Prelude to Space Read Free Page A

fairly good technical background?”
    Dirk looked slightly uncomfortable.
    “To tell the truth,” he confessed, “it’s almost fifteen years since I did any science—and
     I never took it very seriously then. I’ll have to learn what I need as I go along.”
    “Don’t worry; we have a high-pressure course for tired businessmen and perplexed politicians
     which will give you everything you need. And you’ll be surprised to find how much
     you pick up, simply by listening to the Boffins holding forth.”
    “Boffins?”
    “Good lord, don’t you know
that
word? It goes back to the War, and means any long-haired scientific type with a slide-rule
     in his vest-pocket. I’d better warn you right away that we’ve quite a private vocabulary
     here which you’ll have to learn. There are so many new ideas and conceptions in our
     work that we’ve had to invent new words. You should have brought along a philologist
     as well!”
    Dirk was silent. There were moments when the sheer immensity of his task almost overwhelmed
     him. Some time in the next six months the work of thousands of men over half a century
     would reach its culmination. It would be his duty, and his privilege, to be present
     while history was being made out there in the Australian desert on the other side
     of the world. He must look upon these events through the eyes of the future, and must
     record them so that in centuries to come other men could recapture the spirit of this
     age and time.
    They emerged at New Waterloo station, and walked the few hundred yards to the Thames.
     Matthews had been right in saying that this was the best way to meet London for the
     first time. The spacious sweep of the fine new Embankment, still only twenty years
     old, carried Dirk’s gaze down the river until it was caught and held by the dome of
     St. Paul’s, glistening wetly in an unexpected shaft of sunlight. He followed the river
     upstream, past the great white buildings before Charing Cross, but the Houses of Parliament
     were invisible around the curve of the Thames.
    “Quite a view, isn’t it?” said Matthews presently. “We’re rather proud of it now,
     but thirty years ago this part was a horrid mass of wharves and mud-banks. By the
     way—you see that ship over there?”
    “You mean the one tied up against the other bank?”
    “Yes, do you know what it is?”
    “I’ve no idea.”
    “She’s the
Discovery
, which took Captain Scott into the Antarctic back at the beginning of this century.
     I often look at her as I come to work and wonder what he’d have thought of the little
     trip
we
are planning.”
    Dirk stared intently at the graceful wooden hull, the slim masts and the battered
     smokestack. His mind slipped into the past in the easy way it had, and it seemed that
     the Embankment was gone and that the old ship was steaming past walls of ice into
     an unknown land. He could understand Matthew’s feelings, and the sense of historical
     continuity was suddenly very strong. The line that stretched through Scott back to
     Drake and Raleigh and yet earlier voyages was still unbroken: only the scale of things
     had changed.
    “Here we are,” said Matthews in a tone of proud apology. “It’s not as impressive as
     it might be, but we didn’t have a lot of money when we built it. Not that we have
     now, for that matter.”
    The white, three-story building that faced the river was unpretentious and had obviously
     been constructed only a few years before. It was surrounded by large, open lawns scantily
     covered by dispirited grass. Dirk guessed that they had already been earmarked for
     future building operations. The grass seemed to have realized this too.
    Nevertheless, as administrative buildings went, Headquarters was not unattractive,
     and the view over the river was certainly very fine. Along the second story ran a
     line of letters, as clean-cut and severely practical as the rest of the buildings.
     They formed a single word, but at