5
(It seemed there wasn't much left to do in the way of space pioneering. There was a Space Platform, and there were bases on the moon, and drone ships had been out to Mars and sunward past Venus. There were new and better fuels, and the problem involving the Van Allen belts of highly charged atomic particles seemed to have been solved. It looked as if the rest of the job of conquering space would be just plain, slogging hard work of a strictly routine nature. This process would be improved a little, and that would be developed a little further, and progress toward the stars would be made by inches. But things never work out simply. There is always something unexpected and usually disastrous turning up. Just when things looked brightest, somebody worked out the causes of solar flares and devised a way to predict them. It looked like a neat and unimportant triumph of pure theory. But when it was closely examined, it meant that the end of all space travel was approaching.)
They called Colonel Ed McCauley back from the moon when Doctor Bramwell peevishly refused to go along with the Venus shoot unless the assigned crew was fired and replaced by more respectful men. The top brass felt that McCauley might be able to get along with Bramwell and get the job done. It was a highly necessary job. There was a sun-flare maximum coming up, but if the Bramwell-Faraday screen could be improved enough, it might not matter. Men might continue to occupy the Space Platform, and activities at the bases on the moon might continue. All the men now in space might not have to return to Earth to stay until the flares died down—if they ever did. In effect, if the Bramwell-Faraday screen could be built up to adequate strength, man's conquest of space might continue. If the screen couldn't be built up, space travel must stop.
And Doctor Bramwell was the key man in the project. He'd devised the screen in the first place, and was more likely to be able to improve it than anyone else. But he was not an amiable person. So, since he was a civilian and couldn't be given orders, when he said peevishly that he would not go along with the original crew, the men first assigned to the Venus shoot were removed—swearing luridly—and Colonel Ed McCauley came back from the moon to see what he could do.
He had one interview with Bramwell, and was very respectful. Part of the respect was genuine, and part was diplomacy. Bramwell did have one of the two or three best brains on Earth, but his personality gave McCauley reason to be disturbed.
After the interview he consulted higher-ranking officers. He did not think Bramwell was psychologically qualified to take part in the Venus shoot. He thought the scientist would do better work if he stayed home and directed somebody on the ship by tight-beam radio. McCauley spoke forcefully. But Bramwell happened to have a near-monopoly of the kind of brains that were required. And the psychological factor that made McCauley doubtful made the doctor as temperamental as any prima donna. The high brass knew all the reasons for McCauley's protest. But if Bramwell felt himself pushed aside, he'd sulk. If he sulked, he wouldn't do his best work. And his best work was an essential. So McCauley was ordered to make do with Bramwell somehow.
McCauley shrugged dubiously. He asked for Major Randy Hall to be assigned as his second-in-command. Randy gloated when his appointment came through, but McCauley shook his head gloomily.
"There's no reason to feel good about it," he told Randy dourly, in the almost completed Venus ship. "I'll be glad if you go along, but that's not the idea. You're appointed to be the man who'll be fired if Bramwell demands it."
Randy blinked. The cramped, inconvenient, gadget-filled interior of the Venus ship looked glamorous, when you thought of where it was going and what had to be done in it.