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diff --git a/78281-h/78281-h.htm b/78281-h/78281-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..069373f --- /dev/null +++ b/78281-h/78281-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,345 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <title> + Four-Billion Dollar Door | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +.pb2 {margin-bottom: 2em;} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + + +blockquote { + margin-top: 0; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + +.center {text-align: center;} + + +figcaption {font-weight: bold;} +figcaption p {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .2em; text-align: inherit;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + +.f15 {font-size: 1.5em;} +img.w30 {width: 30em;} +img.w20 {width: 20em;} +img.w10 {width: 10em;} + + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowe113_8125 {width: 113.8125em;} +.illowe31_2500 {width: 31.2500em;} +.illowe46_8750 {width: 46.8750em;} + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78281 ***</div> + +<figure class="figcenter illowe113_8125" id="cover"> + <img class="w20" src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption> + Satellite Science Fiction December 1956 (vol. 1, no. 2). + </figcaption> +</figure> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div> + +<figure class="figcenter illowe46_8750" id="103"> + <img class="w30" src="images/103.png" alt=""> +</figure> + +<h1> +Four-Billion Dollar Door +</h1> + + +<p class="f15 center">by <strong>Michael Shaara</strong></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div> + +<blockquote> +<p><i>Old Sam Button devoted his life to being the first man on the +Moon—in one way, he was.</i></p> +</blockquote> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div> + + +<p>I see, by the latest history books my boy brings home from school, that +they are already beginning to rewrite the incredible tale of Sam Button +and the door. And I can see their point. Sam Button was a great hero, +first man to reach the Moon and all that, and it was a rare moment in +history when he made it.</p> + +<p>But still, they haven’t got any right to hush +up about the door. Because, even if that was one of the great moments +in history, it was also undoubtedly one of the funniest. Anything that +funny ought to be handed on to posterity. So, since nobody else had +taken on the chore I guess I’ll have to take it on myself.</p> + +<p>Old Sam +Button was a long lean man with blonde hair that looked like it had +been stuck on with glue. Old Sam was a rare man, as well as a lean +one. For as far back as I can remember, Old Sam lived with one great +dream, to get from Earth to the Moon. There are a lot of people like +that nowadays, but there weren’t so many then.</p> + +<p>We used to kid him about +it. “Old Onward and Upward Button”, we used to call him, and it was a +standing joke that his mother had been frightened by a flying saucer.</p> + +<p>Kidding never stopped Old Sam—not even when he was Young Sam. He knew +exactly where he was going. He kept at it all through school, up to a +Ph.D. in physics, and then went right to work on guided missiles. He +planned it from the very beginning, so that, when the chance came, he +would be ready. When it finally came, Old Sam was readier than any man +in the country. Which shows you what a deeply dedicated man he was. +It also makes it kind of peculiar that such a comedy finish should +finally wind up his dream.</p> + +<p>Old Sam had faith every step of the way—I +mean faith in science. He was absolutely certain men would get to the +Moon, and Mars, and all the other places, and he was pretty sure that +most of it would be within his lifetime. So he traveled around the +country, making speeches.</p> + +<p>In his spare time, Old Sam wrote science +articles, speculating on the amazing things we would find when we got +wherever we were going. I guess he had more to do with the first big +rocket being built than any man in the country. It cost four billion +dollars, you see, which even now will go a good long way in the right +hands, and Congress naturally had to be practically dynamited before +they’d hand it over.</p> + +<p>But Old Sam never gave up. He bribed them, he +warned them, he sweetened them, he promised them everything. He claimed +that the Moon was an invaluable military base, that whoever got there +first would rule the world, that the scientific information we would +receive would be enormous. He even hinted seriously that there might be +loose diamonds, lying around on the Moon’s surface—caused, he said, by +meteors striking rock with great speed and pressure.</p> + +<p>He promised them, +in short, the Moon—and, in the end, he got the money.</p> + +<p>I have never +heard a more eloquent speaker. The only time I ever saw him stumped +was when one Senator, an amiable, earthy man from Missouri, commented +that, “If the good Lord had meant us to get to the Moon, why’d he make +it so dagnab fur away?”</p> + +<p>“But science,” Old Sam declared, “science would +find a way.” There were a lot more atoms in the world than there were +people, and, as far as Sam was concerned, what the atoms did was more +important.</p> + +<p>Now, perhaps, you begin to know a little about Old Sam. +True, he was not exactly a likeable man. Dedicated men like that seldom +are. But I guess Old Sam really went a mite too far. After spending a +lot of his lifetime in a laboratory, he was certainly a one-sided man. +If a thing wasn’t done scientifically, it wasn’t done at all, for Sam.</p> + +<p>Fortunately, he had no children. If he had had kids, he was the kind +of man who would have spared the love and spoiled the child. All his +emotional interest was bound up in space flight. Which, considering +what happened, must have made subsequent events really rough on him.</p> + +<p>At any rate, he got his money and built the satellite station <i>and</i> the +space-ship. They were four years in the building, and then, one July, +he took off for the Moon.</p> + +<p>I don’t suppose there was a man on Earth +who didn’t know about Old Sam’s trip, and there were very few people +who weren’t excited about Man’s first step into space. It was a great +moment, a dramatic moment. There were television cameras mounted on Old +Sam’s ship beaming it all back to Earth. At least fifty million people +were following Old Explorer Sam and his crew on their spectacular +journey.</p> + +<p>So, one morning, as Sam finally began to maneuver for the +Lunar landing, he was already a monumental hero. Newspaper reporters +all over the world had been busy for months, writing about the hazards +of the trip, about the deathly cold of outer space, about collisions +with mountainous meteors and cosmic death rays.</p> + +<p>But Old Sam had merely +sniffed smugly for the cameras. “Everything has been considered,” +he reassured the press, “we have foreseen every detail.”</p> + +<p>So the +papers painted him as a vast man, calm, unworried, going off into the +illimitable dark, on the greatest of all explorations. No doubt, Old +Sam <i>was</i> a great man—in his way.</p> + +<p>All eyes were on him, as he went in for +Man’s first landing on the Moon. The TV cameras were focussed upon him, +as he gave the orders for the landing, standing proud and triumphant in +a spotless white cap and gilded uniform. There was a great bump, the +picture leaped and blurred for a moment, while fifty million breaths +were held, and then you could almost hear the cheers rising up from +all over Earth. The Moonship was finally down—down and safe. What a +moment!</p> + +<p>Old Sam took off his hat and made a little speech. “Men and +women of Earth,” he said simply, “we have reached the Moon.” It was +very impressive—it was about as impressive a moment as I have ever +seen. Then Old Sam stepped toward the door.</p> + +<p>Naturally, the next moves +had all been carefully rehearsed. He was to don his uniform, a thick +rubberized affair with a fishbowl helmet, then he was to step out of +the airlock of the great steel ship, bearing a flag in his hand.</p> + +<p>Then +he was to plant the flag in the soil of the Moon, and the television +cameras were to be brought outside the ship, and we were all to get our +first look at the Moon, while he made the speech claiming it. So we all +watched breathlessly, while he got into his helmet.</p> + +<p>At last, Old Sam +went to the airlock, turned once to wave at the cameras, and pushed a +button. The door didn’t open.</p> + +<p>There was a seemingly endless pause, and +then, still calm, he pushed the button again.</p> + +<p>The door still didn’t +open.</p> + +<p>He pushed several times, then motioned to one of the crew. You +could hear people begin giggling nervously. The crewman examined the +lock with bewilderment, then mumbled something to Sam.</p> + +<p>“What do you +mean, frozen?” Old Sam cried, and the question must have been audible +all over the world. Then he pushed feverishly at the button. But the +great steel door wouldn’t open.</p> + +<p>It was all very embarrassing. Having +reached the Moon safely, they couldn’t get out of the ship. The ship +of course was built of solid steel, fully pressurized, and there was +simply no exit. They had spanned two hundred and forty thousand miles +of space, had spent four billion dollars and they couldn’t get out of +the ship! No flag, no speeches, no scientific information—no diamonds! +They couldn’t get out of the ship!</p> + +<p>The door was frozen shut. Moments +later—some of the most wildly hysterical moments in history—Old Sam +announced unbelievingly to fifty million people that he had discovered +the reason. Some mechanic, back on Earth, had greased the outside of +the door. In outer space, the grease had frozen rock-solid. There was +no possible way of opening the door.</p> + +<p>I must say, to Old Sam’s credit, +that he didn’t break down. He waited, at least, until the cameras were +off him. Then all we saw was a frigidly smiling announcer, trying to +point out that Man had after all reached the Moon. But you could feel +the shock rising all over the world—and then the laughter.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Mankind +guffawed from pole to pole. Practically everybody enjoyed it but +Congress. Some hothead introduced a resolution banning spaceflight +forever. There was nothing for Old Sam to do, but to bring the ship +back to Earth. It would be understandable if he had committed suicide +on the way. He came back to what must have been the worst ribbing in +history. I guess, deep down, we were all a little embarrassed, and we +had to take it out on somebody.</p> + +<p>Well that’s about all there is. What +Old Sam did thereafter is obscure. When the laughter finally died down, +and space travel was revived, he had no part in it. For he died, about +that time, of a stroke of apoplexy, brought on one day at a picnic with +his wife.</p> + +<p class="pb2">It seems she had forgotten the can opener.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowe31_2500" id="107"> + <img class="w10" src="images/107.png" alt=""> +</figure> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"></div><div class="transnote"> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Note"> + Transcriber’s Note: + </h2> + + + +<blockquote> +<p>This etext was produced from Satellite Science Fiction December 1956 +(vol. 1, no. 2). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that +the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p> + +<p>Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but minor +inconsistencies have been retained as printed.</p> +</blockquote> +</div> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78281 ***</div> +</body> +</html> |