Marooned, p.4
Marooned, page 4
What’s tenuous at a comfortable, slow speed can be a mass of sticky glue at three hundred miles a minute. The sparse molecules of air were a vacuum in terms of man and survival, but that’s from a strictly relative viewpoint. The racing spacecraft would start to slap against the molecules. It would hit hundreds of them, and that wouldn’t mean much. But the number would rush upward on an almost vertical scale, to the thousands, the millions, trillions, and uncountable numbers beyond.
Everything was so beautifully in balance. It takes kinetic energy—heat—to get a capsule into orbit. That energy comes from the howling fires of the big Atlas booster. The Atlas exchanges heat, its kinetic energy in the form of thrust, for velocity. Orbiting the earth, his capsule was a supercharged package of kinetic energy.
It didn’t seem that way, but it would—it surely would—in re-entry. He would have to get rid of just as much energy as it had taken to get him into space—in order to get down again. He would have to exchange heat for heat, energy value on an equal basis with the big push into flight through the seas that lie beyond the world of men.
He would yield that energy in the form of friction. The atmosphere would quickly become a seething furnace of heat.
He would plunge earthward with a bow wave—a shock wave, actually—riding well ahead of his blunt heat shield. A bow wave of more than 11,000 degrees temperature, hotter than the surface of the sun. Barely a foot from his back the fiberglass and spun resin shield would soak up heat, would blaze at 3,000 degrees, and would spatter away the terrible temperatures in wisps of gases and flowing resin.
He would . . .
“Can that crap!” he commanded himself, in harsh tones. The explosive outburst took him by surprise. His years of experience, his training, his fine-edge of subconscious protection against a dangerous situation, came to his aid. He realized with distaste that he had allowed his mind to slide without control into a wishful state. He was startled at the clarity with which he imagined the re-entry through the atmosphere. He could understood the longing, but Pruett was himself his harshest critic.
Years of flying, much of it in experimental airplanes where mistakes and sloppiness brought only disaster, had created in him an unbending drive toward perfection. That this was a state unattainable did not in the least interfere with his drive for the impossible, for it promised, if nothing else, the highest possible level of skill and capability. Answerable only to himself, he regarded excuses as a weakness and alibis as worthy only of disgust.
He concentrated on Cape Control’s request. Try to remember—anything. He realized that it was possible for him to have overlooked something, some small and, at the time, perhaps seemingly unimportant item. It had happened before in flying; it happened to pilots new to the game and to the old veterans with twenty and even thirty thousand hours of flying. That’s why the market for printed checklists was just as good today as it had been for years, and why they still made pencils with erasers.
But he knew better than to wrack his brains to find the straw in the haystack of thousands of events these last days. There had been a constant, steady schedule for this flight.
He had trained almost incessantly until he was like a skilled fighter about to enter the ring. And then . . . well, this was his first time in orbit. Only four Americans had ever gone the route before. He had exulted (and he still did) in the sensations and miraculous experience of it all.
Under the pressure of meeting his flight schedule, carrying out the scientific experiments, reporting on schedule to the capsule communicators around the world, drinking in the beauty of the heavens and the huge globe below him . . . yes, he could very well have missed up on something, somewhere. Not for a second did he believe that he had done so. But he had learned also, under the lash of past errors and accumulated experience, never to take anything for granted. He could permit himself the luxury of generalization. But Pruett had never been guilty of self-confidence to the extent of knowing that he might not slip in the meticulous schedule of his flight.
He knew, also, that it was important to approach the problem from an oblique angle, to enter it slowly, treading the mental pathways with caution. Any desperate attempt to discover the error, if indeed there had been one, would only fog his thinking. He had to go through a mental checklist. He had to unwind, to relax his body as well, to free himself from the tensions which had shouldered and pushed their way into his processes of thought. Only by complete objectiveness could he divorce himself from the chilling immediacy of the lethal end he faced. He must relax. For a little while, at the least, he must get his mind off the problem. He must step outside the arena for a mental moment, and then return slowly, fully in control of all his thoughts and senses.
He closed his eyes, oblivious to his plunge about the massive world. He drifted gently above his couch, sandwiched in between pressure bulkheads and humming machinery and his control panel, but absolutely free within his weightless state.
He let his thoughts drift, idly, washing gently to and fro in the memories he knew and cherished most of all . . .
Chapter III
Early morning was the best time to thumb a ride from his home in Huntington, on Long Island’s north shore, to Roosevelt Field. Twenty miles was a long haul on foot, and he learned to leave as early as possible. With the sun hardly over the horizon, the roads were fairly empty. Gasoline rationing kept many of the cars off the roads, but there were always plenty of trucks. Early in the day the drivers were willing enough to pick up a kid in his early teens with a grin on his face and a thumb raised in the time-honored gesture. He’d listen for the sharp hiss of air brakes and the welcome squeal of tires as the rigs slowed. He enjoyed running down the side strip, and swinging up into the big tractor-trailers with their wide, worn leather seats.
He’d tell the driver he was on his way to Roosevelt Field, near Mineola. He said that maybe he’d even get a chance to fly, if luck was with him. Handling a huge rig was a man-sized job, but the drivers were always interested, and the trips were short enough. He’d climb down, yell his thanks, and then take off in a trot for the airfield.
When he was fourteen, an older friend took Dick Pruett into the sky for his first flight. The airplane was old, its fabric a faded and splotched yellow, and the engine dripped oil on the ground. It reeked of gasoline in flight, and it shook horribly. But the pilot didn’t care, and Pruett was madly in love with the clanking, wheezing machine.
He often thumbed his way to Roosevelt Field just to watch the planes. In the distance, fighters and bombers snarled into the sky from Mitchel Field. Sometimes he’d walk down to the road that crossed the end of the Mitchel runway and stand in awe as a fighter crashed its way scant feet over his head, tucking up its gear like a crippled bird and fleeing to the haven of the skies.
But at Roosevelt he could get close to the planes. He could watch the pilots shouting contact to the mechs, the wooden props swinging down suddenly and catching with a stuttering cough. He loved to stand behind the ships when the pilots revved them up for power checks. The air blast whipped back, throwing up dust, stinking of oil and gasoline. It flattened the grass down like the ears of a frightened dog, and it blew strong and heady into his face.
More than once he walked to the end of one particular runway. There was a marker at the site. Sometimes he would place his hand gently on the marker, sliding his fingers slowly over its surface. It was then that he would see in his mind a silver monoplane bouncing along the grass, moving with painful acceleration, bumping until the tail came up and the speed came. He listened in complete silence as the old-timers at the field recalled that great moment when Charles Lindbergh opened the throttle on his Ryan and launched himself on an incredible journey and into fame. From this runway, from this very spot, he thought, flushed with the wonder of being right here, at the very same place, where Lindbergh had passed.
But he didn’t do any more flying himself. His friend with the clattering old airplane moved away, and Pruett had to settle for the smells and the roaring engines, and the wind blowing dust into his face. He’d stand near the hangars, just watching. One day a man rolled a gleaming new Luscombe out of the hangar. No one was around to help. When he saw Pruett, he called to him.
“Hey, kid! Give me a hand, willya!”
Pruett stumbled in his haste to get to the little two-place ship. He ran behind the right wing and pushed on the strut. The beautiful machine was light and easy to roll along the grass. The man said, “Thanks,” and left for the flight line office.
When he returned Pruett was standing on a box by the nose, polishing madly with his handkerchief. He’d cleaned the cockpit glass and was working on the side windows. The man watched him in silence for a few moments.
“You like a ride, son?” he asked.
Pruett’s broad grin was all the answer he needed. “Okay, then, hop in.”
The boy breathed deeply to soak in the smell of the Luscombe. It was a new ship, everything clean and sparkling. The two seats were side by side, the instrument panel dazzled Pruett, and with great care he ran his fingers over the rubberized grip of the control stick on his side of the airplane.
Twenty minutes later they were at six thousand feet, drifting lazily above white puffs of clouds. Pruett hadn’t said a word, but his eyes were glued to every movement the pilot made. He couldn’t believe it when the man turned to him and said, “Want to try your hand at it?”
“Y—yes!”
The pilot laughed. “Okay. But remember, she’s real light and sensitive on the controls. Handle her real gently.”
His hand trembled slightly as he closed his fingers around the grip. The pilot grinned at him and held his hands up to signify passing the controls. Pruett swallowed hard, afraid to believe that he was really flying the airplane.
He wasn’t. He was manhandling the Luscombe. You don’t push one of those airplanes around; you breathe your wants and desires, and the silver machine responds with obedience. Ten minutes after he started, the pilot took back the controls from Pruett.
He landed at East Hampton, far out on the Island. “I’ll be back in a little while,” he said. “Stick with the airplane and don’t let anyone fool around with it.”
An hour later the man was back, and they were at the end of the runway. “Hang on to the stick lightly, and put your feet on the pedals,” the pilot ordered. “Now, you can follow through with me on the controls, and really get the hang of it.” Pruett nodded. The Luscombe bounced down the strip, and Pruett hardly noticed the slight nudge of the stick toward him. But the airplane responded and soared away from the ground.
They were thirty miles out of Roosevelt Field when the pilot told Pruett to be sure his seat belt was cinched tightly. “Ever do any aerobatics, son?”
“No—no, sir, never did anything like that.”
“Okay, hang on. And tell me—right away—if your stomach starts to slosh around too much.”
The sky vanished. Pruett stared at a vertical line where there had been sky, and realized with a start that the edge of the world, where there had been a horizon, now stood on its end. But not for long, as the Luscombe continued on over, filing around the inside of an invisible barrel in the air, until the ground was up and the sky was down. He had just enough time to catch his breath when the nose went down and a hand pushed him gently into his seat and glued him there as the nose came up, and up. The horizon disappeared again and the engine screamed with the dive. Then the nose was coming up, higher and higher, and the engine began to protest the pull against it. The sun flashed in his eyes, and Pruett found himself on his back as the Luscombe soared up and over in a beautiful loop.
There was a lot more to it, and Pruett’s eyes were glazed with delight and wonder when the silver airplane whispered onto the grass at Roosevelt.
There could be no stopping him after that delirious flight. He lived and slept flying, and drove his parents near distraction with his long absences from his home. He lugged home stacks of books from the library, and stayed up long hours into the night. In his reading he mixed adventures and dramas of pilots with serious studies of aerodynamics. He plunged into the world of flight with an exhilaration that ebbed slowly and only after he began to accumulate a growing number of hours at the controls. He replaced exhilaration with competence.
He worked every afternoon when he left school. He scrimped and saved, and he took a job on Saturday night in addition to his after-school work. He spent every weekend he could at Roosevelt Field, and did odd jobs there as well. He accepted his pay in flight time; as little as fifteen minutes made it worthwhile.
On his sixteenth birthday he had ninety hours logged in his book, and he almost flew home on his own private cloud. For he soloed that day, and there is only one first solo for any pilot, anywhere.
The war had almost dried up the supply of aviation gasoline. But by now Pruett had learned the ropes, and he made certain to form fast friendships with several pilots in the Civil Air Patrol. They flew anti-submarine patrol missions off the Atlantic coast. It was a tremendously brave and, many claimed, an incredibly ludicrous mission to carry out. Some of the pilots rigged crude shackles beneath their small airplanes and slung a fifty-pound bomb from the contraption. At best it was a hazardous thing to do, since the little airplanes bounced and rocked through takeoffs and landings, and what the hell was a man in a fabric putt-putt going to do against a submarine if he ever did run into one on the surface?
No one ever found the answer, because one day a Stinson hit a bad hole on takeoff, and the bomb jogged loose. It didn’t dig much of a hole in the runway, but it tore the Stinson and its two pilots into very small fragments. That ended the armed patrol missions.
Pruett flew on every trip he could. It meant time in the air, time at the controls. He was sharp at it, he understood mechanically what the airplane did in flight, and he gradually added superb skill to his unflagging enthusiasm.
He graduated from Huntington High School in the summer of 1943, and went straight from the graduation ceremonies to the Army recruiting station where he volunteered for flight cadets. He had four hundred hours logged by then . . .
Early in 1944 he pinned on his gold bars as a spanking-new second lieutenant, and wore with a deep pride the silver wings on his tunic. As quickly as he could he slipped back to his room and closed the door.
He stood before the full-length mirror. It didn’t seem true, not really true.
“Richard John Pruett . . . fighter pilot,” he breathed. He stared at the image for a long time.
The Army Air Forces sent him to an advanced training base for a new fighter pilots. The biggest airplane he’d flown yet was the AT-6 advanced trainer, a rugged and snarling brute with six hundred horsepower behind the prop. At the new school he stood before the gleaming nose of a Mustang. He ran his hand hesitantly along one of the four big propeller blades. He spent an hour with the sleek fighter, in love with its lines, burning with the desire to take it into the air.
He ran his instructors to exhaustion. He couldn’t get enough of the Mustang. It howled with energy, it was lithe and tigerish and deadly, and it seemed a fulfillment of all the hours that had led to the airplane. He took to mock dogfights with a fury, and within several weeks had turned aggressor against his instructors, who discovered quickly that the young lieutenant seemed as much a part of his fighter as the engine.
Pruett was more than a natural pilot. He was a brilliant, natural pilot who combined these characteristics with technical skill.
But he never had the opportunity to fire the Mustang’s six heavy guns in combat. With the war coming to a close in Europe, the Army Air Forces released him from active duty to attend college. Pruett had seen the handwriting on the wall. When the war in the Pacific ended, there would be a flood of pilots all over the place. Tens of thousands of pilots, and they’d be so cheap in the flying game that their flight experience wouldn’t be enough to make them stand out in any crowd. He’d heard of the new jets in European combat; he talked to pilots who had been bounced by the twin-engine Messerschmitts that flashed by them with a speed margin of more than a hundred and forty miles per hour.
Swept wings, mach numbers, compressibility, gas turbines . . . the lexicon of the budding new age was both exciting and a warning. Exciting because of the new dimensions of flight that lay just over the horizon; a warning because being a pilot wasn’t enough. Not any more. You had to be strong in the brain department as well.
Pruett entered the University of Minnesota and cut himself a wicked schedule. Other pilots had done it; he could match any one of them. He took the full four-year course and doubled up on all his classes. The outside world seemed to merge into a fog that swirled around his new life, and he ignored it almost completely. Two years after signing up at the university, he graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering.
He paused only to catch his breath, and signed up at once for additional work. A year later—and fifteen pounds lighter than when he first came to the university—he had his master’s degree in aeronautical engineering.
The Air Force told him to wait for recall to active duty. The end of combat brought with it a dizzying downward spiral in flying activities, and the military was crawling with pilots hunting for airplanes to fly.
Pruett went home. It was the fall of 1947, and he was grateful for the respite from the grueling pace he had maintained for three full years. He was content to spend his days in lazy relaxation. There was plenty of fishing, and mild surprise at the way the girls he’d known in high school now filled their tight dresses. But there was one girl in particular—Ann Fowler. She had been a person apart from the others he’d known and whom he had dated, and while neither of them ever had broached the subject directly, the assumption rested quietly between them that marriage waited at some time in their future. Ann had never pushed, and even in her unconcealed deep pleasure at greeting Pruett, she was certain, as always, to keep their relationship unstilted and undemanding.
