Our concern has been directed mainly to doing the job.” He virtually said, “If not me, another.” If they would insist on making him a hero, he would be a hero on terms he alone would make clear. There had been only one Columbus—there were ten astronauts at least who could do the job, and hundreds of men to back them up. He was the representative of a collective will.

Sitting in his drab gray-green suit, a suit as close to no color as possible, his shirt pale blue, his tie nondescript dark gray-blue, a blue-green wall behind him (perhaps to hint at empyreans of sky), his neck seemed subtly separated from his collar, as if—no matter how neatly he was dressed—his clothes felt like a tent to him, like a canvas drop out of which his head protruded through the hole of his collar. They were popping baseballs at him, he was dodging.

“Will you keep a piece of the moon for yourself?” asked a questioner. It was a beautiful question. If he admitted desire, one could ask if the Armstrong house would sleep on nights of full moon when the piece of rock bayed silently to its distant mistress, and emanations wandered down the stairs. But Armstrong said stiffly, “At this time, no plans have been made” … (Would he ever have the desire to steal a rock, Aquarius asked silently.) “No,” Armstrong went on, “that’s not a prerogative we have available to us.”
He could of course have said, “We can’t do it,” but in trouble he always talked computerese. The use of “we” was discouraged. “A joint exercise has demonstrated” became the substitution. “Other choices” became “peripheral secondary objectives.” “Doing our best” was “obtaining maximum advantage possible.” “Confidence” became “very high confidence level.” “Ability to move” was a “mobility study.” “Turn off” was “disable”; “turn on” became “enable.” It was as if the more natural forms of English had not been built for the computer: Latin maybe, but not simple Anglo-Saxon. That was too primitive a language—only the general sense could be conveyed by the words: the precise intent was obliged to be defined by the tone of the voice. Computerese preferred to phase out such options. The message had to be locked into a form which could be transmitted by pulse or by lack of pulse, one binary digit at a time, one bit, one bug to be installed in each box. You could not break through computerese.

Through it all, Collins would smile, turn his sensitive presence as eyes to the questioners, ears to the answer. His smile would flicker at the plastic obsidian impenetrability of computerese. “Darn it all,” his smile would seem to say to the magazine writers, “if I had to learn how to translate this stuff, I’m sure you fellows can do as well!” Once again, Collins was being asked few questions.

They turned after a while to Aldrin and began to draw some flecks of a true-blooded response. He was, of course, equally impenetrable in the beginning, but after a time he may have made the mistake of essaying a joke. Asked of his reactions to visiting the moon, he proceeded to build a wall of verbal brick, then abruptly with that clumsy odd sobriety, almost engaging, with which he was forever showing his willingness to serve, Aldrin made a remark about having been a boy scout. “I attained the rank of tenderfoot,” he said. He gave a discomfited smile. “I hope I don’t have a tender foot after walking around the moon.” It was so bad a joke that one had to assume it was full of interior reference for him,
perhaps some natural male anxiety at the thought of evil moon rays passing into one’s private parts. A glum expression sat next to gloom—the damnedest things can happen to a good man.

Then they queried Aldrin on personal mementos. Would he be taking any along?

Well, yes, he admitted reluctantly, he would be taking a little family jewelry along. He stopped, he looked mulish. It was obvious he didn’t want to go on. The primitive value of the objects, their power, their retention of charms, their position in the possible hierarchy of the amulets would be vitiated by describing them. On the other hand, a high quotient of availability-for-miscellaneous-unprogrammed-situations (known in the old days as charity, spontaneity, or generosity of spirit) also ranked high in good astronaut qualifications. So Aldrin gave answers even if he didn’t want to.

Well, he admitted, the family jewelry were …
rings
. He had two heavy gold rings on two fingers. Yes, he nodded distrustfully, looking for a moment like a chow forced to obey a command he cannot enjoy, yes, on the flight, he would probably still be wearing them.

What else in the way of family jewelry?

But now Aldrin had had enough. “Personal category,” he grunted.

A Viennese or German correspondent asked in a heavy accent of Armstrong, “Have you had any der-reams?”

Dreams. Armstrong smiled. He couldn’t say he did. The smile was as quick to protect him as the quick tail flick of a long-suffering cow standing among horseflies in a summer meadow’s heat, yes, smile-and-flick went Armstrong, “I guess after twenty hours in a simulator, I guess I sometimes have dreams of computers.”

Yet as the questions went on, the game was turning. The German might have asked his question about dreams with the happy anticipation that any material provided would offer a feast—the symbols of the dream were pot roast after all and gravied potatoes
to the intellectual maw of a nice German head, but the answer, frustrating as nearly all the answers had been, now succeeded in working up a counterpressure. Slowly, unmistakably, the intellectuals and writers on the dark side of the glass were becoming a little weary of the astronauts. Collins’ implacable cheerful cool, Aldrin’s doughty monk’s cloth of squaredom, Armstrong’s near-to-facetious smile began to pique their respect. The questions began to have a new tone, an edge, the subtlest quivering suggestion that intellectual contempt was finally a weapon not to be ignored. Were these astronauts not much more than brain-programmed dolts? The contempt was a true pressure. For give an athlete brains, give an aviator brains, give an engineer a small concealed existence as presumptive poet, and whatever is not finished in the work of their ego, whatever is soft in their vanity, will then be exercised by the contempt of an intellectual. The writers were pushing Armstrong now.

Why, why ultimately, they were asking, is it so important to go to the moon? Man to man, they were asking, brain to brain, their leverage derived from the additional position of asking as writer to small-town boy: why is it important?

Armstrong tried to be general. He made a speech in fair computerese about the nation’s resources, and the fact that NASA’s efforts were now tapped into this root. Well, then, asked a dry voice, are we going to the moon only for economic reasons, only to get out of an expensive hole? No, said Armstrong.

Do you see any philosophical reason why we might be going? the voice went on, as if to imply: are you aware there is philosophy to existence as well?

Armstrong had now been maneuvered to the point where there was no alternative to offer but a credo, or claim that he was spiritually neuter. That would have violated too much in him. Yes, he blurted now, as if, damn them and damn their skills, they had wanted everything else of him this day, they had had everything else of him, including his full cooperation, now damn them good,
they could have his philosophy too if they could comprehend it. “I think we’re going,” he said, and paused, static burning in the yaws of his pause, “I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges.” He looked a little defiant, as if probably they might not know, some critical number of them might never know what he was talking about, “It’s by the nature of his
deep inner soul
.” The last three words came out as if they had seared his throat by their extortion. How his privacy had been invaded this day. “Yes,” he nodded, as if noting what he had had to give up to writers, “we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.”

That was a fair haul for a working day—Aquarius now had a catch to fry. Yet the day was hardly over for our astronauts. They still had to have their conversations with the television networks. Since each man would have his own half hour before the camera, that meant there would be three interviews for each man, or nine altogether. With breaks and dinner, their day would continue for another six hours.

Aquarius was invited to audit a filming and chose Armstrong’s session with NBC. He had an idea Armstrong would be more comfortable in a TV interview and he was not wrong. But then Armstrong had indicated his concern for good television earlier at the full press conference when he had apologized for the program they would send from the moon. “I don’t mean to sound discouraging but I don’t have high hopes that the picture that we will be able to send back from the surface will be nearly so good as those you have been looking at from the recent flights from the Command Module. The camera is somewhat different and is somewhat more restricted in the kinds of lenses that we can use, and the kinds of lighting we have available to us.… And I suspect that you will be somewhat disappointed at those pictures. I hope that you’ll recognize that it’s just one of the problems that you face in an environment like the lunar surface and it’ll be some time before we
really get high quality in our lunar surface pictures back on TV link.”

It was the one time he had spoken without many pauses, almost as if he were talking already to the TV audience rather than to reporters, almost as if he just simply believed that Americans were entitled to good television—one of their inalienable rights. And now, up before the TV cameras, Armstrong looked not at all uncomfortable at the thought of being presented to some forty or fifty million viewers.

Indeed, Aquarius was to see cool pieces and parts of the half hour in thirty-second segments, minute segments and two-minute segments over the next few weeks, particularly during the days of the flight. During many a pause on the trip to the moon, the TV screen would cut to the face of Armstrong, Aldrin or Collins standing or sitting with the blue-green wall of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory behind him. Whether the filmed insertion was to elucidate some remark of the commentators, or merely to fill some frayed space in the ongoing hours of exposition and recapitulation, the effect after having seen ten concrete bits from this interview was to recognize that a new species of commercial was being evolved. NASA was vending space. Armstrong was working directly for his corporate mill. Despite the fact that this future audience of forty million would be listening and studying him, he spoke without long pauses, and seemed oddly enough to be at ease, a salesman with a clear modest mild soft sell. But, then, Aquarius decided, it was not really so very odd. If Armstrong’s most recognizable passion was to safeguard his privacy, a desire which approached the force of sanctuary to him, then there was nothing on television he would be likely to reveal or betray. He came, after all, from that heartland of American life which had first induced the particular public personality now bequeathed to all TV viewers as the most viable decorum—that intolerable mixture of bland agreeability and dissolved salt which characterized all performers who appeared in public each day for years and prospered. That view of the world, if designing a face, would have snubbed the
nose, faded out the color of the eyes, snugged the lips, slicked the hair and dispensed with the ears for they were protuberances with obscene interior curves—first cousins to the navel.