Card Sharks

A Method Of Reaching Extreme Altitudes

(From The Los Angeles Herald, Monday, April 12, 1958:)

U.S. TO TRY ROCKET FLIGHT

BEFORE RUSSIANS?

ROSAMOND, CALIFORNIA. (Herald exclusive) The United States may attempt a manned rocket flight in the next few weeks in an attempt to beat the Russians into space, it was learned here today.

Officials at the Muroc Lake Test Site of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics referred this reporter to the USAF office here, which declined comment. NACA's Muroc Site is part of the larger, restricted access Tomlin Air Force Base.

Nevertheless, it is known that six Air Force and NACA test pilots are training for flights in a winged rocketplane known as the X-11A. Several of these pilots are reported to have taken part in as many as five unpowered free flights of the X-11A, in which the Northrop-built vehicle glided to a landing on the dry lakebed at Tomlin.

The planned orbital flight would reportedly see the X-11A take off from Tomlin to rendezvous with a specially-modified Boeing tanker at 30,000 feet. Following re-fueling, the X-11A would rocket into orbit on its own power, returning to Tomlin after making a single orbit of the earth.

The existence of the American orbital program, long rumored, comes three weeks after the announcement by the Soviet Union that it hopes to launch a manned spacecraft known as North on its own orbital mission sometime later this year …

(From the notebooks of Edgar Thayer:)

In those days — which seem quite long ago, as I write, but were actually less than five years in the past — the Muroc Lake facility of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics wasn't on any maps. This had less to do with security concerns (NACA was a civilian agency, anyway) than with the general lack of formality, or even public interest. Nevertheless, as I waited for the phone call in the ratty motel in Rosamond on the morning of April 12, I didn't need directions: I already knew where to find it.

I was fourteen years old and living in a small town in southern Minnesota when the wild card struck. Although we were not isolated — we had CBS radio coming through loud and clear on WCCO — we were not directly affected. For years I thought of the plague as less important than polio, which had crippled one of my classmates.

What fascinated me was the proof that there was life on other planets. I was already a sporadic reader of comic books — sporadic only because the vagaries of distribution didn't often bring them to St. Peter — and became a devotee of Heinlein's Tak World books. I discovered the first one, Eclipse, in the St. Peter High School library my junior year, and made such a fuss over it that my parents bought the next one, Fire Down Below, $2.45, for me the following Christmas.

They faithfully sent me each new one, all through my time at the University of Minnesota, and even during my first two years in the Air Force. I can remember eagerly unwrapping The Sound of His Wings, the 1955 volume — the last in the series, alas — while sitting in an office at Kirtland Air Force Base looking out on the very hangar where the Takisian ship Baby had been based before being moved to California.

So I was one of the few — very few — who still believed that humans might have a destiny in space. Who weren't ready to give up the dream just because someone had found us first.

My work in the Air Force was as an analyst with the foreign technology division. It consisted of taking captured German and stolen Soviet weapons — in my case, missiles — out to New Mexico and firing them off to learn how they worked. It was fascinating, and my experience in the infant field of launch operations got me assigned later to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, where I worked on Pied Piper, our first satellite program.

That April morning in Rosamond I was twenty-eight years old, having left the service after completing my ROTC committment. I had spent the intervening year at Aerojet in Pasadena, working on the rocket engine that would later be used in the X-11A. My background as a launch controller had come to NACA's attention, however, and I had been summoned to the high desert in great secrecy for an assignment of unlimited duration.

It was greatly upsetting to my wife, Deborah, who was left in the apartment in Pasadena, pregnant and caring for our five-year-old daughter.

For me, however, it was a dream come true.

***

They started early at Muroc in those days. The phone call from Dr. Rowe's office came before six … by seven I was at the administration building (shack would be a better word) thirty-two miles away, having passed through three successively picky Air Force checkpoints, while driving through the flat, trackless waste that was Tomlin.

(There had been a late spring rain that year, and the usually dry lakebeds were covered with an inch-deep sheen. Rising over the Tehachapis, the sun and its reflection effectively blinded me: never the best of drivers, I could just as easily have driven off the road, rolled the car, and drowned in an inch of water.)

By nine I had been badged and cross-examined by a security officer named Battle, who had the air of a parochial school nun. Then I was taken into my first briefing.

It wasn't particularly dark in the conference room; the blinds had been drawn so that viewgraphs could be seen. But it took a moment for my eyes to adjust from the blinding brilliance of a desert morning.

Rowe was just discussing how some unexpected funding cuts were going to force stretchouts in the final testing phase … possibly delaying the first all-up launch of the X-11A by several weeks or more.

"Ah, shit, Doc," said a voice from the back. "Who needs the tests? We know it'll fly … let us fly it."

"That's easy for you to say, hotshot," a second guy said. "You won't be flying the first one." There was some general laughter.

Then Rowe noticed me.

"Here's the new arrival now," he said. "The most vital element in any program team … the last one to join. Ed Thayer." I shook some hands that belonged to vaguely familiar faces, then took an open chair between the two men who had been kidding each other.

To my right was the youngest pilot in the group, Mike Sampson, an Air Force captain. The file on him had been brief … first in his class at West Point, service as a fighter pilot in Germany, an engineering degree from Michigan. What was unusual is that he had also done graduate work in astronomy. Clearly he had his sights on a career in space, not just aviation.

The loudmouth who didn't care for the pace of the testing program was Al Dearborn, a naval aviator. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and pants the color of a diseased liver, he looked more like the number two mechanic at a small town filling station than someone who held the Distinguished Flying Cross. (He had shot down two MiGs in Korea.) One of my briefers had expressed amazement that Dearborn had gotten into the program at all, assuming his selection was a bone thrown to the Navy in exchange for minuscule financial support. In fact, Dearborn hadn't even finished in the top three when the Navy selection board made its choices, but two of the other finalists chose to stay in flight test at Patuxent River while the third had managed to break his arm in a softball game.

Sitting across from me was Major Woody Enloe, USAF, blond and handsome in the manner of a teen movie star. Even sitting down he seemed taller than the others. He was known as a pilot's pilot, the only one ever to have waxed Yeager in a dogfight.

Next to him was his reverse image, the dark, homely, clumsy Casey Guinan, a civilian pilot who had worked with Rowe since World War II. His file showed him to be a multi-engine pilot and though the decision about who would fly the X-11A on its maiden voyage was still to be made, Guinan was sure to pilot the tanker instead.

I don't remember many details from the briefing. The first all-up attempt to get the X-11A into orbit was then still three weeks off. As Dr. Rowe pointed out, it had been three weeks off for six months now. There were on-going concerns about the fuel lines — the X-11A had two engines, a jet and a rocket motor, which shared common tanks. So there was the obvious problem of pumping liquid oxygen from one aircraft to another at 30,000 feet. Which in turn made the X-11A itself a potential flying bomb.

Everyone knew the refueling concept was tricky … but the only other way to get a workable manned spacecraft — not just a tin can — into orbit was a multistage launch vehicle. The U.S. had the Convair Atlas ICBM, which had put Pied Piper into orbit. A multi-stage version of Atlas was years and millions of dollars away.

I did learn that my job would involve monitoring the two propellant systems. Fortunately I had helped design one of them — the rocket. So all I had to do in the next three weeks was become an expert on jet engines.

It never occurred to me that this was unreasonable, or impossible. There I was, sitting in a room with Wilson Rowe, who had been one of my idols, and the pilots who would be the first space travelers. I was home.

When the meeting broke up, Dr. Rowe called me over. He was then about fifty, slim, bald, with merry eyes hidden behind the engineer's thick eyeglasses. He had grown up with aviation … watching some of the first Army tests at Camp McCook in Dayton, Ohio, where he lived. (The story was that a Packard-Le Pere LUSAC 11, the earliest American fighter plane, had crash-landed in his family's backyard, thus ensuring that young Wilson would do nothing else in his life.) Getting into M.I.T., earning one of the first degrees offered in aeronautical engineering … working on America's first jets and rockets during World War II.

Those were the broad outlines of Rowe's career, but they said nothing about his ability to lead or inspire. During my brief career at Aerojet I had run into no less than four of his former associates … all of them spoke of him in awe as the man with the vision. The man who believed. The man who would cajole or seduce or threaten or bully to reach his goal.

The single biggest disappointment in his life was obvious to everyone … that he, himself, would never see the Earth as a sphere … never kick the dust of the surface of the moon. You see, Rowe had paid his way through college as a barnstormer, flying his own specially-modified Stearman in county fairs and settings even less formal all across America. It was his eyesight that forever kept him from becoming a professional pilot, a verdict he accepted gracefully, without complaint.

But even now, it was said, when the pressure got to be too much, he would sneak off to nearby El Mirage to go sailplaning.

"Mr. Thayer. I've been waiting for you."

At first I thought I had already done something wrong. "I came straight here from Security," I said.

He smiled, his eyes twinkling behind the thick lenses. "Not this morning. For weeks. Months."

Fumbling for my sunglasses, I followed him out of the briefing shack into the noonday sun. He never even blinked. I had a quick, nod-of-the-head tour. "Control center's over there … Aerojet office … Pratt amp; Whitney. Hangar Two." That hangar was practically a shrine to someone like me. The JB-1, the first American jet, had been towed here, complete with a dummy propeller on its nose to confuse Axis spies. (I had seen a replica of JB-1 at Jetboy's Tomb in New York, of course, during a Boy Scout trip there when I was thirteen.) This was also where Kelly Johnson's lovely XP-80 had flown, with the ill-fated Halford engine. "Oh, yes.." he said finally, as we approached another massive, never painted structure. "Hangar Three." We went inside.

It took me several seconds to realize that I was looking at the X-11A, vehicle number one. (Northrup, the prime contractor, was assembling birds two and three out in some town with the unlikely name of Pico Rivera.)

I had only seen a couple of rough sketches in Aviation Week … and they hadn't done it justice. They made the X-11A look like a slightly larger Bell X-1 — a bullet with wings.

This was a winged beast more like an eagle. Or, to shift from the aero to the nautical, a manta ray. For one thing, it was twice the size of the X-1, 55 feet long, with a delta wing forty feet across at its widest. The tail, rising above the fraternal twin engines, reached eighteen feet.

It was the cockpit that reminded everyone of the X-1. It was so cramped that Enloe — never a noted humorist — was widely quoted as saying, "You don't climb in … you put it on." Because most of the X-11A's volume was taken up by engines and fuel tanks, there wasn't even room enough for the pilot to float around once reaching zero-G. Later models would be bigger, with better engines. There would have to be more room … if we were going to land X-11A or its children on the Moon.

"The world's first spaceship," I said, walking underneath it with its father.

"Is it? What's going on with the Russians?"

"My information is over a year old."

A tight smile. "That's not what I hear."

My background as an analyst was no secret to Rowe — to anyone. But who knew that I'd kept in touch with the FTD, more as a hobby than anything else? My wife, maybe. "All I have is raw data."

"That's okay. This isn't a quiz. I just want to know if von Braun and Korolev are going to beat me."

The fact that he knew those names told me he had access to whatever information there was. Von Braun had headed the Nazi V-2 rocket program and had been brought to the U.S. briefly after the war to build rockets for the U.S. Army. After the wild card struck, the program was scrapped. Leaving his brain — or whatever was valuable in it — behind, von Braun returned to Germany, where he was scooped up by the Russians.

According to the stories — and they may have been just that: stories — he found a soul brother in a Russian engineer named Sergei Korolev.

Korolev was a lot like Rowe … a child of aviation who burned to go beyond it. He was flying gliders in his twenties and building rocket motors in his thirties. He had come close to being shot during the purges that destroyed the Soviet air force in 1938, wound up in a gold mine in the Arctic under a de facto sentence of death … only to be reprieved. He'd built katusha rockets for Stalin during the war, and then was put in charge of finding a use for all the captured German V-2s.

I would have given anything to be present when Korolev first met von Braun.

"They've adapted one of the German designs for a multi-stage booster — "

"The A-10?"

"More or less. They call it the R-11."

"Interesting coincidence."

"It's a big brute — "

"You've seen it?"

Should I answer? I had seen Pied Piper photos, which were highly classified. But Rowe knew about Korolev and von Braun; surely he knew about our spy satellites. "Yes. It's twenty stories tall, maybe thirty feet across at the base, tapering like an artillery shell. I guess it puts out over a million pounds of thrust — "

He was shaking his head, out of pleasure or annoyance, I couldn't say. "And we have a tenth of that."

"And they will throw away nine-tenths of that rocket."

"The spacecraft itself …?"

"A modified missile nosecone with a blunt bottom. One pilot."

He was thinking, almost certainly replaying endless debates over the very same issues, reaching the same conclusion. "We couldn't have done it. We built bombers, not intercontinental missiles." He smiled again. "But their way is faster."

"They haven't had a manned launch yet."

We were interrupted by a female voice. "Dr. Rowe?"

I turned. A woman in her early thirties wearing a white blouse and a beige skirt was walking toward us. She had copper-colored hair that was pulled back by a hairband and was wearing her sunglasses inside the darkened hangar. "They were looking for you over in administration," she said.

"Thanks, Peggy." He clapped me on the shoulder. "We'll have plenty of time to talk later." As he went out: "By the way, Edgar Thayer, Margaret Durand. The rest is up to you."

Only when Rowe had walked off did she take off her glasses. I saw that her eyes were a blue so pale they looked transparent. Maybe it was the drab surroundings, maybe it was my personal situation. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

I had married a hometown girl for reasons that couldn't possibly have been any good. We both thought we were in love. We both wanted to get out of St. Peter.

Oddly enough, we hadn't been high school sweethearts: I had gone on three forced dates (to this day I can remember each excrutiating moment) … two homecomings and one senior prom, each with a different partner. I knew Deborah, of course — I knew everyone in St. Peter High — and thought her quite pretty and nice. She even had a good sense of humor. But she had a steady boyfriend, one of the Borchert boys, from a farm family east of town, with whom she was constantly breaking up. Nevertheless, most high school couples in St. Peter had, like it or not, mated for life. It never occurred to me to ask Deborah out.

Not until I came home on my second summer vacation from St. Paul. I had left St. Peter a virgin; I had returned a veteran of half a dozen sexual encounters, some of which I hadn't had to buy. Romance was in the air. And Deb was in the middle of a surprisingly long breakup with Billy Borchert.

One thing led to another, as they say. When I went back to the University of Minnesota at the end of the summer we were sort of engaged. When Deborah called three months later to tell me she was pregnant, we got married. And I, the panicked new father, worried about supporting a wife and child, joined ROTC, committing myself to five years of service in the Air Force. (The way I looked at it, I was committing the Air Force to support me for five years.)

Deb joined me in St. Paul, where Caroline was born.

We had one good year, I think, that year when Caroline was in her crib. Living in married student housing only slightly better than a Selby and Dale tenement, we had no money for baby sitters — when we did go out, even to see a movie like She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, it was a special occasion — but we were entertained by Caroline's antics. Deb made a stab at being the wife of an engineering student, helping me with my course work, reading some of the texts — I think she even thought about going to the U of M herself. But all she had really wanted was to save herself from becoming a farm wife. It was enough for her to have a child and be in the big city.

I don't know that I was ever in love with Deborah. I don't know that she was ever really in love with me. But, all in all, we had more good times than bad. Until the day I drove into Muroc.

***

"He likes you." Those were Margaret's first words to me. (I was never able to call her Peggy; that was one thing that separated me from the others.)

"Who?"

"Rowe."

"We just met."

"He knows all about you, or you wouldn't be here."

"That doesn't mean he likes me."

"He doesn't give tours of the X-11 to everyone he hires." She reached out and stroked the leading edge of the spacecraft, her red nails and pale fingers in stark contrast to the black titanium.

"You're keeping track."

"I keep my eyes open. Part of my job."

"Which is?"

"Flight nurse."

"I think I'm going to faint."

"Don't do it now. She walked past me, so close that I caught a wisp of her perfume. "I'm off-duty."

The big question around the office, I learned later that day, concerned the pilot who would be selected for the first X-11 launch. All four candidates had been given the same training and told they would all remain at some mental and physical peak.

In fact, the strain was driving them crazy. I got my first hint the next morning, when I went through suiting with Enloe and Guinan prior to a test flight. (Sampson and Dearborn had done theirs the day before I arrived.)

I later learned that it was Enloe who insisted on my presence: he had very firm ideas about who he wanted making decisions involving his life or death. He wanted to size me up.

I didn't know whether to admire Enloe, or write him off as some kind of obsessive freak. He made this run-through as realistic as possible, right down to paying forty cents for his low-residue breakfast from the officer's club. (I asked one of the chase pilots, a Major Meadows, why the program didn't pay for breakfast. He just stared at me and said, "Tradition." By which he meant, I realized, "superstition.")

The surgeon, Dr. Lawrence, had checked Enloe out prior to breakfast. So it was just Enloe, Guan, Meadows and me. The moment the coffee had been cleared away, Enloe put on his long-johns and flight helmet. (He had to pre-breathe for two hours, since the X-11A was pressurized with pure oxygen at five pounds per square inch, much less than sea level.)

While the suit techs periodically checked Enloe's helmet, I did the weather briefing and Meadows went over the flight conditions — ground track, call signs, abort points. Enloe absorbed it all without a trace of emotion. He was like an actor doing Hamlet, and it was impossible to tell whether for the fourth — or four hundredth — time.

Guinan was more of a mystery, eating a double breakfast while seemingly paying absolutely no attention to what was going on. He could have been some truck driver having ham and eggs between oil changes.

By now a second chase pilot, Captain Grissom, had joined us. He and Meadows donned regular flight suits, then helped Guinan with what looked like a brand new one, right out of its paper bag. I didn't learn why until later.

Then it was into the pressure suit for Enloe: lacing the heavy boots, connecting the pressure hoses and electrical leads. "I want you to ride in the tank this morning."

"I'm supposed to be in flight control."

"They'll survive without you for one more day."

I wouldn't have dared to ask, but Enloe, as senior test pilot, had almost as much clout as Rowe himself. I stepped out the back door to use a phone, got through to Rowe and explained Enloe's request. Rowe's answer was brief: "Do as he says."

Outside the suiting room I saw two very strange sights:

First was Woody Enloe … all buttoned up in his orange pressure suit … bowing his head in prayer. Then lifting off the ground … hovering briefly … flying, one arm extended like Black Eagle, toward the flight line.

Enloe was an ace.

Second, in the hallway, just inside the door, was Casey Guinan … passionately kissing Margaret Durand. I almost ran into them. Guinan didn't even look at me. He merely patted Margaret on the behind and went out. Margaret's glance met mine.

"Everyone likes me, Thayer."

Guinan's tank — I never heard the NACA-modified KC-135 called anything else — was already in flight … orbiting in a racetrack pattern, when Enloe took off, the stubby wings of the X-11A biting the desert air. I barely paid attention, so appalled was I at the tank's cockpit.

The controls had been specially modified so that there were almost no displays … just open panels. I could only think of them as wounds. Gone were the traditional pilot's chairs — gone, for that matter, was the co-pilot. In place was a couch of sorts.

And squatting on that couch was what was left of Guinan … he had literally flowed into the controls. His head was pressed up to the windshield, one arm was wrapped around the control yoke, the other splayed across the throttles. Mercifully, I couldn't quite see what had happened to his lower torso and legs. His flight suit had exploded.

Guinan was an ace, too.

I tried to put it out of my mind, concentrating instead on listening to Jack Ridley, the navigator sitting next to me. He noticed my alarm. "Don't worry, Ed. I've got backup controls, if anything happens to Casey. But he actually gets into the hydraulics. Told me once he could feel the breeze on the wings."

"But he's an ace! Is that even legal?"

Ridley just smiled.

We weren't able to observe the climbout to altitude. My imagination might have failed me where Guinan was concerned, but one thing I could imagine was the shattering roar of the 11A's Pratt and Whitney … a big brute designed only for one thing: thrust. To hell with fuel efficiency.

Enloe took the 11A off runway 22 and headed straight toward Death Valley. He would circle back and intercept us at 31,000 feet, in the heart of the Tomlin Test Range. I glanced through some of Ridley's charts and noticed that the rendezvous would take place while we were almost directly over over the concrete hangar where the Takisian ship Baby was entombed.

I was plugged in throughout our takeoff and Enloe's, noting the sequence of test events on my kneepad. As rendezvous approached, Ridley indicated I was to go to the boom station in the rear of the tanker.

I had expected the tank to be cramped with extra insulating equipment — it wasn't just carrying room temperature jet fuel, as designed, but a liquid oxygen slurry that had to be kept at minus 400 degrees. In fact, there were tons of additional equipment, in addition to special pumps and a bigger boom. But there was still room to move around: Guinan's tank only had to refuel one relatively small spacecraft, not a dozen jet fighters.

Flopping onto the observer's couch, one of three at the boom station, I tried to keep out of the way as Sergeant Vidrine, the boomer — who must have been a joker, since he had three arms — dumped a few pounds of LOX and kerosene through the twin nozzles, clearing them as the 11A crawled up behind us. Then the boomer and Enloe began talking.

My briefing had told me that this was to be a full-load refueling, with Enloe dropping away to fire the 11A's rocket motor for twenty seconds … enough to test the system and, incidentally, to propel him higher than any human had ever flown.

Enloe and the X-11A approached … the boom was toggled into place … the fuel dumped in less than four minutes. Vidrine said, "You're full with regular and super."

"Roger. Disconnect."

The exhilaration I had felt upon Enloe's invitation had worn off, a casualty, I first thought, of clear air turbulence, the smell of J-4 jet fuel, and the sight of Guinan. Or worrying that I was surrounded by wild card freaks.

Then I realized what the problem was: no one seemed to be having any fun. Enloe said little, confining himself to cryptic callouts of altitude, fuel, speed. Dearborn, the communicator for the flight, was surprisingly terse. Only Vidrine and the chase pilots — who were making a bet involving beers at Pancho's place — added a human touch. It certainly had none of the rakish charm of the heroes of the Tak World novels, who were always bickering and stabbing each other in the back. I could have been listening to a couple of guys tearing down an engine block for a '49 Chevy.

The X-11A dropped several hundred feet behind us while the tanker rolled to the right. Dearborn counted down. At zero a tongue of flame shot out of the 11A. It was out of sight before I realized it.

Only then did I remember where I was … six miles over the California desert, refueling the world's first real spaceship. It went so far beyond the amazing that we had to invent new ways of describing — and appreciating — the experience.

There was a dicey moment during Enloe's altitude run … some pogo effect in one of the rocket's pumps. He had to shut down at 17 seconds and wasn't able to crack the 100,000 foot barrier.

"Next time we'll go all the way," he said. I didn't hear a trace of disappointment in his voice.

The X-11A was on the ground before we were, though Enloe would be tied up in debrief through lunch. That was where Rowe and the rest of the team would be, so I was eager to join them.

But Margaret was waiting for me as I walked away from the tank. "What did you think?" she asked brightly.

"I think we're just about ready to go."

"I mean Casey. She raised an eyebrow. Only then did I realize she was inviting me to picture the two of them in bed.

"I've got work to do." I started walking away.

"I know. Rowe sent me to pick you up." She opened the car door for me. When I hesitated, she said: "Get in. Don't be such a baby."

She was amazing. I told her. "I'm not used to talking about things like this."

"Sex? Or aces?"

"Neither."

"You'll learn."

We drove in silence for a minute. "Rowe wanted me to give you a message."

"I'm listening."

"He says that unless there are any further technical problems, we'll attempt a launch on May 5th."

"That's great."

"He also says the Soviets announced today that they will try to put a man into orbit tomorrow morning."

(From The Los Angeles Herald, Thursday, April 14, 1958:)

RUSSIAN ROCKET FIZZLES!

Red Spaceman Lucky to Be Alive!

Moscow (AP). The first attempt to put a man into space ended prematurely today with a huge rocket explosion, according to TASS, the official Soviet news agency. The pilot, Konstantin Feoktistov, was lifted to safety inside his vehicle, which was equipped with its own parachute.

The accident took place at the Soviet rocket research center at Kapustin Yar, on the Volga River just east of Stalingrad. Previous unmanned Soviet rockets, some of them carrying orbital satellites, have been launched from this site since 1947, under the direction of space scientists Sergei Korolev and Werner von Braun.

According to TASS, Feoktistov, a 32-year-old engineer said to be a protege of Korolev, boarded the bell-shaped Sever spacecraft atop its giant R-11 rocket at 7:30 local time. He wore a special protective spacesuit for the mission, which was to see him orbit the earth three times.

Liftoff of the R-11, said to stand 12 stories tall and weigh over a million pounds, took place shortly after nine. The R-11's twenty-four first stage engines ignited, lifting Sever (which means "North") into the sky.

But at an altitude of nine thousand feet, as the rocket was passing through the area of maximum dynamic pressure, there was an explosion. Automatic devices aboard Sever ignited an escape rocket mounted forward of Feoktistov's cabin, pulling it free of the fireball.

Sever then descended by parachute into the swamp five miles east of the launch site, as debris from the exploding rocket rained down around it. Reached by rescuers within minutes, Feoktistov was reported to be injured, but not seriously. He is rumored to be convalescing at a resort on the Black Sea.

TASS quoted von Braun as comparing the failure to those of the World War II V-2 …

(From the notebooks of Edgar Thayer)

We got the news of the Soviet failure at Muroc the same way everybody else did … from the radio. For everyone's convenience they had moved me from the motel in Rosamond to the Tomlin visiting officer's quarters — logically enough, seeing as how I would only be around for a month — which left me twenty miles closer to the action. Which on that particular night was at Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club, just west of the base.

I had spent the rest of the test day in debriefing and can't remember who suggested that we have a Soviet Watch at the bar. It might have been Al Dearborn, who, it was said, had run up such a tab that Pancho herself had had to make him a part owner in the joint. I do remember asking if Dr. Rowe would join us, only to told that Rowe probably didn't know where Pancho's was.

Anyway, we were there early, before six, ostensibly for steaks: Dearborn, Sampson, Grissom, Meadows, Ridley, a brace of test engineers, and me. Enloe and Guinan showed up soon after. It was the single wildest evening I have ever spent, though it began innocently enough, just beers with Dearborn.

Midway through the third Budweiser, I got the nerve to ask him how he managed to handle the pressure … not knowing who was going to make the first flight.

"Listen, buddy, I do know."

"Don't keep me in suspense."

"You're looking at him."" He saw my amused disbelief. "Look, I'll prove it to you. Give me a quarter." I produced a half-dollar. He took it and flipped it. "Call it."

"Heads."

Heads of it was. In fact, Dearborn got it right fourteen times in a row. "Pure luck," I said.

He winked. "Bingo. That's me: Mr. Lucky. Fall in shit, come up smelling like roses. It might not be pretty, but it got me where I am today. Another beer?"

Through the haze of my growing intoxication, I realized that Dearborn, too, was an ace. I didn't know whether to be shocked, or just amused. In those days, to use a term from another circumstance, aces were largely in the closet. Yet, just like people in those other circumstances, they were everywhere you looked … if you looked closely.

At Muroc, however, it seemed that no one cared. Or that none of the aces cared if anyone cared. As if the rules had been suspended.

(I just wondered what Sampson's wild card talent was.)

True to his reputation, five minutes later Dearborn caused some local talent to materialize, two blondes and a brunette, who made themselves right at home on various laps. One of them had brought a camera, an Argus, I recall, and they were posing for photos with the famous pilot.

By seven I was so drunk I was necking with blonde number one on the pool table, to the raucous cheers of Sampson and Meadows. Even Enloe cracked what I hoped was an approving smile.

I was still a deux with the blonde when I realized that Margaret had come in. She gave me a wink as she squeezed past us, murmuring, "Pretty fast work for an engineer," and took a place at the bar between Guinan and Meadows. Soon Enloe and Dearborn had joined them.

Everyone seemed to be having a good time, particularly the three 11A pilots. At some point Meadows called over to Mike Sampson, and with some reluctance he joined the group. Meadows had picked up the camera and was trying to take a snap of the pilots with Margaret. He was too drunk to make it work. Equally drunk, I disengaged myself from my blonde and rolled off the pool table long enough to point out that he wasn't advancing the film. Without a word he just handed the camera to me, so I took the photo … Margaret in the middle, Enloe and Dearborn to her right, Guinan and Sampson to her left.

I'm not sure exactly what happened after that. Sampson's voice suddenly got very loud: "If I wouldn't fly in formation with him, I sure as hell wouldn't get close enough to fuck him." Followed by Margaret: "Shut up, Mike." Guinan added: "If she wanted to be with you, buddy, she'd still be with you."

Sampson leered. "I never heard any complaints."

Margaret shot back, "You were too busy watching yourself perform."

The next thing I remember is Sampson tapping my blonde on the shoulder. "Let's go, baby." Her lipstick smeared, the blonde straightened like she was on a string. She actually followed him out.

Now, a juicy scene like that would have silenced any ordinary bar, but the general din and jukebox wail never diminished. I'm not sure anybody but me actually heard the three-way love fest.

I staggered to the bar, where Pancho thoughtfully had a cup of coffee waiting for me. Then Enloe summoned Guinan over to the table where he was sitting with Grissom and Meadows, leaving me alone with Margaret.

"Well, go ahead," she said. "Say it."

"Say what?"

"Call me a tramp, or whatever it is boys from Minnesota say. You're just radiating disapproval."

"I think it's the beer. Honest."

She stabbed out her cigarette and swung around on her stool. "They're awfully fun," she said, nodding toward what had become the pilots-only table. "A bunch of eighteen-year-olds with their first hot rods." She turned back to me. "How old are you, Thayer?"

"Twenty-eight."

"That means you're still fourteen. In boy years."

"Boy years?"

"Like dog years. A boy's real age is only half his chronological age. Believe me, I've done all the research." She took out another cigarette. "There are girl years, too."

"I can't wait."

"They're a little trickier. The conversion factor is one-point-five. When I was thirteen — "

"— You were actually twenty."

"Of course, that's only good up to twenty-one. Then the conversion factor begins to diminish until you're twenty-nine when you're twenty-nine."

"And twenty-nine when you're thirty-three."

"My. A college graduate." There was that smile again. She looked over at the table in the corner, where Enloe, Guinan and the others had their heads together. "Do you suppose Casey's ever going to come back?"

I glanced at the clock. "He's probably waiting for the eight P.M. news."

"You're probably right. Damn you and that stupid Russian rocket. I hope it blows up."

"It might do just that." My head was clearing.

Then Dr. Rowe walked in.

He was dressed as he always dressed, except for the fact that his tie had been slightly loosened. For the first time, there was relative quiet in Pancho's. Rowe seemed amused. "Anybody know what happened with the Russians?"

"Pancho, what's the matter with you! Turn the damn radio on!" Dearborn shouted from the table.

Rowe stepped up to the bar and ordered a beer. As he waited, he glanced at Margaret and me. "Margaret. Ed, what do you think?"

"I don't think they've had enough test flights."

He got his beer and stared into it for a moment. "I hope you're right." He looked up. "And I hate myself for it."

Three minutes to eight. Rowe went to a table — alone. Margaret slid off the stool and took my arm. "Let's go," she whispered.

"Don't you want to know?"

"No."

We found her car. She slid behind the wheel and I got in beside her. Then we just sat in silence. Finally I said, "What was the big rush?"

"I just wanted to get out of there." She pulled up her knees, dropping her shoes. Through the car window came a hot breeze that rippled her hair and blouse. Suddenly I pulled her toward me. After a moment, she pushed me away. "Something wrong?"

She smiled, and unbuttoned her blouse. "I've just decided we're perfect for each other."

(A handwritten note:)

I can still remember each time we made love … each move within each time. On the couch in her office one Friday when everyone had gone. (Sliding my hand under her skirt to her moist center. We didn't even take our clothes off.) In the car outside a motel in Rosamond, where Deb and the kids had come to visit me. (Her head in my lap … hair caught in the steering wheel … stains on my jacket.) The motel in Lancaster on a hot afternoon. (The shades drawn against the heat if not the light, her riding me, drowning me in her breasts….)

Pathetic. But this is what happened.

(From the notebooks of Edgar Thayer:)

The news of the Soviet failure encouraged all of us. We started receiving visitors … a couple of generals from the Western Development Division, which supervised the missile program and who, until that week, had believed the idea of space travel to be so much cream cheese, and from Aeronautical Systems, who were running around trying to take credit for Rowe's project, which they had been forced to fund.

A Senator Kennedy showed up, too.

Since I was spending twelve hours a day in flight control, I was oblivious to most of this. We were debugging our data processing network while at the same time the engineers in Hangar Three were putting together and tearing down the LOX pump that had caused the pogo. There were orbital operations to be rehearsed and worldwide communications to integrate.

Oh, yes: on April 20, after Sampson and Dearborn flew another test, Rowe announced that Enloe and Guinan would make the first all-up flight. Major Wilbert Wood Enloe would become the first man in space.

I saw Dearborn moments after the announcement. He was still shaking his head, like a man who'd been in a bad fight. Sampson didn't react at all. I concluded that he hadn't expected to get the first flight.

Enloe began to fly daily landing approaches in an F-104 that had been modified to handle like the X-11A.

I didn't see Guinan at all in those several days between the incident at Pancho's and the announcement. When I chanced to meet him at the commissary on Wednesday the 21st he acted as if nothing whatever was the matter. "No hard feelings?" I said.

"Like I told Mikey, if she wanted to be with me, she'd still be with me." He was piling enough food on his plate for three men. "Enjoy it while it lasts, buddy boy. Because one of these days, she'll pull the same thing on you."

I hated Guinan for saying that, though I already suspected it was true. Margaret had told me — confessed is not the word; she might as well have been discussing a change in the weather — that she had slept with three of the four pilots so far.

Dearborn, Mr. Lucky, had been first. "He made a pass at me five minutes after we'd been introduced. I mean, I was putting a cuff on him — to check his blood pressure — and just like that he had his hand on my thigh." (I had my hand on her thigh.)

"You were powerless to resist," I said. "After all, he is an ace."

"I'd like to think that was it. I just took his hand away. He couldn't believe it for a moment. Then the next thing I knew I was locking the door and, well … you know." She blushed.

"Show me." And she shifted so her head slid down my stomach.

Sampson had been second. "Dearborn told him about me, then told me he had told Sampson, just to get his reaction. You know, Mike had been sitting in the office outside …"

Except for that drunken night at Pancho's, I would have sworn Sampson was a straight arrow. It was hard to picture him lusting after Margaret, and I said as much. "That was the whole idea. He's not married, he doesn't have a girlfriend. No one could even remember seeing him with a woman. I think the guys thought he was some kind of freak."

"Who knows what aces think of each other."

"Anyway, I noticed he was hanging around the medical office one day for no particular reason. I pretty much teased him into asking me out to dinner.

"It was very sweet. He insisted on picking me up — and he drives some beat-up little foreign car, a Renault, I think. Nothing like any pilot I've ever known — and taking me all the way to Lancaster to some romantic, out of the way little Italian place."

"The only romantic, out of the way little Italian place in Lancaster."

"That must be true, because who do you think we saw the moment we sat down? Wilson Rowe."

"With Mrs. Rowe?"

"Not unless he's married to a twenty-year-old."

"His daughter."

She laughed. "I don't think so."

I raised myself on one arm, momentarily shocked out of the mood … which was well into the realm of the ridiculous. Here I was, ensconced in the bedroom of a woman not my wife … daring to be disappointed by the idea of Rowe having an affair.

Then, in the time it took for Margaret to place her hand on my chest, forcing me onto my back, I relaxed, embracing it all. We were isolated, working impossible hours in reduced circumstances on what was supposed to be this magnificent adventure. The fact that Margaret had been intimate with the other aces, except for Enloe, made me feel I was part of a select club. After all, the normal rules of behavior no longer applied.

"Sampson," I said, moving my mouth from one breast to the other. A cool wind had come up. Margaret's nipples were hard as pebbles.

"Let's just say he … surrendered."

"He's an ace, too, isn't he?"

"Mikey is … intense. I mean, he went on for hours." She laughed. "No wonder he doesn't screw very often. He'd kill someone."

"I must be a hell of a disappointment …"

"Not quite. It kind of scared me." We rolled over so that I was above her. "So it was only natural that I would turn to Casey." She laughed at some private joke, then whispered in my ear. "I was bad."

"I'm listening."

"I was like a dog. I just wanted to fuck him, then get rid of him." She laughed again. "Just like a man."

"I'm hurt."

"You don't feel hurt."

I was inside her now. "All these aces …"

"I never overlap. When I find a new one, the old one is history."

I lost my ability to speak.

***

We had simulations the weekend of the 30th, so even if I had wanted to drive all the way down to Pasadena, I couldn't have. This left me with some free time to spend with Margaret, but, unfortunately, she was pulling the late shift at the clinic.

About ten o'clock on Saturday night I was dozing on the couch in my room at the BOQ, too tired to function, too lazy to go to bed. "Have Gun, Will Travel" was on the TV.

There was a knock at the door. Margaret, still in her nurse's uniform. "Come with me," she said. It never occurred to me to do anything else.

She was unusually silent — tired, I thought — as we pulled out of the base on our way to Pancho's. But we went right at the gate instead of left. I said, "If this is a kidnapping, I insist that you have your way with me…."

"All right."

"Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise."

Moments later we drove through The NACA facility without stopping. I was disappointed. "I was sort of hoping you were going to sneak me into the 11A cockpit."

"This is even better."

It was still a bit of a drive … out to the Mohave Highway, then east again, finally turning south onto Rich Road. Then, at Leuhman Ridge, she pulled off on a dirt road trail.

"Isn't this the restricted area?" I asked as she got out.

"Yes." She left the door open, the headlights on, and the radio playing loudly, some hillbilly music out of Bakersfield.

In front of us stood a concrete bunker. Between our car and the bunker was a chain link fence with a padlocked gate. "I hope we're not supposed to climb."

She produced a pair of keys. "Now that shows initiative," I said.

Moments later we were opening the steel door to Baby's tomb.

The surroundings were unimpressive. This was nothing more than a concrete and steel bunker, the kind originally used to store explosives. A row of bare lightbulbs provided the illumination.

There, in the middle, sat Baby.

I was surprised at how small it was, probably half the size of the X-11A. And where the spaceplane was sleek and winged, Baby looked like a seashell. Its skin was rough to the touch, like that of a shark. I ran my hands over it … almost unable to believe that it had traveled here from another world, another star system.

"Like what you see?"

"Yes," I said. "Thank you." Only then did I turn and look at Margaret. She had slipped out of her uniform and stood there naked and, even in that ghastly light, golden. She glided up to me and brushed her lips against mine.

"You have nothing on," I said.

"Don't be silly," she said, unzipping my pants. "You forgot about the radio…."

We made love right there on Baby.

It was, I suppose, final proof that I was no longer the boy who lived the Tak World novels.

***

On the morning of Tuesday, May 4th — launch minus one day — I arrived at the control center as usual at seven. Margaret had again had late duty at the medical office, so I had spent the night at the BOQ, the better to make my ritual early morning call to Deb and the children. (The more enmeshed I got with Margaret, the more faithful I was about calling. Strangely, I was looking forward to seeing them in as little as a week's time.)

A delta-winged F-106 from the Tomlin test force roared overhead on takeoff, and I stopped to watch it climb into the sun. My ears were still ringing when I heard a man say, "Beautiful."

George Battle stood behind me. In his mirrored sunglasses he looked like a demented Teddy Roosevelt. "Don't you love the smell of J-4 in the morning? I'd have given anything to be a pilot. Eyes."

"Aviation's loss."

Battle, from my brief encounter with him, was clearly one of those people who pride themselves on having a sense of humor — and don't. "In three days this place'll be swarming with reporters. Bastards."

"I haven't noticed a lot of them so far."

He gave a tight smile. "Thank you."

"Well, this will be the first manned space flight in history. People will be interested."

"I encourage people to be interested in the rocketry and such. My worry is that some of these reporters will cover the human angle." I didn't know what he meant, so he prompted. "What do you really know about Margaret Durand?" he said, straining to keep things casual.

"I know all I need to know," I said. "Since you've obviously been spying on us — "

"I'm in charge of security around here — "

"— Maybe you should just tell me what exactly — "

"— It isn't as though either of you've been a model of d discretion."

Both of us stopped. We realized we were shouting. "Look," I said, "I realize it looks bad — "

"— How it looks isn't the point — "

"— But we're all under a lot of strain — "

"— Oh, that excuse!"

We were talking over each other again. This time Battle took the lead and I tried to restrain myself. "Her background checks out fine. Medical school in Texas, ten years as Navy nurse until hired by the Committee. Never married. Church goer." He added the last item with a certain relish. "It's perfect. Too perfect, maybe. I'm just warning you — all of you — that once your rocket goes up" — he was oblivious to the double entendre — "your lives are going to change. You're going to be under a microscope. And you'd better be ready. Dr. Rowe." Battle made the transition from warning to greeting so smoothly I was late in catching it.

Rowe was just getting out of his car. "Good morning, George. Don't arrest Thayer until after tomorrow. I need him until then."

Battle, still oblivious, cleared his throat. "We were just talking about the weather."

"A personal conversation? Well, don't let it happen again." Then Rowe gestured toward me. "Ed, come here a second." Dismissed, Battle slunk away. Rowe opened the trunk of his car and pulled out what looked like a magazine wrapped in plastic. "Recognize it?"

Inside the plastic was a gray pamphlet published by the Smithsonian Institution and dated December 1919. I didn't need to open it to know what it contained. "Goddard's paper on multi-stage rocketry and flights to the Moon."

"'A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes.' The very paper ridiculed as 'absurd' by The New York Times." He handled it as if it were a priceless artifact. Which it was, to the two of us. Then, a bit too casually, I thought, he tossed it to me. "I want you to put this in Woody's personal pack."

"For the flight?"

"It should get into space, don't you think? After all that was said about it."

Rowe walked over to the fence and leaned on it. From our vantage point we had a clear view into Hangar Three. The tech crew was hard at work preparing the X-11A for its big day.

"Battle says everything changes tomorrow."

"Everything changes every day."

"You don't think the world will be different once Enloe lands?"

He had a distant look in his eye. "I suppose." He stepped back from the fence. "Maybe I'm just looking at the end of an era and not liking it much. Because it's my era. When rockets were toys for bright children and crazy adults."

"It has to grow up sometime. If we're ever going to get to the Moon. Have cities on Mars."

"I know." He smiled sadly. "I just wish it didn't have to hurt so much." He clapped me on the shoulder and nodded at the package in my hand. "Don't forget."

I had a few moments before the seven-thirty briefing, so I decided to drop by the suiting room. I found Major Meadows there giving a tour to some ten-year-old boy. "I told you not to touch the helmet!"

The kid just rolled his eyes. "This looks like airplane stuff. Where's the spaceman things?"

"These are the spaceman things," Meadows explained patiently. "My son, Mark," he said, by way of introduction and apology.

"Pleased to meet you, Mark."

He ignored me. "Come on, Mark. I'll drop you at school."

I held the door for the two of them.

It's funny, when I think back. If I hadn't held the door, I wouldn't have seen Margaret come into the building with Enloe.

They were laughing. I knew that laugh.

Margaret leaned close and said something to Enloe. Her secret voice.

They were holding hands. My hands.

I ducked back into the suiting room. I was too stunned to do anything but find Enloe's personal pack, open it, and gently place Rowe's gift inside it.

Then I stood there for what seemed like a long time.

Eventually I heard voices. Enloe and Guinan on their way to the briefing. My briefing. I knew I should leave. Right now. Any moment. Finally I forced myself out the door.

The next morning, Wednesday, May 5th, 1958, dawned beautifully bright in the high desert. I was up at four, unable to sleep later, and at the control center by five-thirty. As was everyone else. It was like Christmas morning: something grand was going to happen.

I stopped by Hangar Three, where Sampson, in white overalls, was setting up the cockpit.

Guinan's tank had already rolled out to the flight line. He was in the cockpit. Ridley and Sergeant Vidrine waved as they walked toward the tank.

I spotted Enloe on his way to breakfast with Grissom, Dearborn and Meadows. He gave me a double thumbs up. All I wanted to do was make the final suit check, and get to my console.

Going into the suiting room, I ran right into Margaret.

She seemed startled, almost pale. "Ed!"

"Sleep well?" I said. I couldn't hide my emotions any better than she could.

She sighed as her color returned. "You knew it was going to happen eventually — "

"Eventually. Not this fast."

"It pretty much had to be this fast, Ed." She looked at me with defiance. I never wanted her more than at that moment.

"Well," I said. "I suppose I should take one last look — "

I tried to brush past her, but she blocked me. I put my arms around her and pressed her against the wall. She wiggled away, smoothing her hair back. "Not out here."

We literally fell into an equipment closet. It was dark, crowded, with barely enough room for one person. Which is what we were, briefly. It was a fast, almost brutal collision of raised skirt, cold belt buckle, and torn panties.

For a moment we held each other, panting. "What about your rules against overlapping?"

"I changed them."

Once back in the light we both realized we were late. Maybe that was the reason we ran from each other.

As I plugged into the console next to Dearborn, I nodded to Rowe at his station in the back. Lost in thought, he didn't see me. Which didn't bother me in the least.

"Glad you could make room for us in your busy schedule," Dearborn said.

"Had to answer a call of nature." If he only knew.

"Curtain's going up," Dearborn said. He keyed the intercom. "Tank, this is flight. Comm check."

Moments later, Guinan's tank was airborne.

We had film cameras mounted in the KC-135 and at two places in the 11A cockpit. I mention this because we weren't able to see anything … we had to rely on the audio comm lines and telemetry. As did the rest of the world: NBC had managed to convince NACA and the Defense Department to allow it to broadcast the attempt live. (The Soviet failure made our image-conscious policy makers eager to show them up publicly.)

As the 11A approached the tank from behind and below, we heard Enloe, Guinan and the boom operator speaking from the script, which had by then been through a dozen in-flight rehearsals.

Suddenly we heard Grissom, in the lead chase plane, holler, "Watch it!"

At the same time Meadows, the other chase pilot, called, "Mid-air!"

"Abort." (According to the tapes, that was me, though I don't remember saying it.)

The next thirty seconds were confused. Guinan said he was rolling left. Grissom told him he had lost part of his tail and right wing. Guinan's broken reply: Can't hold."

I literally punched Dearborn on the shoulder. "Where's Enloe!" Forgetting that all along Dearborn had been calling, "11A, this is flight. 11A, this is flight."

At the same time I was hearing from every console at once. The one that registered was propulsion — the engineer monitoring the X-11A's rocket. "We're at redline."

"Woody, shut it down!" I didn't wait for Dearborn to make the call.

No response. No response. Finally, Meadows' voice. "Dust on the lake. Ten miles north of Boron."

Dust on the lake? That's when I realized that it was all over. One of the aircraft had crashed. But which one?

Then I heard Grissom's voice. "Tank's down, too. Five miles from Boron."

Rescue crews were already on their way, but it was too late. The X-11A had suddenly pitched up as the boom was being inserted. This would have been incovenient, but not disastrous, except that the two craft were physically connected. The 11A actually pivoted around the boom, slamming into the tail of Guinan's tank, rolling across the bigger plane and shearing off the right wingtip.

Guinan might have been able to save the tanker with damage to the tail or the missing wingtip, but not both. He was helpless to stop the beast — laden with fuel — from rolling over and plunging to earth.

Even so, he managed to retain some kind of control: the KC-135 was almost level when it hit … in the proper attitude for landing. But it broke apart and exploded, leaving a blackened smear four hundred feet long across the desert. The only recognizable structure was the crew cabin with the bodies of Guinan and Ridley. (It was later determined that Vidrine, the boom operator, had been decapitated in the initial collision.)

Both of the men in the cockpit had suffered "severe thoracic trauma," in the bland words of the investigating board. There was one curious bit of damage to Guinan which could not be explained by the impact:

He had lost his right hand.

Enloe's death was more chilling. The cabin films, one frame a second, show him in control and in position up through the beginning of fuelling. Suddenly — in the space of one frame — his hands fly off the controls, as if he is reacting to an explosion of sorts in his lap. (The board later concluded it was due to a failure in the oxygen hose attached to the belly of his suit. It literally blew apart.)

At that delicate moment, the lack of a steady hand — and the sudden, reflexive push on the pedals — is enough to throw the 11A into its fatal pivot.

Even though he is in his flight harness, Enloe is flung toward the camera by the collision with the tail of the tank. The cabin remains intact. The light changes, shifting from sun to shadow to sun, as the 11A rolls across the tank, clipping the wing.

The canopy shatters. Enloe, in his pressure suit and helmet, seems unhurt, though one of the straps of his harness comes loose. Sun, shadow, sun, shadow. Faster and faster, until the rate of rotation exceeds the frame speed.

The last two frames show a mountainside reflected in the faceplate of Enloe's helmet.

(From the Special Committee Investigating the X-11A Disaster, Maj. Gen. John B. Medaris, Chairman:)

MEDARIS: Mr. Thayer, the 11A did not contain an ejection seat.

THAYER: No, sir.

MEDARIS: Why not?

THAYER: Because of Major Enloe's wild card abilities. He was literally capable of flight.

MEDARIS: But he did not fly away from the 11A.

THAYER: No, sir.

MEDARIS: Why not?

THAYER: I don't know. The medical telemetry shows that he was conscious until impact, or shortly before.

MEDARIS: Was he impeded in any way? Could he have gotten out?

THAYER: Film from the chase plane shows that the 11A cabin was relatively intact until impact, and that one or both of his harness straps were loose.

MEDARIS: He should have been able to fall out and fly. Is that what you're saying?

THAYER: That's one possibility, yes, sir.

(By hand: If he wanted to!)

(From the notebooks of Edgar Thayer:)

Three days after the accident we held a memorial service out on the flight line. The Navy hymn. The missing man formation. Margaret was there, in sunglasses, somber, serene and distant. I stood next to Rowe. He and I had been in the hands of the investigating board since the hour of the accident. I hadn't slept more than a total of four hours. At that point, I didn't think I'd ever sleep again.

When it was over, I caught up with Margaret, who was hurrying toward her car. "Don't run away from me, goddamnit!"

"All right, Ed." She turned toward me, waiting. "What do you want?"

"I'm in trouble."

"I heard. Why you?"

"They think they've found the cause of the accident. It was in Enloe's life support system, which I was supposed to check."

"But didn't?"

"No."

She shook her head. It might have been sympathy. "What's going to happen?"

"I'm going to be in a lot of trouble."

"With the program …"

"Oh, it's finished. They'll investigate for two years and realize there's nothing wrong with concept. But there's no more money. Especially since the Russians are grounded, too."

"I'm sorry, Ed. I mean, I'm sorry for you. This was your dream." Then she said something that didn't shock me until much later. "What the hell, Ed: they were aces. It wasn't as though human beings were the ones going into space."

"I never cared about that. I worked for Dr. Rowe."

She started to laugh. "Yes, Dr. Rowe. When you get a chance, ask him why he hired you."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Talk to Rowe. He's got all the answers."

Without a kiss, without another word, she got in her car and drove off.

I found Rowe cleaning out his office. An air policeman stood guard outside.

"I had an interesting conversation with Margaret Durand."

Rowe smiled for the first time in days. "Oh, yes, Peggy Durand. I'm going to miss her."

"She told me to ask you why you hired me. She seemed to think it was important.

The smile stayed on his face, but his eyes closed. He sank into his chair. "You know, a few years ago I began to have dreams. Visions of the future. Winged spaceships taking off from runways and flying into orbit. Space tugs landing on the surface of the moon." He swiveled his chair to look out at the desert. "Even things like aces and jokers being treated with respect."

"None of that seems very likely, now."

He turned back to me. "Oh, that's the hell of it, Ed. I also dreamed that I would try to make this happen. That I would build the first winged spaceship … but that it would fail. Fail horribly. And all because of some young Judas named …" He stopped himself. "Never mind."

He said this nonsense with such conviction that I began to get chills. "Well," I said, playing along for the moment, "why didn't you do anything about it? You brought me in here … you threw me together with Peggy …"

"You can't change things, Ed. That's what hurts the most. I thought I could. I hedged my bets." He laughed bitterly. "I even put my most prized possession on that ship, hoping … It didn't make a damn bit of difference."

"What am I supposed to say? That I'm sorry?"

"It wasn't up to you." He was trying to make me understand. "It will happen, you know. The good part of the vision, those winged spaceships. I can still see them. But Enloe and Guinan had to die first."

There was a knock at the door. George Battle was there to take us away.

It wasn't until days later, sitting in confinement in Los Angeles, awaiting transfer to Washington, that I realized Rowe had made quite a confession to me. He, too, was an ace … with the power of foresight. Actually, given the nature of the power, I should say he was a joker.

Did he take comfort in knowing that eleven years after the X-11A disaster SpaceCom would be formed? That in thirteen years a whole squadron of Hornets would be flying into orbit — Hornets whose design was based on the X-11A? I hope so. He was a good man caught, like all of us, in the world created by the wild card.

He was the real victim.

(From The Albuquerque Journal, Saturday, January 28, 1967:)

X-11A DESIGNER DIES

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA (AP). Wilson Rowe, the engineer who designed and oversaw the ill-fated X-11A rocket plane program, has died here of cancer at the age of 62. He had been living in seclusion for the past several years following charges of sabotage that were lodged against him and his team.

(From The True Brothers by Tom Wolfe, 1979:)

Yeager quit testing rocket planes in 1954 and returned to operational flying in Korea. Four years later he was back in the United States, commanding a squadron of F-100s at George Air Force Base, fifty miles away from Tomlin, when the X-11A blew up.

It caused a colossal panic, with newspapermen and congressmen leading a pack that bayed through the woods about wild card treachery and communist sabotage. This was the End of Everything.

The first soul to be dragged off the sled was the 11A's intense young flight director, Edgar Thayer, who was actually sentenced to prison for "gross negligence." He served ten years in the Federal lockup in Lompoc, California, only to die in a car crash as soon as he got out.

Thayer's mysteriously timely death led to the revival of a few wild theories, however. It had been rumored, the True Brothers said, that someone else had screwed up Woody Enloe's equipment. Tomlin flight operations weren't like some goddamn Hitler bunker … lots of people went in and out of there that day. Sure Thayer should have checked … but who cut the hose in the first place?

None of the Brothers could ever understand why nobody but Thayer and Rowe got called to testify. What about Battle, the head of security? He was a weaselly sonofabitch. What about Margaret Durand, the flight nurse? She was every True Brother's choice for Space Age Mata Hari, but she just vanished! Disappeared into the mist!

Yeager, of course, wasn't about to turn himself into some kind of bounty hunter. He spent a few weeks with the panel investigating the accident, came to his own conclusions, then went off to the Sierras in search of golden trout.

At the party the night the first Hornet took off, however, it was Yeager who raised a toast to the True Brothers who should have made it, Woody Enloe and Casey Guinan….