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Title: Four-billion dollar door

Author: Michael Shaara

Illustrator: Arnold Arlow
        Kelly Freas


        
Release date: March 23, 2026 [eBook #78281]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Renown Publications, Inc, 1956

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78281

Credits: Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Luminist Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR-BILLION DOLLAR DOOR ***
[Illustration]




                        Four-Billion Dollar Door

                           by Michael Shaara


  _Old Sam Button devoted his life to being the first man on the
  Moon--in one way, he was._




I see, by the latest history books my boy brings home from school, that
they are already beginning to rewrite the incredible tale of Sam Button
and the door. And I can see their point. Sam Button was a great hero,
first man to reach the Moon and all that, and it was a rare moment in
history when he made it.

But still, they haven’t got any right to hush up about the door.
Because, even if that was one of the great moments in history, it was
also undoubtedly one of the funniest. Anything that funny ought to be
handed on to posterity. So, since nobody else had taken on the chore I
guess I’ll have to take it on myself.

Old Sam Button was a long lean man with blonde hair that looked like it
had been stuck on with glue. Old Sam was a rare man, as well as a lean
one. For as far back as I can remember, Old Sam lived with one great
dream, to get from Earth to the Moon. There are a lot of people like
that nowadays, but there weren’t so many then.

We used to kid him about it. “Old Onward and Upward Button”, we used
to call him, and it was a standing joke that his mother had been
frightened by a flying saucer.

Kidding never stopped Old Sam--not even when he was Young Sam. He knew
exactly where he was going. He kept at it all through school, up to a
Ph.D. in physics, and then went right to work on guided missiles. He
planned it from the very beginning, so that, when the chance came, he
would be ready. When it finally came, Old Sam was readier than any man
in the country. Which shows you what a deeply dedicated man he was. It
also makes it kind of peculiar that such a comedy finish should finally
wind up his dream.

Old Sam had faith every step of the way--I mean faith in science. He
was absolutely certain men would get to the Moon, and Mars, and all the
other places, and he was pretty sure that most of it would be within
his lifetime. So he traveled around the country, making speeches.

In his spare time, Old Sam wrote science articles, speculating on the
amazing things we would find when we got wherever we were going. I
guess he had more to do with the first big rocket being built than any
man in the country. It cost four billion dollars, you see, which even
now will go a good long way in the right hands, and Congress naturally
had to be practically dynamited before they’d hand it over.

But Old Sam never gave up. He bribed them, he warned them, he sweetened
them, he promised them everything. He claimed that the Moon was an
invaluable military base, that whoever got there first would rule
the world, that the scientific information we would receive would be
enormous. He even hinted seriously that there might be loose diamonds,
lying around on the Moon’s surface--caused, he said, by meteors
striking rock with great speed and pressure.

He promised them, in short, the Moon--and, in the end, he got the money.

I have never heard a more eloquent speaker. The only time I ever saw
him stumped was when one Senator, an amiable, earthy man from Missouri,
commented that, “If the good Lord had meant us to get to the Moon,
why’d he make it so dagnab fur away?”

“But science,” Old Sam declared, “science would find a way.” There were
a lot more atoms in the world than there were people, and, as far as
Sam was concerned, what the atoms did was more important.

Now, perhaps, you begin to know a little about Old Sam. True, he was
not exactly a likeable man. Dedicated men like that seldom are. But I
guess Old Sam really went a mite too far. After spending a lot of his
lifetime in a laboratory, he was certainly a one-sided man. If a thing
wasn’t done scientifically, it wasn’t done at all, for Sam.

Fortunately, he had no children. If he had had kids, he was the kind
of man who would have spared the love and spoiled the child. All his
emotional interest was bound up in space flight. Which, considering
what happened, must have made subsequent events really rough on him.

At any rate, he got his money and built the satellite station _and_ the
space-ship. They were four years in the building, and then, one July,
he took off for the Moon.

I don’t suppose there was a man on Earth who didn’t know about Old
Sam’s trip, and there were very few people who weren’t excited about
Man’s first step into space. It was a great moment, a dramatic moment.
There were television cameras mounted on Old Sam’s ship beaming it
all back to Earth. At least fifty million people were following Old
Explorer Sam and his crew on their spectacular journey.

So, one morning, as Sam finally began to maneuver for the Lunar
landing, he was already a monumental hero. Newspaper reporters all
over the world had been busy for months, writing about the hazards of
the trip, about the deathly cold of outer space, about collisions with
mountainous meteors and cosmic death rays.

But Old Sam had merely sniffed smugly for the cameras. “Everything
has been considered,” he reassured the press, “we have foreseen every
detail.”

So the papers painted him as a vast man, calm, unworried, going off
into the illimitable dark, on the greatest of all explorations. No
doubt, Old Sam _was_ a great man--in his way.

All eyes were on him, as he went in for Man’s first landing on the
Moon. The TV cameras were focussed upon him, as he gave the orders for
the landing, standing proud and triumphant in a spotless white cap and
gilded uniform. There was a great bump, the picture leaped and blurred
for a moment, while fifty million breaths were held, and then you could
almost hear the cheers rising up from all over Earth. The Moonship was
finally down--down and safe. What a moment!

Old Sam took off his hat and made a little speech. “Men and women
of Earth,” he said simply, “we have reached the Moon.” It was very
impressive--it was about as impressive a moment as I have ever seen.
Then Old Sam stepped toward the door.

Naturally, the next moves had all been carefully rehearsed. He was to
don his uniform, a thick rubberized affair with a fishbowl helmet, then
he was to step out of the airlock of the great steel ship, bearing a
flag in his hand.

Then he was to plant the flag in the soil of the Moon, and the
television cameras were to be brought outside the ship, and we were all
to get our first look at the Moon, while he made the speech claiming
it. So we all watched breathlessly, while he got into his helmet.

At last, Old Sam went to the airlock, turned once to wave at the
cameras, and pushed a button. The door didn’t open.

There was a seemingly endless pause, and then, still calm, he pushed
the button again.

The door still didn’t open.

He pushed several times, then motioned to one of the crew. You could
hear people begin giggling nervously. The crewman examined the lock
with bewilderment, then mumbled something to Sam.

“What do you mean, frozen?” Old Sam cried, and the question must have
been audible all over the world. Then he pushed feverishly at the
button. But the great steel door wouldn’t open.

It was all very embarrassing. Having reached the Moon safely, they
couldn’t get out of the ship. The ship of course was built of solid
steel, fully pressurized, and there was simply no exit. They had
spanned two hundred and forty thousand miles of space, had spent four
billion dollars and they couldn’t get out of the ship! No flag, no
speeches, no scientific information--no diamonds! They couldn’t get out
of the ship!

The door was frozen shut. Moments later--some of the most wildly
hysterical moments in history--Old Sam announced unbelievingly to fifty
million people that he had discovered the reason. Some mechanic, back
on Earth, had greased the outside of the door. In outer space, the
grease had frozen rock-solid. There was no possible way of opening the
door.

I must say, to Old Sam’s credit, that he didn’t break down. He waited,
at least, until the cameras were off him. Then all we saw was a
frigidly smiling announcer, trying to point out that Man had after all
reached the Moon. But you could feel the shock rising all over the
world--and then the laughter.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mankind guffawed from pole to pole. Practically everybody enjoyed it
but Congress. Some hothead introduced a resolution banning spaceflight
forever. There was nothing for Old Sam to do, but to bring the ship
back to Earth. It would be understandable if he had committed suicide
on the way. He came back to what must have been the worst ribbing in
history. I guess, deep down, we were all a little embarrassed, and we
had to take it out on somebody.

Well that’s about all there is. What Old Sam did thereafter is obscure.
When the laughter finally died down, and space travel was revived,
he had no part in it. For he died, about that time, of a stroke of
apoplexy, brought on one day at a picnic with his wife.

It seems she had forgotten the can opener.

[Illustration]




Transcriber’s Note:


  This etext was produced from Satellite Science Fiction December 1956
  (vol. 1, no. 2). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
  the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
  minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.


*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR-BILLION DOLLAR DOOR ***


    

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