“It will be successful.” He thought a moment, then squared his tired shoulders and said, “Tell them that this is the beginning of the human race’s greatest era. Tell them that every one of them will have a chance to follow in Captain LeCroix’s footsteps, seek out new planets, wrest a home for themselves in new lands. Tell them that this means new frontiers, a shot in the arm for prosperity. It means—” He ran down. “That’s all tonight. I’m whipped, son. Leave me alone, will you?”
Presently Côster came out, followed by the V.I.P.’s. Harriman went up to Coster. “Everything all right?”
“Sure. Why shouldn’t it be? Track three followed him out to the limit of range-all in the groove.” Coster added, “Step five killed a cow when it grounded.”
“Forget it—we’ll have steak for breakfast.” Harriman then had to make conversation with the Governor and the Vice-President, had to escort them out to their ship. Dixon and Entenza left together, less formally; at last Coster and Harriman were alone save for subordinates too junior to constitute a strain and for guards to protect them from the crowds. “Where you headed, Bob?”
“Up to the Broadmoor and about a week’s sleep. How about you?”
“if you don’t mind, I’ll doss down in your apartment.”
“Help yourself. Sleepy pills in the bathroom.”
“I won’t need them.” They had a drink together in Coster’s quarters, talked aimlessly, then Coster ordered a copter cab and went to the hotel. Harriman went to bed, got up, read a day-old copy of the Denver Post filled with pictures of the Pioneer, finally gave up and took two of Coster’s sleeping capsules.
CHAPTER TEN
SOMEONE WAS SHAKING HIM. “Mr. Harriman! Wake up—Mr. Caster is on the screen.”
“Huh? Wazza? Oh, all right.” He got up and padded to the phone. Caster was :ooking tousie-headea and excited. “Hey, Boss—he made it!”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Palomar just called me. They saw the mark and now they’ve spotted the ship itself. He—”
“Wait a minute, Bob. Slow up. He can’t be there yet. He just left last night.”
Coster looked disconcerted. “What’s the matter, Mr. Harriman? Don’t you feel well? He left Wednesday.”
Vaguely, Harriman began to be oriented. No, the take-off had not been the night before—fuzzily he recalled a drive up into the mountains, a day spent dozing in the sun, some sort of a party at which he had drunk too much. What day was today? He didn’t know. If LeCroix had landed on the Moon, then—never mind. “It’s all right, Bob-I was half asleep. I guess I dreamed the take-off all over again. Now tell me the news, slowly.”
Coster started over. “LeCroix has landed, just west of Archimedes crater. They can see his ship, from Palomar. Say that was a great stunt you thought up, marking the spot with carbon black. Les must have covered two acres with it. They say it shines out like a billboard, through the Big Eye.”
“Maybe we ought to run down and have a look. No—later,” he amended. “We’ll be busy.”
“I don’t see what more we can do, Mr. Harriman. We’ve got twelve of our best ballistic computers calculating possible routes for you now.”
Harriman started to tell the man to put on another twelve, switched off the screen instead. He was still at Peterson Field, with one of Skyways’ best stratoships waiting for him outside, waiting to take him to whatever point on the globe LeCroix might ground. LeCroix was in the upper stratosphere, had been there for more than twenty-four hours. The pilot was slowly, cautiously wearing out his terminal velocity, dissipating the incredible kinetic energy as shock wave and radiant heat.
They had tracked him by radar around the globe and around again—and again . . . yet there was no way of knowing just where and what sort of landing the pilot would choose to risk. Harriman listened to the running radar reports and cursed the fact that they had elected to save the weight of radio equipment.
The radar figures started coming closer together. The voice broke off and started again: “He’s in his landing glide!”
“Tell the field to get ready!” shouted Harriman. He held his breath and waited. After endless seconds another voice cut in with, “The Moon ship is now landing. It will ground somewhere west of Chihuahua in Old Mexico.”