He wouldn’t look at me. Not straight-on. “We’ll have to keep you here for a while, Marie. Not for long. Just ‘til after the Inauguration. ‘Til I. . . we. . . are safely in office. Corio and his people will make you comfortable here.”
I stood there, stunned. Without another word Jim suddenly got up and strode out of the room, leaving me there alone.
He kept his promises. Corio and his staff made life very comfortable for me here. Maybe they’re putting things in my food or something, who can tell? Most likely it’s for my own good. I do get bored. And so lonely. And frightened.
I watched his Inauguration on television. They let me see TV. I watch him every chance I get. I try to spot the tiny difference that I might catch among the seven of them. So far, I haven’t been able to find any flaw at all.
He said they’d let me go to him after the Inauguration. I hope they remember. His second Inauguration is coming up soon, I know.
Or is it his third?
CONSPIRACY THEORY
I’ve been involved in the exploration of space for two years longer than NASA.
I became a space enthusiast when I was in junior high school and made my first visit to the Fels Planetarium, in Philadelphia. I got hooked on the grandeur and mystery of the vast starry universe. So much so that I began to read everything I could about exploring space. This got me interested in the fields of astronomy and astronautics.
I also found that there were fictional stories about going to the Moon and Mars and other worlds in space. That’s how I discovered science fiction.
When the United States announced that it would attempt to place an artificial satellite in orbit, I jumped from newspaper reporting to the company that was building the launching rocket. I became a technical editor on Project Vanguard in 1956. Then came Sputnik, the Space Race, and the creation of NASA in 1958.
Most of the fiction I’ve written about space exploration and development has been based as solidly as possible on the known facts. When I write about factories on the Moon, you can depend on the accuracy of the physical facts. When I wrote my novel Mars, I made it as realistic as humanly possible.
A couple of years ago, however, while I was writing an essay about the history of our exploration of Mars, I was struck by a wave of nostalgia.
Back when I was sitting in the darkened dome of the Fels Planetarium, there were still arguments raging about whether or not Mars actually was crisscrossed with canals. Most professional astronomers said no, but there were enough dissenters to allow dreamers (like me) to hope that perhaps there truly were intelligent engineers on Mars, desperately struggling to bring water from the polar ice caps to the desert cities of the planet.
Well, the pitiless advance of knowledge squelched those dreams. No canals on Mars. No cities. No intelligent Martians.
But as I sat thinking about my youthful dreams, it occurred to me that the solar system was much more interesting back before NASA started exploring it. Not only could we imagine intelligent, canal-building Martians, but there was the possibility that Venus was a steaming Mesozoic jungle beneath its perpetual cover of clouds.
Just for fun, I started tinkering with a story in which my teenaged view of the solar system was right, and NASA’s data was all wrong.
Again, the bare idea was not enough to make a story. I had to figure out why NASA and the scientific establishment were feeding us wrong information. And who might be hurt by this conspiracy.
Or helped.
“I’m not exactly sure why,” said Roy Huggins. “When I asked for another eye checkup, they sent me here.”
“To see me,” said Professor Schmidt, chuckling a bit.
“Yes sir,” Huggins replied. He was totally serious; he did not even notice the professor’s little pun.
A silence fell over them. The athletically slim Hug gins, sandy-haired and boyish-looking in his sweat shirt and jeans, seemed quite honestly puzzled. Herb Schmidt, chairman of the astronomy department, was a chunky, white-bearded Santa even down to the twinkle in his baby blue eyes. A Santa in a dark three-piece suit, sitting behind a desk covered with thick reports and scattered memos heaped high like snowdrifts.
The professor eased back in his creaking old swivel chair and studied his student thoughtfully.
How many times had they met in this stuffy little office? Ever since Huggins had taken his first class in astronomy, back when he’d been an undergraduate. Now the boy had turned into a man: a youthful, vigorous man with a fine intelligent mind that had been sharply honed.
Was he enough of a man to accept the truth? And to keep the secret? The next few minutes would decide.
“Why were you having your eyes checked?” the professor asked innocently.
Huggins had to clear his throat before he could answer, “I seem to be. . . well, seeing things that aren’t there.”
“Ghosts?” asked the professor, smiling to show he did not mean it. “Elvis Presley, perhaps?”
The younger man shook his head. “At the telescope,” he said in a low, unhappy voice.
“Let me see now.” Schmidt made a pretense of searching through the papers scattered across his desk. “Your time at the facility is on . . .” He let the sentence hang.
“Mars,” Huggins whispered. “I’ve been observing Mars.”
Schmidt had known that all along. He stopped leafing through the papers and leaned back in his chair again, lacing his fingers together over his ample belly.
“Mars, eh?”
“I see—” Huggins swallowed again, “—canals.”
“Canals?” the professor echoed.
“Well—markings. I—I checked with some of the maps that Lowell drew—just as a lark, you know.”
“Percival Lowell? Way back then?”
Huggins’ answer came out as a tortured moan. “They match. My drawings match Lowell’s almost perfectly. A whole network of canals, all across the face of Mars.”
“But the photos you’ve taken don’t show any canals. I’ve seen your photographic work.”
“There aren’t any canals on Mars!” Huggins blurted. “You know that! I know that! We’ve sent spacecraft probes to Mars, and they proved there are no canals there! Lowell was crazy!”
“He was—enthusiastic. That’s a kinder word.”
Huggins nodded unhappily and chewed on a fingernail.
